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Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Encyclopedia of race, ethnicity, and society/edited by Richard T. Schaefer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4129-2694-2 (cloth) 1. Racism—Encyclopedias. 2. Race relations—Encyclopedias. 3. Ethnicity—Encyclopedias. I. Schaefer, Richard T. HT1521.E63 2008 305.8003—dc22
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Rolf A. Janke Jerry Westby Diana E. Axelsen Leticia Gutierrez Kate Schroeder Carla Freeman, Robin Gold, D. J. Peck C&M Digitals (P) Ltd. Scott Oney, Penny Sippel, Dennis Webb Julie Grayson Candice Harman Amberlyn Erzinger
Contents Editorial Board List of Entries
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List of Images xv Reader’s Guide
xix
About the Editors xxxiii Contributors xxxv Introduction
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Entries A–Z 1–1430 Appendixes Appendix A: Data on Race and Ethnicity in the United States, 1820 to the Present 1433 Appendix B: Internet Resources on Race, Ethnicity, and Society 1493 Index 1499
Editorial Board General Editor Richard T. Schaefer Department of Sociology DePaul University, Chicago
Associate Editor Shu-Ju Ada Cheng Department of Sociology DePaul University, Chicago
Assistant Editor Kiljoong Kim John J. Egan Urban Center DePaul University, Chicago
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List of Entries Abolitionism: The Movement Abolitionism: The People Abortion Acculturation Adoption Affirmative Action in Education Affirmative Action in the Workplace Afghan Americans African Americans African Americans, Migration of African American Studies African American Women and Work Africans in the United States Afrocentricity Aging Alamo, The Alaskan Natives, Legislation Concerning Albanian Americans Aleuts Alien Land Acts American Apartheid American Dilemma, An American Indian Movement American Indians. See Native Americans Americanization American Jewish Committee Americans with Disabilities Act Amish Anti-Defamation League Antiracist Education Anti-Semitism Apartheid Apartheid, Laws Arab Americans Argentina Armenian Americans
Asian Americans Asian Americans, New York City Asian American Studies Asian American Studies, Mixed-Heritage ASPIRA Assimilation Assyrian Americans Asylum Australia Australia, Indigenous People Authoritarian Personality Aztlán Back to Africa Movement Baldwin, James Balkans Bangladeshi Americans Barrio Belgian Americans Belize Bell Curve, The Bilingual Education Biomedicine, African Americans and Birth of a Nation, The Black Bourgeoisie Black Cinema Black Conservatives Black Elk Black Enterprise Blackfeet Black Intellectuals Black-Jewish Relations. See Jewish-Black Relations: A Historical Perspective; Jewish-Black Relations: The Contemporary Period Black Marxism. See Robinson, Cedric Black Metropolis vii
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Black Nationalism Black Panther Party Black Power Blockbusting Blood Quantum Boas, Franz “Boat People” Body Image Borderlands Border Patrol Bosnian Americans Boycott Bracero Program Brain Drain Brazil Brazilian Americans Britain’s Irish Brown Berets Brown v. Board of Education Bulgarian Americans Burakumin Bureau of Indian Affairs Burmese Americans. See Myanmarese Americans Cambodian Americans Canada Canada, Aboriginal Women Canada, First Nations Canadian Americans Cape Verde Caribbean Caribbean Americans Carmichael, Stokely Caste Census, U.S. Central Americans in the United States Chávez, César Cherokee Cheyenne Chicago School of Race Relations Chicano Movement Child Development Chin, Vincent China Chinatowns Chinese Americans
Chinese Exclusion Act Choctaw Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District Citizenship Civil Disobedience Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil Rights Movement, Women and Code of the Street Collins, Patricia Hill Colombia Colonialism Colonias Color Blindness Color Line Community Cohesion Community Empowerment Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Contact Hypothesis Cosmopolitanism Creole Crime and Race Criminal Processing Critical Race Theory Croatian Americans Cross-Frontier Contacts Crown Heights, Brooklyn Cuba Cuba: Migration and Demography Cuban Americans Cultural Capital Cultural Relativism Culture of Poverty Cypriot Americans Czech Americans Danish Americans Dawes Act of 1887 Death Penalty Declining Significance of Race, The Deficit Model of Ethnicity Deloria, Vine, Jr. Desi Deviance and Race Diaspora Digital Divide
List of Entries
Dillingham Flaw Discrimination Discrimination, Environmental Hazards Discrimination, Measuring Discrimination in Housing Domestic Violence Domestic Work Dominican Americans Dominican Republic Double Consciousness Douglass, Frederick Drake, St. Clair Dred Scott v. Sandford Drug Use Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt Dutch Americans East Harlem Educational Performance and Attainment Educational Stratification Egyptian Americans Emancipation Proclamation English Americans. See United Kingdom, Immigrants and Their Descendants in the United States English Immersion Environmental Justice Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Estonian Americans Ethnic Conflict Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of Ethnic Group Ethnicity, Negotiating Ethnic Succession Ethnocentrism Ethnonational Minorities Ethnoviolence Eugenics Europe Familism Family Fanon, Frantz Father Divine Peace Mission Movement Feminism
Feminism, Black Feminism, Latina Filipino Americans Film, Latino Finnish Americans Foreign Students France Fraternities and Sororities Frazier, E. Franklin French Americans FUBU Company Gaming, Native American Gangs Gautreaux Decision Gender and Race, Intersection of Gender Identity. See Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender; Sexuality Genocide Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908) Gentrification Georgian Americans German Americans Gerrymandering Ghetto Glass Ceiling Globalization Global Perspective Greek Americans Grutter v. Bollinger Guatemalan Americans Guest Workers Hafu Haiti Haitian Americans Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison Haole Hapa Harlem Harlem Renaissance Hate Crimes Hate Crimes in Canada Hawai‘i, Race in Hawaiians Head Start and Immigrants
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Health, Immigrant Health Disparities Hernandez v. Texas Higher Education Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue Hip-Hop Hip-Hop and Rap, Women and Hispanics Hispanic Versus Latino HIV/AIDS Hmong Americans Holocaust Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists Homelessness Homicide Honduran Americans Hong Kong hooks, bell Hopi Hourglass Economy Housing Audits Huerta, Dolores Hull House School of Race Relations Hungarian Americans Hurricane Katrina Hutterites Icelandic Americans Identity Politics Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 Immigrant Communities Immigration, Economic Impact of Immigration, U.S. Immigration and Gender Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Immigration and Race Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 Incarcerated Parents India Indian Americans Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 Indonesian Americans
Informal Economy Institutional Discrimination Integration. See Resegregation; School Desegregation Intelligence Tests Intercultural Communication Intergroup Relations, Surveying Intermarriage Internal Colonialism Internalized Racism International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Internment Camps Interracial Friendships Invisible Man Iranian Americans Iraqi Americans Ireland Irish Americans Islamophobia Issei Italian Americans Jackson, Jesse, Sr. Jamaica Jamaican Americans Japan Japanese American Citizens League Japanese Americans Jewish Americans Jewish-Black Relations: A Historical Perspective Jewish-Black Relations: The Contemporary Period Jewry, Black American Jim Crow Johnson, Charles S. Jordanian Americans Juvenile Justice Kennewick Man Kenya King, Martin Luther, Jr. Kinship Kitano, Harry H. L. Korean Americans Ku Klux Klan
List of Entries
Kurdish Americans Kwanzaa Labeling Labor Market Segmentation Labor Unions Laotian Americans La Raza La Raza Unida Party Latin America, Indigenous People Latina/o Studies Latvian Americans Lebanese Americans Lee, Spike Leisure Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Life Expectancy Lincoln, Abraham Lithuanian Americans London Bombings (July 7, 2005) Loving v. Virginia Lynching Machismo Malcolm X Mandela, Nelson Maquiladoras Marginalization “Marielitos” Marshall, Thurgood Marxism and Racism McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 Media and Race Medical Experimentation Melting Pot Mennonites Menominee Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) Mexican Americans Mexico Military and Race Minority/Majority Minority Rights Model Minority Mormons, Race and
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Multicultural Education Multicultural Social Movements Multiracial Identity Muslim Americans Muslims in Canada Muslims in Europe Myanmarese Americans National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) National Congress of American Indians National Council of La Raza National Indian Youth Council National Origins System National Rainbow Coalition National Urban League Nation of Islam Native American Education Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 Native American Health Care Native American Identity Native American Identity, Legal Background Native Americans Native Americans, Environment and Nativism Navajo Negro League Baseball Newton, Huey Nicaraguan Americans Nigeria Nigerian Americans Nikkeijin Nisei Northern Ireland, Racism in Norwegian Americans Ojibwa One-Drop Rule Operation Bootstrap Operation PUSH Orientalism Pachucos/Pachucas Pacific Islanders Pakistani Americans
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Palestinian Americans Panamanian Americans Pan-Asian Identity Panethnic Identity Pan-Indianism Parenting Park, Robert E. Parks, Rosa PATRIOT Act of 2001 Peltier, Leonard Peoplehood People of Color Peru Peruvian Americans Peyote Pipeline Plessy v. Ferguson Pluralism Police Polish Americans Political Economy Popular Culture, Racism and Portuguese Americans Prejudice Prisons Privilege Proposition 187 Public Housing Pueblos Puerto Rican Americans Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund Puerto Rico
Racial Profiling Racism Racism, Aversive Racism, Cultural Racism, Types of Racism, Unintentional Rainbow Coalition. See National Rainbow Coalition Rap: The Genre Rap: The Movement Redlining Red Power Refugees Religion Religion, African Americans Religion, Minority Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 Religious Movements, New Remittances Reparations, Slavery Repatriation of Mexican Americans Resegregation Reservation System Restrictive Covenants Return Migration Reverse Discrimination Rites of Passage Robbers Cave Experiment Robinson, Cedric Robinson, Jackie Roma Roman Catholics Romanian Americans Russia
Race Race, Comparative Perspectives Race, Declining Significance of. See Declining Significance of Race, The Race, Social Construction of Race, UNESCO Statements on Racetalk Racial Formation Racial Identity Racial Identity Development Racialization
Sacred Sites, Native American Sacred Versus Secular Salvadoran Americans Sami Samoan Americans Samora, Julian San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez Sand Creek Massacre Sansei Santería
List of Entries
Scapegoats Schmiedeleut School Desegregation School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning Science Faculties, Women of Color on Scottish Americans. See United Kingdom, Immigrants and Their Descendants in the United States Segregation Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Separate but Equal Serbian Americans Sexual Harassment Sexuality Sicilian Americans Singapore Sioux Slavery Slovak Americans Slovene Americans Social Capital Social Darwinism Social Distance Social Inequality Social Mobility Social Support Social Work South Africa, Republic of South Americans in the United States Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Sovereignty, Native American Spanglish Spanish Americans Split Labor Market Sri Lankan Americans Stereotypes Stereotype Threat Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Sundown Towns Swedish Americans Symbolic Ethnicity Symbolic Religiosity Syrian Americans Taiwan Talented Tenth
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Terrorism Testing Thai Americans Third-Generation Principle Thorpe, Jim Tibetan Americans Title IX Tlingit Tongan Americans Tracking Trail of Broken Treaties Transnational People Transracial Adoption Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) Trinidad Truth, Sojourner Tubman, Harriet Turkey Turkish Americans Ugandan Americans Ukrainian Americans Underclass United Kingdom United Kingdom, Immigrants and Their Descendants in the United States United States v. Fordice Urban League. See National Urban League Urban Legends Urban Riots “Us and Them” U.S. Census. See Census, U.S. Veil Victim Discounting Victimization Vietnamese Americans Voting Rights Washington, Booker T. Washington, Harold WASP Water Rights Wealth Distribution “Welfare Queen” Welfare Reform
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Wells-Barnett, Ida B. Welsh Americans. See United Kingdom, Immigrants and Their Descendants in the United States West Indian Americans “Wetbacks” White Flight Whiteness Whiteness, Measuring Whiteness and Masculinity White Privilege White Racism White Supremacy Movement
Williams, Fannie Barrier Wilson, William Julius Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973) Xenophobia Young Lords Zapatista Rebellion Zimbabwe Zionism Zoot Suit Riots
List of Images Abolitionism: The People: Harpers Ferry insurrection (photo) 4 Abortion: Table 1, Estimated Abortion Rate by Poverty Status, According to Race and Ethnicity 7 Adoption: Family with five adopted, Russian-born children (photo) 10 Afghanistan (map) 19 African Americans: Figure 1, Estimated Percent of Blacks in the United States 27 African American Women and Work: African American women sorting tobacco (photo) 36 Africans in the United States: Senegalese woman in New York (photo) 38 Albania (map) 47 Aleutian Islands (map) 50 Aleuts: Aleutian child, 1938 (photo) 51 American Apartheid: Public housing in the Bedford Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn (photo) 55 Anti-Semitism: The Eternal Jew poster (photo) 77 Argentina (map) 87 Armenia (map) 89 Asian Americans: Figure 1, Estimated Percent of Asians in the United States 95 Assyria (map) 108 Australia, Indigenous People: June Smith and her work at a Sydney art gallery (photo) 115 Balkans (map) 129 Bangladesh (map) 132 Barrio: Mariachis in East Los Angeles, California (photo) 134 Belgium (map) 136 Belize (map) 138 Birth of a Nation, The: Scene from The Birth of a Nation (photo) 150
Black Conservatives: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (photo) 157 Black Enterprise: Figure 1, Proportion of Employed Black and White College Graduates in Managerial Jobs 162 Figure 2, Percentage of People Over 24 Who Have Completed College, by Race 163 Border Patrol: U.S. border with Mexico (photo) 193 Bosnia-Herzegovina (map) 195 Brazil (map) 200 Brazilian men practicing capoeira on the beachfront (photo) 201 Britain’s Irish: Figure 1, Irish-born Recorded in Great Britain 207 Bulgaria (map) 213 Cambodia (map) 221 Canada, First Nations: A Haida gift offering to the Tlingit (photo) 231 Cape Verde (map) 235 Caribbean Islands (map) 237 Caste: Hindu children of high caste, Bombay, India (photo) 247 Central America (map) 252 Central Americans in the United States: Table 1, Central American Population in the United States 252 Chávez, César: César Chávez and Coretta Scott King (photo) 256 Cheyenne: Great Omaha powwow dance of the Cheyenne in Montana (photo) 264 Child Development: African American grandmother and grandchildren (photo) 275 China (map) 278
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Chinatowns: Chinese New Year Parade (photo) 282 Civil Religion: Pledging allegiance to the flag (photo) 303 Civil Rights Movement: Civil rights march (photo) 305 Colombia (map) 316 Contact Hypothesis: Office relations (photo) 330 Croatia (map) 347 Cuba (map) 352 Cuban Americans: Cuban immigrants (photo) 357 Cyprus (map) 365 Czech Republic (map) 367 Danish Americans: Danish Lutheran church, Evan, Minnesota (photo) 370 Deficit Model of Ethnicity: Cuban exile in Miami (photo) 379 Denmark (map) 369 Discrimination: Table 1, Median Income by Race and Gender 393 Dominican Americans: Dominican Day parade (photo) 409 Dominican Republic (map) 410 Douglass, Frederick (photo) 414 Dred Scott v. Sandford: General parody of the 1860 presidential contest (cartoon) 417 Drug Use: Table 1, Percentage of Persons Using Drugs in the Past 30 Days, by Age and Race 421 Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt (photo) 423 Educational Performance and Attainment: Table 1, Educational Performance and Attainment by Race and Ethnicity 433 Egypt (map) 438 El Salvador (map) 1185 English Immersion: Arab American girl reading (photo) 440 Estonia (map) 448 Ethnic Enclaves: Festival in Little Italy (photo) 454 Eugenics: Buchenwald concentration camp (photo) 472 Father Divine Peace Movement: Father Divine (photo) 484 Filipino Americans: Filipino American couple (photo) 494 Finland (map) 500 France (map) 506
Fraternities and Sororities: Sorority members (photo) 510 Gaming, Native American: Gamblers in Native American casino (photo) 520 Gentrification: Construction in Harlem (photo) 536 Georgia (map) 537 German Americans: German emigrants (engraving) 541 Germany (map) 540 Glass Ceiling: Latina executive (photo) 549 Greece (map) 559 Guatemala (map) 564 Haiti (map) 571 Harlem Renaissance: Langston Hughes (photo) 587 Hawai‘i (map) 599 Hawai‘i, Race in: Table 1, Most Common Racial/Ethnic Groups in Hawai‘i 597 Table 2, Summary Statistics Based on Selected Socioeconomic Indicators by Group 598 Hawaiians: Figure 1, Native Hawaiian Populations Before and After Western Contact 600 Higher Education: Fisk University students (photo) 613 Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue: Figure 1, Causes and Stress Reactions to Racial Battle Fatigue 617 Hispanics: Figure 1, Estimated Percent of Latinos/Hispanics in the United States 626 Homelessness: Homeless person (photo) 642 Honduras (map) 647 Hong Kong (map) 648 Hungary (map) 662 Hurricane Katrina: Hurricane Katrina victims (photo) 665 Iceland (map) 673 Immigration: Figure 1, Number of New Lawful Permanent Residents 687 Figure 2, Legal Status of the U.S. Foreign-Born Population 690 Immigration Reform and Control Act 1986: Illegal immigrants (photo) 702 India (map) 707 Indian Americans: Indian American woman (photo) 712 Indonesia (map) 721
List of Images
Intermarriage: Interracial couple with their daughter (photo) 737 Internment camps: Schoolchildren at Manzanar (photo) 745 Japanese Americans Fred Korematsu, Minoru Yasui, and Gordon Hirabayashi, at a press conference on January 19, 1983 (photo) 746 Iran (map) 752 Iraq (map) 754 Ireland (map) 755 Irish Americans: Immigration cartoon 758 Table 1, Immigration From Ireland to the United States 759 Italian Americans: Italian neighborhood market (photo) 768 Italy (map) 767 Jamaica (map) 775 Jamaican Americans: Harry Belafonte (photo) 776 Japan (map) 779 Kenya (map) 803 King, Martin Luther, Jr. (photo) 806 Korea, North and South (map) 812 Ku Klux Klan: Ku Klux Klan rally (photo) 815 Laos (map) 827 Latin America, Indigenous People: Aztec Indian children in Mexico (photo) 834 Latvia (map) 839 Lebanon (map) 840 Lee, Spike: Table 1, Chronology of Films by Spike Lee 842 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender: Gay rights rally (photo) 847 Life Expectancy: Figure 1, Life Expectancy at Birth, by Race and Sex 850 Figure 2, Infant Mortality Rates by Race and Hispanic Origin 851 Table 1, Ten Leading Causes of Death Among Non-Hispanic Blacks and Non-Hispanic Whites 849 Lithuania (map) 854 Loving v. Virginia: Mildred and Richard Loving (photo) 858 Malcolm X (photo) 865 Marshall, Thurgood: Official portrait of the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court: Justice Thurgood Marshall (photo) 875
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Medical Experimentation: Tuskegee Syphilis Study (photo) 884 Mexican Americans: Immigration reform demonstration (photo) 893 Mexico (map) 898 Myanmar (map) 929 Native American Education: Carlisle Indian School physical education class (photo) 945 Native Americans: Figure 1, American Indian and Alaska Native Household Population by State 965 Table 1, American Indian and Alaska Native Household Population by Tribal Group 960 Navajo: Three Navajo women weaving (photo) 971 Negro League Baseball: Homestead Grays (photo) 973 The Netherlands (map) 427 Nicaragua (map) 978 Nigeria (map) 980 Norway (map) 991 Ojibwa: Ojibwa Indian family in a canoe (photo) 996 One-Drop Rule: Table 1, Percent Reporting Two or More Races by Specified Race 999 Pacific Islanders: Pacific Island census workers taking a break (photo) 1009 Table 1, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Population 1007 Pacific Islands (map) 1007 Pakistan (map) 1010 Panama (map) 1016 Parks, Rosa (photo) 1029 Peru (map) 1040 Philippines (map) 493 Poland (map) 1056 Polish Americans: Polish family working in the fields near Baltimore, Maryland (photo) 1057 Portugal (map) 1063 Puerto Rico (map) 1086 Workers hoeing a tobacco slope in Puerto Rico (photo) 1087 Racial Profiling: Table 1, Race Differences in Perceptions of Profiling 1112 Red Power: Sioux tribesmen on Alcatraz (photo) 1130 Religion, African Americans: Mass at an African American Catholic Church on the South Side of Chicago (photo) 1137
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Roman Catholics: Consecration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (photo) 1171 Romania (map) 1173 Russia (map) 1175 Samoa (map) 1189 Scapegoats: Men in a Chinese lodging house in San Francisco smoking opium (photo) 1202 School Desegregation (photo) 1205 Segregation: Drinking fountain on the county courthouse lawn in Halifax, North Carolina (photo) 1213 Serbia (map) 1222 Sicily (map) 1227 Singapore (map) 1228 Sioux: Sioux at the White House (sketch) 1232 Slovakia (map) 1238 Slovene Americans: Figure 1, Most Important Settlements of Slovene Americans 1243 Slovenia (map) 1241 Social Support: Three-generation Asian American family having dinner (photo) 1256 South Africa, Republic of (map) 1261 South Americans in the United States: Table 1, South American Immigration to the United States 1264 Table 2, Characteristics of the Foreign-Born Population From Select Latin American Countries 1266 Spain (map) 1273 Sri Lanka (map) 1276 Sundown Towns: Figure 1, Sundown Counties in Indiana 1284
Sweden (map) 1286 Swedish Americans: Bishop Hill Colony (photo) 1287 Syria (map) 1291 Taiwan (map) 1293 Terrorism: Airport security (photo) 1298 Thai Americans: Ritual of paying respect to the teacher at a Thai American Buddhist temple (photo) 1302 Thailand (map) 1301 Thorpe, Jim (photo) 1305 Title IX: Women’s ice hockey game (photo) 1309 Tlingit: Kaw-Claa (photo) 1311 A new chief (photo) 1312 Tonga (map) 1314 Trinidad (map) 1326 Table 1, Distribution of the Population by Race/Ethnicity in Trinidad 1328 Truth, Sojourner (photo) 1329 Turkey (map) 1334 Uganda (map) 1339 Ukraine (map) 1341 United Kingdom (map) 1347 Queen Elizabeth II (photo) 1348 Vietnam (map) 1366 Vietnamese Americans (photo) 1367 Wells-Barnett, Ida: Lynching caught on camera (photo) 1389 West Indies (map) 1391 White Supremacy Movement: George Lincoln Rockwell (photo) 1409 Zimbabwe (map) 1425
Reader’s Guide This list is provided to assist readers in locating entries on related topics. Some entry titles appear in more than one category.
Biographies
Thorpe, Jim Truth, Sojourner Tubman, Harriet Washington, Booker T. Washington, Harold Wells-Barnett, Ida B. Williams, Fannie Barrier Wilson, William Julius
Baldwin, James Black Elk Boas, Franz Carmichael, Stokely Chávez, César Chin, Vincent Collins, Patricia Hill Deloria, Vine, Sr. Douglass, Frederick Drake, St. Clair Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt Fanon, Frantz Frazier, E. Franklin hooks, bell Huerta, Dolores Jackson, Jesse, Jr. Johnson, Charles S. King, Martin Luther, Jr. Kitano, Harry H. L. Lee, Spike Lincoln, Abraham Malcolm X Mandela, Nelson Marshall, Thurgood Newton, Huey Park, Robert E. Parks, Rosa Peltier, Leonard Robinson, Cedric Robinson, Jackie Samora, Julian
Community and Urban Issues American Apartheid Apartheid Asian Americans, New York City Barrio Black Metropolis Blockbusting Chicago School of Race Relations Chinatowns Code of the Street Colonialism Colonias Community Cohesion Community Empowerment Crown Heights, Brooklyn Culture of Poverty Discrimination in Housing East Harlem Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of Ethnic Succession Gangs Gautreaux Decision Gentrification xix
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Ghetto Harlem Homelessness Housing Audits Hull House School of Race Relations Hurricane Katrina National Urban League Public Housing Redlining Resegregation School Desegregation Segregation Sundown Towns Urban Riots White Flight Zoot Suit Riots
Concepts and Theories Acculturation Afrocentricity Americanization Anti-Semitism Assimilation Asylum Authoritarian Personality Aztlán Barrio Black Bourgeoisie Black Nationalism Black Power Blockbusting Blood Quantum “Boat People” Body Image Boycott Brain Drain Caste Chinatowns Citizenship Civil Disobedience Civil Religion Code of the Street Colonialism Colonias Color Blindness
Color Line Community Cohesion Community Empowerment Contact Hypothesis Cosmopolitanism Critical Race Theory Cultural Capital Cultural Relativism Culture of Poverty Deficit Model of Ethnicity Desi Diaspora Digital Divide Dillingham Flaw Double Consciousness Environmental Justice Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of Ethnic Group Ethnicity, Negotiating Ethnic Succession Ethnocentrism Ethnonational Minorities Ethnoviolence Eugenics Familism Feminism Feminism, Black Feminism, Latina Genocide Gentrification Gerrymandering Ghetto Glass Ceiling Globalization Guest Workers Hafu Hapa Hate Crimes Hate Crimes in Canada Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue Hispanic Versus Latino Holocaust Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists Homelessness Hourglass Economy Housing Audits
Reader’s Guide
Identity Politics Informal Economy Intercultural Communication Internal Colonialism Internalized Racism Internment Camps Invisible Man Islamophobia Jim Crow Kinship Kwanzaa Labeling Labor Market Segmentation La Raza Machismo Marginalization “Marielitos” Marxism and Racism Melting Pot Minority/Majority Model Minority Multiracial Identity Native American Identity Nativism Nikkeijin Nisei One-Drop Rule Orientalism Pan-Asian Identity Panethnic Identity Pan-Indianism Peoplehood People of Color Pipeline Pluralism Political Economy Privilege Race Race, Social Construction of Racetalk Racial Formation Racial Identity Racial Identity Development Racialization Racial Profiling Racism
Racism, Aversive Racism, Cultural Racism, Unintentional Redlining Red Power Refugees Remittances Resegregation Restrictive Covenants Return Migration Reverse Discrimination Rites of Passage Sacred Versus Secular Sansei Scapegoats Segregation Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Separate but Equal Sexual Harassment Social Capital Social Darwinism Social Distance Sovereignty, Native American Spanglish Split Labor Market Stereotypes Stereotype Threat Sundown Towns Symbolic Ethnicity Symbolic Religiosity Talented Tenth Third-Generation Principle Tracking Transnational People Underclass Urban Legends “Us and Them” Veil Victim Discounting Victimization WASP “Welfare Queen” “Wetbacks” White Flight Whiteness White Privilege
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White Racism Xenophobia
Criminal Justice Apartheid, Laws Crime and Race Criminal Processing Death Penalty Deviance and Race Drug Use Gangs Hate Crimes Hate Crimes, Canada Homicide Incarcerated Parents Internment Camps Jim Crow Juvenile Justice Labeling Lynching Pachucos/Pachucas PATRIOT Act of 2001 Police Prisons Racial Profiling Victim Discounting Victimization
Economics and Stratification Affirmative Action in the Workplace Alien Land Acts Americans with Disabilities Act Apartheid Barrio Black Bourgeoisie Black Enterprise Black Power Boycott Bracero Program Brain Drain Caste Colonialism Color Line Culture of Poverty
Declining Significance of Race, The Digital Divide Discrimination Discrimination, Environmental Hazards Discrimination, Measuring Discrimination in Housing Domestic Work Double Consciousness Environmental Justice Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) FUBU Company Gaming, Native American Gentrification Ghetto Glass Ceiling Globalization Guest Workers Health Disparities Homelessness Hourglass Economy Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 Informal Economy Institutional Discrimination Internal Colonialism Labor Market Segmentation Labor Unions Maquiladoras Marxism and Racism Model Minority Operation Bootstrap Political Economy Public Housing Redlining Remittances Reparations, Slavery Repatriation of Mexican Americans Resegregation Reservation System Restrictive Covenants Return Migration Social Capital Social Darwinism Social Inequality Social Mobility Split-Labor Market
Reader’s Guide
Talented Tenth Transnational People Underclass Water Rights Wealth Distribution “Welfare Queen” Welfare Reform
Education Affirmative Action in Education African American Studies Afrocentricity Antiracist Education Asian American Studies Asian American Studies, Mixed-Heritage Bell Curve, The Bilingual Education Biomedicine, African Americans and Black Intellectuals Brain Drain Brown v. Board of Education Chicago School of Race Relations Child Development Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District Cultural Capital Digital Divide Discrimination Educational Performance and Attainment Educational Stratification English Immersion Fraternities and Sororities Grutter v. Bollinger Head Start and Immigrants Hernandez v. Texas Higher Education Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue Hull House School of Race Relations Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 Intelligence Tests Intercultural Communication Latina/o Studies Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) Model Minority Multicultural Education
Native American Education Pipeline Resegregation Reverse Discrimination San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez School Desegregation School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning Science Faculties, Women of Color on Segregation Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Separate but Equal Social Capital Spanglish Talented Tenth Testing Title IX Tracking United States v. Fordice
Gender and Family Abortion African Americans, Migration of African American Women and Work Aging Body Image Canada, Aboriginal Women Child Development Civil Rights Movement, Women and Culture of Poverty Domestic Violence Domestic Work Familism Family Feminism Feminism, Black Feminism, Latina Gender and Race, Intersection of Hip-Hop and Rap, Women and Homelessness Hull House School of Race Relations Immigration and Gender Incarcerated Parents Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 Institutional Discrimination
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Intermarriage Kinship Kwanzaa Leisure Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Loving v. Virginia Machismo Parenting Rites of Passage Science Faculties, Women of Color on Sexual Harassment Sexuality Social Support Social Work Title IX Transracial Adoption Veil “Welfare Queen” Welfare Reform Whiteness and Masculinity
Global Perspectives Apartheid Apartheid, Laws Argentina Asylum Australia Australia, Indigenous People Back to Africa Monument Balkans Belize Borderlands Bracero Program Brain Drain Brazil Britain’s Irish Burakumin Canada Canada, Aboriginal Women Canada, First Nations Cape Verde Caribbean Caste China Citizenship
Colombia Colonialism Cosmopolitanism Creole Cross-Frontier Contacts Cuba Cuba: Migration and Demography Diaspora Dillingham Flaw Dominican Republic Ethnic Conflict Ethnocentrism Ethnonational Minorities Europe Foreign Students France Genocide Globalization Global Perspectives Guest Workers Hafu Haiti Hate Crimes in Canada Hawai‘i, Race in Holocaust Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists Hong Kong India Intercultural Communication International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Ireland Jamaica Japan Kenya Latin America, Indigenous People London Bombing (July 7, 2005) Maquiladoras Marxism and Racism Mexico Muslims in Canada Muslims in Europe Nigeria Nikkeijin Northern Island, Racism in Orientalism
Reader’s Guide
Peru Puerto Rico Race, Comparative Perspectives Race, UNESCO Statements on Racism Refugees Remittances Roma Russia Sami Santería Singapore South Africa, Republic of Taiwan Transnational People Trinidad Turkey United Kingdom Veil Xenophobia Zapatista Rebellion Zimbabwe Zionism
Health and Social Welfare Abortion Adoption Aging Americans with Disabilities Act Biomedicine, African Americans and Body Image Census, U.S. Child Development Cuba: Migration and Demography Discrimination, Environmental Drug Use Environmental Justice Eugenics Familism Family Health, Immigrant Health Disparities HIV/AIDS Hurricane Katrina Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978
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Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 Leisure Life Expectancy Medical Experimentation Native American Health Care Native Americans, Environment and Social Support Social Work “Welfare Queen” Welfare Reform
Immigration and Citizenship Acculturation Alien Land Acts Americanization Assimilation Asylum Bilingual Education “Boat People” Borderlands Border Patrol Brain Drain Chinese Exclusion Act Citizenship Colonialism Colonias Cosmopolitanism Cross-Frontier Contacts Dawes Act of 1887 Deficit Model of Ethnicity Diaspora Dillingham Flaw Domestic Work English Immersion Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of Ethnic Succession Ethnonational Minorities Foreign Students Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908) Guest Workers Haitian and Cuban Immigrations: A Comparison Head Start and Immigrants Health, Immigrant Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996
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Immigrant Communities Immigration, Economic Impact of Immigration, U.S. Immigration and Gender Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Immigration and Race Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 “Marielitos” McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 Minority Rights National Origins Systems Operation Bootstrap PATRIOT Act of 2001 Proposition 187 Refugees Remittances Repatriation of Mexican Americans Return Migration Symbolic Ethnicity Third-Generation Principle Transnational People Voting Rights “Wetbacks” Xenophobia
Legislation, Court Decisions, and Treaties Alaska Natives, Legislation Concerning Alien Land Acts Americans with Disabilities Act Apartheid, Laws Blockbusting Brown v. Board of Education Bureau of Indian Affairs Chinese Exclusion Act Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District Dawes Act of 1887 Dillingham Flaw Dred Scott v. Sandford Emancipation Proclamation Gautreaux Decision Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908) Grutter v. Bollinger Hernandez v. Texas Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 Indian Gaming and Regulatory Act of 1988 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 Loving v. Virginia McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 Native American Identity, Legal Background Operation Bootstrap PATRIOT Act of 2001 Plessy v. Ferguson Proposition 187 Repatriation of Mexican Americans San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez Separate but Equal Title IX Trail of Broken Treaties Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) United States v. Fordice Voting Rights
Media, Sports, and Entertainment Birth of a Nation, The Black Cinema Body Image Digital Divide Film, Latino Harlem Renaissance Hip-Hop Hip-Hop and Rap, Women and Kwanzaa Leisure Media and Race Negro League Baseball Popular Culture, Racism and Rap: The Genre Rap: The Movement
Organizations American Indian Movement American Jewish Committee Anti-Defamation League
Reader’s Guide
ASPIRA Back to Africa Movement Black Panther Party Brown Berets Bureau of Indian Affairs Census, U.S. Chicago Movement Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Father Divine Peace Mission Movement Fraternities and Sororities Gangs Japanese American Citizens League Ku Klux Klan Labor Unions La Raza Unida Party Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) National Congress of American Indians National Council of La Raza National Indian Youth Council National Rainbow Coalition National Urban League Nation of Islam Operation PUSH Pachucos/Pachucas Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund Religion, Minority Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Young Lords
Prejudice and Discrimination Affirmative Action in Education Affirmative Action in the Workplace American Apartheid American Dilemma, An Antiracist Education Anti-Semitism Apartheid Authoritarian Personality
Aztlán Birth of a Nation, The Black Metropolis Body Image Civil Rights Movement Civil Rights Movement, Women and Colonialism Color Line Contact Hypothesis Crime and Race Critical Race Theory Deficit Model of Ethnicity Discrimination Discrimination, Environmental Hazards Discrimination, Measuring Discrimination in Housing Double Consciousness Environmental Justice Ethnic Conflict Eugenics Hate Crimes Hate Crimes in Canada Health Disparities Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists Housing Audits Immigration and Race Institutional Discrimination Intelligence Tests Intergroup Relations, Surveying Internal Colonialism Internalized Racism International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Interracial Friendships Invisible Man Jim Crow Ku Klux Klan Labeling Lynching Marginalization Marxism and Racism Medical Experimentation Military and Race Minority Rights Nativism
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Orientalism Popular Culture, Racism and Prejudice Privilege Racialization Racial Profiling Racism Racism, Aversive Racism, Cultural Racism, Types of Racism, Unintentional Racism, White Reparations, Slavery Reverse Discrimination Robbers Cave Experiment Scapegoats Segregation Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Slavery Social Darwinism Social Distance Social Inequality Stereotypes Stereotype Threat Sundown Towns “Us and Them” “Welfare Queen” White Supremacy Movement Whiteness Whiteness, Measuring Whiteness and Masculinity Xenophobia
Public Policy Abortion Affirmative Action in Education Affirmative Action in the Workplace American Apartheid American Dilemma, An Apartheid, Laws Asylum Bilingual Education Black Conservatives Black Metropolis Blockbusting
Census, U.S. Citizenship Civil Disobedience Civil Rights Movement Community Empowerment Criminal Processing Death Penalty Digital Divide Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Gautreaux Decision Gerrymandering Hate Crimes Health Disparities Homelessness Housing Audits Hurricane Katrina Intelligence Tests Juvenile Justice Ku Klux Klan Labor Unions Lynching Marginalization Marxism and Racism Medical Experimentation Native Americans, Environment and Nativism Orientalism Political Economy Proposition 187 Public Housing Racial Profiling Redlining Refugees Reparations, Slavery Reverse Discrimination Segregation Separate but Equal Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Sexual Harassment Slavery Sovereignty, Native American Testing Title IX Voting Rights White Supremacy Movement
Reader’s Guide
Racial, Ethnic, and Nationality Groups Afghan Americans African Americans Africans in the United States Albanian Americans Aleuts Amish Arab Americans Armenian Americans Asian Americans Assyrian Americans Australia, Indigenous People Bangladeshi Americans Belgian Americans Blackfeet Bosnian Americans Brazilian Americans Britain’s Irish Bulgarian Americans Burakumin Cambodian Americans Canada, First Nations Canadian Americans Caribbean Americans Central Americans in the United States Cherokee Cheyenne Chinese Americans Choctaw Creole Croatian Americans Cuban Americans Cypriot Americans Czech Americans Danish Americans Desi Dominican Americans Dutch Americans Egyptian Americans Estonian Americans Filipino Americans Finnish Americans French Americans Georgian Americans German Americans
Greek Americans Guatemalan Americans Haitian Americans Haole Hawaiians Hispanics Hmong Americans Honduran Americans Hopi Hungarian Americans Hutterites Icelandic Americans Indian Americans Indonesian Americans Iranian Americans Iraqi Americans Irish Americans Issei Italian Americans Jamaican Americans Japanese Americans Jewish Americans Jewry, Black American Jordanian Americans Korean Americans Kurdish Americans Laotian Americans Latin America, Indigenous People Latvian Americans Lebanese Americans Lithuanian Americans Mennonites Menominee Mexican Americans Muslim Americans Myanmarese Americans Native Americans Navajo Nicaraguan Americans Nigerian Americans Nisei Norwegian Americans Ojibwa Pacific Islanders Pakistani Americans Palestinian Americans
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Panamanian Americans Peruvian Americans Polish Americans Portuguese Americans Pueblos Puerto Rican Americans Roma Romanian Americans Salvadoran Americans Sami Samoan Americans Sansei Schmiedeleut Serbian Americans Sicilian Americans Sioux Slovak Americans Slovene Americans South Americans in the United States Spanish Americans Sri Lankan Americans Swedish Americans Syrian Americans Thai Americans Tibetan Americans Tlingit Tongan Americans Turkish Americans Ugandan Americans Ukrainian Americans United Kingdom, Immigrants and Their Descendants in the United States Vietnamese Americans West Indian Americans
Religion Amish Civil Religion Father Divine Peace Mission Movement Hutterites Islamophobia Jewish Americans Jewry, Black American Mennonites Mormons, Race and
Muslim Americans Muslims in Canada Muslims in Europe Nation of Islam Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 Peyote Religion Religion, African Americans Religion, Minority Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 Religious Movements, New Roman Catholics Sacred Sites, Native Americans Sacred Versus Secular Santería Schmeideleut Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) Symbolic Religiosity Veil
Sociopolitical Movements and Conflicts Abolitionism: The Movement Abolitionism: The People African Americans, Migration of Alamo, The American Indian Movement ASPIRA Aztlán Back to Africa Movement Black Nationalism Black Panther Party Black Power Boycott Brown Berets Chicano Movement Civil Disobedience Civil Rights Movement Civil Rights Movement, Women and Cross-Frontier Contacts Crown Heights, Brooklyn Environmental Justice Father Divine Peace Mission Movement Feminism
Reader’s Guide
Feminism, Black Feminism, Latina Harlem Renaissance Jewish-Black Relations: A Historical Perspective Jewish-Black Relations: The Contemporary Period Kennewick Man Ku Klux Klan La Raza La Raza Unida Party London Bombings (July 7, 2005) Military and Race Multicultural Social Movements Nation of Islam
Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) Red Power Sand Creek Massacre Sovereignty, Native American Terrorism Trail of Broken Treaties Voting Rights Water Rights White Supremacy Movement Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973) Young Lords Zapatista Rebellion Zionism Zoot Suit Riots
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About the Editors About the General Editor Richard T. Schaefer is the Vincent DePaul Professor of Sociology at DePaul University and served as chair of the department from 1997 through 2003. He previously taught at Western Illinois University in Macomb, where he also served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Schaefer has been interested in race and ethnicity since the beginning of his college studies. As an undergraduate, he wrote a refereed paper on African Americans in the military and since has maintained a constant interest in the changing mosaic of race and ethnicity in the United States and worldwide. He received his BA in Sociology from Northwestern University and then continued his studies with an MA and PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Dr. Schaefer’s continuing interest in race relations led him to write his master’s thesis on the membership of the Ku Klux Klan and his doctoral thesis on racial prejudice and race relations in Great Britain. He has taught sociology and courses on multiculturalism for 30 years. He has been invited to give special presentations to students and faculty on racial and ethnic diversity in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas. Dr. Schaefer authored the books Racial and Ethnic Groups, eleventh edition (Prentice Hall, 2008) and Race and Ethnicity in the United States, fourth edition (Prentice Hall, 2007). He is also the author of the eleventh edition of Sociology (2009), the seventh edition of Sociology: A Brief Introduction (2008), and the third edition of Sociology Matters (2008), all published by McGraw-Hill. Schaefer coauthored Extraordinary Groups (8th edition, Worth Publications) in 2007. His articles and book reviews have appeared in many journals, including American Journal of Sociology, Phylon: A Review of
Race and Culture, Contemporary Sociology, Sociology and Social Research, Sociological Quarterly, and Teaching Sociology. He served as president of the Midwest Sociological Society from 1994 through 1995. In recognition of his achievements in undergraduate teaching, he was named Vincent DePaul Professor of Sociology in 2004 at DePaul University.
About the Associate Editor Shu-Ju Ada Cheng is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at DePaul University. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA in International Studies from the University of Oregon, a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Oregon, and a BA in Spanish Language and Literature from Fu-Jen University, Taiwan. Cheng’s areas of interest include international migration, globalization, development, work, gender, and ethnography. Her recent publications include her book, Serving the Household and the Nation: Filipina Domestics and the Politics of Identity in Taiwan (Lexington Books, 2006), and an article, “Rethinking the Globalization of Domestic Service: Foreign Domestics, State Control, and the Politics of Identity in Taiwan” in Gender & Society (2003), which received both the Women of Color Caucus Essay Award from the National Women’s Studies Association and the Section on Sex and Gender Distinguished Article Award of the American Sociological Association. Cheng’s other published articles include “When the Personal Meets the Global at Home: Filipina Domestics and Their Female Employers in Taiwan,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies (2004); “Contextual Politics of Difference in Transnational Care: The Rhetoric of
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Filipina Domestics’ Employers in Taiwan,” Feminist Review (2004); and “Right to Mothering: Motherhood as a Transborder Concern in the Age of Globalization,” Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering (2004). Other scholarly recognition includes winning the Carrie Chapman Catt Prize (Iowa State University) for Research on Women and Politics (Project Title: Serving the Household and the Nation: Filipina Domestics and the Politics of Nationhood in Taiwan) and winning the Cheryl Allyn Miller Award (Sociologists for Women in Society) on Women and Paid Work (Paper Title: Articulating the Household and the Nation: Foreign Domestics, State Control, and National Identity in Taiwan). In addition to her scholarship, she received the university Excellence in Teaching Award from DePaul University in 2002.
About the Assistant Editor Kiljoong Kim is research director at John J. Egan Urban Center at DePaul University. Kim has been teaching statistics in social sciences for the past 10 years and has taught research methods, race and ethnicity, sociology of sports, and spatial analysis. He is currently a doctoral student in sociology at University of Illinois at Chicago with a concentration in race, ethnicity, and gender. Born in Seoul, South Korea, and having grown up in a diverse neighborhood on the north side of Chicago, Kim has always been interested in the ways
in which people lived and the affect of the buildings and urban landscape on how people work and live. Upon receiving his BS in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he became a research assistant at the American Medical Association, and then a research analyst at the Riverside Publishing Company, where he worked on the development of standardized tests. During this time, Kim earned an MA in Sociology from DePaul University in Chicago, where he wrote histhesis critiquing The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, a controversial book about intelligence and its disparities by race, ethnicity, and class. Kim’s interests in quantitative research led to a research statistician position at Nielsen Media Research. His adjunct position at DePaul University as the instructor of statistics led to his current position at the Egan Center. Kim was a coeditor of and contributor to The New Chicago: A Social and Cultural Analysis (Temple University Press, 2006) and has had an active role in such community research projects as the New Communities Project and the Preservation Compact, the former funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the latter funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the Urban Land Institute Foundation. Kim is on the board of directors for the Asian American Institute, the Korean American Research and Development Institute, and on the advisory board for the University of Illinois Extension.
Contributors Abu S. Abarry Temple University
Molefi Kete Asante Temple University
J. Q. Adams Western Illinois University
Mary Welek Atwell Radford University
Marina A. Adler University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Duke W. Austin University of Colorado
Gustavo Agosto-DaFonseca Baruch College, City University of New York
Abu Bakarr Bah Northern Illinois University
Michael Bernabé Aguilera University of Oregon
Damayanti Banerjee University of Western Kentucky
Benigno E. Aguirre University of Delaware
Michael Banton University of Bristol
Donna L. Akers University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Jiemin Bao University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Ben Alexander City University of New York
R. Gabriela Barajas Columbia University
Luis Alvarez University of California, San Diego
Steven E. Barkan University of Maine
Sandy Alvarez Shippensburg University
Marcellus C. Barksdale Morehouse College
Alma Alvarez-Smith Arizona State University
John Barnshaw University of Delaware
Amy E. Ansell Bard College
Robyn J. Barrus Brigham Young University
Julie E. Artis DePaul University
Abel A. Bartley Clemson University xxxv
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Victor Bascara University of Wisconsin–Madison
Karen S. Boyd University of Notre Dame
Jeanne Batalova Migration Policy Institute
Melinda Brahimi Baruch College, City University of New York
Michael M. Bell University of Wisconsin–Madison
Andrea Malkin Brenner American University
Corinne Lally Benedetto DePaul University
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn Columbia University
Lois Benjamin Hampton University
Christopher George Buck Independent Scholar
Michael I. J. Bennett DePaul University
Ashley A. Buller Iowa State University
Natalie Bennett DePaul University
Meghan A. Burke Loyola University Chicago
Donald J. Berg South Dakota State University
Craig Calhoun Social Science Research Council
Brent Berry University of Toronto
Thomas Calhoun Jackson State University
Ruth Bettina Birn War Crimes and Special Investigations Enforcement Program of Canada
Gregory R. Campbell University of Montana
Kay J. Blalock St. Louis Community College Kenneth Bolton, Jr. Southeastern Louisiana University Christopher Bondy DePauw University
Julia Miller Cantzler Ohio State University Dennis Carlson Miami University Leonard A. Carlson Emory University
Heather D. Boonstra Guttmacher Institute
Deborah Carr Rutgers University University of Wisconsin
Luisa N. Borrell Columbia University
Amy E. Carreiro University of Tulsa
Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr. University of Minnesota
AnneMarie Cesario The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Contributors
Gary Chaison Clark University
Paul R. Croll University of Minnesota
Neil Chakraborti University of Leicester
Clark E. Cunningham University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Laura Chambers Harold Washington College
David Cunningham Brandeis University
Jerome A. Chanes Brandeis University
Heather M. Dalmage Roosevelt University
Stewart Chang California State University, Long Beach
Seif Da’Na University of Wisconsin–Parkside
Shu-Ju Ada Cheng DePaul University
Roger Daniels University of Cincinnati
Simon Cheng University of Connecticut
Wei Ming Dariotis San Francisco State University
Eric Cheyfitz Cornell University
Gary C. David Bentley College
Andrew Cho Tacoma Community College
Diane de Anda University of California, Los Angeles
Glynis Christine St. Philip’s College
Mary Jo Deegan University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Julia Chuang University of California, Berkeley
Héctor L. Delgado University of La Verne
Jack Clarke DePaul University
Rutledge M. Dennis George Mason University
Arica L. Coleman Johns Hopkins University
Meera E. Deo University of California, Los Angeles
Roberta L. Coles Marquette University
Christina Diaz DePaul University
Sharon M. Collins University of Illinois at Chicago
Nandi E. Dill New York University
Stavros T. Constantinou Ohio State University, Mansfield Campus
Elena Dingu-Kyrklund Stockholm University
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Danielle Dirks University of Texas at Austin
Abby L. Ferber University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Peter Doell Alliance & Nazarene University College
Kenneth Fidel DePaul University
Karen Manges Douglas Sam Houston State University
Gary Alan Fine Northwestern University
John F. Dovidio Yale University
Jan Fiola Minnesota State University Moorhead
Korie L. Edwards Ohio State University
Mako Fitts Seattle University
Howard J. Ehrlich The Prejudice Institute
Kathleen J. Fitzgerald Columbia College
Don Elligan Harold Washington City College
Terrence Fitzgerald Unit 4 School System, Champaign, Illinois
Brandy J. Ellison University of Notre Dame
Camilla Fojas DePaul University
David G. Embrick Loyola University Chicago
Georges Fouron Stony Brook University
J. Lynn England Brigham Young University
Samuel L. Gaertner University of Delaware
Sylvia Escárcega DePaul University
Peter Gale University of South Australia
Dionne Espinoza California State University, Los Angeles
Alma M. Garcia Santa Clara University
George J. Fachner, Jr. George Mason University
Christine Lynn Garlough University of Wisconsin–Madison
Richard P. Farkas DePaul University
Roberta Garner DePaul University
John E. Farley Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
Julia Gelatt Princeton University
Joe Feagin Texas A&M University
Navid Ghani Five Towns College
Contributors
Dog˘ an Göçmen University of London
Othello Harris Miami University
Henry Goldschmidt Wesleyan University
Douglas Hartmann University of Minnesota
Angela Ann Gonzales Cornell University
Christiane Harzig Arizona State University
Harry Goulbourne London South Bank University
Lawrence Hashima California State University, Long Beach
Kimberly Goyette Temple University
Timothy Havens University of Iowa
Dipankar Gupta Jawaharlal Nehru University
Karina J. Havrilla American Sociological Association
Jamie L. Gusrang University of Connecticut
Ted Henken Baruch College, City University of New York
Miro Hacek University of Ljubljana
Max Herman Rutgers University
Shaconna Marie Haley American University
P Rafael Hernández-Arias DePaul University
J. Mark Halstead University of Huddersfield
Kim D. Hester-Williams Sonoma State University
Debra Newman Ham Morgan State University
Walter W. Hill St. Mary’s College
Steve Hamilton American University
Lynn Horton Chapman University
Chong-suk Han Temple University
Kevin G. Howard Dundalk Institute of Technology
Troy Harden Chicago State University
Evren Hosgor Lancaster University
Vinay Harpalani New York University
Alexandra Hrycak Reed College
Donna Marie Harris Warner School, University of Rochester
Matthew W. Hughey University of Virginia
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Li-Ching Hung Mississippi State University
Mary E. Kelly University of Central Missouri
Pamela Rae Huteson University of Alaska, Southeast
Michael J. Kelly Creighton University
Jenny Irons Hamilton College
Ivy Kennelly George Washington University
Gayle Y. Iwamasa DePaul University
Romana Khaoury Queens University, Belfast
Regine O. Jackson Emory University
Barbara Kim California State University, Long Beach
J. Jackson-Preece London School of Economics
Joon K. Kim Colorado State University
Cardell K. Jacobson Brigham Young University
Kiljoong Kim DePaul University
Peter Jacques University of Central Florida
Leslie C. Baker Kimmons Chicago State University
Andrew Jakubowicz University of Technology Sydney
Peter Kivisto Augustana University
Roy F. Janisch Pittsburg State University
Jennifer M. Klein DePaul University
Jeffrey C. Johnson Independent Scholar
Matja Klemencˇicˇ University of Maribor
Andrew Jolivette San Francisco State University
Lisa Konczal Barry University
Stephen Francis Jones Mount Holyoke College
Andrew G. Kourvetaris Northeastern Illinois University
Shawn Malia Kana’iaupuni Kamehameha Schools
George Andrew Kourvetaris Northern Illinois University
Diana Leilani Karafin Ohio State University
John Koval DePaul University
Maulana Karenga California State University, Long Beach
Donald B. Kraybill Elizabethtown College
Contributors
Adam Krims University of Nottingham
Xing Lu DePaul University
Glen David Kuecker DePauw University
Pat Luce-Aoelua National Office of Samoan Affairs
Kian-Woon Kwok Nanyang Technological University
Aloysius M. Lugira Boston College
Yvonne M. Lau DePaul University
Tracey Mabrey DePaul University
Mahendra Lawoti Western Michigan University
Kinuthia Macharia American University of Nigeria
Brandon C. Ledward University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
Iain S. Maclean James Madison University
Matthew R. Lee Louisiana State University
Stephanie Madon Iowa State University
Cheryl B. Leggon Georgia Institute of Technology
Bernard Maegi Normandale Community College
Tracey Lewis-Elligan DePaul University
Mike A. Males Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
Jeff Libman Truman College
Theodoric Manley, Jr. DePaul University
John Lie University of California, Berkeley
Keith Andrew Mann Cardinal Stritch University
Sheryl Lightfoot University of Minnesota
Maxine L. Margolis University of Florida
Howard Lindsey DePaul University
Gerardo Marin University of San Francisco
Eric Yang Liu Baylor University
Lisa B. Markman Princeton University
James W. Loewen Catholic University of America
Derek Martin Southern Illinois University
Nancy Lopez University of New Mexico
Suzanne B. Martin University of California, Berkeley
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Martha A. Martinez DePaul University
Jennifer C. Mueller Texas A&M University
Douglas S. Massey Princeton University
Paul T. Murray Siena College
Félix Masud-Piloto DePaul University
Susan Needham California State University, Dominguez Hills
Arieahn Matamonasa-Bennett DePaul University
Kumiko Nemoto Western Kentucky University
Scott Mathers Mississippi State University
Michelle Newton-Francis American University
Armand L. Mauss Washington State University
François Nielsen University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Christopher D. Maxwell Michigan State University University of Michigan
Jack Niemonen University of South Dakota
Eric Michael Mazur Virginia Wesleyan College Erin McCoy San Francisco State University Michael McCurry South Dakota State University Pancho McFarland Chicago State University Beth Frankel Merenstein Central Connecticut State University Karen L. Meyer DePaul University
Fuifuilupe ‘Alilia Niumeitolu University of California, Berkeley Casey Oberlin DePaul University Suzanne Oboler City University of New York Dina G. Okamoto University of California, Davis Michael A. Olivas University of Houston Maggie O’Neill Loughborough University
Deborah W. Meyers Migration Policy Institute
Matthew Oware DePauw University
Diditi Mitra Brookdale Community College
Judith Owens-Manley Hamilton College
Amanda Moras Dickinson College
Efren N. Padilla California State University, East Bay
Clayton Mosher Washington State University,Vancouver
Nicholas C. Pano Western Illinois University
Contributors
Vincent N. Parrillo William Paterson University
Daniel Pouesi Kin Publications
Nicholas Parsons Washington State University, Vancouver
Devyani Prabhat New York University
Anju Mary Paul University of Michigan
Kristopher Proctor University of California, Riverside
Bimal Kanti Paul Kansas State University
Bandana Purkayastha University of Connecticut
Fern M. Paul University of New Brunswick
Karen D. Pyke University of California, Riverside
Monique R. Payne-Pikus DePaul University
Ralph E. Pyle Michigan State University
Sabrina Pendergrass Harvard University
Lincoln Quillian Northwestern University
Donald D. Pepion New Mexico State University
Richard Race Roehampton University
Judith Ann Perez Fordham University
Catherine S. Ramírez University of California, Santa Cruz
Barbara Perry University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Kathryn R. L. Rand University of North Dakota
Gary Kinte Perry Seattle University
Emily Rauscher New York University
Sheila Renee Peters Fisk University
Meghan Ashlin Rich University of Scranton
Mark E. Pfeifer Hmong Studies Journal
C. Centae Richards Arizona State University
Fred L. Pincus University of Maryland, Baltimore County
James T. Richardson University of Nevada, Reno
Alexander W. Pisciotta Kutztown University
Victor Rios, Jr. College of the Desert
Caroline Plüss Nanyang Technological University
Christina Rivers DePaul University
Jack Nusan Porter Spencer Institute for Social Research
Polly Rizova Boston University
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Tom I. Romero II Hamline University
Richard T. Schaefer DePaul University
Lydia Rose DeVry University
Kyle Scherr Iowa State University
Michael J. Rosenfeld Stanford University
Traci Schlesinger DePaul University
Mark Rubinfeld Westminster College
Janet Ward Schofield University of Pittsburgh
Scott Edward Rutledge Temple University
Margaret Mackenzie Schwartz University of Iowa
Emily Ryo Stanford University
Jeremy Seekings University of Cape Town
Rogelio Saenz Texas A&M University
Hinda Seif Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Alan Saltzstein California State University, Fullerton
Duško Sekulic´ University of Zagreb
William Alfred Sampson DePaul University
Saher Farooq Selod Loyola University, Chicago
Raymond San Diego San Francisco State University
Christie A. Sennott University of Colorado at Boulder
Diane Sandage Western Illinois University
Jason Eugene Shelton Rice University
Linda Sanderson University of California, Davis
Jean H. Shin American Sociological Association
Jenniffer M. Santos-Hernández University of Delaware
Stephen J. Sills University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Paul Khalil Saucier Northeastern University
Toni Sims University of Louisiana, Lafayette
Arthur Scarritt University of Iowa
Alena Singleton Rutgers University
Peter D. Schaefer University of Iowa
Carlos Siordia Texas A&M University
Contributors
Davorn Sisavath San Francisco State University
John Stone Boston University
Emily Skop University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Madeleine R. Stoner University of Southern California
Cary Stacy Smith Mississippi State University
Claudia Tazreiter University of New South Wales
David Norman Smith University of Kansas
Bhoomi Thakore Loyola University, Chicago
Marsha Smith Augustana College
Darryl Clark Thomas Pennsylvania State University
Tom W. Smith National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago
Doug Thomson University of Toronto
William A. Smith University of Utah Sonia W. Soltero DePaul University Stephanie Southworth University of North Carolina at Charlotte Sarah Spain Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center
Shatema A. Threadcraft Yale University Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales San Francisco State University Lourdes Torres DePaul University Manuel R. Torres University of Delaware
Nancy E. Spencer Bowling Green State University
Rosemary Traoré University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Rainier Spencer University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Teruyuki Tsuji Florida International University
Gregory D. Squires George Washington University
Sirpa Tuormainen University of California, Berkeley
Richard Stahler-Sholk Eastern Michigan University
Milton Vickerman University of Colorado
Melanie Stansbury Cornell University
Salvador Vidal-Ortiz University of Virginia
Michael F. Steltenkamp Wheeling Jesuit University
Neil Vincent American University
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Willem van Vliet DePaul University
Vernon J. Williams, Jr. Indiana University, Bloomington
Elizabeth Arbuckle Wabindato University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point
Frank Harold Wilson University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Mohamed Wann Baruch College, City University of New York
J. Alan Winter Connecticut College
Elisabeth I. Ward University of California, Berkeley Leland Ware University of Delaware Bijan Warner University of Chicago Judith Ann Warner Texas A&M International University
Julia M. Woesthoff DePaul University Daniel P. Wolk University of Alabama at Birmingham Andrew Woolford University of Manitoba Robert A. Wortham North Carolina Central University
Patricia Y. Warren Florida State University
Jane H. Yamashiro University of Hawai‘i at Manoa University of Tokyo
Jill Watts California State University, San Marcos
June Ying Yee Ryerson University
Briana M. Weadock American University
Grace J. Yoo San Francisco State University
Melissa F. Weiner Quinnipiac University
David Zarefsky Northwestern University
Joseph Owen Weixelman University of New Mexico
Sarah Zell University of British Columbia
Jennifer Willard Iowa State University
Assata Zerai University of Illinois
Introduction The issue of race and ethnicity is critical in contemporary life. It is a key element, whether explicitly stated or not, in debates concerning governmental leadership, health care, religion, aging, the media, and public policy in general. The issue of race and ethnicity is even more explicit in areas such as housing, music, sport, business, immigration, poverty, and antiterrorism. Variously described as a melting pot, salad bowl, and a kaleidoscope, the United States is, at the very least, a changing mosaic of people. No one could have anticipated the future when E Pluribus Unum (“out of many is one”) was adopted as the motto on the Great Seal of the United States in an act of Congress in 1782. Indeed, also central to the seal are symbols from the countries that had settled the United States to that point—England, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, and Scotland. Already the presence of millions of Native American tribal people and the African slaves had been set aside. The country has since been, at different points, defined by the enslavement of Black people, the subjugation of American Indians to expand the country west, the annexation of half of Mexico, the colonization of islands in the Pacific and the Caribbean, the forced internment of people of Japanese ancestry, and the receiving of refugees resulting from the wars the United States fought or backed in Europe, Asia, Central America, the Middle East, and elsewhere. The subject of this encyclopedia is race and ethnicity in society. This is a broad, complex topic that has undergone serious scholarly study for well over a century and was preceded by literary treatments spanning many centuries. Race and ethnicity typically refer to long-established groups with a common culture and geographic origin, often sharing a common language and religious tradition. Although the terms are used interchangeably, race tends to be associated with groups whose physical appearance is defined as
distinctive, whereas people’s ethnicity rests on cultural differences alone. Even this separation of race and ethnicity is abandoned as ethnic groups become racialized—as in the British viewing the Irish as a race apart from themselves or the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims racializing each other. Later in this introduction, we will consider how these and other terms that sometimes appear to be used with precision are actually quite inconsistent and controversial in their use. Regardless, race and ethnicity are social constructs that vary across time within any society. At one point, diversity in the United States was cast in biracial, almost caste-like terms as a Black–White issue with American Indians and Asian immigrants virtually ignored. By the end of the 20th century, observers were beginning to talk about the triracial nature of the United States or the Latinization of America, while also noting that dozens of other socially defined groups such as Pacific lslanders and hundreds of tribal groups were ignored or received less attention even though they were a significant part of society (Bonilla-Silva, 2004). Although Belgians seem to represent a distinct unified nationality since Belgium became independent from the Netherlands in 1830, closer inspection reveals a society that represents an uneasy combination of French-speaking Walloons in the south and Dutchspeaking Flemings in the north. In a different fashion, there are religious groups such as the Amish, Hutterites, and Mormons whose distinctiveness justifies their coverage within an encyclopedia committed to covering race and ethnicity. Race and ethnicity are situated at the intersection of individual social identity and the very structure of society. Who are we as individuals? Who are we as a society? (Winant, 2004). This encyclopedia has been assembled in response to these questions.
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How to Use the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicitty, and Society This encyclopedia is arranged with nearly 600 entries in alphabetical order. The individual essays range in length from 500 to 6,000 words (118 entries are more than 2,000 words), accompanied by more than 200 visuals, including photographs, tables, figures, and maps. The Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society also addresses other issues of inequality that often intersect with the primary focus on race and ethnicity. Therefore, the reader will find relevant coverage in such areas as ability status, age, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Each entry offers an overview of a particular topic with guides to additional exploration through further readings. Effort has been made to select materials generally available through college libraries and to include potentially useful Web sites. The broad area of race, ethnicity, and society is highly interconnected. Hence, each entry refers the reader to other potentially useful entries through cross-references (“See Also”) at the end of the text of each entry. Thus, one will find the entry on “Adoption” refers one to “Transracial Adoption,” which in turn refers the reader to “Racial Identity.” These cross-references supplement the alphabetical format for quick ease of location that finds such strange companions as “Lebanese Americans” next to “Lee, Spike,” and “Santería” next to “Scapegoats.” Another helpful and important feature in the encyclopedia is the Reader’s Guide section, which appears in the front matter of each volume immediately after the List of Images. This additional guide to the contents of the three volumes is organized around 18 headings, and each entry in the encyclopedia is listed in at least one of these 18 subject areas. These categories or themes identify well-represented subject areas within the encyclopedia. More significant to readers, the headings provide an additional way to guide further study. So for example, one may want to know more about immigration and therefore first look at entries such as “Immigration and Gender” and “Refugees.” However, by considering the “Immigration and Citizenship” category in the Reader’s Guide, users of the encyclopedia may see entries that they had not considered of use to them such as “Americanization,” “Ethnonational Minorities,” and “Remittances.”
Located at the end of Volume 3 are the appendices. Appendix A, “Data on Race and Ethnicity in the United States, 1820 to the Present,” includes historical trends, the most recent data, and projections into the future. Appendix B, “Internet Resources on Race, Ethnicity, and Society,” identifies more than 100 Web sites with a variety of perspectives on the issues contained in this encyclopedia. The strength of any reference work rests on its authorship. In these three volumes, we have brought together the insights of 376 individuals from more than 230 colleges, institutes, and organizations. To our knowledge, this is the largest number of scholars brought together to write on race and ethnicity—three times the number that produced the classic Harvard Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnicity, published a generation ago (Thernstrom, 1980). The 376 individual contributors come from fourteen countries—Australia, Canada, Croatia, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Japan, Northern Ireland, Samoa, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States, with more than 45 different states represented. Breadth of academic backgrounds is also illustrated by discipline backgrounds of the authors including African American Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Communications, Criminal Justice, Gender/Women’s Studies, Geography, History, Latina/o Studies, Languages and Linguistics, Law, Media Studies, Native American/American Indian Studies, Political Science, Psychology, Public Policy, Scandinavian Studies, Slavic Studies, Social Work, Sociology, and Speech. In a later section, we will consider the credentials of the scholars we have assembled in greater detail. The coverage is also broad in its historical perspective, ranging from “Kennewick Man” and the “Emancipation Proclamation” to “Hip-Hop.” Biographical entries have been judiciously chosen for people who are historically important, representative of a particular period or genre, and often, scholarly contributors themselves such as Vine Deloria, Jr., Harry Kitano, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. A central part of the encyclopedia is more than 120 entries covering specific ethnic, nationality, tribal, and racial groups in the United States. Each informative essay provides basic information for each group with cross-references to related groups, pertinent concepts, and relevant historical events. The groups included are those that have had the most impact on society. Individual entries on specific groups are supplemented
Introduction
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by broader treatments on Africans in the United States, Asian Americans, Caribbean Americans, Central Americans in the United States, Latin Americans in the United States, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders. Supplementing this core selection of entries are more than 100 essays looking at race and ethnicity in societies on every continent and from countries ranging from Canada to Zimbabwe as well as including a number of topics viewed from a broader global perspective such as “Colonialism,” “Diaspora,” and “Guest Workers.” Throughout the encyclopedia, but particularly in the nation and nationality entries, efforts have been made to include the latest population data. The 2007 population estimates come from the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) and reflect the current 2007 data from the individual countries, UN estimates, or calculations by PRB demographers (Haub, 2007).
Ehrlich (Ethnoviolence), John Farley (Discrimination in Housing), Gary Fine (Robbers Cave Experiment), Douglas Hartmann (Measuring Whiteness), Ted Henken (Immigration and Race), Peter Kivisto (Religion), Donald Kraybill (Amish), Armand Mauss (Mormons and Race), Vincent Parrillo (Italian Americans), Fred Pincus (Reverse Discrimination), James Richardsen (New Religious Movements), Jason Shelton (Malcolm X), Sonia Soltero (Bilingual Education), Gregory Squires (Blockbusting), John Stone (Comparative Perspectives of Race), Jill Watts (Father Divine Peace Mission Movement), David Zarefsky (Abraham Lincoln), and many, many others. Many of the contributors played the useful editorial role of suggesting important topics to be covered and potential experts whose contribution could be solicited. The editors gratefully acknowledge such assistance.
Scholarship: Breadth and Scope
Terminology
Some encyclopedias are written by a handful of nonexperts who assemble information from already published reference works, but the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society is the work of some of the most distinguished authorities possible who offer insight on complex topics. We have Craig Calhoun, author of the seminal essay on cosmopolitanism, writing on that topic; Michael Banton, the dean of race relations scholarship in Great Britain, writing on ethnic conflict; Douglas Massey, author of American Apartheid, writing on that concept; former American Sociological Association President Joe Feagin and Jennifer Mueller writing on White racism; Tom W. Smith, Director of NORC General Social Survey, writing on surveying intergroup relations; Maulana Karenga, the creator of Kwanzaa, writing on that internationally recognized festival; James Loewen, author of Sundown Towns, writing on that topic; and Molefi Kete Asante, who coined the term Afrocentricity, writing on that concept. The overall quality of scholarship in this reference work continues to be apparent to those with knowledge in the area of race and ethnicity. Many of the authors of the essays are acknowledged as the authorities. For example, consider entries written by Benigno Aguirre (Hurricane Katrina), Thomas Bouchard (Intelligence Tests), Roberta Coles (Family), Sharon Collins (Black Enterprise), Gary David (Arab Americans), Mary Jo Deegan (Chicago School of Race Relations), John Dovidio (Aversive Racism), Howard
We have striven to establish a common use of terms to cover the topics in the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. Given the nature of the field, this is a challenging endeavor. We do acknowledge that words and categories have power and note this throughout this reference work. Ethnic and racial terminology is a complex and sensitive matter that transcends any purely scholarly discussion. We fully recognize the very real social significance it has for all the peoples discussed in this book, not to mention to the individuals who either detest any categorization or resent the many occasions they are misidentified. For example, in some contexts terms such as “nonWhite” carry deep emotional scars (South Africa), whereas in some contexts in academic writing in the United States, this term is intended to be a useful, nonpejorative term (for example as in Bonilla-Silva, 2004). To those new to the field, it may seem puzzling and arbitrary that the U.S. Census Bureau’s primary ethnic classification is “Hispanic” and “non-Hispanic” and that race includes such ambiguous geographical in origin categories as “Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders” (American Anthropological Association, 1997; Office of Management and Budget, 1997). Frankly, even to scholars immersed in the field, categorization remains a challenge that is also puzzling and arbitrary. Typically, we use terminology that is most acceptable to members of groups themselves. Having said that, we recognize the utility of such
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collective terms as Asian Americans and Latinos is typically set aside in favor of more appropriate, specific descriptors, as Taiwanese Americans or Dominicans. Even what may seem as fairly specific social categories such as Italian Americans are too broad for those who self-identify as Sicilian or Genoan. Native Americans and American Indians are used interchangeably. A 1995 national survey commissioned by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau found that both the terms enjoyed relative popularity among tribal people (49% endorsed American Indian and 37% expressed preference for Native American). However overwhelming such broad umbrella terms, the individual preference, used in this encyclopedia wherever possible, is to use more specific tribal identities such as Hopi or Ojibwa (Tucker, Kojetin, and Harrison, 1996). Similarly, Hispanic and Latino are used interchangeably in the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society; some have argued there are different meanings for each, but there is no consensus about what those distinctions may be. As with American Indians, greater clarity comes from using more specific identifiers than from a broad, collective term such as Hispanic or Latino. Therefore, inspection of our list of entries will find sixteen separate groups from Brazilian Americans to Salvadoran Americans encompassed by the collective social category of Latinos or Hispanic Americans, although neither term is used as a self-descriptive term by the people in their home countries in Latin America or the Caribbean (Rodriguez, 2000). Another aspect of terminology is the use of minority and majority. The use of minority is generally accepted in academic writings to describe all those groups who see themselves as distinct from the economically and politically dominant group, the majority, in terms of cultural or ethnic identity and is not intended to reflect some devaluation by outsiders. A group may also be identified as a minority even though it is in the numerical majority, as in the case of describing Black Africans in their own country during the apartheid era. In the not-too-distant past, the term mixed-race was used only in the most disparaging way by the “chosen race” to cleanse itself of those people who were of mixed descent, however defined. This has changed in many societies including the United States, where people are being encouraged to not think in terms of old, rigid compartments. The census
completed in 2000 was the first in the United States to allow for multiple categories; however, one could not self-classify as “biracial” or “multiracial” or “multiethnic.” Consequently, a significant number of entries confront the very real, and sometimes personal, issue of identity (Jones and Smith, 2001). In a similar trend to the recognition of mixed backgrounds, many individuals and scholars embrace efforts to bring separate groups together in shared endeavors. Hence, we look in detail at panethnic movements ranging from La Raza to Pan-Indian and Pan-Asian movements. Although the preceding discussion concerning terminology has focused on the United States, similar concerns about nomenclature of racial and ethnic groups are repeated throughout the world. In a study undertaken by the UN’s Statistical Division, 63 percent of 141 national censuses incorporate some form of racial, ethnic, or nationality enumeration. It is very challenging to identify common categories except through the broadest classification systems. Consider the variety of ways that “indigenous,” “native,” or “aboriginal” are employed around the world. Yet another variation in terminology is how nations may officially cluster groups treated as distinctly different in other countries. For example, some nations group ethnic with dialect groups (Singapore), whereas other nations combine caste with ethnicity (Nepal). The reader is referred to the UN Statistical Division (2003) and Ann Morning’s (2008) valuable synthesis for further insights into the complexity of terminology worldwide. Suffice it to conclude, like the authors represented in this encyclopedia, that one should exercise care in use of racial and ethnic terminologies and acknowledge as best as one can different interpretations. Finally, special caution must be used when exploring race and ethnicity in societies that are new to the investigator.
Maps and Photographs More than 90 maps specially designed in the three volumes assist the reader in getting a sense of place either of the source of nationalities or distributions of members of particular ethnic or racial groups. These illustrations offer the most accurate, recent impressions possible. Reflecting ongoing political disputes, however, boundaries are often a contentious issue. Although only small parcels of land were involved relatively speaking, Mexico and the United States did
Introduction
not finally fix their shared border until a 1970 treaty that became effective in 1977. Other borders such as India-Pakistan remain very much in dispute, and even the autonomous existence of such states as Taiwan and Tibet are in dispute. With all this in mind, one should view maps with their intended purpose— general location and key features—rather than as the final word in geopolitical disputes. Pictures speak volumes and, therefore, special care has been taken to select images to highlight topics. Rather than selecting a simple headshot of Malcolm X, for example, we undertook research to show him dining in a Harlem restaurant patronized by the Nation of Islam. Concepts that may not always be familiar to the reader are also illustrated with photographs accompanying the entries on the deficit model of ethnicity and ethnic enclave. For example, a photograph that shows Sioux tribal members staking claim to the abandoned Alcatraz Prison Island in 1969 accompanies the entry on the concept of “Red Power.” The captions themselves reflect the writing of the General Editor with assistance from entry contributors.
Acknowledgments The development of a work of a million words is truly a collaborative effort. I am particularly grateful to my editorial team. Shu-Ju Ada Cheng in her role as Associate Editor shared responsibility for developing the list of entries and identifying potential contributors. In addition, she authored seven entries herself. Assistant Editor Kiljoong Kim also identified many of the contributors and provided advice on statistical and data-collection matters. He authored (or coauthored) five entries. The noteworthy credentials of my two colleagues are detailed elsewhere. Sage Publications continues to provide the academic community immeasurable reference and scholarly materials. I am most pleased that this encyclopedia is a part of this invaluable program. Publisher Rolf Janke has taken a valued personal interest in this project from the very beginning. Diana Axelsen has been the driving force on a daily basis (including many weekends) behind these three volumes. Her official title of “Developmental Editor” does not adequately describe her many roles. Kate Schroeder, with the assistance of Carla Freeman, Robin Gold, and D. J. Peck, has transformed a collaborative writing project into a unified whole. Leticia Gutierrez oversaw the Web-based
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system that managed the drafts and queries to the hundreds of scholarly participants. Finally, among all the individuals at Sage, I close by acknowledging Jerry Westby, who knows the field and was very receptive to my proposal that a part of the Sage bookshelf should be this encyclopedia. The resources of my home campus at DePaul University have been extremely important. Managing Editor Monique Billings has played an important support function to the editors. Reference Librarian Paula Dempsey has been invaluable in tracking down esoteric bibliographic entries. The Department of Sociology Program Assistant Valerie Paulson and student workers Jan Gorospe, Meaghan Kawaller, Rachel Hanes, Suzanne Hammond, and Lidia Yip assisted with manuscript preparation and production. The scholarly content rests with the several hundred authors, but others helped in a broader fashion. Jean H. Shin, in his role as Director of the Minority Affairs Program at the American Sociological Association (ASA), assisted me in contacting minority scholars to solicit their participation as authors. Similarly, I reached contributors through the Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities of the American Sociological Association. In closing, we note that common elements in the definition of an encyclopedia are “authoritative” and “scholarship.” We would like to close by again acknowledging the work of the individual scholars who have combined to produce this single reference source covering race and ethnicity in society.
References
American Anthropological Association. 1997. “Response to OMB Directive 15; Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting.” September. Retrieved February 27, 2006, from http://www.aaanet.org/gvt/ombdraft.htm Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2004. “From Bi-racial to Tri-racial: Towards a New System of Racial Stratification in the USA.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27(November):931–950. Haub, Carl. 2007. 2007 World Population Data Sheet. Washington DC: Population Reference Bureau. Jones, Nicholas and Amy Symens Smith. 2001. The Two or More Races Population: 2000. Series C2KBR/01-6. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Morning, Ann. 2008. “Ethnic Classification in Global Perspective: A Cross-National Survey of the 2000 Census Round.” Population Research and Policy Review.
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Forthcoming. Retrieved from http://sociology.as.nyu .edu/object/annmorning.html Office of Management and Budget. 1997. “Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity.” Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse .gov/omb/fedreg/ombdir15.html Rodriguez, Clara E. 2000. Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History of Ethnicity in the United States. New York: New York University Press. Thernstrom, Stephan, ed. 1980. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tucker, Clyde, Brian Kojetin, and Roderick Harrison. 1996. A Statistical Analysis of the CPS Supplement on Race and
Ethnic Origin. Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau. Available from http://www.census.gov/prod/2/gen/ 96arc/ivatuck.pdf United Nations Statistical Division. 2003. “Ethnicity: A Review of Data Collection and Dissemination.” Unpublished document, Demographic and Social Statistics Branch, United Nations Statistical Division. Available from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/ sconcerns/popchar/Ethnicitypaper.pdf Winant, Howard. 2004. The New Politics of Race: Globalism, Difference, Justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
A slavery to the economies of the northeastern United States, led to the “first emancipation.” In the southeastern United States, where chattel slavery was of enormous economic interest and also a major social institution, the outcome was different. Manumissions, which had increased during the revolutionary era because of fluctuating tobacco prices in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, halted after the introduction of the cotton gin in 1793. Many plantation owners migrated to the Southeast.
ABOLITIONISM: THE MOVEMENT Abolitionism, the attempt on the part of both African American and European American activists to eradicate the institution of slavery and all of its vestiges, was one of the most successful biracial reform movements in the history of the United States. Abolitionism not only achieved its major goal of ending slavery but also valiantly attempted to make the ideals of equality and the unity of humankind a reality. Through the efforts of many activists, it sought to provide African Americans with all of the requisite educational, civil, and political rights necessary to function as useful and valued citizens of the republic.
The New Abolitionism After 1810, the emancipation tendencies of the revolutionary era gave way to a new orientation that resulted in a revision in U.S. beliefs regarding nature, human nature, and the supernatural, resulting in the widely circulated notion that the United States was a “White man’s” country. As a consequence, the call for the “immediate emancipation” of slaves, which had been promulgated by free Black activists on the northeastern seaboard since the American Revolution, did not seem feasible, even to most abolitionists. Like most abolitionists, the Quaker Benjamin Lundy, whose weekly Genius of Universal Emancipation (1831–1835) was one of the most influential newspapers on abolitionism before William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator (1831–1865), believed that colonization was the most prudent method of engendering emancipation. Thus, only after Garrison, prodded by the wealthy Black Philadelphia sail maker James Forten, demonstrated that most Blacks opposed colonization did the movement for “immediate emancipation” become a
Early Abolitionism Beginning as early as 1688, a community of Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, engaged in a dialogue about slavery. This early challenge to slavery was indeed significant, but it was not until the period of the American Revolution, when Quakers such as John Woolman and Anthony Benezet wrote antislavery pamphlets that were distributed widely, that their goals reached fruition. In 1776, the Society of Friends organized the first Antislavery Society, and one year later it ordered its slaveholding members to emancipate their bondspersons or leave the church. The high point of early abolitionism, the main goal of which was to end the slave trade, came in 1808 when the U.S. Congress declared that it was illegal to import slaves into the country. The impact of religious and intellectual trends, along with the marginality of 1
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force to be reckoned with. During the early 1830s, Garrison’s newspaper was financed, subscribed to, and provided other means of support by Forten and other Black male and female activists. Furthermore, Garrison drew on the support of large numbers of young Whites from comfortable families who were evangelical Protestants, Quakers, and Unitarians— people in whom the ideals of equality and the unity of humankind were embedded. By 1840, however, Garrison’s American Antislavery Society, which had been founded in 1833, split. Garrison had broadened his reform movement from the single issue of slavery to universal reform, combining feminism and radical pacifism with the crusade against slavery. Influential abolitionists such as Arthur and Lewis Tappan of New York and Frederick Douglass, whom Garrison had befriended and worked with, insisted on the necessity of overt political activity. During the 1840s and 1850s, Garrison labeled the U.S. Constitution as a proslavery document and called for disunion—that is, the North’s secession from the Union—a position unpalatable to many abolitionists, including many of his staunchest supporters. Although the new White abolitionists were for the most part paternalists, they challenged not only the institution of slavery in the South but also the forces of racism and reaction in the North—especially in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, abolitionists campaigned (with a degree of success) against racial segregation in schools and public transportation and opposed prohibitions against intermarriage. Some of them sought funds for manual schools for Blacks, and a few even supported Black business ventures. But perhaps the least-known aspect of the abolitionist challenges was the attempt to dismantle the scientific racism of the American School of Ethnology. This school was composed of Samuel George Morton, Josiah Nott, George Gliddon, and Louis Agassiz, men who had rejected the universalistic theory of humankind of Enlightenment monogenesis— the theory that humankind has a single origin. Instead, they posited the theory of polygenesis, a belief in the separate origins of races. As a result, on the basis of measurements of cranial cavities and material culture, the American School of Ethnology sought to prove scientifically that non-Whites were inferior to Whites. In essence, they turned their backs on the universalistic theory of humankind of the revolutionary era thinkers such as Benjamin Rush and
John Stanhope Smith to rationalize a racism that excluded “savages” from the domain of “people.” Black abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, James McCune Smith, Martin Delany, and Hosea Easton railed against the American School of Ethnology. The abolitionists commingled theological, moral, and political concerns in their discourses on race despite the fact that Christian monogenesis at that historical juncture was outside the mainstream of scientific argumentation. Bent on pursuing an older tradition of argumentation, their discourses on race have only recently been rediscovered.
The Aftermath Once the North and the South drifted into the Civil War and the bloodbath that accompanied it, the abolitionist movement attempted (with success) to transform the goal of the war from simply preserving the Union to also freeing the slaves. At the end of the Civil War, Garrison believed that his mission had been accomplished. As a consequence, he terminated the publication of his newspaper and retired. Nonetheless, many abolitionists, including Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, sought to uplift the freed people through education in the newly founded Negro schools and financial institutions. In retrospect, the abolitionist crusade was a beginning. Yet it did not realistically treat the sources of racism—not even among its members. However, its utopian goal and dream—the emancipation of the slaves—became a reality. Vernon J. Williams, Jr. See also Abolitionism: The People; African Americans; Back to Africa Movement; Black Intellectuals; Douglass, Frederick; Emancipation Proclamation; Frazier, E. Franklin; Race; Racism; Slavery; Truth, Sojourner
Further Readings
Bay, Mia. 2000. The White Image in the Black Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Dain, Bruce. 2002. A Hideous Monster of the Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Laurie, Bruce. 2005. Beyond Garrison. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Stauffer, John. 2002. The Black Hearts of Men. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Abolitionism: The People
ABOLITIONISM: THE PEOPLE Abolitionists were people who fought for the eradication of slavery and the slave trade during the 18th and 19th centuries. Abolitionism was a movement to end slavery and the worldwide slave trade. Started by Quakers, the movement embraced both Whites and Blacks working together toward a common goal. This entry introduces some of the key figures in that movement.
The Quakers The initial steps toward abolitionism occurred in 1712 and initially concerned the prevention of continued importation of non-Whites into the American colonies. It was not until 1767 that abolitionism took a humanitarian position against slavery and began to assert that the trading and the enslavement of Africans were immoral. In 1783, the first antislavery movement was organized in England by the Quakers. The Quakers petitioned Parliament to end the slave trade and abolish slavery throughout the British Empire. By 1787, the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was developed largely by groups of evangelical reformers, and a network of abolitionists was created around the country. In 1775, the Quakers founded the first American abolition society, called the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. This initial organization did not get national exposure until it was taken over in 1784 by Benjamin Franklin, who served as president. From this point onward, the abolition of slavery in every northern state occurred gradually with the advocacy of organizations such as the Society of Friends, the Pennsylvania Antislavery Society, and the New York Manumission Society. The abolition of slavery in the northern states succeeded in 1804, the largest emancipation of slaves before the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
William Lloyd Garrison During the 1830s, with the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist movement made a radical shift. The original goal of the movement was for the gradual abolition of slavery; however, this goal was changed to one that demanded the immediate emancipation of slaves. In 1831, Garrison published
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the abolitionist journal The Liberator and publicized the movement’s goal of immediate and unconditional emancipation of slaves. It was this shift in the abolitionist movement that created great animosity between America’s slaveholders and major political and religious leaders. The objectives of Garrison’s movement were quite revolutionary because they were deemed to undermine the economic and social order of the time. Even though the abolition of slavery was successful in Great Britain and most of the European colonies, slaveholders in the U.S. southern colonies were resistant to ending slavery. Their opposition was due to the belief that the chattel system was necessary for economic prosperity and to the fact that in some states where slaves were the majority there was a fear that emancipated slaves would retaliate against the Whites. In 1833, Garrison and the Tappan brothers organized the Antislavery Society. This society was involved in publicly denouncing slavery and called for immediate action to free all slaves. By 1835, this society started a major propaganda campaign in the South and inundated the slave states with abolitionist literature, sent organizers to the North, and petitioned Congress to end slavery. The Antislavery Society’s campaign was met with strong opposition. Abolitionists in the North were attacked by mobs that would break up their meetings, destroy their printing presses, burn their antislavery pamphlets, and (in some areas) excluded them from the mail. In addition, Congress prohibited free debate so as to avoid their petitions. As antiabolitionist sentiments continued to grow, abolitionist groups used this fear to strengthen their cause. The murder of Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist who was attacked and murdered by a mob when trying to defend his printing press, provided a platform to reinforce antislavery attitudes. As a result, by 1837 more than 1,300 antislavery societies with approximately 250,000 members were formed throughout the North. Even though abolitionists’ common goal was for the eradication of slavery, there was disagreement on how to achieve set goals. Garrison’s followers believed that women should be allowed to fully participate in the antislavery societies and that the movement should appeal to the morality of slaveholders to end slavery. The Garrison platform divided the cause due to the more conservative members who opposed female participation and to the more radical members who believed that moral persuasion was insufficient.
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As a result, the American and Foreign Antislavery Society was formed, and abolitionists remained divided and were never again a unified movement. In 1840, the Liberty party was another antislavery party that developed from the split within the Antislavery Society organization and whose members believed that slavery could be abolished by following a conventional political format. Although the Garrison antislavery platform was revolutionary for its time, Garrison advocated a nonviolent approach to ending slavery, whereas some members recognized the need to meet violence with violence. In 1859, one of the final acts of extreme abolition was committed by John Brown and his raid on the northern Virginia town of Harpers Ferry, where he took 60 Whites hostage in hopes of igniting an uprising of slaves.
Joining the Movement Numerous people—Black and White, men and women—participated in the abolitionist movement and dedicated their lives to eradicating slavery. Most abolitionists remained anonymous; however, a handful received national acclaim. Wendell Phillips joined the Antislavery Society and was known as abolition’s “Golden Trumpet” because of his speaking ability. Like many abolitionists, Phillips refused to eat cane sugar or wear clothes made of cotton. Henry David Thoreau was an American author and lifelong abolitionist who lectured fervently against the Fugitive Slave Law and supported the efforts of John Brown. Harriet Beecher Stowe moved with her family to Cincinnati, where her father became the first president of Lane Seminary. There she learned about slavery,
Harpers Ferry insurrection. Abolitionist efforts involved many people, from the North and South, White and Black, but one of the best known is John Brown. In 1859, John Brown and his “provisional Army of the United States” seized the military army at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with the objective of arming an uprising of slaves. His efforts were immediately thwarted as federal troops arrived under the command of Robert E. Lee. Brown was taken prisoner and charged with “conspiring with slaves to commit treason and murder.” Tried and convicted, he was hanged later that year. Pictured is the interior of the engine house in the armory just before the gate was broken down by the Marines. John Brown and others are depicted with rifles and other weapons. (Shown in Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper, Vol. 8, No. 205, November 5, 1859) Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-132541.
Abortion
became an abolitionist, and wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. William Still was born a free Black man and worked as a mail clerk and a janitor for the Antislavery Society. He was eventually appointed as head of the General Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia, a group that assisted fugitive slaves seeking safety in the city. Eventually, Still worked to organize one of the most extensive networks of safehouses and conductors that soon became part of one of the most effective Underground Railroad systems in the country. Theodore Weld, although not well known, is considered to be the most important figure of the abolitionist movement. As a student at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Weld organized antislavery debates among the students that eventually led to his dismissal. In support of Weld and the antislavery movement, the entire student body also made requests for dismissal. Many of these former students from Lane Seminary became agents for the Antislavery Society and were central in spreading the antislavery mission throughout the North. Frederick Douglass joined Garrison’s antislavery movement, served as a lecturer for the Antislavery Society, and was responsible for talking about his life and selling subscriptions to The Liberator and the National Antislavery Standard. By the 1850s, Douglass officially split with Garrison but continued to fight vigorously against injustice toward Blacks. He played a key role in the Underground Railroad by providing shelter to fugitive slaves, and in 1852 he gave his famous “July 5th” speech questioning what the celebration of American freedom was to a slave. Sojourner Truth was born Isabella and escaped slavery in 1827. Convinced that she was led by God, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth (which means “traveling preacher”) and traveled throughout the North preaching about emancipation and women’s rights. Finally, Harriet Tubman was one of the most well-known conductors of the Underground Railroad. During a 10-year period, she made nineteen trips to the South and escorted more than 300 slaves to freedom. The contributions and talents of the many men and women in the abolitionist movement continued to press the government to end slavery. Their tireless efforts and the support of radical Republicans in Congress ultimately contributed to President Abraham Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and a few years later slavery was abolished with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Leslie C. Baker Kimmons
5
See also Abolitionism: The Movement; African Americans; Back to Africa Movement; Black Intellectuals; Douglass, Frederick; Emancipation Proclamation; Frazier, E. Franklin; Race; Racism; Slavery; Truth, Sojourner
Further Readings
Blassingame, John. 1979. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press. Douglass, Frederick. 1962. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. New York: Collier Books. Grant, Joanne. 1968. Black Protest: History, Documents, and Analyses—1619 to the Present. New York: Fawcett Premier. Harley, Sharon. 1996. The Timetables of African-American History: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in African-American History. New York: Touchstone. Healy, Joseph. 1998. Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class: The Sociology of Group Conflict and Change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge. Higginbotham, A. Leon, Jr. 1978. In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process—The Colonial Period. New York: Oxford University Press.
ABORTION For nearly half a century, abortion has been a dominant issue in U.S. social and political discourse. Beneath the surface discussion are concerns over human life, family, sexuality, and women’s selfdetermination and role in society. At the same time, induced abortion remains an extremely common medical procedure in the United States, primarily because unintended pregnancy in the country remains pervasive. Each year, just under half of all pregnancies— some 3 million—are unplanned, and just under half of these pregnancies—1.3 million—end in abortion. At current rates, one in every three U.S. women will have an abortion at some point in her life.
Social and Legal History Abortion, both legal and illegal, has long been part of life in the United States. Indeed, the legal status of abortion has passed through several distinct phases in U.S. history. Generally permitted at the nation’s founding and for several decades thereafter, the procedure was made illegal under most circumstances in most states beginning in the mid-1800s.
6
Abortion
Yet even after the procedure was criminalized, clandestine abortion continued to be common. It is estimated that during the 1950s and 1960s, a minimum of 200,000 women each year (some estimates go as high as 1.2 million) had illegal abortions, many of which were performed under unsafe conditions. As late as 1965, illegal abortions accounted for 17% of all officially reported pregnancy-related deaths. Poor women and women of color and their families were disproportionately affected by the criminalization of abortion because even where abortion was illegal, women with financial means often had access to a safe procedure. Also, a woman could obtain a legal abortion by getting the approval of a hospital committee established to review abortion requests—an option generally available to only the well connected. A less affluent woman had few options aside from a dangerous illegal abortion. According to a series of studies on abortion in New York City during the 1950s and 1960s, the incidence of abortion was much higher among patients with private physicians than among women without their own doctors, and low-income women were more likely than more affluent women to be admitted to hospitals for postabortion care following an illegal abortion. Furthermore, one of every two childbirth-related deaths among non-White and Puerto Rican women in New York City during the 1950s was due to abortion, compared with one of every four among White women. During the 1960s, states began reforming their strict antiabortion laws so that by the time the U.S. Supreme Court acted to make abortions legal nationwide in 1973, legal abortions were already available in seventeen states (home to four of every ten women ages 15–44 years) under a range of circumstances beyond those necessary to save a woman’s life. In Roe v. Wade, the Court held that a woman’s right to decide, in consultation with her physician, whether to obtain an abortion early in pregnancy is protected constitutionally. However, states may restrict or prohibit abortions entirely after fetal viability (i.e., the physiciandetermined point in a pregnancy when the fetus could survive outside the woman’s body) unless an abortion is necessary to protect the woman’s life or health. Nearly 20 years later, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that central holding. In its 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, however, the Court also held that state regulations are permissible if they do not impose an “undue burden” on a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion. Under
these standards, the Court has allowed significant state restrictions, including requirements that patients undergo a mandatory 24-hour delay before having an abortion and that teens obtain consent for the procedure from a parent or a court, but has not gone so far as to allow a spousal notification requirement. The right to abortion, therefore, is not absolute.
Roe Major Trends in Abortion Post-R The decriminalization of abortion had a dramatic impact on women’s lives. As legal, medically safe options became available, injuries and deaths from abortions plummeted; today, early abortion—with a death rate of fewer than 1 in every 100,000 procedures— is one of the safest of all common medical procedures performed in the country. And indeed, women have been increasingly able to obtain an abortion early in pregnancy; nine of every ten abortions are now performed at or before 12 weeks’ gestation (half within 8 weeks), and the proportion of women having an abortion at or beyond 16 weeks’ gestation fell from 9% in 1973 to 5% in 2001. Not surprisingly, the U.S. abortion rate rose rapidly during the years immediately following legalization due in part to a shift from unreported illegal abortions to reported legal abortions. But legalization, of course, also meant better access for women. As the number of physicians who were trained and experienced in the procedure increased, and as a nationwide network of largely freestanding outpatient services developed, women who previously did not have access to even a clandestine abortion were able to receive a legal procedure in a medical facility. The U.S. abortion rate peaked in 1980 at 29 abortions per 1,000 women and then began to fall, dropping more steeply after 1990 until it reached a rate of 21 abortions per 1,000 women in 2003—in other words, approximately 2% of women of reproductive age. Improvements in contraceptive use have been a major factor in declining abortion rates since 1980, particularly among unmarried women. The proportion of unmarried women at risk for unintended pregnancy who were using contraceptives increased from 80% in 1982 to 86% in 2002, and this increase was accompanied by a decline in unmarried women’s unintended pregnancy rate over the same period. Nevertheless, the U.S. abortion rate, although at its lowest level since 1974, remains significantly higher than the abortion rates in many other developed countries around the world.
Abortion
Persistent Disparities In the United States, both historically and today, health status and access to health care are often driven by socioeconomic circumstance, by race and ethnicity, or by both. This is as true for reproductive health as it is for health in general. Disparities across income and racial/ethnic groups are pervasive. For two decades beginning in the 1970s, however, the income and racial disparities in unintended pregnancy and abortion appeared to be closing. But recent data indicate that these disparities have widened again. Between 1994 and 2001, the unintended pregnancy rate for poor women (those with incomes below the federal poverty line) increased 29% even as it fell 20% for more affluent women (those with incomes above 200% of the poverty line). A poor woman in the United States is now nearly four times as likely as a more affluent woman to have an unplanned pregnancy. Similarly, from 1994 to 2000, while the abortion rate among higher income women decreased, the abortion rate among poor women increased. Because of this relatively higher level of unplanned pregnancy, a poor woman in the United States today is more than three times as likely as a more affluent woman to have an abortion. As a group, Black women have seen some progress during recent years: Their unintended pregnancy rate fell 3% between 1994 and 2001. Nonetheless, Black women are twice as likely as women overall to have an unplanned pregnancy. It is not surprising, then, that they are also more likely to have an abortion; each year, 5% of Black women have an abortion—more than twice the national average. The story is different for Latinas. Although the overall pregnancy rate for Hispanic women fell by 10% from 1994 to 2001, the decline was due entirely to a drop in intended pregnancies. The unintended pregnancy rate among Hispanic women remained unchanged, leading to an increase in the proportion of their pregnancies that were unintended. Not surprisingly, then, the proportion of Hispanic women who have an abortion each year (3%) is higher than the national average and three times as high as that of White women (1%). Although there is often overlap between economic status and race and ethnicity, economic status does not fully explain the differences among racial and ethnic groups. At all income levels, abortion rates for Black and Hispanic women are higher than those for White
Table 1
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Estimated Abortion Rates per 1,000 Women Ages 15 to 44 Years, by Poverty Status, According to Race and Ethnicity, 2000
Poverty Statusa Total < 100% 100–199% 200–299% ≥ 300%
White
Black
Hispanic
13 23 27 15 7
49 62 68 48 28
33 68 34 19 15
Source: Jones, Rachel K., Jacqueline E. Darroch, and Stanley K. Henshaw. 2002. “Patterns in the Socioeconomic Characteristics of Women Obtaining Abortions in 2000–2001.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 34(5):226–235. Reprinted by permission of the Guttmacher Institute. a
Percentage of federal poverty level.
women (Table 1). Indeed, Black women with incomes above 200% of the poverty line have abortion rates approximately two to three times those of Hispanic women and three to four times those of non-Hispanic White women. Even when seeking an abortion, the disadvantage continues as certain groups of women are more likely than others to experience a delay in obtaining the procedure. More than half of all economically disadvantaged women experience a delay, most frequently because they need to raise money for the procedure. Not surprisingly, most economically disadvantaged women also say that they would have preferred to have their abortion earlier. Furthermore, Black women deliberate about abortion for as long as Hispanic and White women do, but Black women take significantly longer from the time they decide to have an abortion to the time they obtain one, even when controlling for age, marital status, and income.
Enduring Controversy Abortion remains an emotionally charged and politically divisive issue in the United States. For some, the act of abortion is simply immoral and tantamount to murder. For others, the right to abortion is a foundation for women’s self-determination over their bodies and their lives and is critical to women’s equality. The reasons women give for deciding to terminate a pregnancy, however, underscore the complexity of the decision. Six of every ten women who have an abortion
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Acculturation
are already parents. More than half say that they want a child or another child at a later point in their life. Most cite concern or responsibility for someone else as a factor in their decision. During the years immediately following nationwide legalization, the primary focus of abortion opponents was to overturn Roe by persuading Congress to pass a “human life amendment” to the U.S. Constitution that would grant full personhood to the fetus from the moment of fertilization. When that legislative strategy failed, the issue of abortion’s basic legality was relegated to the back burner in favor of an “incremental” approach still seen today—withdrawing public funding and otherwise restricting access to the procedure—aimed at changing public opinion about the legitimacy of abortion. Since then, a latticework of abortion law—codifying, regulating, and limiting whether, when, and under what circumstances a woman may obtain an abortion—has developed. For example, thirty-two states and the District of Columbia prohibit the use of state funds to pay for all or most medically necessary abortions for Medicaid enrollees except in those cases where federal funds are available—where the woman’s life is in danger or the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. Twenty-four states require a woman seeking an abortion to wait a specified period of time, usually 24 hours, between when she receives counseling and the procedure is performed. Thirty-four states require either parental consent or parental notification before a minor is permitted to have an abortion. The extent to which these restrictions block substantial numbers of women from actually obtaining abortions is unclear. Although studies have shown that laws prohibiting the use of public funds for abortion force some indigent women to carry their unintended pregnancies to term, the evidence that restrictions such as waiting periods and mandatory parental involvement have a significant impact is less compelling. What is clear, however, is that restrictions on abortion access make abortion more costly—financially and in terms of women’s health and safety—as the resulting delays lead to more expensive and less safe procedures. Moreover, restrictive abortion policies fall hardest on poor women and women of color, who are already disadvantaged by society in a host of other areas of their lives, including their access to the information and services necessary to prevent unplanned pregnancy in the first place. Heather D. Boonstra
See also Adoption; Family; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Health Disparities; Sexuality; “Welfare Queen”
Further Readings
Boonstra, Heather B., Rachel B. Gold, Cory L. Richards, and Lawrence B. Finer. 2006. Abortion in Women’s Lives. New York: Guttmacher Institute. Finer, Lawrence B. and Stanley K. Henshaw. 2006. “Disparities in Rates of Unintended Pregnancy in the United States, 1994 and 2001.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 38:90–96. Jones, Rachel K., Jacqueline E. Darroch, and Stanley K. Henshaw. 2002. “Patterns in the Socioeconomic Characteristics of Women Obtaining Abortions in 2000–2001.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 34:226–235. Luker, Kristin. 1985. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mohr, James C. 1978. Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Nelson, Jennifer. 2003. Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement. New York: New York University Press.
ACCULTURATION Acculturation refers to the process by which people adopt a new culture. Usually, this process is accompanied by people’s distancing themselves from their original culture. Acculturation can be seen as occurring along a continuum starting with modest acceptance of the new culture through acquiring some knowledge of the language and customs. With more complete acculturation, people speak the language flawlessly without accent, participate in the accepted religious practices, and carry out other traditions—from sports to food to the holidays—of the new society. It is important to understand that acculturation is generally a one-way process. Individuals or ethnic groups alter their lifestyle, but the dominant or new host society remains unchanged. It is not a social process between equals. Typically, those undergoing acculturation are immigrants, but it can also include indigenous people such as the American Indians, the First Nations of Canada, and the Aboriginal people of Australia. It is a process also experienced by those populations forcibly transferred such as slaves.
Adoption
Acculturation is regarded a part of the larger process of assimilation, where one takes on the total identity of the new society. In this context, acculturation is referred to as cultural assimilation, with other components of assimilation involved in entering the everyday social life of society (structural assimilation) and marrying freely with other societal members (marital assimilation). Issues of social identity arise as acculturation continues. Do the people taking on the cultural characteristics of the dominant culture begin to view themselves even marginally as members of the new society? Being of two worlds but being comfortable in neither is a typical experience of the children of immigrants. Although acculturation may reduce hostility from the host society, which sees newcomers as different, it is not without negative social consequences. For example, research shows that immigrants often encounter health problems as they acculturate, leaving behind old health networks and confronting the private pay system of medical care in the United States. The outcome is that the health of immigrants often deteriorates. Interestingly, this also occurs with Puerto Ricans, who are citizens when they arrive and obviously do not experience as much culture shock as do other immigrants. Scholars have looked at the implications for infant mortality of migration from Puerto Rico to the United States. Their analysis showed that children of migrants have lower rates of infant mortality than do children of mainland-born Puerto Rican women. This means that babies of Puerto Rican mothers who are born in the United States are more likely to die than are babies of mothers who migrated from Puerto Rico. Why does this happen? Immigrants generally are still under the protection of their fellow travelers. They are still networked with other immigrants and the culture in which they were raised, and these other immigrants assist them in adapting to life in the United States. However, as life in a new country continues and the acculturation process persists, these important social networks break down; people learn to navigate the new social system—the health care system in this example. Research indicates that Puerto Ricans in the United States, regardless of how recently they arrived, still experience better health than do those in Puerto Rico. The health care problems of second-generation immigrants are widely recognized. Indeed, in 2007, the Mexican government initiated health care outreach from its consulate
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offices for its countrymen and -women in the United States who found it difficult to navigate health care in their new country. Acculturation during the early 1900s was regarded as a uniformly positive outcome under the naive assumption that the U.S. “melting pot” welcomed all new arrivals without much difficulty. Today, research documents the importance of maintaining ties to one’s first culture as one takes on the language and values of the new society. Many of the policy debates today in the United States, such as the one involving bilingual education and English as the official language, reflect tensions over acculturation. In other countries, the issue of acculturation has manifested in other ways such as the debate in France over Muslim school children wearing headscarves in the classroom. Richard T. Schaefer See also Americanization; Assimilation; Australia, Indigenous People; Bilingual Education; Dawes Act of 1887; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Dillingham Flaw; Double Consciousness; English Immersion; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Ethnocentrism; France; Marginalization; Melting Pot; Third-Generation Principle; Veil
Further Readings
Alonso-Zalvadar, Ricardo and Anna Gorman. 2007. “Mexican Consulates Offer Healthcare Help.” Los Angeles Times, May 31, A1, A24. Landale, R. S. Oropesa and Bridget K. Gorman. 2000. “Migration and Infant Death: Assimilation or Selective Migration among Puerto Ricans?” American Sociological Review 65:888–909. Lara, Marielena, Cristina Gramboa, M. Iya Kahramanian, Leo S. Morales, and David E. Hayes Bautista. 2005. “Acculturation and Latino Health in the United States: A Review of the Literature and Its Sociopolitical Context.” Pp. 367–397 in Annual Review of Public Health. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews. Newman, William M. 1973. American Pluralism: A Study of Minority Groups and Social Theory. New York: Harper & Row.
ADOPTION Adoption is the legal act of permanently placing a child with a family other than the child’s birth parent(s). Adoption requires the severing of parental
10
Adoption
Family with five adopted, Russian-born children. Adoption may involve crossing ethnic, racial, religious, or linguistic boundaries. Kim (adoptive father at left) and Carol (adoptive mother at right) Cormany pose on their porch with their five adopted Russian-born children. In 2000, 13% of all adopted children in the United States were foreign born. Source: Photo by Lloyd Wolf for the Bureau of the Census.
rights and responsibilities of the biological parents and placing those rights and responsibilities with the adoptive parent(s). After the adoption is finalized, there is no legal difference between biological and adopted families or between biological and adopted children. As adoptive families have shared in interviews, the decision to adopt brings with it numerous issues and challenges as well as great pleasure and joy. Adopting a child of another race, ethnicity, or culture adds additional elements for which to prepare and consider. Modern adoption laws have been designed with the best interests of the children in mind—to find them homes—not the best interests of the adults who intend to adopt. This entry reviews the legal process involved in adoption, reasons for adoption, and the history of adoption in the United States. Today, adoptions can be conducted privately between birth parents and adoptive parents, between independent agencies and individuals, and between public agencies (e.g., a state’s child protective services) and individuals. Adopted persons may be infants or older children, may be adopted singly or as part of a sibling group, and may come from the local area or from other states or countries. Adoptive parents may be married couples, same-sex couples, or single adults who have no children or may parent other children. Adoptive parents have been, and continue to be, primarily U.S. and European citizens who
identify as Caucasian. Guidelines as to the requirements of potential adoptive parents are provided by states, countries, and individual adoption agencies. Adoptions occur for a number of reasons. Many children are placed for adoption because their biological parents decide that they are unable to care for them adequately. In some countries, where single motherhood is considered as scandalous or unacceptable, a woman in this situation may make an adoption plan for her infant, whereas others may come under financial, societal, religious, or familial pressure to choose adoption for their children. In some cases, children are abandoned at orphanages so that they can be safely placed for adoption. Some biological parents involuntarily lose their parental rights; this usually occurs when the child is placed in foster care due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment. Eventually, if the birth parents cannot resolve the problems that caused or contributed to the harm of their child, a court may terminate their parental rights and the child may become available for adoption. Kinship Care is a program designed to help support children who reside outside of their own homes by placing them with relatives. This supports the concept that children residing with family members, rather than in foster homes, may alleviate family stress or temporary familial problems. The main reason for adopting varies from one country to the next, depending largely on social and legal structures. Infertility of one or both partners, a lack of a partner of the opposite sex, and the avoidance of inheritable diseases are reasons reported by potential adoptive parents. In many Western countries, stepparent adoption is the most common form of adoption as people choose to strengthen a new family following divorce or the death of a parent. Some couples choose adoption for “humanitarian” reasons such as concerns about overpopulation and the belief that children in need of families should take precedence over biological reproduction. Whatever the reason that potential parents come to adoption, as a group they believe that adoption is a valid and positive way to create a family. The history of adoption has followed a chronology that included key turning points. Considered as some of these landmark moments are the foundation of social work schools, adoption agencies, and organizations of social welfare workers (e.g., the New York School of Applied Philanthropy in 1904, the Spence Alumni Society in 1908, the National Association of Social Workers in 1955), the creation of democratic
Adoption
alliances and government agencies designed to investigate child welfare (e.g., the U.S. Children’s Bureau of the Department of Labor in 1912, the Child Welfare League of America in 1921, the UN Assembly that adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959), the passing of acts created to define standard setting for adoption policy in the United States (e.g., the Social Security Act of 1935, the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994, the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997), and the creation of policies that respect intercountry adoptions and support the rights of foreign-born adopted persons (e.g., the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1961, the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children in 1993, the Child Citizenship Act of 2000). Historically, indigent children were sent to public institutions or orphanages until they could be “put out” as indentured servants, apprentices, or farmhands. During the early 19th century, however, several variables— including economic conditions, population size, and the efforts of social reformers—helped to change society’s attitude toward adoption and to make children in need of families available for adoption. Private agencies were established and began to place children in homes where they would become legal family members. Private adoption acts grew to ensure the legal status and inheritance rights of adopted children. Following World War I, the sharp drop in population caused by the war and the influenza epidemic, coupled with the development of commercial baby formula, set the stage for a dramatic increase in adoptions. Most were conducted in secret, and “closed” adoptions became the norm. At this time, many adopted persons were told that they were their parents’ biological children. It was thought that this secrecy helped children to bond with their new families and to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy. By the mid-1950s, the demand for healthy infants began to exceed the number available. Families in the United States adopted children from the war-torn areas of Europe, Vietnam, and Korea, and the majority of children were placed with Caucasian families. As the number of American racial/ethnic minority children without families increased over time, domestic adoption agencies began placing African American, Native American, and Hispanic children with Caucasian families who longed for children in their homes or who were reaching out to children in need. The practice of placing a child of one racial/ethnic
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group with adoptive parents of another racial/ethnic group is commonly referred to as transracial or transcultural adoption, and for many people it continues to be a controversial topic. During the 1970s, “open” adoptions, in which adoptive and birth parents are known to each other, became more accepted. Since the end of the 20th century, adoptive parents have increasingly turned to transracial and international adoptions from more than 50 different countries, with the greatest clusters from Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa. The number of older “special needs” children awaiting adoption, both in and outside of the United States, has skyrocketed. These children often come from backgrounds of abuse and neglect, and finding appropriate placements for them is one of the most pressing concerns in child welfare today. Adoption rights organizations have long focused on issues such as the adopted person’s right to access his or her birth information, including birth family medical information. They also focus on improving classroom sensitivity to adoption issues, encouraging school systems to steer away from lessons such as those about family trees and tracing genetic connections. The language used in adoption is changing and evolving as well to more honest and positive wording, breaking with the use of negative or inaccurate language describing adoptive individuals, birth parents, and the adoption experience. Andrea Malkin Brenner See also Child Development; Family; Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978; Multiracial Identity; One-Drop Rule; Race; Social Work; Transracial Adoption
Further Readings
Alstein, Howard and Rita Simon. 1990. Intercountry Adoption: A Multinational Perspective. New York: Praeger. Carp, E. Wayne. 2004. Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation and Ballot Initiative 58. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Herman, Ellen. 2005. Timeline of Adoption History. The Adoption History Project. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption/timeline.html Jones, Merry Bloch. 1993. Birthmothers: Women Who Relinquish Babies for Adoption Tell Their Stories. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review. Melosh, Barbara. 2002. Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Affirmative Action in Education
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
IN
EDUCATION
Since the introduction of the term in Executive Order 10479, signed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, affirmative action has occupied a place of great hope, uncertainty, and debate within U.S. society. Over the decades, support for affirmative action has grown and waned as political currents have changed. After numerous U.S. Supreme Court decisions have shaped affirmative action policies, the future of the program is uncertain. As a result, many states have begun to develop alternative plans in their efforts to ensure diversity within schools. This entry defines affirmative action, summarizes the debates over its implementation, examines related federal court decisions, and outlines possible alternatives.
Defining Affirmative Action There is no clear agreed-on definition of affirmative action. For the purposes of this selection, George E. Curry’s definition, based on a report of the Civil Rights Commission, is used. Affirmative action, then, consists of “policies and programs that permit the consideration of race, ethnicity, national origin, or sex in awarding of contracts, employment, or university admissions in order to provide opportunities to a class of qualified people who have been historically or actually denied those opportunities, and to prevent further discrimination in the future.” Originally designed to combat discrimination against African Americans, affirmative action programs have been expanded to consider other ethnic groups, including Latinos and Native Americans, as well as other minority groups such as women. Affirmative action can best be seen as a continuum of policies ranging from strict quotas that make race or gender the deciding factor to policies that indirectly increase inclusion without taking race or sex into account.
The Debate Almost since its inception, affirmative action has been a source of great controversy within the United States. Opponents of affirmative action usually take one of three approaches, focusing on (a) unfairness to White males, (b) unfairness to minorities, or (c) general questions of unfairness. Supporters of the unfairness to White males approach claim that the policy is reverse discrimination because it denies qualified Whites the
same opportunities as are available to minorities. Those who support this argument often use the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origins, and (later) gender as proof of the unconstitutionality of the policy. In addition, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the equal protection clause of the Fifteenth Amendment are cited to contest affirmative action policies. Advocates of the second approach examine how affirmative action policies have a negative impact on the minorities they are designed to assist. They claim that the policy is detrimental for minorities because it puts underqualified minorities in institutions where they do not have the skills to be successful. Hence, the programs set minority students up for failure. Support for this argument can be seen in the lower graduation rates of certain minority groups such as African Americans. Another argument is that affirmative action takes away minority motivation for working hard. This position maintains that minorities will not try as hard because they know that they will get into colleges because of their minority status. Similar to the motivation issues, some argue that minorities will become demoralized because they know that they are not in college because of their own merit but rather because of their minority status. Also, affirmative action could increase racial tensions on campus because Whites may feel resentment because of the preferences given to minority groups. The third and final view of opponents of affirmative action tends to deal with more general concerns about fairness. One position maintains that such policies tend to benefit the most advantaged members of minority groups—the middle class. Opponents of affirmative action claim that this group would be successful without such policies; hence, the program does not really benefit anyone. Another objection is that affirmative action policies are designed to compensate for past discrimination. Many argue that it has been more than 40 years since the Civil Rights Movement when discrimination became illegal, and they wonder when the country will have paid enough for its past errors. In a related argument, some claim that if affirmative action is designed to compensate for discrimination, applicants should be required to demonstrate that they have been discriminated against and minority status should not be sufficient proof of discrimination. Finally, opponents maintain that affirmative action is now applied to too wide a group. They contend that the affirmative action policies originally
Affirmative Action in Education
designed to assist African Americans now apply to a wider range of groups, such as new immigrants from Latin America, who do not cope with the historical legacy of discrimination that African Americans face. Thus, opponents maintain that affirmative action has lost its relevance and needs to be discontinued. In contrast to opponents of the program, advocates of affirmative action focus on how such policies have increased equality in the United States. According to supporters of affirmative action, such policies are crucial to education because diversity enhances the learning experience by providing a diversity of opinions and life experiences. In addition, given the growing diversity of the United States, being in a diverse campus environment prepares students to work and live in a more ethnically diverse environment. Another point that advocates of affirmative action present is the belief that discrimination continues to exist, so such programs are still needed. Those who support this opinion point to statistics demonstrating that African Americans and Latinos continue to be overrepresented among the poor, that women continue to make less money than men, and that African Americans are less likely to be called back for a second job interview, or even given a first interview, if they have ethnic-sounding names. In addition, supporters note the continued preference given to legacy applicants—the children and grandchildren of alumni—in college admissions, a preference that disproportionately benefits Whites. Thus, they maintain that affirmative action policies are needed to ensure a level playing field. Advocates of affirmative action also point out the problems of the opposition’s perspective. For example, using a sample of academically selective colleges, William G. Bowen and Derek Bok demonstrated, in their classic book The Shape of the River, that affirmative action policies are not a matter of choosing unqualified minorities over qualified Whites but rather one of giving minorities preference within a pool of qualified candidates. These authors also found that the selective colleges that practice affirmative action did not have greater racial tensions and that White students believed that diversity on the college campus was important and added to the learning environment of the institution. With regard to affirmative action hurting the recipients, Bowen and Bok found that African Americans at elite colleges had higher graduation rates than did those at nonselective colleges. They also discovered that the long-term benefits of affirmative action policies
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are positive; African Americans who graduate from elite colleges have higher salaries than their counterparts from less selective institutions and also contribute more to their communities. Based on these findings, the authors concluded that affirmative action does not have the negative consequences that opponents of the policy suggest it has.
Federal Decisions Although each educational institution has its own affirmative action policy, the federal courts have been the primary entity to set the acceptable boundaries of these policies. In this way, the Supreme Court has been one of the most influential bodies with regard to setting affirmative action policies. The first relevant case was the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision. This case overruled the Plessy v. Ferguson case, which had found that having separate facilities for African Americans and Whites was constitutional so long as the facilities were equal. The Brown decision found that having separate facilities, especially within education, was inherently unequal. This case sparked the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, which ended legal segregation in the United States. The Brown decision is important because it was the first case that called for students of different ethnic origins to attend school together. Subsequent Court cases would set the parameters of affirmative action policies. The next important case considered by the Supreme Court was Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In this case, Allen Bakke argued that he was denied admission to the medical school at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), because less qualified minorities were admitted. The UC Davis medical school had a policy of setting aside 16 of its 100 medical school spots for minorities. In 1978, the Court found that setting aside a specific number of positions for minorities was unconstitutional. Although it was OK to have percentage goals for minority enrollment, this case outlawed the use of quotas— having a set number of positions for minorities. As a result, schools needed to revise their affirmative action policies to ensure that quotas did not exist. After the Bakke decision, the Supreme Court was relatively silent about affirmative action for the following couple of decades. But during the late 1990s, more affirmative action cases made their way through the federal court systems. As result, different federal districts ended up having opposing findings. In
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Hopwood v. Texas, decided in 1998, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that giving racial preferences in higher education was unconstitutional. It found that using preferences to ensure a diverse student body was not a sufficient rationale for the consideration of race. The Supreme Court decided not to hear the case, causing the ruling to stand. In this way, the consideration of race was outlawed in the states that fell under the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals—Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. In contrast, in 2000, The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in Smith v. University of Washington, found the diversity rationale of the admissions policy of the University of Washington Law School was constitutional. The Supreme Court also declined to hear this case. Thus, the legality of affirmative action varied from state to state. In 2003, the Supreme Court finally weighed in on affirmative action and set the parameters for the entire country. In 2003, the Court handed down two rulings. In the first case, Gratz v. Bollinger, the Court found that the University of Michigan’s undergraduate admissions policy, which awarded points to members of ethnic minority groups, was unconstitutional. The Court ruled that such a system was too mechanistic because it did no individual assessment and did not take a holistic approach. In contrast, in Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court found that the University of Michigan’s law school policy of considering race among a variety of factors when evaluating each applicant to ensure diversity was constitutional. Based on these decisions, the consensus seemed to be that diversity in higher education was adequate justification for affirmative action policies so long as race was only one of many considerations, with no specific value attached, when evaluating the entire application of each person. In addition, Justice O’Connor, who was the deciding vote, stated in her opinion that in approximately 25 years the use of racial preference would no longer be necessary to ensure diversity.
Alternatives to Affirmative Action Even before the Supreme Court’s decisions in 2003, many states had passed referenda outlawing the consideration of race within college admissions and employment. For example, in 1996, California passed Proposition 209 outlawing the consideration of race by the state. Washington passed a similar initiative,
and the governor of Florida outlawed the consideration of race by executive order. In response to the decline in admissions of minorities in state universities, some states have developed percentage plans. Texas was the first state to develop a percentage plan in 1997. Texas instituted a law that admitted the top 10% of all high schools’ graduating senior classes to the state public university system. Shortly after that, Florida decided to admit the top 20% of graduates and California decided to admit the top 4%. Because of the racial segregation that continues to exist in the United States, it is easy to identify predominantly African American or Latino schools. Advocates of percentage plans claim that by admitting the top percentage of each class regardless of test scores, ethnic diversity will be maintained. Opponents of this program state that the policy will work only so long as racial segregation continues. In addition, they state that many of these policies do not guarantee admissions to the state’s flagship schools such as the University of Texas at Austin. Hence, the increase in minority enrollment may be limited to second-tier schools and not affect the first tier. Finally, opponents claim that the students who are admitted might not be able to do the work required to complete college successfully. In this way, they are being set up for failure. Another alternative to race-based affirmative action is class-based affirmative action. According to this approach, because minorities are overrepresented among the poor, they will disproportionately benefit from policies that give preference to applicants from poorer economic backgrounds. In addition, because there are no laws related to class preference, there is no concern about the constitutionality of such policies. Objections to this alternative highlight the fact that when class is controlled, ethnic minorities have lower test scores than do Whites. Hence, class-based affirmative action policies would benefit many more Whites than ethnic minorities. Also, even if poorer ethnic minorities are admitted, they might not have the skills necessary to complete college successfully. A third and final alternative is the lottery-based system of admissions. This approach calls for setting a cutoff test score and then deciding admissions based on a lottery. In this way, so long as students meet the minimum requirement, they can potentially be admitted to the school. The key is making sure that the cutoff point is low enough that a sufficient pool of
Affirmative Action in the Workplace
minority applicants will be eligible. The primary critique of this approach focuses on the inefficiency of the model. Using a lottery-based system would still result in many more Whites being eligible and, therefore, being more likely than minorities to be chosen. Thus, such a policy would result in fewer minorities being admitted than is the case under current affirmative action policies. Clearly, each of the alternatives to affirmative action has its limitations, but so do most affirmative action policies themselves. Affirmative action has been a “hot button” issue in the United States for nearly half a century and will probably continue to be one. There are valid arguments on both sides of the debate, and neither side seems willing to give in. Yet given the recent Supreme Court decision and the election of two conservative Supreme Court justices since the Michigan cases, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alioto, the future of affirmative action appears to be dim. If diversity is important to higher education, alternative policies need to be developed to attain this goal. Monique R. Payne-Pikus See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Brown v. Board of Education; Discrimination; Educational Performance and Attainment; Grutter v. Bollinger; Higher Education; Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue; Pipeline; Plessy v. Ferguson
Further Readings
Bowen, William G. and Derek Bok. 1998. The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Curry, George E. 1996. “Introduction.” Pp. xiii–xv in The Affirmative Action Debate, edited by George E. Curry. New York: HarperCollins. Elliott, Eul W. and Andrew I. E. Ewoh. 2005. “Beyond Gratz and Grutter: Prospects for Affirmative Action in the Aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Michigan Decisions.” Review of Policy Research 22:541–553. Grofman, Bernard and Samuel Merrill. 2004. “Anticipating Likely Consequences of Lottery-Based Affirmative Action.” Social Science Quarterly 85:1447–1468. Harper, Shannon and Barbara Reskin. 2005. “Affirmative Action at School and on the Job.” Annual Review of Sociology 31:357–379.
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Naff, Katherine C. 2004. “From Bakke to Grutter and Gratz: The Supreme Court as a Policymaking Institution.” Review of Policy Research 21:405–427.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN THE WORKPLACE Affirmative action is a term that refers to institutional programs or policies designed to create equal opportunities for women and racial minorities in areas where they have traditionally been denied access. Although the term itself is relatively new, the idea behind the intent of the concept is not. For much of U.S. history, women and minorities were relegated to second-hand citizenship and treated as inferior beings in comparison with White men. They were denied access to employment, educational, political, and even social opportunities that were typically held by and reserved for White men. Even though much has changed during the past 50 or so years, affirmative action continues to draw major debates as to its usefulness during the post–civil rights era. This entry describes the historic context of discrimination, the advent of affirmative action, and the more recent retreat from these advances.
Founding Principles The notion that all people are equal, imbued with certain inalienable rights, and should be treated fairly and justly is relatively new in the United States. Of course, one could point to the U.S. Constitution or, in particular, the Bill of Rights, and make the claim that justice and fairness have always been the centerpiece of U.S. society, relying on the fact that “We the people” begins the Constitution. In addition, the preamble of the U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776) specifically mentions equality and inalienable rights: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Despite these affirmations, a number of contemporary race scholars say the U.S. Constitution is a racial document that historically helped to set the stage for the development of a racist society. Of course, the Founding Fathers were also sexist. Women had few rights compared with men in the early history of the United States. Hence, the Founding Fathers had probably always assumed White male supremacy.
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President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, paved the way for the dismantling of slavery in the United States. Established following the Civil War, the Freedman’s Bureau represents one of the earliest forms of affirmative action by the U.S. government to give some measure of assistance to newly freed slaves in the form of clothing, rations, and medicine. The Freedman’s Bureau also participated in employment negotiations between laborers and their employers. However, Whites continued to maintain social, economic, and political control through the use of Jim Crow legislation, highly racialized scare tactics, and a court system openly hostile to minorities.
Change Begins White males were able to thwart an increasing women’s suffrage movement, which would not gain momentum until the early 20th century. Only with ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution on August 26, 1920, were women finally permitted to vote. During the early 1930s, federal court decisions ordered an end to overt racial segregation at all-White universities. One of the earliest attempts at affirmative action during the 20th century came in the form of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802, better known as the Fair Employment Act. Under pressure from a massive protest organized by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (led by Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, and A. J. Muste), Roosevelt signed the executive order on June 25, 1941, only months before the start of World War II. It prohibited racial discrimination in the national defense and other government-related industries. The Fair Employment Act was the first federal law prohibiting discrimination in the United States. It established the Committee on Fair Employment Practices, headed by the Office of Production Management, to investigate discrimination violations and take appropriate action. Although the Fair Employment Act was government’s acknowledgment of the need to address racial issues, Executive Order 8802 carried no punitive measures for companies that did not comply. Roosevelt’s intent in creating the executive order was to curtail protests and strikes so as to ensure the production of military weapons and supplies as the United States prepared for war.
Nonetheless, the executive order served as a precedent for future presidential orders dealing with discrimination in the workplace.
The War Years As World War II began to become inevitable, the idea of the United States as a great big “melting pot” became a central theme for a government trying to unite its people to a common cause. World War II also created a new set of dilemmas for businesses that had lost the majority of their workforces to the war. As men were being shipped off to fight overseas, many companies needed to use more women laborers as well as minority and immigrant male workers who were unable or ineligible to serve in the armed forces. Thus, record numbers of women and minorities were given the opportunity to enter into the U.S. labor force and into jobs that were previously dominated by White men. Nevertheless, although World War II provided unprecedented opportunities for women and minorities to obtain better paying jobs than they previously had, racial and gender barriers were not erased and discrimination against women and minorities continued, albeit on a smaller scale than before. The end of World War II signaled a return to the White male supremacy ideals that had been a feature of U.S. society since long before the American Revolution. Along with increased blatant and overt racial and sex discrimination came racial hostility not only from White males but also from the educational, political, and court systems, all of which were composed of White males. The country’s melting pot was an exclusive club, and mostly excluded from this club were Blacks, Asians, Latinos, and some dark-skinned European groups. Around the same time, the U.S. government was busy supporting a large political campaign designed to get women out of the workforce and back into their homes.
The Civil Rights Era In the 1954 milestone case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that denying education to anyone, regardless of race, was unconstitutional. Beyond declaring school segregation illegal, the case led to more equitable conditions in areas beyond education. This significant time of change in U.S. history is called the
Affirmative Action in the Workplace
civil rights era. Along with changes in the law favoring women and minorities, laws were also allowing at least token numbers of immigrants into the United States, some from countries whose people had previously been barred from immigration or admitted only in limited numbers. The late 1940s and early 1950s were also times of strife. Increased racial riots and frequent protests created uncomfortable situations for many White men. The social and political movements of many minority groups posed a real challenge to the political, cultural, and social structures in the United States. But although the riots and protests against racial and gender discrimination were effective tools for creating social change, real progress came about as a result of changes in the legality of racial and sex discrimination. These legal changes forced businesses to adopt new tactics when it came to dealing with minorities and women both as customers and as employees. The biggest change for many businesses came about with the ratification of Civil Rights Act of 1964 that (a) enforced the right to vote, (b) let federal courts provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, and (c) authorized federal lawsuits to protect rights to public facilities and public education. The act also extended the term of the Commission on Civil Rights, charged with preventing discrimination in federally assisted programs, and established the Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity. Of particular interest to businesses is Title VII, an equal employment opportunity clause that prohibited employers, labor organizations, and employment agencies from discriminating based on an individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. For many companies, Title VII (along with other laws such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965) posed serious threats to the White male power structure present in corporate America. Because of the law, corporate businesses faced legal ramifications for racial and sex discrimination. Before the Civil Rights Act, most businesses freely and openly discriminated against women and minorities, although record numbers were still being employed after the war. Their jobs, however, tended to be menial and low paying with few opportunities for advancement. In fact, it was not uncommon for employers seeking white-collar workers to specify
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that they were interested only in Protestant or Nordic applicants. Minorities and women were denied access to many jobs. Skilled labor unions (e.g., American Federation of Labor), which represented better opportunities than did nonskilled unions (e.g., Congress of Industrial Organizations) for those seeking managerial promotions, often excluded women and minorities. Reserved for White men were the managerial and executive positions of a company, a social incubator that helped them to maintain their social status, their White privilege, and their exclusive power.
Affirmative Action Arrives Although these laws barred discrimination, they did not require any positive steps toward a more equitable society. The term affirmative action was first used by President John F. Kennedy in his Executive Order 10925 (signed March 6, 1961) to refer to a measure designed to achieve nondiscrimination. The executive order established a President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, which was charged with ensuring that discrimination did not occur in government jobs based on race, creed, color, or national origin. Most of the affirmative policies under Executive Order 10925 came in the form of written directives toward government agencies to send yearly reports to the president in regard to specific actions that were taken to ensure equal employment opportunities. Although the term affirmative action was first used in government employment, it became widely implemented in other areas such as education, civil and public employment, and organizations that wanted to (at least overtly) create unique opportunities for women and minorities seeking a piece of the “American dream.” In some cases, affirmative action policies included setting aside quotas for women and minorities. However, most affirmative action programs established guidelines to expand opportunities for women and minorities in the workplace. According to philosopher and race expert Cornel West, the fundamental purpose of affirmative action was to disrupt the networks of privileged White men who held the best jobs and the most influential positions. Thus, affirmative action was not simply a means by which women and minorities could gain access to better paying jobs and higher level positions; it was also a counter to the continuing legacy of White male supremacy.
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President Lyndon B. Johnson justified the use of affirmative action programs in his speech, titled “To Fulfill These Rights,” at Howard University on June 4, 1965. He said, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line in a race, and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.” Affirmative action began to receive widespread attention during the late 1960s to early 1970s with Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 (signed September 24, 1965) establishing a set of equal employment opportunity and affirmative action guidelines for federal contractors regarding race, color, gender, religion, and national origin. Along with Executive Order 10925 signed by President Kennedy, administration and enforcement were assigned to the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), with both orders serving as mechanisms to reduce barriers to women and minorities in both private and public employment. New programs were added and old ones were renewed throughout the 1970s because the Nixon and Ford administrations were active supporters of affirmative action and other policies that promoted equal opportunity, a strategy that some critics thought allowed the Republican party to better connect with an expanding Black middle class. President Richard M. Nixon’s administration created a new set of policies that required all affirmative action programs to include “minority and female hiring goals and timetables to which the contractor must commit its ‘goodfaith’ efforts,” a requirement that Laurence Silberman, as under secretary of labor, claimed would ensure opportunities for women and minorities. In the business world, companies faced heated pressure from the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) and the OFCCP to conform to multicultural and nondiscriminatory practices. Many companies found themselves on the losing end of discrimination lawsuits filed by the EEOC, and many settlements required not only monetary compensation to women and minorities for violating their rights but also company programs and policies that would help to fuel women and minority success in the workplace. Consequently, a number of large corporations voluntarily implemented affirmative action programs on their own. Indeed, organizations such as Plans for Progress, a collaboration of more than 165 Fortune 500 companies, freely engaged in affirmative action efforts to recruit women and minorities into their workplaces.
The Reaction Comes Starting in the late 1970s, and further fueled by the Reagan administration during the 1980s that altered many social welfare and EEOC programs, affirmative action became a national controversy. With the waning of the post–World War II economic boom, increased competition, and cheap labor markets overseas, the economic policies of the Reagan and Bush administrations resonated with a public whose members were willing to find a scapegoat for their economic woes. The newly devised plans implemented during this time included not only severe cuts to many welfare and social programs but also racially coded language designed to appeal to White voters and public discourse arguing that because racism was no longer an issue in the United States, programs designed to create opportunities for minorities were no longer needed. The idea that everyone was on a level playing field generated new hope for Whites (males in particular) in the form of reverse discrimination, a notion suggesting that Whites were being racially discriminated against by programs and policies designed to promote the participation of women and minorities in higher education and the workplace. In addition, Executive Orders 10925 and 11246 were amended to reduce their effectiveness, and the EEOC and OFCCP found themselves targets of the U.S. Department of Justice as well as the White House. Around the same time, the 1978 Supreme Court case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, added fuel to the affirmative action debate. Although the Court made it clear that affirmative action was legal (and would repeat this argument in more recent affirmative action cases, Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger), it outlawed the use of quota systems, opening the door for future anti-affirmative action advocates. Although affirmative action was rapidly losing ground in the political and social arenas of the United States, most businesses in corporate America continued their affirmative action programs into the 1990s. Since then, however, many companies have moved away from affirmative action policies and programs in favor of initiatives centered on diversity and inclusion. Current attempts to thwart affirmative action have found success in several states, with the most recent being the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (also known as Proposal 2). In what may be the most powerful attack on affirmative action, Proposal 2 bans
Afghan Americans
affirmative action and equal opportunity programs in employment in Michigan (as well as in education and business contracts). Proposal 2 was passed on November 7, 2006, by 58% of the voters and was set to go into effect on December 22, 2007. Michigan represents the third state, after California and Washington, to pass such an initiative against the use of affirmative action in employment. Although affirmative action continues to be a heated issue in the United States, the issue of racial and gender inequality in the workplace continues to be ignored. Women and minorities are still often overlooked in corporate positions that hold any serious decision-making power. They also continue to be underrepresented in higher education, both as students and as faculty members, and despite some highprofile figures, their representation in U.S. politics is still not commensurate with their numbers.
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Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge. Renzulli, Linda A., Linda Grant, and Sheetija Kathuria. 2006. “Race, Gender, and the Wage Gap: Comparing Faculty Salaries in Predominately White and Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” Gender & Society 20:491–510. West, Cornel. 1996. “Affirmative Action in Context.” Pp. 31–35 in The Affirmative Action Debate, edited by George E. Curry. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Williams, Linda Faye. 1996. “The Politics of Affirmative Action.” Pp. 241–257 in The Affirmative Action Debate, edited by George E. Curry. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
AFGHAN AMERICANS
David G. Embrick See also Affirmative Action in Education; African American Women and Work; Discrimination; Emancipation Proclamation; Glass Ceiling; Informal Economy; Labor Market Segmentation; Scapegoats
Further Readings
Acker, Joan. 2006. “Inequality Regimes: Gender, Class, and Race in Organizations.” Gender & Society 20:441–464. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2006. Racism without Racists: ColorBlind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield. Burk, Martha. 2005. Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done about It. New York: Scribner. Burstein, Paul. 1985. Discrimination, Jobs, and Politics: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity in the United States since the New Deal. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Feagin, Joe R. 2006. Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression. New York: Routledge. Feagin, Joe R., Hernan Vera, and Nikitah Imani. 1996. The Agony of Education: Black Students at White Colleges and Universities. New York: Routledge. Green, James R. 1978. Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest 1895–1943. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Green, James R. 1998. The World of the Worker: Labor in Twentieth-Century America. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Afghan Americans are immigrants from Afghanistan, a country of 31.9 million people by 2007 estimates, as well as their descendants. Afghan Americans represent the many diverse groups of Afghanistan, including the different linguistic, political, religious, and ethnic groups. There are nineteen different ethnic groups in Afghanistan, but the majority in the United States are Pushtun and Tajik. According to the 2000 census, a total of 45,195 people born in Afghanistan
Russia
Kazakhstan
Uzbekistan Azerbaijan
Turkmenistan
Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan
China
Afghanistan
Iran Iraq
Pakistan Kuwait
Nepal
Persian Gulf
Bhutan
Qatar Bangladesh
U. A. E.
Saudi Arabia
Oman
Arabian Sea
India Bay of Bengal
Yemen
Somalia
Indian Ocean Sri Lanka
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were residing in the United States, and 57.5% of them were citizens. This entry looks at the background of immigration from Afghanistan to the United States and the contemporary picture of Afghan Americans.
Immigration Patterns Immigration patterns of Afghans before 1953 are difficult to estimate because relevant statistics are virtually nonexistent. However, the first Afghans to reach U.S. shores probably arrived during the 1920s or 1930s. Data from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service indicate that Afghans who entered the United States between 1953 and 1979 were highly educated and wealthy. Many Afghans entered the country as students and stayed. Others were trained under various developmental programs and were employed mainly in government administration and education. However, after the 1979 Soviet invasion, many Afghans were stranded in the United States as students or sought asylum as diplomats. For the following 10 years, Afghans who entered the United States were either refugees or reunifying with family members who were already living in the United States.
Contemporary Community Immigration from Afghanistan has been uneven. Of those Afghan-born people in the United States in 2000, only 2% had entered the country prior to 2000. During the early 1990s, most Afghan arrivals were admitted as family-sponsored immigrants. Approximately 1,500 Afghan refugees were admitted to the United States each year until 1994, when admissions virtually ceased. The next wave of immigrants, mainly women and children, came between 1996 and 1999 due to a lack of social services after the Tajik government collapsed. During recent years, people from Afghanistan have sought permanent residency and refugee status and have completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 to 2002, approximately 1,000 Afghans immigrated to the United States annually. Then, reflecting the U.S. involvement in that country, as many as 4,000 Afghans were granted legal permanent status annually. Similarly, the number of refugees arriving has increased but with a somewhat different pattern. Between 1,400 and 3,000 arrived from 2000 to 2003, but the number dropped to less than 1,000 for the period from 2004 to 2006. At least 1,000 Afghan
Americans have become naturalized citizens annually since 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2005, there were 71,552 people of Afghan national origin in the United States in 2005. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states were California, Virginia, New York, Maryland, and Texas. The San Francisco Bay area, with eight mosques and many cultural organizations and businesses, is the largest Afghan community. Other large Afghan communities can be found in northern Virginia and the Los Angeles area. According to the 2000 census, 47.7% speak English less than “very well.” The median family income was $36,967, as compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Famous Afghan Americans include Khaled Hosseini, award-winning author of A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner; Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the highest ranking Muslim in the Bush administration; Ehsan Aman, artist and musical composer; and Miriam Wafa, singer. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Islamophobia; Muslim Americans; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs .gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Linton, Cynthia, ed. 1996. The Ethnic Handbook. Schiller Park, IL: Business Press. Robson, Barbara and Juliene Lipson. 2002. The Afghans: Their History and Culture. Washington, DC: Cultural Orientation Resource Center. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://www.cal.org/co/publications/ cultures/afghans.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
AFRICAN AMERICANS African Americans are a people whose ancestors are from Africa. Although there are obvious mixtures among African Americans, the dominant ancestry of
African Americans
the people is from Africa. African Americans first used this term to define themselves, but for various reasons they have also used terms such as Negro, Colored, Afro-American, and Black at various times in their history. The most frequently used terms now are African American and Black, which are used interchangeably. The term African by itself is, to a lesser extent, used interchangeably with African American and Black by more culturally conscious African Americans. Approximately 35 million African Americans reside in the United States, constituting 12.3% of the total population, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. Most of them (88%) live in metropolitan areas. Approximately half of all African Americans live in the South. This entry reviews their history, from slavery through emancipation and ongoing struggles for equity and civil rights.
African Background The majority of the ancestors of African Americans came from areas of West Africa that were home to various social and political formations, from small ethnic groups and city-states to large states and empires. Among these were the states of Ashanti, Benin, Dahomey, and Oyo and the major empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. These latter empires existed from approximately 300 BC to the early 1600s and were defined by their efficient government, great wealth, commitment to education and scholarship, international trade, and strong armies. Songhai, the last of these empires, was conquered in 1596 by forces from North Africa and was in decline when Europe initiated its international traffic in humans variously called the African slave trade or—by an increasing number of African American and Continental African scholars—the Holocaust of African enslavement.
Enslavement Although the Founding Fathers of the United States spoke and wrote extensively about freedom and human rights, they held Africans as slaves in all thirteen of the British colonies. Moreover, although Africans fought in the War of Independence (1775–1783), it did not change White Americans’ attitudes toward enslavement. Enslavement did, however, begin to decline in the North due to changing economic conditions. It began to grow rapidly in the
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South with the increase of cotton cultivation and the desire for enslaved labor after the invention of the cotton gin. Sugar plantations in the South also contributed to the demand for enslaved labor. It is in this context that the massive violent process called the European slave trade takes root. Some authors have argued that, due to the massive violence, destruction of human life and culture, and interruption of African history, trade is too limited a term and hides the catastrophic impact of the process. They argue that when one considers the massive destruction of human life—in the millions—and the destruction of villages, towns, cities, states, and whole civilizations, as well as great works of art, literature, and the people who made them, trade is not a category capable of defining such a catastrophic event. Thus, some scholars prefer the term Holocaust of African enslavement. By this term is meant “a morally monstrous act of genocide that is not only against the targeted peoples but also a crime against humanity.” In fact, such a definition undergirds the basic modern claim of reparations for African Americans and other Africans— both continental and diasporan. How th he Syste em Work ked
The U.S. system of enslavement was defined first by its physical, psychological, and sexual brutality. Physically, it was a violent domination by various forms of punishment and terror, including whipping, mutilation, torture, murder, and deprivation. Psychologically, it involved daily humiliation, coerced protocols of submission, religious and social doctrines of White superiority and Black inferiority, and processes to deculturalize and dehumanize the enslaved Africans. Sexual brutality was imposed mostly on women but also on children and men; it involved both forced breeding and rape. These practices and the system itself were further enforced by law, armed bodies of various official and unofficial kinds, and other institutions. Resissta ance to o Ensllavement
Africans’ resistance to enslavement began in Africa and continued throughout the period of enslavement in the United States in various forms. Cultural resistance involved maintaining cultural views, values, and practice in changed forms and creating new cultural forms that reaffirmed African dignity and humanity and sustained them. Day-to-day resistance
22
African Americans
was another form of resistance and included strikes, arson, attacks of various kinds on the enslavers, suicide, infanticide, and flight. Abolitionism—various efforts to end enslavement—was another form of resistance and involved petitions to the government, fund-raising, legal defense, educational efforts through writings and lectures, security provisions for formerly enslaved Africans who escaped or were rescued, and the building of an Underground Railroad to free and support resettlement of enslaved Africans. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Frances Watkins Harper, and Robert Purvis were prominent abolitionist leaders. Another form of resistance was emigrationism, which involved efforts to return to Africa, Haiti, South America, or elsewhere where Africans could have freedom, self-determination, and justice. Paul Cuffee, Martin Delany, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, James Holly, and Alexander Crummell were very active in this movement. Moreover, the Negro Convention Movement, which was both abolitionist and emigrationist, played an important role in ending enslavement and exploring the possibilities of a free and good life elsewhere. Finally, Africans also resisted enslavement through armed struggles. This included ship mutinies, guerilla warfare conducted by marooned and independent communities, alliances and common struggles with Native American and Mexican allies from societies to which they escaped, and armed revolts. The most important of the revolts were those led by Gabriel and Nana Prosser in 1800, by Denmark Vesey in 1822, and by Nat Turner in 1831. More than 250 of these revolts are recorded in U.S. history, and they clearly had a significant impact on the enslaved Africans as well as on their enslavers. Laws were passed, punishments were handed out, and the system was tightened. But the revolts continued, revealing an unquenchable thirst for freedom and a profound political commitment to struggle for it against overwhelming odds by the enslaved Africans. Free ed Africcan ns in n th he North h
Although enslavement gradually disappeared in the North, Africans were not totally free or equal there. Indeed, they were not allowed to worship freely with Whites, did not receive equal justice before the law, and were segregated in housing, education, and other areas of social life. Thus, they began a long struggle to improve their lives and win freedom for
their enslaved sisters and brothers in the South. During the early postcolonial period, African Americans began to build major institutions, self-help and benevolent societies, Masonic lodges, and other voluntary associations as well as intellectual and literary societies, medical facilities, and businesses. In addition, several African American newspapers were established, the first of which was the Freedom’s Journal, founded in 1827 by John Russworm and Samuel Cornish. The great abolitionist and leader Frederick Douglass also established the North Star in which he, like others, argued forcefully and meticulously against enslavement. There was also development of a rich body of literature, including novels, plays, short stories, and social commentaries, criticizing enslavement and calling for struggle and the freedom and upliftment of African people. David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829) and Maria Stewart’s Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart (1832) are examples of this literature. Autobiographies by formerly enslaved persons also emerged. Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1854) and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) are representative of this genre.
The Civil War Era Although numerous factors can be cited as causes of the Civil War, the question of enslavement, and thus the future and place of Africans in the United States, was at the core of its causes. African Americans volunteered quickly, but Whites resisted their service, fearing changes in the relationship during and after the war and possible rebellion and armed struggle for their rights. But by the summer of 1862, after a series of military defeats of Union forces, Congress passed the Confiscation and Militia Act to open service up to free and freed Africans in the war effort. In addition, to lend moral weight to the cause and to further inspire and involve Africans in the war effort, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. It was not a blanket declaration of freedom but rather limited itself to those states in rebellion. Also, it was clearly unenforceable in the South, which was in rebellion, but it gave the war a moral character it previously lacked and contributed to an increase in volunteers among free Africans and those who escaped from enslavement.
African Americans
Africans, who were eager to fight for freedom, respect, and equality in society, enlisted in large numbers and served in various capacities—as regular soldiers and sailors, guides, scouts, intelligence agents, engineers, nurses, surgeons, chaplains, construction workers, teamsters, cooks, carpenters, miners, farmers, commandos, and recruiters. An estimated 186,000 Africans participated as soldiers and 29,000 participated as sailors, accounting for 25% of U.S. sailors. The real number of participants is probably much higher but was distorted by many racially mixed people being registered or “passing” as Whites. Blacks served in every theater of operations and won seventeen Congressional Medals of Honor on land and four on sea in spite of vicious racism exhibited in treatment, pay and time differentials, poor equipment, bad medical care, excess fatigue details, and reckless and hasty assignments. The Civil War ended April 9, 1865. Although it won Blacks new respect, it also meant the beginning of a new struggle to secure economic and political rights that did not come automatically with emancipation. Thus, the nation and the national African American community entered into a period called Reconstruction. Recconstru uctiion
The period of Reconstruction (1865–1877) was a time of great leaps forward and hope as well as of great possibilities to realize the ideals of freedom, justice, and equality for all. But after a strong start, the country failed in solving the problems that the postwar period posed—the problems of Reconstruction. These problems essentially revolved around integrating the freed Africans into the social fabric, especially in the South; protecting them from reenslavement, exploitation, and abuse; and providing them with the economic and political bases to live lives of dignity and decency. Congress passed three amendments directed toward integration of Blacks into the social fabric on the basis of equality. Essentially, the Thirteenth Amendment (in 1865) freed Africans, the Fourteenth Amendment (in 1868) made them citizens, and the Fifteenth Amendment (in 1870) gave them the right to vote. Congress also passed several civil rights acts to strengthen and enforce the civil rights of Africans and their rightful participation in the body politic. However, Congress did not give Blacks the economic foundation they needed, and so Blacks were
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essentially reintegrated back into the southern economy under semienslaved conditions as sharecroppers. Threatened with imprisonment and terror by the new legal Black codes passed by the South and with no protection or land, the majority of freed Africans slowly but inevitably returned to the plantations more or less at the mercy of their employers. The Reconstruction period did, however, provide some short-lived political gains for African Americans. During this period, twenty-two African Americans served in Congress. Two served in the Senate (Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce, both from Mississippi), and twenty served in the House of Representatives. Under the Hayes–Tilden Compromise, the federal troops that protected African American rights were withdrawn, and the future of African Americans was literally turned over to their former enslavers. Thus, Reconstruction came to a tragic end with the rise of White terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), violent resubordination of African Americans, and the establishment of legal segregation.
Migrations North The worsening situation in the South led to migration from the rural areas to the cities of the Midwest and West and finally of the North. The greatest waves of migrants were to the North so as to escape the political oppression and economic disaster and suffering in the South. The North promised opportunities for jobs in steel mills, railroads, the automobile industry, and meat-packing plants, especially during World War I. Black newspapers, labor scouts, and relatives who had gone ahead encouraged southern African Americans to come north. However, once in the North, Africans were shut off into ghettos and the racial violence, discrimination, segregation, and inequality persisted. Lynching and race riots were major problems in both the South and North. Also, after World War I, their new jobs were eliminated and the living standards declined. The Great Depression of 1929 aggravated the situation, but through a system of sharing, bartering, self-help, mutual aid, and (eventually) forms of federal and state relief and public works projects, African Americans demonstrated impressive resiliency and durability. During the 1920s, in the midst of some of the most difficult times for African American people, African American intellectuals initiated a period of extraordinary aesthetic creativity called the Harlem Renaissance.
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African Americans
Producing some of the country’s and the African American community’s best literature, writers, poets, and painters developed a new discourse on the meaning of being both African and American and of having African and southern roots and living a northern ghetto life. They also addressed the expansive meaning of being in oppression and in struggle in various creative ways. Alain Locke spoke and wrote about “the New Negro” as a creative and social conception. Some of the other major names during the Renaissance were Jean Toomer, W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Aaron Douglas, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Fauset, Zora Neal Houston, and Claude McKay.
Renewed Resistance The racist violence, discrimination, and disappointment in the North and the continuing oppression in the South gave rise to the formation of organizations and movements to challenge and resist the state of things. The system of segregation established by the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) enshrined in law a doctrine of “separate but equal” that ensured racial inequality and discrimination. Also called Jim Crow, the system limited and denied Africans access to public facilities and established a racial protocol of subordination and subservience for them. One of the first movements to resist segregation and engage in organized efforts of self-help was the Black Women’s Club Movement, which had emerged among African American women during the 1890s. It rose out of African cultural traditions that stressed collective concern and responsibility to family and community, and this led to free Black women and men establishing numerous mutual aid societies during the period of enslavement and afterward. In 1896, the First National Conference of the Colored Women of America convened and established the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) with Mary Church Terrell as its first president. The concerns of the NACW included issues and activities around education, lynching, White sexual abuse and character assassination of Black women, health care, child care and care for orphans and the elderly, job training, and the struggle for social justice. Within 20 years of its founding, the NACW represented more than 1,000 clubs and 100,000 Black women. Some of the major figures in this movement were Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells-Barnett,
Anna Julia Cooper, Charlotte Brown, Fannie Barrier Williams, Margaret Murray Washington, and Mary McLeod Bethune. Working within the NACW as its president from 1924 to 1929, Bethune had a vision of a larger and more powerful organization, the National Council of Negro Women, which she organized and founded in 1935. In addition to the Black Women’s Club Movement, the Niagara Movement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Urban League were very active. The Niagara Movement was formed in 1905 by Du Bois and others to fight against injustice. It demanded the right to justice, the vote, and education; the abolition of Jim Crow; equal treatment in the armed forces; and enforcement of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments. It gave way to the NAACP, which was formed in 1909 by African Americans and White liberals. The NAACP, which absorbed many of the Niagara Movement’s members (including Du Bois), adopted much of the movement’s philosophy. In fact, Du Bois was the only African American among its original executive officers. However, the NAACP went on to launch and win effective legal campaigns against lynching and Jim Crowism and to secure the vote. Also, the Urban League was founded in 1911 and dedicated itself to social service programs for jobs, housing, recreation facilities, health clinics, and the like, shunning politics and the social struggles of African Americans. African Americans created institutions to sustain and enhance community life and maintain a decent measure of independence and selfreliance. They established educational, cultural, political, economic, and financial institutions to serve the needs of the community and to participate more effectively in the larger society. Finally, in the midst of this period, in addition to major women leaders such as Bethune and WellsBarnett (a writer and social activist), three male leaders were key in helping to shape the vision and activities of the African American community. The first was Booker T. Washington, who is known for building Tuskegee University and whose stress was on agricultural and industrial education, accommodationism, avoidance of political participation, and quiet lobbying and support for causes in the background. Du Bois was one of the greatest intellectuals in U.S. history and a scholar-activist deeply engaged in the African American struggle for freedom, justice, and equality. As mentioned, he was a founder of both
African Americans
the Niagara Movement and the NAACP and the editor of its magazine, The Crisis. He was also a panAfricanist and a major organizer of the modern PanAfrican Movement. In addition, he was Washington’s most insistent critic, arguing for political participation, the struggle for civil rights, and advanced education as well sas for agricultural and industrial education. Marcus Garvey was the founder and leader of the largest mass movement of African people in history, involving millions in the United States, Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and elsewhere. His organization was the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Born in Jamaica, he came to the United States in 1916 hoping to see Washington, whose stress on economic foundation and self-reliance was embraced by Garvey. But he believed that Washington should have also stressed building a political base. Both Garvey and Du Bois were pan-Africanists, but Garvey was interested not only in freeing the continent of Africa but also in building a power base there to develop the continent and serve as a source of protection and development for Africans everywhere.
The New Deal The New Deal, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, held out hope and relief for Blacks through its focus on social welfare and public work programs. Blacks, recognizing the importance of this new focus, shifted dramatically from their traditional Republican voting to support Roosevelt and the Democratic party by 1936. Also, the New Deal marked a significant turning point in Black–White relations for the better. This was due to the continuous struggle of Blacks for equality and the end of discrimination as well as to the humanitarian focus of the administration. Moreover, Blacks achieved increased respectability in the Roosevelt administration as specialists and advisers in various governmental departments. This marked a change in the Washington model of an unofficial adviser whose relationship with the president, more than his or her skill, fitted him or her for the job. These were highly respected specialists and advisers who were civil servants. They were called the “Black Cabinet” and the “Black Brain Trust” due to their academic and professional achievements. Among the most notable of this brain trust were Robert Weaver, Mary McLeod Bethune, Eugene Jones, Ralph Bunche, and Abram Harris. Although these positions
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were not Cabinet level, they were a breakthrough in appointment by merit and paved the way for advances during the 1960s and afterward.
The Freedom Movement The Black Freedom Movement (approximately 1955 to 1975) flowered during the 1960s. This period may also be called the Reaffirmation of the 1960s because it was a time when African Americans reaffirmed both their Africanness and social justice tradition in an intense struggle for freedom, justice, equality, cultural integrity, power over their lives, and a just and good society that offered a context for these goods. The movement left an important legacy of struggle and achievement through expanding the realm of freedom in this country, and it served as an inspiration and model of struggle for human freedom for other oppressed and marginalized peoples and groups in the United States and around the world. The Civil Rights Movement, although clearly a continuation of African Americans’ ongoing freedom struggle, emerged in the South against segregation as well as in the interest of freedom, justice, dignity, and equal access and opportunity. Its pivotal moment was the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and the emergence of leaders such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., who became national symbols of the Civil Rights Movement. Also, the boycott, the demonstrations, and cooperative effort became models for other struggles. Clearly, the NAACP’s winning the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which outlawed segregation in schools, was an important development in civil rights history and helped to give momentum to the movement. It put an end to Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal” doctrine, reaffirmed the rightness of the struggle, and served as support and encouragement to attack segregation in all areas. The civil rights struggle was led by major groups, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the NAACP, the National Council of Negro Women, and the Urban League, although countless smaller groups played fundamental, and indeed indispensable, roles in the civil rights struggle. Likewise, major personalities, such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Bob Moses, Ella Baker, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Ruby Doris Robinson, Dorothy Height, Kwame
26
African Americans
Ture (Stokely Carmichael), and Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (Rap Brown), were key to the civil rights struggle, but there were countless less known freedom fighters who also played an indispensable role in the movement. The Civil Rights Movement employed numerous nonviolent forms of active resistance to segregation and oppression. In addition to boycotts and demonstrations, there were marches, sit-ins, freedom rides to challenge segregationist laws and practices, legal and legislative battles, and economic initiatives of resistance and construction. The Civil Rights Movement had impressive gains in its legal and legislative struggles. These include the 1954 Brown decision, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Civil Rights Bill of 1960, the Interstate Commerce Commission ruling in September 1961 against racial segregation on interstate carriers and terminals, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which was the most far-reaching and comprehensive civil rights law passed by Congress), mass voter registration, the Voting Act of 1965, and widespread desegregation of public facilities.
The Black Power Movement The Black Power Movement from 1965 to 1975 began in the midst of the urban rebellions and the decline of the Civil Rights Movement. Its beginning was marked by the Watts Revolt in 1965, and it continued until 1975. Although the call for Black Power was not made until 1966, its history had already begun during the early 1960s with the resurgence of the Black nationalist sentiment among African Americans. The movement was influenced by Marcus Garvey, the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, especially its national representative Malcolm X (in 1965), and smaller nationalist organizations in the urban areas of the United States. But it is from the SNCC that the call for Black Power emerged and was embraced nationally as a fundamental focus. Willie Ricks (Mukasa) first made the direct call on an SNCC march, but it was Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) who raised it to a national battle cry. And it was Ture and Charles Hamilton who wrote the essential book on Black Power titled Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. In their book, Ture and Hamilton stressed the need for Black power to overcome racist oppression, making a clear distinction between individual acts of discrimination and racism as an institutional arrangement.
In 1966, Adam Clayton Powell called a group of leaders to plan a series of National Black Power Conferences to develop and carry out an agenda to achieve Black Power in the United States. The meeting established a Continuations Committee to organize the conferences. Nathan Wright of Newark, New Jersey, was elected chair, and Maulana Karenga of Los Angeles was elected vice chair. The second conference was held in Newark in 1967, and the third was held in Philadelphia in 1968. Komozi Woodard reported that although Wright was the leader of the National Black Power Conference Continuations Committee, by 1968 Karenga was its chief organizer and theoretician. Karenga asserted that the struggle for Black Power had three fundamental goals: selfdetermination, self-respect, and self-defense. To elaborate, he meant that Black people (a) should control their communities, destiny, and daily lives through institutional strength; (b) should be culturally grounded with a sense of expanded self-worth and ability rooted in culture and struggle; and (c) should be able to exercise their right to defend themselves against attacks of racism, especially by the police, “by any means necessary,” as Malcolm said. During the Black Power conferences, Karenga also introduced the concept of operational unity, which he defined as “unity in diversity and unity without uniformity”; this became a standard reference and call to unity in the Black Liberation Movement. As the Black Power Movement developed its conference process, it also engaged in electoral politics and embraced and nurtured the Black Arts Movement, the Black Studies Movement, and the Black Student Movement. It helped to inspire and build Black United Fronts, the Modern Black Convention Movement, the National Black Assembly, the Congress of African Peoples, and the African Liberation Support Committee. The Black Power Movement also launched a massive political and cultural education process linking the African American struggle with Continental African and Third World liberation struggles and introduced the concept and practice of armed struggle in the urban centers. As an expression of nationalism, the Black Power Movement can be divided into three basic tendencies or thrusts—religious, cultural, and political—represented by major groups such as the Nation of Islam and the Shrine of the Black Madonna; Us and the East; and the Republic of New Africa and the Black Panther Party, respectively. However, the Nation of Islam and Us had elements of each of these.
27 UT
AZ
ID
NM
CO
WY
MT
Estimated Percentages of Blacks in the United States in 2005
HI
NV
CA
OR
WA
TX
OK
KS
NE
SD
ND MN
MO
LA
AR
IA
MS
IL
WI
MI
AL
OH
KY TN
IN
MI
GA
SC
VA
FL
NC
WV
PA MD
NY
NH
DE
NJ
CT
VT
RI
MA
ME
0% – 5% 5.1% – 24.9% 25% +
Percent Blacks
Source: Developed by Egan Urban Center, DePaul University, Chicago, from U.S. Census data, County Population Estimates by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin, July 1, 2005; used by permission.
Figure 1
AK
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African Americans
The 1970s The decline of the Black Freedom Movement ushered in an era of retrenchment and resurging racism and a countermove in the African American community to resist this and continue to push forward. The Black Freedom Movement had declined partly of its own initiative but also due to the massive suppression by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) launched against the movement to “discredit, disrupt, destroy, and otherwise neutralize” all real and potentially threatening leadership and organizations. This included groups such as the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, Us, the CORE, the SNCC, the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), and leaders as moderate as Martin Luther King, Jr. From this, violent internecine struggles were provoked; activists were shot and murdered, put in prison on trumped-up charges, or driven into exile; and families as well as organizations were disrupted and destroyed. The violence and shock of the suppression destroyed morale, provoked both critical and uncritical reassessment, and made many wonder whether organized activism was any longer a valid strategy for social change. Much of what passed as a critical assessment of the 1960s was in fact Black selfcondemnation and reflected both a loss of heart and vision of what the 1960s decade was all about and certainly what was achieved. The 1960s represented one of the most important decades in Black history, and its achievements were substantial. Even though Blacks lost ground during the 1970s, they also made gains. Easily the greatest gains of African Americans during the 1970s were their penetration and victories in electoral politics. Taking advantage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Blacks went to the polls in great numbers, especially in the South. Whereas in 1966 there were only six Blacks in Congress, ninety-seven Blacks in state legislatures, and no Black mayors, by 1976 eighteen Blacks had been elected to Congress and several hundred had been elected to state legislatures. Lieutenant governors in California and Colorado were Black, as were mayors of several major cities, including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington, Newark, and Cleveland. Moreover, thousands of Blacks had been elected to other state and local offices. Also, Blacks sought to build national independent power structures throughout the decade, beginning in 1972 with the first National Black Political
Convention in Gary, Indiana, the formation of the Black political agenda, and the National Black Assembly for collective planning and strategy directed toward social policy and social change. The 1970s also brought a resurgence of pan-Africanism and the formation of two key organizations to advance its principles and practice: the African Liberation Support Committee, dedicated to supporting liberation struggles on the continent of Africa, and TransAfrica, an African American lobby for Africa and the Caribbean. Affirmative action was another major issue and struggle during the 1970s. Growing out of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it was extended and reinforced by executive orders and the Equal Employment Opportunities Act of 1972. Although a number of court cases challenged affirmative action, terming it “reverse discrimination,” no case was as well known as the Bakke case, which originated in California as opposition to the special admissions policy of the medical school at the University of California, Davis. The Bakke case brought to a head the struggle over the questions of numerical goals versus quotas, preferential treatment versus corrective measures for historical injustices, and racially weighted criteria versus raceconscious criteria for school admissions as well as employment. The Supreme Court seemed to straddle and ruled in 1978 that reservation of places for people of color and uncompetitive evaluation was prohibited but that consideration of race and ethnic origin as one criterion for selection as well as consciously seeking diversity was permissible.
The 1980s and 1990s The 1980s began with the challenges to African Americans of continuing struggle to rebuild a Black mass movement and appropriate alliances and coalitions so as to defend Black gains, win new ones, and minimize losses. In this context, there were increased efforts to build united fronts to maximize strength and cooperation. In this way, the Black Leadership Forum, made up of approximately sixteen national organizations and the Congressional Black Caucus, was created. This was a means to gather; to get briefings on the latest governmental policies, decisions, and proposals; and to discuss possible defensive and development strategies. The 1980s also witnessed a heightened level of electoral/political activity among African Americans. In Chicago, Harold Washington waged a brilliant
African Americans
campaign to become mayor. He put together a coalition of Blacks, Latinos, workers, professionals, nationalists, White liberals, and leftists to achieve his victory. Jesse Jackson ran for U.S. president in 1984 and 1988, mobilizing and registering millions of voters, and this was instrumental in getting other Blacks and progressives elected. Although Jackson himself did not win office, his campaigns were seen as an important tool in mobilizing, organizing, and politically educating Blacks and progressives and in building the Rainbow Coalition for the inauguration of a new progressive politics. The 1990s featured carryover problems from the 1980s that required sober assessment. Among these problems were (a) an increasing negative attitude of the Supreme Court toward racial justice and affirmative action, (b) a continuation of hate crimes against African Americans (which tripled in the seven years from 1983 to 1990), (c) a veto and later passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, and (d) an increase in poverty among Blacks and in the country as a whole. The 1990s also began with a revolt in Los Angeles in April 1992 that grew out of smoldering resentment of oppression in the Black and Latino communities. But it was triggered by the acquittal of four White Los Angeles policemen who brutally beat a Black man, Rodney King, while he was on the ground and incapacitated. The rebellion was the most destructive in recent U.S. history, leading to the loss of 58 lives and millions of dollars in property. King became a symbol of police brutality, and the rebellion became a reminder of the injustice faced by Black people. It also had a Latino dimension and reflected similar injustices that are suffered by them and that they too will dare to struggle to correct. Clearly, one of the most impressive and memorable events during the 1990s was the Million Man March/Day of Absence (MMM/DOA). The MMM/DOA was clearly an event of major importance not only because of the vast numbers of its participants but also because of its social policy and social practice emphasis and the effect it had on Black men, Black people in general, and the country. Called for by Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, the MMM/DOA was a joint project of hundreds of organizations and was one of the most massive organizing efforts for a demonstration in the history of the country. It brought together Africans from all over the country and world and from all spiritual traditions through the efforts of local organizing committees in more than 300 cities. Held in Washington, D.C., on
29
October 16, 1995, it assembled more than 1 million persons and was the largest demonstration in the city’s history. The MMM/DOA was directed first and foremost as a call to Black men, although women also participated and attended. A second aspect of the project was the Day of Absence in which women would take the lead in organizing the communities to stay away from businesses, school, and work in support and observance, to register people to vote, and to hold teach-ins around social policy initiatives to improve and empower the community. The mission statement represented the collective position of the leadership of the march, a broad-based group representing various political, religious, and economic affiliations and interests. Maulana Karenga was selected to draft the collective mission statement, pulling together the common grounds for a joint set of policies and initiatives directed toward the community, government, and corporations. The statement began by registering consciousness “of the critical juncture in which we live and the challenges it poses for us” and “concern about increasing racism and continuing commitment to White supremacy in this country, the deteriorating social conditions, degradation of the environment, and the impact of these on our community, the larger society, and the world.” Moreover, the mission statement noted that African men and women came to the capital “reaffirming the best values of our social justice tradition which require respect for the dignity and rights of the human person, economic justice, meaningful political participation, shared power, cultural integrity, mutual respect for all peoples, and uncompromising resistance to social forces and structures which deny or limit these.” In this spirit, they also came to “declare our commitment to assume a new and expanded responsibility in the struggle to build and sustain a free and empowered community, a just society, and a better world.” The MMM/DOA was followed by the Million Woman March (MWM) on October 25, 1997, and the Million Youth Marches (MYMs) in 1998, building on and expanding themes from the MMM/DOA. These included unity, family and community building and strengthening, pan-Africanism, education, reparations, human rights, and struggle. The MWM included more than 2 million persons from around the world and specifically stressed issues of sisterhood, child and elder care, human rights, and honoring African women’s tradition of social activism.
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African Americans, Migration of
In conclusion, the history of African Americans in the United States from the beginning has been a struggle for freedom, justice, equality, and power over their destiny and daily lives. It has been a history of rising from catastrophic oppression to achieve impressive gains against overwhelming odds and of struggling relentlessly to expand the realm of human freedom and human flourishing in the United States and the world. Maulana Karenga See Appendix A See also Abolitionism: The Movement; Affirmative Action in the Workplace; African American Studies; African American Women and Work; Back to Africa Movement; Black Bourgeoisie; Black Cinema; Black Nationalism; Black Panther Party; Black Power; Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); Ghetto; Jim Crow; Ku Klux Klan; Lynching; Military and Race; Nation of Islam; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Racial Profiling; School Desegregation; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); Underclass; Urban League; Voting Rights; Washington, Harold; White Supremacy Movement
Further Readings
Bennett, Lerone. 2003. Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America. Chicago, IL: Johnson. Franklin, John Hope and Alfred Moss, Jr. 2000. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Harding, Vincent. 1993. There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America. New York: Harvest/HBJ. Karenga, Maulana. 2002. “Black History: Africans in America.” Pp. 129–230 in Introduction to Black Studies, edited by Maulana Karenga. Los Angeles, CA: University of Sankore Press.
AFRICAN AMERICANS, MIGRATION
OF
Migration has been a key process in the African American experience in the United States. African Americans were living primarily in the rural South at the end of slavery, but by the end of the 20th century they were concentrated in urban areas and were more regionally dispersed. Moreover, whereas African Americans generally have been migrating out of the South since the end of slavery, toward the end of the
20th century they began to return to the South. African American migration has had a significant influence on African Americans’ labor market experiences, residential environments, and culture, all of which are reviewed in this entry.
Early Movement African Americans as an ethnic group are a product of migration. During the 16th through early 19th centuries, Africans from a variety of ethnic groups in West and Central Africa experienced forced migration to the Americas as part of the Atlantic slave trade. Approximately 500,000 of the slaves went to the United States. Many of the slaves brought to the United States went to the South to work on plantations that cultivated southern cash crops such as tobacco. During slavery, African Americans continued to migrate. Slaveowners forcibly moved slaves as they sold them within and across states. In addition, some slaves escaped their masters and fled to northern states or to Canada. Free Blacks also moved farther north to escape racial constraints. Between emancipation and World War I, African Americans began moving from rural to urban areas and a small number moved to the North and to the West. An important movement of African Americans occurred in 1879 when several thousand African Americans from states such as Mississippi and Louisiana migrated to Kansas. Henry Adams, a former Union soldier, and Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, a carpenter, led the movement. The poor social and economic conditions of African Americans in the South after emancipation motivated these migrants, known as the “Exodusters.” The Exodusters hoped to establish an independent African American community in Kansas. Although some of the Kansas migrants improved their lives, others did not and they eventually left the state.
The Great Migration Around 1910, the Great Migration began as African Americans moved out of the South and to more urban environments. Between 1910 and 1980, more than 4 million African Americans born in the South moved to other regions. Whereas 89% of African Americans lived in the South at the beginning of the 20th century, the proportion of African Americans living in the South decreased to 55% by the end of the century.
African Americans, Migration of
Moreover, between 1920 and 1970, the proportion of African Americans living in urban areas increased from 44% to 74%. Cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles were major destinations. Several factors affected the Great Migration. World War I was a major impetus. The war led to a sharp decline in the number of European immigrants working in northern factories. African Americans from the South fulfilled the northern demand for labor. During World War II, African Americans were permitted to take defense jobs, leading to further migration to the North and to the West. Also, agricultural labor in the South increasingly became mechanized over these decades, and so fewer workers were needed. The decreased number of jobs led to fewer opportunities for African American workers in the South. These labor market changes, coupled with the racism pervasive in the South, led to significant African American migration out of the South between 1910 and 1970. African American social networks and institutions greatly facilitated migration. Many migrants moved in with other family members or friends when they migrated to ease their transition to their new environment. Furthermore, migrants maintained connection to their families in the South by sending their children there during the summers, sending home money, and/or visiting frequently. African American newspapers such as the Chicago Defender disseminated information about the jobs and conditions for African Americans in the North, while African American churches provided material resources for migrants and an institutional venue through which African Americans could press for social and political change. Migration was selective such that African American males were more likely to migrate than were African American females. In addition, the migrants from the South generally had more education than those who remained in the South, but they had less education than those who were born in the North. Southern-born African Americans in the North had higher employment rates and incomes than did northern-born African Americans. African American migration substantially influenced the demographics of urban cities and the experiences of African Americans in the North. African Americans faced opposition in the labor market, where they competed with Whites for jobs. As African Americans moved into northern city centers, Whites began to flee to the suburbs. Racial residential segregation increased. Whites also responded to the
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increasing number of Black migrants with racial violence. As manufacturing jobs left city centers and moved to areas where Whites lived, many African Americans lost jobs and African American neighborhoods became less stable. Areas of isolated poor African Americans emerged. The Great Migration also influenced African American cultural production. Harlem was a major destination for African American migrants and eventually became a cultural center for the African American community. African American artists and writers such as Langston Hughes and Richard Wright arose during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and early 1930s. Later, artists such as Jacob Lawrence used the Great Migration as a subject in their work. In New York and Chicago, migrants carried jazz music with them and the genre evolved. Also, important African American cultural venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater developed in areas with high concentrations of African American migrants.
The Trend Reverses Around the 1970s, the Great Migration began to reverse as the South experienced a net in-migration of African Americans from other regions. Some of the migrants to the South were returning to the region in which they were born, whereas others were moving there for the first time. Although scholars are just beginning to examine the reverse migration, several explanations arise. In the North, the decline in manufacturing jobs available to African Americans, increased labor market competition with low-skilled immigrants, worsening neighborhood quality in northern cities, and the reality that there is also racism in the North are motivations for African Americans to migrate out of the region. The improvement in race relations since the Civil Rights Movement, the economic boom in major southern cities, and the cultural, familial, and social network ties that African Americans have in the South are important factors to pull migrants to the South. Cities such as Atlanta, Orlando, and Charlotte have been major destinations for African American migrants. At the beginning of the 21st century, new demographic and labor market shifts are occurring in the United States, for example, bringing increasing numbers of African, Caribbean, and Latino immigrants to the United States. The story remains to be told about how these shifts will influence African American
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African American Studies
migration and about how recent African American migration patterns will affect African Americans and the United States as a whole. Sabrina Pendergrass See also African Americans; Harlem; Harlem Renaissance; Return Migration; Sundown Towns; White Flight
Further Readings
Dodson, Howard, Sylviane A. Diouf, and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 2004. In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society. Johnson, Daniel M. and Rex R. Campbell. 1981. Black Migration in America: A Social Demographic History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tolnay, Stewart. 2003. “The African American ‘Great Migration’ and Beyond.” Annual Review of Sociology 29:209–233.
AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES African American (or Black) Studies is the systematic and critical analysis of the thought and practices of African-descended peoples in their historical, modern, contemporary, and current contexts. As such, it studies the cultures of African peoples in the United States, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and other parts of the world. It embraces scholars of African American literature, history, politics, religion, philosophy, sociology, social work, and many other fields within the humanities and social sciences. This entry describes the origins of African American (or Black) Studies, its development as a discipline, and its current status.
Origins The roots of the discipline now known as African American Studies lie in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The period provided the historical moment when a call for a change in societal and academic structures needed to be made. Seizing the moment, various organizations, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Black student unions on predominantly White campuses, made a popular demand for academic relevance and positive social
change. Four phases characterize the history of the movement. The first occurred in 1960 when the Civil Rights Movement demanded the abolition of racial segregation in public places, equality and justice for Blacks, and the organization of Blacks into an independent and powerful social force. The move to achieve these objectives was spearheaded by the SNCC and included organizations such as the Southern Leadership Conference Committee (SLC), the Committee on Racial Equality (CORE), the National Organization for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panthers. The second phase emerged in 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley, where students—mostly White—had formed the Free Speech Movement to protest against the administration’s policies on campus. Eventually, the movement merged its interests with those of the larger national Civil Rights Movement. Together, proponents called for the empowerment of students and Blacks. A year later, the third phase emerged when student opposition to the Vietnam War, and the involvement of some universities in it, led to the formation of the antiwar movement. Members questioned the universities’ structure and governance pattern and suggested ways in which the institutions could relate to Black students, the Black community, and other Third World peoples. By doing so, the student movement succeeded in forging a link between demands for changes in the universities and for those in the society at large. The final phase occurred in 1966 at the peak of the Black Power Movement. Empowered by the movement’s vision, the Negro Students’ Association at San Francisco State College changed its name to the Black Students’ Union (BSU). Members demanded the establishment of an autonomous Department of Black Studies where the mission would consist of academic excellence and social responsibility. Their demands, buttressed in a five-month strike, inspired student and faculty activism at many other universities across the nation. Several protests and sit-ins were organized by Black students, faculty, and allies who demanded that the traditional academic structures be changed to enable the institution to address the culture, needs, and aspirations of Blacks and other minorities. In February 1968, San Francisco State appointed Nathan Hare to coordinate the first Black Studies program and to develop a proposal for the establishment of a Department of Black Studies. Hare completed his
African American Studies
task and promptly submitted his report in April. Its implementation was delayed by the administration. This provoked a series of student protests, including a strike in November that led to student–police clashes, which in turn brought more community involvement in campus affairs. By the spring of 1969 when the strike ended, the program was given an official status and became a fully fledged department in September 1969. The successful experience of San Francisco State was duplicated on various campuses in the nation. And by the end of 1969, many colleges and universities had established Black Studies programs of some sort. However, the historically Black colleges and universities, which had historically shouldered the responsibility for teaching the Black experience, did not initially embrace the new discipline. But after the adoption of the program by universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, prominent Black universities such as Emory, Fisk, Howard, Lincoln, Morgan, and Tuskegee followed suit. Today, many institutions offer a degree in Black Studies.
Development of a Discipline The discipline strove toward consolidation and expansion during the 1970s and 1980s. In the process, many new projects emerged, further influencing the definition and character of the discipline. These include (a) professional organizations of the discipline, (b) the concept of Afrocentricity, (c) Black Women’s Studies, (d) Multicultural Studies, and (e) Classical African Studies. Organizzatio onal Gro owth h
The first professional organizations created were the African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA) and the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS). The AHSA was formed in 1969 by members of the Black Caucus of the African Studies Association (ASA), the major professional organization of African Studies at that time. They were motivated by the persistent refusal of the latter association to provide Africandescended peoples with the opportunity to modify the ideological and structural foundations of the association. The basic goals of the AHSA were to study all dimensions and approaches to the history and culture of African-descended peoples in the United States and elsewhere. The AHSA has served several functions, including providing a context for scholarly exchange.
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And its annual conferences bring together scholars from all over the worldwide African community in fruitful exchange and creative challenge. The next institution to be founded was the NCBS. Created in 1976, it has since become the discipline’s preeminent professional organization. It is committed to the development of academic and community programs and to the promotion of excellence and social responsibility. It is open to cooperation with educators and students as well as with members of other professional and community organizations. Notable among its achievements are the establishment of an accreditation process for the discipline’s programs, the creation of specialty caucuses, the organization of workshops on multicultural education and Black women’s issues, and collaboration with the AHSA, the Congressional Black Caucus, and other academic, professional, and community organizations. It is also credited with the founding of the International Journal of Africana Studies (formerly The Afrocentric Scholar), which is now a leading journal for the discipline. The Afro oce entricc Persspecctiv ve
The emergence of the Afrocentric perspective during the 1980s marked an important development in the discipline. Its basic requirements are that any analysis of phenomena from the African world should be grounded in an African worldview, history, traditions, and agency. The initial case for this perspective was made by Molefi Asante in 1980. With this and subsequent works, he promoted it as a vital theoretical and methodological tool for Black Studies. In its social implication, it calls for cultural retrieval, community empowerment, and the deconstruction of all types of domination. The concept was critical to the development in 1998 of MA and PhD programs in Black Studies at Temple University, where Asante had become the chair. Since then, several other universities have also developed doctoral programs in the field. The Women n’ss Perrspectiv ve
Another major development in Black Studies is the emergence of Black Women’s Studies as a basic component of the discipline. After a period of inadequate scholarship and discussion of women’s issues, during the 1970s the discipline began to address and correct these serious problems. The process was not easy. It
34
African American Studies
was marked by both continuing inattentiveness and outright resistance. The women in the discipline itself, especially Barbara Christian, Delores Aldridge, and Paula Giddings, waged intellectual and practical struggles. They strove for the creation and maintenance of space for teaching and research in Women’s Studies in particular and in gender studies in general. They critiqued malecentered interpretations of African and human realities, critiqued the relationships that such interpretations engendered and maintained, and offered alternative visions. Their works raised critical issues of race, gender, and class for correctives. During the 1980s and early 1990s, books by the women expanded in various fields, especially literature. Apart from their scholarly works, women academics also played significant roles in the creation and promotion of the two major professional organizations of the discipline: the AHSA and the NCBS. Their persistence has helped tremendously to broaden and augment the discipline. The Multicu ultu ural Persspectiv ve
Another key development in Black Studies is its varied response to the emergence of multiculturalism as discourse and practice. Its genesis may be seen during the 1960s with the Black Student Movement’s demand for an end to exclusive White studies instruction. Their efforts were aided and augmented by White progressives and Third World groups. Proponents demanded an end to Eurocentric epistemology and curriculum in favor of a multicultural education. In this way, they made general academic interrogations possible. Later, other groups such as Native American, Latino, Asian Studies, and Women’s Studies used this tradition and pressed for quality and relevant education. It was at this point that multiculturalism was recognized as a necessary component of quality education. The Classiccal Perrspectiv ve
A significant development in the discipline emerged during the 1980s when several scholars began to focus on the study of classical African civilizations, particularly Egypt. The popular subjects were art, culture, language and literature, religion, and philosophy. In 1978, the Kemetic Institute in Chicago, dedicated to the recovery of ancient Egypt’s legacy, was founded. And a year later, the Kawaida Institute
of Pan-African Studies in Los Angeles also directed its attention to the study of Egypt. During the 1980s, owing to the convergence of a number of academic and practical activities in the United States, the cause of Egypt as an intellectual paradigm received a major boost. First among these was the founding of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC) in 1984 by Maulana Karenga and Jacob Carruthers. A second major factor was the activities of the Nile Valley Civilization group headed by Ivan Van Sertima. A third factor was the increasing familiarity with, and receptivity to, the works of Cheikh Anta Diop and, to a lesser degree, those of his student and colleague, Theophile Obenga. The works of these two scholars had a positive impact on many African American scholars. Diop is credited with pioneering the African focus on Egypt as a classical civilization. In his major works, he delineated the Black character of ancient Egypt and its role in African and world history.
Record of Accomplishment Today, African American Studies has emerged as a fully fledged discipline, but it is yet to settle on a single name. Therefore, it goes by different names—Africana Studies; Afro-American Studies; African American and African Studies; African American, African, and Caribbean Studies; Black Studies; and Africology. However, the lack of a single name does not seem to be a major issue for the discipline at the moment. All of the programs and departments are united in their focus on the systematic study of continental and diasporan African peoples in their struggles against racism and social, political, and economic oppression. So far, they have experienced some significant successes. Graduates in African American Studies become prime candidates for positions in teaching, social work, social research, law, law enforcement, civic and community organizations, and municipal, state, and federal government as well as cultural– historical societies. Research centers at several universities are devoted to the evolution of scholarship in African American Studies. Nevertheless, there is room for further development. For one thing, as a discipline committed to a comprehensive study of the lives and cultures of African peoples, some scholars believe that its current range should be expanded to embrace the physical and natural sciences. This does not mean a study of “Black
African American Women and Work
Science,” “Black Physics,” or “Black Chemistry” as such; rather, it means the incorporation of the insights and values from new fields of science and technology into an Africana Studies framework. Calls have also been issued for programs and departments to revisit their community development agenda and enhance their collaboration with community members, schools, cultural institutions, and civil and religious leaders. A development in this direction was the establishment in 2006 of a Center for African American Research and Public Policy within the Department of African American Studies at Temple University. The center strives to generate grants and create an atmosphere where research on the policies and trends affecting the Philadelphia African American community are actively engaged by Temple scholars and local community leaders. Abu S. Abarry See also Afrocentricity; Asian American Studies; Black Power; Higher Education; Latina/o Studies
Further Readings
Aldridge, Delores and Carlene Young, eds. 2001. Out of the Revolution. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Anderson, Talmudge. 1990. Black Studies: Theory, Method, and Cultural Perspectives. Pullman: Washington State University Press. Asante, Molefi. 1980. Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change. Buffalo, NY: Amulefi Publishing. Asante, Molefi and Abu Abarry. 1996. African Intellectual Heritage. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Asante, Molefi and Maulana Karenga, eds. 2006. Black Studies Handbook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Diop, Cheikh Anta. 1991. Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology. New York: Lawrence Hill Books. Hull, Gloria, Patricia Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds. 1982. All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press. Karenga, Maulana. 2002. Introduction to Black Studies. Los Angeles, CA: University of Sankore Press. Marable, Manning. 2000. Dispatches from the Ebony Tower: Intellectuals Confront the African-American Experience. New York: Columbia University Press. Norment, Nathaniel, Jr. 2007. The African-American Studies Reader. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Turner, James. 1984. The Next Decade: Theoretical and Research Issues in Africana Studies. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, Africana Studies and Research Center.
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AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN AND WORK African American women’s work and its history is, in many crucial respects, the history of the United States. Although most Black women have labored in the most back-breaking work, during more recent years some have also held the most prestigious and attractive jobs. Thus, African American women’s labor spans the labor economy and market, from menial service jobs to high-powered information and entertainment work. The proportion of Black women participating in the labor market has always outstripped that same proportion of White women, and this fact alone brings their work history to the forefront of Black culture in U.S. society. Locked out, like White women, from most highwage employment until quite recently, and paid even lower wages than their White women counterparts, it is likely that African American women have worked more actual hours during their work lives than has any other group in U.S. history. This entry looks at overall historical patterns of their work, in particular their relegation to domestic and service jobs; the impact of racial and sex discrimination; and relatively recent improvements in their job opportunities.
Historical Patterns The labor market history of Black American women in many ways parallels that of all U.S. women, especially in terms of restrictions and exclusions. It differs in its intensity and stability; more African American women have always worked for pay, remaining in the labor force across time and the vicissitudes of culture. Work, whether paid or unpaid, is the defining feature of African American women’s lives in modern postemancipation society. This is also true, in a relative sense, for women as a whole. The proportion of women’s labor is greater, on a global calculus, than that of men’s labor. As with women in general, African American women have labored in a host of work roles, both formal and informal, since the end of slavery. Formal occupational roles exist in the official tracked labor economy and are linked to systems of rationalized taxed wages and benefits. People employed in the formal labor economy are entitled to legal and governmental protections, and there are demonstrable
36
African American Women and Work
For many decades after emancipation, only a narrow occupational area was open to African American women, and entry to jobs with career ladders and organizational stability was severely restricted. Although still clustered in the service sector, African American women, with increasing educational attainment over the past half-century, have broadened their representation across an array of higher wage service jobs and professions. In education, the arts, and medicine, some Black women did attain relatively stable careercentered jobs, but most Black women worked in low- to mid-level service occupations until the late 20th century.
African American women sorting tobacco (circa 1899). Labor and work for Black women in the United States have a very long history, beginning with unpaid slavery. With emancipation, women entered a wider array of occupations. Here, African Americans (mostly women) sort tobacco at the T. B. Williams Tobacco Company, Richmond, Virginia. This photo was part of the Exhibit of American Negroes organized for the 1900 Paris Exposition through a collaborative creation of Black colleges and universities and the Library of Congress. The driving force behind the exhibit was the Black sociologist and historian William Edgar Burghardt Du Bois. He described the materials sent to Paris as “an honest straightforward exhibit of a small nation of people, picturing their life and development without apology or gloss, and above all made by them. In a way this marks an era in the history of the Negroes of America.”
Service Work and Domestic Employment
Until the decades following World War II, African American women worked most often in formal or informal domestic service sector employment. Because no records are kept of informal cash-based employment, the numbers are very difficult to estimate and impossible to know for certain. Black women have traditionally been overrepresented in jobs caring for Source: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. children and cleaning. A hierarchy of class and status records of their work-based positions and histories. existed within the sphere of domestic employment for The informal economy, in contrast, contains a Black women. These status distinctions were upheld plethora of jobs and products in a shadow structure of by both races, albeit in different ways and probably cash-based untaxed labor and goods. for different reasons. Among Black women workers, For many decades, African American women were status became a primary source of occupational and restricted to the bottom rungs of the occupational ladself-identity. Whites primarily recognized a wage der and often within the informal sector. Across the hierarchy. Thus, in southern culture, a Black woman world, a higher proportion of minority power social recognized and hired as a baby nurse enjoyed considgroups participate in the cash economy than do groups erable prestige in her home community—a fact with more social and cultural power. Given the higher acknowledged in her relatively better wages and prostatus usually accorded to those with lighter skin, the tected task array (e.g., she was never expected to clean work of non-White women in the global economy is things). The role of Black women in the care and raisin many ways linked to this informal, personalized, ing of White children remains an underacknowledged and cash-based economy. mainstay of U.S. family life—especially in the South. In the formal U.S. labor market, Black women work Baby nursing, housekeeping, and child minding were in an ever widening distribution of occupational roles. positions of some prestige and authority in southern
African American Women and Work
37
culture and among the few routes out of “dead end” work. Black women in domestic service roles worked most often in White people’s homes. Caring for the household of an employer usually meant that the domestic worker herself was unable to fully provide these services for her own family. Thus, other women (often relatives) were drawn into Black women’s domestic sphere to complete the work left undone by outside domestic employment. The opportunity cost of working a primary job at depressed wages continues to be very high, although the pattern of using one’s relatives to support family work is no longer as prevalent among employed Black women.
With their family economy rooted in artificially depressed discriminatory wages for both adults, Black women very often labored beyond even the now famous “second shift,” keeping their own and other women’s households afloat and adding other paid labor besides. When at all possible (especially after World War II and the northward migration of many southern Black families), African American women stayed at home to raise their children. Economic pressures and discrimination often made this difficult without the addition of some extra work such as paid child care. Formal schooling was then, as now, the primary route to relative economic stability for African American families.
Labor Market Segregation: Sex and Race
Expansion of Labor Force Participation
African American women’s experience in the work world grew from their various yet common experiences as Black women in a society at first built on slavery and later irrevocably shaped by its effects. For many decades, Black people faced nearly overwhelming odds of survival at work, especially in heavy industrial jobs and other sorts of dangerous employment. Issues shaping African Americans’ physical and economic survival within U.S. industrial and service jobs have consistently impeded the group’s full share of prosperity from the era of slavery to the present day. Until recently, this was especially true for Black women; patterns of sexual and racial segregation in the workplace obstructed any real progress toward occupational stability. Racial and sexual labor force segregation patterns developed across time and kept all women, and Black women in particular, restricted to certain industrial, service, and professional occupations. In the United States, such patterns varied somewhat by region. The West’s more flexible political and labor economy is well documented. In the South, the twin forces of sex and race-based segregation combined to prevent full and dynamic labor force participation for Black women. The social and cultural forces pressing African American women into prostitution and related dangers within the informal economy operated across all regions of the country, but their influence was especially pernicious in the urban areas of the Eastern Seaboard and the industrialized Midwest.
The feminization of paid work during World War II had a famously backhanded effect on women’s labor force participation experiences. The temporary easing of sex- and race-based occupational restrictions brought previously unimaginable possibilities for paid work into women’s lives. In 1945, when the labor market began to shift back to a preference for (White) males, African American women were the most economically vulnerable workers. The monetary and employment gains of the war years fell away quickly, but the effect was softened by the rising tide of Black educational attainment and the growing tidal force of the Civil Rights Movement. Institutionalized sexism and racism began to decline during the 1950s, creating a social climate for Black women driven by slowly climbing levels of educational and occupational attainment. This gradual rise in levels of formal schooling and occupational prestige and stability marks the contemporary world of African American workers as well. Wage gaps persist, even if narrowing, between Black and White workers and between men and women. Black females continue to bear the brunt of those gaps. In the contemporary United States, the term African American women collapses an array of ethnic and historical family backgrounds into an aggregate category that is convenient for demographic analysis yet far from reflecting its true diversity. Both a Black female medical doctor who is the descendant of slaves and an urban Haitian immigrant employed in the cash economy are classed together under that rubric. This fact makes
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Africans in the United States
generalizations about Black women’s contemporary labor force experiences difficult. It is better to note the historical patterns of disadvantage and response conditioning this group’s now stunning diversity of form in relation to paid and unpaid work in the United States. Corinne Lally Benedetto See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; African Americans; American Apartheid; Civil Rights Movement, Women and; Domestic Work; Educational Performance and Attainment; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Glass Ceiling; hooks, bell; Informal Economy; Labor Market Segmentation
Further Readings
Aptheker, Bettina. 1982. Women’s Legacy: Essays on Race, Sex, and Class in American History. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Durr, Marlese and Shirley Hill, eds. 2002. “AfricanAmerican Women: Gender Roles, Work, and the Political Economy in the Twenty-First Century [special issue].” Gender & Society 16:437–563. Lerner, Gerda. 1972. Black Women and White America: A Documentary History. New York: Pantheon Books. Tucker, Susan. 1988. Telling Memories among Southern Women: Domestic Workers and Their Employers in the Segregated South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
AFRICANS
IN THE
UNITED STATES
Africans living in the United States can be from fiftythree different countries—from Algeria, Angola, and Benin, through Mauritania and Morocco, to Zambia and Zimbabwe. In addition, every nation on the African continent has much ethnic diversity within its borders. For instance, in Tanzania alone, there are more than 130 ethnic groups, with nearly as many distinct languages. More than 900 million people live on the African continent, and more than 1,500 languages are spoken. African immigrants to the United States have contributed greatly to their communities of settlement with African churches and mosques; Ethiopian, Senegalese, and other African restaurants; African hair braiding salons; taxi drivers or nursing home care providers who might be Somalian, Liberian, Eritrean, or Sierra Leonian; medical doctors from Nigeria and other African nations; and African professors and teachers from many different countries. Many African-born
Senegalese woman in New York. A Senegalese woman is shown walking by a store in Little Senegal, an area in Harlem, New York, at 116th Street and 7th Avenue. The numbers of Africans settling in the United States has increased to the point that businesses catering to them have begun to emerge in many cities. Source: Aurora/Getty Images.
residents in the United States are urbanized, and they have one of the highest education levels of any immigrant group. An African living in the United States could be an entrepreneur or a refugee, a doctor or a PhD, an accountant or a student, rich or poor. Thus, in many ways, it is difficult to generalize about the experience of Africans in the United States. This entry, then, focuses on cultural and social values that appear to be common among people from Africa and how those values intersect with those of U.S. society, in particular regarding issues of community, family, and race.
African Values in a New World Africans who come to the United States bring with them a rich cultural heritage, a strong work ethic, and
Africans in the United States
a wide array of skills that they are enthusiastic to share, and America has been enriched by their literature, music, and dance. They bring a strong commitment to education, a sense of hospitality, a long and rich history of many cultures and traditions, a facility with languages (some Africans speak five or more languages), and a strong sense of community. An African is first a son or daughter, then a member of a village or ethnic group such as Mandingo or Fanti, and then a citizen of a country such as Guinea or Ghana. Ethnicity comes before nationality on the continent. When Africans travel outside of their country, nationality may become a prominent self-identifier. For most Africans, it is only when they come to the United States that race becomes an identity marker. Even “African” is much less an identity marker on the continent than it is in the United States. Because of a strong sense of responsibility to their extended families and a deep family connectedness that extends well beyond the U.S. notion of a typical family unit, African immigrants also contribute to their home economies. Trying to provide for their immediate families living with them in the United States as well as for family members they left behind in Africa can be a challenge. Caring for the extended family is an integral part of the African culture. Families in Africa may have high expectations of their relatives who emigrate to the United States; there is a common misperception that to have arrived in the United States is to have achieved success. Passing on ancestral traditions and customs to their children is important to most African immigrants, who sometimes are concerned that children born or raised in the United States will grow up to be more “American” than “African.” The African values of community, connection between the spiritual and the physical, circular understanding of history and time, respect for the ancestors and elders, and acknowledgment of the Creator all are challenged by the U.S. values of individualism, capitalism, money, and separation of church and state. One father tells of arriving alone in the United States. He worked nights for many years at a parking garage and took courses during the day to complete his bachelor’s degree. He did this with the sole objective of one day being able to bring his children to the United States for a “good” education. Now that his children have arrived, he is upset about what is happening to them. He is concerned that his children are too rapidly losing their African values and acquiring those that he considers as unacceptable. His children
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now show disrespect for their elders, and this would be unthinkable back home. Nevertheless, like so many, he clings to the belief that a U.S. education is worth more to his children’s future than the education they would have received in his home country. Some Africans, however, have decided to send their children back home to ensure that they will not lose their African values. The communal worldview expressed by ubuntu— “We are, therefore I am”—is a far different perspective from that in the United States, where there is a focus on the importance of the individual. Many Africans have traditionally considered the welcoming of a stranger—any stranger, even someone who is White—as a matter of hospitality that required a warm greeting and a meal as a sign of shared humanity. It can be a shock to Africans who have broken bread with Whites in Africa to sometimes find that they are not welcomed as warmly by U.S. residents. To their dismay, for many Africans, it may be the color of their skin that most influences their actual experiences in the United States.
Africans and Race Along with the spread of religion throughout a large portion of the African continent, European colonialism imposed a new way of looking at race. Colonialism demanded that Africans see Europeans as superior and more intelligent. South Africa’s historical experience of apartheid was both the most severe and the most publicized form of racial discrimination based on skin color. This form of accentuating racism is incomprehensible to Africans. Before they interact with White people, most Africans do not see the color of their skin as having any real significance. For them, skin is something that covers the outer body and is not connected with the individual characteristics or personality, so its color is of dubious importance. “Race,” understood simply as a variant in shades of skin color, is to be appreciated as an asset and not as a deficiency or a social problem. A traditional Malinke story tells how different kinds of snakes can evolve from the cassava snake. In Africa, people of different skin colors are viewed as just another example of nature exercising creativity. For Africans in general, skin color variations are recognized as a continuum of hues, and skin color is not used as a measure of an individual’s worth. Darkness, blackness, and night are not to be feared; they are a part of nature. Ethnicity may be understandable
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Africans in the United States
as an identity marker because culture can dictate behavior. But because behavior can change, whereas skin color cannot change, Africans wonder what creates racism. On arriving in the United States, many Africans learn that they are “Black” first—not Gabonese, Rwandan, or African—and that “being Black” has negative connotations. Administrative forms used by the government or employers that ask about an individual’s “race” seem strange to the African eye because they offer options that are incomprehensible in the African system. Some Africans list “other” to indicate what they believe the forms are requesting about their identification with a particular group, whereas others just leave it blank. The term African American describes Blacks born in the United States. So what does that leave persons from Africa to be? They were not born here, but they have come here.
Other Cultural Hurdles For Africans, the notions of both race and ethnicity are challenged. They are seen as Black until they open their mouths to speak. Then they are foreigners if they have an accent. Many are told not to lose their accent or else they might be confused with being African American. It becomes quickly clear that to be African American in the United States is viewed negatively owing to systemic racism. Negative media stereotypes of Africa, Africans, and African Americans often contribute to strained, rather than mutually supportive, relationships between Africans and African Americans. Most Africans are multilingual/multidialectal, and many may already speak English well but often with an accent that is unfamiliar to Americans. They understand, however, that making an adjustment in language learning may be part of assimilating into the new society. On occasion, however, their accent creates difficulties with communication and a sense of being foreign. When Africans come to the United States, many expect to find a society that has achieved the highest level of success, a land of abundance, and the legendary “land of the free and home of the brave.” There is a general expectation that their lives will be easier when they get to the United States, but for many Africans who emigrate it is not so easy. The situation of those who have family members already in
the United States, or who come with jobs or financial stability, differs from that of Africans who arrive as refugees sponsored by churches and nongovernmental organizations and of those who arrive on their own with little or no support. However, it is almost inevitable that Africans arriving in the United States will be confronted with some form of racism. Some of it is rooted in cultural ignorance. Africans are often surprised to be asked questions such as “Did you wear clothes in Africa?” and “Did you have lions in your yard?” The notion that Africa is uncivilized remains strong; in the imagination, it is a land of jungles, and the familiar figure of Tarzan remains intact as an iconic image of Africa even today. Africans are surprised when U.S. residents do not know that Africa is a continent, not a country. Africans in the United States bring with them a wealth of experiences and cultural riches that might not fully prepare them for the eventual clash with the reality of life in the United States or the ways in which an individual’s physical characteristics can be used as a focus for judgment. Rosemary Traoré See Appendix A See also Afrocentricity; Cape Verde; Colonialism; Diaspora; Kenya; Kwanzaa; Muslim Americans; Nigeria; Nigerian Americans; Popular Culture, Racism and; Refugees; South Africa, Republic of;
Further Readings
Asante, Molefi Kete. 2007. The History of Africa: The Quest for Eternal Harmony. London: Routledge. Ethnologue.com. n.d. Languages of Tanzania. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://www.ethnologue.com/ show_country.asp?name=Tanzania Hilliard, Asa G. 1997. SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind. Gainesville, FL: Makare. Omotosho, Samson A. 2005. Being an African Student: Stories of Opportunity and Determination. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Population Reference Bureau. 2006. 2006 World Population Data Sheet. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://www.prb.org/pdf06/06WorldDataSheet.pdf Traoré, Rosemary and Robert J. Lukens. 2006. This Isn’t the America I Thought I’d Find: African Students in the Urban U.S. High School. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Afrocentricity
AFROCENTRICITY Afrocentricity is a philosophical paradigm that emphasizes the centrality of the African person within historical context. As such, it is a rejection of the marginality and alterity often expressed in the ordinary paradigm of European domination. What is more, Afrocentrists articulate a counterhegemonic view that questions epistemological ideas that are simply rooted in the cultural experiences of Europe. In its attempt to shift discourse about African phenomena from ideas founded in European constructs to a more centered perspective, Afrocentricity announces itself as a form of antiracist, antibourgeois, and antisexist ideology that is new, innovative, challenging, and capable of creating exciting ways in which to acquire knowledge. The denial of this exploitative expression of race, gender, and class found in the European construction of knowledge is at once controversial and a part of the evolving process of the development of this paradigm. This entry discusses the background and principal elements of Afrocentricity.
Development of the Concept The origin of Afrocentricity is traced to the publication of the book Afrocentricity in l980 by Molefi Kete Asante. Additional books and articles helped to create the discourse that thrust the concept into the intellectual world as a perspective whose core was the interpretation and explanation of phenomena from the standpoint of Africans as subjects rather than as victims or objects. Central to the Afrocentric idea is the fact that Africans were moved off of intellectual, philosophical, and cultural terms by the 500 years of European hegemony. To return to an authentic consciousness, it was necessary for African people to see themselves in the midst of their own history and not as in the margins of Europe. This meant that it was essential to return to the classical civilizations of Africa. Thus, the return to a discussion of the ancient African civilizations of Egypt and Nubia was essential for an appreciation of the role that Africans and Africa played in world history. The Afrocentrists were the first to see the overthrow of European domination in the African’s mind by a return to classical Africa. Besides its acceptance of classical Africa, Afrocentricity was
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grounded in the historical reality of African people through the presentation of key intellectual ideas. For example, it was important to contend that the Eurocentric view had become an ethnocentric view that elevated the European experience and downgraded all others. For the Afrocentrists, it was clear that Afrocentricity was not the counterpoint to Eurocentricity but rather a particular perspective for analysis that did not seek to occupy all space and time as Eurocentrism has often done. For example, to say classical music, theater, or dance is usually a reference to European music, theater, or dance. However, this means that Europeans occupy all of the intellectual and artistic seats and leave no room for others. The Afrocentrists argue for pluralism in philosophical views without hierarchy. All human cultures must be centered, in fact, subject of their own realities.
Principal Ideas In the Afrocentric view, the problem of location takes precedence over the topic or the data under consideration. Two methodological devices have emerged to assist in the construction of a new body of knowledge: reasonable plausibility and intelligent conclusion. Both are common terms used in a definite and precise sense to deal with the issue of historical, social, and cultural lacunae in many discourses on African people. Although seen as speculative supports, these devices are central to understanding how Africans responded in situations where there was little information. Reasonable plausibility is based on Martin Bernal’s thesis of explaining lacunae in historical information. One can assume that the ancient Greeks who lived and traveled in ancient Egypt were exposed to certain Egyptian values, ideas, and behaviors. Even if there are no documents stating that Plato or Lycurgus was actually in the great city of Waset, reasonable plausibility would allow the researcher to make a highly probable statement of fact. Intelligent conclusion is derived from the work of Asante and is based on analysis of prejudicial and racist reportage in texts. When one knows by circumstances, effects, and policies that Africans were involved in an event or a phenomenon, despite the lack of direct information, one can make an intelligent conclusion. The records of the Great Storm of 1928 in Florida reveal little about the role that Africans played
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Aging
in the economy prior to the storm. One could even get the impression that Africans were marginal to the society and the economy by reading the biased accounts of history. However, more than two-thirds of the nearly 3,000 killed by the storm were Africans, indicating an enormous agricultural laboring sector that can be missed if one does not make an intelligent conclusion. Afrocentrists contend that humans cannot divest themselves of culture, whether participating in their own historical culture or that of some other group. A contradiction between history and perspective produces a kind of incongruity that is called decenteredness. Thus, when an African American writes from the viewpoint of Europeans who came to the Americas on the Mayflower, or when literary critics write of Africans as “the other,” Afrocentrists claim that Africans are being peripheralized within their own story.
Afrocentrist Work Metaphors of location and dislocation are the principal tools of analysis as events, situations, texts, buildings, dreams, and literary authors are seen as displaying various forms of centeredness. To be centered is to be located as an agent instead of as “the other.” Such a critical shift in thinking means that the Afrocentric perspective provides new insights and dimensions to the understanding of phenomena. Among the scholars writing in this vein are Ama Mazama, Mark Christian, Maulana Karenga, Wade Nobles, Adisa Alkebulan, Troy Allen, Katherine Bankole, and Marimba Ani. Mazama was one of the original Afrocentrists identified with the Temple University Circle of Afrocentricity of which Asante was a leading member. Contemporary issues in Afrocentric thinking have involved the explanation of psychological misorientation and disorientation—attitudes that affect Africans who consider themselves to be Europeans or who believe that it is impossible to be both African and human. Severe forms of this attitude have been labeled as extreme misorientation by some Afrocentrists. Additional issues have been the influence of a centered approach to education, particularly as it relates to the revision of the U.S. educational curriculum. Hundreds of dissertations and numerous books and articles have been written extending the idea of Afrocentricity in architecture, social work, religion, politics, criminology, and philosophy. Molefi Kete Asante
See also African Americans; African American Studies; Black Nationalism; Ethnocentrism; Kwanzaa Further Readings
Asante, Molefi Kete. 1990. Kemet, Afrocentricity, and Knowledge. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Asante, Molefi Kete. 1998. The Afrocentric Idea. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Asante, Molefi Kete. 2002. Afrocentricity . Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Asante, Molefi Kete. 2007. Afrocentric Manifesto: Toward an African Renaissance. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Conyers, James L., Jr., ed. 2003. Afrocentricity and the Academy: Essays on Theory and Practice. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Conyers, James L., Jr. 2004. “The Evolution of Africology: An Afrocentric Appraisal.” Journal of Black Studies 34:640–652. Early, Gerald. 1994. “Defining Afrocentrism.” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 1(Winter):46. Mazama, Ama, ed. 2003. The Afrocentric Paradigm. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
AGING Aging refers to the process of getting older. People age at different rates and in different ways, influenced by cultural, social, biological, and economical factors. Race and ethnicity may also play a major role in how people experience aging. Since the beginning of the 20th century, improvements have been made in health care, nutrition, and public health. These improvements have greatly affected the longevity of different groups of people; however, not all groups of people have benefited equally. More often, the poor health status and life expectancies of minorities can be traced back to historical racial/ethnic discrimination and treatment of minority groups. This entry looks at the demographics of aging and discusses issues related to social support, health, and economic well-being—all with a focus on differences related to race and ethnicity.
Demographic Overview Life expectancy is typically measured by averaging the number of years that people in a given population can expect to live. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau in 2003 indicate that the life expectancy at birth for all races was 77.5 years. However, there is a gap in life expectancies when accounting for race and gender.
Aging
The life expectancy at birth for White males was 75.3 years and for White females was 80.5 years. Comparatively, the life expectancy for Black males was 69.0 years and for Black females was 76.1 years. Three terms are commonly used to describe the old. Individuals between 65 and 75 years of age are referred to as the young old, individuals between 75 and 85 years of age are referred to as the old old, and individuals over 85 years of age are referred to as the oldest old. With people living longer than in previous times, the total amount and proportion of older people in the U.S. population is growing. For instance, the older population now constitutes approximately 12% of the total U.S. population. At the same time, the number of individuals living past 100 years of age, or centenarians, has increased during the past century as well. A large birth rate between the years 1946 and 1964 produced more than 70 million people. Demographers label this cohort of births the “baby boom” population. The first wave of the baby boomers will turn 65 years of age in 2011. The mass amounts of people aging are expected to put a strain on society’s resources and institutions. Economic issues such as age of retirement, living arrangements, and costs of health care are of great and real concern because of the enormous pressures placed on government programs such as social security and Medicare benefits as means of support. Consequently, social institutions will also need to become flexible to meet the needs of a diverse population whose members might not have, or might never have had, equal treatment and resources in the society. Reflecting the demographic changes of the U.S. population over the past decades, the older population will become more diverse. In 2003, the breakdown of the older (65+ years) U.S. population was as follows: non-Hispanic White, 82%; Black, 8%; Hispanic (of any race), 6%; Asian, 3%; and Native American, less than 1%. However, projections for 2050 indicate that the pattern is shifting. The Hispanic population is projected to grow the fastest, from just over 2 million in 2003 to 15 million in 2050, and to be larger than the older Black population by 2028. The diverse population of older people presents special issues and special needs.
Marital Status and Living Arrangements Marital status and living arrangements can affect personal well-being both emotionally and economically. Older men are more likely than older women to be
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married. That is because women are more likely to be widows than men are to be widowers. On average, women live longer, so they spend more time alone as they get older, whereas men are likely to be married until they die. The living arrangements of the elderly include living with a spouse, living with other relatives, living with nonrelatives (or in institutions such as nursing homes and hospitals), and living alone. Older men are more likely to live with a spouse than are older women. In contrast, as mentioned, older women are more likely to live alone. Living arrangements of older people differ by race as well. For instance, Asian women are more likely than women of other races to live with relatives other than a spouse, whereas White and Black women are more likely to live alone. However, Black men are the most likely to live alone. Living alone creates its own set of issues such as proper monitoring of health and depression. The living arrangements of the elderly are important factors because they are often linked to income, health status, and availability of caregivers. Also, people who live alone are more likely to be in poverty than are people who live with a spouse. Social networks, such as family and/or a spouse, provide the elderly with positive support both by encouraging healthy behaviors and by providing a safety net of individuals who can be counted on for any physical, emotional, and/or financial assistance. Stages of life, such as retirement and widowhood, can cause isolation and depression in the elderly. Many families now live apart from one another, creating the issue of lack of immediate assistance for the elderly. With family members so far away, issues such as adequate housing and a safe environment become concerns. Not having these basic needs leaves a portion of the elderly vulnerable and isolated. Also, lack of economic resources or the perception thereof places a burden on the elderly and contributes to disparity in mortality of some groups. Due to a cultural emphasis on independence, many elderly do not wish to burden family members. The caregiving issue has created a “sandwich generation”— a generation of people who are caring for their children and their aged parents at the same time. This puts quite a strain on the family, especially the women of the household, in that they are often the caretakers of elderly family members. Recent research has also begun to focus on the effects of kin support, in light of the national divorce trends.
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Aging
Health
Economics
There has been an “epidemiologic transition,” that is, a shift from infectious and acute diseases to chronic and degenerative diseases as reasons for mortality. Therefore, a cultural emphasis on preventing illness and maintaining health has emerged along with a “successful aging” approach. The top five causes of death for ages over 65 years are heart disease, cancer, stroke, emphysema, and pneumonia. These diseases are often referred to as “lifestyle” diseases, that is, diseases that trace to poor diet, obesity, lack of exercise, and/or cigarette smoking. These shifts in lifestyle account for much of the change in mortality rates over the past few decades. The leading cause of death differs by group. Compared with Whites, Black Americans’ mortality rates are higher for stroke, heart disease, cancer, and HIV disease. Native Americans have the highest cancer mortality rate—approximately 40% higher than the rest of the population. Concurrently, Native Americans and Alaska Natives have considerably worse health outcomes—including higher infant mortality rates, more disease and disability, and shorter life expectancies—than much of the rest of the United States. Healthy behaviors have a significant effect on one’s health status later in life. The risk factors that interfere with successful aging include smoking, alcohol abuse, depression, and lack of exercise. The top five sources of disability include diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, hearing impairment, and cataracts. Many elderly will move to nursing homes because of disability concerns as well as the need for assistance and management with activities of daily living such as bathing, dressing, and eating. Minority and low socioeconomically disadvantaged groups are likely to experience health disparities, or a gap in the quality of health and health care, in comparison with wealthier and/or White groups. Negative social and environmental factors (e.g., poor housing/neighborhood), health-related behaviors (e.g., smoking, alcohol, poor eating habits/lack of nutrition), access to and use of health services (e.g., having health insurance/education on prevention), and quality of health care received further affect physical, cognitive, and emotional functioning later in life. Racial disparities that seem profound today can often be traced to a history of racial/ethnic discrimination in the United States.
Social security benefits are the largest source of income for the elderly and are received by most households. Other sources of income include earnings, asset income, and pensions. However, there is much inequality in income of the elderly. This can be attributed to employment patterns over the life course and is reflected in the differences in the sources of income for the elderly. For example, because Whites are more likely to have more assets and pensions, a smaller portion of their income derives from social security, whereas it accounts for the majority of minorities’ income. Those who spend their time in low-wage service sector jobs, agricultural, and domestic realms (mainly women and minorities) are often unable to save for retirement because the employers for whom they work rarely offered health or retirement benefits. Others who fall into this category are those who started saving too late and could not make up for earlier shortfalls and/or had their work histories interrupted by familial responsibilities. Studying aging requires a multifaceted approach in that the social, cultural, and economic characteristics all play a part in how people experience aging. Furthermore, historical racial/ethnic discrimination also has a significant impact on how one experiences aging. Keeping up with changing demographics will be a challenge to the society. In particular, social institutions will require more diversity in the type of resources available for the aging U.S. population. Jennifer M. Klein See also African Americans; Asian Americans; Familism; Family; Hispanics; Native Americans; Social Inequality; Social Support
Further Readings
Budrys, G. 2003. Unequal Health: How Inequality Contributes to Health and Illness. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Keith, J. 1994. Aging Experience: Diversity and Commonality across Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Klinenberg, E. 2002. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rowe, John W. and Robert Louis Kahn, 1998. Successful Aging. New York: Pantheon Books. Smedley, Brian D., Adrienne Y. Stith, and Alan R. Nelson. 2003. Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Alamo, The
ALAMO, THE The Alamo, originally named Misión San Antonio de Valero, was built in 1724 and served as a home to Spanish missionaries and Indian converts. It is located in what is today San Antonio, Texas. During the early 1800s, the Spanish army stationed a cavalry unit at the mission and named it the “Alamo” (meaning “cottonwood” in Spanish) in honor of their hometown, Alamo de Parras, Coahuila, Mexico. During the Mexican revolution for independence from Spain, the fortress had been in the hands of both revolutionaries and royalists. It remained in the hands of the Mexican army until December 1835, amid the Texas Revolution, when the rebel Texans captured the fort by driving Mexican forces out of San Antonio de Bexar. Soon after, in February 1836, Mexican forces sought to recapture the Alamo in a battle that made the fort famous and a shrine to Texan patriots to this day. The siege of the Alamo began on February 23 and lasted 13 days, ending on March 6 when Mexican forces permeated the walls of the fort. The Mexican president-cum-dictator, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, assembled a force to quell the Texan rebellion and retake the Alamo. The Texan rebels, made up of Texians (Anglo-American settlers) and local Tejanos (ethnic Mexicans of Tejas), were determined to hold the fort despite the news from Commander William Travis that reinforcements would not come. A small band of 33 men from Gonzales, Texas, would later join the Alamo garrison. On March 2, Texas declared independence in the midst of the Alamo battle, unbeknownst to the defenders, who sent a vote in favor of independence to the constitutional convention at Washington-on-theBrazos. Among the defenders of the Alamo were some local heroes and national icons. David Crockett, former Tennessee congressman and legendary frontiersman, was among the Texian patriots who gave their lives for the Alamo and for Texas. Famous knife fighter James Bowie was in command of a volunteer force defending the Alamo. Tejano political and military hero Juan Seguín was among the Alamo defenders as well and was sent out as a courier in request of more troops. The Alamo defenders were a diverse force. Americans from the north and south, Western Europeans, Tejano natives, and Black slaves all fought and died at the Alamo. They banded together in a fight against the increasing centralization of the
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Mexican government under Santa Anna, who rose to power in a coup and abolished the Constitution of 1824. This encroachment on autonomy is what sparked the Texas Revolution, and the Alamo became a symbol of that resistance. After killing most of the Alamo garrison, Mexican forces continued through the town of San Antonio de Bexar, setting fire to homes and abusing locals. The loss at the Alamo stirred a fire in the hearts of Texians and Tejanos. The subsequent victory of Texan forces at the Battle of San Jacinto solidified Texan independence and identity. Texan soldiers cried out “Remember the Alamo” in memory of their fallen compatriots. The brutality of Santa Anna’s forces in the wake of the Alamo perpetuated and intensified anti-Mexican sentiments among Texas’s Anglo population. The Alamo was yet another catalyst for tension during an immutable conflict between Mexico and Texas. Decades after the Alamo, Tejano sacrifices were ignored. The folklore, emphasizing a Texan defeat over inferior Mexicans during the subsequent Battle of San Jacinto and the Texas Revolution, shaped the attitudes of Texans. As a result, Texas landowners felt warranted in their mistreatment of Mexican laborers. This discrimination was not reserved only for Mexicans; it also extended to Mexican Texans who were thought of as being untrustworthy. Although the majority of Tejanos had sided with Texas during the revolution, they still sympathized with the Mexican cause. Many of them had friends and family members fighting for Mexico. Of course, the Alamo was not the lone agitator. AntiAnglo sentiment on the part of Mexicans and Santa Anna’s postrevolution assault on Texas borderlands further embittered Texans. The facts surrounding the battle itself remain a subject of debate. Accounts of the Alamo were told by the survivors on both sides and are engrossed with nationalistic folklore. In this sense, the Battle of the Alamo epitomizes the historically conflicted relationship between Texas and Mexico. George J. Fachner, Jr., and Ted Henken See also Aztlán; Borderlands; Cross-Frontier Contact; Ethnoviolence; La Raza; La Raza Unida Party; Mexican Americans; Mexico; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848); “Wetbacks” Further Readings
Campbell, R. 2003. Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Alaskan Natives, Legislation Concerning
Matovina, T. 1995. The Alamo Remembered: Tejano Accounts and Perspectives. Austin: University of Texas Press. Montejano, D. 1987. Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986. Austin: University of Texas Press.
ALASKAN NATIVES, LEGISLATION CONCERNING The United States has passed a number of laws related to Native Americans, some applying specifically to Alaska and others concerning Native Americans as a whole. The earliest of these, passed on May 17, 1884, was called the Organic Law and established a form of government, a set of laws, and education for all races. After the turn of the 20th century, the Native Allotment Act of 1906 provided homesteading parcels for Native Alaskans averaging 40 acres. Only 100 or so have been allotted. After Alaska became a territory in 1912, a state legislature was created and Juneau became the capital. In 1959, Alaska became a state. The Alaskan Native Leaders have been involved with the politics throughout the changes that have taken place in Alaska, from tribal in their beginnings to an international level today. Since 1924 with William L. Paul becoming the first Alaska Native elected to the territorial legislature, the Aboriginal Peoples of Alaska have played an increasing role in the creation and enforcement of laws concerning their people. The following paragraphs examine some of those laws. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. This bill decrees that Indigenous Peoples within the United States and its territories have U.S. citizenship, rights, and property. However, the Aleuts on the Pribilof Islands, St. George and St. Paul, lived in virtual servitude, forbidden to leave their islands. During World War II, the Aleuts were evacuated and sent to internment camps in Southeast Alaska, where they discovered the freedoms enjoyed by the Southeast Alaskan Natives and so sought assistance for their emancipation. Duck Stamp Act of 1934. This law required a federal license for the hunting of migratory birds and prohibited Alaska Natives from partaking in the right to hunt and gather eggs for their traditional foods due to the Canadian and U.S. migratory bird treaty. The latter
treaty was amended in 1996 to include Alaska Natives. Equal Rights Bill of February 16, 1944. In response to severe prejudicial treatment toward minorities, the Alaska Native Brotherhood and the related Sisterhood organization lobbied against racial discrimination. The bill called for “full and equal” rights for “all citizens.” Alaska Statehood, 1959. As part of the Alaskan Statehood Act, 103 million acres were allotted for federal land without regard for the indigenous tribal properties or hunting, fishing, and gathering areas. Land claims were filed with the Indian Claims Commission, implementing a freeze on the lands. International attention was aroused when this freeze affected the Trans-Alaska Pipeline project, and that expedited the negotiation process. More than 400 proponents from Native communities congregated, forming the Alaska Federation of Natives, to unify Alaska Natives’ voice and lobby for the Land Claims Bill. Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, December 18, 1971. In one fell swoop, Congress replaced tribalism with corporatism. Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) corporations were allotted $962.5 million and 44 million acres. The Natives were divided among 13 regions and 12 corporations, with the 13th region receiving monetary allotments rather than land. Natives possessing less than one-quarter Alaskan Native blood or born after 1971 were denied shareholder status unless they inherited shares. Inupiat Howard Rock formed the newspaper Tundra Times for the very purpose of informing the general public of this issue and other Alaskan Aboriginal issues. The Language Bills, June 9, 1972. State-operated schools are mandated to teach languages used by Indigenous Peoples such as Tlingit. The bill also established the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, which has been the leading center for the Eskimo and Athabaskan languages and has become a partner in the preservation of languages worldwide. Alaska National Interests Lands Conservation Act, December 2, 1980. Rural Alaskan residents were given preeminence concerning fish and game, for subsistence endeavors, over that of sport or commercial purposes.
Albanian Americans
Elizabeth Peratrovich Day, 1988. February 16 marks the commendation of Elizabeth Peratrovich, Tlingit civil rights leader and grand president of the Alaskan Native Sisterhood. She directed the campaign against racial prejudice and discrimination, and her leadership and inspirational speech affected the passage of the “equal rights” law. Alaska Native Veterans Bill, 1998. Veterans serving in the Vietnam War were unable to apply for lands prior to the 1971 Native Allotment deadline. Through this bill, veterans have applied for land parcels. The bill was amended in 2006. Pamela Rae Huteson See Appendix A See also Aleuts; Native Americans; Reservation System; Tlingit Further Readings
Boyle, Francis A. 2003. Proclamation for an Independent Nation. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Chance, Norman A. 1990. The Inupiat and Arctic Alaska: An Ethnography of Development. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt, Brace. Krauss, Michael E. 1974. “Alaskan Native Language Legislation.” International Journal of American Linguistics 40:150–152. Morgan, Lael. 1988. Art and Eskimo Power: The Life and Times of Alaskan Howard Rock. Fairbanks, AK: Epicenter. Thomas, Edward K., Sharon Olsen, and Wanda Culp, comps. 1991. A Recollection of Civil Rights Leader Elizabeth Peratrovich 1911–1958. Sponsored by Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, Alaska Native Brotherhood Grand Camp and Alaska Native Sisterhood Grand Camp, and Sealaska Corporation.
a change in its composition, the community has also been active in promoting the independence of the Albanian-inhabited region of Kosovo from Serbia. The foundations of the Albanian American community were laid in 1892 when seventeen young Albanian males settled in the United States. There was only a modest increase in Albanian immigration to the United States during the remainder of the 19th century, but the flow of Albanians then accelerated until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. During this period, most Albanians entered the United States using Turkish passports because Albania did not win its independence from the Ottoman Empire until 1912. Thus, it is difficult to determine precisely the size of the Albanian American community; however, by the time this first wave of immigration had run its course, there were an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Albanians in the United States. The first generation of Albanian immigrants was composed largely of Orthodox Christian and Muslim males. Most had emigrated for economic reasons or to escape military service, and many planned to return home after accumulating sufficient funds to improve their lives. These early arrivals were mainly of peasant origin or from families engaged in retail trade. They had only limited education and few skills; thus, they were employed as factory, restaurant, or construction workers.
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ALBANIAN AMERICANS Although the Albanian American community is relatively small in size and recent in origin, it has at various times during the 20th century played a significant role in the history of Albania. Most recently, reflecting
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Albanian Americans
By the time Albania proclaimed its independence from the Ottoman Empire in November 1912, the Albanian American community had emerged as the preeminent center of the Albanian national movement and would assume a crucial role in the preservation of Albania’s independence and territorial integrity when the country fell under foreign occupation during World War I. The growth in the influence and prestige of Albanian Americans during the first decade of the 20th century owes much to the leadership provided by Fan S. Noli (1882–1965) and Faik Konitza (1876–1942). Today, both of these men are regarded as icons of the Albanian American community. In 1908, Noli was among the founders of the Albanian Orthodox Church in the United States and served, with several interruptions, as its spiritual leader until his death in 1965. In 1909, Noli and Konitza were the prime movers in the establishment of Dielli (The Sun), the oldest continuously published Albanian language newspaper in the world. Three years later, Noli and Konitza joined with others to form the Pan-Albanian Federation of America (Vatra). Because Vatra supplanted virtually all existing Albanian American patriotic societies, it was viewed as the authoritative voice of the community both in the United States and abroad. Noli and Konitza, both of whom received degrees from Harvard University in 1912, are also revered for their contributions to Albanian culture. The chaos that engulfed Albania during World War I provided Albanian Americans with a unique opportunity to participate in shaping their homeland’s destiny at a critical point in its history. Under the leadership of Vatra, Albanian Americans between 1917 and 1920 raised nearly $200,000 to underwrite, in both Europe and the United States, lobbying and propaganda efforts that were instrumental in preserving Albania’s independence following the war. In addition, they contributed $223,000 in 1920 to help balance the budget of the restored Albanian government. Between 1919 and 1922, the Albanian American community also worked to secure the diplomatic recognition of Albania by the United States—a goal achieved in July 1922. As a reward for their valued services to Albania, Albanian Americans in 1921 were granted the right to elect one member of the Albanian parliament. Noli was chosen to fill this seat, and in June 1924 he served as prime minister of a short-lived progressive government. The overthrow of the Noli government in December 1924 marked the end of the active participation of the
Albanian American community in the political life of the homeland. At this time, the Albanian American community experienced some significant changes. During the 1920s, an estimated 10,000 Albanians returned to the homeland to establish small businesses or to acquire farmland. Others went back to marry or to bring their families to the United States. In the United States, the character of the Albanian American community experienced change as the original settlers began to marry and raise families. Owing to a shortage of Albanian women, however, there were a considerable number of mixed marriages, especially among Muslim Albanian males. For most Albanian Americans, family and personal concerns now overshadowed their interest in political issues in Albania. The adverse impact of the Great Depression also diverted attention away from external political concerns. Albanian Americans, however, continued to manifest their national identity and pride through membership in Vatra and the Albanian Orthodox Church in the United States, as well as through participation in community social and cultural organizations. The invasion and annexation of Albania by Italy in April 1939 served to revitalize the Albanian American community under the leadership of Vatra and, subsequently, the Free Albania Organization, which was established in 1941. Both organizations sought to ensure that Albania’s independence and territorial integrity would be restored after World War II. During the war, Albanian Americans established the Albanian Relief Fund to provide food, clothing, and medical supplies for their compatriots. Albanian Americans, however, were divided in their opinions regarding the postwar Albanian communist regime, with Vatra opposing the new government and the Free Albania Organization supporting it. The end of World War II marked another major watershed in the history of the Albania American community—the beginning of a second wave of immigration from Albania that would continue into the 1960s. This cohort consisted mainly of political refugees associated with the anti-communist resistance organizations and those fleeing Albania following the establishment of the oppressive communist regime. It was more diverse in its composition, encompassing Albanians from all regions of the country and from each of the country’s three religions: Islam, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism. This group was better educated than its predecessor, with high school and university graduates well represented.
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Most Albanian Americans initially viewed them with suspicion or hostility owing to their political activism, but by the 1970s they had been largely integrated into the community. The immediate post–World War II period saw further changes within the Albanian American community. Because many Albanian Americans had prospered during the war, they began to move from the urban neighborhoods of cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Detroit, where they had been clustered, to the suburbs. An increasing number of young Albanian Americans (mostly males but including some females) were enrolling in colleges and universities and embarking on careers in business and the professions. These educated younger generation Albanian Americans, along with those who had served in the U.S. armed forces, tended to marry nonAlbanians and move to diverse regions of the country. Thus, the Albanian American community was losing its cohesiveness during the 1960s when a new and large wave of Albanians began arriving in the United States. This group consisted of ethnic Albanians from Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, and other regions of the former Yugoslav Federal Republic. The new arrivals were mainly Roman Catholic or Muslim, and they were the first significant cohort of Albanian immigrants who had not lived within the boundaries of Albania. They were mostly political and economic refugees who had migrated to the United States to escape the oppression and discrimination to which they had been subjected in Yugoslavia. Although the new arrivals settled throughout the United States, they were concentrated most heavily in New York, Michigan, and Illinois and have become the dominant Albanian element in these states. In a relatively short time, many became successful in pursuits such as real estate, food and lodging services, and construction in addition to medicine and the law. During the 1990s, this group gave generously of its time and wealth to secure the independence of Kosovo and was instrumental in the establishment of the “Albanian lobby” to achieve this goal. This development marked the beginning of the community’s organized involvement in U.S. politics and ensured that its views on issues of concern to Albanian Americans would be effectively presented in the nation’s capital. With the outbreak of hostilities between the Albanians of Kosovo and Serbia in 1999, Albanian Americans raised several million dollars to equip the pro-independence Kosovo Liberation Army, and a contingent of Albanian Americans formed the
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“Atlantic Brigade” and served in Kosovo during the conflict. The demise of the Albanian communist regime in 1991 sparked the most recent wave of Albanian immigration to the United States. This group included mainly political asylum seekers, recipients of “green cards,” U.S. citizens and their families who had been unable to return to the United States in 1939, and Albanian visitors to the United States who failed to return home. These most recent immigrants encompass a broad range of ages and socioeconomic categories, and their ties with the Albanian American community vary widely. According to U.S. Census data, in 2000 there were approximately 116,000 persons of Albanian ancestry residing in the United States. This compares to 2007 estimates of 3.2 million people in Albania. Albanian American community leaders, however, believe that there are likely two to three times that number because many Albanians have emigrated to the United States from countries other than Albania and there has been a high percentage of mixed marriages in the community since the 1950s. Approximately 90% of Albanian Americans reside in states east of the Mississippi River, with their greatest concentrations being in New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. Nicholas C. Pano See also Assimilation; Balkans; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Muslim Americans; Roman Catholics; Turkish Americans Further Readings
“Albanians.” 1980. Pp. 223–228 in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, edited by Stephan Thernstrom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Federal Writers Project. 1939. The Albanian Struggle in the Old World and New. Boston, MA: The Writer. Jurgens, Jane. 1995. “Albanian Americans.” Pp. 43–54 in Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, edited by Rudolph J. Vecoli, Judy Galens, Anna J. Sheets, and Robyn V. Young. Detroit, MI: Gale Group. Nagi, Dennis L. 1989. The Albanian America Odyssey. New York: AMS Press.
ALEUTS The arrival of the Aleuts was an important event in the earliest migrations of nomadic hunters to the North
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American continent. They have been the subject of much study. To what ethnicity group are they more related? When, where, and how did they arrive at the Aleutian Chain. Various theories have been developed in response to these questions. The treeless volcanic Aleutian Archipelagos span more than 1,000 miles from the mainland of Alaska and southwestward toward Russia, the average annual temperature is 30 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and winds are nearly constant at 10 to 20 miles per hour. This climate molded a unique people who were able to survive using limited resources. The Aleutian Islands and weather today are fairly similar to conditions found by Russian explorers in 1741, but the Aleuts have undergone manifold changes to their habitat, religion, clothing, and general growth as a people since then, as described in this entry.
Mysteries of Migration The “Aleut problem,” as brought forth by Roza G. Liapunova, for years has perplexed anthropologists. The Aleuts claim that they traveled along the islands coming from Kamchatka Island in Russia, making settlements, and ceasing their eastward migration on confrontations with another people (perhaps in the Tlingit territory). Yet excavations on ancient Aleutian campsites reveal that the older camps started in the east, with increasingly newer campsites westward.
It is generally agreed that the Aleuts stemmed from the Eskimo/Yupik family, yet on closer examination of the ancient Aleut skulls, they seem to resemble those of the Tlingits to the east, the Evenk of Cisbaikalia on the Asian Continent, and even Sioux Native Americans. Another point of ponder is the two periods of prehistoric Aleut art, with the earlier period being more complex and bearing a definite “Dorset culture” influence on harpoons and spears. Scholars speculate that the Aleuts arrived in Alaska approximately 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Although they may have still been part of the Eskimo/Yupik family when entering the North American Continent, there is also the possibility that the separation took place prior to migrating through the Beringia. Approximately 6,000 years ago, the Aleuts became their own race, as contended by Dennis H. O’Rourke and colleagues, their claims grounded in their research on mitochondria DNA. Finally, approximately 8,000 years ago, the Aleuts made their home on the Aleutian Chain. With one campsite more than 8,000 years old and another approximately 4,000 years old, the community of Nikolski on the Island of Ananiuliak may very well be the oldest community in the world.
Aleut Prehistoric Lifestyle The isolation on these foggy, rainy, and tundra islands honed the talents of the Aleuts not only to survive but also to flourish. They excelled in boat crafting; their kayaks were fashioned from driftwood and mammal skin, with bone and stone joints, making them not only flexible but also the most unique of water vessels. The Aleuts were adept at not only navigating the rarely calm ocean waves but also hunting and fishing within these vessels. The Aleut weaving skills are highly praised, with their grass-woven baskets (both ancient and contemporary) being sought after by museums and private collectors. These maritime people were of a hierarchical society with a chief within each house as well as a main island chief, nobles, common people, and slaves (for those who could afford them). Within the marriage structure, both polyandry and polygamy could be found. There were winter camps with subterranean houses. From spring to fall, the Aleuts made constant trips to various island camps for hunting/fishing and gathering activities that created their subsistence economy. Parkas were made from sewn bird skins. The winter months found the Aleuts back at their winter
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camp, where there was time for artistic weaving activities as well as gear making for the upcoming year. This was also a time for various potlatch-type festivities.
The Great Russian Fur Rush The interpersonal relations of the Europeans and Aleuts started in 1741 when kayaks approached the Russian ship, the St. Paul. Early reports state that the Aleuts gave the Russians artifacts with bird motifs, but it is surmised that these maritime hunters thought that the Russians were spirits. During the second Russian voyage in 1743, the Unangan people (residents of the Atka region call themselves Unangas) were given the name Aleuts; the southern Inuits/Yupiks were also called Aleuts, and their interpretation of this name is Alutiiqs. The evidence of the abundance of fur on the archipelagos of Alaska brought merchant ships and fur traders, with Russian settlements starting in 1784. When the flood of newcomers entered the Aleutian Island territories, increasing negative interactions began to take place. In one village, after witnessing the treatment of their fellow peoples by the Russians on other islands, the women and children committed mass suicide by jumping off a cliff to avoid similar atrocities. During the years 1763 and 1764, four sailing vessels were destroyed by the Indigenous Peoples of the islands, and this brought retaliations by the Russians, with entire villages being destroyed. Due to increasing difficulty in importing and keeping laborers, the Russians started training Creoles (part native and part Russian) and later full-blooded Aleuts. This resulted in the Aleuts beginning to learn trades and even becoming priests.
The U.S. Government Takes Over In 1786, Gerassim Pribilof was sent by the Russian Fur Company to search for two seal breeding islands that the Aleuts spoke of as being a great distance from them. During 1787 and 1788, the Pribilof Islands of St. Paul and St. George were named. The Aleuts experienced a serf-type relationship, with the Russians as the landowners. When the Americans assumed the lands of Alaska in 1867, the Aleuts of the Pribilof Islands became subjects of the U.S. government. The Pribilof Islands received new houses to replace the ramshackle ones and also received medical attention due to the government’s control of the seal business.
Aleutian child, 1938. During the first half of the 20th century, the population of the Aleutian Islands was sparse, consisting mainly of Aleuts and a few Russians and Russian Aleuts. The arrival and settlement of nomadic hunters to the Aleutian islands was an important event in the earliest migrations to the North American continent, although the exact path and origin of the Aleuts remain in dispute among scholars. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USW33-029784-C.
To keep costs down, during part of the year, the Pribilof inhabitants worked without pay, being recompensed with food (which at times could be regulated by the productiveness of the people). When they were paid, it was “near-starvation wages,” as reported by Dorothy K. Jones (e.g., a mid-1940s salary was $700 per year for an adult or $20 for a teenager). In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln declared that slaves in the U.S. South be set free, yet until the early 1960s government agents enjoyed a sovereign power concerning the Pribilof Aleut workers and their families. They were told what they could or could not buy and whether or not they could leave the island or have their relatives come to visit from outside of the island. In 1942 came the World War II Japanese invasion of Attu Island on the Aleutian Chain of Alaska, resulting in 42 villagers becoming prisoners of war in Japan. In addition, the U.S. government evacuated 881 Aleuts to “duration camps” in the panhandle of southeast Alaska. Both resettlements resulted in poor living conditions, sickness, and even death. Many of the Aleuts in duration camps went to work outside of
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the camps. Anatoly Lekanof recalled that for most of the children, it was an exciting time of exploration because this was the first time they were off the Aleutian Islands. During this time, word of the unfair treatment of the Aleuts was disseminated. In addition, the Aleuts became more politically oriented and started fighting for their rights. Organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians and the Alaska Native Brotherhood campaigned for the reform of conditions of the Native Pribilof inhabitants.
Contemporary Aleut Americans Life for the Aleuts is drastically different today from what it was in its earlier history. Subsistence foods and activities have continued to be a part of the Aleut life; however, the gathering and hunting/fishing times (as well as the right to engage in these activities) are now regulated by international, federal, and state laws. This has resulted in various degrees of subsistence activities for both rural and urban Natives supplementing purchased food. The mode of acquiring subsistence food is now implemented with rifles, aluminum boats and outboards, and other purchased gear. After more than 200 years, the Russian Orthodox Church has become a very integral part of the Aleut identity. Manufactured clothing has all but replaced traditional Aleut attire with the exception of traditional affairs. With the Unangan people, as with the other indigenous cultures in Alaska, alcohol, drugs, and mental disorders are leaving their mark on many who are still dealing with the history of trauma against their people—from cultural genocide attempts, massive epidemics that nearly wiped out entire villages, slavery, intense prejudice, and drastic social and economic changes. “Cultural competence,” according to the Center for Mental Health Services, is “the respect … of cultural groups, their histories, traditions, beliefs, and value systems” and is gaining popularity concerning the healing process of traumatized people. Progressive activities are being facilitated to help heal and build community, including those from the Eastern Aleutian Tribes Behavioral Health Clinic, where elders and youth are getting together and making a difference in each other’s lives. The Aleuts, once isolated, are now connected to the world through education, radio, television, and the Internet. They are rediscovering their culture, language,
and history by using everything from culture camps to Internet Web sites. On the Internet, a contemporary Aleut can find the Unangam Tunuu language and download the Tanuu font. Aleut artists’ Web sites show woven baskets, carvings, and other Native artifacts, whereas other Web sites offer Aleut recipes such as fermented fur seal flipper. The Aleuts are an integrated modern people and are proud of their Unangan/Unangas ancestry. Pamela Rae Huteson See Appendix A See also Alaskan Natives, Legislation Concerning; Colonialism; Emancipation Proclamation; Native Americans; Russia
Further Readings
Jones, Dorothy Knee. 1980. Pribilof Aleuts under U.S. Rule. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Langdon, Steve J., ed. 1983. Proceedings of the Alaskan Marine Archeology Workshop. Sitka: University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska Sea Grant College Program. Lekanof, Anatoly. Aleut Internment [audio recording]. Available from http://www.alaskool.org Liapunova, Roza G. 1996. Essays on the Ethnography of the Aleuts (at the end of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century), translated by J. Shelest. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press. Naske, Claus-M. and Herman E. Slotnick. 1987. Alaska; A History of the 49th State. 2nd ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. O’Rourke, Dennis H., M. Geoffrey Hayes, and Shawn W. Carlyle. 2000. “Ancient DNA Studies in Physical Anthropology.” Pp. 217–242 in Annual Review of Anthropology. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews. U.S. Congress. 1889. House Subcommittee on the Study of Seal Fisheries of Alaska. House Report No. 3883, 50th Congress, 2nd session, p. 153. Worl, Rosita. 1982. A Synopsis of Alaska Native Subsistence Economies and Projection of Research Needs [subsistence database, Phase II]. Anchorage: University of Alaska, Arctic Environmental Information and Data Center.
ALIEN LAND ACTS The collective term Alien Land Acts refers to individual state laws passed during the early 20th century that limited the ability of aliens who were ineligible for citizenship to own land or, in many cases, to participate in
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long-term leases. Through court rulings and immigration statutes, citizenship was generally restricted to Whites during this period, and anti-Asian resentment was strong in the U.S. West. The laws were implicitly anti-Asian and specifically affected Japanese Americans who owned agricultural land. Revisions strengthening the laws continued throughout World War II until the Alien Land Acts became nonenforceable as a result of a federal court decision after the war. Although the Alien Land Acts were in effect for only three to four decades, they have had a lasting impact on Asians’ abilities both to earn wealth and to gain acceptance in U.S. society, as outlined in this entry.
Historical Context The Alien Land Acts emerged at a time in U.S. history when questions over citizenship, property ownership, and slots in the labor market were being hotly contested along racial and national lines. This was the era of manifest destiny when Europeans and European Americans were migrating to what is now the U.S. West with the sense that it was the United States’s destiny to own these territories. It was a time not only of rapid U.S. land acquisition but also of a racialized vision of U.S. civilization that was designed for the benefit of European descendants. Native Americans and Mexicans were already living on the land that would become the western and southwestern United States, and slavery of African Americans had contributed to the creation of European wealth in the United States. Nevertheless, these groups were excluded from the class of “true Americans” and from the entitlements that followed. One manifestation of this way of thinking was the Naturalization Act of 1790, which preserved the right of naturalized citizenship for “free White persons” only. Although it was created to settle questions of property ownership and citizenship rights in the context of slavery, this act formed the basis for later immigration laws such as the Immigration Act of 1924. This law was created to settle emerging immigration debates by developing a national origins quota system that disproportionately favored Whites; the same act enforced the exclusion of persons ineligible for citizenship. Although the wording of the law was held to be nondiscriminatory because it did not specifically target Asians for exclusion, the impact of the law had this specifically racial implication. Public support for such immigration laws was strong, and in the U.S. West this support took place in
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an environment of strong anti-Asian sentiment. In 1882, the United States passed the only law in its history targeting one particular nationality—the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. At the time, the Chinese were widely viewed as a degenerate uncivilized population. They were the targets of mass resentment among European descendants in the western states due to the visibility of Chinese laborers in the rail and mining industries. Although the Chinese Exclusion Act effectively barred immigration from China until 1965, it had the result of increasing immigration from other Asian nations, particularly Japan. Although popular support for a similar Japanese exclusion act was strong, U.S.–Japan diplomatic relations and the development of Japan as an imperial world power meant that such an act never passed. Nativists then turned to the old formula restricting citizenship and its benefits to “free White persons,” supporting laws that barred aliens who were ineligible for citizenship from owning or leasing land—the Alien Land Acts. California was the first state to pass an Alien Land Act in 1913. Within a decade, similar laws were passed in Arizona, Washington, Louisiana, New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon.
The Asian Response The creation of the Alien Land Acts spurred varying responses among Asians in these states. Some Asians found ways to circumvent the laws, making use of legal loopholes, the lack of enforcement in some areas, and public indifference to Asian land ownership in regions where land was more readily available and so less contested. A significant legal loophole stated that deeds could be transferred to children of aliens, who by being born in the United States were entitled to citizenship. Many states responded to this practice by tightening control over deed transfers and attempting to regulate who could live on and make use of the land. Another response to the Alien Land Acts was a series of court cases seeking to classify Asians as Whites. Although this move sounds surprising, given the entrenchment of racial categories of White and Asian in the United States today, during the 1920s these boundaries were far from clear. Dozens of these cases were being considered at the time, and two made their way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the 1922 case of Takao Ozawa v. U.S., Takao Ozawa argued that he should be entitled to U.S. citizenship on the basis of his moral character, his support of U.S.
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ideals, and his assimilation into U.S. society. The Supreme Court rejected his claim, arguing that because he was not White under the accepted scientific classification system of the time, he could not become a U.S. citizen. The U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind case one year later made use of the same racial classification system used against Ozawa, attempting to demonstrate that Thind in fact fell into the scientific classification of whiteness. The Supreme Court still held that Thind could not become a citizen; despite these classifications, “the common man” would not consider Asian Indians as White, the court stated, and so Thind could not claim citizenship on these grounds. The impact of these court cases reached far beyond the individuals whose racial and national identities were in question. On the court creation of White and Asian as racial categories, and based on the Alien Land Acts, many Asians who had already been naturalized were stripped of their citizenship and, as a result, of their land rights. In some states, this also meant being stripped of a license to practice various professions. The land that had been legally deeded or leased to Asians prior to the Ozawa and Thind cases was seized by the government and sold to Whites.
Continuing Impact The Alien Land Acts received varying levels of enforcement and attention during the era between the 1920s and World War II, when they took on a special relevance for Japanese Americans. Following the same logic that justified the Alien Land Acts and the resulting ineligibility for citizenship, many Japanese Americans in the western United States, citizens and noncitizens alike, were interned during World War II. During this period, Alien Land Laws were tightened in all states except Washington. Given the short period of time in which Japanese were able to sell their homes and other assets, many possessions were again sold to Whites at far below market value. The Alien Land Acts facilitated this transfer of land, and racist sentiment in the hysteria of the war solidified public support of the Alien Land Acts. The Alien Land Acts were rendered nonenforceable by the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, which ended racial requirements for citizenship. However, decades of enforcement have had a lasting effect on the Asian community in the United States. One significant impact is the gap in wealth along racial lines. Although Asians are close to economic parity with Whites in the United States, they still lag behind in
terms of home ownership and other measures of wealth. Much of this inequality has to do with historical realities such as the Alien Land Acts, which have facilitated the growth of White wealth via property ownership. For centuries in the United States, White Americans encountered no racial barriers to property ownership and in many cases benefited from direct transfers of wealth from non-Whites. As a result, White Americans have had a longer time to accumulate and consolidate their wealth. This wealth affects not only their personal holdings but also their access to good education, employment opportunities, and continued investment among generations. Another important legacy of the Alien Land Acts is the continuing idea that Asians cannot be assimilated into U.S. society. Despite time and generations of residence in the United States, this logic continues to argue that Asians are a foreign people and so not fully American. Tied deeply to beliefs in a binary and permanent difference between the East and the West, the Alien Land Acts were just one manifestation of this line of thinking. Further evidence can be seen in the beating death of Vincent Chin after an encounter with unemployed White workers in Detroit, in the jailing of Wen Ho Lee on what turned out to be unfounded accusations of spying activity, and in treatment of Arab Americans and South Asians after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Although the Alien Land Acts have been rendered ineffectual since 1952 and have been cleared entirely from the books of most states, the logic on which they were forged and the implications of their enforcement have had lasting effects for Asians in the United States today. Meghan A. Burke See Appendix A See also Asian Americans; Chin, Vincent; Chinese Americans; Chinese Exclusion Act; Immigration, U.S.; Internment Camps; Japanese Americans; McCarran-Walter Act of 1952; Orientalism
Further Readings
“The Alien Land Laws: A Reappraisal.” 1947. Yale Law Journal 56:1017–1036. Lui, Meizhu. 2006. The Color of Wealth: The Story behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide. New York: New Press. Molina, Natalia. 2006. “Inverting Racial Logic: How Public Health Discourse and Standards Racialized the Meanings of Japanese and Mexican in Los Angeles, 1910–1924.”
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Pp. 40–61 in Racial Transformations: Latinos and Asians Remaking the United States, edited by Nicholas De Genova. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ngai, Mae M. 2004. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
AMERICAN APARTHEID The book American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass was coauthored by Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton and published in 1993 by Harvard University Press. It was written at the height of the debate on the “urban underclass,” which focused on whether U.S. cities had come to house a large population of poor families detached from labor markets, alienated from social institutions, and prone to crime. During the 1970s and 1980s, poverty became more concentrated within minority neighborhoods and rates of violence accelerated in a
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wave of drug abuse that stemmed from the invention of crack, a cheap but very addictive form of cocaine. Prior to American Apartheid, explanations of urban poverty focused on two competing theories. Conservatives such as Charles Murray blamed the U.S. welfare system. He argued that by providing generous open-ended benefits to poor mothers, welfare discouraged marriage, promoted unwed childbearing, and discouraged work. Liberals such as William Julius Wilson argued that the transformation of the urban economy created the underclass. By replacing highpaying jobs in manufacturing with a two-tiered service economy, the transformation created new employment opportunities for middle-class minorities but reduced them for poor and working-class men, lowering the number of “marriageable males” and fomenting unwed childbearing, welfare use, and a growing concentration of poverty. Neither explanation took account of the fact that, despite the passage of civil rights legislation during the 1960s, the United States remained highly segregated on the basis of race. In American Apartheid,
Public housing in the Bedford Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. The neighborhood name is an extension of the name of the Village of Bedford, expanded to include the area of Stuyvesant Heights. The Bedford community contained one of the oldest free African American communities in the United States. Many people consider the area to be the focus of African American life in Brooklyn, similar to what Harlem is to Manhattan. Throughout the urban United States, one ethnic or racial group typically dominates a neighborhood as described here, and this pattern has been largely unchanged for decades. Source: iStockphoto.
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American Aparth heid d
Massey and Denton drew on a decade’s worth of research to document the continued reality of racial segregation in U.S. cities and to demonstrate its negative effects on groups such as African Americans and Caribbean-origin Hispanics. To conduct their study, they assembled detailed data on the racial/ethnic composition of neighborhoods in the nation’s fifty largest metropolitan areas plus ten other areas with large Hispanic concentrations. They also developed a new measurement model that assessed segregation simultaneously across five geographic dimensions and carefully surveyed prior research to document the social construction of the ghetto historically. Their analysis showed that Blacks and Whites were not always highly segregated from one another in U.S. cities and that before 1870 racial segregation was no more severe than that between Germans, Irish, Poles, Italians, and native Whites. During the late 19th century, however, urban Black populations began to grow through rural–urban migration. As the number of Blacks in cities rose, higher levels of segregation were deliberately imposed on them by Whites using a variety of formal and informal mechanisms that shifted over time. The legal designation of White and Black neighborhoods through legislation gave way after 1917 to a period when segregation was enforced through racial violence, which during the 1920s gave way to new forms of institutionalized discrimination based on deed restrictions, covenants, and prohibitions on renting or selling to “unwanted population groups.” During the 1950s, the federal government itself became directly involved in promoting segregation through its Federal Housing Administration lending policies, urban renewal programs, and public housing construction subsidies. By 1960, high levels of Black–White segregation were universal in the urban United States, and because the Fair Housing Act of 1968 had been stripped of its enforcement mechanisms as part of a compromise arranged to secure its passage, few changes were observed from 1970 through 1990. Black segregation remained at uniquely high levels in the metropolitan United States. Indeed, Massey and Denton identified a subset of metropolitan areas where Blacks were highly segregated on at least four of five dimensions simultaneously—areas the authors labeled “hypersegregated.” Contrary to what Wilson and others believed, middle-class Blacks were not leaving the ghetto in large numbers and Black–White segregation did not decline as socioeconomic status rose.
Massey and Denton argued that a racially segregated society could not be a racially equal society because if African Americans were denied access to housing markets on the basis of race, they were also denied access to critical resources that were correlated with housing, and thus distributed through housing markets, such as education, safety and security, housing wealth, network connections, role models, and insurance costs. They also showed that rising Black poverty (caused by the economic transformations described by Wilson), combined with ongoing racial segregation (caused by continued prejudice and discrimination), produced the remarkable concentration of urban poverty during the 1970s and 1980s. In the absence of racial segregation, the structural transformation of the urban economy would have harmed Black Americans, to be sure, but it would not have had such a disastrous effect on the communities they inhabited to create a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty. In American Apartheid, Massey and Denton sought to move scholarly and popular debate away from arguments about whether it was race or class that produced urban poverty to focus instead on how race and class interacted through housing and job markets to perpetuate disadvantage. They sought to reinforce Wilson’s emphasis on neighborhoods rather than the welfare system as the principal mechanism through which poverty was produced and reproduced in the United States during the late 20th century. Massey and Denton argued that even as economic policies were enacted to promote employment, raise wages, and reduce welfare use, racial policies also needed to be pursued to reduce discrimination in housing and, thus, bring about the desegregation of U.S. society. The specific policies they recommended were actually embraced by President Bill Clinton’s first secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Henry Cisneros, but after the Republican party gained control of the Senate in 1994, these antidiscrimination efforts were cut back and defunded. As a result of this lack of enforcement, Blacks and Whites continue to be more segregated in the United States than in other multiracial societies such as Canada, Britain, and Brazil. The only other case where racial Black–White segregation has persisted at such high levels over such a prolong period is the Union of South Africa under apartheid, underscoring the grounding of the book’s title in reality rather than hyperbole. Douglas S. Massey
Ame ericcan Dile emma, An
See also Blockbusting; Brown v. Board of Education; Discrimination, Housing; Housing Audits; School Desegregation; School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning; Segregation Further Readings
Fuchs, Lawrence H. 1994. “American Apartheid” [review]. American Journal of Sociology 99:1342–1343. Massey, Douglas S. 2004. “Segregation and Stratification: A Biosocial Perspective.” Du Bois Review 1(1):7–25. Massey, Douglas S. 2005. “Racial Discrimination in Housing: A Moving Target.” Social Problems 52:148–151. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
AMERICAN DILEMMA, AN Emerging from a grant authorized by the Carnegie Corporation seeking an objective and comprehensive study of the Negro in the United States, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and American Democracy is a groundbreaking examination of Black–White race relations in the United States. Prior to the publication of An American Dilemma in 1944, the predominant theory of race relations built on the work of Robert Park and the “Chicago School” that viewed race relations as a process of competition and conflict that would ultimately be resolved once the minority group first accommodated and finally assimilated to the majority culture. An American Dilemma challenged the assumptions of the Chicago School by focusing on the responsibility of the majority population (in this case White Americans) in exacerbating racial tensions and placing the solution for racial inequality in their hands. Compiled from exhaustive research beginning in 1939 (and continuing despite the outbreak of World War II), An American Dilemma was published in 1944 and immediately became the inspiration for American liberalism’s approach toward rectifying racial inequity over the next 30 years.
Project Beginnings Credited with instigating the project that would produce An American Dilemma, Newton D. Baker, a Carnegie Corporation board member, suggested that a solution to the “Negro problem” required attention to
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the condition of Blacks in the North as well as in the South, and in October 1935 he proposed that the Carnegie Corporation sponsor a study on the condition of urban Blacks. Rather than selecting from the ranks of U.S. social scientists to direct their study, the Carnegie Corporation board sought a scholar personally unconnected to the nation’s racial history and, therefore, theoretically free from charges of ideological bias in his or her findings. The board selected Gunnar Myrdal, a social economist at the University of Stockholm and a member of the Swedish Senate, as the study’s general director, primarily because Sweden’s history was free from imperialism or colonialism, a fact that would reassure African Americans that the resulting study would be completely impartial. Ironically, Baker and the other board members (many of whom disapproved of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and government-controlled social programs) overlooked Myrdal’s belief in the power of government-legislated social reform, a particularly liberal worldview that would significantly influence the study’s direction as well as its final conclusions.
Research, Methodology, and Findings Myrdal, on accepting the commission, immediately began familiarizing himself with the existing scholarship on U.S. race relations. He visited the U.S. South on a two-month “exploratory journey” to develop his own personal understanding of U.S. race relations. In 1939, he began planning the study, collaborating with dozens of noted U.S. social scientists, including Robert Park, Charles S. Johnson, Ruth Benedict, Franz Boas, Ralph Bunche, W. E. B. Du Bois, Melville Herskovits, and E. Franklin Frazier. Following these consultations, Myrdal largely rejected the isolated focus on urban and northern African Americans originally envisioned by Baker and instead made an already ambitious project even more so by widening the scope of the study to understand all aspects of African American life in the United States and to document the opinions held by the U.S. populace regarding the proper status and treatment given to African Americans. Understanding the impact that the study’s findings would have on the African American community, leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League, and the Commission of Interracial Cooperation all gave considerable research assistance to the project, including
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providing unfettered access to their organizations’ archives. Myrdal, seeking the input of a Black social scientist, selected E. Franklin Frazier as the primary reviewer of the in-progress chapters. Frazier, originally skeptical of Myrdal’s ability as a foreigner to decipher the peculiarities of U.S. race relations, generally approved of the submitted chapters and Myrdal’s assessments. Myrdal’s continued leadership of the project fell into doubt following Germany’s invasion of Denmark and Norway in April 1940 as Myrdal and his wife, Alva, contemplated returning to Sweden, believing that if Germany invaded Sweden, it would be their civic duty to provide their services to the Swedish government. Myrdal openly considered abandoning the study but was ultimately convinced by close friend and research assistant Richard Sterner (who believed that only Myrdal could do proper justice to the final written report) to remain project director. In Myrdal’s physical absence, Samuel Stouffer, a University of Chicago sociologist, became acting director, but Myrdal continued writing the manuscript for An American Dilemma, traveling between Sweden and the United States before completing the initial draft in September 1942. However, aside from the sheer magnitude of the project’s research, which compiled existing published and unpublished studies, new research on African American communities, an exhaustive analysis of statistical data on all aspects of African American life (including but not restricted to income, employment, education, social life, and political activity), and qualitative interviews (many of which were conducted by Myrdal with individuals who were unaware that he was working on a study of the Negro in the United States), what distinguished An American Dilemma from prior examinations of race in the United States was a unique thesis that focused on the attitudes of White Americans toward African Americans to reveal a conflict between the ideals of the “American creed” largely held by most White Americans and the reality of racial discrimination in the United States. Myrdal began by challenging William Graham Sumner’s construction of “folkways” and “mores,” dismissing them as overly simplistic and static explanations for social interactions, particularly when dealing with industrialized societies. Instead, Myrdal framed the discussion of race relations as a conflict between the “beliefs” of individuals, or how they encountered everyday life, and “valuations,” or the ideals of how life should be. It is this conflict within
White Americans that Myrdal identified as the “American dilemma”—the disjunction between the ideals of the American creed and the treatment of African Americans by White Americans that violated those ideals. It was during his stays in Sweden, while observing the Swedish government’s capitulation to Nazi German demands, that Myrdal began formulating the assessment of the American creed, which he defined largely as a high moral platform built on ideas of equal justice, political freedom, and civic duty. The remaining text of An American Dilemma documents the status of African American life in terms of racialized status, population and migration patterns, economic conditions, employment, political activity, confrontations with the justice system, access to education, religious institutions, and the leadership of the African American community. In each instance, it documents how the most significant obstacle to African American equality has been the failure of the majority White population to live up to the American creed. In the final chapter, “America again at the Crossroads,” Myrdal reiterated the opportunity presented by the impending victory in World War II for the nation to rectify its prior failures. Citing the lost promise of Reconstruction following the end of the Civil War, Myrdal urged a far more active role for social engineering and governmental involvement and a rejection of laissez-faire policies when addressing racial inequality. In addition to the publication of An American Dilemma, the Carnegie Corporation initially scheduled nine monographs arising from the research for individual publication, but ultimately it printed only four: The Myth of the Negro Past (by Melville Herskovits), The Negro’s Share (by Richard Sterner), Patterns of Negro Segregation (by Charles S. Johnson), and Characteristics of the American Negro (edited by Otto Klineberg). Lawrence Hashima See also African Americans; Boas, Franz; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Frazier, E. Franklin; Harlem Renaissance; Johnson, Charles S.; Park, Robert E. Further Readings
Herskovits, Melville J. 1941. The Myth of the Negro Past. New York: Harper. Johnson, Charles S. 1943. Patterns of Negro Segregation. New York: Harper.
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Klineberg, Otto, ed. 1944. Characteristics of the American Negro. New York: Harper. Myrdal, Gunnar. 1944. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York: Harper. Sterner, Richard. 1943. The Negro’s Share. New York: Harper.
AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT The American Indian Movement (AIM) emerged from the broader context of ethnic/racial activism during the civil rights era in the United States. AIM was founded in 1968 on the streets of Minneapolis to monitor police harassment and abuse. From this original mandate, AIM quickly evolved into a civil rights organization fighting for Native American rights. This entry reviews its history and contributions.
Early Issues Amid the many local struggles in which AIM members participated across the country, one major protest event drew national and international attention. In 1969, the group “Indians of All Tribes” began its occupation of Alcatraz Island. During the 19-month occupation, a major spokesperson was Dennis Banks, a founder of AIM. That same year, AIM founded an Indian Health Board in Minneapolis, the first urbanbased health care center for American Indians in the nation. After the Alcatraz occupation, AIM chapters were founded across the United States in major cities with significant Native American populations. During this time, some of AIM’s most ardent leaders, such as Russell Means and John Trudell, were recruited to its ranks. Throughout these early years, AIM members expanded their vision for social justice by attacking inequalities on numerous fronts. For example, AIM occupied abandoned property at the naval air station near Minneapolis to focus attention on Indian education. In 1970, a legal rights center was founded to assist in alleviating indigenous legal issues. In a series of demonstrations, AIM members publicly addressed Native American grievances. For example, on July 4, 1971, AIM members held demonstrations atop Mount Rushmore. On Thanksgiving Day, protesters took over a replica of the Mayflower at Plymouth, Massachusetts, painting Plymouth Rock
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red, and they used the ship as a public forum to air Native grievances. In 1971, AIM assisted the Lac Courte Orielles of Ojibwa, Wisconsin, in taking over a dam controlled by Northern States Power that flooded reservation land. The action led to an eventual settlement, returning more than 25,000 acres of Ojibwa land. That same year, the First National AIM Conference was convened to develop long-range strategies for future directions of the movement. Eighteen AIM chapters attended the meeting.
An Agenda of Issues AIM continued to become directly involved in issues nationwide. In February 1972, Means led a caravan of approximately 1,000 people to Gordon, Nebraska, to protest the failure of local authorities to charge two Anglo men in the torture and murder of Raymond Yellow Thunder. AIM also organized a caravan to Washington, D.C. The central objective was to present a twenty-point solution paper to President Richard Nixon to address Native American grievances on the eve of the 1972 U.S. presidential election. In what was called the “Trail of Broken Treaties,” 2,000 people from reservations and urban areas across the country arrived in the capital in November. When government officials refused to allow representatives to deliver their document about treaty rights and self-governance, approximately 400 AIM members and activists seized the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) headquarters in the Department of the Interior building. The six-day occupation ended only after the Nixon administration publicly committed itself to addressing each point. The occupiers left the building, but not before taking many confidential files discovered in BIA offices. The documents revealed many questionable government practices, including land and mineral fraud as well as the forced sterilization of Indian women. AIM came to Washington as a civil rights organization, and it left with the reputation for violent action. This reputation was magnified after the media focused on the vandalizing of the BIA offices rather than on the issues of indigenous sovereignty. While AIM members drew national and international attention to Native American issues, they also sought solutions to problems. Realizing that any resolution must be based in a strong cultural and spiritual context, AIM opened several survival schools in Milwaukee and the Twin Cities (Minneapolis– St. Paul) area. However, in 1973, the federal government
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abruptly canceled AIM’s education grants. Many believe that the withdrawal of funding was punishment for the Trail of Broken Treaties, although legal action restored them. Within two years, a Federation of Survival Schools was created among sixteen schools in the United States and Canada. The purpose of the federation was to advocate and cooperate in a culturally based education for American Indian and Native children. That same year (1975), Housing and Urban Development (HUD) chose AIM to be the primary sponsor of the first Indian-run housing project, the Little Earth of United Tribes.
Wounded Knee After the Trail of Broken Treaties, some AIM members headed to South Dakota to protest a pattern of racism and violence against Indians in off-reservation border towns. On February 6, 1973, 200 AIM members and police confronted each other at the county courthouse in Custer. A local Anglo man, Darold Schmitz, stabbed Wesley Bad Heart Bull to death, and Schmitz was charged with manslaughter rather than first-degree murder. When local officials refused the AIM request to alter the charge, violence ensued. In the end, approximately 40 AIM members were charged with offenses. Several AIM members were jailed, including the victim’s mother, but Schmitz never served a day in jail. AIM leadership also was contacted by the Lakota Elders to assist them in solving the pattern of gross corruption within the BIA and the Tribal Council on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The major conflict was between traditional Oglalas and the federally sponsored tribal government under Dick Wilson. Traditional Oglalas requested support from AIM to defend them against what they saw as a state of terror carried out by Wilson’s tribal government. The conflict led to the 71-day armed confrontation at Wounded Knee, the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. The occupation began February 28, 1973, and the armed standoff, involving U.S. army reserves, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents, law enforcement, and armed vigilantes, ended May 7 after officials agreed to investigate the complaints. The incident at Wounded Knee became a powerful social point for Indian sovereignty. After the Wounded Knee incident, the federal government intervened in ways that had a negative effect
on the movement. AIM leadership was neutralized by a series of criminal charges. During the eight months of trials, the longest federal trial in U.S. history, the defense uncovered many instances of government misconduct. Eventually, most charges were dropped against Means, Banks, and others. On the Pine Ridge reservation, Wilson remained in power despite being outpolled by Means in an election. The Department of the Interior upheld the decision to keep Wilson in power. Wilson’s vigilantes then began a violent campaign to rid the reservation of any political opposition. By the spring of 1975, the Oglalas who were targeted by Wilson’s men had come to conclude that armed self-defense was their only means of survival. AIM members were called back to the reservation and established a base camp at the Jumping Bull property. When FBI agents chased a car onto the property, a gun battle ensued. A force of federal agents, Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONS), and BIA police attacked the AIM defensive encampment. Two FBI agents and one AIM member were killed in the firefight. To capture escaping AIM members, the FBI brought a force of 250 militarily equipped men onto the reservation. Over the course of the next year, the hostilities on the reservation subsided. For the killings of the FBI agents, a number of AIM members were placed on trial. All were acquitted except Leonard Peltier, who was extradited from Canada in 1977. Peltier was convicted in the deaths of the FBI agents and given two life sentences. Questions have been raised about the evidence submitted by the prosecution at the original trial, and new evidence demonstrated that Peltier’s gun did not kill the agents. Nevertheless, Peltier remained incarcerated. Many charge that Peltier is a political prisoner, incarcerated more for his activism than for the deaths of the FBI agents.
A Global Perspective As AIM’s activities grew, the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) began an active campaign to undermine and discredit the movement’s goals, using everything from arrests to infiltrator provocateurs. The effort did not succeed in destroying AIM; rather, it had a role in the eventual creation of a unified AIM. In 1974, Means founded the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) to charge that the U.S. government is in violation of an 1868 treaty. Within three
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years, the IITC arranged the first meeting of Indian peoples from North, South, and Central America before the UN Economic and Social Council at the palace of nations in Geneva, Switzerland. That meeting led to the creation of the Working Group on Indigenous Populations charged with conducting investigations into indigenous issues worldwide. The IITC was the first designated indigenous nongovernmental organization. The IITC remained active into the mid-1980s, but internal political disagreements led to a decline in support among many activists. Despite changes in political direction since its existence, IITC members continue to struggle for international indigenous rights. In April 1996, AIM and IITC representatives attended the Preparatory Meeting for the Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism hosted by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and held in La Realidad in the Lancondone Rainforest of Eastern Chiapas, Mexico. EZLN also hosted a second meeting, held from July 27 until August 3, 1996, about the Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism. Delegates of the IITC and AIM also attended this meeting.
Domestic Issues The Longest Walk was the final unified AIM action. Organized by Banks, the walk began in San Francisco in February 1978. Participants walked across the United States holding a series of public education events to gather local support and participants. By the time they arrived in Washington, D.C., on July 23, the march contained several hundred Native Americans representing more than 80 nations. The participants held a rally on July 25 where a manifesto was delivered amplifying the 1972 twenty-point program. Congressman Ron Dellums had the piece printed as part of the congressional record. On local stages across the country, AIM continued to maintain a high level of involvement in American Indian issues. Members founded MIGIZI Communications, which is dedicated to the production of Indian news and information to educate students of all ages as tomorrow’s technical workforce. This organization launched an adult educational program for American Indian offenders, continued to establish survival schools, and opened the American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center (AIOIC), which creates
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job training schools to ameliorate unemployment among Indian people. More than 17,000 Native Americans have been trained for jobs at the center since it opened in 1979. Throughout the 1980s and beyond, AIM continued its efforts to achieve social justice for American Indians. In South Dakota, local AIM chapters played an instrumental role in the 1980 Black Hills International Gathering. A year later, they founded the Yellow Thunder Camp, a four-year occupation of 880 acres in the Black Hills of South Dakota. AIM members became involved in the Hopi–Navajo land issue by organizing a security camp to protect 10,000 traditional Dine from being forcibly removed from their homes. They also assisted the Anishinabe Akeeng Organization in its struggle to regain control of stolen reservation lands. AIM formed the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media to confront the media stereotypes about American Indians. Over the course of its existence, AIM has gone through a number of alterations in purpose and organizational structure. In the beginning, AIM sought to solve local issues, but it quickly evolved into an activist organization to address national and (eventually) international indigenous issues. AIM remains in the forefront with respect to issues of self-determination, sovereignty, and the improvement of American Indian lives. This commitment now extends to supporting indigenous struggles across the globe. Over time, however, AIM has gone from a centralized organization to autonomous AIM chapters scattered across various states and into Canada. This is the result of several factors. As the political economic landscape changed, disagreements arose within AIM’s ranks over tactics and strategies for continuing the struggle. This factor, combined with governmental efforts to undermine AIM, resulted in charges and countercharges of government collaboration, ethnic fraud, and conspiracy among AIM factions. The legacy of AIM’s work has entered into the mainstream of Native North America. On February 27, 1998, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Wounded Knee incident, an Oglala Lakota Nation resolution established that day as a National Day of Liberation. On July 16–19, 1998, the 25th annual Lac Courte Oreilles Honor the Earth Homecoming Celebration was held to celebrate and honor the people of Lac Courte Oreilles and AIM who participated in the July 31, 1971, takeover of the Winter Dam and the birth of Honor the Earth. Several days later, at the Pipe Stone
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Americanization
Quarries, Minnesota, the AIM Grand Governing Council convened to commemorate AIM’s 30th anniversary and set the agenda for struggling for American Indian rights and sovereignty. Gregory R. Campbell See also Bureau of Indian Affairs; Deloria, Vine, Jr.; National Indian Youth Council; Native American Identity, Native Americans; Peltier, Leonard; Red Power; Reservation System; Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973), Zapatista Rebellion Further Readings
Churchill, Ward. 1994a. “American Indian Movement.” Pp. 37–38 in Native Americans in the Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia, edited by Mary B. Davis. New York: Garland. Churchill, Ward. 1994b. Indians Are Us? Culture and Genocide in Native North America. Monroe, ME: Common Courage. Churchill, Ward and Jim Vander Wall. 2002. Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement. rev. ed. Boston, MA: South End. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1984. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An American Indian Declaration of Independence. 2nd ed. Austin: University of Texas Press. Johansen, Bruce and Roberto Maestas. 1979. Wasi’shu: The Continuing Indian Wars. New York: Monthly Review. Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. 1971. Red Power: The American Indian’s Fight for Freedom. New York: McGraw-Hill. Wittstock, Laura Waterman and Elaine J. Salinas. n.d. A Brief History of the American Indian Movement. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://www.aimovement.org/ ggc/history.html Web Sites
American Indian Movement, Council on Security and Intelligence: http://www.aimovement.org/csi
AMERICAN INDIANS See NATIVE AMERICANS
AMERICANIZATION Americanization—literally, the process of becoming American—is a cultural phenomenon rather than a legal one, not to be confused with naturalization and
the process of becoming a legal citizen of the United States. It represents a conservative social pressure, exerted on individuals or groups who are (or are perceived to be) culturally marginalized, to become integrated into “mainstream” culture, whatever that might be at any given time. For much of U.S. history, that culture was strongly identified with and determined by Western Europeans and Protestantism, so that prejudice related to race and religion excluded many people from the possibility of being Americanized. In other words, Americanization was the process of becoming more like, or more accepted by, the Protestant dominant culture. As demographics have changed particularly since World War II, with religious diversification and a dramatic change in the role of religion in U.S. society, so too has the meaning of Americanization changed. This entry traces the history of Americanization from the founding of the republic to contemporary times.
Early Years Relative cultural homogeneity during the colonial and early republic period meant that concepts of inclusion into public culture—particularly as enshrined in the law—were generally defined by European males, usually from wealthy families, who were overwhelmingly Protestant. The “blue” and Sunday closing laws, religious restrictions on voting and eligibility for election, prosecutions for blasphemy, and Bible reading in school were common reflections of the synthesis of Protestantism and U.S. public society. Some Catholic men did participate in the larger political culture—for instance, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence—but by the American Revolution even the historically Catholic colony of Maryland was under Protestant political control. Free African Americans, women, Jews, and the working classes were marginalized politically and, thus, rendered incapable of contributing to the larger cultural debates in other than occasional or indirect ways. Enslaved African Americans and Native Americans residing on reservations were specifically excluded by law. This meant that, for the most part, although all of these groups may have been the focus of public debate about the ethics of slavery or the rights of women, for example, they were never mistaken for fully vested members of U.S. society. This is not to suggest that there was universal agreement within the Euro-American Protestant
Americanization
world. Some scholars of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment have suggested that its religious clauses were crafted specifically to protect the new federal government from serious and continuing denominational suspicions that dominated specific colonies as they became states. Given the relative homogeneity of the power elite, religion was the most tangible cultural distinction; a federal guarantee permitting the continuation of state religious establishments while disestablishing the federal government meant that, for example, Massachusetts Congregationalists and Virginia Episcopalians could reach a consensus on the new national charter.
The Impact of Immigration By the 1840s, however, significant changes introduced challenges to the perceived Protestant monopoly on the “U.S.” identity. Roman Catholicism— established on the West Coast nearly a century before British Protestantism settled the East—became the largest single religious identity in the United States when the Methodists split North-and-South over slavery. In addition, increased immigration from Ireland and Germany meant an increased number of Roman Catholics in the United States. By the end of the 19th century, continued Catholic immigration coupled with a relative explosion in Jewish immigration (from Central and Eastern Europe), as well as the beginnings of Eastern Orthodox immigration from the Baltic and Mediterranean states, meant that the religious complexion of the country was changing. In addition to the increased immigration of nonProtestants, U.S. society was experiencing continued diversification from within. The introduction of new denominations and sectarian groups—long a facet of American Protestantism—was exaggerated by splits within denominations over issues such as biblical literalism and modernism, fundamentalism, evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism. Although there were continued efforts to maintain a united Protestant front (particularly in missionary work and Bible publishing), by the beginning of the 20th century it was increasingly obvious that a Protestant cultural monopoly could no longer be presumed. The challenge was not without resistance. On the one hand, legal impediments continued, and groups such as the American Protestant Association, the Know Nothings, and the Ku Klux Klan—all products of the 19th-century United States—sought to limit the freedoms of non-Protestant Americans, to limit
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immigration from largely non-Protestant countries, and/or to make official the Protestant nature of U.S. society. On the other hand, some of these and other religious groups and individuals used violence to combat what they perceived to be “un-American” groups or activities. The burning of the Charlestown convent in 1834 and the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915 are just the more infamous of acts against American Catholics and Jews fueled by nativist impulses. In many respects, the “high water mark” of this religious response came during Prohibition, which can be seen not only as a debate over the place of alcohol in U.S. society but also, because of the various parties involved in the public debate, as a religious battle over U.S. society. This battle was fought between second-generation conservative Protestants, who favored Prohibition, and first-generation (and immigrant) Catholics and Lutherans, who did not. The fact that the former group initially won the debate (in the form of the Eighteenth Amendment ratified in 1919), only to see the tide turn (with the Twenty-First Amendment that repealed the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933), suggests as much about the end of the Protestant cultural monopoly in U.S. public society as it does about the place of alcohol therein. The 1928 presidential campaign, which pitted Catholic Al Smith against Quaker Herbert Hoover, elicited reactions in the media and in pulpits around the country associating Smith with alcoholism and a papal conspiracy to take over the country. Within a few years (the 1930s), the debate shifted to the film industry, with Jewish movie moguls and Catholic cultural critics each vying to seem the most “American.”
Since World War II Post–World War II conceptions of Americanization were considerably different. Patterns of military service meant increased exposure across religious and ethnic lines, and the suburbanization of U.S. society marked the great migration of the middle class out of the cities. The rise of Jewish and Catholic media personalities, a nearly ecumenical fight against communism, and the rise of the Civil Rights Movement diverted some attention away from religious differences. “American” meant anti-communist, and although Protestant definitions persisted, as the century progressed into its later decades, religion as a social marker would mean less than it had meant in the past. During the 1960s, a spirit of religious individualism grew, particularly among the “baby boom” generation
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(born between 1946 and 1963), as a result of expanded interaction with non-Western religious traditions because of changes in immigration law, growing generational suspicions toward social institutions (particularly government and religion) because of perceived “establishment” positions on issues such as birth control (and sex generally), the Vietnam War, and (ultimately) the Watergate scandal. This spirit, coupled with legal and social attitude shifts on issues related to individual rights and liberties, meant that by the end of the 20th century, Americanization meant negotiating not with the pressure to be more Protestant-like but rather with the pressure to maintain a conservative, tradition-based, institutional religious identity. At one time, Americanization meant that Reform Jews could announce their divergence from traditional Judaism by introducing mixed-gender seating and liturgical instrumentation or that a number of religious communities could adopt Protestant-sounding names (e.g., Buddhist Churches of America, the Native American Church) or mores (as with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). Today’s Americanization reflects a general social and political conservatism correlated to traditional religious observance generally. Exit polls from the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections indicate, for example, that the single best predictor of voting behavior was not religious identity but rather religious participation of any kind; those who participated in religion more frequently were more likely to have voted along conservative political lines. As U.S. society reorganizes along individualist versus communitarian lines, Americanization retains communitarian meaning where Protestantism once dominated. Eric Michael Mazur See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Civil Religion; Dillingham Flaw; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Immigration and Race; Jewish Americans; Ku Klux Klan; Lithuanian Americans; Nativism; Religion, Minority; WASP
Further Readings
Handy, Robert T. 1984. A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Mazur, Eric Michael. 1999. The Americanization of Religious Minorities: Confronting the Constitutional Order. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Moore, R. Laurence. 1986. Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans. New York: Oxford University Press. Wuthnow, Robert. 1988. The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith since World War II. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is the oldest Jewish defense organization in the United States, established in 1906 to protect the civil and religious rights of Jews around the world. Over the years, its concerns have included immigration policy, antiSemitism, civil rights, international affairs, and Israel. The AJC’s orientation has long been that of a thoughtful and deliberative organization. Indeed, it traditionally viewed itself as being the “think tank” of the Jewish community. In addition to its regular sponsorship of a range of studies and conferences, an influential periodical, Commentary, is produced under the AJC’s auspices with a completely independent editorial policy. Since 1900, the AJC has published the annual American Jewish Year Book, which over the years has become the “document of record” for American Jewry. This entry reviews the organization’s history of advocacy.
The Structure The AJC was formed as a direct outgrowth of concerns about conditions in Czarist Russia, especially the 1905 Kishinev pogrom, and as one response to the search for a basis on which a central representative organization of American Jews could be built. The AJC initially consisted of a small group drawn from the established German Jewish community, people who had migrated in large numbers to the United States beginning in the 1830s. They became well established and viewed their purpose as being able to respond to matters of concern on behalf of American Jews. The organization’s founders represented the prominent German stratum within the Jewish community; out of a sense of noblesse oblige, they combined philanthropic activities and hofjude (“court Jew”) diplomacy on behalf of their fellow Jews. Oligarchic in design, the AJC started as a committee with a limited membership of 60 U.S. citizens
American Jewish Committee
(expanded to 350 by 1931). It had offices in New York and remained a small group for many years. The AJC was self-selected and shared the “elitism” of the German Jewish community, then the regnant Jewish population in the United States. After World War II, the AJC expanded markedly in size and function. A chapter plan adopted in 1944 slowly changed the oligarchic cast and elitist control of the organization. The AJC also reconsidered its historical reluctance to use litigation as a strategy and began to press its case in the courts. In 2005, the AJC had a membership of approximately 150,000 people organized in 33 chapters around the United States. Operating in 2005 on a budget of approximately $37 million—the AJC’s budget in 1979 was $8 million, on par with the AntiDefamation League—the agency maintains offices in Brussels, Berlin, Geneva, and Jerusalem, and has a presence in Paris, Mumbai, and Warsaw, in addition to its New York headquarters.
Ideology and Agenda Two ideas have characterized the work of the AJC throughout its history. First, there was the notion of “stewardship”—the idea that a diaspora-based group of Jewish “stewards” could enhance the collective welfare of the Jewish people. During recent decades, a new notion was added—that no “defense” agency is effective unless it also promotes the internal vitality of the Jewish people. In this second objective, the AJC carved a path that was different from that of its sister defense groups. The AJC’s agenda shifted over the years in response to changing developments. The plight of Russian Jewry before World War I prompted the AJC’s strong defense of a liberal U.S. immigration policy. Following the war, the AJC welcomed the Balfour Declaration articulating British support for a Jewish “national home” in Palestine; however, consistent with its anti-Zionist (at best “nonZionist”) stance, which prevailed until the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, the committee underscored the provision that the declaration would in no way prejudice the liberties of Jews in other lands. During the 1920s, the AJC centered its attention on refuting the popular “Jew Communist” charge circulated in the infamous “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” and further propagated in Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent. The AJC’s approach involved discreet lobbying, a nonconfrontational strategy
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reflecting the fear that the group would be perceived as a “Jewish lobby” with interests at odds with those of other Americans. The rise of Nazism led to intensified activities. When efforts to find allies who could halt the Nazis with aroused public opinion failed, the AJC turned increasingly to plans of rescue and emigration for German Jews, an effort halted by the outbreak of war. Simultaneously, the committee fought the alarmingly sharp rise in organized anti-Semitism in the United States with an emphasis on education and “prejudice reduction” programs. The AJC hoped that the future of Jewry would be secured by universal recognition of human rights to be protected by the United Nations, and it lobbied in 1945 at the San Francisco Conference, where the charter for the United Nations was prepared, for an international commitment to that principle. By 1946, the AJC realized that the problem of displaced persons could be solved only by the creation of a Jewish state. Modifying its traditional anti-Zionist stance, it cooperated with Zionist groups in advocating the cause of partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. After 1948, the committee worked consistently to ensure U.S. sympathy for and diplomatic aid to Israel, and by agreement with Israel statesmen it officially kept Israel’s interests distinct from those of diaspora Jewry. A turning point came in 1943 with the appointment of John Slawson as AJC executive. Slawson believed that, consistent with the AJC tradition of viewing rights for Jews as part of the larger struggle for rights for all minorities, the committee needed to be transformed into a vibrant civil right agency. From 1947, AJC actively participated, through litigation, educational campaigns, and community projects, in the struggle of the Blacks for equal rights. Work to break down the barriers in education, housing, employment, and public accommodations led to pioneer efforts against antiJewish discrimination in clubs, fraternities, and the “executive suite.” The AJC’s focus on human relations resulted in new approaches to intergroup cooperation and intercultural education. In that area, it labored successfully for the revision of prejudiced teachings about Jews in Christian textbooks and for the historic declaration on the Jews—Nostra Aetate—approved by the Second Vatican Council in 1965. The AJC has also explored new ways in which to understand intergroup dynamics and to strengthen Jewish identity in the United States. The annual
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Americans with Disabilities Act
Survey of American Jewish Public Opinion, conducted by the Market Facts agency, provides valuable data for social scientists and policymakers. Numerous studies on a range of issues have emerged from the AJC over the past 40 years.
Recent History Three transitional periods mark the recent history of the AJC. In 1944, Slawson’s decision to shape an agency that had a strong network of regional chapters charted a new direction for the agency. This, together with Slawson’s commitment during the late 1940s to a research agenda that resulted in the watershed volume The Authoritarian Personality, created a newly contoured AJC. Second, the events of 1967—especially the SixDay War—suggested to the AJC (as they did to many other agencies) that the committee ought not be on the sidelines during a fateful period of Jewish history. This “mainstreaming” resulted in AJC moving into a contemporary era. Finally, since the early 1980s, the AJC has undergone a necessary process of redefinition of mission and function within the community. During a period of institutional and financial instability, the AJC had four chief executives within a few short years. This process culminated in 1990, with the AJC turning aggressively toward activity in the international arena, in effect positioning itself as an international diplomatic corps for the Jewish people. With the decline of anti-Semitism in the United States and full acceptance of Jews into U.S. society, the AJC’s agenda has expanded beyond matters of “defense” to include questions of Jewish “continuity.” Jerome A. Chanes See Appendix B See also Anti-Defamation League; Anti-Semitism; Jewish Americans; Zionism
Further Readings
Chanes, Jerome A. 1991. “The Voices of the American Jewish Community.” In Survey of Jewish Affairs 1991. London: Institute for Jewish Affairs. Cohen, Naomi W. 1972. Not Free to Desist: The American Jewish Committee, 1906–1966. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America.
Ivers, Gregg. 1995. To Build a Wall: American Jews and the Separation of Church and State. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Schachner, Nathan. 1948. The Price of Liberty: A History of the American Jewish Committee. New York: American Jewish Committee. Svonkin, Stuart. 1997. Jews against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties. New York: Columbia University Press. Zelin, Richard David. 1992. “Ethnic and Religious Group Politics in the United States: The Case of the American Jewish Committee, 1982–1987.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin.
AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was drafted to ensure equal opportunity, full participation, independent living, and self-sufficiency for millions of Americans with disabilities. With this legislation, the federal government recognized that people with disabilities are a discrete minority who have been subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment and relegated to an inferior position in areas of employment, housing, public accommodations, education, transportation, communication, health services, voting, and recreation. In part, this discrimination follows patterns similar to what has been experienced by racial/ethnic minorities; stigmatized populations whose members also have disabilities face particular social challenges well beyond those dictated by physical or mental limitations. The ADA mandates that (a) employers make reasonable accommodations for workers with disabilities, (b) public facilities and transportation must be accessible for people with disabilities, and (c) communication barriers must be eliminated for those who are deaf or hard of hearing and blind or visually impaired. The act, which took effect July 26, 1990, is considered to be the most comprehensive policy statement ever made in U.S. law about how the nation should address people with disabilities. It is intended to extend to people with disabilities the same protections against discrimination that are afforded minorities and women under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This entry provides some background on the situation of people with disabilities and how the law was intended to improve their circumstances.
Americans with Disabilities Act
Who Is Disabled? Members of the general public who are able-bodied might not consider that they could become disabled; however, people do not always become disabled at birth. It can happen from accidents, diseases, or aging. Disabilities occur in all races, ethnicities, religions, ages, and social classes. Just as members of racial/ethnic minorities and women are often faced with unequal opportunities, so too are people with disabilities. The disabled community has many diverse components. Just as “Hispanic” or “Asian American” brings together a variety of different social groups under the same label, “being disabled” is a broad term. The link among people with mental, physical, or sensory disabilities is not so much the similarity between their impairments as it is their common social experience of oppression, exclusion, and discrimination. Under the ADA, the definition of disability has three parts. The first part applies to a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits at least one major life activity. Major life activities include walking, hearing, seeing, speaking, learning, and performing manual tasks. The second part covers a person who has a history of impairment. This applies to someone who has had cancer, mental illness, or a heart condition. The third part relates to someone who is regarded as having such impairment. In other words, a person may have scars on his or her face but have no physical or mental limitations and no history of having any impairment. The definition of disability is broad; however, some people have encountered discrimination simply because they have a history of disability or because their appearance leads people to perceive that they have a disability.
The Law and Employment The ADA is designed to prohibit private employers, state and local governments, employment agencies, and labor unions from discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities in job application procedures, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation, job training, and other terms conditions, and privileges of employment. The act is slowly driving social, cultural, and legal changes that have enabled people with disabilities to live independently. However, it is not doing so fast enough, especially in areas such as employment.
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The unemployment rate among people with significant disabilities between the ages of 16 and 64 years remains approximately 70% as of 2007. It is the highest of any group of Americans regardless of qualifications and education. The U.S. Census Bureau states that this has been constant for nearly 20 years. African Americans, Hispanics, and women with disabilities are even more likely to be jobless. According to the 2004 National Organization on Disability/Harris Survey, 35% of working-age U.S. residents with disabilities are employed compared with 78% without disabilities. The survey also found that three times as many people with disabilities live with an annual household income of less than $15,000. They are more likely to need accessible transportation and twice as likely to drop out of high school and go without health care that is essential. People with disabilities are not being hired even though they want to work, have the necessary education, and have training for employment. Many employers are worried about the cost associated when hiring people with disabilities, especially when the businesses are required to provide reasonable accommodations. Reasonable accommodations include making the workplace physically accessible, modifying equipment, restructuring the job, providing interpreters, and adjusting policies. The Job Accommodation Network (JAN), a service of the Office of Disability Employment under the U.S. Department of Labor, has been providing information on job accommodations since 1984. Its research shows that more than half of the accommodations needed by employees and job applicants with disabilities cost nothing. Of those accommodations that do cost, the typical expenditure by employers is approximately $600. Moreover, accommodations are required so long as they would not impose any undue hardship or difficulty for the business. Another reason why the unemployment rate is high among people with disabilities is that they are not given a chance to compete for jobs. They often face stereotyping much like members of racial/ethnic groups. For those who are disabled and members of racial/ethnic minorities, the stigmatization they experience can be socially overwhelming. Even people with disabilities and also members of racial/ethnic minorities who are qualified and educated face discrimination and ultimately unemployment. Hundreds of disability organizations across the United States work with a number of different companies
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helping to recruit individuals for employment. These organizations have developed in ways similar to rights organizations on behalf of racial/ethnic groups. However, disability groups typically do not focus on the needs of racial/ethnic minorities any more than traditional civil rights groups consider the special needs of their members with disabilities.
Progress and Challenges Since its passage, the ADA has promoted significant changes, including ramps, curb cuts, accessible parking spaces, Braille signs, and assistive listening at movie theaters. More people with disabilities are able to visit shopping malls, attend colleges, and use public transportation. People with disabilities have money to spend. The National Organization on Disability maintains that people with disabilities, regardless of their employment status, represent more than $175 billion in collective spending power. People without disabilities are benefiting from many of the requirements under the ADA. For example, many of the architectural changes designed for people with disabilities, such as curb cuts, are being used by children, seniors, parents pushing strollers, delivery workers, and skateboarders. The accessibility guidelines requirements for new and existing buildings have removed barriers that had made it difficult for people to get in and out, and moving around inside is becoming less of an issue. Products are designed for universal application regardless of the abilities of the user. All of these are positive changes. At the start of the 21st century, the ADA has come under attack, especially in terms of who is protected. When the ADA was written, Congress broadened the definition of disability from that in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The reason for this was to avoid a debate over the definition of disability. However, the U.S. Supreme Court had curtailed the definition of disability. ADA claims from people with diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, cancer, or mental illness have been rejected by the Court because, with medication, these people are considered to be too functional to meet the definition of disability. Fairness in the workplace continues to be a significant issue among workers with disabilities and their employers. Employers know more about their workplaces, whereas employees with disabilities know more about their conditions. Workplaces can perform better if both parties sit down and find reasonable
accommodations that will result in positive outcomes. Unfortunately, a number of employers have turned to litigating rather than problem solving with employees with disabilities. The number of Americans with disabilities will continue to grow, especially at a time when the United States is involved in war and severely injured soldiers are returning home. The United States has the responsibility to ensure that disabled persons will receive the fair treatment they deserve as they attempt to return to work and full lives in the community. Karen L. Meyer See also Discrimination; Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990; Labeling; Stereotypes Further Readings
Braddock, David and Lynn Bachelder. 1994. The Glass Ceiling and Persons with Disabilities. Washington, DC. Glass Ceiling Commission. Hoyer, Steny. 2004. “The Imperative and the Peril of ADA Restoration.” Tony Coelho Lecture in Disability Employment Law and Policy, delivered at New York Law School, New York, October 21. Imparato, Andrew J. 2004. “Only God Is Able.” American Association of People with Disabilities, delivered at Fairlington Presbyterian Church, Alexandria, VA, June 27. McKay, Jim. 2005. “Americans with Disabilities Act: A Job not Done (yet).” Pittsburgh Post–Gazette, July 15. Shapiro, Joseph P. 1993. No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement. New York: Times Books. Web Sites
National Organization on Disability: http://www.nod.org
AMISH The Amish are one of the United States’s unique and distinctive ethnic groups. They grew rapidly during the 20th century despite rejecting high school, television, public electricity, computers, and car ownership. The Amish not only are surviving but are thriving in contemporary society. A German dialect, sharp cultural boundaries, distinctive dress, and selective use of technology have enabled them to thwart assimilation
Amish
and retain a distinctive ethnic identity. This entry highlights the “Old Order” and “New Order” Amish groups that use horse-and-buggy transportation. These two groups account for approximately 90% of the Amish world. Compared with Old Order groups, New Order churches permit greater use of technology, encourage more personal religious expressions, and have stricter guidelines for their youth.
Amish History There are some two dozen different Amish subgroups, each with its own practices. Some have black top buggies, whereas others sport yellow, gray, or white tops. Even within subgroups, diversity abounds. Some congregations permit power lawn mowers, whereas others do not; some use bicycles, whereas others forbid them. The farmers in one congregation may milk their cows by hand, whereas nearby Amish use automatic milkers. Despite their differences, the Amish share a common history. Amish roots go back to the Anabaptist movement that emerged during the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Beginning in Switzerland in 1525 and spreading to other regions of Europe, the Anabaptists refused to baptize babies, arguing that only adults who had voluntarily chosen to follow Christ should be baptized. They were called Anabaptists (or rebaptizers) because they had already been baptized as infants. Considered heretics, many Anabaptists were burned at the stake, drowned in lakes, or tortured in public spectacles. A 1,200-page book, Martyr’s Mirror: The Bloody Theatre of the Defenseless Christians, recorded stories of their torture and still shapes the Amish world. The harsh persecution confirmed their belief that the church should be separate from the larger society. Separation from the world soon became a key force in forming Amish ethnicity. The Amish emerged in 1693 as a distinctive Anabaptist group in Switzerland and in the Alsace region of present-day France. An Anabaptist leader, Jakob Ammann, sought to renew church life. Among other changes, he called for shunning wayward members of the church so as to maintain its witness and purity. The differences led to a division in 1693, and Ammann’s followers were soon called Amish. Many other Anabaptists eventually took the name Mennonite, derived from a Dutch Anabaptist leader, Menno Simons. The Amish migrated to America in several waves during the mid-1700s and again during the 1800s.
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They formed communities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana and eventually spread to other states, often settling near their religious cousins, the Mennonites.
Today’s Community The Amish reside in more than 370 communities in twenty-seven states and the Canadian province of Ontario. The three most populous states are Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. New communities form yearly, while others flounder and die. They are organized into some 1,600 local autonomous church districts that typically consist of twenty-five to thirty families living in a contiguous area. There is no central national ecclesiastical structure. The Amish population doubles roughly every 20 years. Counting adults and children, they number some 200,000. Large families and strong retention rates propel Amish growth. On the average, families have seven children, but it is not unusual to have ten or more. Typically, approximately 85% of their youth join the church, but in some communities more than 95% join. Although the Amish do not seek converts, outsiders may join if they comply with Amish guidelines. The Amish speak a Pennsylvania German dialect. Children also learn English in school. Outsiders who do not speak the dialect are often called “English.” The dialect is a key component of their ethnicity. Amish Beliefss
The key difference between Amish values and mainstream U.S. culture revolves around individualism. Unlike other U.S. residents who cherish individualism, the Amish speak of “giving themselves up” to the church. They emphasize self-surrender, submission, and yielding to the will of God and to the rules of their community. Amish values are translated into guidelines for daily living called the Ordnung, a German word that means rules and order. The Ordnung is a set of oral expectations for daily living. Its details vary by subgroup and local congregation. The Ordnung defines expectations and taboos for conduct ranging from personal dress to the use of technology. All Amish groups expect men and women to wear distinctive clothing. Married men are expected to grow a beard and wear an Amish-style hat and vest. Women wear a head covering and usually a three-piece dress that includes a cape and an apron. The details of color and style vary from group to group. Unlike U.S.
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culture, where dress is a tool of individual adornment, among the Amish it signals submission to the collective order and serves as a public symbol of ethnic identity. The Amish forbid owning automobiles, tapping electricity from public utility lines, using selfpropelled farm machinery, attending high school and college, joining the military, initiating divorce, and owning a television, a radio, or a computer. Members pledge to obey the Ordnung at baptism, typically at 18 to 21 years of age. During Rumspringa, their “running around” time, some unbaptized youth may flirt with the world by buying a car, playing an electric guitar, or hiding a battery-operated CD player in their buggy. However, when they join the church, they come under its authority and promptly discard these symbols of modernity. Church and family are the primary social units of Amish society. Young people move into adulthood early and usually marry by 21 years of age. Endogamy is practiced by all Amish groups. Networks of extended families bond their communities together. The typical person has some two dozen aunts and uncles and more than seventy-five first cousins, many of whom live nearby. Family members help each other during emergencies—fire or flood—and of course at death. The elderly typically live in a Grossdawdy Haus adjacent to the house of one of their children. Making a Liv vin ng
Until recently, most Amish were farmers. Church leaders resisted large-scale mechanized farming because it would erode family involvement. Using horse-drawn equipment helped to resist large corporate-style farming. Most farms were small family operations that involved children and valued hard work. Hundreds of small Amish-owned industries have sprung up during recent years. Most of these are family-oriented businesses with fewer than ten employees. They produce wood products such as household and outdoor furniture, gazebos, small barns, lawn ornaments, doghouses, and mailboxes. Other shops specialize in fabricating metal. These microenterprises are very productive, with the larger ones exceeding $5 million in annual sales. Construction work also provides employment for many Amish men. In some communities, the majority of Amish men work in English-owned factories located in rural areas. Despite their growing involvement in business, the Amish remain a distinctly rural people, living along
country roads and on the margins of small villages. The shift to nonfarm work was the biggest change in Amish society during the 20th century. Usin ng Tech hnolog gy
The Amish are not Luddites who reject technology; they use it selectively. Televisions, radios, and computers are rejected outright, but other technology is used selectively or modified to fit Amish purposes. Amish mechanics also create new machines compatible with their cultural guidelines. Moreover, much state-of-the-art technology—gas grills, shop tools, camping equipment, and some farm equipment—is readily bought from non-Amish vendors. The Amish worry that if technology is left untamed, it will harm their community by disrupting traditions and exposing them to secular values. The Amish try to tame technology, hoping to prevent it from harming family and community life. Their distinctive technological practices, in addition to Pennsylvania German and dress, bolster their sense of ethnic identity. For example, they call pneumatic power “Amish electricity.” Relatiionship p to Governmen nt
One of the tenets of Amish faith is care and concern for fellow members of the church. Because they shun commercial insurance, many Amish communities have an informal aid plan to help members with large hospital bills. Like other U.S. residents, the Amish pay state and federal income taxes, sales and real estate taxes, and public school taxes. In fact, they pay school taxes twice because they also support their own private oneand two-room schools. The U.S. Congress exempted the Amish from the social security system in 1966 because they considered it a form of insurance that would usurp the biblical mandate to care for their own. The Amish are taught to respect and pray for governing authorities. However, when caught in a conflict between their conscience and civic law, they will “obey God rather than man.” The Amish are pacifists and refuse to enter the armed forces. They generally avoid politics, holding office, and political activism. They are, however, permitted to vote. All things considered, the Amish have fared rather well in a political system that respects and protects their freedom of religious expression. The Amish have developed a remarkable society. With little government aid or scientific assistance,
Anti-Defamation League
they provide care and dignity for their members. Apart from occasional arrests for alcohol or drug abuse among their youth, the Amish have avoided many of the blights of modern life. They have virtually no homeless, no unemployed, no one living on government subsidies, few in prison, few divorces, and few cases of domestic abuse. All things considered, they have created a rather humane society without high school education, professional training, or high-tech accessories. Maintaining strong and distinctive ethnic identity has been central to their survival and growth. Donald B. Kraybill See also Dutch Americans; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; German Americans; Hutterites; Mennonites; Schmiedeleut
Further Readings
Hostetler, John A. 1993. Amish Society. 4th ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kraybill, Donald B. 2001. The Riddle of Amish Culture. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kraybill, Donald B. 2003. The Amish and the State. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kraybill, Donald B. and Steven M. Nolt. 2004. Amish Enterprise: From Plows to Profit. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Nolt, Steven M. 2001. A History of the Amish. rev. ed. Intercourse, PA: Good Books. Nolt, Steven M. and Thomas J. Meyers. 2007. Plain Diversity: Amish Cultures and Identities. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Schaefer, Richard T. and William Zellner. 2008. “The Old Order Amish.” In Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Lifestyles. 8th ed. New York: Worth. Scott, Stephen E. 1986. Why Do They Dress that Way? Intercourse, PA: Good Books.
ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), originally called the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, was founded in 1913 in reaction to the crude and overt anti-Semitism of that period, specifically the Leo Frank case. The ADL’s goal, as stated in the charter that established the league, is “to end the defamation of the Jewish people . . . to secure justice and fair
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treatment for all citizens alike.” This entry reviews its history of advocacy.
Staff and Strategy Originally based in Chicago, the offices of the ADL today are in New York City. The league works out of thirty-one regional offices located throughout the United States. The ADL also has a cooperative relationship with the B’nai B’rith Canadian office, an office in Jerusalem, and representation in Rome and Moscow. Unlike the American Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee, and other community relations “defense” organizations in the American Jewish community, the ADL is not a membership organization. It has evolved from being a commission of its parent body to an organization with independent board and fund-raising structures and in reality is fully autonomous. The ADL is staffed by career professionals who are specialists in various disciplines related to community relations—law, communication, education, interfaith affairs, labor, foreign affairs (especially Israel and the Middle East), and social sciences. Although the ADL views itself as an agency devoted to the combating of anti-Semitism and related forms of prejudice, it avers that the threats to Jewish security come from a weakening of the constitutional structures in U.S. society—such as church–state separation—and from a diminution of civil rights and civil liberties. Moreover, the ADL suggests that antiSemitism appears in new forms and guises such as anti-Israel activity and radicalism of the right and left. The league views itself as being an “active” organization, responding in a timely manner to what are perceived to be threats to the rights and security of Jews. It sees itself as taking a pragmatic, rather than an ideological, approach to issues. The ADL, by virtue of its budget and its varied activity, is considered to be a significant voice among the community relations agencies.
Evolving Agenda The ADL’s initial efforts focused on the blatant antiSemitism of the pre– and post–World War I period that included restricted neighborhoods, resorts, and jobs as well as schools that rejected Jews; for example, model legislation drafted by the ADL helped to unmask the Ku Klux Klan and drastically diminish its
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power. However, the ADL’s focus during its early decades was not on taking legal remedies against discrimination but rather on countering defamation of Jews. For example, the ADL exposed the vicious antiSemitism of the Dearborn Independent, which printed and circularized the infamous Protocols of Zion, and extracted an apology and a retraction from its publisher, Henry Ford. Throughout the 1930s, the league fought and exposed the many hate groups that sprang up during the Depression and the Hitler period such as the Christian Front, the Silver Shirts, and the German American Bund. Particularly during the post–World War II period, the ADL was successful in advocating on behalf of legislation against such discrimination. It also dealt with vulgar stereotypes and caricatures of Jews on the stage and in communication media and with incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism, and it played a role in strengthening interfaith and interracial relationships. During the 1960s, the ADL played a role in the successful coalitional effort that resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and of subsequent fair housing and voting rights laws. The ADL’s sponsorship of a comprehensive study of the roots of prejudice—the “Berkeley Studies,” the University of California’s seven-volume Five-Year Study of AntiSemitism in the United States—helped to create a new climate of interreligious understanding and ecumenism and was a factor in the deliberations of Vatican II, which led to the watershed document Nostra Aetate that, in repudiating anti-Semitism, redefined the Catholic Church’s attitude toward Jews. On the international scene, advocacy on behalf of the State of Israel and other involvement in Middle East issues became an ADL priority, especially after 1967. The league carries out an education and action program to help mold public opinion and exposes and counteracts Arab propaganda. The ADL led the effort that resulted in the passage of antiboycott legislation and worked within the European Economic Community to counter the boycott. The league is also active in protecting and securing the rights of Jews wherever they are in danger and played an important role in the Soviet Jewry movement. Interreligious activities also have been an important part of the ADL agenda. During the 1970s, in response to what the ADL then characterized as “the new anti-Semitism” that derived less from overt expression and more from apathy and insensitivity to Jews and to Jewish concerns and problems (including Israel), the league recontoured its
approaches to anti-Semitism. A major prejudice reduction program, “A World of Difference,” has been an ADL centerpiece since the early 1990s, as has been Holocaust education. Convinced that preferential treatment will destroy equality of opportunity and selection based on merit, the league’s position on affirmative action is nuanced in terms of its opposition to the reemergence of quotas.
Changing Ideology The ADL’s traditional ideology was that aggressive use of litigation and other legal remedies to counter discrimination and church–state violations was too confrontational and would ultimately damage the constructive relationships that Jews had built up with other faith communities over the years. From its earliest years the ADL, unlike its sister “defense” agencies, rejected advocating on behalf of antidiscrimination legislation and instead focused on combating prejudice and defamation. The league’s national director until 1947, Richard E. Gustadt, articulated the view that intergroup negotiation and education programs emphasizing cultural pluralism offered the best chances to remedy societal abuses. Certain societal evils could not, in the ADL’s view, be eliminated; they could only be tempered. This view (shared in large measure by the American Jewish Committee) marked a fundamental ideological difference with the American Jewish Congress, which believed in direct legal action. From the late 1940s until the late 1970s, the ADL was led by a tandem of Benjamin Epstein and Arnold Forster, who together began aggressively prosecuting a civil rights agenda for the league. However, beginning in the early 1980s, with a marked shift in the national public policy agenda back to church–state and other First Amendment matters, there was again a shift in the priorities of the ADL. During the tenure of national director Nathan Perlmutter, additional legal expertise and resources were added to the agency’s staff and the league became an aggressive player in the church–state arena. During this period, there was a certain degree of deemphasis of the traditional civil rights agenda resulting in large measure from antiSemitism within some Black civil rights groups. Even with a new emphasis placed on church–state separation and other legal matters, the ADL always viewed church–state concerns to be just one of several major civil rights and civil liberties issues on its organizational palette, which includes countering racial
Antiracist Education
supremacist organizations, judicial remedies for “hate crimes,” and discrimination and harassment. Changes within the organization arising out of exogenous factors did not mean that the ADL intended to abandon its charter purpose of public response to anti-Jewish defamation. Since the mid-1980s, under the stewardship of Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL has become one of the most visible national Jewish organizations on the American—and indeed international—scene. Although viewed as increasingly conservative in some areas of activity, the reality is that the ADL has carved a highly nuanced political path, especially on Israel-related issues, threading its way skillfully between agencies such as the rightist Zionist Organization of America and Jewish groups of the left. This “centrist” approach has been evident in a range of domestic public affairs issues as well. Newer areas of activity for the ADL include threats of global anti-Semitism, “hate” activity on the Internet, working with law enforcement agencies, a new generation of church–state situations, and balancing traditional civil liberties concerns with those of national and local security. The ADL has commissioned a series of public opinion surveys, both in the United States and in Europe, that have elicited valuable data on anti-Semitic attitudes and on attitudes toward Israel. In terms of institutional considerations, until the early 1980s the leading “defense” agency, in terms of budget and stature, was the American Jewish Committee; the annual budgets of the two agencies were at approximate parity at roughly $12 million. The ADL budget ($5.5 million in 1971) began increasing during the 1980s at approximately $3 million per year and soon far outstripped the other “defense” agencies, reaching some $30 million by the early 1990s and approximately $60 million by 2005. The league’s staff and programmatic initiatives have increased commensurately. Also important in terms of institutional dynamics is the ADL’s relationship with B’nai B’rith. The ADL began life as a commission of B’nai B’rith, but tensions developed between the two agencies as B’nai B’rith was recontouring itself from being primarily a fraternal and service organization to one that addresses community relations issues. During the mid- to late-1990s, the issue with B’nai B’rith came to a head, with B’nai B’rith—itself finally seeking to reshape its own identity—asserted that its community relations and “defense” agenda would be pursued
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aggressively. The ADL, maintaining that it was B’nai B’rith’s “defense” arm, in effect severed its ties with its erstwhile parent. (The ADL does retain a de jure legal connection with B’nai B’rith.) Jerome A. Chanes See Appendix B See also American Jewish Committee; Anti-Semitism; Hate Crimes; Jewish Americans; Ku Klux Klan
Further Readings
Belth, Nathan C. 1979. A Promise to Keep: A Narrative of the American Encounter with Anti-Semitism. New York: Times Books. Chanes, Jerome A. 1991. “The Voices of the American Jewish Community.” In Survey of Jewish Affairs 1991. London: Institute for Jewish Affairs. Chanes, Jerome A. 2004. “Who Does What: Jewish Advocacy and Jewish ‘Interest.’” Pp. 100–119 in Jews in American Politics, edited by L. Sandy Maisel and Ira N. Forman. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Ivers, Gregg. 1995. To Build a Wall: American Jews and the Separation of Church and State. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Svonkin, Stuart. 1997. Jews against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties. New York: Columbia University Press.
ANTIRACIST EDUCATION Antiracist education emerged as dissatisfaction with, and is distinct from, multicultural education, which emphasizes cultural awareness as the means to achieve racial harmony. Antiracist educators characterize multicultural education as a deracialized discourse that understands only superficially the processes that create and perpetuate racism. Its appropriation by liberal and conservative discourses blocks its liberatory potential and preserves the privileges of Whites, according to the antiracist group. Conceptions of antiracist education are diffuse, and the term itself is relatively recent. In general, antiracist education is understood as a set of pedagogical, curricular, and organizational strategies that hope to promote racial equality by identifying, and then eliminating, White privilege. Inspired by the principles of Paulo Freire, it employs the language of critique. One of its strengths, it is claimed, is the ability to move beyond prejudice
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and discrimination as a problem to be corrected in individuals so as to examine critically how institutional structures support racist practices economically, politically, and culturally. Some antiracist educators link antiracist education to student-centered and collaborative learning on the grounds that didactic teaching undermines the ability to elicit, discuss, and analyze personal accounts of racism. Most proponents define antiracist education as a political project directed toward specific goals and achieved through collective action. This entry looks at its ideology and practice and offers a critique.
Framework of the Antiracist Education Paradigm Antiracist educators argue that racism continues to be a major problem in the United States and that sociological concepts such as “social dislocations” obviate its significance. The fact that race is socially constructed does not diminish its importance. They claim that race is much more important than social class in explaining inequality. As a causal construct, race underpins all identities, discourses, and institutional structures, they say. It determines how people treat each other, which groups have access to the material rewards of society, and how such access is negotiated. In the view of antiracist educators, failure to acknowledge this fact results in distorted self-understandings and discriminatory behaviors. Rooted in an autonomous culture, race has a logic relatively unconstrained by material factors. In antiracist education, racism is viewed as a pervasive phenomenon that has multiple meanings and manifestations. For example, it is an ideological practice that creates, and then naturalizes, group distinctions based on phenotypic or other variations with the intent to establish relations of superiority and inferiority. Racism is an epistemology that privileges Eurocentric values, beliefs, and practices. It is the normative framework that defines whiteness as the standard by which to evaluate others. Racism is a set of institutionally embedded exclusionary practices that create, and then reproduce, socioeconomic status attainment disparities, including tracking in schools and discrimination in hiring. It is an aversion to critiquing the ideologies that justify existing arrangements such as equality of opportunity and meritocracy. Racism is manifested in opposition to race-targeted programs such as affirmative action. Sometimes it is likened to distorted thinking, impaired consciousnesses, or a cancer on society.
Antiracist education appropriated the postmodern premise that science is a form of hegemony that does not deserve its privileged status. In this view, science imposes restrictions a priori on what constitutes knowledge, is fraught with problems of subjectivity and preferentiality, and should not be privileged as objective, factual, or universal. In extreme interpretations, Western epistemology is seen as representing little more than domination by Eurocentric men. Here antiracist educators claim that “race thinking” (or “whiteness”) shapes what counts as knowledge. Scientific discourse is constructed in such a way that it cannot admit its complicity in the perpetuation of racial advantages and disadvantages. Antiracist educators reject the conception of research as advancement of knowledge for its own sake in favor of one that states research must be judged in terms of its contribution to particular political projects—specifically those that eliminate racism. According to antiracist educators, an understanding of racism is insufficient to guarantee antiracist behavior. To eliminate racism requires that whiteness be deconstructed and that Whites recognize that they have racist tendencies regardless of their attitudes or beliefs toward minorities. In extreme interpretations, minorities cannot be racist because they are not the beneficiaries of society’s rewards and privileges. Whiteness is the cultural marker against which “otherness” is defined. Because those who possess whiteness accrue unearned benefits, whiteness must be made problematic if prevailing inequalities are to be redressed given that the unexamined self is the guise for perpetuating racism. Whites do not perceive themselves as racial beings; therefore, they do not know what it means to be White, antiracist educators believe. Once Whites recognize their advantages, they need to acknowledge that current arrangements favor them. In antiracist education, whiteness has multiple meanings as well. It is (a) a state of being that is constituted by a historical denial of the harm that Whites have inflicted on minorities; (b) a standpoint from which Whites evaluate, and then denigrate, other identities and discourses; (c) a set of cultural practices that is unnamed, that is, regarded as universal, neutral, or normative; (d) both a structural location and a strategy that allows Whites to monopolize material and cultural resources; and (e) a form of capital from which advantages accrue regardless of social standing or place in life. Whiteness is premised on the claim that opportunities in life are largely dependent on race, a claim that Whites fail to recognize or acknowledge.
Antiracist Education
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Whiteness is manifested in defensiveness (as in “I am not a racist”), characterizations of the minority poor as pathological, claims of reverse discrimination, and so-called color blindness. Antiracist educators hold that those who claim to be color-blind deracialize public discourse and treat race as if it did not matter. They believe that their successes in life are due to talent, motivation, and hard work. Color blindness “relieves” Whites from needing to recognize and take responsibility for racial injustice. It enables them to blame minorities for their plight by circulating their alleged deficiencies in public discourse. In this view, Whites who protest that they had no control over the past reproduce a discourse that disclaims responsibility for the present. Appeals to universalistic morals, values, and principles as the foundation for intergroup relations do little more than maintain the status quo. Antiracist educators construct their argument on the grounds that privileging Western epistemology marginalizes other epistemologies, thereby eliminating from contemporary discourse the manifestations of racism that only alternative epistemologies can grasp. In response to critics who note the profound changes in Black life chances that have occurred since the Civil Rights Movement, antiracist educators respond that whiteness retains its value as a consolation prize. Poor Whites, in particular, do not need to consider themselves losers because they are at least White—a phenomenon that antiracist educators link to White supremacist pride.
eliminate racism from the body and soul as Whites share their affective responses, immerse themselves in the trauma of others, hold themselves accountable for the injustices that they have perpetuated, give up claims to authority, and then witness to others. Here, it is claimed, whiteness studies undermine the respectability and goodness of White identities. In the absence of this intent, Whites would continue to reproduce racial hierarchies as they deny whiteness but racialize others. This version of antiracist education embodies the confessional and redemptive modes common in moral reformation movements. The possibility of redemption seems unlikely if all Whites are inherently racist. Nevertheless, redemption is at the same time the only source of salvation. Moral progress depends on acknowledging White privilege and then disowning and undoing the practice of whiteness. At the highest stage of antiracist identity development, Whites ally with minorities in a common struggle that requires witnessing—defined as a shift in the frameworks through which Whites understand the social world. Bearing witness through firsthand testimony interrupts the historical process of denial; it is crucial for the construction of a “nonracist utopia.” As some antiracist educators see it, the answer lies not so much in sociological understanding as in a development leap sparked by a deep call to the soul. Self-described as an ethically grounded pedagogy of coercion, this version offers a vision of community that is regulated by appropriate morals, values, and behaviors.
Education in Practice
Critics Respond
In practice, some antiracist educators are benign. They propose and have implemented curricular changes, continuing education, and racial awareness training. For example, students are encouraged to discuss racist incidents that they witness or experience. Then they are asked to collectively analyze these incidents as the first step to becoming responsible citizens. Other antiracist educators are less benign and preach with a religious fervor. For example, they say that to deny the “demon of White privilege” through color blindness is to evade responsibility and commit a moral error, not just a pedagogical error. Here racism reemerges as an opprobrium that is equated with original sin. On recognition of their original sin, Whites are expected to express embarrassment and regret for being ignorant. Emotional pain and guilt should be expected as part of the reconstructive process that will
In the United States, antiracist education is confined largely to schools of education. Other disciplines appear reluctant to embrace it on the grounds that this pedagogy lacks a substantive body of empirically grounded research. Antiracist education claims to address the political economic and social structural roots of racism. However, the work of William Julius Wilson and the hundreds of research studies on Black socioeconomic status attainment that followed the publication of The Declining Significance of Race in 1978 are not cited in its literature. This problem may be rooted in antiracist education’s implicit acceptance of the postmodern epistemic that empirically based social research distorts or silences other epistemologies. However, accepting alternative epistemologies at face value does not resolve the questions of how this knowledge is created and whether it is credible or valid.
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The antiracist education literature does not discuss the ontological foundation of race as a concept; the elaborate ideological processes that essentialize, and then reproduce, the idea of race; or the elusive nature of racism itself. Empirical inquiry is slighted in favor of rhetorical assertions that do not acknowledge the ambivalences, inconsistencies, and contradictions within White and non-White identities. Reifying whiteness negates the extent to which the White category is multidimensional and contested. Some critics note that the effort to deconstruct whiteness inadvertently reconstructs it as a fixed, permanent, and allencompassing category. If race is declining in significance, then antiracist education is in danger of becoming a movement without a cause—hence the search for racism in feelings, thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, institutions, and cultural repertoires. For example, those who oppose the social programs that are intended to redress racial inequities on the basis of principled justifications are impugned to be racist. Even the abstract principles cited to defend their position, such as equality of opportunity and freedom from government coercion, are cast in the same light. By defining racism as a pervasive phenomenon, the proportion of people thought to be racist increases dramatically and no one can ever be sure that he or she is not a racist. Antiracist educators have not resolved the contradiction between claiming the omnipresence of whiteness and acknowledging the ways in which White privilege is complicated by social class and sex interactions. They have not examined the degree to which processes of racialization and categorization are autonomous from processes of social class formation and structuration or how these processes interact. The tendency in antiracist education to ignore the increasing significance of class does not provide either the understanding or the appropriate strategy to mount a successful antiracist campaign. Jack Niemonen See also Color Blindness; Declining Significance of Race, The; Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue; Multicultural Education; Racism; Reverse Discrimination; Whiteness; White Privilege
Further Readings
Blum, Lawrence. 1999. “What Is ‘Racism’ in Antiracist Education?” Teachers College Record 100:860–880.
Eichstedt, Jennifer L. 2001. “Problematic White Identities and a Search for Racial Justice.” Sociological Forum 16:445–470. Lewis, Amanda E. 2004. “‘What Group?’ Studying White and Whiteness in the Era of ‘Color-Blindness.’” Sociological Theory 22:623–646. Mansfield, Earl and John Kehoe. 1994. “A Critical Examination of Anti-Racist Education.” Canadian Journal of Education 19:418–430. Thompson, Audrey. 1997. “For: Anti-Racist Education.” Curriculum Inquiry 27(1):7–44. Troyna, Barry. 1987. “Beyond Multiculturalism: Towards the Enactment of Anti-Racist Education in Policy, Provision, and Pedagogy.” Oxford Review of Education 13:307–320. Wilson, William Julius. 1978. The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
ANTI-SEMITISM Anti-Semitism is one of the world’s most powerful and enduring ideologies—and, in the current century, it is more pervasive than ever. Earlier in the postwar era, this would have seemed doubtful given that the Holocaust raised anti-Jewish prejudice and practice to seemingly unsurpassable levels. But anti-Semitic worldviews are now more universal, and more inextricably part of global culture, than they were during the Holocaust itself. Fantasies of Jewish power and evil are found nearly everywhere—from Egypt to Pakistan, Indonesia to Malaysia, Russia to France, Argentina to Canada. Islamic supremacism is sometimes called the key to global anti-Semitism, but in fact anti-Jewish sentiments are also common in realms where Catholicism, Protestantism, and Greek and Russian Orthodoxy hold sway. Even Japan, which has almost no history of direct contact with Jews and no obvious cultural ground for anti-Jewish sentiment, has become a hub of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, with a prolific source of best-selling books alleging Jewish domination over the non-Jewish world. Contemporary events sustain and spread this worldview. Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and simmering controversies over the meaning and truth of the Holocaust exert wide influence, keeping Jews in the global limelight. But the roots of anti-Semitism stretch far into the past. Generations of historians and social scientists have sought to explain how this sentiment crystallized and how, over time, it acquired
Anti-Semitism
The Eternal Jew poster. This poster advertises for a propaganda documentary film produced by Joseph Goebbels, mastermind of the German Nazi propaganda machine. The poster, which stirred up anti-Semitic violence, portrays Jews as moneylenders, Bolsheviks, and slave drivers by depicting a Jewish man holding gold coins in one hand and a whip in the other, with the Soviet Union under his arm. Anti-Semitism, whether endorsed by the state or acted out by individuals, has a long history. Source: Getty Images.
its unique features and dimensions. The answer lies in history, which this entry reviews.
Roots of Prejudice Jews acquired a special religio-cultural status in antiquity that, in modernity, mutated into an oddly ideological identity. Like no other people—and certainly no other dispersed minority—the Jews are imagined to rule and ruin the world. They are viewed as plutocrats and radicals, bankers and commissars, the secret “elders” and masters of capitalism and communism. They are indicted as media moguls who traduce public morality and masquerade as sacred genocide victims. Pariahs who are viewed as parasites, Jews are treated as if they were the key to the world’s woes. Rid the world of Jews, anti-Semites say, and you solve the riddle of history and save humanity.
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No other prejudice is so comprehensive, so paranoid— or so popular. Other despised groups have been demonized; for example, the Tutsis were demonized by Hutu chauvinists in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. But no other group has ever been demonized on this scale by adversaries all over the globe, who accuse Jews of savior-killing, soul-destroying, world-dominating malignity. And therein lies the central problem with respect to the analysis of anti-Semitism. A prejudice that resembles other prejudices in some respects, anti-Semitism is also an encompassing ideology formulated to explain the misfortunes of a world careening from disaster to disaster. How are we to understand this ideology in all its complexity? Gavin Langmuir offered a useful starting point by distinguishing among three types of ethnic bias: garden variety prejudice when groups simply dislike each other, xenophobia when groups form essentially negative opinions of each other, and chimeria when outgroups are demonized as bearers of monstrous powers. Jews, at different times, have been the object of all such prejudices, but increasingly they are the objects of chimerical prejudice in particular, according to Langmuir. “Chimeria” is a neologism based on the myth of the Chimæra—a beast that is part lion, part goat, and part snake. Lions, goats, and snakes are, of course, real; however, chimeras are mythical. Chimeria, then, is the belief in mythical creatures. Jews, according to Langmuir, have had the bad luck to be perceived as if they were fabulous monsters while their real attributes are dismissed or disdained. Other groups have been maligned in similarly fanciful ways, but no group has been so fantastically derogated, for so long, in so many places. The key to this uniquely chimerical status lies in the central and defining role of the Jews in “Judeo-Christian” and world history.
The Israelites and Christianity The Israelites first distinguished themselves, in the days of the prophets, by claiming an exclusive covenant with an all-powerful God, Yahweh (YHWH). This was not always a self-congratulatory claim; the prophets castigated the Israelites for forsaking the covenant, insisting that Israelite misfortunes (e.g., defeat, persecution, captivity) were their just desserts, but it was a charismatic claim nonetheless. YHWH was deemed the ultimate deity, and the Israelites were designated YHWH’s chosen, if errant, people.
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The strength of this faith was tested by many trials, from the Babylonian captivity to the massacre at Masada. At every step, the Israelites (whether free or captive, in Palestine or in diaspora) renewed their charismatic claim as YHWH’s “chosen ones,” the unique heirs to Mosaic revelation. Living along the caravan route between Assyria and Egypt and exposed to the depredations of empires, the Israelites preserved their unity by fanatical devotion to their creed. At times they were reviled for this fanaticism. But until Christianity sprang from the ferment of Hellenic and Mosaic religion, this “odium” was, analytically speaking, xenophobic, not chimeric. Only when the Jews were first depicted as inversely charismatic enemies— specifically as Christ killers, as God’s betrayers—did a chimerical variable enter the equation. The Jews, of course, occupy a central position in the New Testament. They retain their status as the sacred people of the Old Testament, but now they are also seen as traitors who betray God’s son, God’s gift to humanity as a whole. The Jews, by “hardening their hearts” to Christ’s divinity, forfeit God’s favor. This makes them the failed precursors of the new faith. As such, they become opposition incarnate, cautionary figures who by their very disqualification as God’s chosen yield this qualification to others. This gives them an exemplary role in the gospel dramaturgy. And yet, nonetheless, they remain a thorn in the side of believers because, with “stiff-necked” obstinacy, they persistently reject the revelation that builds on their own. Rather than sharing the charisma of Mosaic revelation with the new messiah, they reserve it for themselves. Thus, they remain a rankling reminder of the new faith’s inability to conquer its iconic forebears. Thus, criticism of the Jews was central to the emergent Christian theology of Roman and medieval times. At times this criticism gave way to denunciations of the kind familiar from the adversus Judaeus tradition. Writings by Chrysostom and others fall into this category. But in the first millennium, it was unusual for theology to inspire pogroms. Mass anti-Jewish action was rare. Jews were icons of disbelief, but they were not, in the main, enemies to be scourged.
The advance of Islam and the weakening of Byzantium also proved to be unsettling. Fierce jurisdictional disputes divided the Roman papacy from the Holy Roman emperors, antinomian heresies and millennial fantasies flourished, and chimeric prejudice became common, for example, manifest in sorcery fears and witch hunts (directed, above all, against lepers, widows, Lombards, and Jews). A sense that the world was coming unhinged, that daily life was ruled by occult and malevolent forces, began to infuse public sensibilities. Jews, in particular, began to seem uncanny and menacing. The first Crusade, begun in 1095 with the goal of reconquering Muslim-ruled Jerusalem, showed the force of this superstitious dread. Jews were often collateral victims of crusader violence. The spirit of this violence—exorcistic and expropriatory—permeated a traumatized culture so that, when the Black Death broke out in 1349, Europeans had already grown accustomed to chimeric charges against Jews, ranging from child murder to well poisoning. The fact that similar charges are still current, in places as diverse as Slovakia and Saudi Arabia, testifies to the breadth of their diffusion during this period. Jews, who had earlier been decried as unbelievers, were now reviled as miniature anti-Christs. When, in the same period, they began to figure as money lenders—because handling money was taboo for Christians—they were censured as usurers. This charge, in particular, ultimately had fateful consequences. Late medieval Europe witnessed many anti-Jewish innovations, including expulsions and inquisitions. England, Spain, and Germany led the way, forcing Jews into an ever widening diaspora. Growing enclaves of Ostjuden—“eastern Jews”—sprang up in Russia, Poland, and the Baltics. These populations also were subject to persecution, including Cossack violence. But chimerical bias during this period remained a fairly minor source of Jewish woes compared with ordinary ethnic and religious prejudice. Feelings toward the Jews were hedged in with magical dread (hence with chimeria), but more often than not Jews in early modern Europe were ostracized but not utterly demonized.
Medieval Instability
The Role of Capitalism
The situation changed during the late medieval period. The reasons for this change are complex and can only be intimated here. One factor, for example, may be the commercial revolution of the 11th century, which proved to be destabilizing with anomic effects.
The ratio of chimeria to lesser prejudices began to shift decisively when capitalism entered the picture. As money became unmistakably a world-changing power, Jews, who had become nearly synonymous with money, acquired an even more odious and uncanny
Anti-Semitism
reputation than before. This happened by infinitesimal degrees, but a crucial moment can be identified in the surge of railroad building that occurred in Central Europe during the 1830s and thereafter. The Rothschild-financed Northern Railway, in particular, roused jeering antipathy, inspiring rallies, broadsides, and even poetry. Friedrich Engels, at the time, observed that Jews figured in this movement as money personified; the anger they attracted was diverted from capital, which, as a strictly impersonal force, was far harder to grasp. It was easier to blame the Jews—for guilt by association with Rothschild, with money, or with both—than to blame the structural dynamics of an invisible, silent inscrutable system. Karl Marx, decades later, said that the public is often drawn to an invidious distinction between productive and parasitic capital. Because production is valued, industry is praised and profit from industry is applauded; however, interest from lending appears to be parasitic, springing not from industry but rather from the sheer manipulation of needs, debts, and numbers. If Marx had added, with Engels, that parasitic capital is routinely identified with Jewry, he would have brought us to the threshold of modern antiSemitism in one of its principal forms. Jews are demonized not merely as religious recalcitrants but also as parasites—as rapacious and calculating Shylocks preying on producers. The “Jew as banker,” personifying parasitic finance capital, is among the master themes of modern anti-Semitism. This first became apparent during the late 19th century, and it has since become so widely known that it borders on the obvious. The Long Depression of 1873 to 1896 was a major turning point. Until then, no single crisis had ensnared all the Euro-Atlantic economies at once. Capitalism had been growing by leaps and bounds, but its growing pains had been felt locally and regionally. Now, for the first time, a tear in the fabric of the capitalist system became universally evident. Insecurity about wages and profits became common across the spectrum; job loss and business failure became nearly universal fears. Disoriented, the public sought answers. Often, instead, they found scapegoats. It was not preordained that the Jews would be blamed for this crisis. For example, in the youthful United States, where antibank sentiment materialized during the panic of 1819 and matured during the Jacksonian years, the scapegoat for crisis was not the Jews but rather the Freemasons. An anti-Masonic scare of major proportions played a notable role in
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early mass politics in the United States, while Jews were ignored. Initially, something similar happened in Europe as well. When the first major anti-Semitic writers began to bewail modernity and berate the Jews during the 1880s, they pointed accusing fingers at the Masons as well. Catholic tradition, in particular, made the Masons a familiar scapegoat, so when Edouard Drumont and others began to publish conspiracy theories about the masterminds who they alleged were the sponsors of sedition and crisis, they singled out the Masons as often as they did Jews. But the equation of Jews with money proved to be decisive. Finance capital was having too obviously corrosive an effect on society to be ignored, farmers and small shopkeepers were pushed to the brink of survival, and workers fell deeply into debt. By the turn of the 20th century, Jews had eclipsed the Masons as the chosen ones of modern chimeria. They became fantasy figures or objects of obsession. This chimeric status was confirmed when the Dreyfus affair engulfed France in 1894, giving anti-Semitism a mass base. Just three years later, Vienna was governed by a radical antiSemite. In 1919, another Austrian, Adolf Hitler, would join a rightist German group that, under his leadership, became the Nazi party. He was won to this party, Hitler reported, by its anti-Semitism. Germans were besieged, party leaders told him, by a Jewish conspiracy with two arms: the “Red International” of communism and the “Golden International” of finance capitalism. It was the duty of anti-Semites to destroy this menace. Hitler took this lesson to heart. Since then, many others have done the same. Etymologically, anti-Semitism is a modern term, coined in 1879, that was deployed to give a scientific veneer to the claim that Jews are an antisocial “race.” Ever since, ideologues have poured energy into circulating this nostrum, inspiring many analysts to call anti-Semitism a form of racism. This is a fair claim. A kind of essentialism, akin to racism, is inherent in much anti-Jewish sentiment. But sociologically speaking, the ideas and movements called “antiSemitic” are more often fired by chimerical fear and fantasy than they are by pseudoscience. Modern antiSemitism is ultimately a species of demonology best explained by history and social psychology. David Norman Smith See Appendix B See also American Jewish Committee; Anti-Defamation League; Genocide; Jewish Americans; Prejudice; Stereotypes; Zionism
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Further Readings
Adorno, Theodor, R. Nevitt Sanford, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, and Daniel Levinson. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper. Altemeyer, Bob. 1996. The Authoritarian Specter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brustein, William. 2003. Roots of Hate. New York: Cambridge University Press. Cohn, Norman. 1981. Warrant for Genocide. Chico, CA: Scholars Press. Eisner, Will. 2005. The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. New York: Norton. Goodman, David and Masanori Miyazawa. 1995. Jews in the Japanese Mind. New York: Free Press. Harris, James. 1994. The People Speak! Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Langmuir, Gavin. 1990. History, Religion, and Anti-Semitism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Massing, Paul. 1949. Rehearsal for Destruction. New York: Harper. Neumann, Franz. 1944. Behemoth. New York: Oxford University Press. Penslar, Derek. 2001. Shylock’s Children. Berkeley: University of California Press. Samuel, Maurice. 1988. The Great Hatred. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1948. Anti-Semite and Jew. New York: Schocken Books. Smith, David N. 1996. “The Social Construction of Enemies.” Sociological Theory 14:203–240. Smith, David N. 1997. “Judeophobia, Myth, and Critique.” Pp. 123–154 in The Seductiveness of Jewish Myth, edited by S. Daniel Breslauer. Albany: State University of New York Press. Weber, Max. 1952. Ancient Judaism. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Wilson, Stephen. 1982. Ideology and Experience. London: Associated University Presses.
APARTHEID Apartheid was the system of racial classification, segregation, and discrimination practiced in South Africa under National party governments between 1948 and 1994. Apartheid entailed an extreme attempt to order a society explicitly and systematically according to racial categories. The context was a colonial settler society with a minority of White settlers—farmers and workers—living amid an indigenous or “native” majority. But the method was profoundly modern as the powers of the modern state were used to maintain
the privileges of the White minority. This entry examines the system of apartheid, its operation, its goals, and its impact.
Classifying People The foundation of apartheid was the system of racial categorization enshrined in law by the Population Registration Act of 1950 (and subsequent amendments). The act provided for all South Africans to be classified into one of three basic racial categories: “A White person is one who in appearance is, or who is generally accepted as, a White person, but does not include a person who, although in appearance obviously a White person, is generally accepted as a Coloured person. A native is a person who is in fact or is generally accepted as a member of any aboriginal race or tribe of Africa. A Coloured person is a person who is not a White person nor a native.” Later, a fourth category, Indian, was added for people of South Asian descent, and the label native was replaced by the labels Bantu and Black. Racial classification was recorded in official identity documentation. From 1970, the Black category was further subdivided into ethnic or linguistic groups (e.g., Zulu, Xhosa). This racial categorization was largely “commonsensical” and consensual, based on agreed and broadly coterminous factors (descent, language or culture, and appearance). In difficult or contested cases, classification was not based on either descent or purely biological markers; instead, the cultural markers of appearance and general acceptance were most important. Although informal “rules” about appearance—including about skin color or hair— were used, they were used inconsistently and appearance was generally interpreted in terms of social standing or class. Overall, judgments about social standing (e.g., friends, work, name, dress, deportment, tastes) were most important in contested cases. The 1951 national population census provided the first opportunity for mass racial classification. Race was determined by census enumerators, who had no specific expertise and received no special training. In ambiguous cases, therefore, classification reflected the prevailing social prejudices of White people. People could appeal to a Race Classification Appeal Board. Although the appeal board tended to find in favor of the applicants, there were very few appeals, reflecting the generally consensual basis of classification. Ambiguous and contested cases generally involved the very small minority of Colored people. “Colored”
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was a composite and diverse category that included the descendants of relationships between White and Black people, the descendants of “Malay” slaves brought from Southeast Asia (categorized separately in 1951 but not thereafter), and (after 1970) descendants of the indigenous Khoi and San who inhabited the Western Cape prior to the arrival of either White or Black people and who did not speak Bantu languages. Although segregation between White and Black preceded apartheid, segregation between White and Colored was a primary objective of the apartheid state.
The System’s Goals Three broad objectives lay behind the apartheid project. The first was to maintain racial purity by preventing the “mixing” or “dilution” of “White blood.” There should be no interracial sex and, hence, no interracial marriage. To prevent temptation, there should be residential segregation by race. Pre-1948 legislation prohibiting sex and marriage between White and Black people was extended to cover White and Colored people. The Group Areas Act of 1950 led to the forced removal of nearly 1 million people, mostly Colored people removed from mixed residential areas when they were declared White areas. In hospitals, patients were supposed to be handled by nurses of the appropriate racial group (although nearly all doctors were White). Segregation was extended to other areas of social interaction—education (separate schools and universities for each racial group), transport (separate railway carriages), and most municipal facilities (separate parks and beaches). Where complete segregation was not possible, partial segregation was implemented through providing separate entrances and counters (e.g., at stations and post offices). The second objective was to ensure and then protect the privileged economic position of the White minority. Apartheid served to determine “who got what” in diverse ways. Long before 1948, Black people were prevented from owning land outside of demarcated “native reserves.” Given the scarcity of good farmland or other economic opportunities in these areas, most Black people worked as landless laborers on the White-owned farms that covered most of the country or as migrant workers in the gold mines of the Witwatersrand. The apartheid state also inherited policies that protected unskilled White workers through a racial discriminatory “color bar” in employment, reserving better paying occupations for White people. Under apartheid, the emphasis shifted to racial
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discrimination in public education. White children from poorer White families were provided with the skills required to sustain a privileged position in the labor market. The massive investment in the education of White children was so successful that the color bar became largely redundant. The apartheid state sought to balance its commitments to White voters with the protection of the profits earned by White-owned capitalist enterprises. Whereas the cost of White and skilled labor was inflated under apartheid, the cost of Black and unskilled labor was depressed. “Influx control” policies and the pass laws restricted where Black people were allowed to live and hence work, ensuring not only that urbanization among Black people was curtailed (in stark contrast to most other parts of the developing world at the same time) but also that White farmers were guaranteed a supply of labor despite being unable to pay competitive wages. The third objective of apartheid was to maintain the political dominance of the White minority. During the 1950s, the apartheid state was preoccupied with removing Colored voters from the existing common voters roll, but thereafter the primary concern was the political threat posed by the already disenfranchised “native” or Black majority, that is, the swart gevaar (or “Black danger” in Afrikaans). The apartheid state sought to restrict the political rights of Black people to the native reserves or bantustans (“homelands”), as they were later renamed. Powers were devolved first to appointed chiefs and later to semielected but largely compliant banstustan governments. In 1975, the Transkei homeland was the first to become notionally independent, with its citizens losing South African citizenship. The apartheid system was maintained primarily through the day-to-day bureaucracy of a modern state (outside of the homelands), through indirect rule (in the homelands), and through ideologies of racial hierarchy, but behind the clerks, officials, and teachers sat the police (including growing numbers of Black police in junior positions), informers, and prisons. When Black South Africans rebelled, notably during the 1950s and early 1960s, 1976–1977, and the mid1980s, the army was deployed.
Impact on South Africa Apartheid not only ordered but also transformed South African society. Discriminatory education and privileged family backgrounds provided White
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children with the advantages of class, such that explicit racial discrimination in the labor market became unnecessary. Economic and industrial policies designed to reduce dependence on Black workers and boost incomes for (White) skilled workers and professionals resulted in capital-intensive growth at the same time as rising unemployment (among unskilled Black people) and, thus, both inequality and poverty. Forced removal of the unemployed and their dependents (i.e., the “surplus population”) from White-owned farms and towns to the reserves resulted in massive overcrowding and the consequent destruction of a smallholding agrarian society in those areas. Apartheid was unable to transform the country’s demographics. The White minority was too small to sustain economic growth; industry demanded semiskilled and then skilled Black workers to produce goods and a larger pool of consumers to buy them. During the 1970s, and especially during the 1980s, the apartheid state began to dismantle racial discrimination in the labor market, to invest more heavily in secondary schooling for Black children, and to lift restrictions on the growth of a Black middle class and a stable urban working class. Petty apartheid—the segregation of parks and other public facilities—was dismantled. Racial discrimination in public welfare was slowly reduced. In 1984, the apartheid state reversed its earlier policies and sought to co-opt the small Colored and Indian minorities into an antiBlack coalition through racially segregated representation in a Tricameral Parliament (with separate chambers for White, Colored, and Indian members of Parliament). Finally, in the face of countrywide revolt from below and intensified international pressures, the apartheid state began to negotiate an end to all aspects of apartheid. In 1994, South Africans— including in the notionally independent homelands— voted in the country’s first nonracial elections. Many aspects of apartheid were not unique to South Africa. In the aftermath of slavery, colonial (and especially settler) societies in Africa generally practiced racial segregation. In the United States and Brazil, most Black people were denied the vote through literacy and other qualifications (until the 1960s in the United States and as late as the 1980s in Brazil). In much of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the U.S. southern states, White people owned the land and landless Black people worked for them. Racism and racial discrimination were nearly universal during the 20th century. The concept of
apartheid has even been applied to cities in the United States during the late 20th century. What made apartheid unique was its systematic depth and breadth, as a fully modern state-ordered society along racial lines, going far beyond racism and racial discrimination to generalized social engineering around state-sanctioned racial ideology and legislation. Jeremy Seekings See Appendix B See also Apartheid, Laws; Discrimination; Mandela, Nelson; One-Drop Rule; Racism; Segregation; South Africa, Republic of Further Readings
Christopher, A. J. 2002. ‘“To define the indefinable’: Population classification and the Census in South Africa.” Area 34:401–408. Norval, Aletta. 1996. Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse. London: Verso. O’Meara, Dan. 1996. Forty Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948–1994. Johannesburg, South Africa: Ravan. Posel, Deborah. 1991. The Making of Apartheid, 1948–1961: Conflict and Compromise. Oxford, UK: Clarendon. Posel, Deborah. 2001a. “What’s in a Name? Racial categorizations under apartheid and their afterlife.” Transformations 47:50–74. Posel, Deborah. 2001b. “Race and Common Sense: Racial Classification in Twentieth Century South Africa.” African Studies Review 44:87–114. Seekings, Jeremy and Nicoli Nattrass. 2005. Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
APARTHEID, LAWS Between 1948 and 1990, South Africa was controlled by the system of apartheid (separateness). This social and legal policy was the strict racial segregation of the South African population in all aspects of life, both private and public. Apartheid laws determined where people could live, which jobs people could perform, whether people could vote, who people could marry, which schools or hospitals people could go to, and even which beaches people could visit. People’s race—White, Black, Colored (mixed race), or Asian (from the Indian subcontinent or Chinese)—affected
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every part of their lives and work. People’s race was determined by the state based on their parents’ race or by a series of tests of the color of their skin, the curliness of their hair, and the color of their fingernails. People could apply to change their race, as was necessary if a person wanted to marry someone of a different race; very few people were able to do this. Apartheid was the goal of the White Afrikaner political party, the National party, which was voted into power in 1948. Members systematically developed and enacted laws, described in this entry, that were designed to keep race groups apart in the country and to ensure that White South Africans, who constituted only 10% of the population, were able to benefit the most in the society.
Grand Apartheid Laws Apartheid legislation can be divided into two broad areas: grand apartheid and petty apartheid. Grand apartheid laws determined people’s race (Population Registration Act of 1950) and where they could live (Group Areas Act of 1950) and work (Bantu Building Workers Act of 1951). Tens of thousands of Black and Colored families were uprooted from their homes when the Group Areas Act reclassified large areas of the country as reserved for Whites only. They were moved onto non-White land that lacked any infrastructures or amenities. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 and the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950 banned marriage and sexual relations between people of different races. The government sought to force Black South Africans out of White areas completely through the establishment of self-governing homelands. The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951, the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959, and the Bantu Homelands Citizens Act of 1970 created eight homelands within the borders of South Africa and forced Black South Africans to take up citizenship of a homeland even if they had never lived there. Under the Natives (Abolition of Passes and Coordination of Documents) Act of 1952, every Black South African needed to carry a passbook that detailed the individual’s ethnicity, employment, and identity number. Adult Black South Africans were not allowed to be in a White area unless they had a job there. The “pass laws” allowed the government to expel the unemployed into the homelands and to place severe restrictions on travel for all Black South Africans. The
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pass laws resulted in a massive increase in arrests and imprisonment for those who were living illegally outside of their homeland, it criminalized the Black population, and it was the most hated piece of apartheid legislation. Schools and universities were segregated under the Bantu Education Act of 1953 and the Extension of University Education Act of 1959. The government did not want to educate Black South Africans to any significant level, viewing this as a waste of resources. The government spent more than ten times the resources on White students than on Black students. Bantu education was designed to make Black South Africans unskilled and unable to compete with Whites for jobs. The grand apartheid laws were strictly upheld by the police and courts. Fully 90% of all police work was taken up in enforcing these laws, which ensured the economic and social impoverishment of the Black population.
Petty Apartheid Laws Petty apartheid laws regulated day-to-day living. This legislation was determined by individual cities and provinces and sought to segregate all local amenities according to race. People’s race determined which restaurants they could patronize, which hospitals would accept them as patients, and even which park benches they could sit on. All public transport, cinemas, entertainment venues, bars, and hotels were racially segregated, and Black South Africans were barred from worshiping in many churches even when they were employed as workers there. Petty apartheid created some bizarre situations. For example, all races were allowed to swim in the ocean, but all beaches were segregated; Black nurses were not allowed to treat White patients; and blood used in transfusions was separated by type and race of donor. The first heart transplant in 1967 was delayed because the initial donor was a Black male and the recipient was a White male; the doctors were not allowed to “mix” the organs between races. Black South Africans were allowed to walk through city parks but not to stop or sit on benches or walk on the grass unless they were employed as workers in the parks. Black police constables were not allowed to arrest White suspects or to go though areas designated as “Whites only.” Public buses for Whites were allowed to pick up Japanese but not Chinese passengers. Tourists who
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were not White needed to carry identification to ensure that they would be allowed entry into hotel bars and restaurants. The system of apartheid criminalized the majority of South Africa’s population. The laws ensured the economic, educational, and social impoverishment of Black, Colored, and Asian South Africans. In spite of the efforts of the apartheid state to uphold the laws through the police, courts, and military, the system failed. Politically and economically, it was unsustainable. After decades of violent and nonviolent opposition to the legislation by political, religious, and social groups inside and outside of South Africa, the apartheid legislation was repealed in 1990. This set the stage for four years of political negotiation and the first democratic election in 1994, electing Nelson Mandela as president. Doug Thomson See also Apartheid; Discrimination; Mandela, Nelson; Segregation; South Africa, Republic of; White Racism
Further Readings
Coleman, Max, ed. 1998. A Crime against Humanity: Analysing the Repression of the Apartheid State. Cape Town, South Africa: Human Rights Committee. Price, Robert M. 1991. The Apartheid State in Crisis: Political Transformation in South Africa, 1975–1990. New York: Oxford University Press. Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 1998. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report. vols. 1–5. Cape Town, South Africa: Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
ARAB AMERICANS Although they are frequently regarded as recent immigrants, persons from the current Arab world have immigrated to the United States for well over a century. During this time, the Arab American community has undergone tremendous transformations based on its own internal evolution and external events. A major issue throughout this time has been to define who the Arab Americans are, especially in terms of what qualities and characteristics they possess, and the extent to which Arab Americans are the same as, and different from, mainstream society. This question has by no
means been resolved, adding to the dynamism and complexity of the Arab American community.
The Arab World The Arab world encompasses a vast area across North Africa, through the Arabian Peninsula, and Western Asia (bounded by Turkey to the north and Iran to the east). As such, the commonly used designation of the Middle East captures only a portion of the approximately 5 million-square-mile expanse. This area is populated by approximately 300 million people who can be considered Arabs, although subclassifications may result in certain groups being omitted from this grouping. Strictly speaking, the twenty-two countries that belong to the Arab League (a regional political organization) can be defined as Arab. These countries are Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Although this region has been populated for millennia, the states themselves are comparatively recent, emerging primary post–World War I due to the League of Nations mandates that provided many of the national boundaries seen today. Given the large area and large number of people in the Arab category, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to identify consistent cultural elements that span all Arabs across region, religion, and nationality. Of course, one element is the Arab language as a primary medium of communication. Although the advent of mass media has resulted in the emergence of Modern Standard Arabic, there can still be drastic divergences in local dialect. This can be more of an issue for those parts of the population who have received limited schooling, meaning that social class also can be an important dividing line among the populations of the Arab world. Although Islam is the predominant religion in the Arab world, it is by no means the only religion. The vast majority of Arabs belong to one of the three Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—all tracing their lineage to Abraham and worshipping the same god. Thus, despite variations in specific aspects of theological doctrine, all three Abrahamic branches share many common themes and traditions. Thus, the “religious” divide that often is discussed as the root of regional conflict ultimately has more to do with political differences than with religious differences.
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A more significant unifying element can be referred to as an Arab consciousness, which refers to a shared sense of belonging to the Arab category. When this consciousness has been strong, it has provided unification in the Arab world. At the same time, when this sentiment ebbs, there is a diminished sense of unity. In its places have emerged other sources of unity, including nationality, social class, and religion (often combined in various permutations). Thus, although Arabness can be an elusive quality to concretely identify and contain, it is nevertheless a real element in the binding of the Arab world.
Arab Immigration Understanding the composition and characteristics of each immigration wave provides the best understanding of the diversity within the Arab American community. This diversity means that it can be difficult to accurately represent the totality of the community without first developing an agreed-on definition of who can be counted as an Arab American. Using estimates derived through the 2000 census, the Arab American Institute places the number of Americans with Arab ancestry at 3.5 million. However, due to methodological issues regarding how the information was collected, this can be used only as a general estimate. Emigration from the Arab world to the United States is unique in that there have been many immigration periods that span U.S. history. The presence of “Mohamedeans” in the United States can be traced to trade wars with the Barbary states as well as to the presence of sailors who arrived from North Africa. Although not comprising a significant wave of immigration, this demonstrates the long-lasting relationship of the United States with the Arab world. Research on the Arab American community typically divides immigration into two periods: pre-1924 and post-1965. This is owed to the changes in U.S. immigration law and policy that resulted in very little immigration from non-Western and Northern European countries from 1924 to 1965. Pre e-19 924 Immig gra atiion Wave
Because the Arab world was under the control of the Ottoman Empire during the late 19th century, the United States chose to classify Arab immigrants, along with other persons from the Ottoman Empire (e.g., Turks, Greeks, Armenians), as coming from
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“Turkey in Asia.” Thus, these immigrants were seen as Turks even though the ruling Ottoman authority was Islamic and the vast majority of the early immigrants were Christians from what is today Lebanon and Syria. At the turn of the 20th century, the United States began to distinguish those coming from Greater Syria from those coming from other parts of the Ottoman Empire. At that time, the term Arab was associated with being Muslim and the label Syrian was associated with Christianity. For most early immigrants, Syrian was seen as a more favorable label because the majority of these early immigrants were Christians. As a result, the label Syrian, or Syrian American, became the standard designation for persons from the Arab world. Another issue was whether the immigrants could be considered White or not. This was important due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which stated that only persons considered White could become naturalized citizens. Whether immigrants from the Arab world could be classified as White was decided in the 1923 case of Dow v. United States. The case came to court in 1914 when George Dow was denied U.S. citizenship by a judge on the grounds that he could not satisfy the prerequisite of being a “free White person.” The decision was reversed based on the argument that Syrians were in fact members of the Caucasian race and, therefore, could be considered as White. It was this finding that allowed all other persons from the region to claim U.S. citizenship because the court ruled in favor of their whiteness (even if they always remained on the margins of the Caucasian family tree). Increased restrictions on immigration due to the quota system had a major impact on the early Arab American community. First, it virtually ended immigration from the Arab world and limited contact between the communities in the United States and the communities back home. The vast majority of the immigrant community realized that they would never return to their homeland to live (despite their original plans to do so). Second, community youth in the second generation would now rely on community elders to provide an account of the homeland and its culture rather than having firsthand experience on their own or learning it from continuously arriving immigrants. In this way, community elders, organizational leaders, and others in positions of authority became the cultural authority for the community, determining what proper cultural practice was as they saw fit regardless
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of whether it matched what was actually occurring in the Arab world. The end result was a process of tangential development wherein the Arab American community (and its culture) in the United States would evolve on a different path than would the Arab world. Post-1 1965 Immigra atiion Wav ve
Immigrants did not begin to flow into the United States again until after 1965 when the quota system ended and increased immigration was allowed. The result was an influx of new Arab immigrants into Arab American communities that had existed, in some instances, for two or even three generations. The arrangement of the old and the new in close proximity had the potential to exacerbate conflicting characteristics of each. In many cases, the religions of old and newer immigrants varied. In addition, those who had been living in the United States were viewed as very American (despite any lasting ethnic traits), whereas the immigrants were viewed as more foreign. Thus, while sharing a common ancestral homeland, they did not necessarily share much else. Several basic differences demarcated the communities from one another. First, the later immigrants were primarily Muslim, whereas the early immigrants were generally Christian. Second, most in the early group were from rural areas, had little education, and were of a lower socioeconomic status. Although there were some in the second wave that also resembled this description, there were more who came through a process known as the brain drain, where persons with advanced education and professional occupations left the Arab world for prospects they believed to be better in the United States than in their homelands. Third, the vast majority of the first period came from a limited geographic area, essentially a number of villages in present-day Lebanon and Syria along with some from Palestine and Jordan. The second group came from a greater number of nations, including Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, and increased numbers from Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. Finally, many in the early group came out of economic necessity and had made conscious and willing decisions to leave their homes. The second group, on the other hand, was composed of a greater number of unwilling exiles who had come as a result of political unrest and regional warfare. Another difference that has received less attention involves the different political ideologies that had become infused in the Arab identities of the two different periods. As a result of the mandate system
after World War I, the partition of Palestine, and the emergence of the nation-state in the neocolonialist era, the region had become intensely politicized during the period of the late 1930s and onward. This meant that part of the “Arab” consciousness that emerged at the time was likewise highly political. To be Arab was to be more than just culturally aware; it was also to be politically aware. Despite these differences, the traditional cultural elements of family, religion, and village/region continued to hold across the divisions within the Arab American community, and this has on occasion provided the impetus for these groups to come together as one. Similar to the Arab world, Arab American community unity and identity ebb and flow with events in the Arab world and in the United States. This makes any study of the Arab American community a snapshot of a particular moment in time rather than a definitive portrayal.
Contested Representations Derogatory portrayals of Arab culture and Islam based on stereotypical characterizations can be found throughout the history of the United States. This antagonistic and suspicious feeling extends back to the earliest period of the United States and has been rendered as negative portrayals in movies and television, literature, and news coverage. In all of these instances, Arabs and Muslims are presented as a certain formulaic type reduced to a finite set of characteristics that are consistently emphasized. A review of 900 films by Jack Shaheen found that Hollywood typically portrays Arabs as “brute murderers, sleazy rapists, religious fanatics, oil-rich dimwits, and abusers of women.” The issue of otherness is key to understanding the recurring discrimination and racism directed toward Arab Americans during times of crisis. This has contributed to a sizable willingness among the U.S. public to treat Arab Americans differently after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Polls regarding Arab Americans indicated that most Americans favor profiling persons of Arab ancestry regardless of their U.S. citizenship. Other polls had similar results, indicating a general suspicion of Arab Americans. Although this attitude is not new in the United States, the war on terrorism provides a new context for this sentiment. Ongoing attempts are being made to “rehumanize” Arab American and Muslim Americans. The process of rehumanization involves rebutting commonsense
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notions and practical reasoning through highlighting those behaviors that are seen as positive and preferred. Part of this attempt is being done by national and local organizations that highlight Arab Americans that have made significant contributions to U.S. society. This process is meant to provide a new commonsense understanding of the Arab category, and thus the Arab American category, by highlighting behaviors that are already observable but are rendered invisible because of negative stereotypes and schemas. Recent calls made for Arabs to become part of the United States ignore the presence of Arab Americans extending over a century. Whether this process is successful depends on the suspension of dominant stereotypes, a transformation in typical portrayals, and an expansion of our understanding of the characteristics and diversity of the Arab American community. Gary C. David See Appendix A See also Assyrian Americans; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Egyptian Americans; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Iraqi Americans; Islamophobia; Jordanian Americans; Lebanese Americans; Muslim Americans; Palestinian Americans; Stereotypes; Syrian Americans
Further Readings
Abraham, Sameer Y. and Nabeel Abraham, eds. 1983. Arabs in the New World: Studies on Arab-American Communities. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Allison, Robert J. 1995. The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776–1815. New York: Oxford University Press. Aswad, Barbara C., ed. 1974. Arabic Speaking Communities in American Cities. New York: Center for Migration Studies. Cainkar, Louise. 2002. “No Longer Invisible: Arab and Muslim Exclusion after September 11.” Middle East Report, Fall, 22–29. David, Gary C. and Kenneth Kahtan Ayouby. 2002. “Being American and Becoming Americanized: Ethnic Organizations and Mediated Assimilation.” Pp. 125–142 in Muslim Minorities in the West: Visible and Invisible, edited by Yvonne Haddad and Jane I. Smith. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira. Hitti, Phillip. 1924. Syrians in America. New York: George Doran. Hourani, Albert. 1991. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Warner Books.
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Kayal, Phillip M. and Joseph M. Kayal. 1975. The SyrianLebanese in America: A Study in Religion and Assimilation. Boston, MA: Twayne. McCarus, Ernest. 1994. The Development of Arab-American Identity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Naff, Alixa. 1985. Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Said, Edward W. 1997. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Vintage Books. Shaheen, Jack G. 2001. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. New York: Olive Branch. Shakir, Evelyn. 1997. Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women in the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger. Suleiman, Michael. 1999. Arabs in America: Building a New Future. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Terry, Janice J. 1985. Mistaken Identity: Arab Stereotype in Popular Writing. Washington, DC: American Arab Affairs Council.
ARGENTINA Argentina is a nation with an estimated 2007 population of 39.4 million people and is located at the southernmost tip of South America. According to the CIA World Factbook, 97% of Argentines are ethnically “White.” However, this seemingly homogeneous Nicaragua Costa Rica
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population is constantly debating the essence of argentinidad—caught between its European roots and its uniquely “American” experience. Before colonization, the land that is now Argentina was sparsely populated by groups of nomadic indigenous people, such as the Mapuche and the Tehuelche, and by more sedentary groups, such as the Kolla and the Guaraní, in the mountainous forested north. Of these, only the last two constitute a significant presence in present-day Argentina. When Argentines look back to the past for the roots of their national identity, therefore, they look not to the indigenous past but rather to the gaucho—the legendary protagonist of Argentina’s rural origins.
The Gaucho The gaucho was often, but not always, a mestizo or an Indian who sold his knife, horsemanship, and tracking skills to the highest bidder. Much like the North American cowboy, the gaucho is a rural figure, living nomadically, owning only what he carried on his horse’s back. Mercenary gauchos made up the cavalries of armies on both sides of the civil wars of the 19th century. In 1872, the gaucho was immortalized in José Hernández’s epic poem Martín Fierro, which is the first instance in which the gaucho is invoked not as a marginal societal element but rather as a symbol of national identity.
Immigration: Assimilation and Isolation With the success of the “Conquest of the Desert” campaigns, which effectively wiped out indigenous presence in the southern regions, immigration was encouraged with the goal of populating these newly open spaces with people from “civilized”—that is, European—societies. This influence, the reasoning was, would help to make Argentina into a modern nation and erase any mark of the aboriginal or gaucho “barbarism” of the past. The result was that by the early 20th century, nearly 30% of the population was newly arrived immigrants. The effect, ironically, was a turn back to the gaucho as national icon in the face of the changes brought on by this massive wave of newcomers. Itallia an Argentin ness: Assimillatio on Brings a New Natio onalissm
In today’s Buenos Aires, Italian ethnicity is everywhere—from the food, to slang words of Italian origin,
to the newsstands where Italian newspapers are sold. A glance through a phonebook shows as many surnames of Italian origin as of Spanish or other European origin. With the 2001 economic crisis, many Italian Argentines reclaimed their dual citizenship and voted in the Italian elections in 2006. During the early years of the 20th century, however, these newcomers were not yet assimilated, and many feared the changes they had brought to language and culture. During this period, young writers returned to the gauchesca poetry founded by the epic poem Martín Fierro. The gaucho, once a feared and marginalized outlaw, had become a figure of national pride now that his actual cultural presence had diminished. By the middle of the century, the immigrants had established themselves as the industrial workforce that would form the basis of the labor movement and the populist movement of Peronism. Other groups, however, have remained isolated, resisting—or being refused—integration into the ever changing national character. Two examples here are Welsh and Jewish Argentines. Wellsh h Argen ntin nes
The Argentine government offered Michael D. Jones, a Welsh pastor with ultranationalist leanings, 250 square kilometers of land along the Chubut River in Patagonia in return for the establishment of a stable European presence in these newly conquered territories. In 1865, the “little Wales beyond Wales” was established, with Jones recruiting and financing other Welsh settlers. Welsh language, architecture, and customs have survived in this area to the present day. Welsh is still spoken and taught in schools. Cultural centers, such as teahouses and Protestant chapels, dot the landscape in the Chubut Valley’s main Welsh settlements—Puerto Madryn, Dolavon, Trevelin, Trelew, and Rawson. Argen ntin ne Jew ws
Argentina boasts the largest Jewish population in South America. The first Jewish settlers arrived in 1888 and settled in rural colonies organized and financed by the Jewish Colonization Association of Paris, a group dedicated to settling Russian Jews in agricultural areas around the world. The Pampas Jews became known as “Jewish gauchos.” In Buenos Aires, Jewish immigration followed patterns similar to those in the United States—a large
Armenian Americans
wave at the turn of the 20th century and then another large wave fleeing Europe in World War II. However, the 20th century has also revealed deep anti-Semitism, keeping Argentine Jews from comfortable assimilation into the larger culture. In 1992, a suicide bomber hit the Israeli embassy. In 1994, a bomb exploded at the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA). Because the government has yet to solve either case, there is a perception within the Jewish community that it is indifferent to their concerns. Synagogues are heavily guarded and entrance is tightly controlled, with even regular members needing to produce identification and submit to bag searches. The Jewish presence in Buenos Aires is visible nevertheless; the community comes together every year to observe the anniversaries of the AMIA and embassy bombings, with increasing public and political recognition. On a more whimsical note, Buenos Aires boasts the only Kosher McDonald’s restaurant outside of Israel.
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ARMENIAN AMERICANS Armenians have immigrated to the United States in two primary waves with different political and economic circumstances. Approximately 100,000 were already living in the United States by 1924, when most immigration was shut off, and a much larger flood, including survivors of the 1915 genocide, have arrived since immigration laws were liberalized in 1965. Today, the Armenian American community described in this entry embraces approximately 700,000 persons, compared to an estimated 2007 population of 3 million people in Armenia.
Russia Ukraine Kazakhstan
The Present and Beyond The current wave of immigration is from nations such as Bolivia and Paraguay. These people—often marked by their mestizo ethnicity—occupy the lowest social position and often suffer discrimination and racism. Only time will tell how these newcomers—a group far more mestizo and indio than those who came before—will change the face of Argentine national identity. Margaret Mackenzie Schwartz
Georgia Armenia
Azerbaijan
Turkmenistan
Turkey
Syria Cyprus Lebanon
Iraq
Iran
West Bank Israel
Jordan
Egypt
Kuwait
Saudi Arabia
Persian Gulf
ea
dS Re
See Appendix A See also Anti-Semitism; Assimilation; Colonialism; Cosmopolitanism; Creole; Diaspora; Immigrant Communities; Melting Pot
Black Sea
From Armenia to the United States Further Readings
Goodman, J. 2002. “Return to a Promised Land on the Pampas.” Américas 54(1). Grimson, A. 2005. “Ethnic (In)Visibility in Neoliberal Argentina.” NACLA Report on the Americas 38(4):24–29. Rock, D. 1987. Argentina, 1516–1987: From Spanish Colonization to Alfonsín. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sarmiento, D. 2004. Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism (K. Ross, Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
The historic Armenian homeland straddles the eastern portion of present-day Turkey, the western portion of the former Soviet Union south of the Transcaucasian Mountains (including where the present-day Armenian republic lies), and the northwestern portion of present-day Iran. Over the centuries, this location put Armenians at a major crossroads of trade, cultural exchange, and war between the world’s East and West, and Armenia alternated between states of independence and subjugation by invading powers. Through these changing political situations, Armenians
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Armenian Americans
maintained their sense of nationhood, with a distinct alphabet and a distinct Christian Church, the Apostolic Church, similar to but not affiliated with Eastern Orthodox denominations. By the 19th century, most of historic Armenia was part of the Ottoman Empire, with Armenians living as one of the millets, the religious national subdivisions of the empire. Most lived as peasant farmers or petty urban laborers, suffering extra burdens of taxation and personal indignity as a religious minority. Eastern Armenians during these years lived under the rule of Czarist Russia. After Turkey’s November 1914 entry into World War I and subsequent battlefield defeats before Russian armies, the Young Turk triumvirate presided directly over the Armenian genocide of 1915, resulting in the slaughter of between 1.0 million and 1.5 million Armenians and the slower deaths of many more over the next several years. The U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morganthau, and other diplomats protested the killings and saved what few lives they could. At the behest of European leaders, late in 1920 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the rightful borders of Armenia to include substantial portions of historically Armenian provinces currently ruled by Turkey. He did so with ironic timing because at that time Armenia was under siege by both Turkish and Soviet Russian armies. By the start of 1921, a tiny slice of the historic homeland had been rechristened the Soviet Republic of Armenia. An estimated 60,000 Armenians already lived in the United States on the eve of the genocide. The figure had reached approximately 100,000 by 1924, the year that the Johnson–Reed immigration restriction act reduced subsequent Armenian entry to a slow annual trickle. Among those cities and towns with sizable Armenian populations were Boston, Watertown, and Worcester, Massachusetts; New Britain, Connecticut; New York City; Union City, New Jersey; Detroit, Michigan; and Fresno, California. A typical Armenian community had an Apostolic church and a smaller Evangelical (Protestant) church as well as headquarters of one or more Armenian political parties. Because U.S. naturalization law during the early part of the 20th century required foreign-born persons desiring citizenship to be White (or, in an ironic legacy of the Reconstruction era, to be of African descent), Armenians on two occasions found themselves in federal court arguing their whiteness: first in the 1908 Supreme Court case In re Halladjian and
then in 1925 in Oregon federal district court with United States v. Cartozian. The Armenians prevailed in both cases.
The Early Community An important part of the Armenian American experience, as well as the Armenian experience worldwide, has been the partisan conflict between the more militant–nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation, or Tashnag party, and a coalition of other partisan groups represented predominantly by the Ramgavar party, whose current formal English name, after some early 20th-century mergers, is the Armenian Democratic Liberal party. Although this division predated World War I, it intensified during the years from 1918 to 1920 when there existed an independent Tashnag-dominated Republic of Armenia in the eastern portion of the historic homeland. To Armenians of the Tashnag persuasion worldwide, the republic truly embodied Armenia. Non-Tashnags, during this same span of time, identified with the Armenian National Delegation, which had been sent to Paris to lobby for the Armenian cause in 1913, and its leader, the wealthy Egyptian Armenian Boghos Nubar Pasha. After the republic collapsed and the country became part of the Soviet Union, the Tashnags viewed Armenia as under enemy occupation while non-Tashnags, even those who were uncomfortable with some of the specifics of Leninist and Stalinist rule, accepted Sovietization and considered the homeland to benefit from the Soviets’ care and protection. Rather than fading with time, the partisan animosity grew worse, especially with the 1933 assassination by stabbing of the anti-Tashnag Archbishop Levon Tourian, who had incurred the wrath of the Tashnag party earlier in 1933 by refusing to share a stage with the flag of the “thousand-day republic” at the World’s Fair in Chicago. Tashnags and their adversaries polarized, and remained so for years to come, over the trial and conviction of nine Tashnag party members for the crime. This event caused a split in the Apostolic Church that became formalized in 1956. From the 1930s onward, the parties and other community institutions published English language weekly newspapers and launched youth groups to keep the American-born generations included in the life of the community. As party and church leaders reached out to the youth and advocated Armenian causes in the national and international arenas, they
Asian Americans
promoted and boasted of the intense U.S. patriotism and social integration of their constituents. In this environment, the conflicting Armenian partisan leaders used English language media to impugn each other’s U.S. patriotism as well as Armenian patriotism. The Tashnag party was one of a number of ethnic factions during the early 1950s that embraced cold war militancy, thereby merging U.S. superpatriotism with the sense of a global ethnic struggle to liberate an ancestral homeland from the Soviet yoke. Yet partisan struggles by the 1950s comprised a fairly small component of Armenian American community life. Most Armenian Americans, especially the second generation and now the third generation, were firmly rooted in their lives as upwardly mobile middle-class or middle-class-oriented U.S. residents. Many important symbols of their Armenianness, including novels and memoirs, were those that they could share with their U.S. friends. During these postwar years, many Armenians joined their fellow U.S. residents in moving from urban centers to outlying suburban locales. New Armenian churches followed the migration.
Later Arrivals From the late 1950s onward, and especially after the revision of immigration law in 1965, new waves of Armenians entered the United States. Many were the families of 1915 genocide refugees who had lived out the interim decades in Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon. Indeed, the civil war in Lebanon during the mid-1970s and the Shiite revolution in Iran a few years later pushed many Armenians off to the United States. Approximately 30,000 are also estimated to have come from Soviet Armenia between 1960 and 1984. For these migration waves, Los Angeles served as the principal magnet and soon boasted the largest single concentration of Armenians (including all generations and degrees of community participation), possibly as many as 300,000, outside of Armenia. Results of this influx have run the gamut from an infusion of vigor into leadership of churches and other community institutions to tensions between old and new waves and an alarmingly growing presence of Armenian youth in the gang and drug scenes. Social service agencies have arisen to address this concern. Noted Armenian Americans, both past and present, have included Brown University president Vartan
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Gregorian, painter Arshile Gorky, composers Charles Aznavour and Alan Hovhannes, entertainers Arlene Francis and Cher, director/performer Eric Bogosian, Broadway producer Rouben Mamoulian, authors William Saroyan and the two Michael Arlens (father and son), and the controversial “doctor of death” Jack Kevorkian. An estimated 700,000 persons of Armenian descent now live in the United States. Ben Alexander See Appendix A See also Balkans; Ethnic Conflict; Genocide; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
Further Readings
Alexander, Benjamin F. 2005. “Armenian and American: The Changing Face of Ethnic Identity and Diasporic Nationalism, 1915–1955.” PhD dissertation, City University of New York Graduate Center. Bakalian, Anny. 1996. Armenian-Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Balakian, Peter. 2003. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response. New York: HarperCollins. Kooshian, George Byron, Jr. 2002. “The Armenian Immigrant Community of California: 1880–1935.” PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Mirak, Robert. 1980. “Armenians.” Pp. 136–149 in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, edited by Stephan Thernstrom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mirak, Robert. 1983. Torn between Two Lands: Armenians in America, 1890 to World War I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Phillips, Jenny K. 1989. Symbol, Myth, and Rhetoric: The Politics of Culture in an Armenian-American Community. New York: AMS Press. Takooshian, Harold. 2000. “Armenian-Americans.” In Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, 2nd ed., edited by Robert Dassanowsky and Jeffrey Lehman. Detroit, MI: Gale Group.
ASIAN AMERICANS Asian Americans are a large and growing segment of the U.S. population, numbering nearly 12 million people, or just over 4% of the population, in 2004.
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Asian Americans
Asian American is a collective term that, although used frequently, is a matter of convenience for the general population. Asian Americans themselves nearly always use a specific ethnic or nationality term for self-designation such as Chinese American or Hmong. Furthermore, Asian American is somewhat confusing in its usage because Japanese Americans and Filipino Americans are considered Asian, whereas people such as Samoan Americans are often classified as Pacific Islander in official U.S. government publications. Large-scale immigration of Asians to the United States did not begin until the middle of the 19th century, although some Filipinos had arrived during the mid-1700s. Opposition to Asian immigrants initially arose among White laborers but evolved into widespread acts of violence against workers as well as federal exclusion acts that barred immigrants from citizenship and ownership of property. Resistance to discrimination eventually led to elimination of these bans. Following passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (the Hart–Celler Act), Asian immigration increased dramatically, and today Asian Americans make up nearly 4% of the U.S. population. Their history in the United States is summarized in this entry.
Early Immigrants Between the years 1840 and 1920, customs officials counted approximately 370,000 Chinese, 400,000 Japanese, 7,000 Koreans, 7,000 Asian Indians, and 180,000 Filipinos entering the United States. As a point of comparison, more than 35 million European immigrants entered the United States on the “other” coast during the same time period. The earliest Chinese immigrants, who arrived on the West Coast during the 1840s, were well received by the U.S. residents. Among them were wealthy successful merchants as well as skilled artisans, fishermen, and hotel and restaurant owners. Thus, these initial Chinese immigrants gained favor not only from business employers but also from the government and the public. However, their presence was soon overwhelmed by larger numbers of relatively unskilled Chinese recruited to come to North America. Following the end of the British slave trade, Western powers became increasingly interested in the importation of cheap labor and found an abundant supply on the Asian continent. Contrary to popular belief, these immigrants did not necessarily leave
their homelands because they were devoid of opportunities. Often they were actively recruited and, in some instances, tricked into leaving their countries with promises of unlimited opportunity and religious freedom that were based more on the mythology of the U.S. West than on concrete reality.
Opposition to Early Asian Immigration At first, the growing number of U.S. entrepreneurs welcomed cheap immigrant labor in Hawai‘i and California. However, as the number of Asian workers became noticeable, the new immigrants became the targets of increasing animosity from U.S. workers. Along the West Coast, Asians were deemed as an “inferior race” and became targets of open, and often violent, acts of prejudice. Asian immigrants faced much more than simple discrimination and harassment; they confronted a barrage of laws and policies aimed directly at limiting their rights. Asian Americans became a growing concern for White labor and those who saw the presence of Asian faces as representing a “yellow peril” to the White Americans. What made these unjust laws possible was that Asian Americans were viewed as foreign and were denied the right to naturalize. Without this right, they did not acquire the right to vote until after World War II, robbing them of any political power they may have exercised. The first recorded act of violence against Asian Americans occurred in Los Angeles in 1871 and resulted in the deaths of 19 Chinese men who were either shot or hanged. By the 1880s, acts of violence spread to other areas of the West. In 1885, at Rock Springs, Wyoming, dozens of Chinese workers were killed when White workers of a mining company burned all 79 huts belonging to the Chinese. In this instance, several dead bodies, as well as the bodies of live but wounded Chinese, were thrown into the fires. In 1885, an ad hoc committee of anti-Chinese agitators met in Seattle, Washington, to demand that all Chinese leave the Seattle–Tacoma area by November 1. When the Chinese did not evacuate by the deadline, a posse of disgruntled White Americans dragged them out of their homes and shoved them outside the city limits into the harsh winter. Eventually, these barriers were legally institutionalized on the national level through a series of exclusion acts that not only stopped the immigration of all Asians but also greatly hampered Asians’ constitutional
Asian Americans
rights. During the same time that Asians were met with an impenetrable barrier to immigration, those already in the United States also faced adverse treatment. Asian immigrants not only were legally classified as “aliens ineligible for citizenship” but also were legally prohibited from owning property, leasing property, moving about freely, and participating in the civic process.
An Era of Resistance Contrary to the popular stereotypes of Asian Americans as servile and docile, members of every Asian immigrant group were active in protest. The largest strike undertaken by the Chinese began in June 1867 during the building of the transcontinental railroad. Unhappy with deplorable labor conditions under which they earned less than half of what European American workers were making, 2,000 men went on strike, demanding higher pay and shorter working hours, an end to physical punishment, and the abolition of pseudo-slavery. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the strike led to other protests by Chinese workers fighting against oppression. Likewise, Japanese Americans also have a long history of fighting against oppression. During the 1880s and 1890s, spontaneous work stoppages to protest unjust work conditions were a recurring phenomenon throughout the Hawaiian sugar plantations. In the first organized strike by the Japanese plantation workers in 1904, nearly 1,200 men forced sugar plantation owners to meet several key demands. After a series of smaller strikes, 7,000 men rose against the major plantations on Oahu for four months in 1909. In many instances, several diverse Asian American groups came together to forward their common causes. In 1919, Japanese and Filipino workers started organizing to fight the conditions on the sugar plantations. When the Filipino strike funds ran out, Japanese supporting the strike housed and fed them. On the mainland, Filipinos were active in labor unions beginning during the early years of the last century. In 1933, Filipino workers in California formed the Filipino Labor Union (FLU) after the American Federation of Labor (AFL) turned down their request to organize on their behalf. The activities of the FLU became so widely known that in 1936 the AFL agreed to grant a charter to the Field Workers Union, Local 30326, a Mexican–Filipino union. Likewise, Filipinos were active in organizing labor
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among salmon-canning workers in Alaska, among many other laborers along the West Coast. In addition to striking against unfair labor practices, Asian immigrants also took their fight to the courts. Between 1882 and 1943, during the height of the Asian exclusion, more than 2,000 legal challenges were mounted against local, state, and national governmental agencies. These legal cases challenged immigration exclusion, the rights of naturalization, and discrimination. Among the more famous suits filed by Chinese Americans is United States v. Wong Kim Ark, an 1898 case that led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that anyone born in the United States was a citizen and could not be stripped of that right. In 1886, the Supreme Court held in Yick Wo v. Hopkins that an ordinance governing the licensing of wooden buildings in San Francisco in practice discriminated against Chinese in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.
World War II and the Internment Camps Although World War II affected the lives of every U.S. resident, it touched Asian Americans in intimate ways. The images of Chinese, Asian Indian, Korean, and Filipino Americans improved dramatically in the minds of White Americans as their countries of origin joined the United States in the great global conflict. During the period following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a sizable number of Chinese and Filipino Americans found jobs in skilled trades and joined the armed forces. By 1946, exclusion laws were lifted and a small number of immigrants were allowed to immigrate to the United States. At the same time, Japanese Americans confronted a quite different fate. In fact, so complete were the perceived differences between the Japanese and other Asians in the minds of other Americans that in a Gallup Poll conducted in 1942, respondents characterized Chinese as “hardworking, honest, brave, religious, intelligent, and practical,” whereas they characterized Japanese as “treacherous, sly, cruel, and warlike.” Anti-Japanese sentiments reached an all-time high following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. However, historic evidence seems to indicate that the genesis of prejudice was much earlier. According to historian Gary Okihiro, military intelligence began collecting information on Japanese immigrants and their U.S.-born
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children as early as 1918 following the Russo– Japanese War. In fact, careful collaboration among military intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S. Census Bureau led to the immediate arrest of 1,700 Japanese American community leaders on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. Those who were incarcerated immediately included ministers, teachers, officers of community organizations, and newspaper editors. In contrast, while the war with Germany and Italy raged earlier and more intensely, little was done to collect information about German and Italian resident aliens living in the United States. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the designation of military areas and giving John L. DeWitt, the secretary of war, absolute power to protect these areas as he saw fit. What began as a slow voluntary movement of Japanese Americans from the West Coast soon turned into a rapid succession of forced removal. In all, nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans, the majority of whom were Americanborn citizens, were imprisoned in internment camps in a handful of states. For years, Japanese Americans lived as virtual prisoners, robbed of their property, their dignity, and their rights. They also suffered the disintegration of their community and their families as members of the younger generation were used by military leaders to undermine the authority of the older generation.
Whether the framers of the new laws truly meant there to be equal treatment of immigrants from all parts of the world as outlined by the new law or intended to continue to favor European immigrants is a point of major historical contention. At the same time, it is important to note that the preference categories favored immediate family reunification, a fact that should have favored European immigrants over Asian immigrants because there were more European immigrants and their descendants overall. Historians have pointed out that the framers of the new immigration acts did not expect Asian immigration to increase and assumed that Europeans would continue to make up the vast number of immigrants. However, the original architects of the new immigration laws did not take into account the number of “war brides” who had arrived in the United States following World War II and the Korean War, nor did they anticipate those who would arrive following the Vietnam War. Following these developments, Asian Americans quickly became the fastest growing population group in the United States. Since 1965, the growth of the Asian American population has been dramatic. In 1980, Asian Americans made up 1.4% of the U.S. population. By the 2000 census, that percentage had grown to 3.9%, based largely on new immigration. Today, the U.S. Census estimates that there are nearly 14 million Asian Americans in the country, with the majority of Asian Americans living on the West Coast and more than a third living in California alone.
Changes Caused by the Cold War During the cold war, the United States perceived itself as the leader of the free world. However, in the global arena, the United States found itself facing increasingly hostile communist nations. In an effort to halt the spread of communism, the United States fought wars in Korea and Vietnam and also armed indigenous groups in a number of countries in an effort to strengthen opposition to leftist governments. Increasingly, the image of the United States as the leader of the free world became harder to maintain under the shadow of the immigration veil. The U.S. government found an answer to this dilemma through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (the Hart–Celler Act), which finally eliminated “national origin” as a measuring stick for migration rights. Legally, at least, Asian immigrants were finally put on equal footing with European immigrants.
The Legacy of Immigration and Refugee Policies The legacy of immigration and refugee policies, coupled with U.S. foreign policy, has left unique marks on the Asian American population. The Asian American population today is a mix of dozens of different ethnic groups and represents every spectrum of the human experience. Although the Asian American median household income is the highest in the nation among racial/ethnic groups, this measure ignores the fact that most Asian Americans are concentrated on the West Coast and urban areas, where incomes are generally higher, and that more Asian family members are in the workforce. Despite the success of some Asian groups, most Asian American ethnic groups experience higher levels of poverty than do Whites. The poverty rate of some Asian ethnic groups, such as
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NV
AZ
ID
UT
NM
CO
WY
MT
Estimated Percentages of Asians in the United States in 2005
HI
CA
OR
WA
TX
KS
NE
SD
ND
OK
MN
AR
LA
MO
IA
MS
IL
WI
MI
KY TN
AL
IN
MI
SC
NC
VA
FL
WV
GA
OH
PA MD
NY
Percent Asians 0% – 2% 2.1% – 9.9% 10% +
NH
DE
NJ
MA CT RI
VT
ME
Source: Developed by Egan Urban Center, DePaul University, Chicago, from U.S. Census data, County Population Estimates by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin, July 1, 2005; used by permission.
Figure 1
AK
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Asian Americans
Hmong and Cambodians, is higher than that of Blacks and Latinos. Asian Americans also vary in terms of educational attainment. Although some groups, such as Japanese, have higher educational attainment than do Whites, other groups lag behind significantly. Among Asian Americans, 64% were born outside of the United States. The diverse Asian American population includes members of dozens of different ethnic groups who speak many different languages and dialects. Chinese, Filipinos, and Asian Indians are currently the most populous Asian groups in the United States. followed closely by Koreans and Vietnamese.
Conflict and Tensions Limited English proficiency and lack of other employment opportunities forced many recently arriving Asian immigrants into self-employment, although as with most immigrants, English proficiency is typical by the third generation—in other words, the grandchildren of the immigrants who speak little and write less in the language of their forbearers. Lacking start-up capital, most Asian American immigrant arrivals found entrepreneurial opportunities in largely poor Black and Latino enclaves, where they have come to dominate certain types of businesses such as liquor stores, laundromats, nail salons, and wig shops. Unfortunately, the presence of Asian storeowners in Black and Latino communities has contributed to rising racial tensions in U.S. cities, with Black and Latino customers accusing Asian storeowners of being rude and not giving back to the community. Racial tensions came to a boiling point during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Following the acquittal of four Los Angeles police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King, large parts of the greater Los Angeles area erupted in an urban riot during the summer of 1992. During the riot, Korean-owned stores were targeted for destruction in what many scholars have called a scapegoating of Korean-owned businesses for larger societal inequalities.
Asian American Panethnicity During recent decades, the rise in political consciousness among Asian Americans has led to the formation of panethnic coalitions. Asian American panethnicity refers to the process by which different Asian American groups have come to share a common racial
identity. During the student movements of the 1960s, Asian American activists from different ethnic groups began to see their experiences as being historically similar. In addition, they came to see the small population of specific Asian groups as a hindrance when it came to demanding social services, extending political clout, and fighting racial injustice. In light of this, young Asian American activists established panethnic newspapers, arts organizations, and social service agencies to lay claim to government resources and fight for progressive policies. As Yen Le Espiritu noted, it would have been impossible for any single Asian ethnic group to contest the system of racial inequality without such panethnic coalitions. Coalitions built to deal with common ethnic grievances often tend to promote the concerns of just one group over others; thus, these coalitions tend to be fragile and to rupture easily. Different Asian groups need to find a theoretical perspective that will help them to share a sense of racial/ethnic history. As a new discipline taught today in more than 100 U.S. colleges and universities, Asian American Studies examines the shared experiences of Asian Americans in the United States. Chong-suk Han and Kimberly Goyette See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Afghan Americans; Asian American Studies; Cambodian Americans; Chin, Vincent; China; Chinese Americans; Filipino Americans; Hawaiians; Indian Americans; Indonesian Americans; Japanese Americans; Kitano, Harry H. L.; Korean Americans; Laotian Americans; Myanmarese Americans; Pacific Islanders; Pakistani Americans; Pan-Asian Identity; Sri Lankan Americans; Thai Americans; Tibetan Americans; Vietnamese Americans
Further Readings
Chan, Sucheng. 1991. Asian Americans: An Interpretive History. Boston, MA: Twayne. Espiritu, Yen Le. 1992. Asian American Pan-Ethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Kibria, Nazli. 2002. Becoming Asian American. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Okihiro, Gary. 2001. The Columbia Guide to Asian American History. New York: Columbia University Press. Takaki, Ronald. 1989. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. New York: Penguin Books.
Asian Americans, New York City
ASIAN AMERICANS, NEW YORK CITY New York City has always been a major entry point for immigrants, and Asians of various ethnicities form a large and vibrant portion of the immigrant community. Many studies have looked at the contributions of Asian Americans as workers in New York’s service industries, such as the health sector, and as entrepreneurs opening grocery stores and restaurants. Their educational attainment provides a rich ethnic and cultural diversity to the city and, thus, can make the United States a model to the world as a nation of diverse society, researchers suggest. This entry discusses how Asian American immigrants are presented in the most recent ethnographic studies about their socioeconomic and cultural adaptation and contribution in the City of New York.
Building Communities The recent immigration to the United States has changed the racial/ethnic composition of the country. The U.S. Census showed that the total population was 281.4 million people in 2000. The largest immigrant group was Hispanics, accounting for approximately 13.1 million people. The second largest group came from Asia and accounted for approximately 12 million people. Some of the Asian groups, such as Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and Filipinos, have been in the United States for several generations. Other groups, such as Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis, are comparatively recent immigrants. New York has the largest Asian population with 872,777 people. Many immigrant scholars call New York City the most ethnically mixed community in the world. There are three “Chinatowns” today, with Flushing in Queens and Sunset Park in Brooklyn joining the original Chinese neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. There are also many other Asian neighborhoods such as Little India in Jackson Heights in Queens. More than half of New York’s Asian population lives in Queens. Dozens of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi grocery stores and restaurants can be found in these neighborhoods. Here one can find Korean storeowners dealings in wigs, handbags, gift articles, hats, shoes, and the like. In Chinatowns, one can find beautiful temples, shopping stores, and Chinese bookstores. Without these immigrants, scholars argue, New York would be
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a smaller, poorer, and less diverse city. With their arrival, New York joins Los Angeles as the nation’s premier magnet for global population flows. New York’s Asian population is extremely diverse in background and resources. The immigrant community includes the well educated seeking to protect their wealth in unstable economies back home, children of the middle class searching for wider opportunities, and large numbers of unskilled people looking for better opportunities for themselves and their families. Some groups, such as Indians and Chinese, actually have high rates of academic and professional skills and have shown strong signs of economic mobility, especially in the private and social services sectors. Alejandra Portes and G. Ruben Rambout gave an example of an Indian doctor who achieved tremendous success in academics and came to the United States along with his wife, also a doctor. Their combined income is in the six figures, affording them a comfortable lifestyle and a certain influence and standing. Social scientists observe ethnic ties as an important aspect of flourishing Asian communities in New York City. Their ethnographic studies describe the lifestyle of Asian immigrants in Elmhurst–Corona, Queens. These studies are full of details and contain useful summaries of interviews. The most visible component of Asian American lifestyle, according to these studies, can be observed by visiting these neighborhoods to spend many hours at parks, playgrounds, and small shopping malls; to eat in local restaurants; and to visit schools and libraries. These studies observe political protests, festivals, park openings, and block cleanings that cross lines of ethnicity and race and underscore the tradition of values shared by all.
Getting to Work Even Asian immigrants who live in the suburban areas of New York City often continue to shop and conduct business within the ethnic enclaves in the city. In one of the ethnographic studies, a bank employee from China who is a frequent visitor to Chinatown in Manhattan said, “I feel like I am home in the city. You get the music, you get the food. You get everything.” This example also points out something in the direction of the enclave economy that provides a main route for immigrants’ economic and social achievements. One interesting element of ethnic business is that these self-employed immigrants, through the help
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Asian Americans, New York City
of family members, are often able to minimize the risk of failure by engaging in multiple employment. For example, the wife of a grocery store owner works in the store until 5 p.m. She has another job in the nearby hospital, where she works until 9 p.m. Her husband works in New York public transportation during the day and takes over the store at 5 p.m. In another case, the wife works in a health center during the day and helps her husband with the business routine in their restaurant in Jackson Heights during the evening. They also have a video store nearby, and their son opens that store when he comes from school. In other words, they are multiple jobholders and collect both wage income and self-employment income. Ethnic business activity varies a lot by various groups and their socioeconomic backgrounds. Groups such as Chinese, Koreans, Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis serve both Asian and non-Asian customers and are located in Astoria, Flushing, and Jackson Heights. These neighborhoods serve not only as the Asian ethnic enclave but also as the Asian business center, where they sell all sorts of ethnic food and services. In attempting to explain these findings, however, some studies note that many recent Asian immigrants are not involved in entrepreneurial activity but rather adjust to economic and social change in their new homes by taking low-level service jobs. These studies attribute this trend to the growth of the public service sector in New York City during the 1990s. Columnist George Will once asserted that the U.S. welfare culture encourages an entitlement mentality among immigrants, reducing their individual ambitions. An immigrant might retort, “Why you think I come here, for the fun? If I wanted to sit around on welfare, I would have stayed home.” One Indian who was interviewed for a study said that his fellow immigrants come to the United States to work; welfare, he said, is for children or people with disabilities. Sentiments such as these were also confirmed by Elizabeth Bogen, who ran the New York City Office of Immigration. Immigrants are willing to take low-paying, low-status jobs rather than collect welfare, she said, giving substance to the stereotype of immigrants as hard-working and reluctant to take public assistance.
The Future of Asian Immigrants In spite of some negative views about Asian immigrant groups, many Americans have positive perceptions of recent immigrants. For instance, few Whites
complained to researchers that Asian immigrants who moved into small businesses in New York City were “taking away jobs from Americans.” Rather, one Irish American resident was grateful for their efforts, explaining that immigrant businesses had revitalized the Chinese neighborhood in the Lower Manhattan shopping strip. Their long business hours and low prices were widely appreciated. Many researchers contend that the future of these immigrants in the United States is probably a bright one. These immigrants are putting down roots. Many of these merchants are the brothers, sisters, and other relatives of earlier immigrants. They do not mind working long hours and are ardent supporters of the free enterprise system, the core of the U.S. economic system. Thomas Muller made an interesting claim, namely, that the decline of U.S. cities during the second half of the 20th century was due partly to low levels of immigration imposed from the mid-1920s through the 1960s. Unless immigration increases, New York will continue to decline, Muller argued. In his view, the revitalization of metropolitan areas such as New York is related to high levels of recent immigration that have enhanced the ability of cities to retain middleclass residents. Navid Ghani See also Asian American Studies; Asian Americans; Bangladeshi Americans; Chinatowns; Chinese Americans; Community Cohesion; Educational Performance and Attainment; Ethnic Group; Filipino Americans; Hispanics; Immigrant Communities; Indian Americans
Further Readings
“Immigration Fueling Cities’ Strong Growth.” 1998. The New York Times, January 1. Isbister, John. 1996. The Immigration Debate: Remaking America. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press. Mollenkopf, John. 1998. “Urban Political Conflicts and Alliances: New York and Los Angeles Compared.” Unpublished manuscript, City University of New York Graduate Center. Muller, Thomas. 1993. Immigrants and the American City. New York: New York University Press. Portes, Alejandra and Rumbaut G. Ruben. 1996. Immigrant America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sanjek, Roger. 1998. The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Asian American Studies
ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES The Asian American Studies discipline involves university-level research and teaching programs that serve and educate students who are interested in learning about Asian American experiences regardless of whether they plan on pursuing careers in ethnic communities. Founded during the late 1960s as a result of student protest, the programs usually have a strong bent toward community involvement. This entry discusses their history and describes current programs and perspectives.
In the Beginning Between the fall of 1968 and the spring of 1969, the Third World Liberation Front led the longest student strike in U.S. history at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University), later followed by a strike at the University of California, Berkeley. The result was a movement that led to the institutionalization of ethnic studies programs in higher education. Black, Asian, Filipina/o, Latina/o, and Native American students who saw themselves as connected to the peoples of the Third World recognized a need to challenge Eurocentric interpretations of history and fought diligently to create a relevant curriculum. Daniel Gonzales, an activist in the Third World Liberation Front and an associate professor at San Francisco State University, said that Asian American Studies—like ethnic studies in general—was founded on three core values: self-determination/inclusion, community advocacy, and community service. Selfdetermination was defined as the right and power of a people to make decisions and to take action consistent with their own best interests; in this particular case, this called for inclusion and representation of people of color in the university curriculum, student body, and faculty. On the second point, ethnic studies faculty members were expected to be advocates for and representatives of the needs of communities where they had primary sociocultural and political experience. Finally, ethnic studies programs were designed to be a bridge between the university and the community, one that involves students and faculty in constructive civic activism and direct service. In 1969, Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University developed a mission statement and curriculum focused on the study of cultural heritage
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and historical development of Asian American communities. Early on, a clear and deliberate distinction was made between Asian (Area) Studies, a curriculum reflecting Western perspectives on the culture and history of Asia, and Asian American Studies, a curriculum emphasizing the primary perspectives of Asians in the United States. The study of culture in Asian American Studies began as a study of production as well as heritage wherein Asian Americans engage in the rediscovery of their “roots” but also create culture in the U.S. setting. During the formative era of ethnic studies, Asian American Studies programs were concerned with meeting the cultural and personal identity needs of students interested in learning about Asian American experiences and working with secondary and collegelevel students, particularly those with plans to work in ethnic communities as teachers, counselors, health service and social workers, labor organizers, and lawyers.
Today’s Programs Nearly 40 years later, the core values and the spirit of the early mission still remain to inspire the general sentiment in Asian American Studies, but much has evolved with regard to research, scholarship, service, commitments, curriculum, and Asian American Studies programs. Pro ograms and Departments
More than forty colleges and universities offer coursework with an Asian American focus. The courses reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the field through a social science and humanities curriculum with significant expansion in literature and fine arts. Some Asian American Studies classes are also focused on areas of public policy, mental health, and psychosocial ecology. Some universities offer departmental and interdisciplinary majors, minors, certificates, and graduate emphasis options. Many schools house their Asian American Studies programs within Ethnic Studies or American Studies departments. More than thirty degree-granting colleges and universities with Asian American Studies are spread throughout the country, with the highest concentration of programs in California. Both the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and San Francisco State University offer a master of arts in Asian American Studies.
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Asian American Studies
Current Persspectiv ves
As an interdisciplinary field of study, Asian American Studies has been counteractive against mainstream ideologies and frameworks regarding Asian Americans. Recently, there has been discourse over developing the proper courses for an Asian American Studies program. Classes tend to adopt a Pan-Asian American focus or a single population or community focus. Pan-Asian American courses tend to be more appropriate for survey or introductory courses (e.g., history of Asian Americans) or those that are thematically based (e.g., Asian American film). Although these courses show commonalities and relationships among the various Asian American cultures and ethnicities, sometimes the experiences of less researched groups, such as Pacific Islanders, are minimized. Ethnicspecific courses are geared toward distinguishing the individual cultures and their place within the broader scope of Asian America. These courses show that not all Asian Americans are the same, but the courses can be limited in breadth by more researched groups or faculty representation (e.g., Koreans and Filipinos vs. Thais and Samoans). It is understood that both are necessary for the holistic understanding of Asian Americans. A perspective that is explored more often is the relationship between various identities and issues and how they overlap. Race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, generation, and age all are key in formulating identity, and it is accepted that these identities exist concurrently within one person. For some scholars, this notion of “intersectionality” acknowledges the multiple oppressions and privileges that can occur simultaneously (e.g., being a woman and a minority, being a recent immigrant and a homosexual). It is important to define what it means to be Asian American beyond a racial or political identity and to recognize how identity is negotiated in various spaces. This also includes the need to discuss the experiences of mixed-heritage Asian Americans. During recent years, the notion of transnationalism and the impacts of globalization on the Asian American community have been examined more critically. The struggle to maintain cultural ties to one’s place of ancestry and the implications of multiple diasporas are being evaluated through extensive changes in technology, migration, and mobility. Asian nationals are also building communities in other countries such as Brazil, Canada, and Peru as well as in the Middle East. Although these migrations are often for better economic mobility, it is not to be romanticized given that Asian overseas labor has not always produced positive outcomes.
Asian American Studies programs that offer “study abroad” programs are developing further understanding of such migrations and struggles. San Francisco State University offers travel study programs to China and Vietnam, and UCLA offers a program in Hawai‘i. Civicc and Com mmunity y Engagemen nt and Servicce Learning
Many students, especially those who are connected to an Asian Pacific American community or who identify themselves as having a particular Asian ethnic ancestry, often come to Asian American Studies with a sincere interest to learn about themselves. In some instances, this searching for their identity is a process of “decolonization” and leads them to question assimilation and the internalizations of racism along with other “-isms.” These political transformations are life changing, and for some students Asian American Studies becomes their entry point into civic and community engagement. Historically, Asian American Studies established the need to be directly connected to the pursuit of social justice, particularly through student and faculty involvement with community service and activism. Many Asian American Studies courses include service learning projects. Service learning is a pedagogical tool that gets students involved with service activities that relate directly to course content while also providing them with an opportunity to learn about civic engagement. In Asian American Studies, service learning and civic engagement can be directly related to community responsibility and community involvement. In many cases, Asian American students are afforded a chance to serve Asian Americans in service learning activities. There are courses that have students volunteer at community organizations that focus on health, the arts, and services for the elderly, youth, and families. There are also projects that give students the opportunity to teach what they are learning in their courses in schools and community settings. In some cases, these service learning experiences lead students to pursue careers in social service, sometimes in Asian American communities.
The Future of Asian American Studies After nearly four decades of curriculum development and program expansion, Asian American Studies has grown into an institutionally recognized field of study. Many of the students who have graduates
Asian American Studies, Mixed-Heritage
from undergraduate major programs and master’s programs have gone on to serve Asian American communities in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors locally as well as in the Pacific Rim areas. Some of the majors have gone on to master’s programs, and Asian American Studies master’s students have pursued doctoral programs. Many students who have taken Asian American Studies courses have gone on to become educators. Asian American Studies has clearly grown into having programs and courses at many universities and colleges, and it is continuing to grow in more settings. Asian American Studies has become a significant force in shaping the future of the Asian American community. The community and its demographic changes, as well as its political and cultural interests, have also shaped the development of Asian American Studies. There is a clear need to continue the bridge between what is happening in the classroom and what is happening in the community. It is evident that Asian American Studies needs to stay connected to the communities where it is committed to serve. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales and Raymond San Diego See also African American Studies; Asian American Studies, Mixed-Heritage; Asian Americans; Higher Education; Latina/o Studies; Pan-Asian Identity
Further Readings
Chan, Kenyon S. 2000. “Rethinking the Asian American Studies Project: Bridging the Divide Between ‘Campus’ and ‘Community.’” Journal of Asian American Studies 3(1):17–36. Nair, Ajay T. and Hilal Nakiboglu. 2004. “Back to the Basics: Service Learning and the Asian American Community.” Journal of Civic Commitment 3. Omatsu, Glenn. 2003. “Freedom Schooling: Reconceptualizing Asian American Studies for Our Communities.” Amerasia Journal 29. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://www.boggscenter.org/ ideas/edu/omatsu.shtml Orrick, William H., Jr. 1969. Shut It Down! A College in Crisis: San Francisco State College, October 1968–April 1969. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Web Sites
Association for Asian American Studies: http://www.aaastudies.org
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ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES, MIXED-HERITAGE Mixed-heritage Asian American Studies began to take shape during the early 1990s as several anthologies emerged describing the special challenges faced by people whose ancestry included different Asian heritages. The development of literature on this topic became a touchstone for many in the mixed-heritage movement. This entry discusses the development of this area of study and related issues.
Background Some people might call mixed-heritage Asian American studies (informally) Hapa Studies. However, there is currently a great deal of contention over the use of the word hapa as an ethnic label for mixed-heritage Asian Americans. Hapa is a Native Hawaiian term and has evolved from a word that once just meant mixed or part; it was shorthand for a longer phrase, usually (but not always) hapa haole, meaning part European, with the other “part” implied being Native Hawaiian. The controversy lies in the fact that many who use the term hapa are not Native Hawaiian but rather Asian. In Hawai‘i, Native Hawaiians are outnumbered by an Asian hegemony, and the use of the term hapa (often capitalized as an ethnic label) by Asians is seen by some Native Hawaiians as a “cultural appropriation” that parallels the appropriation of the Hawaiian Islands by non-Natives—both European and Asian American. The 2000 census, due to the work of many mixedheritage organizations such as the Hapa Issues Forum, allowed people to mark more than one box to indicate racial identity. Significantly, mixed-heritage Asian Americans, including those who identify as two or more “races” (e.g., Asian and African American) and those who identify as being of one “race” but more than one ethnicity (e.g., Taiwanese and Filipino), are second in number only to Chinese Americans. This means that the next generation of Asian Americans will have a significant proportion of mixed-heritage members. Mixed-heritage organizations also typically include transracial adoptees. A significant proportion of transnational transracial adoptees are of Asian heritage (largely from Korea and China). Asian transracial adoptees are part of the mixed-heritage Asian American population.
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Whereas mixed-heritage Asian Americans are sometimes seen as another Asian American ethnic group, they also cut across all group boundaries and will become even more diverse as they increase in the next generation of Okinawan Americans, Hmong Americans, Thai Americans, Iranian Americans, and the like.
Academic Programs Mixed-heritage Asian American Studies has two homes: within the larger field of Mixed-Heritage Studies, where work on Asian Americans of mixed heritage is held in conjunction with work on African Americans, American Indians, and Latinos of mixed heritage, and in Asian American Studies, where mixedheritage Asian American issues and experiences, including those of transracial adoptees, are examined both alongside and within those of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and other Asian American ethnic groups. A current explosion of mixed-heritage Asian American creative writing and artwork means that future scholarship in the field will likely have a strong cultural studies component. Critical legal studies is another important area for mixed-heritage Asian American Studies, in particular given the history of antimiscegenation laws. This area of investigation also looks at laws relating to racial identity, for example, in connection with immigration and citizenship. Future issues for scholarship are likely to emphasize newer mixed-heritage populations. In addition to the traditional focus on the history, sociology, and psychology of mixed-heritage Asian Americans, future scholarship might also consider this population in the context of war and tourism, health and health care issues, incarceration and probation institutions, legislation around collecting racial/ethnic data, and affirmative action policies. Wei Ming Dariotis See also Asian American Studies; Census, U.S.; Hapa; Hawai‘i, Race in; Hawaiians
Further Readings
Lai, Eric and Dennis Arguelles, eds. 1998. New Face of Asian Pacific America. Los Angeles: Asian Week with UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press. Ling, Amy and Annette White-Parks, eds. 1995. Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writings (Sui Sin Far). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Root, Maria P. P., ed. 1992. Racially Mixed People in America. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Root, Maria P. P., ed. 1996. The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Spickard, Paul. 1989. Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Williams, Teresa. 2001. The Sum of Our Parts: MixedHeritage Asian Americans. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
ASPIRA ASPIRA is a nonprofit organization focused on helping Puerto Rican and Latino youth to increase their educational attainment, take pride in their culture, and learn leadership skills so that they can become contributing members in their community. The organization was created to address the ongoing problem of high dropout rates among Puerto Ricans and the selfesteem issues that surface when minority youth are integrated into a different culture and expected to assimilate. This entry provides an overview of the founding and purpose of the organization as well as a brief explanation of some of the many activities that ASPIRA offers its participants. ASPIRA was founded in New York City in 1961 by Antonia Pantoja and members of the Puerto Rican Association for Community Affairs (PRACA). A Puerto Rican herself, Pantoja became a successful educator in the United States despite her humble beginnings in Barrio Obrero in Puerto Rico. Troubled by the low educational attainment among youth in her Puerto Rican community in New York, Pantoja anticipated the long-term effects that would be experienced by the community if its future leaders were not educated and trained to take on leadership roles. She worked with other community leaders to develop a plan to create an organization where youth could come together for mentoring, educational advocacy, leadership training, scholarship information, and empowerment through learning about and taking pride in their Puerto Rican history and culture. Originally designed for Puerto Rican youth, the organization eventually expanded its programs to include all Latino youth. Today, there is a total of seven ASPIRA organizations that collectively serve more than 50,000 youth and families annually.
ASPIRA
New York founded the first ASPIRA organization in 1961, followed by Illinois and New Jersey in 1968, Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico established organizations in 1969, the Florida ASPIRA organization was started in 1981, and the Connecticut ASPIRA was established in 1990. All seven of the state associations use the ASPIRA Process Model and run many of the same or similar programs, striving toward the goal of educational attainment and empowerment of Latino youth. A proven success, the ASPIRA Process Model is a three-step intervention model that stresses the development of potential. Students are taught to first become aware of the situation, then to analyze the consequences, and finally to take action that will effect change. When selecting a name for the organization, the founders wanted a simple upbeat word that would convey confidence and optimism. They wanted the participating youth to aspire to greater things, so from aspirar, the Spanish the word for “aspire,” came the name ASPIRA. Alumni and participants in the program are called ASPIRAntes. The ASPIRA logo carries a sleek image of a little bird that represents the pitirre, a small bird known for outsmarting birds that are much larger in size. The ASPIRA mission, as found on the organization’s Web site, is “to promote the development of the Puerto Rican and Latino community through education and leadership development of its youth.”
ASPIRA’s Programs ASPIRA hosts a number of programs to assist Latino youth, including literacy and mentoring programs, programs to increase technological knowledge and skills, and programs to enhance wellness and health. In addition, it has developed programs to teach parents how to support and assist the ASPIRAntes through the learning and growing process. Some of the significant and successful programs are described briefly here. Community technology centers (CTCs) are focused on making an impact on the “digital divide”—the technological gap of knowledge experienced by Latinos and marginalized people who do not have access to computers. Driven by the belief that educational attainment will be enhanced through advanced knowledge of computer technology, CTCs’ goal is to increase technological awareness and skills of the ASPIRAntes.
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Parents for Educational Excellence (APEX) is a program to help Latino parents support their children more effectively through increased involvement in their education. The ASPIRA APEX program offers workshops on topics such as communication, understanding the importance of education, getting involved in schools, self-esteem, and networking with other parents. The Community Wealth Development Initiative is focused on a long-term vision of building wealth in the community through home ownership, building organizational capacity, and increasing sustainability within the Latino neighborhood. ASPIRA offers financial, insurance, and mortgage classes for potential homeowners in the community and entrepreneurial classes for Latinos interested in running their own businesses. The Math and Science Academy (MAS) was developed to increase student interest in the fields of math and science and to encourage students to pursue careers in these arenas. Built on four basic components— academic support, a summer enrichment program, teacher awareness, and parent awareness—this program promotes exposure to the math and science fields through hands-on activities, field trips, and guest speaker visits. MAS is assisted by the Community Allies for Smart Access to Math and Science (CASA MAS), an electronic depository that offers educational resources for students, parents, and teachers. ASPIRA has joined with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to teach traffic safety to ASPIRAntes. Areas covered include the hazards of drinking while under the influence, the importance of proper use and maintenance of child safety seats, and encouraging the use of safety belts. The ASPIRA Professional Development Institute provides skill development workshops for ASPIRA staff members and associates as well as staff members of other community organizations that have partnered with ASPIRA. In addition, participants are encouraged and given assistance to pursue postsecondary education. Recognizing that communication is a critical component for success, ASPIRA has teamed up with Verizon Communications to combat illiteracy. ASPIRA’s Reading Institute offers reading programs to address all levels of reading; resources for teachers, families, and researchers; and access to books in Spanish and English for all ages. Since its inception, ASPIRA has worked with more than 250,000 youth, teaching them how to tap into their intellectual potential, pursue careers that will
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Assimilation
benefit their community, be leaders for the enactment of change, and appreciate their culture and heritage. ASPIRA boasts a 95% graduation rate among its participants, and 90% go on to college. Many leaders in Puerto Rico were influenced by ASPIRA during their childhoods. Alma Alvarez-Smith See also East Harlem; Educational Performance and Attainment; Higher Education; Hispanics; Pipeline; Puerto Rican Americans; Puerto Rico; Young Lords
fell into disrepute. It is now considered ethnocentric to expect immigrants to discard all of their traditional values as inferior and to adopt supposedly superior U.S. ones out of hand. This negative idea of assimilation has since entered the popular imagination through the Star Trek: The Next Generation television and movie series. In the shows, the Borg are a race of cyborgs that are connected via a hive network to a single brain that controls all of their thoughts and actions. The Borg travel around the universe absorbing other species into their collective through the use of force. Their now classic phrase to future victims is, “You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”
Further Readings
Alvarez-Smith, Alma. 2004a. ASPIRA. Pp. 43–44 in Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture, edited by Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, Arturo J. Aldama, and Peter J. Garcia. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Alvarez-Smith, Alma. 2004b. Pantoja, Antonia. Pp. 613–614 in Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture, edited by Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, Arturo J. Aldama, and Peter J. Garcia. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Pantoja, Antonia. 2002. Memoir of a Visionary: Antonia Pantoja. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press. Web Sites
ASPIRA: http://www.ASPIRA.org
ASSIMILATION With each of the four major waves of immigration into the United States, nativists worried that the new hordes of immigrants arriving on U.S. shores were “unassimilable.” The classic definition of assimilation described a process of melding where new arrivals acquire the values, outlook, and behavior of the receiving society and over time become incorporated into that society’s common cultural life. Nativists feared that these new arrivals would cling to their traditional ethnic ways, thereby eroding the solidarity of the country, based as it was on a common tradition and common experiences. At the turn of the 20th century, the common tradition that new arrivals were expected to adopt was the ways and values of the Anglo-Saxon American core. Since the 1960s, however, as the notion of an Anglo-America began to be eroded and a policy of multiculturalism became more widespread, assimilation
Classical Assimilation Theory Most 20th-century research on immigration focused on the issue of assimilation, mainly in urban settings. The first theory of assimilation that was put forward during the early part of the 20th century was the notion of “straight-line” assimilation. Using the first wave of mass immigration to the United States as their starting point, these social scientists posited that assimilation was a natural process that entailed new immigrants to a country gradually giving up their traditional cultural and behavioral traits and adopting those of their new country. With each successive immigrant generation, ties to the old country are weakened while ties to the receiving country increase until these immigrants finally “melt” into mainstream society. The definition conflated two different processes—acculturation and adaptation—into one. The assumption was that immigrants needed to shed certain values and behaviors before they could become fully American and could fully participate in U.S. society. This melting pot philosophy frowned on hyphenated identities as a sign of conflicting loyalties, and there were fears that the United States would unravel into a mess of squabbling national groups unless all immigrants adopted a unifying “American” identity on arrival. The message to immigrants was that they needed to be Americans and nothing else. Later scholars refined straight-line assimilation theory slightly, arguing that race, language, and social class could affect the speed of assimilation. They believed that racial/ethnic minorities might have a harder time gaining parity in social mobility even as differences in economic opportunity due to language or culture disappeared. However, these scholars saw
Assimilation
race and other factors as simple interaction effects that could hasten or slow down but not fundamentally alter the upward direction of straight-line assimilation. Even later scholars created a typology of assimilation. The first and easiest stage was to achieve “cultural assimilation” (or acculturation) and involved picking up the language, social mores, and outlook of mainstream society. This was the first step—and the most crucial one—for most immigrants. Thus, those immigrants who lived a segregated life and did not interact with natives were handicapped from assimilating culturally and could never move onto the next stage of “structural assimilation.” This involved participation in social organizations, intermarriage, and the general civic life of the receiving society. Although they had their differences, all of these scholars saw distinctive ethnic traits as a handicap for new immigrants and as something to be discarded if they wanted to fully participate in U.S. society. Sociological studies from the first half of the 20th century seemed to provide evidence for this view of assimilation in that each successive immigrant generation was shown to have increased its social mobility, intermarriage rate, educational attainment, and English proficiency. The majority used a three-generation model where by the third generation, immigrants had fully assimilated into U.S. society both culturally and structurally.
Classical Assimilation Theory Questioned After the 1960s, however, straight-line assimilation theory began to be questioned. Scholars pointed out that the current wave of mass immigration to the United States was very different from previous waves. First, the racial/ethnic composition of the U.S. immigrant population has changed drastically since the beginning of the 20th century. From a largely European-origin immigrant population, the United States now receives mainly non-European immigrants. Results from the 2004 census indicate that only 14% of the current foreign-born U.S. population is European in origin, whereas 25% is from Asia and 53% is from Latin America. Purely on the basis of race, it is not as easy for new immigrants to the United States to “melt” into mainstream society as it was in the past. Scholars have also highlighted the changed economic landscape that now greets newly arrived immigrants to the United States. Some 50 years ago, the
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United States was a manufacturing powerhouse that could offer English-speaking, second-generation immigrants blue-collar industrial jobs that put them on the first rung of the ladder to economic well-being. Now, these scholars argue, the decline of manufacturing in the United States has resulted in an “hourglass” economy that lacks intermediate jobs, preventing the children of low-wage immigrant workers from breaking out of the cycle of poverty. Along with these macro-level changes, studies of the latest wave of immigrants began to reveal anomalies that did not jive with straight-line assimilation theory. In certain cases, social and economic disadvantages increased rather than diminished for immigrants who had lived in the United States for a long time. Other studies showed that length of residence did not affect educational outcomes; rather, children of highly educated first-generation immigrant parents performed better in school than did fifth-generation descendants of poorly educated ancestors. Location also counted; immigrants arriving to middle-class suburbs did better than those in inner-city ghettos. Longitudinal studies also revealed that certain second-generation immigrant groups displayed a reactive ethnicity where they reverted over time to their ancestral ethnicity, rather than to an American or even a hyphenated American identity, as a result of discrimination. Some scholars put forward a theory of “secondgeneration decline,” arguing that today’s children of immigrants are caught in a bind that leads to permanent poverty. Being culturally assimilated with their U.S. peers, they do not want to work in the same lowpaid menial jobs as their parents had worked, but at the same time, they are unable to find better prospects for themselves because of discrimination based on their ethnicity and/or skin color. However, this theory could not explain the phenomenon of “model minorities” whose members outperform their U.S. classmates in school without being fully culturally assimilated or even having a strong command of English. Other critics of straight-line assimilation theory argue that it is based on an ethnocentric model that assumes that immigrants’ cultural traits are negative and must be discarded to find success in the United States. These critics believe that immigrants are constantly redefining what being “American” is all about and that ethnic cultures are an integral part of U.S. society. This school of thought promoted “salad bowl” cultural pluralism over “melting pot” policies toward racial/ethnic minorities in the late 20th-century
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United States. It is now acceptable to have a dual American identity—Irish American, Asian American, African American—with the first half of the description indicating the person’s ancestry. Thus, allegiance can be claimed to both ethnic roots and the American nation without denigrating either. However, this point of view does not explain the different outcomes of immigrant groups. Structural theorists take a more pessimistic view of assimilation. They argue that U.S. society is a stratified system of social inequality and that there is an ethnic hierarchy that determines access to jobs, housing, education, and occupations. The benefits of “becoming American” vary according to the strata of U.S. society into which immigrants are absorbed. Not all immigrants will eventually become middle class, these scholars argue. Some proponents of straight-line assimilation theory, however, have continued to defend it. They argue that recent structural changes are what give the appearance of the theory not working. They also point out that the constant high rate of immigration to the United States has not given arriving immigrants a chance to assimilate and merge with the native population, an opportunity that earlier waves of immigrants enjoyed between the passage of the National Origins Act after World War I and that of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965. They argue that with more time, immigrants will eventually assimilate into the mainstream United States while gaining social and economic mobility.
Segmented Assimilation Theory In an effort to combine elements of all these competing theories, the segmented assimilation theory was developed. Its proponents argue that various adaptation outcomes are possible depending on the interplay of individual and structural factors alongside immigrant cultural traits and social capital. There are three possible adaptation outcomes for second-generation immigrants under segmented assimilation: standard acculturation into the middle-class mainstream, similar to the straight-line assimilation theories of yore; downward assimilation, where immigrants come up against impassable social and economic barriers that lead to permanent poverty while, at the same time, assimilating with native, inner-city underclass populations; and nonassimilation, where immigrants remain separate from mainstream society (either intentionally
or as a consequence of discrimination) but simultaneously enjoy rapid economic advancement as a result of strong coethnic solidarity and support. The matrix of social factors that determine which adaptation path a second-generation immigrant follows include government policy (either receptive, indifferent, or hostile to the particular immigrant group), societal reception (whether prejudiced or nonprejudiced), and resources of the coethnic community (either strong or weak in terms of overcoming barriers). A strong community would consist of a high concentration of coethnics who are not all involved in manual low-wage labor but who show a spread of occupations that include entrepreneurs and professionals. As such, an immigrant group that encountered an indifferent government policy and hostile societal reception, such a Koreans arriving after 1965, could still succeed because of the extensive resources of their coethnic community.
The Future of Assimilation in the United States Most recent studies of immigrant assimilation seem to provide more positive news about the adaptation of immigrants to U.S. society, showing some continuity with the patterns of assimilation observed among earlier European immigrants. Second-generation immigrant children were, by and large, doing better in school than were their native-born classmates. With increasing length of stay in the United States, immigrants move to areas that do not show a concentration of any one ethnic group. In terms of language ability, second- and thirdgeneration immigrants are comfortable with speaking English and by the third generation have forgotten their native tongue. Intermarriage rates across different racial and national groups are also high. Intermarriage rates with Whites among Asians and Latinos are higher than those between Whites and Blacks, but intermarriage across immigrant groups that share the same ethnicity, such as Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, is also very high. There are some disconfirming data in all of these findings. For instance, Mexican Americans are still performing poorly in school even at the third generation, but on the whole there seems to be evidence to reaffirm the classical idea of upward assimilation. Since the 1990s, more Asian and Latin American immigrants have also been settling down in the rural Midwest and in the South. Mexicans are by far the biggest nationality group among these immigrants.
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Neither of these regions has had much experience with immigration for decades; as a result, patterns of assimilation in these parts of the country are likely to be different from those in the traditional gateways of urban cities along the coasts. This difference could stem from a variety of areas. The very lack of immigration history in these parts of the country provides immigrants with a unique opportunity to define their social position from scratch without the baggage of earlier stereotypes. The significantly smaller size of these new immigration destinations can also affect assimilation both positively and negatively. Being smaller and having fewer public facilities available mean that immigrants and locals will be forced to interact with each other, thereby reducing opportunities for social isolation. On the other hand, smaller towns can be overwhelmed by the sudden increase in demand for their limited public services. Schools and hospitals may become overcrowded and social service workers may find it difficult to communicate with immigrants if they do not have the requisite language skills, and this may cause frustration on both sides. How these towns and cities, as well as their new citizens, are adjusting to their changed environments is one of the new frontiers of assimilation research in the United States. Recent immigration research also argues that the idea of generations in studying assimilation rates is no longer as critical. These scholars argue that the United States is in a state of continuous replenishment of immigrants and will likely continue that way for many years to come. The previous wave of immigration that lasted from 1880 to 1920 ended abruptly, and this made the generation unit a useful variable in understanding rates of assimilation. A person’s generation measured not only distance from one’s individual ancestors but also distance from all first-generation immigrants. This allowed the three-generation model of classical assimilation theory to be developed. In the current wave of immigration, however, the constant arrival of new groups of immigrants mixes up generations so that it no longer has the same potency. Now, a second-generation immigrant may share the same social situation as a first-generation immigrant arriving more recently. They may be affected by the same macro-level social factors even though they came from different generations. These scholars argue that immigrant research, therefore, should now take into account birth period in addition to generation. Anju Mary Paul
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See also Acculturation; Americanization; Desi; Discrimination; Ethnocentrism; Immigration, U.S.; Intercultural Communication; Melting Pot; Third-Generation Principle
Further Readings
Alba, Richard D. and Victor Nee. 2003. Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Portes, Alejandro and Ruben G. Rumbaut. 1990. Immigrant America: A Portrait. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rumbaut, Ruben G. 2001. “Assimilation of Immigrants.” Pp. 845–849 in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, edited by N. J. Smelser and P. B. Bales. New York: Elsevier. Suárez-Orozco, Carola and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco. 2001. Children of Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Warner, W. Lloyd and Leo Srole. 1945. The Social Systems of American Ethnic Groups. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Waters, Mary C. and Tomás R. Jiménez. 2005. “Assessing Immigrant Assimilation: New Empirical and Theoretical Challenges.” Annual Review of Sociology 31:105–125. Zhou, Min. 1997. “Growing Up American: The Challenge Confronting Immigrant Children and Children of Immigrants.” Annual Review of Sociology 23:63–95.
ASSYRIAN AMERICANS Assyrians, who some construe to include Chaldeans and Syriacs, have witnessed both internal diversity and community integration since first settling in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. Members of this stateless Middle Eastern Christian minority, who numbered 82,365 in the 2000 census, have cultivated elaborate transnational networks while adjusting to U.S. institutions and culture, as described in this entry.
Migration History In the ancestral homelands of these people(s), in what is now southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, and northwestern Iran, many pockets of
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Christians speaking an astonishing array of widely diverse dialects of Neo-Aramaic lived for centuries. They belonged to two ancient churches with liturgies in Syriac, a variant of Aramaic: (a) the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch and (b) the Church of the East or “Nestorian.” These churches are often known in the West under the theologically pejorative labels “Jacobite” and “Nestorian,” respectively. Many adherents of these churches left to join Uniate churches, which recognized the Vatican-led Roman Catholic Church while maintaining their own patriarchates and Syriac liturgies. The Syrian Catholic Church split off the Syrian Orthodox Church, and the Chaldeans split off the Church of the East. Under the influence of American Presbyterians and other Protestants, some Assyrians formed Protestant congregations, especially in Iran. Migration to the United States has proceeded in waves. During the late 19th century, a number of those Assyrians who had come under the sway of American Presbyterians in Iran sojourned in the United States as students of theology and medicine. After the turn of the 20th century, migration from Iran accelerated, with the bulk of the migrants coming to work in jobs such as painting and waitering and ending up staying permanently. Assyrians settled in distinct quluniye- (“colonies”) in New Britain, Yonkers, Elisabeth, Philadelphia, Gary, San Francisco, and (above all) Chicago; Chaldeans settled near Mosul in
Detroit; and Syriacs, mostly Turkish speaking, settled in Worcester, Cranston, and Patterson. Churches tended to be the social centers in these “colonies.” Secondary migration also took place, including that to Flint (Michigan) for its fledgling automobile industry and to an Assyrian agricultural colony in Turlock (California). During World War I, Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs experienced genocide. Following myriad routes, survivors made their way to “colonies” in the United States. Secularist organizations emerged to aid the many refugees of the war and to lobby for political autonomy in their old homelands. From the 1920s until the 1960s, immigration of Assyrians slowed mainly to a trickle. Nevertheless, during this period, the Chaldean community of Detroit burgeoned as Chaldeans came to work in automobile plants and to open small grocery stores, which to this day remain a mainstay of the community. The ascent of the Ba’ath party during the 1960s in Iraq led to a new wave of immigration among Assyrians and Chaldeans. Many Iraqi Christians had worked for the British military or foreign contractors, but the Ba’thist nationalization of enterprises made their position precarious. Assyrians of all stripes fled the Middle East as a result of the Lebanese Civil War of 1975–1976, the Iran–Iraq War of 1980–1988, the Persian Gulf War of 1991, and the war in Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion.
Contemporary Linkages Whereas war and violence have “pushed” Assyrians to leave their home countries, family and lineage reunification have “pulled” them to particular localities in the United States. Many long urbanized Assyrians keep track of up to thousands of relatives around the world. Before World War II, Iranian Assyrians established village-based organizations with chapters in different U.S. cities. Affiliations with ashirats, or independent chiefdoms in the Ottoman Empire, and rayats, or districts under direct Ottoman control, are still widely known even though they have had no official political standing for nearly 100 years. The abiding significance of kinship and lineage affiliations manifests itself in many ways such as the following. First, those sharing village, rayat, or ashirat ancestry continue to celebrate shahre- or festivals marking anniversaries of patron saints associated with those localities. Sometimes the organizers keep
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mailing lists of those who share such ancestry and reside all over North America. Certain shahre-, such as that of Mat Maryam (St. Mary), are celebrated community-wide. Second, elaborate patterns of visiting based on kinship and “tribal” networks are actively maintained, although neighborliness and friendship often influence these patterns as well. Third, wars in Middle Eastern countries, especially Iraq, have had a devastating impact on Assyrians, causing many to flee and live in limbo in Amman, Beirut, Athens, and elsewhere. Although Assyrian charitable organizations have worked assiduously to support them, far more aid has reached them through informal family connections. Although kinship ties have been paramount in the everyday lives of Assyrians, more inclusive ones manifest themselves as well. Since its inception in 1933, the Assyrian American National Federation (AANF) has served as an umbrella group for myriad Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syriac organizations. A striking component of Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac life in the United States are the AANF’s annual national conventions held in Chicago, Turlock, Philadelphia, Detroit, San Diego, central Connecticut, and other locations. Up to thousands of Assyrians converge on these conventions, which serve political, educational, cultural, and social functions, reestablishing ties and revivifying community sentiments. Larger communities of Assyrians, such as those in Chicago and San Jose, also transcend kinship affiliations inasmuch as they support a significant amount of commercial radio and cable television programming, with the latter including Assyrians Around the World (Chicago) and the Assyrian Television Network (Modesto). Like other ethnic groups in the United States, Assyrians have been upwardly mobile by joining the professions of engineering, accounting, law, and medicine as well as by engaging in successful business endeavors. Intermarriage has slowly been on the rise. Nevertheless, church and community life has, by and large, kept Assyrians clustered in certain metropolitan areas. Recently, their visibility has increased by virtue of the high-profile turmoil in Iraq. Daniel P. Wolk See also Arab Americans; Iranian Americans; Iraqi Americans; Kinship; Refugees; Syrian Americans; Transnational People
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Further Readings
Ishaya, Arian Beit. 1985. “Class and Ethnicity in Rural California: The Assyrian Community of Modesto–Turlock, 1910–1985.” PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles. Sengstock, Mary C. 2005. Chaldeans in Michigan. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Shoumanov, Vasili. 2001. Assyrians in Chicago. Chicago: Arcadia. Wolk, Daniel. 2004. “Assyrians.’’ P. 51 in The Encyclopedia of Chicago, edited by James R. Grossman et al. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
ASYLUM Throughout human history, people have sought asylum from various forms of persecution for their political affiliations, religious beliefs, and social practices. Asylum is the act or process of seeking protection from serious forms of persecution that could lead to harm or death. Persons who ask for asylum are called asylum seekers. Those persons whose claims for asylum are formally recognized are called refugees. In previous historical epochs, churches were often places of sanctuary or asylum. Today, it is primarily the nation-state that provides protection to those seeking asylum in the form of temporary or permanent residence or citizenship status. In 1685, French Protestants fled France with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes that had previously granted them religious tolerance. This event marked the beginning of the modern tradition of asylum, with the Marquis of Brandenburg granting protection to the fleeing Huguenots. The contemporary asylum system and the related definition of refugees were codified after World War II. Indeed, it was the shortcomings of the international community and individual nationstates in giving protection to people who were persecuted for their race, religion, nationality, political affiliation, or membership of a social group, and the massive human rights violations and deaths that resulted during World War II, that helped to gather momentum for a robust international protection system. First, the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights enshrined the right of the individual to seek protection from persecution. More specifically, the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees defined
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those needing protection. Those nation-states that have signed the Refugee Convention are obliged to properly assess the claims of people who claim asylum and are present in their territories. People may not be returned to the source of the persecution if a “genuine and wellfounded fear” of that persecution remains. People seeking protection under the Refugee Convention must be outside of their country of origin, and claims must be made for each individual case. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) oversees the international protection system and guides and advises nation-states in meeting their obligations to people who need protection. Today, asylum is first and foremost a human rights issue. The contemporary refugee system offers protection to those fleeing situations of persecution, armed conflict, and violence. The tension in this system is between international ideals and their fulfillment at the level of the nation-state. Throughout the 1990s, many states felt burdened by asylum migration and other migration flows. During this period, many nationstates erected barriers to the arrival of unwanted migrants, including people seeking asylum. Increased border surveillance and extraterritorial surveillance measures at international airports and other transit points have made it more difficult to seek protection. For those who manage to enter a nation-state and lodge a claim for protection, internal deterrence measures were increased throughout the 1990s. Such measures include limited or no work rights and little or restricted access to welfare, housing, education, and health care rights. People seeking asylum are one category of migrant among many other “types” of migrants. Migration falls broadly into the categories of voluntary and involuntary (forced) movement. Migrants are also often classified by states as authorized and unauthorized, denoting whether or not they have passports and other travel documents such as visas to regularize their entry into the territory of a state. Voluntary migration includes skilled and unskilled workers and family reunion migration and is usually regulated through visas and formal application processes. Involuntary migration is characterized by some form of coercion or force, where an individual is compelled to leave his or her country of origin. This category includes refugees, asylum seekers, people who are trafficked across borders, and people who migrate for economic reasons or following natural disasters. Involuntary migrants most often do not have authorization for their journey and may be regarded as security risks.
The arrival of persons without a legal right to stay in a nation-state is often seen as a challenge to the sovereignty of that state. The approach of nation-states to the arrival of people seeking asylum had a marked change from the end of the 1980s. With the end of the cold war and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the numbers of unauthorized migrants increased worldwide. Nation-states needed to deal with the arrival of large numbers of people without visas, travel documents, and other identifying papers. Some of these individuals claimed that they were asylum seekers. However, particularly Western European states felt overburdened by these arrivals. Consequently, throughout the 1990s, many countries introduced legislative and administrative measures that made it more difficult for individuals to enter and stay in a country. Increased internal and external surveillance and security measures, detention, and restricted access to welfare benefits, health care, housing, and work and education rights are some of the measures that have been introduced to discourage the arrival of undocumented arrivals, including asylum seekers. In addition, many countries have stepped up removal and deportation processes. Not all persons fleeing their country of origin are able to seek asylum or qualify as refugees. Only a very small proportion of refugees or people living in refugee-like situations, such as displaced persons, are offered resettlement in a “third” state. The majority of the world’s refugees and displaced persons live in camps in countries bordering or close to their country of origin. Many live in such situations for years where it is not safe to return home and no other “durable solution,” such as resettlement in another country, is offered as an alternative. This phenomenon is called “refugee warehousing.” The ongoing problem for refugee populations is a lack of human security in the form of access to basic human rights. Claudia Tazreiter See Appendix A; Appendix B See also “Boat People”; Citizenship; Discrimination; Ethnic Conflict; Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison; Minority Rights; Racism; Refugees Further Readings
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Benhabib, S. 2004. The Rights of Others. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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Carens, Joseph. 1987. “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders.” Review of Politics 49:251–273. Cohen, Roberta and Francis M. Deng. 1998. Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Goodwin-Gill, Guy S. 2001. “Asylum 2001: A Convention and a Purpose.” International Journal of Refugee Law 13:1–15. Marrus, Michael R. and Anna C. Bramwell. 1988. Refugees in the Age of Total War. London: Unwin Hyman. Marfleet, Philip. 2006. Refugees in a Global Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Zolberg, Aristide, Astri Suhrke, and Sergio Aguayo. 1989. Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World. New York: Oxford University Press.
AUSTRALIA Australia, a land of hundreds of Aboriginal clans, was claimed by the British during the late 18th century. It was named during the 19th century (it had previous Portuguese, Dutch, and French names) after the original Latin Terra Australis (the “South Land”). It is an island continent between the Pacific and Indian oceans, south of the Southeast Asian archipelagos. It is approximately the same physical size as the continental United States and has a population of approximately 21 million. Most of the population lives in a small number of large cities within 100 kilometers of the coast. The urban populations are more culturally diverse and educated, and the rural populations are more culturally homogeneous and less well educated. Indigenous people tend to live in the rural areas, although there are significant numbers in the suburbs of the major cities. Approximately 23% of the population was born outside of Australia, and 27% had at least one parent born outside of Australia. Power is shared between the Commonwealth government in Canberra and the six state and two territory governments. This entry examines the social patterns of race and ethnicity and the political processes associated with them. Although some reference is made to Aboriginal Australians, the focus of this entry is the culturally diverse makeup of the population as a result of immigration.
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Race and Racism In Commonwealth law, neither racism nor race is defined. Rather, laws such as the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 and the Racial Hatred amendments to that act in 1995 reflect Australia’s acceptance of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. They prohibit discrimination (distinction, exclusion, restriction, and preference) on the basis of race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin in relation to any human right or fundamental freedom. Other laws at the state level also prohibit discrimination on race, ethnic background, national origin, and (in some cases) religion. Australian governments have passed legislation at the state and federal levels seeking to define and outlaw racism. Although Australia has not been at the forefront in international forums confronting racism, it has for the most part aligned itself with the more progressive nations. It is important to recognize that there are two competing and conflicting social discourses about race current in the society: (a) one that is based on humanitarian, universal, and cosmopolitan values and that welcomes cultural differences and decries racism and prejudice and (b) one that is defensive of the myths of the core culture, denies that racism is a problem, and stresses values associated with assimilation into British/Australian culture. Australian law claims to desire the former of these social discourses while needing to take into account and accept elements of the latter. The balance of the compromise has been a central concern of the politics of race since 1973, when White Australia was put to rest, multiculturalism was first enunciated as a policy to replace assimilationism, and indigenous land rights were firmly placed on the political agenda. Most colonial settler societies, of which Australia is included, have been predicated on a primary racist assumption—the right of European powers to appropriate the wealth and resources of other societies. Australia, as a concept and as a reality, was created by two centuries of imperial struggle. The core myths and social practices of Australia reflect this history. Moreover, the issue of how to “read” Australian history has become highly politicized. In 1996, Prime Minister John Howard (head of government at the national level) argued that a “black armband” view had taken control of what should be seen as a far more heroic struggle to establish civilization in the land. He was reflecting on an argument first developed by historian Geoffrey Blainey, who in 1993 had castigated
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revisionist historians for focusing on the negative elements of Australian history and thereby supporting the development of what he described as a guilt industry. The issue of the history of racism has been politicized, and there is no longer an unambiguous narrative to which all historians could subscribe. However, it is important to ensure that voices of those about whom the history is written are also heard.
History and Social Context When the British government laid claim to ownership of the Australian continent in 1770, it did so within an international environment of aggressive imperialism where the subordination of colonial peoples was taken as a given among European powers. The British justified their aggression through a variety of ideological stratagems, typically combining religious goals with economic imperatives. Thus, Australia would provide fertile ground for the conversion of the heathen natives, who were seen as children to be led into civilization by the enlightened foresight of the conqueror. In the process, because there were few signs of what Europeans recognized as civilized life and no signs of the local people having organized government, their living on the land was perceived as an increasing frustration to be eradicated. Their resistance was a nuisance to be suppressed. When the British first settled/invaded in 1788, there may have been as few as 300,000 or as many as 1 million Indigenous inhabitants. The Indigenous people were seen to have no legal claim to the land and were immediately taken under the protection of the Crown. All of their land became Crown land, and their law was immediately nullified. Wars broke out in the Sydney region, where the local people resisted the invasion under the leadership of a local chief. The settlers were assisted greatly by the impact of germ warfare, introducing diseases such as measles, influenza, and smallpox to which the local people succumbed. The British spread quickly across the continent and the major islands. Early policy kept Australia as a penal colony for the first 20 years of settlement until more land was acquired by new pastoral industries. Christian missions were established about one generation after settlement. The first mission, in 1820, sought to protect the Indigenous people from the worst depravities of the invaders and, in the process, to convert them to Christianity and Westernize them. In particular, the aim was to render the population passive and compliant,
thereby positioning them in menial and servant roles in the social hierarchy. It was not until 1834, nearly half a century into the colonial period, that the first Europeans were found guilty and hung for the murder of Aborigines. Robert Tickner, a former Aboriginal affairs minister, stated that even with differences in emphasis and policies among the colonies, the common theme was the introduction of control over Aboriginal people. It permeated every aspect of their lives—from the food they ate, to the religion they practiced, to their freedom of movement and association. Within half a century of settlement, free immigration was growing rapidly, a tide that became a flood after the discovery of gold during the 1850s. New colonies were established around the periphery of the continent, and significant populations of British and non-British immigrants arrived seeking the free land. Populations of indentured workers were brought in to work the new industries—gold mining and forest clearing Chinese from the Guang Zhou region of southern China, Jat Pathan camel drivers from Pakistan/Afghanistan to build overland telegraph lines, and Kanaka laborers from the Pacific Ocean islands to work in the northern sugar industry. The federation of the colonies into a single Commonwealth in 1901 was driven in part by the fear of non-White immigration and the equally strong desire to create an egalitarian White democracy in the South Seas. One of the first legislative acts of the new nation was to define a restrictive immigration policy and exclude non-Whites. Ideologies of race played a critical part in the formation of the nation both internally in relation to the position of the Indigenous population (excluded from citizenship and political participation, being not counted in the national census so as not to favor states with large Aboriginal and small settler populations) and externally through a definition of racial purity as a social goal. Aboriginal organizations argued consistently for such a Commonwealth power that would effectively allow them to be citizens in their own land and to vote or seek representative office. Various attempts were made to address this issue, and an attempt by the wartime government in 1942 to win popular support for an Aboriginal power was defeated at referendum. The movement grew in strength and support through the 1950s and 1960s until, in 1967, a referendum passed by a large majority empowered the national government to act on behalf of the Aborigines and to recognize them as Australian citizens.
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Although the accrual of disadvantage highlighted the conditions under which Indigenous people lived, the explanations were highly politicized. On one side, a movement that was pushing for reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians stressed the social conditions that needed to be addressed. On the other side, a conservative movement with support in the government and in rightwing populist political parties argued that Indigenous people were being given too many rights and that their conditions of life were of their own making. Thus, racism remains a reality in the lives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, with governments facing great difficulty in dealing with both the material conditions of Indigenous life and the attitudes and values of some parts of the wider community toward them. As a consequence, Australia has come under sustained criticism from international organizations such as the United Nations and Amnesty International, to which the conservative government has reacted defensively.
Racism, Immigrants, and Refugees The problematic place of race in Australian national identity is exemplified in the management of immigration. The fierce affirmation of White Australia, which had been part of the crucible of nationhood, was played out in strategies to exclude those who were not acceptable participants in the new nation. The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 (revised, modified, and finally revoked during the late 1950s) had the effect of slowing, and then reversing, the inflow of non-Europeans. The widespread Chinese community could no longer bring over marital partners, mixed marriages in the northern Torres Strait came under legal pressure, many of the Muslims remained but were cut off from their families and cultural links, and many of the Kanakas were sent back to their islands of origin. A language dictation test was used to filter out undesirables. However, in the wake of World War II, during which there was widespread internment of Japanese, German, Austrian, and Italian Australians, governments of both political persuasions committed the country to a huge population-building program and turned increasingly to Southern and Eastern Europe. Throughout the 1960s, internal disturbance and external criticism eroded the unanimity within which White Australia had been sustained.
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During the mid-1960s, the Australian Labor Party removed its commitment to White Australia while conservative government policy moved from assimilation to integration, recognizing that non-British immigrants were retaining many elements of their own cultures and, more important, had every right to do so within an overall commitment to Australia. This was to become the philosophical framework for all future policies—the idea of a primary allegiance to a unitary Australia. By the early 1970s, the national government had moved toward a policy of multiculturalism, recognizing the legitimacy of diverse cultures within the framework of an overall commitment to Australia. Although racial markers were removed as filters for immigration in 1973, it was not until later in the 1970s, following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, that significant numbers of Asian immigrants arrived. These were predominantly refugees from that war, usually staunchly anti-communist and politically conservative. They settled by the hundreds of thousands in the major cities of Sydney and Melbourne and played a critical part in the transformation and globalization of these cities. Reaction to the new immigrants was not long in coming. Although there had been bipartisan support for multiculturalism as policy from 1978, this harmony fragmented in the wake of the economic downturns of the early 1980s. Leading populist intellectual figures argued that Australia could not culturally deal with the rapid cultural change affecting its cities. A series of government reports raised questions about the effectiveness of multiculturalism and whether it should be retained as either concept or policy. This view was particularly centered in the core of conservative politics that expressed resentment and hostility to the rapid impact of globalization and, in particular, the Asianization of Australia’s cities. The conservative national government elected in 1996 voiced its antipathy to the idea of multiculturalism. Welfare benefits were cut for new arrivals, parental sponsorship rights were cut back, research and policy groups concerned with issues of equity were closed, and the prime minister avoided using the concept of multiculturalism. A series of long drawn out reports through the final years of the 20th century finally created a sense of a more nationalist idea of Australian multiculturalism. However, senior conservative figures continued to argue that the term and its policy implications should be dropped.
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Combating Racism Until the mid-1960s, the Australian government had policies in place based on racist assumptions and designed to have racist outcomes. It was only with the changing political tenor of the period that new government policies were developed designed to eradicate racist practice and confront racist values. The state government in South Australia developed the first antidiscrimination legislation in 1966. Both the White Australia policy and the Aboriginal affairs policies would be affected by Australia’s position in the world. Australia could not avoid supporting UN initiatives against racism. However, even though Australia signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1966, the agreement was not ratified until 1975 and included the exclusion of criminalizing racial vilification. This was done through the Racial Discrimination Act of 1975, which stopped short of criminal sanctions for any actions covered by its terms. Again in 1994, the Senate forced amendments to the Racial Hatred Act, removing criminal sanctions. The first national strategy designed to respond to complaints of racial discrimination used a short-lived Community Relations Commission (1974–1976) with limited powers. It preceded the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity (HREO) Commission, which oversaw the Racial Discrimination Act. The HREO Commission has powers to adjudicate in disputes (through a tribunal) and to reach decisions (through negotiation). If no outcome can be negotiated or the offending party does not act as agreed, the aggrieved party needs to take the matter to a court for action. In addition, after the failed proposals for criminal sanctions were blocked by senators in opposition, the HREO Commission was charged with community education. The commission also carries out investigations and prepares reports, including those on the social justice status of Indigenous people, the conditions of refugees, and the experiences and social conditions of immigrants.
Contemporary Issues Australia is a society with an evident racist past and continuing controversies over the nature of its present and future. The national government’s position remains that none of its actions is in any way racist— from the revisions to the Native Title Act that stripped many of the protections Indigenous people had
secured during the early 1990s, to the position on refugees that was described as race free (with the government arguing that it was taking more than its fair share of refugees and that those repulsed were “illegal” entrants), to the erosion of multiculturalism (and the affirmation that Australian multiculturalism rightly placed Euro-Christian values at the apex of the value hierarchy). The post-9/11 ambience of fear of terrorism and hostility to Muslims has pervaded parts of Australian society; in December 2005, race riots between White surfers and Middle Eastern Muslims took place in Sydney’s beachside suburbs. National organizations also developed around issues of racism affecting immigrants and refugees. The most widely known of these is the Federation of Ethnic Community Councils of Australia (FECCA) with an agenda covering a broad range of issues, including discrimination. In a country that has prided itself publicly on its multicultural and tolerant public culture, and that in 1995 hosted the World Cultural Diversity Conference, it is extraordinary how rapidly race has become the hottest topic on the political agenda. Partly as a consequence of external factors and partly as a consequence of increasing pressure from conservative political forces anxious to reassert a narrow cultural hegemony, Australians are less willing to accept social difference than they have been for many years. Increasingly conservative commentators are arguing that many of the perspectives advocated by liberal proponents of diversity since the 1960s should be abandoned. Cultural relativism has come under major attack, with the reassertion of religious-based precepts drawn from Christianity and, in particular, evangelical tendencies. Assimilationism has been resurrected as a legitimate philosophy of intergroup relations, whereas immigration recruitment has targeted English-speaking professionals while restricting family reunion from poorer non-English-speaking countries. In the new millennium, Australia’s public face reflects a generation of legislation designed to outlaw racial discrimination, prohibit racial vilification, and encourage social harmony. A broad commitment to Australian multiculturalism in relation to cultural diversity and to reconciliation in relation to Indigenous people characterizes the formal agenda of political life. However, there is widespread disagreement over the practical meaning of these terms as significant minority groups advocate for the end of multicultural policies and the removal of all recognition of the particular interests of Indigenous people.
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Australia is a society trying to come to terms with its racist past and the reality of its cultural diversity in a globalizing world. Race provides an easy fault line along which frustration can surge and social division can emerge. The interconnections between ideas about race, practices of inclusion and exclusion, and struggles over national identity reveal a sharply divided society with very different ideas about how diversity should be treated. Andrew Jakubowicz See Appendix A See also Australia, Indigenous People; Globalization; International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; Racism
Further Readings
Australian Council for Population and Ethnic Affairs (Jerzy Zubrzycki, chair). 1982. Multiculturalism for All Australians: Our Developing Nationhood. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Grant, Bligh, ed. 1997. Pauline Hanson: One Nation and Australian Politics. Armidale, Australia: University of New England Press. Hodge, Bob and John O’Carroll. 2006. Borderwork in Multicultural Australia. Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Jakubowicz, Andrew. 1985. “Racism, Multiculturalism, and the Immigration debate in Australia: A Bibliographic Essay.” Sage Race Relations Abstracts 10(3):1–15. Tickner, Robert. 2001. Taking a Stand: Land Rights and Reconciliation. Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Vasta, Ellie and Stephen Castles. 1996. The Teeth Are Smiling: The Persistence of Racism in Multicultural Australia. Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin.
Web Sites
Making Multicultural Australia: http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au
AUSTRALIA, INDIGENOUS PEOPLE The Indigenous people of Australia have inhabited the continent continuously for at least 50,000 years. Today, they comprise approximately 2.4% of the total population, and although they are small in number,
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their presence based on this irrefutable long legacy is highly visible. The phrase Indigenous people refers collectively to a diverse group of people. Often in both popular speech and more scholarly writings, the term Aborigine is used to refer to all Indigenous people, although others argue to differentiate the Torres Strait Islanders, who comprise 11% of the Indigenous population of Australia, from those settled on the Australian continent. In matter of fact, Indigenous or Aboriginal people themselves are most likely to refer to themselves by a more specific term referring to a specific clan or region such as the Koori, Noongar, Anangu, Palawah, or Kulin. Aborigine is also a term that is not exclusive to referring to the first people of Australia. It does, in fact, refer to the earliest known inhabitants, who continue to maintain distinct traditions in other countries such as Canada and Taiwan. But it is contemporary Australia where the term is most widely in use. Aboriginal and Indigenous people are used interchangeably in this entry. The
June Smith and her work at a Sydney art gallery. The artistic expression of the indigenous people of Australia, whether through song, dance, stories, or artwork, has received increased appreciation in the past two decades. June Smith (born 1960), from the Keringe community of the Eastern Arrernte in central Australia, displays her intricate work “Flowers After the Rain” at a Sydney art gallery in 1999. Typical of many contemporary artists, she uses dots and circles as a technique for reflecting the landscape. Although acrylic paint on canvas is used today, this technique mimics the traditional Aboriginal ground paintings or constructions made from pulverized plant and animal material mixed with brilliant colored ochre. Reflecting the versatility of many Aboriginal artists, Smith has designed ties and scarves and was commissioned in 2005 to design the new carpet for the Alice Springs Airport in Northern Australia. Source: AFP/Getty Images.
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official government definition of an Aborigine is a person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent who identifies as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin and who is accepted as such by the community with which the person associates. This entry describes Aborigines’ history and current status.
Early History Although 50,000 years is the typically stated length of settlement, some archaeologists suggest that the presence of people on Earth may stretch back 100,000 years. The beliefs of the Aboriginal people themselves contend that they emerged from the land itself. Scholars currently believe that Aborigines arrived in Australia from parts of what is today Asia through New Guinea when sea levels were low during the Ice Age. A social system emerged—still identifiable today—that is organized around a clan; its people moved within a specific land area but were not nomadic. Traditionally, they were hunters and gatherers remaining relatively fixed in their location except for some areas in Australia where clans would move depending on the seasons. Today, there is an appreciation for the different techniques used by the Aboriginal people in raising vegetables, diverting water supplies, and making animals edible. However, the Europeans who first arrived in Australia did not see this management of scarce natural resources as agriculture because it did not correspond to the settlers’ notions of farms and livestock management. Historically and even today, the cultural practices of Indigenous people of Australia are very diverse. These people comprise many clans, language groups, and communities with few interconnections except those occasionally created through kinship or trade. When Europeans arrived, there were an estimated 600 to 700 groups speaking 200 to 250 separate languages as distinct as French is to German. In addition, there were many more dialects of a language that could be more or less understood by others. Reflecting this diversity is the spirituality of the people. Although belief systems vary reflecting the changing terrain from the Outback to rainforests, the Indigenous people see themselves as having arisen from the land itself and ultimately returning to the land. Collectively, these beliefs are commonly referred to as “Dreaming” or “Dreamtime” and sometimes take on a style that Westerners view or label as a cosmology or oral folklore.
The Europeans Arrive There are not even reliable estimates of the population of Australia before European settlement in 1788, although the absolute minimum pre-1788 population is given as 315,000. Other estimates have put the figure at more than 1 million, and recent archaeological research indicates that a population of 750,000 could have been sustained on the continent. To offer some comparison, the British government brought 160,000 convicts to Australia. European contact with the Indigenous people of what is today Australia is relatively recent. Only sporadic encounters with Dutch, French, and English traders are reported prior to British settlement began in 1788 at Sydney Harbor. Unlike most other colonies, Australia initially was not populated by true colonists but was used largely as a port of penal colonies created along the coastlines. From the beginning, the British had no respect for local culture and lifestyle. Despite the ability of the Indigenous people to survive and flourish in an inhospitable environment, the English saw little to learn from the local people. The size of Australia’s Indigenous population declined dramatically after European settlement as a result of the colonialism. The impact of new diseases, some of which were not life threatening to Europeans, had devastating effects on Indigenous communities because the people lacked immunity. The number of Indigenous people also decreased as a result of their mistreatment, the dispossession of their land, and the disruption and disintegration of their culture. The absence of any colonial policy with respect to the social welfare of Aborigines reflected not only the devaluing of their position as humans but also a conviction that they would experience extinction. Already by the 1830s, this was deemed as inevitable. In 1901, when the Commonwealth of Australia was formed, the official count was placed at 70,000. As with Indigenous people worldwide, Aborigines were and are the object of missionary outreach. Chief among denominations in the Australians are the Anglican Church, Roman Catholics, and Methodists. Over time and location, there have been significant differences in interference in clan spiritual and cultural practices. Reflecting the spatial isolation of many clans, new missionary initiatives were undertaken as recently as the 1940s.
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Legal and Land Issues Legally and historically, there was little recognition of Indigenous people. Great Britain took the view of Australia as terra nullius—a territory belonging to no one. In reality, it meant that the land was available for settlement and ownership by the English, with the Indigenous people having no claim. In comparison with other countries with significant Indigenous populations, Australia was late in recognizing the possibility that Indigenous people enjoyed long-term land rights. As Aborigines were driven away from European-occupied territory, the concept of reimbursement or negotiation was absent. There were isolated events during the last half of the 20th century where the federal government recognized land rights, but these did not have the far-reaching implications of the Mabo decision. Eddie Mabo was a member of the Meriam people residing on the Murray (Mer) Islands annexed to Queensland in 1879. Mabo and others had indisputably farmed land on individual plots and fought for ownership of their land. Central to the Aborigines’ claim was to contend that the Crown’s annexation did not extinguish the rights of Aboriginal people. In 1992, the High Court of Australia ruled that Indigenous title to land had survived British colonization. In the wake of the Mabo decision, the Native Title Act of 1993 was passed, maintaining that the Crown did not have ownership of all land acquired during European settlement and that prior interest of Indigenous people could still survive. Although the act was a radical departure from the prior position, it did stipulate that Indigenous owners must live by the laws and customs of their clan and could not sell the land to people external to the clan. Earlier in 1967, Australian citizenship and voting rights were extended to the Indigenous people, allowing them access to welfare and unemployment benefits. It would be misleading to view Aboriginal people as passive, either during colonial days or during more contemporary times, with respect to their position in Australia. They have taken active part in efforts to secure their rights.
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five years after the group organized in California in the United States. This came at a time when Indigenous adults had a 7% unemployment rate (as of the 1966 census) when the nation enjoyed full employment. There were places in Australia where an Aborigine would not be served in retail shops or allowed to dine in restaurants. Although this discrimination did not enjoy the legal support found in the Jim Crow South in the United States, White Australian attitude toward Aborigines at times served to enforce social distance. The writings of Black Nationalists from the United States enjoyed a sympathetic audience among activists in the Australian Aborigine community, but the differences were significant and remain so today. One similarity was the call for Aborigines to have more say and leadership in those services for which they were the major clients. Some activists found greater parallels in the United States with the American Indians and the Maori and saw their position as being a people dispossessed and colonized. Aboriginal people have initiated several strategies to fight for their right to land, including going on strike. Aboriginal people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia went on strike in 1946. There was the Gurindji walk-off from Wave Hill Station of New South Wales in 1966. In 1975, the federal government granted the Gurindji leasehold on a small portion of land, a significant symbolic gesture that included the prime minister funneling a trickle of dirt into the hand of the leader of the Gurindji. Urban-based Indigenous people joined the land rights movement by establishing a “Tent Embassy” on the grounds of what was the Parliament House in Canberra. The Tend Embassy, established in January 1972, drew international attention to the Aboriginal land rights movement and gave the world its first view of the Aboriginal flag. A striking black, yellow, and red symbol of people, their land, and hope, the colors of the Aboriginal flag are used as designators of Aboriginality in jewelry and other forms of expression by Aboriginal people who see their struggle for identity rights as second only to their struggle for land rights.
Protest Movements In many parts of the world, the civil rights and Black Panther movements had an impact on people of color. Australia was no exception. For example, by 1971 the Australian Black Panther Party was first formed, just
Contemporary Society In 2001, the estimated Indigenous population was 458,000 or approximately 2.4% of Australia’s total population. Given their more rural lifestyles, accurate
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counts of Indigenous people are difficult. Yet it does appear that the population is growing faster than the general population due to modest improvement in health conditions and increasing willingness of people to be identified as Indigenous on census forms. By 2009, this population is expected to grow to approximately 528,600. Reflecting a shorter life expectancy by 17 years, the Indigenous people have a median age much lower than that of the non-Indigenous population (20.5 vs. 36.1 years). Indigenous people are much more likely to live in rural or remote areas of Australia. In 2001, roughly one in four Indigenous Australians lived in remote areas compared with only one in fifty non-Indigenous Australians. Health and social conditions for Indigenous people are problematic at best. A 2002 government study found that 83% experienced a “life stressor” (e.g., death of a family member or close friend, serious illness or disability, unemployment), compared with 57% among nonIndigenous people. Although studies conducted since 2000 generally show the health of Indigenous people to be improving, health indicators generally trail those of the general population across the board. Rates of infant mortality, hospitalization, and disability are significantly higher for Indigenous people. Reported incomes show that 20% of non-Indigenous people age 18 years or older were low income, compared with 37% of Indigenous people and an even greater proportion (48%) living in remote areas. Unemployment levels and reports of financial stress follow a similar pattern. Overall, the proportion of Indigenous people completing non-school qualifications (i.e., not graduation certificate, diploma, or bachelor’s degree or above) gradually increased to 26% by 2002. This compares with 50% of non-Indigenous people, with obvious social implications for future employment prospects. As with Indigenous people in other parts of the world, the degree of assimilation varies dramatically among the Indigenous population of Australia. A 2002 government study found that two-thirds of the Indigenous people reported attending relevant cultural events during the previous year. More than half of those reporting identified with a clan or a tribal or language group. Finally, one in eight used an Indigenous language as his or her primary language at home. Although older people show more modest levels of assimilation, the differences are not that striking. For example, 26.1% of those age 55 years or older speak
an Indigenous language, compared with 18.2% of those between 15 and 24 years of age. Today, Indigenous people take a mixed approach to displaying their culture and lifestyle to outsiders. In urban areas, cultural centers such as the Koorie Heritage Trust Cultural Centre in Melbourne provide insight into the history and culture of the Indigenous people of the region. Tours into areas inhabited by Indigenous people operate within a range from those wholly owned by local Aboriginal people to those managed by outside commercial tours that are at best tolerated by Aboriginal people. Just in the current generation, the general public has begun to recognize the sanctity to the Aboriginal people of certain areas of Australia such as Ayers Rock (now called Uluru) in central Australia. The arts and crafts provide a source of income for some Indigenous people, but issues of nonauthentic mass-produced goods reduce the potential impact. Comparable to academic institutions in other former colonial countries, Indigenous Studies has become more common in Australian institutions of higher education. Still developing contentious issues of coverage, relationship to traditional disciplines such as anthropology, and the role of non-professionally trained teachers confront these growing programs. Common to these programs is a commitment to Indigenous people first and not to treat them as merely academic subject matter. Perhaps more challenging has been for Indigenous programs to not be limited to typical Western systems of thought and to embrace Indigenous knowledge, culture, and life experiences. Australian identity for more than 120 years has been rather straightforward as Anglo-Celtic in origin or simply “English.” The White Australian image since World War II was modified to recognize the immigration from Asia. Now in the 21st century, there is a gradual willingness to recognize Indigenous Australians as a central part of Australian culture, but they remain marginalized economically and socially. Indigenous people individually have received national recognition. Among the notables are actor and television host Ernie Dingo, Olympic medalist Cathy Freeman, tennis professional Evonne Goolagong Cawley, and political activist Noel Pearson. Richard T. Schaefer See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Australia; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Brazil; Canada, First Nations; Civil Rights Movement; Colonialism; Latin America,
Authoritarian Personality
Indigenous People; Marginalization; Native Americans; Racialization
Further Readings
Anderson, Warwick. 2003. The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health, and Racial Destiny in Australia. New York: Perseus Books. Attwood, Bain. 2003. Rights for Aborigines. Crows Nest, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Davison, Craig A. 1998. “Native Land Rights in Australia.” Business Ethics: A European Review 7(1):12–16. Horton, David R., ed. 1994. The Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. Canberra, Australia: Aboriginal Studies Press. Lothcan, Kathy. 2005. “Seizing the Time: Australian Aborigines and the Influence of the Black Panther Party, 1969–1972.” Journal of Black Studies 35:179–200. Nakata, Morton. 2006. “Australian Indigenous Studies: A Question on Discipline.” Australian Journal of Anthropology 17:265–275.
Web Sites
Australian Bureau of Statistics: http://www.abs.gov.au
AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY The term authoritarian personality was introduced by Theodor W. Adorno and colleagues in 1950 following the publication of The Authoritarian Personality, one of a series of studies in prejudice and discrimination conducted by Adorno and Else Frenkel-Brunswik (both exiles to the United States from the specter of Nazism in Europe) along with R. Nevitt Sanford and Daniel J. Levinson (both members of the Berkeley Public Opinion Study research group located at the University of California). This was an interdisciplinary psychosocial inquiry that systematically studied the mechanisms of domination and the propensity toward authoritarianism in the United States. This entry looks at the concept and its impact on issues of race and ethnicity.
Describing the Study An authoritarian personality was described as an individual who unquestioningly conforms to social norms and is prone to stereotyping, emotional coldness,
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identification with power, and general destructiveness. The variable authoritarianism was investigated, and the attitudinal components made up the “F scale”—a personality structure rendering a person “receptive to antidemocratic propaganda.” Although the focus of the study was a type of personality related to “various manifestations of prejudice,” the authors stressed the need to focus on both the social and psychological structures and processes involved in the mechanisms of domination because “these are the products of the total organization of society.” The study involved the development of a questionnaire (2,099 respondents living in California), followup interviews, observations, and subsequent analysis that uncovered inclinations toward authoritarianism— belief in a system where some people control while others are controlled and involving domination and submission; members of in-groups hold negative attitudes about out-groups such as seeing them as less deserving or less human than themselves. The research team devised a set of interpretive techniques that included a series of scales by which a cluster or constellation of related attitudes could be measured— A-S, anti-Semitism; E, ethnocentrism; PEC, political, economic, conservatism; F, fascism. The F scale, or “Implicit Antidemocratic Trends” scale, was made up of the following variables. Conventionalism: A rigid adherence to conventional middle-class values Authoritarian submission: A submissive uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the in-group Authoritarian aggression: A tendency to be on the lookout for, and to condemn, reject, and punish, people who violate conventional values Anti-intraception: An opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, the tender-minded Superstition and stereotypy: The belief in mystical determinants of the individual’s fate; the disposition to think in rigid categories Power and “toughness”: Preoccupation with the dominance–submission, strong–weak, leader–follower dimension; identification with power figures; overemphasis on the conventionalized attributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness Destructiveness and cynicism: A generalized hostility; vilification of the human
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Projectivity: The disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outward of unconscious emotional impulses
in relation to the nature and function of ideology and the conditions of late capitalism explored through socioeconomic and cultural analysis.
Sex: Exaggerated concern with sexual “goings-on”
In The Authoritarian Personality, psychoanalytic categories were used to interpret the results. The major hypothesis was that the political, economic, and social convictions of an individual often form a broad or coherent pattern that is, in turn, an expression of deeper lying trends in the individual’s personality. The study disclosed a high degree of anti-Semitic prejudice and a significant number of people who scored high on the scale that measured authoritarian potential in individuals. The study suggests that the knowledge gained through the study could prove to be useful in combating the political–social trend of fascism and that action research/education might prevent a repetition of the European experience.
Social Context The study took place under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee, which hired Max Horkheimer to be the director of the Department of Scientific Research and is clearly linked to the earlier work of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt and its reception of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. Indeed, the antecedents of the research are located in the work of Freud, Horkheimer, Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Walter Benjamin and their concerns with freedom, anti-Semitism, and how the ideals of the Enlightenment (reason, progress, and liberation) could turn into their opposite in repression, manipulation, and unfreedom. This marked the paradoxical nature of modernization/modernity. The concept of authoritarianism was initially explored by Fromm in Politics and Psychoanalysis (1931) to explain how attitudes can be mobilized to support political movements such as Nazism. The Frankfurt Institute for Social Research subsequently conducted a series of works that explored authoritarianism, enlightenment (modernity/modernization), and fascism. Fromm’s Studies in Authority and the Family and Adorno and Horkheimer’s “Limits of AntiSemitism,” published in Dialectic of Enlightenment, are two examples. The influence of Marx is also apparent in Adorno’s analysis in The Authoritarian Personality, specifically
Contemporary Relevance In The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno and colleagues draw links between anti-Semitism and totalitarian thinking, arguing for analysis that looks for explanations at the level of the social sphere as well as the psyche. Adorno’s work was dedicated to unmasking the false, that is, seeking the truth in life’s fictions and working against the forces of totalitarianism that include prejudice, racism, and “othering.” In Minima Moralia, Adorno described how through a chance conversation on a train a person might consent to statements that ultimately are abhorrent to him or her. As one eminent scholar told us, the false appearance of agreement is enough to undermine truth. Adorno raised unsettling questions about contemporary culture; for example, how deeply do authoritarianism currents run in advanced pluralistic cultures? Examples that can be used to illustrate authoritarian tendencies can be found in studies of obedience to authority in experiments by Philip Zimbardo and Stanley Milgram. Despite critiques of The Authoritarian Personality that claimed the end of authoritarianism and challenged the methodological basis of the study, research into prejudice and authoritarianism continues, leading to analysis that seeks to counter authoritarian tendencies. For many scholars, The Authoritarian Personality still matters and authoritarianism is better described in terms of attitudes than in terms of personality, thereby enabling contemporary studies of the far right to be conducted alongside measures for their reduction. Adorno and colleagues’ central thesis remains relevant, namely that advanced industrial society encourages the formation of authoritarian individuals, who may become fascists and form fascist organizations. For example, see current studies in pseudoconservatism, far right groups (e.g., the British National Party [BNP] in the United Kingdom), security, terrorism, and the treatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. An example of research and action designed to counter such trends can be found in the development of a global network focusing on Human Dignity and
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Humiliation Studies (HDHS), which meets at Columbia University in New York City once a year to report and reflect on research that examines humiliation, human dignity, conflict and peace, immigration and migration (both forced and free), and the need for growth-fostering social communities and relationships to interrupt pathways of violence so as to build equality and human dignity and to counter negative social forces such as the impact of authoritarianism, humiliation, instrumental reason, racism, sexism, and identity thinking. Other recent studies focus on explanations that concentrate on group processes rather than individual characteristics drawing on studies by Milgram, Zimbardo, and Michael Billig by way of examples. Maggie O’Neill
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Milgram, Stanley. 1963. “Behavioral Study of Obedience.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67:371–378. O’Neill, Maggie, ed. 1999. Adorno, Culture, and Feminism. London: Sage. Reicher, Stephen and S. Alexander Haslam. 2006. “Rethinking the Psychology of Tyranny: The BBC Prison Study.” British Journal of Social Psychology 45:1–40. Roiser, Martin and Carla Willig. 2002. “The Strange Death of the Authoritarian Personality: 50 Years of Psychological and Political Debate.” History of the Human Sciences 15(4):71–96. Zimbardo, Philip G., Christina Maslach, and Craig Haney. 1999. “Reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment: Genesis, Transformations, Consequences.” Pp. 193–237 in Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm, edited by T. Blass. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
See also American Jewish Committee; Anti-Semitism; Labeling; Prejudice; Stereotypes Further Readings
Adorno, Theodor W., Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Norton. Adorno, Theodor W. and Max Horkheimer. 1995. Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming. London: Verso. Adorno, Theodor W. 1996. Minima Moralia, translated by E. F. N. Jephcott. London: Verso. Billig, Michael. 1978. Fascists: A Social Psychological View of the National Front. London: Academic Press. Bronner, Stephen Eric and Douglas M. Kellner, eds. 1989. Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. New York: Routledge. Christie, Richard and Marie Jahoda, eds. 1954. Studies in the Scope and Method of the Authoritarian Personality. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Haney, Craig, W. Curtis Banks, and Philip G. Zimbardo. 1973. “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison.” International Journal of Criminology and Penology 1:69–97. Haney, Craig and Philip G. Zimbardo. 1976. “Social Roles and Role-Playing: Observations from the Stanford Prison Study.” Pp. 266–274 in Current Perspectives in Social Psychology, 4th ed., edited by E. P. Hollander and R. G. Hunt. New York: Oxford University Press. Jay, Martin. 1984. Adorno. London: Fontana. Lindner, Evelin. 2006. Making Enemies: Humiliation and International Conflict. Westport, CT: Praeger.
AZTLÁN Aztlán refers to the land of origin of the Nahuatlspeaking Mexica of Mexico, who are commonly, but incorrectly, known as Aztecs. Nahuatl legends relate that seven tribes, including the Mexica, lived in Chicomoztoc (“the place of the seven caves”). These tribes subsequently left the caves and settled somewhere in the region that currently comprises the present-day northern Mexico or U.S. Southwest. The Aubin Codex states that the tyranny of a despotic elite, known as the Azteca Chicomoztoca, forced the Mexica to flee from Aztlán, guided by the spirit of the South, Huitzilopochtli. The Codex describes how this Nahuatl god of war and sun forbade the Mexica from identifying with the Azteca. Ironically, and representing an important theme of conquest, scholars of the 19th century would name the Mexica’s descendants and their civilization Aztec. During the 1960s, Aztlán came to be represented in the material and political culture of young Mexican Americans, as described in this entry. Particularly as Mexican American youth sought to reclaim and reposition their mixed indigenous history, culture, and experiences in relation to the U.S. acquisition of nearly one-third of the landmass of Mexico after the Mexican–American War in 1848, Aztlán served a powerful metaphorical role in the creation of a cohesive racial, cultural, and political identity for Mexican Americans. Such an identity was essential for many
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Spanish-surnamed individuals who, as result of racial/ethnic discrimination, had been relegated to second-class citizenship, social marginalization, and the underclass during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
The Denver Meeting The importance of Aztlán to the civil rights and identity struggles of Mexican Americans crystallized in March 1969 in Denver, Colorado, where Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales convened the First National Youth and Liberation Conference. Gonzales had become the ideological leader for many Chicano youth with the publication of his epic and critical poem, Yo Soy Joaquin. Approximately 1,500 young people from throughout the United States attended the conference held at the headquarters of Gonzales’s political organization, the Crusade for Justice, to discuss common issues of social injustice and racial discrimination experienced by a wide array of youth in their communities. After much debate and discussion, the conference formulated a philosophy of cultural nationalism, calling for all Mexican Americans to unite under the banner of the term Chicano and calling for selfdetermination in all spheres of life. Most important, the participants embraced the concept of Aztlán to situate their program. By referencing their social and political identity in relation to the indigenous homeland of the Mexica empire, which became subjected to Spanish and (later) American expansion, Aztlán provided an image by which Chicanos/as could resolve the racial tensions of their mestizo multiracial and multicultural identities. Simply, it was an effort to reject whiteness and the long-standing ethnocentric view in the Mexican American community; beyond that, being indigenous meant being less than European or American. All of these sentiments were captured in a document drafted by the conference participants—El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán. The Chicano poet Alurista penned the Preamble to this Mexican American Declaration of Independence: In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage, but also of the brutal “Gringo” invasion of our territories, We, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern
land of Aztlán, from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth. . . . We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those that plant the seed, water the fields, and gather the crops, and not the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the Bronze continent.
Aztlán accordingly served to identify precisely the connection between Mexican Americans’ distinct mixed-race identity and a centuries-long struggle for human rights and cultural survival in the U.S. Southwest. A month later, many of the same attendees of the National Youth Liberation Conference met at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and organized student organizations under the name Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MECHA). Moreover, Aztlán functioned as the foundation by which transnationalism came to be articulated by many Mexican American students and activists both during and after the height of the Chicano movement during the early 1970s. Highlighting the interdependency of racial formations during a period when Black, Asian, American Indian, and other Third World activists each developed comprehensive visions of sovereignty, the nationalism embodied in the concept of Aztlán became the basis to organize Chicanos in the worldwide struggle against racism and systemic exploitation. Indeed, Aztlán represented the ability of a colonized people to distribute economic resources equitably and fairly, to provide meaningful political access, and to preserve the cultural character of Chicanos/as.
Long-Term Impact During the years since its emergence in the Chicano movement, the concept of Aztlán has served to animate Chicano political mobilization across the political spectrum—from the class-based politics of Centro de Accion Social Autonomo (CASA) to the more mainstream National Council of La Raza. In turn, the concept of Aztlán and its use by Chicanos has drawn intense and often raucous criticism for being racist and exclusionary and for contributing to the “Balkanization” of the United States. Nevertheless, the name is a distinct product of a particular historical moment by which Mexican Americans during the 1960s and 1970s reimagined and recentered their
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political and social identities as a mixed-race people who had long been part the history of conquest, control, and resistance in the Americas. Tom I. Romero II See also Alamo, The; Chicano Movement; Identity Politics; Internal Colonialism; La Raza; Mexican Americans
Further Readings
Anaya, Rodofo, ed. 1993. Aztlán: Essays on the Chicano Homeland. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
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Barrera, Mario. 1990. Beyond Aztlán: Ethnic Autonomy in Comparative Perspective. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Gonzales, Rodolfo. 2001. Message to Aztlán: Selected Writings. Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press. Griswold del Castillo, Richard. 2006. North to Aztlán: A History of Mexican Americans in the United States. Whelling, IL: Harlan Davidson. Navarro, Armando. 2004. Mexicano Political Experience in Occupied Aztlán: Struggles and Change. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
B repatriation of liberated Blacks. In 1815, Paul Cuffe successfully took nine families consisting of thirtyeight people to Sierra Leone. Such voyages encouraged many free Black and White abolitionists to do the same. Drawing on the success of the Fourah Bay settlement and Cuffe’s inspirational voyage, the American Colonization Society (ACS) (formally named “The American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States”) was established in 1816. Its aim was to have liberated Blacks colonize the western coast of Africa. Three groups supported the ACS. First, there were those who believed that resettlement was the only means by which Blacks could obtain a modicum of freedom and justice. Others were motivated by the goal of spreading Christianity to what they saw as “savage” Africa. The third group— and the source of most ACS support—were southern planters and slaveowners who grew fearful of the free Black population. Slaveowners wanted free Blacks removed from the nation for fear that they might ignite an insurrection among slaves. Therefore, many slaveowners saw repatriation as the only means of ridding themselves of this “dangerous” group, especially given the success of the Haitian revolution.
BACK TO AFRICA MOVEMENT The so-called Back to Africa movements—projects designed to repatriate people of African descent, willingly and unwillingly, to West Africa and elsewhere during the 19th and 20th centuries—are often omitted from accounts of U.S. history. Yet these movements played an important part in the history of Black Nationalism and civil rights in the United States. Championed by both Whites and Blacks, Black emigration from the United States to Africa reached its apex with the creation of Liberia. This entry reviews the history of the movement and its impact.
Historical Origin The idea of repatriating to Africa predates the American Revolution. Virtually every national leader from Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln held the conviction that Blacks and Whites could not coexist as free and equal citizens. As a result, these men encouraged emigration, as did James Madison, Daniel Webster, Andrew Jackson, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice Bushrod Washington, and even Harriet Beecher Stowe. Other advocates included Martin Delany, Henry McNeal Turner, Alexander Crummell, and Marcus Garvey. Sending liberated Blacks to Africa gained momentum after the successful settlement at Fourah Bay, Sierra Leone, in 1787, by the British Crown. There, several hundred liberated slaves were settled. Later, New Englander Paul Cuffe, a successful Black shipper, inquired about conditions in Sierra Leone and established organizations in the United States to assist in the
Sailing for Sierra Leone In 1820, the ACS launched the brig Elizabeth, bound for the Grain Coast with eighty-eight African American emigrants. The Elizabeth landed at Sherbro Island in Sierra Leone. Soon thereafter, about a quarter of the would-be colonists died of vector-born diseases like malaria, dengue, and yellow fever. Led by Elijah Johnson, the survivors retreated to Freetown, 125
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Sierra Leone. Despite the initial failure, the ACS pushed forth and sailed a second group in 1821. Escorted by the U.S.S. Alligator, the Augusta landed in 1821 at Cape Mesurado, a site that was selected by a young American lieutenant named Matthew Perry. After negotiations with indigenous African chiefs— who reluctantly agreed to sell their land—the ACS agents and settlers purchased sixty miles of land along the coast for U.S. $300. In April 1822, the first settlement was established, but not without resistance from the native population. Immediately following the signing of the contract with indigenous chiefs, local natives pushed the settlers back to an island in the Mesurado Lagoon called Providence Island. On November 11, 1822, the indigenous population attacked the settler community again, using firearms acquired from Spanish and Cuban slaveowners. Under the leadership of Jehudi Ashmun, the settlers regrouped with the help of British and U.S. forces and claimed a victory over the indigenous population. The settlement came to be known as “Monrovia,” after U.S. president James Monroe, and the colony took on the name “Liberia,” from the Latin adjective liber, meaning “free.” Hence, all settlers became known as “Americo-Liberians.”
Building the Liberian Colony Within months, the ACS began to purchase more land along the coast, while strongly encouraging Black emigration from the United States. Over the next decade, state colonization societies (e.g., Maryland Colonization Society and Mississippi Colonization Society) continued to sponsor the emigration of manumitted Blacks from America to Liberia. Between 1822 and 1867, the colony grew to approximately 19,000 Americo-Liberians. In fact, early Black Nationalists like Henry McNeal Turner and Henry Highland Garnet supported the ACS. Turner saw emigration as a means to Christianize Africans, a view that was later strengthened after visiting Liberia, Sierra Leone, and South Africa in the 1890s. The relationship between the African American settlers and the indigenous population worsened as the settler populations grew and as time passed, for the settlers saw themselves not as descendants of Africans, but as Americans. Despite their subordinated role in the New World, many identified with the world that had refused them, and Liberia was simply an asylum from that subordination. Having no psychological
attachment to Africa, the settlers treated the indigenous population as savages and barbarians. To the AmericoLiberian population, they were uncivilized. The settlers thus began to establish a castelike system, essentially ethnic apartheid. In 1838, the Americo-Liberian elite and the ACS declared Liberia a commonwealth, which was to be overseen by the U.S. military, and in 1839, they drafted a constitution based on the U.S. Constitution. Joseph Jenkins Roberts, governor of Liberia and first governor and president of partial African parentage, later convinced the settlers that Liberia was better off breaking ties with the ACS and declaring its independence. In Liberia, with limited aid from the United States, the Americo-Liberians built churches, schools, and colleges; maintained stable political parties; managed to assimilate Africans liberated from slave ships by the U.S. Navy; and established a constitutional republic in 1847, thus claiming jurisdiction over approximately 1 million indigenous people who already occupied the area. Ironically, the survival of their nation made an important though often overlooked contribution to Black pride and hope in the United States. For the first 2 decades, a small group of “mulattoes” ruled the new nation, but in the second half of the 19th century, the Americo-Liberian community became politically divided. The division led to the establishment of two political parties: the Republicans and the True Whig Party (TWP). In 1870, the darker-skinned True Whig Party ousted the lighter-skinned Republicans and ruled until 1980. In other words, the descendants of the early African American settlers monopolized the government—which was controlled by the governing TWP—and economy for well over a century until the overthrow of the First Republic by military coup in 1980, after which civil strife was commonplace.
Subsequent Support Although no other movement had the success of the ACS, other individuals and organizations strongly advocated for the mass emigration of African Americans to Africa. Initially against repatriation, Black Nationalist Martin Delany, in his book The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States (1852), encouraged emigration. Delany was also active in emigration conferences throughout the 1850s and managed to
Baldwin, James (1924–1987)
create a treaty to settle liberated Blacks in present-day Nigeria, an agreement that eventually failed. Another noteworthy advocate of emigration was Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Garvey championed colonization in the 20th century and compared emigration to Liberia to the Jewish recovery of Palestine. Garvey popularized the slogans “Back to Africa” and “Africa for Africans.” However, unlike those before him, Garvey failed in sustaining and creating a movement that helped repatriate people of African descent to Africa. Influenced by Garvey, Rastafarians have also envisioned a return to Africa. Paul Khalil Saucier See also Abolitionism: The Movement; Abolitionism: The People; African Americans, Migration of; Black Conservatives; Black Nationalism; Slavery
Further Readings
Moses, Wilson. 1998. Liberian Dreams: Back to Africa Narratives from the 1850s. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Van Deburg, William. 1997. Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan. New York: New York University Press. Werner, Emma and Margaret Bacon, eds. 2005. Back to Africa: Benjamin Coates on the Colonization Movement in America, 1848–1880. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
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as a testament to an artist’s generative struggle to integrate vision and identity.
Family Background and Early Influences James Baldwin was born in a Harlem hospital in 1924, son of the unmarried Berdis Jones. After her marriage to David Baldwin and the subsequent birth of eight siblings, James and his family continued to live in New York City, and the children attended its public schools. Baldwin’s love of solitary reading and his first writing efforts—the tender shoots of a major literary talent—appeared during his Harlem childhood. As a Baldwin son, he made his home in his family’s apartment; as a son of the human social world, he found a home in the public library on 135th Street. Baldwin’s stepfather worked as a laborer and a preacher, and his influence on young James was powerful and decidedly ambiguous. Many of Baldwin’s literary works are shaped by the fractious, fear-filled love between them. His own family and early experiences are inextricable in his prose from their symbolic counterpoints in the larger society. Thus, suffering and difficulty linked to his stepfather were transmuted into the pain of never quite belonging in the world. The thematic power of his actual and symbolic “illegitimacy” runs through many of his major works, particularly Go Tell It on the Mountain, Nobody Knows My Name, and No Name in the Street.
Formation of Artistic Identity
BALDWIN, JAMES (1924–1987) One of the preeminent African American novelists, essayists, and short-story writers of the 20th century, James Baldwin brought the struggle of race and identity to the forefront of all his fictional work. The power of his stories and the characters inhabiting them lies in their symbolic reflection of U.S. social and political realities. His stories bring the midcentury racial and sexual political milieu to light without sacrificing the ambiguity and humanity of the individual characters. The impact of his work on American letters and on the politics of human liberation was as singular as the struggling, incontrovertibly unique characters he created. Influenced by some of the great writers of his time and place, Baldwin’s oeuvre stands
James Baldwin faced a host of terrifying challenges as he grew into his relationship with the larger human world. His experience as the somewhat-outcast son in the Baldwin family awakened in him a thirst for belonging that was never to be satisfied, even as it galvanized the emotional and artistic energy sustaining him and driving his work forward. He began to preach the Christian gospel as an adolescent, bringing the conflict with his stepfather to a contest on more or less equal footing (even as the senior Baldwin was losing his grip on sanity) and developing his signature facility with speech and oral witnessing. Around the same time, several school-based mentors, both White and Black, provided extremely significant guidance and support to young James (Jimmy) and were pivotal elements fostering his intellectual and artistic development. From these mentors,
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Baldwin learned a love for language in the form of theater, classic drama, and fiction. A formative experiential influence on his art and his confidence in being an artist was an Orson Welles Works Progress Administration (WPA) production of Macbeth with an all-Black cast. His longing, like that of his literary model, Henry James, to be recognized as a playwright owes much to that early encounter with drama. Indeed, in the final weeks of his life, Baldwin labored over revisions to his play, The Welcome Table. Between Macbeth and The Welcome Table, Baldwin was to find a thicket of success and betrayal only partly assuaged by his self-imposed exile in France beginning in the late 1940s.
Struggle in the Black Diaspora Exile, social and physical, provides the dominant motif for Baldwin’s life and literary work. His vision adamantly rejected the compartmentalizing of personal and political phenomena, and, in this as in other important aspects of human liberation, he represented the avant-garde. The integration of warring elements in the human predicament formed the theme for many of his best works, published just after the Paris period: Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Notes of a Native Son (1955), and Giovanni’s Room (1956). Sometimes—for example, during the burgeoning of the Black Power Movement in the 1960s—Baldwin’s incisive forward-thinking personal and social politics opened him up to the ridicule and disapprobation of young Black intellectual and political leaders. Richard Wright, at first a mentor to the young expatriate, publicly disavowed Baldwin after James questioned the use of literature for purely political ends. As his work and words make clear, the nature of art is a political and existential challenge to the status quo. Later, after his return from Paris, Baldwin’s open homosexuality became the focus of a series of public efforts by young Black political and intellectual leaders to cut him out of Black American culture. Somewhat daunted, yet relatively unscathed, Baldwin published important work during this period, such as The Fire Next Time (1963), Blues for Mister Charlie (1964), and a screenplay (unfilmed) about Malcolm X.
Artistic and Political Legacy In both quality and number, the published works of James Baldwin are on a par with many major literary
figures. They exist neither solely in the individual domain nor in the political world, but display a rare, integrative vision of life and literature. Baldwin’s work has contributed greatly to the literature of human liberation—for gays, Blacks, women, and all humans oppressed by the negative power of labels and divisive identities. Many contemporary Black literati, such as Toni Morrison, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Maya Angelou, knew Baldwin, and credit his work with the formation of their own artistic perspective. His legacy emerges clearly in the work of new generations of Black writers, poets, and intellectuals. In the last years of his life, Baldwin gave interviews and continued writing (The Evidence of Things Not Seen, 1985; The Fire This Time, 1985; Gypsies and Other Poems, 1987; and a draft of The Welcome Table). He died of cancer at his home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in 1987. Corinne Lally Benedetto See also African Americans; African American Studies; Black Intellectuals; Black Power; Diaspora; Harlem; Harlem Renaissance; Malcolm X
Further Readings
Baldwin, James. 1953. Go Tell It on the Mountain. New York: Knopf. Baldwin, James. 1955. Notes of a Native Son. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 1992. “The Fire Last Time: What James Baldwin Can and Can’t Teach America.” New Republic 206(22):37–42. Leeming, David. 1994. James Baldwin: A Biography. New York: Knopf. McBride, Dwight A. 1999. James Baldwin NOW. New York: New York University Press.
BALKANS The term Balkan is a relatively recent designation for the peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean east of Italy and the nations that are in that geographic region. The Balkans are historically home to people of several ethnic groups, and these ethnic divisions have rarely been reflected in the national boundaries that have fluctuated over the last century. The result has been a penchant for conflict that has given a meaning to balkanization that has nothing to do with geography.
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This entry looks at the development of the term and the history of the region, focusing on its ethnic conflict.
Developing the Term The Turkish word Balkan denotes “wooded mountain.” The term entered the literature in the beginning of the 19th century, first used by the German geographer August Zeune (1809) to describe the countries south of the Old Mountain in Bulgaria. Zeune’s intention was to name the southeastern part of the European landmass according to the main mountain systems, analogous to the Pyrenean and Apennine peninsulas. The geographical peculiarity of the Balkan peninsula is the nonexistence of a mountainous demarcation line dividing it from the rest of Europe on its northern part. Given the negative political connotation that the term later obtained, that geographical fact led to ideologically motivated debates among the countries of the region about who does and does not belong to the Balkan Peninsula. From the beginnings of its usage, the term had a broader geopolitical meaning in addition to the narrow geographical one. Initially, the term was used for the territories directly or indirectly under the control or influence of the Ottoman Empire. Today, the term is used in a historical and political sense to indicate the territories of the modern countries of Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria,
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Greece, Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo in the southwest part of Serbia along the Albanian border, and the European part of Turkey. Depending on how the northern demarcation line is drawn, many authors also designate Croatia and Slovenia as being in the Balkan region. The evolution of the negative connotation of the Balkans in the modern political discourse can be connected with the period of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The competition among the great powers (mainly Russia and Austria-Hungary) to replace the declining Ottomans, combined with national revolutions, created social and geopolitical instability. Terms like the eastern question, powder keg of Europe, and tinderbox entered the vocabulary of international politics. In a period characterized by general tranquility in the rest of Europe, the Balkan Peninsula was a scene of continuous conflicts through the 19th century. The Balkan wars (1912, 1913) and World War I definitively pushed the perception of the Balkans as being imbued with political, social, cultural, and ideological overtones, and Balkan became increasingly used as a pejorative term. This period also gave birth to the concept of balkanization, denoting political and territorial fragmentation within the context of ethnic heterogeneity and territorial and border disputes. The term Balkan started to signify the disintegration of viable nation-states and the reversion to the tribal, the backward, the primitive, and the barbarian. The situation in the Baltic region began to be called the “Northern Balkans,” and the “Balkanization of Africa” was used as a description of the African decolonization after World War II. These Balkan stereotypes were reinvigorated by the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia, which are often termed Balkan wars despite the fact they were confined to the former Yugoslav republics. The people in the region also internalize the “Balkan” stereotype. The “Balkanist” rhetoric was utilized to legitimize Croatia’s quest for independence as a necessary emancipation from its “Balkan burden.” Slovenians emphasize in their self-description that they do not belong and never have belonged to “the Balkans.”
Ethnic Composition Geography and history contributed to the ethnically heterogeneous nature of the Balkan area. The mountains, by isolating peoples and encouraging localism, hindered the development of larger and unified states. The mountainous terrain also allowed minority
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peoples to take refuge to escape conquerors and thereby retain their identities rather than be assimilated. Examples include the retreat of Illyrians and Dacians into the mountains at the time of the Slavic invasions (7th century) and their later reemergence as Albanians and Vlachs. In the period before the first political unification of the region under the Roman Empire, the main ethnic groups were Illyrians, Thracians, and Dacians in the north and Greeks in the south. Starting from the 2nd century BC, Romans penetrated the peninsula and subdued the Illyrians. The result was the romanization of the indigenous populations but also the settlement of large numbers of Roman veterans. A large number of other peoples had contributed to the ethnic mixture of the region before the later Slavic penetration. Celts, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Gepids raided and settled the region on their own or as Roman federate troops. In the towns, merchants, officials, and soldiers included Italians, Germans, Greeks, Armenians, and eastern people from Anatolia, Egypt, and Syria. In the broader cultural sense, the Balkans became the region between Old Rome and New Rome (Byzantium) and between Latin and Greek. The Slavic Invasio ons
The Slavic invasions in the 6th and 7th centuries produced a deep and long-lasting change of the ethnic composition of the Balkans. Large-scale Slavic settlement began in the late 570s and early 580s. The Slavic penetration pushed back the Greek influence. Slavs poured down to the tip of the Peloponnesus in Greece. Except for certain coastal cities and some mountainous regions, the Byzantine Empire was left only with most of Thrace, a few walled cities along the Dalmatian and Greek coasts, and many islands. Most of the Balkans region was settled by Slavs of two types (excluding the smaller groups of Slavic Slovenes and Turkic Avars in the western Balkans). Each of these two main Slavic groups was to be named for a second conquering group, which appeared later in the 7th century. The first group (modern Bulgarians and Macedonians), whose Slavic component according to some historians is derived from the old ethnic group called Antes (probably the Slavic version of a name of Iranian origin), was in the late 7th century conquered by the Turkic Bulgars. The Slavs eventually assimilated them, but the Bulgars’ name survived. The second group is made up of Slavs
inhabiting the rest of the Balkan Peninsula. These Slavs came to be dominated by two different but similar tribal peoples, called Serbs and Croats, in the second quarter of the 7th century. The military elite of true Serbs and Croats provided the new names for most of these Slavs. Ethnicity y and Relig gion
The Balkan Peninsula in the Middle Ages was culturally under two main influences. On the eastern side was the Byzantine Empire, which influenced the societies and cultures of Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, and Albania. On the western side—that is, Slovenia, Croatia, and to a large extent Bosnia and Herzegovina— the influences emanated from Italy, Austria, and Hungary. The most visible dividing line emerging from this division is the religious one between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. These cultural influences, which were combined with the different patterns of mixture between the Slavic and indigenous ethnic components, were decisive in the creation of the ethnic map of the peninsula. In the 15th century, the penetration of the Ottomans brought deep political, religious, and ethnic changes. The conversion to Islam of some segments of the population contributed to the increase of the ethnic heterogeneity of the region; these groups include the contemporary Bosnian Muslims today, called Bosniaks, along with Albanians and Pomaks in Bulgaria, Macedonia, or Greece.
The Rise of Nationalism The 19th century was a time of nationalist awakening and nationalist revolutions oriented toward the establishment of independent nation-states carved up from the territories of the empire. Where the struggle had clearly defined targets (Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman empires), the “nation” in the name of which the struggle was fought was very far from clear. Boundaries and identities in the Balkans were not clearly delineated. Within the empire’s boundaries, the different nationalities had moved freely. The functional specialization of some ethnic groups created ethnic mixtures with no clear territorial separation. For example, the commercial predominance of the Greeks, the Jews, and the Armenians gave some of the towns of Bulgaria and Macedonia a Greek character, while the countryside was overwhelmingly Slavic. The great
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majority of the Balkan peoples lived as impoverished peasants in small, isolated villages. They were in general illiterate and spoke local dialects. The feeling of belonging to the larger units was not clearly defined except in the religious community. The French Revolution and the later influence of German Romanticism gave the Balkan people an ideology supporting revolt; the intelligentsia developed a clear concept of “the nation.” The problem was that these abstract theoretical ideas did not correspond to the much more mixed social reality. The criteria used to determine the border areas in this complicated situation were language and religion. In the literary and cultural revivals that preceded the political and military actions, each national group turned for inspiration to the myths of its own national history: the Greeks to ancient Greece and Byzantium and the Serbs, Croats, and Bulgarians to their medieval states and empires. These various criteria led to the competing claims of nationalist movements in different Balkan nations that determine the politics of the region to this day.
Contest and Conflict Competing claims were made for the territory and for the people’s “souls.” The competition over territory was often based on the fact that boundaries were different in different eras: Nationalist groups, for example, might claim territory for their nation based on the boundaries of their medieval empire at the peak of its expansion. In every nation, there was a feeling of resentment growing out of the contrast between the historical reality and the nationalist dreams of the “Greater” Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, and Serbia. As the result of migrations, expulsions, and various demographic trends, the historical idea of what was national territory and the demographic reality often do not coincide today. One example of this is Kosovo, the heart of the medieval Serbian state, which today is 90% inhabited by Albanians. Competing claims clashed not only over territory but also over people. National awakening proceeded with different speeds in different parts of the region, and different historical and political circumstances determined different positions for different ethnic groups. That led to a competition for the allegiance of populations who inhabited regions in between groups that had already passed through a “national awakening” period, for example, between Serbs and Croats over Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks); between Serbs, Bulgarians, and
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Greeks over Macedonians; and between the definition of Montenegrins as an independent national group or simply as a branch of the Serbian nation. These competing claims are often combined with a less than just treatment of the different minorities living within the territories of nation-states. The result has been ethnic cleansings, forced assimilation, and simply negation of the existence of some groups. Other examples are frequent “exchanges” of populations between Greece and Turkey (between 1913 and 1926); agreements between Bulgaria and Turkey about the emigration of the Turkish population after World War II and the mass exodus of Turks in 1989; forced assimilation of Turks and Pomaks in Bulgaria from 1984 to 1989; and the negation of the existence of the “Macedonian question” in Bulgaria and Greece. During the disintegration of Yugoslavia, ethnic cleansing between Serbs, Croats, Albanians, and Bosniaks occurred in all directions, and as a consequence, the ethnic map of the former Yugoslav states is now significantly changed. After the fall of communism, the attractiveness of the European integration processes played a positive role in checking ethnic tensions. Despite that, many issues with an uncertain future remain, the most outstanding ones being the status of Kosovo; the relationship of Serbs, Bosniaks, and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and the Albanian-Macedonian tension in Macedonia. Duško Sekulic´ See Appendix A See also Albanian Americans; Borderlands; Bosnian Americans; Bulgarian Americans; Croatian Americans; Europe; Muslims in Europe; Romanian Americans; Serbian Americans; Slovene Americans
Further Readings
Fine, John V. A. 1993. The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Fine, John V. A. 1996. The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Glenny, Misha. 1999. The Balkans 1804–1999: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers. London: Granta Books. Poulton, Hugh. 1991. The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict. London: Minority Rights Publications. Roudomentof, Victor. 2001. Nationalism, Globalization, and Orthodoxy: The Social Origin of Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
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Stavrianos, Leften S. 1958. The Balkans since 1453. New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. Todorova, Maria. 1997. Imagining the Balkans. London: Oxford University Press.
BANGLADESHI AMERICANS The term Bangladeshi American is generally used to refer to individuals of Bangladeshi descent who currently reside in the United States, as either immigrants or citizens. The overwhelming majority of Bangladeshi Americans arrived in this country during the last decade, and thus they are largely first-generation immigrants. Bangladeshi Americans are ethnically Bengalis and speak Bengali. Most adhere to Islam, although there are a small number of Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian Bangladeshi Americans. The primary objective of this entry is to briefly present some salient characteristics of Bangladeshi Americans. Kyrgyzstan
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Immigration History Immigration to the United States from the area of British India that constitutes present-day Bangladesh (with an estimated 2007 population of 149 million people) began in 1887, but the numbers were very small until the
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which took full effect in 1968. This act eliminated the country of origin as a qualification for obtaining an immigration visa and allowed Asians to immigrate to the United States. Many Bangladeshis who settled in the United States prior to the independence of the country in 1971 fled Bangladesh to avoid political persecution or, in the case of religious minorities, to avoid religious discrimination. This first wave of immigrants was generally composed of professionals, people who were well educated and affluent. During this period, all Bengali Americans were considered either Indian Americans or Pakistani Americans. The second wave of Bangladeshi immigrants to the United States began after independence in 1971. It has been reported that only 154 Bangladeshi immigrants arrived in the United States in 1973. By 1980, there were an estimated 3,500 Bangladeshis in the United States, 200 of whom had already become U.S. citizens. Between 1982 and 1992, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization service legally admitted 28,850 Bangladeshis. Most of the immigrants arriving during the 1970s and 1980s were younger males who were leaving hard economic and political times behind. Overpopulation and widespread poverty were the two primary reasons for emigration from Bangladesh at that time. A third of these immigrants had professional training, and a considerable number had marketable skills. The early immigrants were typically employed in respectable positions in both the public and private sectors. About half of these immigrants were already married when they immigrated, with families awaiting immigration once the spouse was settled. A steady flow of sizable numbers of Bangladeshi immigrants began after the U.S. Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990. One important component of this act was the introduction of the diversity visa (DV), in what has come to be called the “lottery” visa program. Under this program, the United States allowed more than 6,000 Bangladeshis entry into the country as immigrants every year beginning in the early 1990s. In recent years, this number has been reduced to nearly 4,000. Along with documented immigrants, this flow also brought undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh. The number of Bangladeshis entering illegally into the United States decreased remarkably after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Nonetheless, some estimates suggest that more than 50,000 undocumented Bangladeshis are now living in metropolitan New York City alone. Recent immigrants from Bangladesh also include groups of tribal people from
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the Chittagong Hill Tracts region, who are culturally distinct from the Bengalis of Bangladesh; they left Bangladesh to escape repression by the government. In addition, many Bangladeshi students have come to the United States on student visas over the last 2 decades and stayed on after graduation. There are also skilled Bangladeshis who immigrated to the United States indirectly. Many such immigrants first went to the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand for employment or to pursue higher studies and then moved to the United States. Many also came from Bangladesh after working several years in Middle Eastern countries.
The Bangladeshi Community The community of Bangladeshi Americans is small compared with other Asian immigrant groups, and although Bangladeshi Americans have settled in every state, they are predominantly concentrated in large metropolitan areas like New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, and Chicago. There is no reliable information regarding the total number of Bangladeshis now living in the United States. Unofficial estimates put this number between 200,000 and 250,000. At least half of Bangladeshi Americans are believed to be residing illegally within this country. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 41,280 people identified themselves as being of solely Bangladeshi origin in the 2000 census. Almost half of these selfidentified Bangladeshi Americans are over the age of 25 and have at least a bachelor’s degree, whereas less than 25% of the total U.S. population has achieved this level of education. The reported median family income of Bangladeshi Americans from the 2000 census was $38,146, significantly less than the U.S. average of $50,046 and also less than that of other Asian immigrant communities, such as Indian Americans. Bangladeshi Americans who arrived after 1990 can be classified into two broad groups. Those who came through the DV program are in general less educated and possess fewer skills. Most are employed in lowpaying jobs in restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, and gas stations, and some drive taxis in large cities like New York and Chicago. Many street vendors in New York City are also of Bangladeshi origin. Some own small businesses, such as restaurants, gas stations, motels, or travel agencies. Bangladeshi immigrants who came as students or who came indirectly from other countries are generally
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highly educated and hold professional jobs as engineers, medical doctors, scientists, and university teachers. Bangladeshi immigrants in general are geographically mobile, and most preserve strong ties to Bangladesh. These educated, highly mobile immigrants often become actively involved in local organizations that reflect religious or geographical affiliations in their home country. Bangladeshi Americans are a tightly knit group. Because of their religion, many are linked by stereotype to the larger Muslim community. It appears that religious conservatism has been rising among Muslim Bangladeshi Americans. They are actively involved with the activities of mosques, and a large number of first-generation women immigrants tend to adhere more closely to the Islamic model than to the mainstream American model. Bangladeshi immigrants typically support the U.S. Democratic Party, which more closely reflects their views on the Iraq War. Most Bangladeshi immigrants stay well-informed regarding all issues related to their homeland. Many travel to Bangladesh annually, and most send money to close relatives still living in Bangladesh. In fact, remittances play an important role in the economic development of Bangladesh. Bimal Kanti Paul See Appendix A See also Asian Americans; Asian Americans, New York City; Immigrant Communities; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; India; Indian Americans; Pakistani Americans
Further Readings
Gardner, Katy. 1995. Global Migrants, Local View: Travel and Transformation in Rural Bangladesh. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Jones, Sydney J. 2006. Bangladeshi Americans. Retrieved from http://www.everyculture.com/multi/A-Br/ Bangladeshi-Americans.html Paul, Bimal K. 2005. “Bangladeshi American Response to the 1998 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA): An Assessment.” The Professional Geographer 57:495–505.
BARRIO Barrios are described as Spanish-speaking neighborhoods, usually in urban centers, in which residents identify as either Hispanic or Latino. The barrio has
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become a symbolic entity where residents form residential patterns marked by segregation and the racialization of Latinos. Stereotypes reinforce the negative perception of U.S.-based barrios, but the realities of modern barrios, along with their recent and future transformations, challenge these stereotypes.
Definition
marked by economic deprivation, include residents who are undocumented, or who reside illegally in the United States. This criterion impacts the services rendered to a community or neighborhood by local, city, state, and national agencies.
Barrio as Symbol and Community
Symbolism Barrios are found throughout Latin America as well as The barrio is a symbolic place. It is symbolic in its within the United States and include residential, comgeographic position in an urban center, usually on the mercial, and industrial properties. William Siembieda periphery of the city limits, suggesting further marand Eduardo Lopez Moreno asserted that the term has ginalization of its residents. The barrio symbolizes become a descriptive category and not a functional struggle, culture, pride, unity, and a sense of commuconcept of daily life. The barrio is identified objecnity. It also becomes a permanent space to celebrate tively, positively, or negatively. When barrios are successes and remedy community failures. operationalized objectively, the focus centers on delimiting geographical census tracts and spatial boundaries, while identifying demographic trends. Ressid den ntss When barrios are operationalized negatively, they are The barrio is a symbolic place of identification, described as deteriorated urban areas occupied by whereby residents may affiliate themselves, first, with impoverished Latinos. their barrio, and, secondarily, with their city, state, Since the barrio is a place of commerce and resiregion, or country. In contemporary urban research, dence, Emmanuelle LeTexier characterized it by residents of the barrio might be labeled as members of demographic, socioeconomic, and political criteria. the underclass, a group marked by low median annual Demographic criteria include those who reside in the barrio. Since the majority of barrio residents are of Latin American origin, most services available to community residents cater to this demographic population. The second criterion of a barrio is based upon socioeconomic factors, usually referring to measures of education, income, and occupation. Although barrios include Latinos from all socioeconomic backgrounds, the majority of Latino communities identified as barrios in the United States tend to include lowincome residents. Low socioeconomic factors result in restricted opportunities, resulting in high unemployment rates, low median household incomes, and a population that according to national decennial census data subsists below the Mariachis in East Los Angeles, California. The barrio is a place of both work national poverty level. and residence. Without work at the end of the day, these Mariachis ponder The third criterion of a barrio is polit- their next move at La Placita in East Los Angeles, California (June 18, 2003). ical. A resident’s immigration status is a East Los Angeles’s population is 98% Latino and is the oldest Latino immigrant highly political position in a commu- neighborhood in Los Angeles. nity. Many barrios, especially those Source: Getty Images.
Barrio
incomes and low school retention rates. Some people also choose to live in ethnically concentrated barrios because of shared differences from the host (e.g., predominantly Anglo) society, regardless of socioeconomic status. Settllement Pa atte ern ns
Barrios are geographically specific. The U.S. Census Bureau defines a barrio as the primary legal subdivision of municipios in the commonwealth of Puerto Rico, similar to the minor civil divisions used for reporting census data in twenty-eight states. The residential settlement patterns of Latinos vary by their ethnicity and nationality, and this creates distinct barrios in different regions of the country. Of these twenty-eight states, the majority of Latinos reside in the western region. Mexicans reside predominantly in the West, while the majority of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans reside in the Northeast, and the majority of Cubans reside in the South, particularly in South Florida. New Mexico has the largest-percentage Latino population in the United States (42.1%), followed by California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. The majority of Latinos who live in the most populous states are either of Mexican ethnicity or classified as “Some other Hispanic,” which usually includes Central and South Americans. The lowest percentage of Latinos reside in Maine, West Virginia, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, New Hampshire, and Ohio. Although gross numbers of Latinos are reportedly low in these states, distinct barrios, predominantly of Mexican or Central and South American origin, are beginning to develop nationwide. Responding to local, regional, and national labor demands, the 21st-century influx of Latino migrant and undocumented workers influences these barrio developments. In addition, Ohio has maintained several Puerto Rican barrios for at least 40 years. In terms of ethnicity, overall, the majority of Latino residents in these low-population states are identified as either “Mexican” or “Some other Hispanic.” Two of the largest barrios in the United States are “East L.A.,” in Los Angeles, California, a predominantly Mexican American barrio, and “El Barrio,” in the East Harlem section of New York City, a predominantly Puerto Rican barrio. Recent trends in gentrification have diversified these barrios with the arrival of middle-class Whites. With gentrification and rising
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rents and property taxes, many low-income families can no longer afford their neighborhoods, creating a new community increasingly for upper-middle-class Whites. Barrio redevelopment changes the ethnic specificity of its definition. Through gentrification, barrios may no longer be identified by their Spanish moniker, since the new definition no longer relies on ethnic dimensions. Seg gregatiion
The barrio is a highly segregated space. Studies have shown that due to illegal residential segregation and housing discrimination, Latinos are less likely to have fair access to all types of neighborhoods, regardless of their income, occupation, marital status, and educational attainment. The segregation of underrepresented ethnic groups is rooted in social, racial, structural, and income-discriminatory practices. Segregation impacts equal access to viable community resources such as schools, employment opportunities, health services, green spaces, community organizations, and places of faith worship. Racia alizatio on
The barrio is a racialized space, built along ethnic lines that are maintained for the preservation of community authenticity and cultural solidarity. For Latinos, racially segregated spaces are synonymous with highly impoverished spaces. Segregation and the pervasive impact of stereotypes make the barrio an inferior place in which to raise a family. Poor city planning is partially to blame, because barrios are usually located in urban peripheries. Residential segregation results from the high concentration of one ethnic or racial group, which limits and impacts the kind of services that enter or leave a particular residential area. Scott South, Kyle Crowder, and Erik Chavez contended that residential segregation is the result of individual choices about where one chooses to live, determined in part by individuals’ attitudes and preferences about the characteristics of neighborhoods. Studies show that overall, the vast majority of Latinos want to live in racially integrated and heterogeneous neighborhoods. The only exception is the Cuban population, whom researchers found tend to voluntarily remain in predominantly Cuban neighborhoods and form ethnic enclaves, regardless of individual socioeconomic status.
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Ste ere eotypes
Further Readings
The barrio carries the weight of negative stereotypes. Barrios are sometimes described as Latino versions of ghettos, which are contemporarily identified as low-income African American neighborhoods, riddled by economic and social disadvantage. Barrios are stereotyped as having low mobility, poverty, and low political participation. Such labels suggest that social problems in these places come from individual and internal causes or blight, and not from institutional constraints. Barrio residents are imagined to be culturally incapable of ascension into the middle or upper socioeconomic classes.
Elliott, James R. and Mario Sims. 2001. “Ghettos and Barrios: The Impact of Neighborhood Poverty and Race on Job Matching among Blacks and Latinos.” Social Problems 48:341–361. LeTexier, Emmanuelle. 2003. Mobilizing in the Barrio: Conflicting Identities and the Language of Politics. Working Paper No. 78. San Diego: University of California, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies. Rodriguez, Clara. 1989. Puerto Ricans: Born in the U.S.A. Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman. Siembieda, William J. and Eduardo Lopez Moreno. 1998. “Barrios and the Hispanic American City: Cultural Value and Social Representation.” Journal of Urban Design 3:39–52. South, Scott J., Kyle Crowder, and Erick Chavez. 2005. “Migration and Spatial Assimilation among U.S. Latinos: Classical versus Segmented Assimilation.” Demography 42:497–521.
Realities and Transformations The barrio is a local, regional, national, and international structure. It is a geographical unit with specific social, cultural, and identity politics that permit residents to have a voice in their community. It is a political and urban space that is easily mobilized toward political action. It is at once an inclusive and marginalized space, because many barrio residents prefer to live among other Latinos who share similar characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, language, and socioeconomic status, marked by shared exclusion from the dominant society. Besides gentrification, another transformation that has changed the barrio involves the rise of ethnic entrepreneurship. This concept impacts the way in which residents experience residential and racial segregation. What was once seen as marginalization among barrio residents has now been transformed into an ethnic enclave, which describes an entity that promotes and empowers individual and community agency. This type of business venture encourages the sustenance of ethnic networks, and it promotes business opportunities allowing barrio residents to economically improve the conditions of their communities from within barrio boundaries. Through ethnic enclaves and ethnic entrepreneurship, there is a chance for economic transformation in the barrio. These transformations will also change the way in which the term barrio is redefined for the duration of the 21st century.
BELGIAN AMERICANS Belgian Americans are immigrants from Belgium, a country of 10.5 million as of 2007 estimates, as well as their descendants. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 33,895 Belgian-born individuals lived in the United
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Judith A. Perez See also Black Metropolis; Code of the Street; East Harlem; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Gentrification; Ghetto; Harlem; Racialization; Segregation Stereotypes; Underclass
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States, and 53.7% were citizens. Belgian Americans form two ethnic groups in the United States: the Dutch Flemings, or Flanders (Dutch speaking, from the northern provinces of Belgium), and the Walloons (French speaking, from the southern provinces of Belgium). This entry looks at the background of immigration from Belgium to the United States and the contemporary picture of Belgian Americans.
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scientific and technological contributions. Among them are George Goethals, engineer-builder of the Panama Canal, and Leo Baekeland, pioneer of modern plastics. Also among famous Belgian Americans are Audrey Hepburn, actress; Jean-Claude Van Damme, actor; Father Damien, missionary; and Earl Louis “Curly” Lambeau, founder of the Green Bay Packers football team. Jennifer M. Klein
Immigration Patterns The largest wave of Belgians came to the United States during the 19th century, mainly to create better lives for their families and for financial opportunities. From 1820 to 1920, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 130,968 Belgians obtained permanent resident status. Most who moved to the United States during this time were small landowners/farmers, agricultural laborers, miners, craftsmen (e.g., carpenters, masons, and cabinetmakers), and other skilled tradespeople (e.g., glassblowers and lace makers). Between 1920 and 1979, 71,942 Belgians came to the United States. During this time, and especially after the two World Wars, many middle-class and urban professionals left Belgium for the United States, seeking work in universities, laboratories, and industrial corporations. Between 1980 and 2000, a total of 14,922 Belgians obtained legal permanent U.S. resident status.
Contemporary Community Of those Belgian-born people who lived in the United States in 2000, only 10.1% had entered the country prior to 2000. According to the 2000 census, 12.5% spoke English less than “very well.” The median family income was $65,615, compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. In recent years, people from Belgium have sought permanent residency and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2002, about 3,651 Belgians immigrated to the United States annually. About 250 Belgian Americans have become naturalized citizens annually since 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, 220,308 individuals of Belgian origin resided in the United States. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states were Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, California, and Florida. Belgians have brought many talents and skills to the United States and have made some major
See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Sante, Luc. 1998. The Factory of Facts. New York: Pantheon Books. Sante, Luc. 2002. “The Past Is Another Country.” History Workshop Journal 54:221–225. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Belgium. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/ www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
BELIZE Belize is a vibrant subtropical country in Central America with a 2007 population of about 300,000 people. It is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the east, Mexico to the north, and Guatemala to the west and south. Internally, Belize is separated into districts that feature vastly different landscapes and are home to a varied array of races and ethnicities. These districts are (from north to south) Corozal, Orange Walk, Belize, Cayo, Stann Creek, and Toledo. The Belize Barrier Reef, located five miles offshore, provides a safe haven to tropical fauna and a number of small habitable islands called cayes (pronounced “keys”). This entry discusses the racial and ethnic groups that make up today’s Belizean population and their history in the country.
Early History Belize has its origins within the Mayan civilization from around 2,000 BC. There is evidence that the
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maximize profits from agricultural products. During the height of colonialism, the population consisted mostly of African slaves and Mayan Indians. Small populations of people with Mayan and Spanish heritage, called Mestizos, also existed at the time. The Mestizo and Maya survived by becoming subsistence farmers or working in the English logging or fruit industries, having being blocked from international trade by the monopolization of land and strict laws regarding the use of land. Land in Belize could be used for logging or subsistence farming only, marginalizing the production of other marketable goods and maintaining English control of the colony. Currently, the European population in Belize is 0.8%.
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Olmec civilization also inhabited the region before its mysterious disappearance around 1050 BC. Profitability of the New World and land initiatives brought Spanish conquistadores to the region. In the 15th century, under the command of Hernan Cortez and with the help of slave labor purchased from Jamaica, the Spanish subdued the Maya and brought the region under the rule of the Spanish crown. Around the end of the 16th century, British mercenaries and investors began logging ventures in the Belizean rain forest. In the 17th century, the rising profits from lumber exports, such as mahogany and other hardwood, sparked the war that culminated in the Battle of St. Georges Caye, in 1798. This famous battle between the Spanish and the British marked the turning point in the war, leading to British victory. The region afterward was officially named British Honduras and was recorded as an English colony. England ruled the colony until Belize gained its independence in 1981.
Population by Race and Ethnicity The Britiish
Even at the peak of colonization in 1788, only 3% of the population of Belize was British. Colonial management relied on slave labor and feudalism to
The Creoles of Belize are descendants of Africans, mainly from West Africa, and European colonists. The Creoles arrived in Belize due to an increased need for labor in the lumber industry and for security against Mayan uprisings. The influx of slaves from Jamaica caused the African population to swell to a majority, which was maintained until the late 1990s, when their numbers were superseded by those of the Mestizo. Creole contributions to the social structure of Belize are strong in the areas of public service, politics, and tourist trade. Creoles are particularly dominant in the maintenance of national identity. Belize Kriol English is the lingua franca of the country. The Creoles make up 24.9% of the population. The Mestizzo
Historically, the Mestizo share indigenous (Mayan) and European ancestry. The Europeans were mainly Spaniards, as they had more access to lands containing the Maya and other indigenous inhabitants. Due to the geographical location of Belize, Mestizos have supplanted the Creoles as the dominant culture. Immigrants from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and other Latin American countries have created a shift in population over the last 25 years. Mestizos also contribute to the social dynamic of Belize through public service; however, their strength lies within agricultural trade. They currently control the citrus, banana, and most of the fishing industries within the country. Mestizos currently control the majority, at 48.8% of the population.
Bell Curve, Th he
The Gariffuna
The Garifuna culture is a dynamic Afro-Indian culture that comes from the Carib Indians and African descendants on the island of St. Vincent. The indigenous population enjoyed relative freedom from slavery until the arrival of the British in 1791. The darker Garifuna were separated from the fairer-skinned natives and expelled from the island. The Garifuna eventually migrated to mainland Honduras and Belize. Currently, the Garifuna inhabit the Stan Creek District, and their major cities include Dangriga and Placencia. The Garifuna people also created the musical dimensions of the country, with the traditional punta rhythm at the heart of the music and dance of Belize. They make up 6.1% of the population of Belize. The Maya
Mayan ruins are abundant throughout the countryside, from Altun Ha in the center of Belize to Laminai in the northwest. The Maya enjoyed rule and homogeneous culture until the arrival of the Spanish. Rebellion against Spanish rule generated persecution that continues to the present day. Spanish victories against Mayan rebellion in colonial Mexico caused the mass migration of the Yucatan Maya south into Belize, where they were bereft of land and resources. Many of these Maya live in extreme poverty, without formal education and access. The Mopan Maya were the oldest inhabitants, with the Ketchi and Yucatan Maya arriving after Spanish oppression became rampant in Latin America. The appearance of Mayan refugees and Mestizo immigrants gave rise to the common belief among Creoles that these groups did not exist in the country before mass migration. In fact, the Maya are the oldest inhabitants of Belize. At present, the combined Mayan population (Mopan, Ketchi, and Yucatan) stands at 9.6% of the country’s inhabitants. Oth her Eth hnicc Min noritiies
Although sparsely represented, other ethnic minorities control vast amounts of commerce and trade in Belize. The German Mennonites (3.0%) control practically all the construction and mechanical technologies imported internationally. The Chinese (0.7%) and the East Indians (3.6%) are dominant in the grocery and food industries. Combined, these minorities control roughly two-thirds of the grocery
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business in the major towns in Belize. Other minorities include African (0.3%) and Lebanese (.01%). C. Centae Richards See Appendix A See also Caribbean; Central Americans in the United States; Colonialism; Creole; Jamaica; Latin America, Indigenous People; Mennonites
Further Readings
Belize Ministry of Education. 2001. Belize Abstract of Statistics Belize City: Belize Central Statistical Office. Belize Ministry of Education. 2005. Education in Belize. Belize City: Ministry of Education. Hoetank, H. 1967. Caribbean Race Relations: A Study of Two Variants. London: Oxford University Press. Natural Light Productions. 2006. A History of Belize. Retrieved from http://www.belizenet.com/history/toc.html
BELL CURVE, THE The Bell Curve, published in 1994 by Harvard psychologist Richard Herrnstein and public policy analyst Charles Murray, addresses the role of intelligence in U.S. society. Its discussion of racial differences in intelligence especially generated much controversy. This entry summarizes the book’s content and discusses its impact.
What the Book Says Risse of the Cognitiv ve Elite e
Most of The Bell Curve examines the ways intelligence affects the fate of individuals in the U.S. social structure, irrespective of race or ethnicity. Extending earlier work by Herrnstein, The Bell Curve depicts the emergence of a cognitive elite in U.S. society during the 20th century, manifested by such trends as an increasing correlation between college graduation and IQ and increasing selectivity of top universities. The book identifies the underlying causes of these trends as (a) the declining salience of social origin as the major factor of class distinctions and (b) the growing demand for cognitive skills in the marketplace of modern industrial society. It relates the premium placed on intelligence to the increasing scale of organizations and markets, combined with the intellectual
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demands of complex technologies and intricate regulatory structures. According to the book, this process of “cognitive partitioning” results in the concentration of individuals with high IQs in the ranks of the educated elite and high-prestige occupations. Herrnstein and Murray reckon that because of assortative mating for intelligence (the tendency of spouses to have similar IQs) and because IQ is in part genetically inherited, cognitive partitioning may lead to the formation of a quasi-hereditary cognitive elite, separated from the rest of the population by a widening economic gap and physical distance in residence and the workplace. They paint a pessimistic picture of a future “custodial state,” in which the cognitive elite (now merged with the affluent) isolates itself in gated communities from a low-IQ underclass drained of its leadership and confined to deteriorating urban ghettos. Against this stark projection, the authors express hope for an alternative future, in which there would be a return to local communities in which neighbors take care of each other, rules of conduct would be made simple to understand and to follow, and everyone would find a “valued place” irrespective of their ability. Herrnstein and Murray document the importance of intelligence in contemporary U.S. society with analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a longitudinal study of 12,000 youth aged 14 to 22 in 1979. Using data for non-Hispanic Whites only, they contrast the explanatory power of IQ (measured as the score on the Armed Forces Qualification Test) with that of socioeconomic status (a composite measure based on parents’ income, education, and occupational status) in predicting socioeconomic outcomes. For many outcomes—dropping out of school, graduating from college, living in poverty, being unemployed, committing a crime, or having a child out of wedlock—they find that IQ is a better predictor of the outcome than is socioeconomic status. Effects of IQ are particularly strong for educational and economic outcomes such as dropping out of high school, graduating from college, and being dependent on welfare. IQ is more weakly related to other life outcomes, such as being married before the age of 30 or self-reported crime. Racia al and Eth hnic Differrences
Herrnstein and Murray review extensive research showing that the mean IQ of Blacks is about one standard deviation lower than the mean IQ of Whites and
the mean IQ of East Asians is one-third of a standard deviation higher than the mean IQ of Whites. They note that some empirical patterns point to genetic roots for these group differences. Clues include the systematic difference in intellectual profile between East Asians and Whites, with the East Asian advantage most pronounced in nonverbal tests; the finding that Black and White scores differ most on the most g-loaded tests, that is, those most related to a general intelligence factor; and the high heritability of individual (within-group) differences in IQ, which, for the group differences in IQ to be purely environmental, implies implausibly large group differences in environmental quality. Herrnstein and Murray concede, however, that there is insufficient evidence to estimate the relative impacts of genetic and environmental factors on group differences. Herrnstein and Murray analyze differences in socioeconomic outcomes among Blacks, Whites, and Latinos using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Statistically controlling for IQ substantially reduces or eliminates the gap between Blacks and Whites for some measures, such as proportion below the poverty line and average wages. For college graduation and access to professional occupations, their analysis indicates that the gap is reversed: At a given level of IQ, a Black person has a higher probability than a White person of graduating from college and holding a professional occupation. Patterns of Latino-White differences are similar but less pronounced. Affirma ativ ve Action n
Herrnstein and Murray summarize research showing that formal schooling and special intervention programs such as Head Start are generally ineffective in raising IQ—with the possible exception of adoption and some very intensive intervention programs directed at young children. Turning to affirmative action in education and in the labor market, they show that for two dozen mostly elite private universities, the median difference in SAT scores of Black and White students in entering cohorts is 180 SAT points, a discrepancy of 1.3 standard deviations, placing the average Black student at the 10th percentile of the IQ distribution for Whites. Based on this and other findings, Herrnstein and Murray conclude that Black and Latino minority applicants to college and graduate school are given an extremely large advantage over Whites in competition
Bell Curve, Th he
for admission. The minority advantage tends to be greater the more selective the university, the authors say. The median SAT score for Asian entering-student cohorts is greater than that for Whites, indicating an Asian disadvantage in college admission. While crediting affirmative action programs for opening college opportunities for more Blacks and Latinos, Herrnstein and Murray underscore the downside of affirmative action, contending that it produces unfairness in college admission and hiring, a concentration of minorities among poorly achieving students on campuses, distrust of minority credentials in the larger society, and lowered productivity in the labor force because of suboptimal matching of ability and occupation. They reckon that the current practice of affirmative action in higher education and the workplace cannot survive public scrutiny. They call for scrapping existing job discrimination legislation and urge a return to what they see as an earlier conception of affirmative action: giving the nod to the candidate from a disadvantaged background when qualifications are similar, irrespective of skin color or ethnicity.
Intellectual Context The Bell Curve enjoyed considerable commercial success for a book of this type (375,000 copies sold by late 2007) but generated considerable controversy by challenging central ethical and political convictions of large segments of academia, the media, and the general public. The idea that racial differences in IQ might be in part genetic was particularly provocative. Besides impugning the existence of a general intelligence factor and the validity of IQ tests, critics have claimed that races, being social constructs, have no objective existence in modern humans; that IQ scores do not measure intelligence, but rather adherence to White middleclass values; that the secular increase in IQ scores in industrial societies (Flynn effect) suggests that racial differences in IQ are environmental in origin; that Herrnstein and Murray have overlooked some early intervention programs that succeeded in raising the IQ of children; that the measure of socioeconomic status they use is defective; that the proportion of variance explained in the statistical models used by the authors is small; that some of the research cited in the book was funded by the conservative Pioneer Fund; and that the scores of African Americans are depressed not for genetic causes, but because of the history of slavery and social subordination the group experienced.
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Amid the furor in the aftermath of publication, there was an almost palpable expectation that a critique would deal the book a decisive blow by uncovering a “smoking gun,” an irreparable defect invalidating the work as a whole. That expectation failed for three reasons. First, much of the massive work consists of reviews of findings from psychometric and behavioral genetic research. Herrnstein and Murray’s interpretation of these literatures and their conclusions about the lack of bias in IQ tests, the heritability of IQ, and the existence and meaning of racial and ethnic differences—with the exception of a genetic basis of racial differences— are largely consistent with the mainstream view as expressed in a standard textbook by Nathan Brody, a consensus statement by Linda Gottfredson cosigned by 52 experts, and the report of a panel commissioned by the American Psychological Association (headed by Ulric Neisser). Part of the controversy surrounding The Bell Curve is due to the considerable gap between the views of experts in the relevant fields and the views held by the general public, the media, and many social scientists outside these fields. A second explanation for the lack of an effective rebuttal is the public accessibility of the data Herrnstein and Murray analyzed and the ordinariness of the statistical methodology they used. Critics such as sociologist Claude Fischer and colleagues used the same data to replicate The Bell Curve’s results and test alternative statistical specifications, obtaining lower estimates of the impact of IQ on some socioeconomic outcomes. However, no reanalysis has been able to overturn Herrnstein and Murray’s central finding that IQ measured in adolescence is a more powerful predictor of many aspects of adult socioeconomic achievement than any single “background” variable, including the composite measure of socioeconomic status traditionally used by social scientists. A third circumstance that favored The Bell Curve is the explosion of knowledge on the role of genes in human behavior and the renaissance of evolutionary thinking in contemporary social thought. The Darwinian revival makes the idea of a substantial role of genes in individual differences, including behavioral differences, more acceptable. The traditional social science model of human beings as blank slates inscribed by the environment and ambient culture has become correspondingly less compelling. The Bell Curve contributed an articulate and accessible presentation of findings—such as the high
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heritability of IQ, the absence of race bias in major IQ tests, the high validity of IQ in predicting job performance, the failure of many intervention programs to durably raise the IQ of children—that had been reserved to specialists. It provided a breath of fresh air in an area riddled with taboos. A number of detailed interpretations in The Bell Curve will be found wanting. The question of a genetic basis of race differences is not settled (compare discussions by Nathan Brody and Arthur Jensen). However, the major conclusions of The Bell Curve are not likely to be overturned, and the issues it aired are now exposed for public debate.
(short term or long term), variations in amount of use of each language, and distinctions in programmatic composition. The Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education calls it “a simple label for a complex phenomenon.” Although it has received renewed attention in recent years, bilingual education is nothing new, having existed wherever people who speak different languages coexist. This entry examines the historical, legislative, and theoretical context of bilingual education, briefly describes the different programs used to achieve this goal, and discusses policy issues and research on effectiveness.
François Nielsen See also Affirmative Action in Education; Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Educational Performance and Attainment; Intelligence Tests; Pipeline; Tracking
Further Readings
Brody, Nathan. 1992. Intelligence. 2nd ed. New York: Academic Press. Fischer, Claude S., Michael Hout, Martín Sánchez Jankowski, Samuel R. Lucas, Ann Swidler, and Kim Vos. 1996. Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gottfredson, Linda S. 1997. “Mainstream Science on Intelligence: An Editorial with 52 Signatories, History, and Bibliography.” Intelligence 24:13–23. (Originally appeared in Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1994) Herrnstein, Richard J. 1973. IQ in the Meritocracy. Boston, MA: Atlantic–Little, Brown. Herrnstein, Richard J. and Charles Murray. 1994. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press. Jensen, Arthur R. 1998. The g-Factor: The Science of Mental Ability. Westport, CT: Praeger. Neisser, Ulric, Gwyneth Boodoo, Thomas J. Bouchard, A. Wade Boykin, Nathan Brody, Stephen J. Ceci, et al. 1996. “Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns.” American Psychologist 51:77–101.
BILINGUAL EDUCATION Bilingual education is a multidimensional concept used to refer to numerous types of program designs that follow divergent linguistic goals (bilingualism or monolingualism), differences in length of implementation
The Context Histo ory
Societies have implemented different forms of bilingual education for over 5,000 years, going back to the ancient world. For most societies, linguistic diversity is the norm, not the exception. Bilingualism is found throughout the world, in all countries, in all social classes, and across all age-groups. For centuries, bilingual and multilingual societies have been created out of trade, migration, politics, and invasion. In recent decades, the advent of the information and communication age, increasing international travel, and growing migration have augmented the bilingual population throughout the globe. A study conducted by the United Nations found that 66% of the world’s children are now bilingual or multilingual, a remarkable increase over the last century. This boost in multilingualism is partly due to the fact that more people around the world are choosing to educate their children in a second language, specifically Arabic, Chinese, English, Russian, or Spanish. Australia, Paraguay, Switzerland, China, and Canada, among numerous other countries, have successfully practiced and encouraged bilingual and multilingual education. Contrary to popular belief, bilingual education in the United States is also not a new phenomenon. Early colonies engaged in bilingual schooling as early as the 1600s. In 1839, Ohio became the first state to adopt a bilingual education law permitting German-English instruction, and, in 1847, Louisiana approved a similar provision for French-English education. The New Mexico Territory adopted a law to authorize SpanishEnglish schooling in 1850. William Harris, the school superintendent of St. Louis, who later became U.S. Commissioner of Education, argued in favor of
Bilingual Education
bilingual education in the 1870s, asserting that abruptly changing traditions, cultures, and religions could have serious personal consequences. Pennsylvania, Colorado, New York, Illinois, Maryland, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Minnesota have offered bilingual instruction in Norwegian, Italian, Cherokee, Polish, Chinese, and Czech. For example, San Francisco established Chinese language schools beginning in the mid-1880s; in the late 19th century, seven Czech language schools were supported by the state school fund in Texas. By the early 20th century, at least 600,000 students in public and parochial schools received instruction in German. However, anti-German and anti-immigrant sentiments after World War I prompted states to abolish bilingual education in most U.S. schools and enact English-only instruction laws. The ban against bilingual schooling lasted until the early 1960s. The consistent academic failure of many non-English-speaking students coupled with the success of bilingual education programs established by Cuban exiles in Dade County, Florida, after the Cuban revolution inspired a revival of bilingual instruction in the United States. Changing Policy y
The Bilingual Education Act, enacted as Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, was passed in 1968, providing federal funding to encourage local school districts to implement native language instruction and other types of support services for English language learners. In 2002, it was superseded by the English Language Acquisition Act under the new federal law, the No Child Left Behind Act. Title VII became Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which no longer gave funding priority to native language instruction and instead left the choice of how to spend federal funds for English language learners to the discretion of each state. In its landmark 1974 decision in Lau v. Nichols, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education.” The court’s decision required schools to take “affirmative steps” to overcome language barriers impeding children’s access to the curriculum. Congress
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immediately endorsed this principle in the Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974. Neither the Bilingual Education Act nor the Lau decision requires any particular methodology for teaching students with limited English proficiency. That is, there is no federal mandate for bilingual education (although a few states mandate it under certain circumstances). What civil rights laws do require are educational programs that offer equal opportunities for English language learners. Seccond-LLanguage Theories
Studies indicate that cognitive skills are best acquired through the primary language and then transferred to the second language. The use of their home language helps children develop critical thinking abilities and cognitive skills, according to some researchers; this cognitive structuring is shaped not only by linguistic knowledge but also by cultural knowledge and the context in which that knowledge is obtained. Cummins proposed three principles relevant to bilingual development and language teaching. First, the additive bilingual enrichment principle contends that being bilingual has no negative consequences for children and some intellectual and linguistic benefits. Numerous studies have reported findings that indicate that bilingual children demonstrate a greater awareness of linguistic meanings and seem to be more flexible in their thinking than monolingual children. Bilingual children must decipher much more linguistic input through the effort of gaining command of two languages than monolingual children, who are exposed to only one language system. Cummins’s second principle, the interdependence principle, is based on the premise that there is an underlying cognitive and academic proficiency common across all languages regardless of their distinct surface features. Cummins maintains that first- and secondlanguage academic skills are interdependent and that there is no relationship between the amount of instructional time spent in the second language and academic achievement. According to Cummins, common underlying proficiency makes possible the transfer of literacyrelated skills between languages. He found that transfer is more likely from the minority to the majority language due to the greater exposure to literacy in the majority language and the social pressures to learn it. Cummins’s third principle, the interactive pedagogy principle, subscribes to Krashen’s assertion that
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language is acquired involuntarily and effortlessly only when it is comprehensible. The key factor in Krashen’s theoretical model is comprehensible input: messages in the second language that make sense when modified and facilitated by visual aids and context. He contends that people acquire grammatical structures in their natural order when sufficient amounts of high-quality input are present. Rules are then generalized from verbal stimuli according to innate principles of grammar. The principle of comprehensible input is based on the idea that the main function of language use is meaningful communication. The importance of meaningful language use at all stages in the acquisition of second-language skills has become recognized as a critical and determining factor for the successful development of a second language and the maintenance of the first language.
Diverse Programs Broadly defined, bilingual education includes any educational program that uses two languages for instruction. Unlike foreign language education, where students study the target language and culture as a subject, bilingual education usually entails the study of literacy and/or content areas (math, science, and social studies) through two languages, the majority language (English) and a minority language (such as Navajo, Spanish, or Chinese). In the United States, bilingual education programs may be offered in early childhood, elementary, and high school settings and sometimes in colleges and universities. The feasibility of offering bilingual education programs for second-language learners depends on several factors: (a) sufficient numbers of students from the same language group, (b) availability of certified bilingual teachers, and (c) state and local policies. One of many incorrect assertions in the area of bilingual education is that language learners can acquire English in less than 1 year. Decades of research both in the United States and abroad have demonstrated that the acquisition of academic language for a second-language learner takes 5 to 7 years, in comparison to the length of time required to learn conversational language, which may range from 1 to 2 years. Mackey categorized ninety variations of bilingual education around the world. Nevertheless, all programs in which English language learners (also known as limited English proficient or language minority students) participate fall under two critical paradigms: (1) additive programs, which aim to
develop full bilingualism, biliteracy, and biculturalism by adding the second language and maintaining and developing the first language, and (2) subtractive programs, which seek to make students monolingual in the majority language by abandoning their native languages. Additive program models include maintenance, developmental bilingual, heritage language, and dual-language or two-way immersion, while subtractive models include transitional bilingual education and newcomer programs. Other program models for English language learners that do not fall under the category of bilingual education because they generally use English only as the medium of instruction are structured English immersion and English as a second language (ESL). Researchers and educators differ in their conceptions and definitions of bilingual education; nevertheless, the descriptions of the models presented here provide general characteristics of the types of educational programs that are available to English language learners in the United States. Transitional Bilingual Education, Early Exit and Late Exit. This model temporarily supports students’ academic development by providing native language instruction as they acquire English through ESL for a period ranging from 1 to 8 years. The principal objective is to facilitate students’ academic progress through the languages they understand, while they acquire proficiency in the second language to function academically in English. Transitional bilingual education consists of two program types, early exit and late exit. The early-exit model is most widely implemented in the United States, where English language learners are mainstreamed (exited) into the general English education program after 1 to 4 years, once they have achieved proficiency in English. Late-exit students continue to receive instruction in the native language for a few more years after having achieved proficiency in English. The primary goal in late exit is to continue to develop students’ literacy and oral language skills in the native language as well as in English for a longer period of time. Maintenance Bilingual Education. This model is sometimes known as developmental or enrichment education. In this model, English language learners maintain and develop their native languages as they acquire English, usually through eighth grade or beyond. The primary aim of maintenance bilingual education is for students to develop bilingual and biliterate proficiencies and to achieve academically at
Bilingual Education
grade level. Maintenance bilingual programs are culturally responsive because they value and build on students’ home cultural and linguistic knowledge. Heritage Language. This program model is designed for students who come from homes where a language other than English is used, including people of indigenous ancestry, colonized groups, new immigrants and refugees, and children and grandchildren of immigrants. The aim of these programs is either to maintain the language and culture of the home or to revitalize the native language and culture, which is no longer used fluently by the younger generation of its speakers. Dual-Language Education. This additive form of immersion, also known as two-way bilingual immersion, is the only bilingual program that integrates English native speakers with speakers of another language in the common pursuit of continuing to develop their native language and culture while acquiring a second language and culture. The major goals of this model are to develop full biliteracy and bilingualism, high academic achievement, and multicultural competencies. Dual-language education in the United States was adapted from the Canadian educational program that began in 1965 in Montreal, where Englishspeaking children initially received all curriculum instruction in French and gradually added English. Newcomer Centers. These programs provide academic, linguistic, and social support to recently immigrated students typically in middle or high school settings and are designed to address the needs of recent arrivals who have interrupted schooling or no schooling. Newcomer centers were created to address the special needs of English language learners that bilingual or ESL programs are not adequately equipped to manage. A key feature of most newcomer centers is the provision of an emotionally safe learning environment that supports rapid second-language learning, adaptation to the host culture, and development of a positive self-image.
The Policy Debate In the United States, English is a fundamental tool needed to achieve in school and to have the potential to become a successful member of society. However, the loss of the home language and culture is often seen as necessary for the appropriate development of English. Hence, linguistic minorities may experience
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not only a loss of personal identity and emotional bonds with their communities but also rejection from the mainstream society. Others suggest that mastering a second language is not necessarily linked to losing proficiency in the first. In this view, additive bilingualism, in which a second language is acquired while maintaining and continuing to develop the first, is a healthy and viable alternative to subtractive bilingualism. Bartolomé points to the contradiction related to languages in the United States, where minority students are discouraged from sustaining their native languages, but English-speaking students are required to study a foreign language as a college prerequisite. The debate over how to best meet the academic and linguistic needs of English language learners in schools reflects not only different basic ideologies but also beliefs about linguistic diversity, immigration, and immigrant rights. Ruiz delineates three broad orientations on language diversity that have driven policy and politics in the United States for centuries. The first, language as a problem orientation, subscribes to the notion that language diversity results in social conflict, divisiveness, and ethnic strife. The second, language as a right orientation, views language as a basic human right and challenges language prejudice and discrimination. The third, language as a resource orientation, considers the diverse linguistic capital of a society as a cultural, social, personal, and national resource, both in terms of its economic potential and also as a means to foster social unity. Since the early 1980s, a resurgence of the language as a problem orientation has paved the way for the English-only (or official English) movement, which aims to establish English as the official language of the United States by law. As a result of this movement, two opposing organizations emerged: (1) U.S. English, supporting the push to make English the official language of the United States by restricting governmentsupported services in non-English languages, including bilingual education, and (2) English Plus, countering the necessity to make English the official language and promoting linguistic pluralism. To date, bills introduced in Congress to make English the official language of the United States have failed. Nonetheless, twenty-six states have passed official English laws. Language restrictionism policies are closely tied to language minority education. California’s Proposition 227, the English Language Education for Children in Public Schools Initiative, was proposed by software entrepreneur Ron Unz. Its passage in 1998 made it law to disband bilingual education and institute compulsory
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1-year English immersion programs for English language learners. Similarly, Arizona passed Proposition 223 in 2000, which also eliminated bilingual education for linguistically diverse students, and voters in Massachusetts approved an initiative to discontinue bilingual education in 2002. Some feel that claims about the ineffectiveness of bilingual education coupled with the media’s predisposition against it have allowed for the dissemination of inaccuracies and misinformation. The inadequate implementation of many bilingual programs has further cultivated the notion that bilingual education is a failure. The low performance of most bilingual education programs is closely correlated to the lack of adequate funds, scarcity of qualified educators, inappropriately sized classes, and absence of proven teaching methodology. Solidly designed bilingual programs that address these fundamental factors have proven to be highly effective for linguistically diverse students. Numerous studies have demonstrated that students who participate in programs that use their native languages for instruction for more than 3 years show better academic performance, mastery of English, and lower drop-out rates. Because educational program evaluation studies are difficult to design, the effectiveness of bilingual education programs remains in dispute. The vast variations in program implementation, pedagogical approaches used, types of schools and student populations, and communities being compared add to the difficult task of determining these programs’ effectiveness. Nevertheless, researchers, educators, and applied linguists recognize that the following premises have strong empirical support: (a) Native language instruction does not retard the acquisition of English; (b) well-developed skills in the native language are associated with high levels of academic achievement; and (c) bilingualism is a valuable skill, for individuals and for the country. The use of the native language in bilingual education for linguistic minority students in the United States remains a controversial and politically charged issue. Bilingual education goes beyond education methodologies and language use to include ideological positions on ethnic minorities and their communities. Sonia W. Soltero See also Affirmative Action in Education; Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District; Educational Performance and Attainment; English Immersion; Foreign Students; Higher Education; Minority/Majority; Minority Rights; Pipeline; Proposition 187
Further Readings
August, Diane and Kenji Hakuta. 1997. Improving Schooling for Language Minority Children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Baker, Colin. 2006. Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Baker, Colin and Sylvia Prys Jones. 1998. Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Castro Feinberg, Rosa. 2002. Bilingual Education: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Crawford, James. 2004. Educating English Learners: Language Diversity in the Classroom. Los Angeles: Bilingual Educational Services. Cummins, Jim. 2000. Language, Power, and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Goble, Paul. 2001. “The Rise in Bilingualism.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Retrieved from http://www .rferl.org/features/2001/06/14062001124636.asp Krashen, Stephen. 1996. Every Person a Reader: An Alternative to the California Task Force Report on Reading. Culver City, CA: Language Education Associates. Lambert, Wallace E. and G. Richard Tucker. 1972. Bilingual Education of Children: The St. Lambert Experiment. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Mackey, William Francis. 1978. “The Importation of Bilingual Education Models.” Pp. 1–18 in Georgetown University Roundtable: International Dimensions of Education, edited by J. Alatis. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Rothstein, Richard. 1998. “Bilingual Education: The Controversy.” Phi Delta Kappan 79:672–678. Soltero, Sonia W. 2004. Dual Language: Teaching and Learning in Two Languages. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Thomas, Wayne and Virginia Collier. 2002. A National Study of School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students’ Long-Term Academic Achievement. Santa Cruz, CA, and Washington, DC: Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence. Retrieved from http://crede .berkeley.edu/research/llaa/1.1_final.html
BIOMEDICINE, AFRICAN AMERICANS AND Research has documented the unequal medical treatment of patients based on race or ethnicity (as well as by socioeconomic status). Former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher has said that given the
Biomedicine, African Americans and
diversity of the U.S. population, it is in the best interests of the United States to maximize the health of all Americans. There is a consensus in the research and policy literatures that eliminating disparities should be one of the primary goals of U.S. health care policy, and increasing the participation of African Americans in the biomedical workforce is seen as an important way to achieve that goal. This entry discusses promising policies, programs, and practices to increase the number of African American physicians and biological scientists.
Importance of a Diverse Workforce Research indicates that even when they have the same degree of insurance and other factors correlated with access to health care—such as ability to pay for care— racial and ethnic minorities receive lower-quality health care than Whites. Another consistent finding is that racial and ethnic minorities are less likely than Whites to receive needed services and clinically necessary procedures. This unequal medical treatment based on race and ethnicity occurs across a range of procedures, from routine treatments for common health problems to treatments in disease areas such as cancer, cardiovascular, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and mental illness. A preponderance of scientific evidence supports the importance of increasing the participation of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans in the biomedical workforce as physicians/clinicians, researchers, and faculty. Data from a 2004 survey indicate that increasing racial and ethnic diversity among health professionals increases access to health care. Specifically, the survey found that 51% of African American medical school graduates plan to practice in underserved areas, compared with 20% of all U.S. medical school graduates, and that officebased patient care is the major professional activity for a greater percentage of physicians who are African American (64%), Hispanic/Latino (62.6%), and Native American (60.9%) than for physicians who are Asian American (53.6%). There is a consensus in the research literature that all racial and ethnic groups prefer physicians of their same race. Racial and ethnic minority patients’ ratings of the quality of their health care tend to be higher when physician and patient are of the same race. Diversity among health care professionals is beneficial not only for African American, Hispanic, and Native American physicians, but for all physicians
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because it broadens the cultural competence of all physicians. Evidence suggests that racial and ethnic diversity is equally important among physicians and biomedical, biological, and life sciences researchers. For example, although African Americans account for approximately 40% of AIDS-related deaths, few African Americans are among U.S. scientists—bench or clinical— conducting research on AIDS. It is crucially important that African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans pursue biomedical career tracks in research because biomedical and life science researchers from diverse backgrounds have the potential to increase the variety of perspectives brought to bear on the research enterprise, which, in turn, enhances the quality of research and treatment. Similarly, it is important that biomedical and life sciences teaching and research faculties be diverse to increase the probability of increasing the variety of perspectives among those determining who will practice in the future.
Workforce Trends Mediccin ne
African Americans are among the groups that are most underrepresented in medicine. In 2002, for example, African Americans made up 12.2% of the U.S. population, but only 3.3% of U.S. physicians. The road to the medical profession begins in the undergraduate years. Approximately 3% of all U.S. BA/BS graduates apply to U.S. medical schools; over the past 20 years, biology majors made up 55% of all medical school applicants. Between the academic years 1993/1994 and 2003/2004, although the number of African American biology majors increased 96% (from 899 to 1,763), the proportion of African American biology majors applying to medical school decreased from 83% to 44%. This has serious ramifications in light of the fact that almost 78% of Black physicians practicing medicine today graduated from medical school after 1980. African Americans are severely underrepresented on U.S. medical school faculties and tend to be concentrated in the lower academic ranks. As of December 2004, there were 114,084 faculty members in U.S. medical institutions. Of these, approximately 72% were non-Hispanic White, and 13% were Asian. African Americans, American Indians/Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islanders combined made up 7.2% of medical faculty members and
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were primarily concentrated at the level of assistant professor; males were more likely than females to be full professors. Research from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) suggests that trends in the numbers of racial and ethnic minority applicants to U.S. medical schools are related to court rulings concerning affirmative action. The number of racial and ethnic minority medical school applicants, which peaked in 1996, declined from 1997 to 2002—after the court ruled against affirmative action in Hopwood v. Texas in 1995 and the state of California passed Proposition 209 in 1996. However, after two Supreme Court rulings in 2003, the number of minority medical school applicants increased. Biollog giccal, Hea alth h, and Life Science es
The number of bachelor’s degrees in the biological sciences earned by African Americans increased from 2,385 in 1992 to 4,685 in 2001; African American females largely drove this increase. Similarly, the number of African Americans earning PhDs in the biological sciences increased from 78 in 1994 to a high of 139 in 2001, then decreased to 108 in 2003. Between 1998 and 2000, the number of African American life scientists in the federal government increased from 1,201 to 1,366. Among doctoral life and related scientists employed full-time in the federal government, the annual median salary earned by Blacks ($72,100) was slightly less than that earned by Whites ($73,000). In 2001, among doctoral life and related scientists employed full-time, Blacks earned the lowest annual median salary ($75,000) in the private for-profit sector; non-Hispanic Whites earned $87,000; and Asian/Pacific Islanders earned $77,000. In universities and 4-year colleges, Black doctoral scientists earned less than non-Hispanic Whites— $53,100 and $63,000, respectively.
Policies and Practices During the past 2 decades, there has been a proliferation of programs to increase and enhance the participation of underrepresented racial minorities in the biomedical sciences. However, evidence of program effectiveness has been largely anecdotal or minimal because much of the funding of the early programs did not include support for evaluation. Unambiguous measures and indicators are needed to identify the most effective and promising programs, practices, and
policies designed to broaden the participation of underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups in the life sciences. Associa atio on of Americcan Medical Colleg ges
The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has several initiatives to diversify the medical school applicant pool and support medical school faculty and administration. In November 2006, the AAMC announced an initiative, AspiringDocs.org, which is both an outreach effort and a Web site to increase the numbers of African American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American college students from all undergraduate majors who pursue careers in medicine. This site creates an online community among aspiring doctors and provides information from the AAMC and other experts in the medical community. Unlike many initiatives, AspiringDocs.org was informed by an analysis of the number of racial and ethnic minority biology majors by undergraduate institution type and the yield of the institution in terms of medical school applicants. Other AAMC initiatives include tools for assessing and measuring diversity in medical education, the Nickens Faculty Fellowship, and minority faculty career development seminars. Nattio onal Institu ute es of Health
The primary funding agency for biomedical research in the United States, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has a congressional mandate, the Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act of 2000, to end health care disparities based on race and ethnicity. Consequently, every center at the NIH has adopted a plan to address the issue of increased participation in the biomedical sciences. The increase in the number of African Americans earning doctorates in the biological sciences was not reflected in the numbers of African American PhD postdoctoral fellows or tenure-track or tenuredinvestigator appointments within the NIH. Senior NIH officials have voiced their concerns over the agency’s lack of diversity, particularly for African Americans, at senior scientific levels. Although the NIH created the National Center for Minority Health Disparities in 2000, some observers contend that the center did not have much impact on the plight of minority scientists within the agency. In 2005, the report from the third phase of the National Research Council (NRC) committee’s
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assessment of the NIH Minority Research Training Programs severely criticized NIH-funded programs for failing to collect, keep, and analyze data on the outcomes of these training programs. Responding to the NRC’s criticism, the NIH division of Minority Opportunities in Research (MORE) inaugurated the “Efficacy of Interventions to Promote Research Careers” grants to examine and analyze both the outcomes and assumptions of various NIH programs. One primary goal of the NIH Health Disparities Postdoctoral Scholars Fellowship Program is to increase the numbers of highly trained scientists and clinical investigators (from racial and ethnic groups that are underrepresented in biomedical research) to focus research on differences in health care based on race and ethnicity; however, it is too early to determine the success of this program. Progress is not always linear. One recent development that does not bode well for diversifying the U.S. biomedical workforce is the trend among federal government agencies to shift from programs targeted explicitly to underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities. For example, in 1998, the National Science Foundation ended its Minority Graduate Fellowship Program, which began in the mid-1960s. Data indicate significant declines in the numbers of African American and Hispanic students awarded National Science Foundation graduate fellowships (despite claims that the program would reach out to all students). Identifying the policies, programs, and practices that are and are not effective or promising in recruiting and retaining African Americans in careers in the biomedical sciences requires systematic compilation and assessment of data. Longitudinal data on program participants are necessary to examine the effects of various interventions throughout the career trajectory; these data must be disaggregated to enhance understanding of the impact of the confluence of race, ethnicity, and gender on careers in biomedicine. Program and policy evaluations, as well as longitudinal career data, should inform current and future efforts to increase the participation of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans in biomedical science careers. Cheryl B. Leggon See Appendix B See also Affirmative Action in Education; Black Intellectuals; Educational Performance and Attainment; Educational Stratification; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Health Disparities; Pipeline; School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning; Science Faculties, Women of Color on
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Further Readings
Association of American Medical Colleges. 2006. Diversity in the Physician Workforce: Facts & Figures 2006. Available from http://www.aamc.org/publications Leggon, Cheryl and Willie Pearson. N.d. Assessing Programs to Improve Minority Participation in STEM Fields: What We Know and What We Need to Know. Available from http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache: JyyBbQtur1MJ:www.umich.edu/~advproj/ncid/ assessing_programs.pdf Manning, Kenneth R. 1983. Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just. New York: Oxford University Press. Smedley, Brian D., Adrienne Y. Stith, and Alan R. Nelson, eds. 2003. Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Web Sites
Association of American Medical Colleges, Minorities in Medicine: http://www.aamc.org/students/minorities
BIRTH
OF A
NATION, THE
D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), the first feature-length studio production in the United States and the first feature film to be screened at the White House, is considered by many to be an original text of cinematic aesthetics as well as the foundation of a broad range of racist stereotypes about African Americans. The film has been mistaken as an accurate history of race relations in the aftermath of the Civil War. However, it is more accurate to claim that the film has created history from racist fantasies and that it persists in doing so. Critic Manthia Diawara has called the film the “grammar book” and “master text” of racism in the United States, which fixes the wide range of secondary and servile roles for African Americans that support White dominance. The Birth of a Nation intensified racial phobias and has been used as a recruitment film for the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), while inspiring a contemporaneous critical response to its representational repertoire in the form of protests by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the production of alternative images of African Americans. This entry describes the film and its impact.
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Americans and their allies upset the social order of the nation. The Sto ory
The Birth of a Nation, based on Thomas Dixon’s novel The Clansman, traces the anxieties in the postemancipation South and provides a noncondemnatory view of the actions taken to repress and control African Americans. The film is set at the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Reconstruction period, when Northern victory led to the elimination of the institution of slavery. The film depicts two families, the Northern Stillwell family and the Southern Camerons, but it focuses on the latter as the main proScene from The Birth of a Nation. D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film is one of the most tagonists. The story builds on national influential and controversial films in the history of cinema. In the film, Griffith internal conflict, in which the South is presents an inaccurate view of the devastation wrought by the Civil War deemed the authentic moral core of the (especially in the South) and the alleged social disruptions caused by United States and the North is degenerReconstruction. The motion picture sends the message that the only recourse left to the South was to develop organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. Even conate, decadent, and overly permissive. temporary filmmakers who seek to represent African Americans in a nuanced The Southern Camerons are sympaand nonstereotypical manner must deal in some way with the long shadow of thetic victims of the war; they are raided by The Birth of a Nation. a renegade Black troop despite being the Source: Roger-Viollet/The Image Works. benevolent protectors of their slaves. They suffer and struggle during the war, and their way of life is destroyed as a result of Making Film History the liberation of African Americans and the postwar Until The Birth of a Nation, movies consisted of two chaos of riots and pillaging. These African Americans are or three reels of film; they were usually about 15 portrayed as unintelligent and primitive brutes who seek minutes in length and depicted simple and casually to topple Southern order and disrupt social civility. filmed events. Griffith’s film institutionalized filmNortherners are portrayed as morally weak abolimaking into a more serious endeavor. The cast tionists who allow White women to mingle with rehearsed for 6 weeks, and filming took 9 weeks. Black men and grant too much power to their African The editing took 3 months, and the resulting film American charges. As in the case of the Northern comprised over twelve reels, with a running time of Stillwell family, Black servants are depicted as overly more than 3 hours. confident and self-possessed. Northern permissiveThe film is said to be the first to use many film and ness about miscegenation is embodied in the insurrecediting techniques, among them the close-up, crosstionary mulatto Silas Lynch—whose very name cutting, rapid-fire editing, the iris, the split-screen inscribes the narrative mandate to eliminate him. shot, and both realistic and impressionistic lighting. Silas Lynch has self-confidence considered beyond These techniques enhanced the framing of realistic his lot, combined with all the features of racial degenimages and the production of a convincing and pereracy: rapaciousness, immorality, criminality, and suasive story about historical events. The film was moral and emotional instability. He embodies authenticated by Woodrow Wilson as “like writing anxieties about the potential revolutionary furor of history with lightning!” But rather than history, it the “mulattoes” who might incite racial unrest, like depicted a race-based ideology in which African the mixed-race leaders of the Haitian revolution. He
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might lead the growing population of enraged Blacks around him into civil disobedience. The most dramatic moment of the film is the attempted rape of a White woman by Gus, one of the militant Blacks. Rather than submit to his will, she throws herself off a cliff, preferring death over the touch of a Black man. Then, a group of men disguised in white sheets emerge out of nowhere to battle the Black rebels. These men who hide their faces are depicted as heroic saviors of a lost South and defenders of a nation. The Messa age
The Birth of a Nation sends the message that the only recourse for the South is to develop civic groups, like the Ku Klux Klan, to restore order and protect the Whites from further dispossession. The film not only documents the emergence of the Klan, but aids in the dissemination of its ideology of racial hatred. In fact, The Birth of a Nation continues to be used as a tool of Klan indoctrination. It paints a portrait of national politics in which the salvation of the United States lies in resurrecting the values of the fallen South. Masquerading as history, The Birth of a Nation actually dramatizes an ideology of racial division and hierarchy. Its depictions of African Americans tend to reflect pseudo-scientific ideas about racial mixing that circulated during the era of slavery. These ideas emanated from a biological argument called “hybrid degeneracy,” which emerged after the Civil War and continued to have social influence until the 1930s. According to the theory of hybrid degeneracy, racially mixed peoples are emotionally unstable, irrational, and biologically inferior to the “pure” races of their parents. These ideas held sway among people who believed that mixed-race peoples were the source of social unrest due to an unhappy combination of ambition and racial degeneracy.
Ongoing Impact The Birth of a Nation reinforced a certain racial ideology in the United States and has greatly influenced Hollywood filmmaking It promoted a social order in which races are divided in discrete categories and racial mixing and commingling is strictly forbidden both socially and legally. After the Civil War, Jim Crow laws were enacted to ensure segregation and the perpetuation of racism. Among these laws were the
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antimiscegenation laws that outlawed marriage between people of different races and denied rights of inheritance to their offspring. The ambiguity about the social role of mixed-race African Americans was removed by the rule of hypodescent, or the “one-drop rule,” that deemed anyone with any Black ancestry whatsoever to be African American. The fears about miscegenation were reflected in the Hollywood Production Code, which forbade the depiction of on-screen liaisons between people of different races. The Birth of a Nation provided the racist template for the representation of African Americans as villains or as serving in various ways to support a White protagonist (mammy, maid, servant), which has appeared throughout the history of Hollywood in different incarnations. Nonetheless, this film legacy is constantly under contestation and reconstruction. Many filmmakers who seek to represent African Americans in a nuanced and nonstereotypical manner must deal in some way with the long shadow of The Birth of a Nation. Camilla Fojas See also African Americans; Black Cinema; Emancipation Proclamation; Film, Latino; Intermarriage; Ku Klux Klan; Lee, Spike; Media and Race; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); One-Drop Rule; Popular Culture, Racism and; Slavery; White Racism
Further Readings
Anderson, Lisa M. 1997. Mammies No More: The Changing Image of Black Women on Stage and Screen. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Bogle, Donald. 2004. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Continuum International. Brown, Ursula M. 2001. The Interracial Experience: Growing Up Black/White Racially Mixed in the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger. Guerrero, Ed. 1993. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Lommel, Cookie. 2003. African Americans in Film and Television. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House. Reid, Mark A. 1993. Redefining Black Film. Berkeley: University of California Press. Smith, Valerie. 1997. “Introduction.” Pp. 1–12 in Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video, edited by V. Smith. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
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Black Bourgeoisie
BLACK BOURGEOISIE From the origin of the Black bourgeoisie in the United States until the present, the intransigency of race and racism, along with social and economic shifts, has shaped the definition of who belongs to this upper stratum of Black society, its members’ stratification patterns within the Black community, and the relationship of its members to the dominant White society and the masses of Blacks. This dynamic racial pattern is evident in the historic development of the Black bourgeoisie from three periods: emancipation to 1915, 1915 to 1960, and 1960 to the present. That history and the current situation are reviewed in this entry.
Origins: Emancipation to 1915 Many scholars have traced the roots of the Black bourgeoisie to the distinctions that arose among the plantation slave communities and among free Blacks of the antebellum period. In slave communities, Blacks were divided into two general groups: house slaves and field slaves. The former were typically related to their White masters by kinship and occupation, and, as progenies of their masters and slave women, they were more likely to have greater privileges than field hands, who performed the more arduous physical outside labor under extremely adverse conditions. The accrued benefits and rewards of favored house servants included more material resources and creature comforts, such as access to better food and clothing and more skilled and semiskilled trades. In addition, the house slaves had more intimate contact with their masters and adopted their manners and styles. Hence, house slaves were more advantaged than the field hands in terms of the social capital required to acquire educational and economic opportunities after emancipation or to have a greater chance to purchase their freedom before emancipation. Free Blacks, many of whom were partly of White ancestry, were most crucial to the development of class distinctions within the Black community. As a means to acquiring wealth, free Blacks could purchase land and real estate in various urban areas of the North, like Boston and Philadelphia; in the upper South; and even in some places in the deep South, like New Orleans, Louisiana. They were also able to engage in labor as skilled artisans, working as barbers, caterers, and tailors serving a primarily White clientele. Free Blacks
also set up small businesses, worked as domestics, and, in a few cities like Boston, worked in the professions of ministry, teaching, law, and dentistry. In sum, during the antebellum period, the invidious distinctions of having White ancestry, owning property, having descended from free Blacks or house servants, and having engaged in occupations as skilled artisans or in a few professions became institutionalized as important differentiating characteristics of the Black bourgeoisie after emancipation. In addition, other criteria of prestige for entry into this class varied, depending on whether the Black elite lived in a rural or urban area or in the North or South. These criteria included respectability, a rigid code of morals and manners, education, lifestyle, occupation, income, organizational affiliation, leadership roles in church or school, cultural similarity to Whites, and status of employer. After th he War
During the late 19th century, postemancipation Black elites developed a separate community and style of life in the urban areas of the North and South, apart from the Black masses, whom they often regarded with contempt. Accordingly, they established their own churches, schools, colleges, and social clubs, as well as their own fulsome lifestyle of entertaining. While extricating themselves from the Black masses, members of the Black bourgeoisie desired to emulate the manners and social customs of upper-class Whites and to cultivate the paternalistic relationship fostered during the antebellum period. One key explanation for their behavior was economic: They derived their livelihood from wealthy White patrons, serving the needs of this class while working as barbers, caterers, and craftsmen. In the South, the color line was more rigid, but in the North, Blacks could live in the same neighborhoods and attend the same schools and churches as Whites. Whether members of the Black bourgeoisie lived in the North, in the upper South, or in the Deep South, having a relationship with upper-class Whites for economic gain or with White missionaries from the North might also have afforded them an opportunity for literacy, the chance to obtain an education at one of the historically Black institutions, or even the prospect of acquiring an education at one of the Ivy League schools, like Harvard, which would thus enable them to pursue careers as teachers in the Black community. With the exception of teachers and ministers, few
Black Bourgeoisie
Black professional occupations existed during this period because most were considered by Whites as inappropriate for Blacks. Lawyers were particularly discouraged because of the adversarial nature of the occupation. However, with the establishment of Black institutions, such as Howard University and Meharry Medical College, Black doctors and dentists eventually came to the South. A New Centu ury
In the early 20th century, the socioeconomic milieu of the postemancipation era Black bourgeoisie began to shift. In the North, for instance, as Black barbers, caterers, and craftsmen encountered competition from White immigrants, they were forced out of their trades, so they never gained a foothold in the economy of the North as did southern Blacks. With increased competition from White immigrant groups and mounting racial tensions, including the rise of violent vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the old paternalistic ties that the upper-class Whites had sustained with the Black elite began to loosen, and their status was threatened. Along with the heightened racial tension, major changes such as industrialization, World War I, the migration of Blacks to cities in the urban North and South, and greater opportunities for Black professionals forced many members of the Black elite of the postemancipation era to give up hopes of separating themselves from the Black masses and aligning themselves with the larger community. It should be noted that in the emancipation era and on into the early 20th century, some Black leaders, particularly religious ones, stressed the role and responsibility of the Black elite to uplift the race. The largely mulatto elite that emerged during emancipation lasted until about 1915. Bart Landry referred to this era’s elite as a “status group,” since its members emerged from the subjective evaluation of the community, as opposed to objective criteria of income, education, and occupation.
Expansion: 1915–1960 In addition to the aforementioned factors that contributed to the expansion of the Black middle class from 1915 through 1960, it is important to cite the 1924 National Origins Act, which restricted the immigration of eastern and southern Europeans, and the role it played in the growth of the Black bourgeoisie.
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As the flow of White immigrants from these regions came to a virtual halt, White industrialists who had favored White laborers began to recruit Black workers from the South. Thousands of Blacks left the South to work in industrial enterprises in the North and West and also to escape the most virulent racism. For the first time, masses of Blacks had an opportunity for industrial employment and a chance to gain a toehold on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, where they could improve their life chances with steady although low-paying jobs. Racism continued to constrain the lives of Blacks as they settled in separate enclaves in urban centers. Yet these Black communities provided opportunities for the development of entrepreneurs, teachers, doctors, preachers, lawyers, nurses, and social workers, along with the development of parallel institutions, such as the Black press and Black colleges, serving the Black community. Even in the public service sectors, except for postal clerks or carriers in the North, Blacks were excluded from clerical and sales jobs until World War II. Traditionally, these white-collar jobs served as a means of upward mobility. Hence, unlike members of the old mulatto elite, who were more dependent on patronage of the White upper class, Black elites of this era were more dependent on Black patronage. The growth of Black institutions of higher education during this period also contributed to expansion of the Black bourgeoisie. These changes led to a new class formation based on education, income, and occupation rather than family background or skin color. In particular, education was viewed as an important avenue of upward individual and collective mobility and as the major criterion of prestige, more so than occupation or income, for entrance into the upper class. Being a waiter, caterer, or artisan was losing its prestige in this era. Although skin color, as well as family background, was still important, a greater differentiation in shades existed because members of the old mulatto elite began losing their social status and started intermarrying with darker-skinned men of the upper class. Behind the segregated walls of their community, the Black elite developed a distinct social life centered on home and social organizations. In cities like Chicago; Washington, D.C.; St. Louis; New York City; Atlanta; Memphis; Detroit; New Orleans; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; Tuskegee; and Nashville, where a large middle class developed, they protected themselves from the onslaught of racial discrimination and contact with the masses by having separate vacation spots and
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beaches, social and civic clubs, cotillions, and lavish parties, as well as camps and organizations for their children. In Black Bourgeoisie, E. Franklin Frazier castigated this segment of the Black society for its preoccupation with conspicuous consumption and for living in a world of make-believe. The Black elite could not, however, maintain too much distance between themselves and the Black masses, because their fates were inextricably connected, so its leaders established benevolent organizations to aid the poor and organizations to advance and uplift the race, which resulted in milestone legislative victories. These race leaders, along with the pool of educated Blacks and working-class masses, were a part of the changing landscape that set in motion the Civil Rights Movement and the expansion of opportunities beyond the segregated walls.
Increasing Opportunity: 1960–Present The Civil Rights Movement, the public policy priority of equal opportunity, and an expanding economy knocked down legal racial restrictions in public accommodations, in housing, in education, in voting, in marriage, and in employment. Thousands of gifted young Blacks broke open the segregated door to opportunities in the 1960s and 1970s and slipped through the cracks in the White higher-education academy and in corporate America. They arrived at the door of opportunity from the cotton belt of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, from the coal fields of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, and from the burned-out urban communities of Watts, Harlem, Detroit, and Newark. They were the offspring of parents and grandparents who tilled the soil as sharecroppers, scrubbed the floors as domestics and janitors, and generally performed the dirty work. They were also the children of doctors, lawyers, ministers, and teachers. The Black elite’s traditional career choices— teaching, ministry, and the selected few occupations of medicine, dentistry, and law in racially segregated communities—expanded to more racially diverse settings with greater occupational differentiation. Blacks are active in elected politics and hold appointed positions in high places in the public and private sectors. Black individuals once traded as commodities are now on Wall Street working as traders, analysts, asset managers, and investment bankers. They are buying seats on the New York Stock exchange and are CEOs of some of the nation’s leading financial firms, such
as American Express. Two Black billionaires have appeared on the list of the Forbes 500, and a substantial number of entrepreneurs and entertainers— including athletes, actors, and rappers—are millionaires. The growing Black elite has led some scholars to conclude that racism is disappearing. Although the color line may be more covert and subtle in this era, however, racism still shapes the life chances of the Black elite. Even rich Blacks do not have as much wealth as rich Whites; and there are more likely to be two or more working people in their households. In addition, they still have to deal with housing discrimination and racial profiling. One concerning aspect of the younger generations of the Black elite—those born in the post–civil rights era—is that many individuals have never experienced the overt racism of the past and have no collective memory of the history and heritage of group struggle that is necessary for continued Black upward mobility. Hence, the older generations of the Black bourgeoisie are apprehensive about the growing generational divide and the increasing divide between the Black “haves” and the “have-nots.” Lois Benjamin See also Assimilation; Black Enterprise; Black Intellectuals; Declining Significance of Race, The; Frazier, E. Franklin; Ku Klux Klan; National Origins System; Racism; Wealth
Further Readings
Benjamin, Lois. 2005. The Black Elite: Still Facing the Color Line in the Twenty-first Century. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] 1964. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Dover. Frazier, E. Franklin. 1963. Black Bourgeoisie. New York: Free Press. Landry, Bart. 1987. The New Black Middle Class. Berkeley: University of California Press. Moore, Jacqueline M. 1999. Leading the Race: The Transformation of the Black Elite in the Nation’s Capital, 1880–1920. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
BLACK CINEMA The term Black cinema refers to the work of African American filmmakers, writers, producers, and
Black Cinema
creators of exhibition venues. While that work is of relatively recent vintage, Black characters and Black actors have a history that goes back to the very beginnings of film. In 1889, Thomas Edison invented the motion picture technology of the kinetoscope, and the first motion picture was screened in 1903. The same year, Edwin S. Porter made the 12-minute reel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which featured the first African American character of film, Uncle Tom, played by a White man in blackface. A year later, in 1904, Biograph, one of the early studios, released the onereel feature A Bucket of Cream Ale, which depicted an African American maid and her White boss. The origins of cinema reflect and perpetuate the conflicted history of African Americans in the United States, a history that has enslavement and brutality at its origins. Yet African Americans have been involved in the film industry from its inception, sometimes taking on the only roles available—as servants, maids, and mammies—and sometimes finding space to challenge stereotypes and forge new kinds of representations. This entry records that history.
Early Hollywood In the early years of Hollywood, the representation of African Americans descended from theatrical representations that themselves were reflections of negative attitudes derived from a system of slavery. Enslaved Africans were representational scapegoats who allowed the White man to further his superiority. Though Blacks were represented on film and archived in U.S. history, their visibility came at the expense of their humanity and integrity. In fact, in the early years of cinema, as in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, many of the roles for Blacks were played by Whites in blackface playing out their racial phobias in comic depictions of Blacks. Donald Bogle has described the representation of African Americans in U.S. cinema as the preserve of the “coon, the tragic mulatto, the mammy, and the brutal Black buck,” in short, all characters designed to bolster the representational superiority of the Whites and entertain with the inferiority of the Blacks. The archive of racial representations on film documents the racism of Hollywood, providing visual evidence of a history of racial mistreatment that might otherwise be lost and forgotten. The Birth of a Nation is considered the first feature film and the earliest exemplar of the art of filmmaking; however, it also chronicles the institutionalization of racism in
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Hollywood. It is an archive of the fears of White Americans about African American emancipation and sexual contact with White women, fears that shaped subsequent representations of African Americans. At the time, many saw The Birth of a Nation as the historical truth about African Americans, whereas today, the film is generally understood within its ideological context, as presenting White fears about the emancipation of a brutally subjugated people. Black cinema continually refers back to this origin story of Black representation, one that is founded in stereotype and has produced the major types and figures of Black media representation. Black cinema emerges from divergent cinematic histories, one represented by The Birth of a Nation and other films of the era, like The Wooing and the Wedding of a Coon (1905), and another tradition that contests this legacy of subjugation and stereotype. These two poles represent a constant struggle in the cinematic representation of African Americans.
Change Begins Prior to World War II, a movement began in Chicago to produce “race films” as a critical reaction to the bad publicity of films like The Birth of a Nation. These films, made for and about African Americans, were intended to promote and support Black arts and the Black community. Often, they were made by interracial or even White-owned companies that knew that a market existed for these films. Race films never enjoyed wide circulation at the time of their release; they were shown late at night and restricted to a Black audience, coinciding with the consolidation of an urban Black audience. The most popular filmmakers were Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams; they remain icons of Black filmmakers for critical African American cinema. These filmmakers offered opportunities for Black performers to play roles other than the mammy and servant roles typical of Hollywood. After World War II, Hollywood gained a critical awareness about race and prejudice and promoted story lines about racial tolerance and an egalitarian civil society. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) and Imitation of Life (1959) were examples of a reconstructed image of African Americans. In 1954, Dorothy Dandridge was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in Carmen Jones, but the first Academy Award for a Black actor went to Sidney Poitier for his role in Lilies of the Field in 1963. The
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Black Cinema
first Oscar for an African American lead actress went to Halle Berry in 2002. By the 1960s, the roles of African Americans began to reflect the new political visibility for peoples of color wrought during the civil rights era. After the major events of mass protest by African Americans and their supporters—including the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, the March on Washington in 1963, the Watts rebellion of 1965, and the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—the landscape of U.S. popular culture had changed irrevocably. It was no longer possible for Hollywood to display racist images of African Americans, nor was it possible to deny the need for representation of African Americans in all aspects of the film industry. By the 1970s, Black cinema entered an entirely different playing field with the rise of blaxploitation films, made on the quick for little money and with an eye for maximum profit. These films were characterized by urban narratives of Black revenge against White men, where Black characters were central and successfully won out over the oppressive White characters, for example, Shaft (1971), Superfly (1972), and Black Caesar (1973). One of the major stars of blaxploitation was Pam Grier, whose tough, no-holdsbarred persona in films like Coffy, Sheba, Baby, and Foxy Brown made her an icon for the feminist movement and landed her on the cover of Ms. Magazine. The representational field of blaxploitation was far from perfect, however. These films depicted African Americans as abjectly physical, brutal, and sensual and prone to crime, drug abuse, and treachery. Nonetheless, Donald Bogle argued that blaxploitation inaugurated the representation of the sexually assertive Black male who is sensual without reverting to the stereotypes of Black rapaciousness that originated with The Birth of a Nation. By the 1980s, Hollywood film in general had entered a period of conservativism and backlash to the gains of the civil rights era. Black filmmakers and performers were faced with an atmosphere of backlash politics that made it difficult to express views alternative to the mainstream. The 1980s was the era of the Black comedian—Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, and Eddie Murphy—and the rise of roles for African Americans as the lead in comedies. One such example would be Eddie Murphy’s role in 48 Hours. Film critic Ed Guerrero has called this the era of the “biracial buddy” movie, in which African American male leads were accompanied by a White counterpart.
The New Wave By the 1990s, a new wave of African American filmmaking was headed by directors like Spike Lee, Charles Burnett, Ernest Dickerson, Bill Duke, Robert Townsend, Julie Dash, and others, causing yet another major innovation in the history of Black film. These filmmakers were concerned with stories that were written, directed, and aimed at Black audiences. They led the way for the rise of the Black film mainstream of the 1990s, in which African Americans took on lead roles across various genres, including urban genres that foreground issues for African Americans in the inner city. Contemporary Black filmmaking has inherited the legacy of Hollywood, and many filmmakers work to create images that decolonize the images of mainstream culture or that deeply contest prevailing stereotypes. The issues and problems for African Americans in film have opened up discourses about representation and the role and function of visual discourses in racial attitudes. The future of Black filmmaking promises new possibilities for nuanced representations of African Americans. Camilla Fojas See also African Americans; Birth of a Nation, The; Film, Latino; Lee, Spike; Media and Race; Popular Culture, Racism and
Further Readings
Anderson, Lisa M. 1997. Mammies No More: The Changing Image of Black Women on Stage and Screen. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Bogle, Donald. 2004. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Continuum International. Guerrero, Ed. 1993. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Jones, G. William. 1991. Black Cinema Treasures Lost and Found. Denton: University of North Texas Press. Lommel, Cookie. 2003. African Americans in Film and Television. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House. Reid, Mark A. 1993. Redefining Black Film. Berkeley: University of California Press. Smith, Valerie. 1997. “Introduction.” Pp. 1–12 in Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video, edited by V. Smith. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Black Conservatives
Wilson, Clint and Félix Gutiérrez. 1995. Race, Multiculturalism, and the Media: From Mass to Class Communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
BLACK CONSERVATIVES A story has made the rounds for many years about the Englishman who, when told of the existence of Black conservatives in the United States, responded with the quip, “What do they have to conserve?” He may have been correct with respect to how the term conserve is commonly understood; however, he was far off the mark regarding the outlook on life the term has come to express politically and culturally. A cursory reading of the speeches by Blacks from many walks of life, beginning in the late 18th century, reveals themes related to a quest for racial and social equality as well as bold statements expressing the need for political and economic self- and group help. This entry traces the history of Black conservative thought and presents current expressions in that context.
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Early Conservative Thinkers The idea of individual and group self-help has a long history among Black thinkers. Richard Allen, William Highland Garnett, Dr. Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, and later Booker T. Washington were among those who adopted the view that the very survival of Blacks would hinge on their ability to advance themselves through both individual and group self-help. That seemed the only sane view to adopt given the racism, brutal treatment, and general neglect of Blacks by Whites at the national, state, and local levels in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These men knew they could not rely on governmental largesse to assist them; thus, their summation of what they needed to do was a matter of practical, commonsense logic. Fred derick Douglass
Frederick Douglass enunciated a more elaborate view of the world of work for Blacks by proffering the need for vocational and skilled training in order to offset the growing job competition from the increasing flow of immigrants from Europe in the mid-19th century. Seeing the immigrant threat, Douglass was the first Black leader to tilt the scale for Blacks slightly away from the struggle for the vote and civil rights toward an emphasis on work, vocational, and skills training. But Douglass was speaking mainly of Blacks, and to Blacks north of the Mason-Dixon Line, not newly freed Blacks currently behind the “cotton curtain” in the South. That is, he spoke for and to Blacks who, living in the North, were technically free and had the ballot; hence, there was no need to emphasize that point. Booker T. Washington
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Prominent African Americans who speak out on issues involving race attract public scrutiny, but this is particularly true for those who endorse more conservative views. Thomas’s nomination in 1991 threw traditional political loyalties into disarray. The NAACP’s and Congressional Black Caucus’s desire to see a Black justice on the Supreme Court competed with their disapproval of Thomas’s conservative views. Source: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.
After Douglass died, Booker T. Washington became the leader whose ideas are now associated with conservative thought. He basically continued Douglass’s theme of the orientation to work, vocational skills, and practical training as necessary tools for Black success. Whereas Douglass could have but did not overemphasize the struggle for the ballot and civil rights, however, Washington, headquartered in Tuskegee, Alabama, and holding the position of group leader during the height of Ku Klux Klan lynchings and the creation of Jim Crow laws designed to deny the ballot to Blacks, had to walk a narrow line. For this reason, he believed he had to de-emphasize the ballot as an immediate goal and relegate it to a distant and future objective.
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Black Conservatives
What made Washington’s strategy conservative was its appearance of maintaining the antebellum racial etiquette and of abandoning the victories won and group assumptions maintained during Reconstruction. However, Washington was simply acting within the structure created by the Compromise of 1877, which reestablished southern White political, economic, and social control over the Black population. He believed his strategy would protect Blacks from terror and violence in the South and place Blacks on the road to economic and social interdependency with Whites. Washington engaged in a bitter battle over group tactics and strategy with W. E. B. Du Bois, a young intellectual educated at Fisk and Harvard Universities and the University of Berlin. In the end, Washington was given the label, sometimes an epithet, of conservative. The negative attitude toward Washington was related not to the idea of individual and group selfhelp, but to the soft-peddling of civil rights and rightto-vote issues, plus his emphasis on low-level manual labor and vocational education. Thus, the association of vocational education, manual labor, the softpeddling of racial issues, and the relegation of the vote to the future, “when the time was right,” all combined to place Washington in the conservative camp. Returning to the statement of the uninformed Englishman, it can be seen that what is often viewed as conservatism by others, White or Black, has little or nothing to do with the idea of conserving anything. As was the case with both Douglass and Washington, the self-help thesis has more to do with the existing social, political, and economic realities Blacks had to confront at the time, not as theory or ideology, but as survival tactics and strategies. This may be seen in the Washington-created Negro Business League (1900), farmer associations, and a host of other organizations Washington founded to foster self-help among Blacks, in the North and the South. The ultimate irony was that Du Bois, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was kicked out of the organization in 1935 because during the Great Depression, he abandoned his quest for integration in favor of a Washington-style, all-Black self-help collective called the “Black Economic Commonwealth.” Marcus Garvey
After Washington’s death in 1915, Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association emerged as the next national Black economic self-help movement.
Garvey had heard of Washington and came to the United States from Jamaica in order to work with him. His back to Africa, pan-African nationalism conflicted with Du Bois’s nationalism in that Garvey’s movement was exclusively for Blacks, whereas Du Bois was an advocate of racial integration. As was Washington’s group, Garvey’s was all-Black, but by ideology and design, whereas Washington’s self-help strategy, located in the turbulent and increasingly segregated South, had no alternative to being all-Black. In the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, the Nation of Islam reached its peak in membership and economic success. Like the strategies of its heroes, Washington and Garvey, the group was a minority religious movement and focused mainly on economic self-help. Like both Washington’s and Garvey’s strategies, it did not concentrate on voting. Rather, like Garvey, it did not view Blacks as citizens of the United States and disparaged voting among Blacks.
Contemporary Conservatism In the 1950s and 1960s, George Schuyler emerged as one of the first Black conservatives in the country. He had worked with the NAACP but became disillusioned and later denounced the group, as well as the entire Civil Rights Movement. He opposed the idea of civil disobedience and denounced the Black leadership of the time, especially Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom he denounced as a racial agitator beholden to communists and socialists. Schuyler was unashamedly pro-American and pro-capitalist and believed that national Black mutual aid consumer cooperatives would do much to alleviate the economic problems confronting Blacks. Socia al Contex xt and Min nd-S Set
In his autobiography, Schuyler provided acute insights into the making of his conservative mind-set, which may have relevance when viewing contemporary Black conservatives: His goals are to adjust, in order to survive and advance, to whatever changes might occur; to conserve, consolidate, and change when expedient; and to take things as they are and try to turn them to one’s advantage. Like Schuyler, contemporary thinkers who are labeled conservative, or even libertarian, have certain traits in common. Whereas White conservatives are often born into upper-middle-class or upper-class families, Black thinkers viewed as conservatives or libertarians tend to be from working-class families: bright
Black Elk (c. 1865–1950)
young men who have worked and studied hard to get into top colleges. In a way, they are like the models Washington held up to the young Blacks of his day: the Horatio Alger–style poor boys who rose to the top through hard work, thrift, sobriety, and religious values. Like Schuyler, today’s conservatives-libertarians are also critical of the Civil Rights Movement and the current Black leaders, whom conservatives believe are hindering rather than helping Blacks to prosper. Like Washington and Schuyler, Black conservatives address more of their criticism toward the Black population than toward the White population. Like Schuyler, these current Black thinkers do not suggest the demise of racism; they simply suggest, as Schuyler does, “It’s here, we know it’s here, so don’t spend too much time dwelling on it. Get your personal life together so as to overcome it.” Black conservatives tend to oppose race-based policies in education and employment. Unlike Washington, but like Schuyler, contemporary conservativeslibertarians are ideologically driven by opposition to liberalism and enumerate, with a nod to the Englishman, things they wish to conserve: the sense of community in the 1950s and early 1960s; the respect once shown by the young toward their elders; and the love of learning that was once a key value in Black communities, especially in well-known public high schools with a tradition of graduating students who then went on to colleges and universities. They also hark back to Washington’s views on vocational education and skilled labor and self-help and in some ways suggest, like Du Bois, that group success is possible when the individual “will” to succeed combines with the “will” to succeed of the group. Beccomin ng Outccasts
Like Douglass, Washington, Schuyler, and even Du Bois before them, these contemporary thinkers appear to denounce the behavior of Blacks and refuse to accept a common liberal view that Blacks fail because Whites won’t let them succeed or simply because the system is stacked against them. Given their working-class backgrounds and considering the heights to which they have risen, it is easy to understand how these African American conservative thinkers could believe that Blacks can succeed despite the racial obstacles placed before them, a view touted repeatedly by Schuyler in his autobiography. Black conservatives may often appear to be estranged from the African American community because they’ve personally and collectively made
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little effort to change their image; they seem to become public only when they are quoted making statements against Blacks and Black communities. Some Blacks might actually agree with some of the positions enunciated by these conservative thinkers, but they disassociate themselves from these thinkers because their views toward Blacks are often presented in a strident manner. At the same time, Black conservatives are seen as resisting overt statements against White racism, which they generally do believe to exist. Contemporary conservatives-libertarians oppose the involvement of big government in the affairs of citizens, an idea that has received a mixed response. Many Blacks find it hard to view the government as an obstacle, or the enemy, when it is this very government that has forced many long-existing societal racial policies to change. Conservative thinkers argue that if people expect less of governments, they will do more for themselves. Rutledge M. Dennis See also Affirmative Action in Education; Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Back to Africa Movement; Black Intellectuals; Douglass, Frederick; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Social Darwinism; Washington, Booker T.
Further Readings
Cunnigen, Donald, Rutledge M. Dennis, and Myrtle Gonza Glascoe. 2006. The Racial Politics of Booker T. Washington. Amsterdam: Elsevier Press. Eisenstadt, Peter. 1999. Black Conservatism. New York: Garland. Faryna, Stan, Brad Stetson, and Joseph Conti. 1997. Black and Right. Westport, CT: Praeger. Schuyler, George. 1966. Black and Conservative. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House. Woodson, Carter. [1925] 1969. Negro Orators and Their Orations. New York: Russell & Russell.
BLACK ELK (C. 1865–1950) Born along the Powder River of Wyoming in July (c. 1865), Black Elk became well-known internationally a century later. Black Elk Speaks, his biography, was published in 1932, but it received little attention until the 1960s. At that time, it was translated into a
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dozen languages, awakened sympathy for the plight of American Indians, and contributed to a growing interest in ecological concerns. Variously referred to as a “bible” for all tribes and the hippie movement, this Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (the book’s subtitle) also moved many readers to explore the religious universe that he so eloquently represented. In a later publication, the transcripts that formed the basis for the biography were also published, raising some interesting questions about the completeness and accuracy of the popular portrayal. This entry discusses the works about Black Elk and the person revealed in the transcripts.
Recalling an Earlier Time Black Elk’s “life story” became the most popular portrayal of American Indian life. It swept readers into a 19th-century Native world that predated the coming of settlers. The holy man poignantly recalled a childhood that saw his people defeat Custer at Little Big Horn but eventually accept confinement to reservations. His biography was a sad one that told of slaughtered buffaloes and massacred friends. It made him a preeminent spokesman for a golden-age environment that had tragically vanished along with many of his people. Concluding with a prayer of hope to the “Great Spirit,” Black Elk Speaks inspired many readers to seek out other defining voices from Indian America. The social unrest of the 1960s and 1970s produced an attentive audience for Black Elk’s vision of spiritual and cultural renewal. The holy man’s image was bolstered by another work that likewise experienced rebirth. Published in 1953 and often reprinted after 1971, The Sacred Pipe was subtitled Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. This volume presented the holy man’s detailed description of Lakota religious practice as it existed before the reservation period. The Sacred Pipe portrayed Black Elk as a very devout man whose religion had been wrenched from his life along with everything else he held dear. Over time, he became the paradigmatic spokesman for all Native wisdom keepers. Since the publication of these seminal works, numerous Indian biographies have tried, but fallen short of, casting the same appeal.
Another View The transcripts that served as the wellspring of Black Elk’s “life story” were published in 1984, for example,
in The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt. In this work, the Neihardt portrait contained significant omissions related to Black Elk’s worldview. The transcripts also raised questions about the holy man’s theology as a whole. This concern was addressed in Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala. It depicted the vivid memory that Black Elk bequeathed to those who knew him from everyday life on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota where he lived. These Native contributors revealed that the early Black Elk books misrepresented the holy man’s life and thought. Notably, his daughter expressed a concern that the books did not address what she said was her father’s most significant legacy. The “life story” rightly showed that Black Elk experienced a dark night of the soul. However, new forms of religious involvement dispelled this anguish and occupied him until his death on August 17, 1950. Holy Man revealed that the 25 years addressed in Black Elk Speaks were by no means his only experience of happiness or sense of mission. Beginning where the “life story” ended, Holy Man described Black Elk’s discouragement in the years after the Wounded Knee conflict of 1890. However, his spirit rallied upon meeting a Jesuit priest, receiving religious instruction from him, and being baptized “Nicholas William Black Elk,” on December 6, 1904. From that time until his death, he was an ardent Catholic, referred to by everyone as “Nick.” He was seldom, if ever, addressed as “Black Elk,” which his biographer had made a household name. Learning of the holy man’s Catholic involvement was a surprise to many, since he had become an icon for the pan-Indian revitalization movement, in which traditional Native practices played a prominent role. Holy Man showed that Black Elk was not the tearful traditionalist that had become his stereotype. It indicated that his popularity as a literary figure was not widely known among residents of his reservation. Rather, for them, he was a much-respected elder who served in the role of fervent Christian layman. Holding the office of catechist (one who helped priests instruct and care for the faithful), Black Elk was like many others from his generation, who were somehow able to internalize religious teachings that to others seemed oppressively invasive. Testimonials from those who knew him insisted that he admirably lived the Christian precepts he was taught. As a result, teachings that once were thought to be quintessentially “Indian” emanated from a
Black Enterprise
Christian faith that Black Elk had built upon his Native tradition. His personality was, moreover, not that of a solemn ascetic, but of one who could bring laughter to an assembly. The holy man’s good-natured disposition and sense of humor were as much a part of his personality as was the serious and sober spirituality imparted to audiences in the previous books. Critics of a Christianized Black Elk challenged this revised portrait. Some sought to show that his institutional practice was a pragmatic (and not sincere) adaptation to changing times. Others asserted that he eventually abandoned Christian involvement and returned to the more satisfying traditions of his youth. The holy man’s life will remain a rich topic of debate. It will also continue to influence Native and non-Native audiences who explore notions of the sacred, notions he acquired as medicine man, Christian missionary, and mystic holy man of the Oglala Sioux. Michael F. Steltenkamp See also Bureau of Indian Affairs; Native Americans; Sioux
Further Readings
Brown, Joseph Epes. 1971. The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books. De Mallie, Raymond J. 1984. The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Neihardt, John G. 1972. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. New York: Pocket Book Edition. Steltenkamp, Michael F. 1993. Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
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The Historical Record From 1910 into the 1960s, the African American urban middle class worked almost exclusively in personal services as servants or were small entrepreneurs. The college-educated faction worked in segregated professions, serving the needs of other Black people, as preachers, physicians, and dentists. Within this context, Black-owned businesses, relative to White-owned businesses, were severely disadvantaged in their attempts to gain market share not only because they were barred from competing in the predominantly White economy but also because they operated in lowgrowth and no-growth market sectors and in communities with higher debt and less disposable income. African Americans seeking jobs in higher-paying white-collar occupations were similarly disadvantaged by hiring discrimination blatantly practiced by White corporations. Yet even under these conditions, African Americans broke racial barriers and became highly successful. John H. Johnson of Chicago started Johnson Publishing and Johnson Products, which remain among the top Black-owned businesses today. The limited opportunity structure on which the African American economy rested is not only a historical notation, but is significant because the dramatic alteration of this structure defines the nature of Black progress during the 1960s. That decade demarcates African Americans’ push for citizenship rights, and the old middle class became more broadly elaborated through entry into white-collar occupations and, particularly, into managerial and business-related occupations in the mainstream economy. Indeed, it is this juncture of movement into higher-paying occupations and White-dominated economic settings that delineates the “new” Black middle class of professionals, managers, and business owners in the 21st century. A Decade of Change
BLACK ENTERPRISE In the last half of the 20th century, the African American middle class of professionals and businesspeople experienced unprecedented gains within managerial and business-related occupations across all sectors of the economy. This entry examines the topic of Black enterprise broadly defined. It not only outlines entrepreneurial activity but also traces the evolution of the broader presence of the Black middle class in the business world from nascent to noteworthy.
Figure 1 tracks the proportion of Blacks and Whites with 4 or more years of college who were employed in managerial jobs nationwide between 1959 and 1973, illustrating that Blacks were virtually excluded from jobs in corporate management in 1959. Only about 6% of the non-White college-educated population were managers, compared with 19% of college-educated White men. The figure also illustrates that a big upward shift in the slope of the line for Blacks, but not for Whites, occurred between 1965 and 1967 and occurred again between about 1969 and
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Figure 1
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Proportion of Employed Black and White College Graduates in Managerial Jobs, 1959–1973
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, unpublished tables.
1973, when about 18% of employed Black college graduates worked in management. The changing distribution of African Americans in the managerial and business-related professions can be accounted for in part by increasing levels of Black educational attainment. This upward trend in education can be seen in Figure 2, which shows the percentage by race of 24- to 29-year-olds who completed 4 or more years of college between 1959 and 1973. In addition, the change in Black economic opportunities can be accounted for by the development of government-sponsored antibias policies and intense public pressure on major employers during this time period. Comparing Figures 1 and 2 illustrates that increases in the percentage of Blacks with 4 or more years of college did not entirely parallel the employment trend. The percentage of Black college graduates increased about twofold between 1959 and 1973 but did not change as dramatically as the emergence of African Americans in managerial positions would have predicted if education alone had been a factor. Ordinarily, sizable rates of change do not occur within such brief time periods; change tends to be glacial. In particular, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and the Office of Federal Contract
Compliance Programs established by executive order in 1965 opened up higher-paying managerial and professional jobs to Blacks in the corporate sector. In a survey sample of historically Black colleges, Richard Freeman found that virtually no major White corporations made recruitment visits to Black institutions of higher learning before that time period. The lack of corporate on-campus visits meant that Black graduates were excluded from a major recruitment pipeline for entry-level corporate positions in management. In 1965, visits by White corporations to Black college campuses began to increase, and, by the end of the decade, the number of White corporations conducting employee searches at predominantly Black colleges jumped dramatically. In 1970, the average Black college campus received visits from about 300 recruiters from various firms. The very same colleges shunned by corporate recruiters before 1965 became a highly desirable resource for Black labor by 1970 due to the push of federal policies. Incre easin ng Opporttunitie es
Surveys by the U.S. Department of Commerce indicate that greater opportunities for Black business owners also grew in this time period as their ability to compete in traditionally White-dominated
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Percentage of People Over 24 Who Have Completed College, by Race, 1959–1973
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, Series P-19 and P-20, along with unpublished data from the Current Population Survey.
market sectors grew due to new government programs. Earl Graves, founder and publisher of Black Enterprise magazine, used a $175,000 smallbusiness loan to build the magazine. Comparing overall gross receipts of all U.S. firms with minorityowned firms between 1969 and 1977 indicates that minority business revenue grew by 57% between 1969 and 1972 and nearly doubled between 1972 and 1977; majority firms’ gross receipts increased by 24.5% between 1969 and 1972 and increased 47% between 1972 and 1977. Moreover, the Blackowned proportion of firms increased in almost every industry, as did the Black percentage of all firms’ gross receipts. New opportunities for Black entrepreneurs evolved in tandem with federal “8(a)” and corporate programs designed to open their respective markets to Black-owned businesses. Federal procurement from predominately Black minority businesses in fiscal year 1969 amounted to only 0.03% of total dollar awards. In 1969, President Richard Nixon established the Office of Minority Business Enterprise, and that
figure increased to 0.08% of total contracts by 1973. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter created the Interagency Council for Minority Business Enterprise to coordinate federal purchases from minority businesses. From 1977 through 1980, the dollar amount of purchases from minority businesses nearly tripled. Data from the U.S. Department of Commerce show that the amount of goods and services sold by minority firms to federal agencies increased from $3 million in 1969 to $3 billion in 1980. Expanded government and corporate supplier diversity programs have enabled minority firms to increase their revenue by about 10% annually and to realize a growth rate triple that of traditional businesses between 1980 and 2000. The new employment of African Americans in corporate jobs served as a backdrop for Black business start-ups in new and previously White-dominated market arenas, such as management consulting and human resource development, public relations and advertising fields, and manufacturing and new fields of retail. Corporations followed the federal
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government’s lead after racial unrest in the late 1960s by developing a private sector version of federal contract set-aside programs. In the automotive sector, General Motors launched the first minority supplier development program in 1968. Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corporation also began minority supplier programs in this period. General Motors started the first minority dealer development program in 1972, and three of these initial businesses were featured in Black Enterprise’s list of the largest 100 Black-owned U.S. businesses. Fortune 500 consumer goods companies, such as Pepsi-Co, Baxter Travenol, Frito Lay, and Burger King also created models for minority business development in the 1980s. These programs, like others, were driven by political and public relations pressures but also by the growing recognition of new targeted-marketing opportunities in minority communities.
Today’s Market Black entrepreneurship is still constrained within segregated markets, although Black entrepreneurs operating in White arenas are more visible. A strong growth area for Black-owned business outside of Black consumer markets is Black-oriented advertising, marketing, and workforce development specialties offered to White institutions. Still, Black entrepreneurs have broken through racial barriers at the high end as owners of highly successful investment banks, mutual funds, capital management businesses, and real estate and as moguls in the entertainment industry. Salaried Blacks in the private sector also show elements of functional segregation. Compared with White executives, Black executives are more concentrated in public relations specialties and personnel areas typically responsible for affirmative action plans and diversity. Sharon Collins’s study of Black executive careers shows Black executives in Chicago disproportionately filled personnel jobs that typically do not lead to the upper echelons of the corporate structure. Yet a small but highly visible set of African Americans emerged in powerful corporate functions such as chief financial officers and division presidents and, most dramatically, as heads of some of the United States’ largest and most powerful corporations. The gains African Americans made in the business world during the last half of the 20th century are both real and significant. At the same time, focusing solely on attainment may not tell the full story of the post–civil rights period. Whether and how African
Americans continue to move into the higher-paying and power-wielding business occupations developing in the 21st century remains an unfolding story. Sharon M. Collins See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Black Bourgeoisie; Black Conservatives; Black Intellectuals; Civil Rights Movement; Discrimination; FUBU Company; Glass Ceiling; Institutional Discrimination
Further Readings
Bates, Timothy and William Bradford. 2003. Minorities and Venture Capital—A New Wave in American Business. Kansas City, MO: Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Collins, Sharon M. 1997. Black Corporate Executives. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Drake, St. Clair and Horace R. Cayton. 1962. Black Metropolis, vol. 2. New York: Harper & Row. Frazier, E. Franklin. 1957. The Black Bourgeoisie: The Rise of a New Middle Class. New York: Free Press. Freeman, Richard. 1976. The Black Elite. New York: McGraw-Hill. U.S. Department of Commerce. 1978. The New Strategy for Minority Businesses and Minority Business Enterprise Development in the 1980s. Washington, DC: Author.
BLACKFEET The Blackfeet of Montana are one of the tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which includes the Siksika (Blackfoot), Piikani (North Piikani), and Blood (Kainai) tribes located in southern Alberta, Canada. The Blackfeet currently reside on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation located in north-central Montana. The 1.5-million-acre reservation is located on the east side of the Rocky Mountains, adjacent to Glacier National Park. The northern boundary is the international border between Montana and the Province of Alberta, Canada. American Indians have been stereotyped as a vanishing people, and historic literature depicts them as uncivilized and ignorant. This entry provides an introductory historic outline of the Blackfeet Indians, who sustain a vibrant culture.
Beginnings Like most Indigenous Peoples of North American, the Blackfeet have a genesis narrative. These accounts
Blackfeet
reveal that the creator of humankind originated the first human Napi from mud brought forth by a water animal from the depths of a watery abyss. These narratives then lead to other origin accounts that reveal the origins of Blackfeet ceremony and spiritual beliefs. According to anthropologists, the Blackfeet are classified linguistically and culturally with the Algonquian group of Indigenous Peoples of North America. It is believed that they migrated from the Great Lakes area to western prairies of what are now the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada. The traditional roaming area of the Blackfeet is an area the size of France. The Blackfeet hunted animals and gathered roots and berries, ranging from the North Saskatchewan River in Alberta to the Yellowstone River in the south. The Rocky Mountains provided a barrier to other tribes to the west, while the plains of Saskatchewan and North Dakota and South Dakota formed a movable boundary to the east. Before the coming of Europeans, the Blackfeet lived in small groups commonly termed bands. The bands consisted of 50 to 100 people, mostly of extended families. They lived in a tepee lodge that included 10 to 15 members of an extended family. The band leaders were usually one or two headmen who had obtained prominence through personal influence, hunting skills, and participation in societies and ceremonial life. The bands also consisted of several social and ceremonial groups commonly termed societies, which were age graded: People entered a society such as the “mosquitoes” as teenagers and then moved into soldier or police societies such as the “brave dog” as young men and women. Toward middle age, the members ritually transferred into the more religious societies of “medicine bundle” or “beaver bundle.” Individuals could become ceremonial leaders such as a “bundle keeper” through an intricate ritualistic process. The spiritual life of the Blackfeet centered on the medicine bundle ceremonies. The medicine bundles contained things such as animals and birds and other objects such as rocks and sticks that have spiritual meaning. The medicine lodge, sometimes called the “sun dance,” was the ultimate ceremony of the Blackfeet tribes. In fact, the many bands and tribes came together as large groups only in the summer for the Ookaan, or medicine lodge ceremonies. Prior to the arrival of the horse in the mid-1700s, the Blackfeet used the domesticated dog as a way of transporting material goods. Later, the horse became the means of transportation. It is believed that the horse came to the Blackfeet either through the Mandan-Hidatsa
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tribe, on the Missouri River, or the Nez Perce tribe, west of the Rocky Mountains. Having horses not only made them more mobile but also improved their ability to harvest buffalo by way of surround and chase. Certainly, material goods in their possession increased, since larger amounts of goods could be transported. The economy of the Blackfeet centered on the buffalo (bison) as the primary food source. This staple was supplemented with roots and berries. During the “dog days,” the Blackfeet lured and chased the buffalo over large hill cliffs, where they fell to their deaths. The Blackfeet also utilized a variety of game animals, such as elk and deer, for sources of food. The Blackfeet lived in conical, tentlike lodges consisting of tanned buffalo hides stretched over a frame of lodgepole pines. Evidence of the Plains Indian lodges is scattered across the western prairies in the circles of rocks that were used to hold down the inside lining of the tepee tent. Clothing of the Blackfeet consisted mainly of tanned deer hide, but other animal hides, such as elk or buffalo, were also used. The buckskin clothing was decorated with intricate colored designs using dyed porcupine quills flattened and woven.
Europeans Arrive With the development of Fort Edmonton on the North Saskatchewan River in the late 1700s, the Blackfeet, or South Peigan, began visiting for trading purposes. In fact, obtaining rifles and whiskey as trade goods in return for buffalo and other animal hides became prominent. History records that Captain Meriwether Lewis had contact with the Blackfeet in 1806 on the return trip from his historic overland trek to the Pacific Ocean. Traveling east down the Missouri River, Lewis went up the Marias River and then to Cut Bank Creek, where his party encountered some Blackfeet Indians. Lewis and his party of a few men were somewhat anxious as they had heard stories of the supposedly treacherous Blackfeet. After communicating with these Natives by way of sign language, Lewis and his men camped for the night with them near the Two Medicine Creek. Early the next morning, a scuffle broke out when some of the Blackfeet were attempting to capture some of the Lewis party’s horses and guns. After killing two of the Blackfeet, the Lewis group rapidly escaped east through the prairie lands. The westward fur trapping and trade created a wave of unstoppable entrepreneurs up the Missouri River. Up until about 1830, when the American Fur
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Company initiated Fort Union below the confluence of the Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers, the Blackfeet had successfully resisted trade with the Americans. In a matter of a few decades, however, a series of trading forts were established up the Missouri River into Blackfeet country as far as Fort Benton. The Blackfeet had begun to build a dependency upon the “White-man’s” trade goods, such as pots, pans, axes, awls, beads, and cloth materials, which made life somewhat easier. The use of alcohol as a major trade item began to influence the social and cultural mores that held the Blackfoot tribes and bands together. The sacred beaver, which had been previously protected, now became an item of barter. By 1855, when the Blackfeet signed their first treaty with the U.S. government, the social and economic situation was rapidly changing. A smallpox epidemic in the 1830s had reduced the population and strength of the tribe. The hide of the buffalo had become an item of commerce rather then a protected and respected source of life.
Difficult Times Whiskey trading, lawlessness, and political desires for statehood were manifested in greed and hunger for Native American lands and a manufactured war. Searching for a small group of Blackfeet who had killed a prominent Montana territory citizen, the U.S. military killed over 173 old men, women, and children on the Marias River in 1870. The loss of food sources such as the buffalo and wild game influenced the Blackfeet to sign treaties that severely reduced the land areas set aside in the 1855 treaty. An unratified treaty in 1865 was held in abeyance until Congress initiated legislation to end treaty making with American Indians in 1871. This led to loss of other tribal lands by executive order of the president of United States or congressional legislation. In the winter of 1883 to 1884, many Blackfeet starved to death. Corruption within the system reduced the food and treaty goods promised in return for the massive areas of land. Since “civilizing and Christianizing” had long been a thematic approach among Europeans, each Native tribe was assigned to a religious denomination. Although the Methodists had been assigned to the Blackfeet, the Catholics instituted St. Peter’s Mission in 1865 near Sun River. In 1890, a Catholic mission boarding school was built, and it operated on the Two
Medicine River until the 1930s. The first Native boarding school for the Blackfeet operated from 1892 to 1910 at Fort Shaw in the former military buildings. Later, the federal government operated a boarding school at Cut Bank Creek, about twelve miles from present-day Browning, Montana. After the Treaty of 1855, the federal government established a series of Blackfeet Indian agencies that included Fort Benton, Fort Shaw on Sun River, Teton by Chouteau, and two different locations on Badger Creek. By 1895, the Indian agency was located in present-day Browning, Montana. The 1887 Allotment Act, or Dawes Act, allotted land to individual American Indians in tracts of 160 to 320 acres, depending upon the agricultural capacity of the land. However, most of the reservation communities grew out of the former “band” concept of extended families living together. Until the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934, the Indian agent appointed Native leaders to a governing body. The IRA provided for a constitutional form of government with elected members to form a governing tribal council.
Contemporary Community The economy of the Blackfeet for many years depended upon oil and gas, timber, and leasing of communally owned lands. The Blackfeet in more recent times have worked diligently to attract the tourism industry. Many tribally operated government programs have evolved through the Indian SelfDetermination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. The Blackfeet Nation now manages many of the programs formerly operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service. Programs such as a housing authority and a Blackfeet community college have been in operation for several years. According to the enrollment office of the Blackfeet Nation tribal government, there are presently over 17,000 tribal members on the official enrollment records. Well over half of the enrolled tribal members live on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, while many make their home in urban areas. Donald D. Pepion See Appendix A See also Bureau of Indian Affairs; Dawes Act of 1887; Native American Education; Native American Identity; Native Americans; Reservation System
Black Intellectuals
Further Readings
Bullchild, Percy. 1985. The Sun Came Down. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. Ewers, John C. [1958] 1983. The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwest Plains. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Grinnell, George Bird. 1892. Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People. New York: Charles Scribner’s. Reprinted by University of Nebraska Press, 1962. McClintock, Walter. 1910. The Old North Trail: Life, Legends, and Religion of the Blackfeet Indians. London: Macmillan. Bison Books. Reprinted by University of Nebraska Press, 1992.
BLACK INTELLECTUALS A review of Black history and culture will reveal any number of African American intellectuals on the Black sociocultural and political landscape: literary intellectuals, political intellectuals, economic intellectuals, “organic” intellectuals, worker’s intellectuals, community intellectuals, and others. Central to their thinking is a devotion to ideas and the dissemination of such ideas, in the form of the written word, the lecture, or works of art. There have been considerable differences, however, over what role the intellectual should play in the larger African American community. This entry presents a brief history of that discussion.
Du Bois Sets a Standard W. E. B. Du Bois once noted that the existence of a Black middle class in the United States represented a double paradox: a “paradox within a paradox.” One might then view the idea of a Black intellectual class as such a paradox, as over time it has been far easier to obtain middle-class status than to become an intellectual. Du Bois had observed the existence of a small, educated, and reflective class during his undergraduate years at Fisk University, in Tennessee; at Harvard; and for 2 years during his studies at the University of Berlin. He returned to Harvard, completed his doctoral dissertation, accepted his first teaching position at Wilberforce University, and prepared himself to engage in the battle of ideas surrounding the role and status of Blacks in the United States. Du Bois’s first major address on race and the role of intellectuals, those whom he had labeled the
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“Talented Tenth,” was the first position paper presented before the newly formed Negro American Academy. In it, Du Bois enumerated the problems confronting Black Americans and the role of the academy and its educated cadre in addressing such problems. Black intellectuals, according to Du Bois, were to be the creators of ideas and the shapers of the values necessary in what he believed would constitute the emergence of revolutionary ideas in the making of a “New Black” and “New White” America. Comm mitm ment to o the Massses
Essentially, Du Bois envisioned a powerful class of educated Blacks, almost Leninist in their convictions and ideological commitment, which would do for the masses of the newly emancipated Blacks what they, lacking education, skills, and cultural insights, could not do themselves. Booker T. Washington and other critics of Du Bois’s intellectual strategy contended that Blacks were not interested in replacing a White elite with a Black elite, but Du Bois asserted that it was not simply a matter of being an elite. What was expected of the Talented Tenth was a life dedicated to the cause of freedom and a willingness to forgo some of the ordinary pleasures of life in order to liberate Blacks from racial and class bondage. Like Marx before him and Lenin after him, Du Bois also believed that an educated class should play a crucial role in initiating and assisting in the consciousnessraising process among the general population. Marx and Lenin focused on class consciousness, whereas Du Bois focused on both race and class. Du Bois thought nationalism would be a central theme in the class and racial struggle, and thus it was important for leaders to be well-versed in European and American “high culture,” as well as being grounded in and having an appreciation for Black history and culture. This was mandated because this intellectual elite class would be responsible for interacting with both groups. The last quarter of the 19th century was a period of great social convulsion, in both the North and South. In the North, entrepreneurial capitalism and the factory took root; in the South, a counterReconstructionist movement took shape, and lynchings became more pervasive. Religious intellectuals such as Bishop Turner of the AME Church were interested in establishing colonies in Africa for Black Americans, while, simultaneously, European powers met at the Berlin Conference and proceeded to divide
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Africa among themselves. These events made an intellectual class even more necessary, and Du Bois sought to address the Africa issue by working with Black and White intellectuals to create a series of panAfrican conferences in Europe. Most important in this period was the rise of Booker T. Washington as the leading spokesman for the Black population, following the death of Frederick Douglass in 1885. Du Bois published his insightful and radical critique of race and class, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), and later collaborated with intellectuals, Black and White, to create first the Niagara Movement and later the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Many political intellectuals wanted to redirect the Black political voice and worked within the NAACP to push for greater civil rights and voting rights in the South. Some joined the Garvey movement, and others joined various socialist and communist movements. Thus, some of the earliest issues facing political intellectuals can be said to have been nationalism versus internationalism and integration versus separatism. Activ visst Artistss
As the political intellectuals were fighting their battles, creative and artistic intellectuals were entering the first phase of what would be called the “Harlem Renaissance” and the idea of the “New Negro.” The political and creative intellectuals were reinforcing each other in their themes and orientations. While the goals of the political intellectuals were more clearly equality and justice, the creative intellectuals saw themselves as involved in the same struggle. These creative and literary intellectuals representing the “New Negro” theme sought to focus on Africa and return to the rural, and natural, cultural roots of Blacks to illustrate the beauty of the African and African American in the outpouring of artworks, novels, poems, and nonfiction devoted to an explication of how and why the “New Negro” was, of necessity, different and better than the “Old Negro.” The “Old” and the “New” Negro were depicted as competing paradigms in the writings of Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Kelly Miller, and Zora Neale Hurston. Du Bois spoke for his age and the aspirations of Blacks when he noted that with the rise of lynching, the institutionalization of Jim Crow throughout the South, and the intensification of European and American imperialism and colonialism, there was no
recourse for intellectuals other than to join the battle and use their intellectual weapons in the struggle for freedom. Seeing the depth and intensity of prejudice and discrimination, he viewed the only realistic role for intellectuals as being the agents and models for social agitation and propaganda. He reasoned that in the middle of a battle, there was no place for “art for art’s sake,” and cultural intellectuals who were members of oppressed groups had a responsibility to their people to use their resources to advance their cause.
Another Voice, Another View In the 1940s and 1950s a different role of the Black intellectual was enunciated by Ralph Ellison, especially on the issue of literary and creative intellectuals. If Ellison ever viewed writing and art as constituting agitation or propaganda, it would be with a small “a” or “p,” never capitalized. For him, if artistic works were weapons, they would serve only as important by-products of literary and artistic creativity, never as their driving force. In this belief, Ellison differed from his contemporaries Richard Wright and James Baldwin, as well as from Du Bois. Thus, Ellison, more than any Black intellectual, would bifurcate African American thinking about the role of Black intellectuals. Some were overt in their struggle and willing to use their art toward political objectives, whereas others wanted their works to be examples illustrating to the larger society that African Americans’ works were just as good or better than those of artists from the dominant society. Ellison saw a distinction between the intellectual as artist and the intellectual as political agitator and thought writing just to incite or to support a cause resulted in bad writing. Other intellectuals—ministers, university students, and some university professors— were more clearly in the Du Boisian mold. Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, these intellectuals played major roles as organizers and demonstrators. Of the limited number of Black faculty and students entering formerly all-White universities, many became intensely engaged in struggles to create Black student unions and Black and African American Studies programs, as well as the push to hire African American faculty and administrators. Some of these faculty and students in formerly all-White institutions exemplified the “intellectualagitator” as Du Bois perceived the role. As the Civil Rights Movement morphed into the Black Power Movement, Black intellectuals, as
Black Intellectuals
novelists, essayists, poets, editors, and scholars, also played a major role in highlighting the idea of community control, the “Black is beautiful” theme, ideas of pan-Africanism, and cultural nationalism and revolutionary nationalism. In addition, intellectuals were the galvanizing force behind ideas pertinent to the creation of a national Black theater, the Black university, and a host of Black publishing companies; the Black Christ and the Black church; and efforts to create Black political parties. Even as Black intellectuals provided the fuel for these ideas, groups, and organizations, other Black intellectuals continued to work with more mainstream Black organizations, such as the NAACP, the Urban League, and the mainstream civic and social organizations, such as sororities and fraternities. Some Christian intellectuals were moving in the direction of defining a Black Christianity, whereas others, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.; C. Eric Lincoln; Andrew Young; and James Cone, sought intellectual and spiritual sustenance from mainline and traditional Christian churches.
A Crisis Is Defined In his book The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967), Harold Cruse sought to depict what he viewed as a national crisis among Black intellectuals. What he actually documented, however, were the ongoing contentious political battles between nationalists, socialists, and communists and the often ambivalent relationship between Black intellectuals and other intellectuals, both Jewish and non-Jewish, in New York City. One of the significant features of Black intellectuals, from Du Bois to Cruse, was that they were excluded from the major White political, financial, educational, and cultural institutions of their day. If they were part of the academic world, they were confined solely to predominately Black institutions. Thus, Du Bois and other Black intellectuals of his generation spoke as marginal outsiders, and one might proffer the view that these academic intellectuals might have understood their marginality: Many knew they were qualified to teach at the major institutions that were most unlikely to employ them. It was only in the 1940s that the noted scholar Allison Davis was employed as the first Black scholar to teach at a predominately White university, the University of Chicago. The Black student and faculty presence became more evident in the early 1970s, and since them, Black intellectuals have played significant
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roles in many institutions. The Harold Cruse question, however, is still open: Why are Black intellectuals unable or unwilling to provide cultural, educational, and political direction and leadership for the Black population? Perhaps they do, and one should not forget the role and impact of intellectuals during the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement. A review of the role of intellectuals during the Black Power era illustrates a heightened cultural and political role as Black theater groups, poetry societies, and community and student organizations flourished. This was also the period of increased aspirations for Black community control, as well as movements toward the establishment of Black-controlled political parties. As stated previously, the greatest and most enduring example of a major role for Black intellectuals can be seen in academia and the impact of Black scholars in helping to shape African and Black Studies programs, as well as initiating a host of academic and administrative changes in the academy. If one seriously raises the question of the effectiveness of Black intellectuals in the academy, the question may be asked of the effectiveness of the intellectual in general at this juncture in American life. There is a sense in which these intellectuals are not satisfied with the core values and ideas in either the larger White American culture or the African American culture. There are public intellectuals who are engaged in the central questions and issues of the day, and they are often quoted in the national media outlets. There are also, however, local and regional intellectuals whose roles and activities are significant only in their immediate environment and communities. Many are involved in local civic, religious, and fraternal and sorority organizations, but they play minor roles in larger national organizations. Although they may understand the importance of the role of public intellectuals, many do not see that role as Du Bois did. Rather, they have defined their role not so much as national speechmakers, but as activist-intellectuals and community and regional practitioners in a variety of institutions and organizations. Rutledge M. Dennis See also African American Studies; Baldwin, James; Black Conservatives; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Civil Rights Movement; Community Empowerment; Double Consciousness; Du Bois, William Edward
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Burghardt; Harlem Renaissance; Invisible Man; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Marginalization; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Talented Tenth; Veil; Washington, Booker T.; Williams, Fannie Barrier
Further Readings
Bronz, Stephen H. 1976. Roots of Negro Consciousness. New York: Libra. Cruse, Harold. 1967. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. New York: Morrow. Dennis, Rutledge M. 1977. “Dubois and the Role of the Educated Elite.” Journal of Negro Education 46:388–402. Dennis, Rutledge M., ed. 1997. The Black Intellectuals. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1897] 1970. “The Conservation of Races.” The American Negro Academy Occasional Papers, No. 2. Pp. 73–85 in W. E. B. Du Bois Speaks, edited by P. Foner. New York: Pathfinder Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] 1971. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Penguin Books. Johnson, Roosevelt. 1974. Black Scholars on Higher Education in the 70s. Columbus, OH: ECC. Lenin, Vladimar I. 1969. What Is to Be Done. New York: International Publishers. Locke, Alain. [1925] 1969. The New Negro. New York: Atheneum. McEvoy, James and Abraham Miller. 1969. Black Power and Student Rebellion. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
BLACK-JEWISH RELATIONS See JEWISH-BLACK RELATIONS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; JEWISH-BLACK RELATIONS: THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD
BLACK MARXISM See ROBINSON, CEDRIC
BLACK METROPOLIS The term Black Metropolis was coined in the book The Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a
Northern City, by St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton (1945). It is a monumental work that describes and analyzes Black life and culture in Chicago after World War I, from historical, anthropological, sociological, economic, and political perspectives. This entry describes the history of the community that was the subject of their research. The Great Migration that began just before World War I and continued through World War II was the largest redistribution of a single population in the United States. As migrants from the South, Blacks transplanted themselves and built social, cultural, religious, political, and economic institutions in Chicago to sustain their lives in an environment that treated them as second-class citizens. The Black Metropolis, a city within a city, was theoretically defined as an internal colony within the United States dealing with overt and covert racism—from the 1919 riots to restrictive covenants to the concentration of public housing to urban redevelopment and the removal of poor men and women and children in the first decade of the 21st century. While Black individuals and their families were a critical and vital population resource for the eventual development of Chicago and the Black Metropolis, many were forced to live in segregated and substandard housing facilities and could not obtain access to employment and educational opportunities equal to those of their White counterparts. Although confined in a narrow corridor on Chicago’s South Side, infamously known as the “Black Belt,” they transplanted their culture, economic and political skills, and lifestyle by naming the Black Metropolis “Bronzeville.” The name symbolized and illuminated the class, cultural, social, and economic dynamism of the multiple shades and colors of Black people who inhabited the community, depicting the emergence of an energetic Black identity through a renaissance of Black businesses and cultural expression, in particular blues music and African American literature. By the 1960s, the communities of Douglas and Grand Boulevard, two original settlement areas for Blacks during the Great Migration, held the largest concentration of public housing in the city of Chicago. The residential mobility of the Black middle and upper classes alone cannot explain the rapid deterioration of Bronzeville, with its cultural, artistic, and musical legacy. Institutions at the city, county, state, and federal levels orchestrated a policy of housing confinement for the Black working class and working
Black Nationalism
poor that fundamentally changed the rich diversity and cultural literacy that had characterized the life of Bronzeville. In Chicago, the African American community faced intense hypersegregation in housing, employment, and schools. These conditions in Chicago, although different from Southern Jim Crow laws and violence, had a no less serious impact on the economic, social, political, and cultural life chances of the African Americans in the Black Metropolis. To cope with segregation in employment, housing, and schooling, African Americans challenged discrimination in employment, housing, and schools. As the size of the Black Metropolis increased, “Negro jobs, Negro housing, and Negro schooling” became institutionalized into an identifiable sublabor and subpolitical market within Chicago. During the first half of the 20th century, African Americans were confined to the Black Metropolis and worked in the lowest-paying jobs in Chicago, but they formed a critical labor force for the city of Chicago and the United States during World War I and World War II. They built institutions like the Binga Bank; Douglas Bank; the Anthony Overton Hygienic Company; Supreme Life Insurance Company; the Chicago Urban League; the George Cleveland Hall Library, a National Literary Landmark; social clubs, like the famous Checkerboard (blues club); the Palm Tavern; and well over 500 churches. The legacy of the Black Metropolis continues into the 21st century, as the community has been designated by the City of Chicago as a historic landmark, paving the way for land clearance and “urban redevelopment,” while removing two-thirds of mostly poor and workingclass men, women, and children. Theodoric Manley, Jr. See also American Apartheid; Drake, St. Clair; Gentrification; Jim Crow; Washington, Harold
Further Readings
Drake, St. Clair and Horace Cayton. 1945. The Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, vol. 1. New York: Harcourt Brace. Grimshaw, William J. 1992. Bitter Fruit: Black Politics and the Chicago Machine 1931–1991. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hirsch, Arnold R. 1998. Making of the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago: 1940–1960. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
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Jones, LeAlan and Lloyd Newman, with David Isay. 1997. Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago. New York: Scribner’s. Manley, Theodoric, Jr., Avery Buffa, Caleb Dube, Molly Szymanksi, Matthew Murphy, Cassandra Brandt, et al. 2007. The Way They Saw It: The Changing Face of Bronzeville. Philadelphia, PA: Dorrance. Spear, Alan H. 1967. Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890–1920. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi. 2000. The American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
BLACK NATIONALISM Black Nationalism is a social and political term that refers to the internationalizing of the African struggle, creating a confraternity among all African peoples and placing their struggle against oppression in a global context. Although quite old, the term has seen several periods of resurgence. For African Americans, the term is most associated with the 1960s and 1970s and with the African American struggle for civil rights. It also was an important element in cementing support and forming coalitions among the various groups fighting for civil rights. As the Civil Rights Movement expanded and developed, some of the more integrationist themes of the earlier movement were rejected in favor of a more Nationalist vision emphasizing Black self-help and group solidarity. This movement helped groups like the Black Panther Party form important intellectual alliances with Afro-Cubans and other Blacks who were part of the African diaspora. This entry looks at the long history of the movement and its key proponents.
Before the Civil War Although most people associate the term Black Nationalism with Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the term actually predates Garvey. Garvey was just one in a long line of people who called for a return to Africa by forming a “Back to Africa” movement. His organization continued a tradition of pan-African organizations, which attempted to make a connection between the struggles of Africans everywhere. Even during the
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period of U.S. slavery, there were poorly organized but effective Black Nationalist movements designed to attack slavery, develop group solidarity, and impact people’s opinion of Africans. Almost immediately after the Revolutionary War, many African Americans realized that the new nation’s leaders intended to keep them in slavery. Therefore, free Blacks made an attempt to connect their struggle with Africa by naming their institutions and organizations after Africa. This attempt to connect themselves to their former homeland was a nascent attempt at establishing Black Nationalism and collectively fighting injustice. This move to connect with Africa was a demonstration of intellectual independence and self-determination, along with a reaction to exclusion from the larger society. As Whites became increasingly hostile to African American attempts at inclusion, Blacks came to believe that they had to take care of themselves. Free Blacks played a leading role, advocating for their brothers and sisters still locked in slavery. They petitioned Congress, wrote letters, organized protests, and formed associations. James Forten, Absalom Jones, and Richard Allen were among the early Black Nationalists, who saw their struggle for dignity and equal rights from a global perspective. The founding of organizations such as the Free African Society (1787), Prince Hall Masons (1791), First African Church of Savannah (1793), Daughters of Africa (1796), and the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1816) were just a few of the outward manifestations of this movement. Voyages to o Africa a
Several movements of the early 19th century can clearly be defined as Black Nationalist movements, among them Paul Cuffe and his voyages to Africa to return former slaves and Martin Delany and his separatist and colonization movements. Cuffe, along with his brother John, had sued the Massachusetts legislature for the right to vote. In a landmark decision, the courts sided with the brothers and opened the franchise to them. Cuffe, the son of an African chieftain and a Native American mother, made a small fortune as a shipper in Boston. He became convinced that the solution to the slave trade was African American migration to Africa. He tried to establish a colony in Sierra Leone as a first step to Black colonization. Most of the antebellum Black Nationalist movements were centered around freeing Africans from slavery and returning them to their homeland. Martin
Delany, who had a Harvard medical degree, took this notion further than most, arguing that Africa was the natural home for all those of color. He is credited with coining the phrase “Africa for the Africans.”
Henry McNeil Turner After the Civil War, Black Nationalist activities increased as Africans attempted to once again internationalize their struggle against legalized discrimination. Most of these movements and organizers continued to look to Africa as an answer to the problem of Black marginalization. African Americans pooled their resources and purchased ships and land and made voyages to Africa. One of the most famous of these voyages was carried out by the Liberian Exodus and Joint Stock Steamship Company. In 1878, they purchased the Azor and made a voyage to Liberia with 206 passengers. The man most associated with the post–Civil War Back to Africa movement was Henry McNeil Turner. Turner was a controversial figure whose life spanned some of the most critical periods in African American history. During the great experiment of Reconstruction, Turner proved to be a very effective and artful politician, whose political leanings were difficult to gauge. Turner was born into slavery in 1834. Early on, he came to see the power of education; he learned to read and write and became a Methodist minister. In 1858, Turner joined the AME church and moved to Baltimore, where he began an intensive program of studying theology, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew with several Trinity College professors. In 1860, he was made pastor of Union Bethel Church, the largest Black church in Washington, DC. After the Civil War, Turner went to Georgia, where he helped start the AME church in that state. Using a grassroots campaign, he ran as a Republican candidate for the Georgia house, serving from 1868 to 1870. Turner became a proponent of African emigration, arguing the positive aspects of Africa. Turner made connections with Africans in Sierra Leone and Liberia. There, he emphasized the connections between Black Americans and Africans. He was a tireless minister who established schools, churches, and other institutions in Africa. Turner was able to plant the AME church in Africa, forming a strong religious tie between the peoples on both continents. Turner was a dedicated opponent of segregation and discrimination in the United States, condemning Whites for their treatment of African Americans.
Black Nationalism
Turner argued that African Americans should leave the United States and return to Africa, where they could regenerate the African continent. Several people followed Turner’s lead and made connections with Africa. In 1903, William Ellis led an expedition to Ethiopia. Harry Dean attempted to establish a kingdom in Basutoland. After Turner’s death in 1915, Alfred C. Sam formed the Akim Trading Company. In 1914, he led an expedition of 60 African Americans to Ghana. By 1915, Marcus Garvey and his UNIA organization were beginning to look at Africa as a natural home for Africans all over the globe. Garvey utilized the phrase “Africa for the Africans at Home and Abroad.”
Marcus Garvey The Garvey movement came on the scene just as African Americans were beginning to feel the sting of disappointment after their service in the First World War. African Americans found themselves once again being shunted into a second-class status after the unfulfilled promises of President Woodrow Wilson. With the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and an increase in lynching, along with a brutal assault on nonconformity, frustrated African Americans looked for alternatives. Garvey argued that Africa was the last hope for African Americans. It was a place where they could fulfill their potential and create a great society, which he believed could equal and surpass Europe and America. Garvey attacked America’s racism, challenged White scholars, and emphasized the positive aspects of African American life. Garvey challenged Africans all over the world to internationalize their struggle and make connections with other Africans. In Chicago, another Black Nationalist, Grover Cleveland Redding, encouraged African Americans to return to Africa. He developed a loyal and vocal following for his Abyssinian movement. Members argued that Ethiopia was the place for African Americans to return in order to reclaim Africa’s glory. Redding led a large, controversial parade through Chicago on Sunday, June 20, 1920. Riding a white horse and wearing a gaudy costume, which he claimed was the costume of an African prince, Redding stopped his parade and then burned an American flag. When an African American police officer attempted to halt his actions, one of Redding’s followers shot and killed the officer. In the riot that followed, a White storeowner and soldier were also killed. Redding and a follower were eventually executed for the killings.
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Garvey’s movement helped spur several others. Many of those who joined with W. D. Fard Muhammad and the Black Muslim movement came out of the Garvey movement. When Elijah Muhammad took control of the organization, he copied many of the techniques and ideas first espoused by Garvey. He went so far as to argue that Whites were devils and that they had deliberately deceived African Americans about their history and heritage. Dr. W. E. B. Dubois worked with others from all over the world as part of the pan-African movement. This movement was separate and distinct from the Garvey movement and emphasized making connections with African nations. Pan-Africanists saw Africa as a potential superpower that just needed to free itself from its colonial past. Instead of viewing the African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans as neocolonialist, pan-Africanists wanted to work with and through the Africans to help Africa develop.
Malcolm X and the Civil Rights Era By the 1960s, once again African Americans made an attempt to internationalize their struggle. Malcolm X, the national spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, threatened to take the United States before the United Nations and challenge the country with crimes against humanity for its treatment of African Americans. Malcolm X challenged African American youth to expand their vision from civil rights to a struggle for human rights. Though Malcolm X rejected the Christian principles outlined by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he nevertheless emphasized the brotherhood of all African peoples. Malcolm’s activism inspired restless young African Americans who sought an alternative to the recognized Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. King. Malcolm became something of a cult hero after he resigned from the Nation of Islam and formed his own organization, called the Organization of African American Unity. He modeled this organization on the Organization of African Unity. Malcolm X denounced his former association with the Nation of Islam, no longer viewing Whites as devils. He gave cautious support to the Civil Rights Movement and attempted to make connections with revolutionary African leaders. Malcolm underwent a spiritual reformation, moving closer to orthodox Islam and rejecting many of his Black Muslim teachings. He challenged American racism, advocating self-defense as opposed to nonviolence. He
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emphasized Black Nationalist thought, encouraging Blacks to control their own communities, economies, culture, religion, and politics. He encouraged African Americans to form rifle clubs and to defend their communities from White terrorist attacks. Although he advocated Black Nationalist thought, he slowly moved toward an interracial alliance with progressive Whites. However, before he could move too far in this direction, he was assassinated on February 21, 1965, in New York City. Several Black radicals took up Malcolm X’s vision and blueprint in forming their own organizations. The Black Panther Party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality all shifted their interests toward a Black Nationalist philosophy, encouraging their followers to reject cooperation with Whites and instead to look to Africa and Black people in general for solutions to their problems. Black Nationalism continued to evolve, and by the 1980s and 1990s, it had become part of an intellectual argument over the necessity of Afrocentric perspectives in education. These debates involved topics such as Ebonics, reparations, and race-sensitive standardized tests. Black Nationalism continues to be a part of the intellectual debates dominating Black thought. It helped undergird the necessary pressure to end apartheid and today is fueling much of the work on global solutions to problems such as AIDS, debt relief, and African development. Abel A. Bartley See also Back to Africa Movement; Black Intellectuals; Black Panther Party; Civil Rights Movement; Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Malcolm X; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Further Readings
Cleaver, Eldridge. 1991. Soul on Ice. New York: Delta Trade Paperback. Haley, Alex. 1964. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley. New York: Ballantine Books. Moses, Jeremiah Wilson. 1988. The Golden Age of Black Nationalism 1850–1925. New York: Oxford University Press. Moses, Jeremiah Wilson, ed. 1996.Classical Black Nationalism from American Revolution to Marcus Garvey. New York: New York University Press.
BLACK PANTHER PARTY The Black Panther Party was founded in October 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, two African American college students in Oakland, California. Seale, the chairman, and Newton, the minister of defense, wanted to offer an urban perspective to the race problem in America. The two men symbolized the growing frustrations of young African Americans about the progress of the Civil Rights Movement. This entry looks at the history of the organization, recording its many contributions along with the controversy and conflict it generated.
Building an Organization Bobby Seale was born on October 22, 1936, in Dallas, Texas, the oldest of three children. His father was a master carpenter who taught him the carpentry trade. Seale was a naturally gifted individual and mastered the concert piano. He worked several jobs as a journeyman sheet metal mechanic and mechanical draftsman before joining the air force, where he was dismissed on a bad conduct discharge. Unable to find stable work, Seale attended Merritt College in Oakland, where he met Huey Newton in September 1962. Newton was born on February 17, 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana, the last of seven children. His father was an itinerant minister who moved the family to Oakland in 1944. Newton struggled in school until his older brother tutored him through high school. After graduation, he enrolled in Merritt College. Newton became an ardent reader of African American history and literature and participated in several radical organizations. He met Bobby Seale while both were members of the Afro-American Association, a student organization that debated African American topics. The men were immediately drawn together by their radical ideology and their commitment to the poor. They volunteered in the Oakland Poverty Center, where they got a firsthand view of the effects of urban poverty. At Oakland Community College, they laid the foundation for the introduction of Black History courses and successfully campaigned for hiring additional Black faculty. After becoming disillusioned with the plight of the poor and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, they formed the Black Panther Party. They were concerned about the ghetto conditions African Americans
Black Panther Party
faced in urban areas of the West. They believed that the Civil Rights Movement had not promoted the structural changes necessary to ensure Blacks meaningful economic opportunities or to attain African American equality. Therefore, they broke from the mainstream nonviolent civil rights struggle and advocated a program of self-defense and self-determination, which was anchored in their Black Nationalist philosophy. Shifting emphasis away from Dr. King’s integrationist stance, they instead advocated a nationalist and socialist ideology more closely associated with his critics. After reading the writings of Malcolm X and Franz Fanon, they adopted their ideas advocating the internationalization of the African American cause. They called for armed resistance to American oppression and destruction of the machinery of the oppressor. They were especially concerned with the treatment African Americans received from what they called racist police forces. Later, they read works from Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara. They adopted Mao Zedong’s teachings, including his words “Power emanates from the barrel of a gun.” They emphasized the progress made by violent Black revolutionaries like Denmark Vesey, Toussaint L’Overture, Gabriel Prosser, and Nat Turner, arguing that violence in self-defense does work. The organization’s name and emblem were borrowed from Stokely Carmichael’s Lowndes County, Alabama, Freedom Organization, which had been founded a few years earlier. Over time, the Black Panthers established chapters in nearly every major city and had a membership that numbered in the thousands. They were able to expand their program from the West into urban areas all over the country by emphasizing their social programs and advocating a revolutionary philosophy. They recruited several talented individuals who helped popularize the Panther ideas. Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Hutton, Elaine Brown, Kathleen Cleaver, H. Rap Brown, Fred Hampton, and others became overnight heroes in the Black community for their radical denunciations of the White power structure. They organized and ran in political campaigns, with Eldridge Cleaver serving as the Black Panther candidate for president in 1968 and garnering more than 200,000 votes.
Contributions and Controversy Initially, the group’s aim was to protect African American communities and end police brutality and
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oppression. The Black Panther Party developed programs and activities designed to aid the urban poor, such as free clinics to provide medical aid to the poor and food giveaways to disadvantaged schoolchildren. By 1969, each morning, the party fed more than 10,000 children breakfast. The party also organized the first ghetto-centered antidrug programs, teaching the evils of drugs, and held nutrition, parasite prevention, and oral hygiene seminars. Panther volunteers were trained by doctors and given medical supplies, such as microscopes and free medication. The Black Panthers developed the rallying cry of “Power to the People,” which emphasized their belief in Black empowerment. They were harsh critics of the police and their treatment of African Americans, especially those locked in urban ghettos. They referred to ghettos as “exploited colonies” of the United States. In Point 7 of their ten-point program, they called for an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people. Panther leaders referred to the police as “pigs,” an expression that later became more widespread. To check the influence of the police in their community, they organized police patrols, which followed police officers and reported on their interactions with minorities. These patrols, by armed Black Panthers, were directly responsible for a drastic cut in cases of police brutality. The presence of armed Black revolutionaries frightened White Californians and pushed the state to introduce a gun control measure. To protest the proposed bill, Panther leaders in full regalia marched on the California State Assembly on May 2, 1967, read a prepared statement, and then left. Their accidental appearance on the chamber floor frightened the assembled legislators, and the police arrested the Panthers for disturbing the peace and conspiracy. Seale spent 6 months in jail as a result, but the party was able to make a critical point and gain valuable publicity. Violent Con nflict
This confrontational approach eventually led to a series of deadly gun battles, which left several Black Panthers and at least one police officer dead. The police responded to the Panther challenge by engaging in a systematic campaign to rid their communities of the Panther Party. Local, state, and federal officials participated in this campaign, which eventually killed or arrested or most of the Panther leadership forced them to go on the run.
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FBI director J. Edgar Hoover referred to the Panthers as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and directed his agents to engage in a counterintelligence campaign against the organization. He wanted to cripple the Black Panthers and destroy their influence. Working with several law enforcement agencies, his agents delivered a series of devastating blows to the Panther organization. In 1969, Fred Hampton, a member of the Panthers in Chicago, and his assistant Mark Clark, were killed in a shootout with Chicago police. The police fired more than 100 bullets, while only one shot could be traced to the Panthers. Bobby Seale was sent to prison for his involvement in rioting at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Bobby Hutton, a 17-year-old Panther, was killed in a shootout with Oakland police. Eldridge Cleaver, the organization’s minister of information, was wounded in the same shootout. After the shooting, Cleaver, who had earlier spent 9 years in prison, was arrested for violating his parole. In November, he left the country, remaining abroad to avoid trial for the shootout. By 1972, twenty-four Black Panthers had been killed in shootouts with police. This caused the Panther leadership to make a controversial decision to denounce violence and instead work to organize the poor.
White radical groups. Carmichael argued that the organization needed to continue an unremitting struggle against the White Western world.
Rev viv vin ng the Plan
BLACK POWER
The Black Panther Party used Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book to formulate many of its strategies and ideas. Leaders encouraged their followers to read his book. Working from a blueprint called the “Black Panther Party Platform and Program,” Seale and Newton outlined a ten-point plan for recapturing the lost momentum of the civil rights struggle. The plan called for self-determination for African American communities, full employment, decent housing, teaching of African American history in schools, exemption from military service, trial of Black defendants before a Black judge and jury, and release of all Black prisoners from jail. Seale and Newton emphasized the class struggle, borrowing much of their ideology from Maoist thought. Though dedicated to socialism, the Black Panthers nevertheless built a wide coalition made up liberal Whites and disaffected African American youth. Expanding their base proved controversial, as Stokely Carmichael, the organization’s prime minister, resigned in protest over the Panthers’ coalition with
Abel A. Bartley See also Black Intellectuals; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Carmichael, Stokely; Civil Rights Movement; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Marxism and Racism; Newton, Huey
Further Readings
Cleaver, Kathleen and George Katsiaficas. 2001. Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party. New York: Routledge. Foner, Philip. 1970. The Black Panthers Speak: The Manifesto of the Party: The First Complete Documentary Record of the Panthers Program. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott. Hilliard, David and Donald Weise. 2002. The Huey Newton Reader. New York: Seven Stories Press. Hilliard, David and Keith Zimmerman. 2006. Huey:Spirit of the Panther. New York: Thunder Mouth Press. Seale, Bobby. 1970. Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey Newton. New York: Vintage Books.
The Black Power Movement (1965–1975) and the Civil Rights Movement (1955–1965) form different phases of the overarching African American struggle called the Black Freedom Movement. Black Power, as the latter phase of the Black Freedom Movement, emerged in the wake of the decline of the Civil Rights phase. Its beginning was marked by the 1965 Watts Revolt and extended to the mid-1970s, with 1975 often set as its end year. This entry describes the movement and its impact.
Origins of Expression Although the term Black Power was not used widely in a movement context until 1966, it had roots in the ongoing Black Nationalist sentiment and organizational thrusts among African Americans, most exemplified by Marcus Garvey. The father of modern Black Nationalism constantly called for organization for the acquisition of power for Black people. In the 1950s,
Black Power
Richard Wright used the term Black Power in the title of one of his books, and Paul Robeson had used it in his writings. When the Black Power Movement emerged in the 1960s, the teachings of the Nation of Islam and its national spokesman, Malcolm X, played key roles in shaping its conception and development. Robert Williams, a self-defense activist and major Black Power activist, had also used the term in his writings from exile and, along with Malcolm X, had contributed to Black Power advocates’ stress on armed self-defense. The revolutionary leaders Frantz Fanon (Martinique and Algeria) and Sekou Toure (Guinea) stressed cultural revolution and culture as an indispensable aspect of the liberation struggle; they also had a tremendous impact on the idea and pursuit of Black Power by its advocates. The direct call for Black Power came in 1966 from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), during one of its marches for civil rights. One of its members, Willie Ricks (Mukasa), made the call for “Black Power,” and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), its chair, took up the call and turned it into a national battle cry. In fact, the SNCC and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) were transformed from civil rights organizations and became leading advocates of Black Power.
Popularization of Black Power In a baccalaureate speech in May 1966 at Howard University, Representative Adam Clayton Powell advanced a concept he would later seek to institutionalize in the form of Black Power conferences. He stated in his address that “human rights are Godgiven. Civil rights are man-made. . . . Our life must be purposed to implement human rights. . . . To demand these God-given rights is to seek Black power—the power to build Black institutions of splendid achievement.” In August, Representative Powell, then chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, called a group of leaders and activists to Washington to plan a series of Black Power conferences. The purpose of these conferences was to discuss critical issues facing Black people nationally and internationally, develop an activist agenda to address these issues, and build structures and processes to carry out the agenda. Out of the initial planning meeting, a coordinating committee called the Continuations Committee was formed, with
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Nathan Wright, director of urban affairs of the Episcopal Diocese (Newark), as chair; Maulana Karenga, chair of the Organization Us (Los Angeles), as vice-chair; and other members Omar Ahmed (Bronx, New York), Isaiah Robison (New York), and Chuck Stone (Washington, D.C.). Although definitions of Black Power were varied, they generally stressed Black people’s building and control of the political, economic, and cultural institutions of their communities and living free and selfdetermined lives in society and the world. Maulana Karenga, who emerged as a central organizer and main theoretician of the Black Power conferences, views Black Power as the struggle of Black people pledged collectively to self-determination, selfrespect, and self-defense. The goal of self-determination stressed the quest for political and economic control of the Black community; political consciousness and responsibility; and rightful representation in the country, activism, unity, and institution building. In its international aspect, it supported pan-African unity, common struggle and liberation, and linkage with Third World liberation movements. The emphasis on self-respect spoke to cultural grounding, reaffirming an African American identity, dignity, and humanity in the context of African American culture; a “return to the source” as an African people; and a proud and productive assertion in the world as Black (African) people. The stress on selfdefense involved affirmation of the right and responsibility of resistance to oppression, including armed self-defense, or, as Malcolm X phrased it, the right to struggle for “freedom by any means necessary.” The first of the Black Power conferences was held in Newark in 1967 and the second in Philadelphia in 1968. Several other similar conferences were held later under different auspices. But the first two held at the height of the Black Power Movement were at the center of its self-definition and tended to reflect its goals and direction. At the first conference, in Newark, over 1,000 representatives came from across the United States and from Africa and the Caribbean. Beginning July 20, the 4-day conference conducted fourteen workshops, including topics on politics, economics, religion, international relations, youth, art and communications, professionals, coalitions and alliances, family, the city, and social change. Resolutions were passed establishing policy in these areas. Especially notable were the decisions to engage in electoral politics in Newark and the establishment of Black political
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power in that city as a major goal, a goal eventually achieved.
Impact of the Movement The Black Power Movement expressed itself in electoral struggles in the North and the South. Examples are the penetration of African Americans into city government with the election of African American big-city mayors and councilpersons, not only in Newark but also throughout the country. A number of Black party formations came together in the North and the South, including the development of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and others. Also important were the new Black United Front initiatives organized around the term operational unity, put forth by Maulana Karenga and defined as “unity without uniformity, unity in diversity.” These included local formations like the Los Angeles Black Congress (Los Angeles), the Black Federation (San Diego), the Committee for a United Newark (Newark), and others. It also gave rise to the New Convention Movement, which produced, as noted above, the Black Power conferences (1966–1968), the Black Arts Convention (1966), and the National Black Political Convention, in Gary, Indiana (1972). Out of this process at the national level, the movement produced the Congress of African People (1971), the National Black Assembly (1972), the Black Women’s United Front (1974), and the African Liberation Support Committee (1972). The Black Power Movement focused on massive political education, mobilization, and organization of the masses and radical confrontation with the established order. The urban revolts were seen as one of its political signatures and provoked adherents and support, as well as harsh criticism and suppression. Many of its leaders and adherents were arrested and imprisoned on various charges, which were denounced by the movement as “frame-ups” and political imprisonment, evidence of the racism and injustice of the system and the role of the police as an occupying army. The Black Power Movement also aided in the development of the Black Arts Movement, the Black Studies Movement and Black Studies, the Black Students’ Movement, Black liberation theology, Black consciousness among Black athletes and musicians, and the revival and expansion of pan-Africanism among African Americans. Moreover, it raised consciousness through a massive political and cultural
education process that reaffirmed Black people’s African origins and identities and called for cultural recovery and grounding. In this context emerged cultural initiatives and creations such as Kwanzaa, the Nguzo Saba (the Seven Principles), Kawaida philosophy, youth rites of passage programs, African value orientation, the signature Afro hairstyle, African fashions, African naming and life cycle ceremonies, the learning of African languages, the independent schools movement, and the building of various cultural institutions. Also, Black power advocates linked the African American freedom struggle with continental African and Third World liberation struggles. Out of these continental African and Third World linkages came added emphasis on cultural revolution and armed struggle and other concepts, like Ujamaa (African socialism and cooperative economics) and vanguard parties, and concepts of internal colonialism and liberated zones as alternating conditions of the Black community. As an expression of Black Nationalism, the Black Power Movement had four basic thrusts: religious, cultural, economic, and political. Some of the groups that were representative of these were (a) religious: the Nation of Islam and the Shrine of the Black Madonna; (b) cultural: Us, the East, the Spirit House, the Institute of Positive Education, and Ahidiana; (c) economic: the Congress of Racial Equality and the Opportunities Industrial Center; and (d) political: the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Black Panther Party, and the Republic of New Africa. Some groups, like the Nation of Islam and Us, included more than one or all of these thrusts within their organizational agendas and initiatives. The Black Power Movement declined and disappeared in the 1970s as a result of both police suppression through the FBI Cointelpro initiative and mistakes and conflicts within the movement itself. But it has had a lasting impact on the way African Americans identify, understand, and assert themselves in cultural and political terms, and it reinforced their stress on self-determination, cultural recovery, community power, and social struggle. Maulana Karenga See also African Americans; African American Studies; Afrocentricity; Black Nationalism; Black Panther Party; Carmichael, Stokely; Chicano Movement; Civil Rights Movement; Kwanzaa; Malcolm X; Marxism and Racism; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Blockbusting
Further Readings
Barbour, Floyd B. 1968. The Black Power Revolt. Boston, MA: Porter Sargent. Carmichael, Stokely and Charles Hamilton. 1967. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. New York: Vintage Books. Karenga, Maulana. 2002. “The Black Power Movement.” Pp. 190–202 in Introduction to Black Studies. Los Angeles, CA: University of Sankore Press. Van Deburg, William L. 1992. New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture 1965–1975. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
BLOCKBUSTING Blockbusting, a term that is well-known in real estate circles, refers to the intentional exploitation of racial fears to induce White families to sell their homes to Black families, leading to rapid racial transition from all-White to all-Black neighborhoods. Such panic peddling, quite common during the 1950s and 1960s, took advantage of the limited home ownership opportunities for Blacks, widespread racial prejudice on the part of Whites, and the fear of what Black neighbors might mean for property values—to generate sales and commissions for unscrupulous real estate agents. Along the way, many White families lost much of the investment they had made in their homes; Blacks were able to purchase homes, but on exploitative terms; communities experienced much disruption; and racial fears and hostility increased—while real estate agents and their partners among mortgage-lending institutions and other housing-related financial service providers reaped huge profits. Blockbusting was declared unlawful under the Fair Housing Act passed in 1968. But its impact on the segregation of the nation’s housing markets persists. To fully understand the nature and impact of blockbusting, it is important to place the practice in the context of ongoing patterns of segregation and competing explanations for those patterns. While Black/White segregation has marginally declined nationwide in recent years, in large cities where the Black population remains highly concentrated (e.g., New York, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee), it has persisted at high levels. The index of dissimilarity remains at around .80 in those metropolitan areas where most of the nation’s Black population continues to reside. (This index is a commonly used measure of segregation that
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varies from 0, where every neighborhood reflects the racial composition of the entire community, to 1.00, where every neighborhood is either all-White or allBlack. Scores over .60 are generally considered quite high, reflecting highly segregated cities.) Segregation scores for Hispanics and Asians are considerably lower, closer to .4 or .5, but they have increased in recent years. Segregation is not just a statistical artifact. It poses severe challenges to minority households that are separated from mainstream society. Schools in nonWhite communities tend to be inferior in almost every way (e.g., per-pupil funding, facilities, teacher experience, graduation, and drop-out rates). Streets are more dangerous. Health care is less readily available. Mainstream financial institutions leave, and so-called fringe bankers (e.g., check-cashing outlets, payday lenders, pawnshops, rent-to-own stores) move in. Jobs disappear, along with valuable social networks for learning about employment opportunities. As Douglas Massey, coauthor of the classic book American Apartheid, has often observed, barriers to spatial mobility are barriers to social mobility. Contrary to conventional wisdom, segregation indeed reflects barriers. It is commonly believed today that most racial and ethnic barriers in the nation’s housing market (and elsewhere as well) have virtually broken down, with remaining patterns of segregation reflecting a combination of individual choices and preferences of people to live among their “own kind” as well as economic barriers that sort people by financial status across diverse communities. From this perspective, because racial and ethnic minorities earn lower-than-average salaries and have fewer economic resources, it would be expected that Whites and non-Whites would be distributed unevenly across neighborhoods. The social science evidence, however, clearly demonstrates that a range of discriminatory public policies and private practices have long been far more influential in determining the racial and ethnic composition of the nation’s neighborhoods. Public opinion polls show that the overwhelming number of minority families would prefer an integrated to a segregated community. And research shows that racial minorities at all socioeconomic levels encounter unlawful discrimination in the nation’s housing markets. Such practices reflect several long traditions. In the early decades of the Federal Housing Administration, the agency’s underwriting guidelines
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virtually required segregation as a condition for qualifying for a federally insured mortgage, and almost every FHA mortgage from the inception of the program in the 1930s through most of the 1960s went to White families. Enforcement of racially restrictive covenants ensured that properties would continue to be occupied only by members of the same race. Concentration of public housing in the nation’s inner cities trapped many poor, non-White (usually African American) families in segregated ghettos. Federally subsidized highways facilitated the commuting of White suburbanites between their homes and downtown jobs. Exclusionary zoning laws by suburban municipalities still restrict the number of multifamily housing units (e.g., apartments) and other affordable homes, limiting the number of low-income and disproportionately minority residents. Such public policies have been reinforced by private industry practices. Redlining by banks and insurance companies undercut homeownership opportunities for minority households and all residents of predominantly non-White neighborhoods. Racial steering by real estate and rental agents, which has increased in recent years, contributes to these patterns. Blockbusting was a particularly egregious but effective tactic in shaping the racial demography of U.S. cities in what, for many, was their formative years during the 1950s and 1960s. Even if blockbusting has faded in recent years, it nonetheless constituted a key part of a set of practices that continue to maintain a highly segregated pattern of urban and suburban living in the United States today. Another important contextual dimension is the fact that blockbusting “worked” only because of the severely limited homeownership opportunities that long existed for racial and ethnic minorities. Discrimination kept Blacks in particular “in their place.” However, as the number of Black residents grew during the post–World War II years, cities simply had to find more space for housing. Unscrupulous real estate agents exploited this housing shortage, fears on the part of many city residents of declining property values if Blacks moved in, and White racism generally. Tactics varied. Sales agents would often phone, mail, or just visit White homeowners offering to purchase their homes, warning them that the value of their homes might well be dropping in the near future as more Blacks moved in. Sometimes, they would hire Black mothers to walk their strollers up and down the sidewalks of White neighborhoods or hire Black teenagers to drive their cars through the streets. Though perhaps subtle, the message was quite clear.
Many local communities have responded to these practices, as did the federal government when it banned blockbusting in the 1968 Fair Housing Act. In places like Oak Park, Illinois, and Shaker Heights, Ohio, groups have initiated a wide range of policies to nurture stable racial integration. These policies include local bans on blockbusting, limits on the use of for-sale signs, mortgage programs whereby families receive financial incentives to make a “pro-integration” move, and coaxing local real estate agents to practice “reverse steering” by encouraging Whites and non-Whites to make pro-integration moves. At least some cities and metropolitan areas are more diverse today, and these efforts have contributed to those emerging patterns. Even if the more overt forms of blockbusting and discrimination have faded in recent years and some city as well as suburban communities have become more diverse, segregation persists as a central feature of the nation’s metropolitan areas. This is due largely to the legacy and continuing reality of several forms of the discrimination that has long played out in U.S. housing markets. Gregory D. Squires See also American Apartheid; Discrimination in Housing; Gautreaux Decision; Ghetto; Housing Audits; Public Housing; Racism; Redlining; Resegregation; Restrictive Covenants; Segregation; White Flight
Further Readings
Gotham, Kevin F. 2002. “Beyond Invasion and Succession: School Segregation, Real Estate Blockbusting, and the Political Economy of Neighborhood Racial Transition.” City and Community 1(1):83–112. Hirsch, Arnold R. 1983. Making the Second Ghetto: Race & Housing in Chicago 1940–1960. New York: Cambridge University Press. Jackson, Kenneth T. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Keating, W. Dennis. 1994. The Suburban Racial Dilemma: Housing and Neighborhoods. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Massey, Douglas S. 2001. “Residential Segregation and Neighborhood Conditions in U.S. Metropolitan Areas.” Pp. 391–434 in America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences, vol. 1, edited by N. J. Smelser, W. J. Wilson, and F. Mitchell. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Blood Quantum
Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Orser, W. Edward. 1994. Blockbusting in Baltimore: The Emonsdson Village Story. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Sugrue, Thomas J. 1996. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
BLOOD QUANTUM Blood quantum, a concept that evolved during the period of chattel slavery to distinguish African Americans from Whites, refers to the proportion of a particular ancestry a person has. It was also used by the U.S. government to categorize Native Americans, and, ironically, the racist concept was later adopted by Native Americans. For example, according to blood quantum, a person whose father is full-blood and whose mother is not Native American would be considered one-fourth Native American. Historically, and in contemporary society, tribes have used blood quantum as one of the criteria to determine enrollment in a tribe. For example, the Apache use a minimum blood quantum of oneeighth, while the Navajo requires one-fourth. This entry will consider the historical significance of blood quantum, social significance, and current debates about it.
Historical Significance Among Native people, blood quantum is an ingrained fact of everyday existence. As a construct, blood quantum is a construct that attempts to calculate the degree of racial inheritance for individuals. The concept embodies the assumption of racial purity and degree of racial mixture, carrying with it implications for social, economic, and political rights and statuses. Since its origin and institutional interjection into numerous federal policies concerning peoples of indigenous decent, it remains one of the most controversial and divisive issues afflicting contemporary Native North America. The origins of blood quantum are directly linked to the development of chattel slavery. By 1661, the institution of slavery was formally recognized by Virginia. Over the next 4 decades, other colonies formalized slavery as a legal economic and social institution. Paralleling the development of slavery was the evolving construction and separation of races on the basis of phenotype.
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Using color along with other phenotypic characteristics to define racial and social inferiority was supported by a growing body of philosophical and scientific literature in that era that held that Africans, Native Americans, and mulattoes possessed inferior intellectual, moral, and social qualities that stood in direct opposition to “whiteness” and its inherent qualities. Race and racism became part of the North American political economic landscape. Blood quantum came to be used to track racial ancestry and define legal rights. In 1705, the state of Virginia enacted a series of laws to deny civil liberties to any Negro, mulatto, or Indian. The law also applied to generations, defining children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren as inferior members of society based on ancestry. Following Virginia’s example, other colonies adopted similar laws, using blood quantum as a mechanism to determine status, privilege, and rights of a free person or slave. The growing body of laws, although originally rooted in the institution of chattel slavery, evolved into a legal and social system that measured the extent of participation and privileges associated with full citizenship under the banner of “whiteness.” Once blood quantum became established as a mechanism for assessing inferiority, its use continued unabated into the 19th century. Increasingly, the development and progress of U.S. society was guided by the belief in the nation’s racial destiny. Dr. Samuel Morton’s 1839 publication, Crania Americana, asserted that Native Americans had a “deficiency of higher mental powers” and an “inaptitude for civilization,” making it impossible for Natives and Europeans to interact. Thus, the building of an American civilization, including its future social and moral development, would be determined by its racial composition. The construction of an Anglo-Saxon nation that extended from one coast to the other under the policy of Manifest Destiny required the further separation of the races. Removal of indigenous populations using the Indian Removal Act of May 28, 1830, provided one strategy for physically separating the races. Another was the passage of laws prohibiting marriages between European Americans and inferior races. North Carolina, early on, passed a code that forbade marriages between Whites and Indians, Negroes, mulattoes, or any other mixed person to the third generation. Through time, such blood quantum laws concerning race mixing became not only widespread but also more pervasive.
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After the Civil War, new racial questions arose. Foremost was whether “inferior racial stocks” could be assimilated into the national fold and whether these “races” would promote national progress. These questions coincided with the acceptance of Darwinian evolutionary principles that predicted a unity of humankind. The application of Darwinian evolution was also extended to the development of social complexity, not just biology. Therefore, it was held that all societies must follow similar trajectories in biosocial development, opening the possibility for the incorporation of inferior races. By the 1880s, the surviving Native American societies were placed on reservations. For some policymakers, reservations were considered a refuge for a declining race; they believed that Native Americans could be salvaged by forcing them out of their “inferior” state, breaking up the habits of savagery, and replacing them with the accoutrements of civilization. Using evolutionary theory and scientific racism as guiding principles, ethnocide from 1880 until 1934 became officially instituted toward solving the “Indian problem.” Blood quantum, an insidious expression of scientific racism, became the centerpiece in many federal policies of forced assimilation. The premises that biophysical characteristics, mental attributes, and cultural capabilities were imparted through a “race’s” blood, found a home in the management of Indian affairs through the passage of the 1887 General Allotment Act, which provided land and certain other benefits according to the degree of Indian blood among the allottees.
Social Significance Blood quantum linked forced assimilation with scientific racism by providing a legal definition of Native American. The allotment process required the compilation of formal tribal rolls, listing individuals belonging to each recognized reservation tribe. While the act posited no specific criteria by which this would be accomplished, Indian agents used the blood quantum “standards,” an already established mechanism for delineating racial descent. Once established, blood quantum was used by the Indian office not only to track “civilized progress” but also to assign entitlements to enrolled tribal members and define the extent of wardship restrictions. In the racialist configuration to construct and regulate Indian identity, “full-bloods” were deemed racially incapable of managing their own affairs and were issued trust patents for their allotments. “Mixed-bloods,” by virtue
of their “White” racial ancestry, were deemed more competent, often receiving patents in simple fee. Section 6 of the Dawes Act specifies that an Indian who had “adopted the habits of civilized life, is hereby declared to be a citizen of the United States,” with all the entitled rights. Competency, or the adoption of civilization, equated with being biologically and socially “White” enough, meaning that such an individual was no longer defined as being “Indian.” The blatant preferential treatment bestowed upon those of mixed ancestry would eventually drive societal wedges, based on the false assumption of race, into indigenous societies that did not exist prior to the reservation period. Recent research concludes that there is little genetic distinction among America’s Indigenous Peoples, despite the precontact cultural diversity across Native North America. Tribal boundaries and ethnic distinctiveness did not inhibit a high degree of reproductive exchange between distinct societies. Thus, prior to establishing blood quantum to define racial identity, social kinship rather than biology was the core component of both societal composition and individual ethnic affiliation. Every Aboriginal society employed a number of sociological mechanisms—adoption, marriage, capture, and naturalization—for the incorporation of individuals and groups from foreign societies. After colonization, numerous Europeans and Africans were fully integrated into Native American societies. Escaped African slaves, for example, typically were accepted among Native peoples. Whether African or European, their host societies incorporated them without any phenotypic or cultural stigma. Over the course of history, most indigenous nations periodically integrated people from other societies. Such processes negated genetic distinctions. By the turn of the century, however, most Native American societies replaced these social mechanisms for defining their communities with blood quantum. The substitution ensured that Native Americans would evaluate each other, phenotypically and culturally, through the prism of racialist criteria. As Indian policy evolved, blood quantum expanded to determine eligibility for federal resources and services, to permit tribal membership, and to delineate economic and political benefits. Blood quantum criteria became internalized among Native American communities with the passage of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA). Most IRA constitutions adopted blood quantum as a criterion for defining ethnic identity, tribal enrollment, and tribal citizenship. By advancing the prevailing quantum standard, a living vestige of 19th-century scientific racism, many Native
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Americans began to use it as the litmus test for defining “Indianness.”
Contemporary Debates Many Native Americans are now indoctrinated into assessing each other in terms of blood quantum. This has led to a continual evaluation of cultural competence and social acceptance based largely on phenotypic characteristics. At a conference of Native American scholars held in February 1993, under the auspices of the Center for Indian Education, Arizona State University, the issue of “ethnic fraud” arose. Native American scholars in attendance were disturbed by the number of academics in U.S. universities falsely claiming to have Indian ancestry in order to receive educational and hiring benefits. The discussion led to six recommendations. The number one recommendation is to require documentation of enrollment in a state or federally recognized tribe, giving hiring preference to those who meet this criterion. Allegations of “ethnic fraud” continue to surface not only on college campuses but also across Indian Country. Three years before the conference, the 1990 passage of the Act for the Protection of American Indian Arts and Crafts deemed it a criminal offense for anyone not enrolled in a federally recognized tribe to identify themselves as American Indian while selling art. Critics claim that after its passage, “identity monitors” scoured Native American art venues demanding to see the documentation of anyone suspected of committing ethnic fraud. The evaluation of ethnic identity using blood quantum has resulted in a rise in infighting and on occasion outright race-baiting between and among indigenous people. Within many reservations and indigenous communities, blood quantum is a contentious issue, often distorted by the blind acceptance of the concept. Native American demographic data reveal that during the 20th century and beyond, there has been an increasing mixture between tribal members and non-Native peoples. These trends have not only continued but accelerated, raising concerns among some about preserving tribal biological and cultural purity. Some reservation tribal leaders are arguing that tribal constitutions should be amended, this time to purge enrolled members who married non-Natives or to raise blood quantum levels on the premise that such measures are vital to maintain the integrity of the tribal identity. Most tragic, some traditionalists on various reservations have taken up the banner of racial politics.
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Ignoring principles of kinship affiliation and other cultural practices for the incorporation of other people, some traditionalists have adopted blood quantum as the singular “traditionalist belief.” The implications of using blood quantum are evident in every aspect of contemporary Native American life. A Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) or Certificate of Degree of Alaska Native Blood is issued to determine citizenship in a specific federally recognized tribe or indigenous community. Enrolled members with a CDIB are entitled to or denied rights and the allocation of resources. In 1985, Congress passed the Quarter Blood Amendment Act to determine which Native American students are eligible for Native education programs and tuition-free assistance at the Bureau of Indian Affairs or contract schools. The act requires that the one-quarter blood degree be documented with a CDIB. The internalization of European America’s conception of race through the adoption of blood quantum by Native peoples, along with the virulence with which it is being manifested in indigenous communities, represents a culmination of federal colonial policies originating nearly 300 years ago. Native North America, some critical scholars claim, has been rendered selfcolonizing, if not self-liquidating. Over the centuries, blood quantum divorced thousands of people from their Native American ethnic heritage through arbitrarily defining who is or is not a person of Native American descent. For some individuals, blood quantum is a eugenics policy designed to “statistically exterminate” the remaining Native American people. For others, it is a mechanism to legitimately define who may claim to be Native American. Blood quantum, as a concept, will remain a contested arena on the cultural and political landscape of Native North America. Gregory R. Campbell See also Bureau of Indian Affairs; Dawes Act of 1887; Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978; Intermarriage; Multiracial Identity; Native American Health Care; Identity; Native American Identity, Legal Background; Native Americans; Race; Race, Social Construction of; Reservation System
Further Readings
Campbell, Gregory R. 1994. “The Politics of Counting: Critical Reflections about the Depopulation Question of Native North America.” Pp. 67–131 in The Unheard Voices: American Indian Responses to the Columbian Quincentenary, 1492–1992, edited by C. M. Gentry and
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D. A. Grinde, Jr. Los Angeles: University of California, American Indian Studies Center. Campbell, Gregory R., ed. 2001. Many Americas: Critical Perspectives on Race, Racism, and Ethnicity. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt. Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth. 1993. “Meeting of Indian Professors Takes Up Issues of ‘Ethnic Fraud,’ Sovereignty, and Research Needs.” Wicazo Sa Review 11(1):57–59. Crawford, Michael Herman. 2001. The Origins of Native Americans: Evidence from Anthropological Genetics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Forbes, Jack D. 2000. “Blood Quantum: A Relic of Racism and Termination.” Native Intelligence from The People’s Voice. Retrieved from http://www.weyanoke.org/jdfBloodQuantum.html Gould, Stephen J. 1996. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton. Jaimes, M. Annette. 1992. “Federal Identification Policy: An Usurpation of Indigenous Sovereignty in North America.” Pp. 123–138 in The State of Native America, Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, edited by M. A. Jaimes. Boston, MA: South End Press. Jones, Nicholas A. 2005. We the People of More Than One Race in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce. Moore, John H. 1992. “Blood Quantum and How Not to Count Indians.” Unpublished lecture, April 9, University of Montana, Department of Anthropology, Missoula. Ogunwole, Stella U. 2006. We the People: American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce. Stannard, William. 1960. The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in America, 1815–59. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Thornton, Russell. 1987. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History since 1492. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Tobar, Hector. 2001. “Thinning Bloodlines.” Missoulian. January 23, B1.
BOAS, FRANZ (1858–1942) Franz Boas, a German-Jewish immigrant to the United States, received a doctorate in physics from Kiel University in Germany in 1881 and went on to found American professional anthropology. As the chairman of what would become the famed department of anthropology at Columbia University between 1901 and his retirement in 1935, Boas transformed anthropology
from a field that was primarily the domain of amateurs who worked for the U.S. government or museums on the Northeastern seaboard of the United States—for example, Daniel Garrison Brinton, John Wesley Powell, and W. J. McGee—to a professional, academic discipline in American universities. Before 1920, Boas trained a cadre of distinguished students who included such notables as Alexander Goldenweiser, Alfred L. Kroeber, Robert H. Lowie, and Edward Sapir. After 1920, his students included Melville J. Herskovits, Ruth Benedict, Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Mead, Otto Klineberg, and Ashley Montagu. By the 1950s, virtually all of the major anthropologists in the United States had been trained under Boas or one of his students. Of greater significance is that Boas’s pioneering development of the concept of culture ushered in a revolution in the social scientific discourses on the issues of race and racial capabilities. As this entry shows, Boas engendered a shift in preoccupation of the social sciences with racial hierarchies that rationalized northern and western European and EuropeanAmerican dominance over non-White peoples both at home and abroad, as well as over southern and eastern European peoples, who during this period were viewed as persons whose race was to some appreciable degree different and distinct from northern and western Europeans. Boas and his students demonstrated that the data about human differences could be explained more precisely in cultural terms than in the expansive racial terms used by evolutionary anthropologists, evident in supraindividual phrases such as racial soul, racial essence, racial spirit, and racial temperament. Furthermore, Boas was an activist who used the tools of science to support the reform agenda of many varied and different racial and ethnic minorities. His life, in fact, ended because of a heart attack brought on by his vituperative denunciation of the Nazi exterminations of so-called inferior stocks during World War II.
Boas as a Cultural Anthropologist As a starting point, Boas’s contribution to the discussion of comparative racial capabilities may be seen as a powerful reaction against 19th-century racial science. Boas himself was a member of a persecuted ethnic minority. His face was scarred during sword duels with anti-Semites in the increasingly intolerant climate of Bismarck’s Germany, and he later witnessed the augmenting nativism that arose as a consequence of the
Boas, Franz (1858–1942)
influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century in the United States. Boas tried to assist in stemming the tide of obdurate racial intolerance and hatred. He was especially skeptical of the self-serving claims of cultural evolutionists— for example, Edward B. Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, and John Lubbock—who drew on Charles Darwin’s work to develop the theory of cultural evolution. These men argued that three distinct and discrete categories defined the stages of cultural development: savagery, barbarism, and civilization. By assuming that their civilization was the most progressive and the standard by which other cultures should be judged, these Victorian ethnologists were extremely ethnocentric. Beginning with the publication of his vicepresidential address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1894, titled “Human Faculty as Determined by Race,” and culminating in the publication of his magnum opus, The Mind of Primitive Man, in 1911, Boas qualified the arguments of the Victorian ethnologists. Through his particularistic, empirical approach to the study of cultures, Boas demonstrated that the armchair anthropologists had confounded achievement with an aptitude for achievement. As a consequence, Boas argued that Western civilization could be accounted for on the basis of historical events rather than on the White race’s purported mental faculties. For example, he argued that purported differences between so-called civilized man and primitive man in mental functions, abstraction, inhibition, and choice were a matter of degree, not of kind. Having confronted anti-Semitism in his native Germany, Boas was especially troubled by the practical fact that prejudicial values aided and abetted the perpetuation of the low status assigned to African Americans in the American social order. Although Boas thought that some of the contemporaneous negative stereotypes of African Americans were true, he did not believe that indigenous West Africans conformed to some of those same stereotypes. In an article that was published in the Southern Workman in 1909, titled “Industries of the African Negroes,” Boas attacked three weaknesses in the argument of proponents of Black inferiority. First, using the example of a West African village market, he argued that stereotypes suggesting that West Africans were innately indolent and unable to defer gratification were fallacious. Second, Boas attacked the stereotypes of Blacks as lacking strong willpower, presenting evidence that some African leaders had
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succeeded in organizing large empires that had endured for long stretches of history. Furthermore, Boas discredited the myth that Whites had made the most significant historical achievements by arguing that African Blacks were perhaps the first race to invent iron implements. In essence, he said, the inability of African Americans to rival the industrial, artistic, and political achievements of their African brethren was due not to any congenital inferiority, but instead to the brutal environment in which they had been forced to live for so many years.
Boas as a Physical Anthropologist Between 1894 and 1911, Boas attacked the racial orthodoxy of the period, which was based on the assessments of comparative anthropometric measurements of the body parts of members of the White and non-White races. Anthropometric measurements were performed as early as the 1830s by such distinguished scientists as Samuel G. Morton, John Bachman, Josiah Nott, George Gliddon, and Louis Agassiz. Their assessments were later supported by the Union Army Surgeons’ studies during the Civil War and by the French craniometrican and father of European physical anthropology, Paul Broca. Rejecting their assessments, which were based on the relatively simple mathematical techniques of means, medians, and percentiles, Boas used correlational calculus to demonstrate the overlapping distribution of anthropometric measurements. As a result, he concluded that all Whites were not superior to all non-Whites. Thus, although non-Whites might not produce as great a proportion of “men of high genius” and their average achievement might not match the average achievement of Whites, all non-Whites were not inferior to all Whites. Boas, in essence, was making a formidable case for “approximate” equality, “individual” differences, and “virtual” equality—terms seldom used in contemporary scholarship. In his examination and analysis of White ethnicities, particularly southern and eastern European immigrant groups, Boas argued, unlike most scholars of race, that the head form was not as hitherto believed. When he was appointed to the U.S. Immigration Commission, established in 1907 by President Theodore Roosevelt, he investigated the effects the new American environment had on 17,281 southern and eastern European immigrants and their children. His arguments, encapsulated in the multivolume Change in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants
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in 1912, suggested that human types were not stable and that the degree of their plasticity was determined by the environment. When these findings were dismissed, he was understandably upset and irate. Congress passed the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which imposed quotas that had the net effect of drastically reducing immigration from southern and eastern Europe.
Boas the Activist Finally, Boas was an intellectual activist. In 1906, at the request of W. E. B. Du Bois, Boas delivered a commencement address at Atlanta University, in which he extolled the value of African culture. His speech at the National Negro Conference in 1910, reprinted in The Crisis, a publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, advocated Black-White amalgamation. As previously discussed, he took significant initiative in attempting to combat nativism and xenophobia directed against the “new immigrants.” Although racism, xenophobia, and nativism have survived Boas, he bequeathed to the United States an intellectual tradition that was equipped to sustain a long, protracted struggle against the forces of reaction. Vernon J. Williams, Jr. See also African Americans; Anti-Semitism; Cultural Relativism; Immigration, U.S.; Jewish-Black Relations: A Historical Perspective; Race; Racism; Social Darwinism
Further Readings
Cole, Douglas. 1999. Franz Boas. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Hyatt, Marshall. 1990. Franz Boas. New York: Greenwood Press. Stocking, George W. 1968. Race, Culture, and Evolution. New York: Basic Books. Williams, Vernon, Jr. 1996. Rethinking Race. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
term refers specifically to groups of people who leave home in small fishing boats and sometimes makeshift rafts, seeking asylum abroad. During the 20th century, the most significant movements of such “boat people”—at least from an American perspective— began in the 1960s, with Cubans, Haitians, and Vietnamese. These groups are the focus of this entry. It should be noted, however, that new crises since the end of the cold war have provoked new waves of boat people in other regions. The Mediterranean has recently seen a steady flow of such people from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, and Australia faces a similar situation of people arriving from neighboring islands. Also critical to fully understanding the term boat people is that beneath its purely descriptive meaning lies a more sinister intention of stigmatizing and racializing poor, desperate immigrants. These perceptions, in turn, shape public opinion and official policies toward these immigrants, governing their fates wherever they settle.
Southeast Asia In the 20-year period that followed the fall of Saigon in April 1975, an estimated 500,000 Vietnamese fled the country in search of asylum. The first to flee, about 135,000, were primarily officials with ties to the United States, who feared reprisals under the new regime and were airlifted out of Vietnam beginning in 1975. The deteriorating economic and political conditions in Vietnam in the late 1970s triggered a second—and much larger—wave of out-migration, composed for the most part of unskilled workers (merchants, small farmers, and fishermen). These refugees, many of whom were ethnic Chinese, were often forced to embark on perilous journeys by boat, bound for Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. By way of these countries, Vietnamese boat people eventually came to the United States. However, unlike their predecessors, they encountered a great deal of hostility from local communities and continue to struggle today against enduring negative stereotypes.
Cuba and Haiti
“BOAT PEOPLE” The term “boat people” is typically used to identify those who leave their homelands by sea during political upheaval or economic crisis. As used today, the
The first Cubans to leave the island after Castro came to power in 1959 were wealthy industrialists, financiers, and officials of the defeated Batista government. During the period between the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the United States faced off against the Soviet Union over the
Body Image
presence of missiles in Cuba, and the Camarioca exodus of 1965, Cuba experienced a short-lived flight of emigrants known as balseros (rafters), headed to the United States. After 1965, other Cubans were able to leave aboard the Freedom Flights. However, Castro’s reversal of this agreement in 1973 forced Cubans to look for alternative ways out. Following a three-way standoff in April 1980, between the Cuban government, the Peruvian government, and the 10,000 Cubans who had occupied the Peruvian embassy in Havana, Castro opened an escape hatch, the port of Mariel, for all who wanted to leave, allowing Cuban exiles in Miami to come on boats to retrieve their relatives. Over the course of the next 6 months, an estimated 125,000 Cubans made the journey from Mariel to Florida aboard boats chartered by their relatives. These newcomers became known as “Marielitos”. As various crises befell Cuba over the next 15 years, the outflow of balseros continued, ebbing at times, rising at others, and reaching new heights in 1994, when over 20,000 Cubans set sail for the United States in the month of August alone. Since then, Cubans like Elián González have continued to come to the United States by sea, but they now do so aboard speedboats (not rafts) as part of highly organized smuggling operations based on the assurance of legal acceptance for those with “dry feet.” Their means of escape from Cuba was not the primary characteristic that distinguished “Marielitos” and balseros from earlier waves of Cuban immigrants (1959–1979). Instead, the disparaging labels attached to the “boat people” are the result of smear campaigns orchestrated by the Castro government, designed to portray them as outcasts. The apprehension felt toward Cuban boat people in the United States is a testament to the campaign’s effectiveness. The first Haitian boat people arrived in the United States in 1963. Their numbers increased sharply over the next 20 years. The first Haitian refugees who came to the United States, dubbed “the airplane people,” were middle class and received a generally sympathetic reception. Those who came by sea, on the other hand, were mostly working class. Coming mostly in two major waves, in the early 1980s and again in 1993, they were perceived as a threat to U.S. economic and social stability and were treated with contempt, particularly in Florida. What distinguished Haitian boat people from their Cuban cousins were the alleged racial and ideological
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preferences on the part of U.S. authorities for “refugees from communism” and against Blacks.
Conclusion Despite the obvious perils of long voyages in ramshackle boats, many refugees still regard the sea as the path of least resistance. Usually poor and unskilled, they often flee their countries under the most hazardous conditions. Given their demographic profiles, those who survive the expedition are often met with enduring prejudice and discrimination, even from those who share their ethnic and national origins. Mohamed Wann and Ted Henken See also Asylum; Cuban Americans; Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison; “Marielitos”; Refugees; Vietnamese Americans
Further Readings
Ackerman, Holly. 1996. “The Balsero Phenomenon, 1991–1994.” Cuban Studies 26:169. Bardach, Ann L. 2002. Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana. New York: Random House. Henken, Ted. 2005. “Balseros, Boteros, and El Bombo: Post-1994 Cuban Immigration to the United States and the Persistence of Special Treatment.” Latino Studies 3:393–416. McDougall, Julie and Don Fletcher. 2002. “Dehumanizing the Boat People.” Social Alternatives 21:4. Stepick, Alex. 1992. “Unintended Consequences: Rejecting Haitian Boat People and Destabilizing Duvalier.” Pp. 125–155 in Western Hemisphere Immigration and United States Foreign Policy, edited by C. Mitchell. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Woods, L. Shelton. 2002. Vietnam: A Global Studies Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
BODY IMAGE The human body is understood as both a physiological creation and a social construct. Individuals experience their bodies through a web of interconnected meaning and practices defined by the societies in which they live. Bodies are reflections of social norms, cultural practices, identity, and self-expression. Therefore, it is
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not surprising that issues of race and ethnicity play a role in this social construct, along with gender and standards of beauty, as this entry shows.
Sex and Gender The organization of gender within a society (e.g., male, female, and transgender) and the socialization of individuals into the expected roles and behaviors disparately associated with each gender inform how people manage perceptions of their bodies. Individuals follow these norms of gendered behavior because their identities and self-esteem are determined by the extent to which they meet social expectations. There are high social rewards for women and men performing their gender roles according to socially acceptable norms. Social relationships, familial ties, and upward social mobility are all connected to how well individuals perform gender roles. For those who fall outside of the traditional Western cultural binary of male and female, for example, transgender individuals, social consequences are high, including alienation from both formal and informal social and familial networks and discrimination in the public sphere. Sociologists of gender argue that differences between men and women that have historically been thought of as biological or natural are actually produced through social practices that persuade men and women to use their bodies differently. Sex and gender are two social categories that are often intertwined. Sex is a category of self-identification and presentation that is assumed to be congruent with biological criteria for classification as female or male. These biological criteria include chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, and procreative organs. Gender is a category based on the sex assigned at birth, which produces patterns of social expectations for bodies, behavior, emotions, and family and work roles. Gender display is the way that individuals manage their presentation of self as a gendered body through the use of symbols, attitudes, and physical activities appropriate to their sex category. Men are often expected to be confident, rational actors, while women are often expected to be nurturing and obedient. Gender also determines social roles, like those of mother and father and the type of worker one becomes, for example, domestic caregiver (female) versus corporate executive (male). Gender behaviors are valued differently and produce different social outcomes for men and women. While women entered
the workforce at varying positions en masse in the latter part of the 20th century, they are still overwhelmingly in positions that earn significantly lower wages than men earn. Men and women have a different relationship with their bodies, which has direct implications for how men and women are situated within the domestic sphere and the labor force. In terms of body norms, there is a double standard of beauty for men and women. Men and women relate to their bodies differently, and while men are socialized to be concerned with their bodies, physical appearance plays a greater role in societal perceptions and treatment of women. In Western cultures, women have been associated with nature—body, land, childbirth, caregiving—while men have been associated with culture—the mind, abstract reason. Human dominion over nature and the mind’s domination over the body is embodied in the male/female dichotomy. Ideas about women and the body have an influence on gender ideologies and reinforce what is called biological determinism, or the tendency to see women in terms of their reproductive and biological selves. Gender studies scholars incorporate nuanced analyses of the social construction of gender and the impact of stereotypical roles on both male and female perceptions of body ideals. However, feminist scholars emphasize the disparate relations of power between men and women; they assert that the body and its expression have stronger repercussions for women’s lives.
Body and Beauty Ideals Norms and ideals about standard body shapes are culturally expressed in intentional and unintentional ways. Boys and girls learn these standards from a young age through the types of toys and play activity that are encouraged by adults. Girls are represented in the tall, busty image of the Barbie doll. Although she has morphed into many identities that represent women of varying employment statuses and ethnicities, the doll’s basic body frame remains a constant illustration of what girls should strive for. Boys learn their place in society through the buff, tanned, militarily trained action figures that symbolize strength, endurance, and courage. Boys are taught that they are the protectors of both society and home. Boys often develop a connected relationship with their bodies because they learn that masculinity is defined through physical strength and intellectual development. Girls often develop a negative association with their bodies
Body Image
because femininity is defined through physical beauty and deference to male authority. Beauty ideals reflect various relations of power in society. In U.S. society, beauty ideals are connected to the production and consumption of products that enhance body aesthetics and morph phenotype. The industries of fashion, cosmetics, hair, diet and exercise, food, entertainment, advertising, and plastic surgery make a profit from maintaining the beauty myth. Popular media reinforce the myth by recycling images of tough, virile men juxtaposed with petite, demure women whose role is to be rescued by the former. A significant element of power in society is race. A culture develops a standard of beauty that approximates the appearance of those who are in power. Therefore, in many White-dominated societies, light skin color comes to be viewed as positive. Lighterskinned Latinos and African Americans often come to be labeled as more attractive, getting an edge in employment, modeling, entertainment, and even interpersonal activities such as dating. Consumers also internalize these norms and receive positive and negative reinforcement for conforming to or resisting them. People engage in what are called disciplinary practices, or the taken-forgranted routinized behaviors that involve social control, in that people spend time, money, and effort on the practices and invest them with meaning. These practices include shaving, applying makeup, and altering hair by using any number of chemical products and electric hardware. For women, these practices are tied to staying thin, petite, and young.
Eating-Disordered Behavior While eating disorders function on an individual level, they are culturally mediated through environmental conditions associated with the politics of gender and sexuality. Scholars think about this behavior in two ways. The first set of behaviors is referred to as eating disorders, which include anorexia nervosa (selfstarvation), bulimia nervosa (binge eating with vomiting and/or laxative use), compulsive eating (uncontrolled eating), and muscle dysmorphia (fear of being not sufficiently muscled). The second set of behaviors is known as general eating-disordered behavior, which includes occasional binging, fasting, compulsive food habits, obsessive dieting, and overexercising. Eating disorders affect primarily young women. According to the National Association of Anorexia
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Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD), the age of onset of eating disorders is getting younger (age 11 to 17 is identified as a time of increased vulnerability). For adults, the approximate ratio of eating disorders among men to women is 1:10. About 20% to 30% of younger anorexics are male. Up to 20% of individuals with serious eating disorders die as a result of complications of their disorder, which include heart problems, chemical imbalances, and suicide. Eating disorders and disordered behavior typically stem from individual body dysmorphia, or an excessive preoccupation with perceived flaws in appearance. Scholars note that this behavior is directly associated with societal pressure primarily for women to meet cultural standards of beauty and attractiveness, or what is referred to as the “culture of thinness.” Body manipulation also symbolizes the value of women and girls in society, which affects selfesteem and the mental and physical health of women.
Intersections The intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual orientation also plays a role in how individuals experience their bodies. Body dissatisfaction is often attributed to societal standards of thinness and an ideal body type that privileges fair skin, light hair, and other European-descended features. Mainstream Western media imagery tends to homogenize female beauty and to create ideals against which women measure and discipline their bodies. Women of color are significantly impacted by this, and while their representations in beauty and fashion magazines are increasing, their images often reinforce prevailing stereotypes of lighter skin and European-descended features. A central theme in multiracial feminist perspectives, including Black feminism and Latina feminism, is the internalization of body image ideals for women of color. The politics of cultural representation as racialized and resistance through cultural affirmation is evidenced in the activism and discourse of feminists of the late 20th century who are women of color. Research suggests that Black women and Latinas are, on average, heavier than White women. While White women and women of higher-socioeconomic status tend to suffer from eating disorders at a higher rate, these rates are increasing for women of color. According to ANAD, eating disorders in the United States appear to be as common among Hispanic as they are among Caucasian women.
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Black women are more prone to bulimia nervosa and abuse of laxatives. Women of color tend to frame the discussion around body image in terms of body ethics—a set of values and beliefs regarding care and presentation of the body—versus body aesthetics ideals. These include cultural values regarding body care and presentation and personal and political commitments. Women of color also develop strategies of resistance for identifying affirming images of themselves and fostering a positive self-image. Scholars acknowledge the importance of culture and ethnicity in shaping how women develop positive ways of experiencing their bodies through cultural norms and practices. Mako Fitts See also Color Line; Feminism, Black; Feminism, Latina; Gender and Race, Intersection of; hooks, bell; Internalized Racism; Labeling; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender; One-Drop Rule; Racialization; Sexuality
Further Readings
hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End Press. Kramer, Laura. 2005. The Sociology of Gender. 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury. Lorber, Judith and Lisa J. Moore. 2007. Gendered Bodies: Feminist Perspectives. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury. Pope, Harrison, Kate Phillips, and Roberto Olivardia. 2000. The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession. New York: Free Press. Rockquemore, Kerry A. 2002. “Negotiating the Color Line.” Gender & Society 16:485–503. Rubin, Lisa R., Mako L. Fitts, and Anne E. Becker. 2003. “‘Whatever Feels Good in My Soul’: Body Aesthetics and Aesthetics among African American and Latina Women.” Culture, Medicine, & Psychiatry 27:49–75. Shaw, Susan M. and Janet Lee. 1997. Women’s Voices Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
distinguish ethnic enclaves within the borders of a nation-state. In both situations, these boundary regions are referred to as borderlands, particularly when the political control of these regions is contested.
Definitions and Concepts Borders may first of all be seen as barriers to integration: A person or an organization that has involvement across a border is internationalizing, which has legal and often economic implications because of different legislative and financial systems in use in the political states separated by the border. The crossing of a border may, however, also imply a confrontation between regional, ethnic, or national identities. Such a confrontation is often expressed in terms of “us versus them” and often leads to biased perceptions of reality. Borders, then, may be seen as cultural and mental thresholds. Consequently, inhabitants of borderlands may feel marginalized by people of either or both political entities adjacent to their common border. Conceptually, borderlands are usually considered as culturally, politically, or economically peripheral. Depending on geographic locale and historical patterns of interaction of the peoples occupying border regions, inhabitants may or may not have a desire to integrate their regions with those more centrally located. They may also be concerned about transforming border regions to mitigate feelings of marginalization and alienation. A desire to be more fully integrated with the political or cultural entity from which they are separated by a border, however, is not necessarily the primary motivator of occupants of borderlands. Rather, occupants of these border regions may confine themselves, or be confined, to a ghetto. In locations such as Sudan and Nigeria, in Africa, and the region of Israel and its Arab neighbors, occupants of borderlands explicitly desire to segregate either themselves or the occupants of regions (their opponents) on the other side of their arbitrary borders.
Disputed Issues
BORDERLANDS Borderlands may be seen both as a concept and as a geographic entity. At the most obvious level, borderlands are geographic areas adjacent to political boundaries between nation-states, but the term is used also to
Another potential concern for nation-states with borderlands has to do with environmental issues. In the sister cities all along the U.S.–Mexico border, for example, smog is causing mercury poisoning, asthma symptoms, cardiac problems, and premature death. Pollution is contributing to global climate change and erosion of quality of life.
Borderlands
Whether borderlands are on land or at sea, their political control is typically in dispute. This dispute may have to do with commercial interests as well as with issues of national or ethnic sovereignty. Corporations engaged in primary industries, that is, the extraction of natural resources from the environment, frequently have a large stake in the demarcation, delimitation, and management of borderlands. Thus, matters affecting borderlands may be hotly contested. This concern regarding the disposition of borderland disputes relates particularly to globalization and the endeavors of multinational corporations (MNCs), whose interests lie in the maximization of profit with a minimum of government intervention. In any case, governments must necessarily become involved to protect the interests of their individual and corporate citizens. The pecuniary interests of corporations as well as individuals are shared by governments because of the promise of tax revenues, the provision of employment, and quality-of-life factors that contribute to the welfare of people and nation-states. Naturally, ownership and control of borderlands become matters of vital concern to sovereign governments, and governments seek to maximize both their territorial prerogatives and their international influence in borderland disputes. While it might appear on the surface as if borderland issues are prevalent only in “hotbeds” of political instability, such as the Middle East, the Balkan region, parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and the Indian subcontinent, the presence of natural resources globally means that even nation-states that traditionally have amicable relations with neighbors may contest common borderlands. Thus, traditionally friendly neighbors like the United States and Canada, Mexico and the United States, and Canada and Iceland from time to time dispute common border regions. As a result of failed efforts to resolve border issues bilaterally, borderland disputes may be submitted to international tribunals for resolution. Agencies like the International Court of Justice and the International Boundaries Research Unit may be enlisted to arbitrate territorial claims, including problems associated with ownership or management of transborder resources. Agencies such as the International Boundaries Research Unit serve as consultants to government ministries, international organizations, multinational corporations, international law firms, oil and gas exploration companies, and shipping lines—all of
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which have a vested interest in both resource issues and, specifically, borderland concerns.
Examples of Border Conflicts Historically, there have been many border disputes between various nation-states. The end of World War II saw boundaries of many European nation-states redrawn, perhaps most notably those of Germany and Poland. Germany was divided into the pro-Western Federal Republic of Germany and the communist German Democratic Republic on the east. Since German unification in 1990, the two divisions have amalgamated. Poland, with an even longer history of partitioning, involving Prussia, Russia, and Austria and dating to the 16th century, regained its independence in 1918, only to become a Soviet satellite state following World War II. Its political boundaries have tended to be malleable as a result of wars and treaties among other nation-states such as Russia and Germany. Cyprus also has been prominent in international affairs because of historic borderland issues. The division of Cyprus into Greek and Turkish enclaves followed ongoing tensions between Turkish occupants in the northern part of the island and Greek Cypriots in the south. A contested political entity virtually since Cyprus gained its independence from Britain in 1960, the island remains a contested region, with a United Nations–administered buffer zone separating the north from the south. In modern times as well, the British partitioning of Palestine to create the state of Israel in 1948 was only the beginning of an ongoing series of disputes involving Israel and its Arab neighbors—Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt at various times and currently the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Although Israel withdrew its troops and its settlers from these two disputed regions in 2005, a final agreement regarding these borderlands has to date not been achieved. In the same time frame (1947), India’s independence from British colonial rule did not ameliorate the long-standing internecine conflict between those of Hindu faith (Indian) and followers of Islam, and this led to the creation of the state of Pakistan—first as East Pakistan and West Pakistan and then the subsequent transforming of East Pakistan into the state of Bangladesh in 1971. The India-Pakistan dispute over the contested Kashmir region resulted in two major conflicts, the war of 1947/1948 and one in 1965, which
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failed to resolve the Kashmir borderland issue. Although tensions surrounding Kashmir borderlands have decreased since 2002, the region remains a contested borderland. India and China also have an unresolved borderland dispute over most of their joint militarized border. Kashmir is reputedly the site of the world’s largest and most militarized territorial dispute, involving India and Pakistan as well as China. While unrest in the former Yugoslavia is by no means new, borderland disputes continue to be a present reality for the states in the Balkan region as well. From the taking of control over Yugoslavia by Josip Tito in 1945, this communist nation-state remained under a single ruler until ethnic hostilities involving Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, and Albanians erupted in 1991. In 1992, Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina were granted independence. The republics of Serbia and Montenegro declared a new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the same year. Despite this apparent resolution of historic conflicts, Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic stirred the political pot again by attempting in 1998 and 1999 to unite all ethnic Serbs in neighboring republics into a “Greater Serbia.” This attempt, culminating in the expulsion of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and a subsequent ethnic-cleansing campaign, led to United Nations intervention in the form of a NATO-led military occupation force charged with the responsibility of keeping the peace. Although Kosovo consists of a numerical Albanian majority, there are numerous Serbian enclaves throughout Kosovo, necessitating the continuation of NATO occupation in the midst of civil attempts to institute democratic reforms and engineer a lasting peace accord between the ethnic combatants. The foregoing examples attest to the fragile nature of borderlands throughout the world, and it is apparent that historic rivalries based on ethnicity, culture, and territoriality are easily transformed into economic competition when natural resources and economic superiority are at stake. The “us versus them” phenomenon that is at the heart of the tribalism that characterizes borderland issues is obviously easy to engender, but difficult to dispel. Peter Doell See Appendix A See also Alamo, The; Balkans; Border Patrol; Colonias; Cross-Frontier Contacts; Ethnic Conflict; Globalization; Maquiladoras; Mexican Americans
Further Readings
Nauman, Talli. 2004. Border Clean Energy Advocates Grab for Power. Retrieved from http://americas.irc-online .org/amcit/507 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. N.d. The World Factbook. Available from https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/ factbook/print/pl.html
Web Sites
International Boundaries Research Unit: http://www.dur.ac.uk/ibru Nijmegen Centre for Border Research: http://www.ru.nl/ncbr
BORDER PATROL The Border Patrol was founded in 1924 as part of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Immigration Bureau. Its primary mission is to secure national borders by the deterrence and apprehension of persons entering the United States without legal authorization. It is currently an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. The Border Patrol’s origins and evolution are intertwined with the history of migration and ethnicity. Its policing function is a fundamental aspect to how a nation-state claims sovereignty. The Border Patrol’s function as territorial and social policing agent can be understood by tracing its history along with the history of migration legislation.
Early Contexts Early efforts at securing the border were informal and met with limited success. When the United States began restricting Chinese migration during the late 19th century, the corresponding need for policing migration arose. In 1904, the U.S. Immigration Service created a force of mounted inspectors to patrol the border with Mexico. Limited in number and training, these patrols had poor results. Unauthorized Chinese entrances from Mexico led Congress to create a horse-mounted border guard in 1915. It was based in El Paso, Texas, and patrolled the border to California with only 75 agents. The need for policing increased with the Immigration Act of 1917. It made migration more difficult by creating an $8 head tax and a literacy test. Those unable to meet the requirement simply entered
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U.S. border with Mexico. This photo shows the border in Nogales, Arizona, as it appeared on June 21, 2006. Border Patrol agents, now employed by the Department of Homeland Security, contend that the town is a hot spot in the struggle to secure the border. Besides the issue of illegal immigration and smuggling of illegal drugs, the post–September 11th security concerns present challenges to the Border Patrol, as there are a limited number of agents available to secure long stretches of the Canadian and Mexican borders. Source: U.S. Army photo by Jim Greenhill.
illegally. The 1924 immigration legislation added a visa requirement and increased the scope of deportable offenses. To have substance, these measures required an enforcement mechanism, which resulted in the formation of the Border Patrol in 1924. The initial Border Patrol had 450 agents, mostly recruited from Texas law enforcement. Recruits supplied their own horses, and the government provided a salary, a gun, a uniform, and a badge. It was not until the opening of the Border Patrol Academy in El Paso, Texas, in 1932, that agents received formal training. Espionage concerns during World War II stimulated an expansion of the Border Patrol to 1,531 agents. In addition to guarding the border, their work included staffing alien detention camps. In response to agricultural labor shortages during World War II, the United States and Mexico formed the “Bracero Program” in 1942. It established a quotabased, contract labor system for Mexicans to work in the United States. As many as 450,000 workers
migrated annually; an estimated 3 million Mexicans participated in the program before its conclusion in 1964. The Border Patrol policed the system, deporting those violating contracts. Unauthorized migration continued because labor demand exceeded quota and employers were willing to hire noncontract labor, which was cheaper. In response, the Eisenhower administration launched “Operation Wetback” in 1954. The Border Patrol utilized neighborhood sweeps and identification checks to round up suspects, resulting in 3 million deportations by the operation’s end. An important consequence of the Bracero Program was the formation of migrant networks, which linked communities from sending countries to those in the United States. These networks greatly facilitated the process of unauthorized migration. The 1965 Immigration Act capped Western Hemisphere visas at 120,000, which made legal migration impossible for millions of potential migrants, thus
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producing a constant flow of unauthorized migrants to the United States. The number of deportable migrants jumped from 110,000 in 1965 to 1,767,000 in 1986.
Legislation in the 1980s and 1990s The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 provided for amnesty and stricter oversight of companies hiring unauthorized migrants. The Border Patrol’s focus shifted to interior enforcement, including checkpoints away from the border. The 1986 legislation failed to address the causes of migration in sending countries. A wave of Central American civil wars combined with a regionwide crisis in the agricultural sector to dramatically increase migration flows to the United States throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. To contain the flow, the Border Patrol returned to a border strategy of deterrence and apprehension. In September 1993, “Operation Hold the Line” stationed 450 agents along a twenty-mile segment of the border in El Paso. The aim was to deter migrants from crossing in urban areas and force them to cross in desert areas of New Mexico and Arizona. The plan was adopted in the San Diego and Tijuana sector with “Operation Gatekeeper,” in October 1994. These plans resulted in short segments of militarized, tightly sealed border, where fences, concrete canals, stadium lighting, motion sensors, video cameras, and line-ofsight positioning of Border Patrol agents became defining features of the urban border environment. The new strategies were expensive. Budgets nearly tripled between 1993 and 1999, from $1.5 billion to $4.2 billion. The Border Patrol’s “prevention through deterrence” strategy had significant consequences. It altered the nature of border communities, turning them into heavily monitored and policed urban sectors, restricting freedom of movement traditionally enjoyed by border residents, and fostering a confrontational relationship between the United States and Mexico. Shifts in migrant crossings to desert areas proved extremely dangerous; between 1993 and 1997, migrant deaths totaled 1,185. The shift substantively changed the nature of Border Patrol work as it increasingly focused on catching people in desert sectors and rescuing migrants dying of heat exhaustion. New routes and stricter policing caused human smuggling to be the dominant method for unauthorized border crossings. Charging upward of $2,000 a migrant, smuggling was big business run by organized crime. The smugglers have matched the Border Patrol’s
prevention and deterrence capacities with clever strategies of avoidance, including underground tunnels. Shortcomings to the legal and policing measures at containing migration fed into a strong wave of nativist sentiment during the 1990s. It labeled migrants as a drain on public resources, which led to ballot initiatives such as California’s Proposition 187, which voters passed in 1994 but which was overturned in federal court. In 1996, Congress attempted to address the issue again, with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. It moved closer to criminalizing unauthorized immigration by enhancing deportable offenses and restricting social benefits to migrants. It also authorized adding 1,000 new Border Patrol agents per year between 1997 and 2001.
After September 11, 2001 The failure of Operation Hold the Line and Gatekeeper’s stricter border policing led the George W. Bush administration to consider implementing a guest worker program. Negotiations with the Mexican government, however, terminated because of the attacks on September 11, 2001, which shifted the entire border paradigm to the “war on terrorism.” It signified a major bureaucratic relocation for the Border Patrol and added the mission of stopping terrorists from entering the United States. In 2003, the Border Patrol was brought into the Department of Homeland Security, merging it with U.S. Customs, U.S. Immigration, and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, to form the Customs and Border Protection Agency. Post–September 11th security concerns present daunting challenges to the Border Patrol, the limited number of agents available for securing long stretches of remote Canadian and Mexican borders perhaps being the biggest. Concern for a possible terrorist entrance through Canada has led the Border Patrol to place more agents on the northern border, which drains its capacities to check the flow of unauthorized migrants in the south. The agency uses a spectrum of technology as “force multipliers,” allowing agents to “patrol” more miles with greater ability. Ground sensors, trip wires, and lasers are integrated with day and night vision cameras to better detect crossings. Unmanned aircraft complement the ground equipment and allow agents to patrol remote areas. The use of National Guard soldiers on the Mexican border also provides a “force multiplier.” A 700-mile fence along the Mexican and Texas border, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, is under construction.
Bosnian Americans
These border-policing measures are combined with more aggressive interior policing, with Border Patrol working with local, state, and federal agencies to deport unauthorized immigrants. Many question how effective these considerable measures are when confronting the immense task of policing an estimated 12 million undocumented people in the United States. The Border Patrol awaits its next phase of development as the nation once again debates the migration issue.
former Federation of Yugoslavia, beginning in 1993. The resettlement experience varied for Bosnian Americans, depending upon their personal characteristics and human capital and the receptivity of their host communities. This entry looks at their background and U.S. experience. Belarus Germany
Poland
Glen David Kuecker
Ukraine
Czech Republic
See also Borderlands; Bracero Program; Central Americans in the United States; Chinese Exclusion Act; Citizenship; Guest Workers; Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS); Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; Mexican Americans; Mexico; Proposition 187; “Wetbacks”
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Slovakia Moldova
Austria Hungary Slovenia
Romania
Croatia Bosnia & Herzegovina
Serbia
Ad
ria
tic
Italy
Se
Montenegro
Bulgaria
a
a
ani
Alb
Macedonia
Greece
Further Readings Ionian Sea
Dunn, Timothy. 1996. The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978–1992: Low-Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home. Austin: University of Texas, Center for Mexican American Studies. Durand, Jorge, Douglas Massey, and Nolan J. Malone. 2002. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Garcia, Juan Ramon. 1980. Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Inda, Jonathan Xavier. 2006. Targeting Immigrants: Government, Technology, and Ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Krauss, Erich. 2005. On the Line: Inside the U.S. Border Patrol. New York: Kensington. Maril, Robert. 2004. Patrolling Chaos: The U.S. Border Patrol in Deep South Texas. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press. Nevins, Joseph. 2002. Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Making of the U.S. Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge.
BOSNIAN AMERICANS According to the U.S. Department of State, approximately 107,000 Bosnian refugees had arrived in the United States by the year 2000. Bosnians fled their country of origin following the war that tore apart the
Turkey
Malta
Mediterranean Sea
Life in Bosnia Bosnia-Herzegovina, a nation of 3.8 million people according to 2007 estimates, is commonly known as Bosnia, and was one of six republics comprising the Federation of Yugoslavia. Bosnia reflected the multiethnic composition of the larger region and appeared to be both the most ethnically diverse and the most tolerant of the republics. More than 30% of all marriages in Bosnian cities in the 25-year period before the war may have been mixed marriages between Bosnian Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Bosnian Serbs. This is an extremely high rate of intermarriage, indicating high social tolerance and cultural integration. The incidence of mixed marriages in rural areas was lower. Prior to the buildup of hostilities in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnians experienced a way of life that was solid and good. Life is remembered nostalgically as “the beautiful life” or “the perfect life,” one filled with family, close friends, travel, and a more relaxed lifestyle than many have found in America. Many Bosnians in America today hailed from sophisticated
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urban environments, such as Sarajevo, in which they enjoyed a high standard of living, rich social networks, and close family ties. Subsistence farming contributed to the household economy in rural villages. Family and neighbors helped young couples build homes, and newly married couples lived with the husband’s family until they saved enough money to build. Families often owned land for a small farm, including orchards, gardens, and animals. Many rural households derived their income from both subsistence farming and wage labor. Subsistence farming transitioned to wage labor over the last 60 to 80 years, and the introduction of factory work for men led to the gradual feminization of agriculture.
Seeking Refuge The United States has resettled more than 2 million refugees since the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. The largest wave of Bosnian refugees came to the United States in the few years immediately after the end of the war in 1995. Humanitarian policies set by the U.S. government allowed those with a need for protection and no other durable solution or those identified as of special concern to immigrate. For Bosnians, this included ethnically mixed marriages and those detained due to ethnicity, religion, or political opinion. Families were reunited when spouses, unmarried children of any age, and parents joined them, until the year 2000, when the family reunification program ended. Although many family members took advantage of these programs, others chose to stay in Bosnia or abroad, decided too late, or were caught in processing problems that were not satisfactorily resolved. Resettlement assistance for Bosnians and other refugees in America includes housing, food, and clothing, orientation to U.S. culture, health screenings, and referrals for social and educational services. These services are complemented by classes in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) and employment training and placement. Refugees are expected to go to work within 6 months of arrival in the United States; legislative language lacks specificity but states that refugees should be self-sufficient as quickly as possible. A refugee may change his or her legal status to legal permanent resident after 1 year. After 5 years, refugees may apply for citizenship. In the last 2 decades, settlement has shifted away from traditional gateway cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. Refugees find themselves in
medium and small metropolitan areas with growing foreign-born populations. Employment experiences vary with the economic conditions and hospitality of the host community. Some refugees found employment easily and worked their way up through lowwage entry jobs. Others were unemployed for long periods of time and experienced poverty and associated stressors. Refugees who held professional jobs in Bosnia frequently complain that their degrees or professional licenses are not recognized in America, and they experience downward mobility as a result. Reports of unemployment for Bosnian refugees in the United States are typical for Bosnians who immigrated to other countries. Positive adaptation outcomes are common but not universal for Bosnian Americans, who maintain close family ties wherever they are able. Many families lost everything they owned during the war and suffered the deaths of close family and friends. Adaptation includes significant stressors, such as language and employment problems; difficulties accessing various service systems, especially the health care system; postwar trauma; and, for the elderly, social isolation. Bosnians in an upstate New York city were quickly free of dependency on welfare programs, and many were able to purchase homes in a matter of a few years, even though some complained of downward occupational mobility and many were able to find only unskilled, low-wage employment. Positive outcomes emanate from characteristics of the Bosnians themselves—cultural and visual similarities to the host society and human capital interacting with features of the receiving society—opportunities for employment, affordable housing, and centralized and accessible service delivery systems. Sociocultural adaptation for Bosnian families in America may involve value conflicts between old ways and new. Prewar family patterns and structures may be radically altered from Tone Brina anthropological accounts of prewar Bosnia, where the significance of extended families and neighbors was emphasized. Bosnian Americans are making those adjustments and contributing to the rebuilding of new communities. Judith Owens-Manley See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Balkans; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Intermarriage; Muslim Americans; Refugees
Boycott
Further Readings
Blau, Peter M., Carolyn Beeker, and Kevin M. Fitzpatrick. 1984. “Intersecting Social Affiliations and Intermarriage.” Social Forces 62:585–606. Bringa, Tone. 1995. Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian Village. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Coughlan, Reed and Judith Owens-Manley. 2005. Bosnian Refugees in America: New Communities, New Cultures. Sociological Practice Series. New York: Springer. Miller, Keneth, Jasmina Muzurovic, Gregory Worthington, Susie Tipping, and Allison Goldman. 2002. “Bosnian Refugees and the Stressors of Exile: A Narrative Study.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 72:341–354. Sekulic, Dusko, Garth Massey, and Randy Hodson. 1994. “Who Were the Yugoslavs? Failed Sources of a Common Identity in the Former Yugoslavia.” American Sociological Review 59:83–97. Singer, Audrey and Jill Wilson. 2006. From “There” to “Here”: Refugee Resettlement in Metropolitan America. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute.
BOYCOTT A boycott is a way to protest offensive acts employed by an individual or a group. Boycotts typically involve abstaining from the use of products or services of the offending entity until a particular policy or behavior desists. The term apparently originates from actions taken against Charles Cunningham Boycott, a negligent landowner, during the late-19thcentury Irish Land War. Boycotts continue to play an influential role in contemporary civil and political rights struggles worldwide. This entry describes characteristics of boycotts and briefly discusses boycotts undertaken during campaigns for equality. Boycotts can take a commercial or political form. Commercial boycotts are directed at businesses or organizations whose practices offend a certain group and will oftentimes call for participants to not purchase certain products or services. These types of boycotts are most successful when the target produces visible products or when their business will suffer as a result of being a target of a boycott. An example of a commercial boycott is the United Farm Workers’ grape and lettuce boycotts in the United States during the 1960s. Political boycotts are geared toward a nation or government and, like commercial boycotts, work to
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punish a political entity for unjust practices. The various boycotts of the Olympics were symbolic protests to unfavorable policies perpetrated by participating countries and are examples of political boycotts. Boycotts can also take the form of a threat or call to boycott. A threat of a boycott can be just as damaging as an actual boycott in destroying the image of an organization and thus coercively encouraging a change in policy. Boycotts end when organizers believe they have met their goals or when this means of protest is no longer viewed as productive for advancing their cause. Occasionally, boycotts continue unofficially despite organizers calling them off. As a protest strategy, boycotts face difficulty in clearly defining success. If a company decides to distance itself from an offensive behavior but doesn’t change its practices entirely, boycotters must consider whether they have successfully convinced the business of its wrongdoing. Although boycotters hope that their actions will bring about awareness, their ultimate aim is to change behaviors altogether. Because this outcome is not guaranteed, there is much debate as to whether the boycott is an effective means of resistance. Another obstacle faced by boycotts is changing consumer behavior. The use of media is essential in order to make the boycott campaign more visible and thus steer consumer behavior. Those targeted by boycotts are at great risk if they are unable to adequately respond to boycotters’ claims. Offending agents must be able to defend their actions or at least attempt to change behavior in order to salvage their reputation from these attacks. If organizations are facing false accusations, they also must have the means to defend themselves. In addition, boycotts have the potential to affect those who might not be directly involved, such as workers, who can suffer job or wage loss as a result of a boycott campaign. Within the United States, boycotts have been useful tactics in civil rights struggles. During the early 1800s, boycotts of slave-produced products were encouraged by those in opposition to slavery. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement was spurred on by boycott strategies. In Montgomery, Alabama, Blacks boycotted the bus system in order to demand equal treatment of riders. Bus boycotts were also carried out in other southern cities as a form of protest to policies of segregation. The Montgomery bus boycotts in particular gave national recognition to Blacks such as Rosa Parks and brought the civil rights struggle in the United States to the forefront of public consciousness;
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the boycotts are also credited with giving the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. a prominent role in the Civil Rights Movement. Sit-ins, also practiced by Blacks during the civil rights era, took an obstructionist approach to boycotting. In protest of segregated lunch counters in the South, boycotters occupied seats at lunch counters and prevented others from being served. Both methods of boycotting were effective means to oppose racially discriminatory policies and ultimately change local and national policies. In the 1960s, grape and lettuce boycotts led by César Chávez of the United Farm Workers (UFW) allowed for central valley California farm workers to successfully organize against corporate growers. Because of the infeasibility of completely stopping production, the UFW employed boycotts against nonunion labor products as a means to stifle corporate producers. The pressure applied by product boycotts forced growers to concede to workers’ demands. Scholars suggest that the UFW was able to attain its goals because of a political environment that mobilized third-party support as well as a strategic use of the media that publicized workers’ grievances and ultimately gained sympathizers. The boycott of South African products during apartheid also served as a method to oppose a government’s policies. This boycott, which started in 1959 in Britain and eventually spread internationally, served as a direct attack on the government’s racist and oppressive policies. Boycotts of South African products applied external pressure on the South African government to desist from these policies. Boycotts as a protest strategy have successfully publicized injustices perpetrated by various groups within society. Although more research is needed to isolate the effectiveness of this strategy, it nonetheless remains a powerful tool of resistance. Nandi E. Dill See also Apartheid; Chávez, César; Civil Disobedience; Civil Rights Movement; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Labor Unions; Parks, Rosa Further Readings
Branch, Taylor. 1989. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63. New York: Simon & Schuster. Friedman, Monroe. 1999. Consumer Boycotts. London: Routledge.
Jenkins, J. Craig. 1985. The Politics of Insurgency: The Farm Worker Movement in the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press.
BRACERO PROGRAM Mexican workers have played an important role in the economic development of the United States. Since the late 19th century, Mexican workers have entered the United States and provided cheap labor for the construction of railroads and the development of agriculture. Their importance to agriculture is particularly distinctive in relation to the establishment of the Bracero Program, which is described in this entry. The Bracero Program, one of the most important contract labor systems, was established in 1942 by a binational agreement between the Mexican and the U.S. government and lasted until 1964. The historical context in which the Bracero Program was established was twofold. The Mexican revolution in 1910 did not improve Mexican farmers’ lives. Underemployment and unemployment were rising, and Mexican farmers were not able to survive on the land. This displaced population provided an important source of cheap labor. This constitutes the push factor for the migration of the Mexican population. The pull factor was World War II. There was a labor shortage in the United States because during the war, much of the population was concentrated in military services and military-related occupations. Acting on the appeal of farmers and agricultural businesses, the United States imported laborers to meet their demands. Bracero means “unskilled worker” or “hired hand” in Spanish, and most were from the Chihuahua region of Mexico. Between 1942 and 1964, 4.5 million workers entered the United States to work in the Bracero Program. However, the actual number of people may have been less since many workers entered the country several times. Since they were contract labor, there were stipulations in the contract concerning their working conditions. While they were required to return to Mexico, many chose to stay. Therefore, their presence changed the social, political, and demographic landscapes of the United States. The Bracero Program has been criticized for being exploitative. The human rights abuses have been well documented. In addition, many of the workers did not
Brain Drain
receive their promised deductions for their savings accounts, which were intended to facilitate their resettlement either elsewhere in the United States or, upon their return, in Mexico. Reflecting on this historical period, the current debate on immigration and the proposed guest workers program should take the Bracero Program’s experiences into consideration.
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The term brain drain refers to the immigration to the United States and other industrial countries of skilled workers, professionals, and technicians from developing nations. This continuing social phenomenon has two implications relating to race and ethnicity. First, the skilled workers are typically people of color who are desperately needed by their home countries. Second, some argue that the availability of these skilled overseas workers offers industrial nations the luxury not to encourage their own racial minorities and women to enter these desired fields of work.
skilled, educated Indians now seek to enter the United States, pulled by economic opportunity. The pay differential between the United States and other countries is so great that beginning in 2004, when foreign physicians were no longer favored with entry in the United States, physicians in the Philippines were retraining as nurses so that they could immigrate to the United States, where, employed as nurses, they would earn four times what they would as doctors in the Philippines. Countries undergoing significant political unrest, such as Iran and Iraq, may also be subject to the loss of human capital to other countries. Whether this remains a permanent or ongoing brain drain once the hostilities or unrest ends remains to be seen. The brain drain controversy was evident long before the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act. However, the 1965 act seemed to encourage such immigration by placing the professions in one of the categories of preference. Various corporations, including Motorola and Intel, now find that one-third of their high-tech jobs are held by people born abroad, although many received their advanced education in the United States. Many foreign students say they plan to return home. Fortunately for the United States, many do not, but rather make their talents available in the United States. One study showed that the majority of foreign students receiving their doctorates in the sciences and engineering are still in the United States 4 years later. This leads to an ironic situation in which industrial countries mount efforts to assist the very countries that have lost a significant segment of their skilled workforces. Despite these realizations, few have seriously questioned policies that facilitate this drain. During the heated debates of the 21st century concerning immigration reform, few were willing to overhaul H-1B visas except perhaps to expand their numbers.
Impact on Developing Nations
Impact on Industrial Nations
In the mid-20th century, many scientists and other professionals from industrial nations, principally Germany and Great Britain, came to the United States. More recently, however, the brain drain has pulled emigrants from developing nations, including India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and several African nations. They are eligible for what are referred to as H-1B visas, qualifying them for permanent work permits. One out of four physicians in the United States is foreign-born; these immigrants play a critical role in serving areas with too few doctors. Thousands of
Critics note that the supply of professionally trained immigrants allows the United States to overlook its minority scholars. At present, for every two minority doctorates, there are five foreign citizens receiving this degree. In the physical sciences, for every doctorate issued to a minority citizen, eleven are received by foreign citizens. Some suggest that more attention should be paid to encouraging African Americans and Latinos to enter high-tech career paths. Some analysts view the current brain drain as yet another symptom of the unequal distribution of world
Shu-Ju Ada Cheng See also Borderlands; Border Patrol; Discrimination; Immigration, U.S.; Mexican Americans; Mexico; Transnational People
Further Readings
Calavita, Kitty. 1992. Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the INS. New York: Routledge Press. Driscol, Barbara A. 1999. Tracks North: The Railroad Bracero Program of World War II. Austin: University of Texas Press.
BRAIN DRAIN
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resources. In their view, it is ironic that the United States gives foreign aid to improve the technical resources of African and Asian countries while maintaining an immigration policy that encourages professionals in such nations to migrate to U.S. shores. These are the very countries that have unacceptable public health conditions and need native scientists, educators, technicians, and other professionals. In addition, by relying on foreign talent, the United States does not need to take the steps necessary to encourage native members of subordinate groups to enter these desirable fields of employment.
Nicaragua Costa Rica
Guyana Suriname French Guiana
Venezuela
Panama
Colombia Ecuador
Peru Brazil
Bolivia
Pacific Ocean
Paraguay
Chile
Richard T. Schaefer Argentina
Uruguay
See also Affirmative Action in Education; Biomedicine, African Americans and; Immigration, U.S.; Pipeline; Science Faculties, Women of Color on
Atlantic Ocean
Falkland Is
Further Readings
Hoffer, Thomas B. et al. 2001. Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities: Summary Report 2000. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center. Mullen, Fitzhugh. 2005. “The Metrics of the Physician Brain Drain.” New England Journal of Medicine 353:1810–1818. Wessel, David. 2001. “Hidden Costs of Brain Drain.” Wall Street Journal, March 1, p. 1.
BRAZIL The diversity of Brazil’s population is reflected in 2000 census data. Whites made up a majority of the population (53.7%). African descendants made up 44.7% of the population, including 38.5% who defined themselves as mulattoes (mixed White and Black) and 6.2% who defined themselves as Black. The population of Japanese, Arabs, and Amerindians made up 0.9% of the total, and another 0.7% of the population was unspecified. This entry looks briefly at indigenous people in Brazil, a nation with an estimated 2007 population of 189.3 million, then focuses on the impact of African slaves and their descendants on the social fabric of Brazil.
Indigenous People There are over 200 indigenous groups in Brazil, with varied histories, languages, and cultures. They do
Tierra Del Fuego South Georgia & the South Sandwich Is
share in common that most of the indigenous in the Amazon are often regarded as obstacles to economic development, including logging, ranching, and mining. State policies have varied from supplying communities with consumer goods to relocation of groups to small preserves. Gold mining led to many deaths of the Yanomami tribal group in 1989 and 1990 as they came into contact with foreign diseases, oil, mercury, and other wastes. Numerous organizations began work on the behalf of the Yanomami, including the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the World Bank. In more recent decades, indigenous groups have fought for the creation and legal titling of reserves.
Slavery Following Pedro Alvares Cabral’s “discovery” of Brazil in 1500, the Portuguese began colonizing Brazil. For 3 centuries, Brazil’s economy was built on the transportation and labor of slaves in sugar plantations, coffee groves, and silver mines. In the early years, African slaves in Brazil survived less than a decade. For many years, there was a myth alleging that slavery in Brazil was “softer” or milder than
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Race in Brazil elsewhere. That myth has been debunked by many historians. Although Brazil ended the importation of Conceptiions and Labels slaves in 1850, it did not abolish slavery as an institution and free the slaves until 1888, the last country in Race in Brazil is complex and distinct from other Latin America to do so. countries, such as the Untied States. Most Brazilians Slaves in Brazil were predominantly from Africa’s today acknowledge or claim mixed African, European, Yoruba culture, but other languages were also and indigenous ancestries. Throughout Latin America, retained. Given their large population size and continracial conceptions and labels are more numerous and uous arrivals, African Brazilians retained their culture fluid than in the United States. One study of selfmore than slaves in the United States were able to do. labeling asked people, “What color are you?” and Slaves and their descendants hid images of their compiled a list of 134 different colors, including African spirits inside statues in Catholic churches. bluish, coffee, lily, pink, ebony, Russian, greenish, Many slaves escaped and formed independent almost white, and suntanned from the beach. colonies of runaway slaves called quilombos. In Although Brazilians are described as lacking Bahia, slave revolts were more common among slaves racial prejudice, there is a strong preference for of Muslim origin. The most famous was the Quilombo whiteness. In practice, the weight of racism causes dos Palmares, in which escaped slaves, mixed-race people to “whiten” themselves. For example, people, and indigenous warriors fought against the morenos (dark-skinned individuals) straighten their Portuguese and Dutch colonizers for 65 years. hair. People search for lighter-skinned marriage partSlavery was abolished in 1888, but rights to land of ners and use nicknames indicating a lighter skin tone. the descendants of slaves were not recognized until At times, the press has been criticized for distinguishthe 1988 constitution, which gave descendants of the ing Afro-Brazilians by skin tone in the news, as a quilombos the right to land titles for these tracts of divide-and-conquer strategy. Currently, as Brazilians land. Quickly, Worker Party members in congress, focus on cultural identity and national unity, more historians, attorneys, anthropologists, sociologists, individuals and organizations are using the term and others began discussing and working on land Afro-descendant. rights issues. Since 1988, there has been significant growth of defined quilombos. Established or new communities can apply for title deeds. The Institute of Land Reform and Settlement (INCRA), the Ministry of Culture, and a number of federal agencies are responsible for identification, legal recognition, and titling of these parcels of land. The process requires documentation of the history, geography, demography, genealogy, economy, political and social organization, religion, and culture of the communities. Historically, quilombos referred to places where runaway slaves hid. Some argue that any rural Black community should not be given the Brazilian men practicing capoeira on the beachfront. The capoeira is a trastatus. Some communities have chal- ditional Afro-Brazilian dance, and its contemporary practice indicates that lenged their forced eviction at the Inter- a vibrant and unique culture is alive and well among Blacks in Brazil. American Commission on Human Rights. Capoeira is a martial art that was initially developed by African slaves in Quilombo communities often engage in Brazil during the colonial period. It is characterized by skillful movements farming and fishing, but without educa- often played on the ground or completely inverted. Some versions also tional and health services, populations have a strong acrobatic component and are always played with music. Source: AFP/Getty Images. will be limited.
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Relationship p to Class
There are many socioeconomic differences between Whites, Blacks, and those with mixed ancestry. Whites are five times more likely to complete college than those of mixed ancestry and nine times more likely to do so than Blacks. The variations between the three major groupings are similar in the proportion in professions and income levels, as well as the likelihood of youth or adults being detained by police. Socioeconomic data have uniformly confirmed that race is correlated with levels of educational attainment, occupations, income, poverty rates, and housing quality. Blacks are approximately 45% of the population, but are 66% of those in poverty or extreme poverty. Blacks make up only 15% of the top decile of income groups, but 70% of the poorest decile. Even when Blacks have professional positions, they do not receive equal salaries. Blacks are twice as likely to be illiterate and to live in houses without running water, sanitation, and trash collection. Skin color affects life chances. The socioeconomic gap between Whites and people of color is larger than ranges within groups. Blacks exhibit higher instances of maternal mortality, tuberculosis, AIDS, leprosy, and uterine and prostrate cancer, as well as lower life expectancy.
second goal was to increase the proportion of Blacks in education, law, and medicine or in positions as mayors, diplomats, members of the armed forces, governors, and president. Rig ghtss and Cultu ura al Organizatio ons
In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a strong “Black soul” movement in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Students adopted Afro hairstyles, clothing, music, and the “Black Power” slogans from the United States. Students and workers gathered in low-income suburbs at night, creating “Shaft Nights” and Black festivals. In the 1980s, people turned to Asia, Africa, and Latin America for inspiration and cultural symbols. Many young people began to identify with the cultural symbols of samba music and the umbanda religion as a form of cultural and political resistance, including university students, professionals, and even some members of the military. During much of the history of Brazilian popular culture, samba has been labeled as being only for poor Whites and Blacks, but in the 1970s, these cultural items were embraced by a broader range of people. Banco Itaú used symbols of the candomblé religion in its marketing campaign. Politiccall Openings
Black Rights Movement There has been a long history of activism for Black rights in Brazil. In May 1929, a group of Blacks met to discuss racial issues. The goals were to raise Blacks’ level of elementary training in history, language, civics, music, and other areas in order to help them advance in secondary and higher levels of education and in civic life. The group decided to create an organization to fight for dignity and react to racial prejudice and racism. Members protested the lack of Blacks in educational and religious institutions and the lack of Blacks as sales clerks. They called for the end of bans on Blacks in movie theaters, ice-skating rinks, and the Guardia Civil of São Paulo. They called for Blacks to reagir, or react against, racial prejudice and racism and fight for dignity. While members worked for the rights of Blacks, they sought not division, but understanding and dialogue with non-Blacks and new immigrants. At a second meeting, in 1931, the organization Frente Negra Brasileira (Brazilian Black Front) was founded. The first priority was to increase the proportion of Blacks completing secondary education. The
The Unified Movement Against Racial Discrimination (MNUCDR) was founded on June 18, 1978, following two highly publicized cases of discrimination and violence. These incidents of discrimination were not unique, but became a rallying cause. In one case, four Black athletes were denied entry and injured as they attempted to enter a discotheque in São Paulo. In the second case, a laborer, Robson Silveira da Luz, was killed. The first public activity was a protest against violence at the Teatro Municipal of São Paulo, with over 500 participants. Protests took place in other cities. In the 1980s, Black protests focused on problems of unemployment, underemployment, racial discrimination, police oppression, and the social marginality of Blacks, which still exists. The rallying cry was “Somos negros, somos netos de Zumbi,” translated as “We are Blacks, we are grandchildren of Zumbi,” honoring the leader of slave revolts who most symbolized resistance. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the MNUCDR in Belo Horizonte worked for Black rights and advancement, networking with candomblé and umbanda centers,
Brazil
workers’ organizations, samba schools, and slum neighborhoods. The central mission included denouncing racism, raising public consciousness of discrimination, raising the self-esteem of Black youth, and provoking debate over the current status of Blacks in Brazil. Other concerns included police violence against youth, the status of Black women, high unemployment levels, and stagnant wages. Devellopin ng an n Agenda
Brazil returned to democracy in 1985, after a period of military dictatorship. On May 13, 1988, Brazil commemorated the centennial of the abolition of slavery. On that occasion, President Jose Sarney announced the creation of the Palmares Cultural Foundation, dedicated to the preservation of social, cultural, and economic aspects of Black history. Three Black deputies began working on drafts of new antiracism measures, leading to the 1989 Lei Afonso Arinos, the constitutional clause against racism. The dramatic recent changes in ideology and policies regarding race in Brazil can be attributed to major national, regional, and global changes in thought, relationships, and policies. After the transition from military dictatorship to an elected civilian president, there were new opportunities for change. In 1988, Brazil adopted a new constitution, incorporating many new issues and some new rights into the legal document. The Movimento Negro, or “Black movement,” was responsible for the inclusion and definition of racism as a “crime” in the 1988 constitution. The first national meeting of Black organizations in Brazil took place in 1991. There was a very broad cross-section of participants, including the Black press, athletes, samba schools, musical, theater, and dance groups, writers, women, and union members. Out of the discussions, three problems facing the movement of Brazilian Blacks were defined as most important. According to their analysis, the Black movement suffered from a lack of visibility, low levels of participation and collaboration with other organizations, and a lack of movement independence or autonomy. Brazil’s “Black movement” surged due to the persistent inequities but also due to the examples of rights movements in the United States, Jamaica, Mozambique, and South Africa. Black Brazilian politicians met with the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus. Black organizations in Brazil tend to be very diverse and specialized in their arenas of interest and
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action. The focus may be on literacy, job training and education, music, or martial arts. Contemp pora ary y Issues
A number of issues are emerging in the 21st century, including reparations for slavery, loss of lands once worked by indigenous and Black peoples, affirmative action, antiracism, and the development of Black businesses. Other needs include infrastructural improvements and social and educational programs for children in slums. Another issue is tracking health issues by race, including HIV/AIDS, sickle-cell anemia, and other conditions. Concerning the labor market, there are demands for more professional and small-business participation, antidiscrimination actions, and investigations of child and slave labor. Prejudice and stereotypes still exist. Outside of carnival, soccer, music, or capoeira, “Black doesn’t sell.” The owner of Agencia Noir has staged “Blackouts” outside fashion shows to protest the lack of Black models. Content analyses reveal that Brazilian Blacks rarely appear in news magazines, and U.S. basketball players appear most frequently. Also, Blacks do not appear in magazine advertising because many firms believe that having a Black face associated with their credit card or yogurt would “burn the product.” A recent policy issue regarding race in Brazil is the development of affirmative action quotas for Black students in public universities. Historically, in Brazil and the rest of Latin America, public universities are heavily subsidized, and students must pay for books but not tuition. Students must pass rigorous exams for admission and spend months in private programs preparing for the exams. White students are more likely to graduate from private high schools, which are defined as superior. Black students without funds for such courses would have difficulty getting into universities. Brazilian data on educational attainment by race was widely disseminated in the press and on the Internet, and some foundations have focused on educational advancement, including the Steve Biko Foundation. Although there have been many external forces for change, the personal biographies of two presidents may have hastened the process. As a professor of sociology, Fernando Henrique Cardoso investigated racial and other forms of social stratification. Luiz Ignacio “Lula” da Silva grew up in poverty and spoke openly about experiencing hunger as a child, which motivated him to institute breakfast programs and financial support for
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parents who keep their kids in school. This breakfast program has been replicated in other Latin nations. It is also instructive that both presidents have mentioned that they have um pe na chao, or a “foot on the floor,” which means some Black blood in their family history. Jan Fiola See Appendix A See also Afrocentricity; Argentina; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Brazilian Americans; Caribbean; Latin America, Indigenous People; Nikkeijin; One-Drop Rule; Race, Comparative Perspectives; Slavery
Further Readings
Bailey, Stanley. 2004. “Group Dominance and the Myth of Racial Democracy: Antiracism Attitudes in Brazil.” American Sociological Review 69:728–747. Bandeira Beito, Lucila. 2004. “Inequality and Human Rights of African Descendants in Brazil.” Journal of Black Studies 34:766–786. Garfield, Seth. 2001. Indigenous Struggle at the Heart of Brazil: State Policy, Frontier Expansion, and the Xavante Indians, 1937–1988. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hanchard, Michael. 1999. Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Linhares, Luiz Fernando do Rosario. 2004. “Kilombos of Brazil: Identity and Land Entitlement.” Journal of Black Studies 34:817–837. Lopes, Nei. 2004. “African Religions in Brazil, Negotiation, and Resistance: A Look from Within.” Journal of Black Studies 34:838–860. Paixao, Marcelo. 2004. “Waiting for the Sun: An Account of the (Precarious) Social Situation of the African Descendant Population in Contemporary Brazil.” Journal of Black Studies 34:743–765. Rabben, Linda. 2004. Brazil’s Indians and the Onslaught of Civilization: The Yanomami and the Kayapó. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Sanson, Livio. 2004. “Anti-racism in Brazil.” NACLA 38(2):26–31. Telles, Edward E. 2004. Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
BRAZILIAN AMERICANS Immigrants from Brazil began arriving in the United States in large numbers in the mid-1980s as Brazil
began suffering a series of economic crises. The term Brazilian American is used here to include not only individuals of Brazilian parentage who were born and raised in the United States but also Brazilian immigrants who came to this country as children or adults. Their immigration and current situation are described in this entry.
Demographics The most problematic feature of the Brazilian American population in the United States is its size. It is impossible to accurately gauge how many Brazilian Americans live in any region of the United States or in the country as a whole. The problem can be illustrated with the following figures. In 2004, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimated that about 1.1 million Brazilians were living in the United States, while the 2003 American Community Survey counted only 237,000 Brazilians in the entire country. One reason for this discrepancy is that a significant but unknown number of Brazilian Americans are undocumented, making them less likely to participate in census counts. Brazilian Americans are not very representative of their homeland in terms of social class, in that far more of them belong to the middle and lower-middle classes than their compatriots in Brazil, where a majority of the population is either working class or poor. Nor are Brazilian Americans typical of their homeland in terms of race, since most cluster at the lighter end of the color spectrum. Blacks and other “people of color,” to use the Brazilian phrase, account for perhaps 20% of the Brazilian American community, a fraction of the nearly 45% reported in the 2000 census for Brazil as a whole. The racial makeup of Brazilian Americans is tied to their social class because Brazilian racial types are not randomly distributed across the nation’s social strata. People of color are overrepresented in the lower ranks of Brazilian society, underrepresented in the middle sectors, and nearly absent among the nation’s tiny elite. Thus, if Brazilian immigration is mostly a middle- and lower-middle-class phenomenon, it is not surprising that the Brazilian American population is lighterskinned than the Brazilian population as a whole.
Brazilian Differences To understand the place of Brazilian Americans in U.S. racial and ethnic hierarchies, one must be aware of the way Brazilians perceive race and ethnicity in
Brazilian Americans
their homeland. Brazilians have a strong national ideology that their land is a “racial democracy,” one without prejudice toward its darker-skinned citizens. The ideology, although untrue, nevertheless shapes the contours of interracial behavior and discourse in Brazil, smoothing its edges. While racial prejudice and discrimination do, indeed, exist in Brazil, their expression is more subtle than in the United States. Unlike the United States, there is no “one-drop rule” in Brazil, the custom that defines anyone with any known or suspected African ancestry as being Black. The Brazilian system of racial classification is far more complex. First, Brazil has never had two discrete racial categories, Black and White, and Brazilians recognize and have words to describe a wide variety of racial types. Moreover, how individuals are classified racially does not depend solely on their physical appearance—their skin color, hair type, and facial features or those of their relatives. Social class, education, and manner of dress all come into play in assigning someone to a racial category. As Brazilians put it, “Money Whitens”; that is, the higher the social class, the lighter the racial category to which an individual belongs. As a result of their past experience, Brazilians coming to the United States are often confounded by this nation’s system of racial classification. AfroBrazilians who were accustomed to being called by terms like mulato (mulatto) and moreno escuro (dark brunette) back home are nonplussed by the American category “non-White.” But this uneasiness is not limited to people of color, because in the United States, most Brazilians, including fair-skinned Brazilians, are classified as Hispanic, Latino, or “Other”—all “nonWhite” categories, according to U.S. standards. Brazilian Americans also have difficulty with ethnic labels in the United States, particularly when they are misclassified as Hispanics. Indeed, one of the first things a Brazilian learns to say after arriving in the United States is “I do not speak Spanish.” Referring to Brazilian Americans as Hispanics is incorrect because the term refers to Spanish speakers or those of Spanish-speaking descent, while the native language of Brazil is Portuguese. However, even many educated Americans think that Spanish is the language of Brazil, and they may be unaware that Portuguese is spoken outside Portugal. Both in Brazil and in the United States, Brazilians insist on distinguishing themselves linguistically and ethnically from other Latin Americans, a stance rooted
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in a sense of cultural pride in the distinctiveness of their “race,” as they call it. Brazilians’ sense of themselves as a unique racial group helps explain why it is so difficult for Brazilian Americans to accept their inclusion in other groups. Brazilian Americans often note with frustration and occasional anger the ambiguity surrounding their ethnic identity. This is why they often go out of their way to use the symbols of language and culture to separate themselves from others whom they deem lower on the social ladder. In particular, they seek to distinguish themselves from Hispanics. Considerations of ethnic discrimination may also be involved when Brazilian Americans insist on stressing their distinctiveness from the Hispanic population in the United States. Many Brazilian Americans claim that they encounter discrimination because Americans think they are Hispanics, that they are the victims of negative Hispanic stereotypes, and that they receive better treatment when they make it clear that they are not Hispanic. Class elitism may play a role here as well. Since the majority of Brazilian Americans are middle and lower-middle class and many are well educated, they resent being confused with the rest of the country’s Latin Americans, most of whom they view as poorer and less educated than themselves. Hence, many Brazilian Americans are adopting stereotypes that already exist in U.S. society and using them to distance themselves from Hispanics. As a consequence, Brazilian Americans have played two contradictory roles: the role of the exploited minority and the role of transmitter of the dominant culture’s ideology. Maxine L. Margolis See Appendix A See also Brazil; Hispanic Versus Latino; Immigration, U.S.; Multiracial Identity; Race, Social Construction of; South Americans in the United States
Further Readings
Beserra, Bernadete. 2003. Brazilian Immigrants in the United States: Cultural Imperialism and Social Class. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing. Margolis, Maxine L. 1994. Little Brazil: An Ethnography of Brazilian Immigrants in New York City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Margolis, Maxine L. 2004. “Brazilians in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Paraguay.” Pp. 602–615 in Encyclopedia of Diasporas, edited by M. Ember, C. R. Ember, and I. Skoggard. New York: Kluwer/Plenum.
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Britain’s Irish
BRITAIN’S IRISH The experience of Irish migrants to Great Britain and their descendants—Britain’s Irish—stands in marked contrast to that of Irish Americans. The latter have emerged as one of the largest ethnic ancestry groups in the United States. In the United States, the number of people who define their ethnic backgrounds, at least to some extent, as Irish is ten times the number of actual Irish immigrants. The Irish American ethnic community has expanded enormously from its immigrant base. In Britain, it is a very different story, as shown by the fact that there is no equivalent for the term Irish American. The British-born descendants of Irish immigrants are rarely, if ever, described as Irish British, despite the fact that Irish migration to Great Britain has been substantial for 2 centuries. Indeed, an estimated 13 million of Great Britain’s 58 million people can trace at least some of their ancestry back to Ireland. Also, the 2001 census of Great Britain recorded 750,000 Irish-born, far exceeding any other overseas-born category. Yet in the same census, only 690,000 people identified their ethnic backgrounds as Irish. While census figures need to be treated with caution, a major issue in the study of Irish ethnicity and migration is examining why there is no multigenerational Irish British community, given the scale of Irish migration to Great Britain. Why, for many millions of Britons of Irish ancestry, is this not an aspect of their contemporary social identities?
Irish Migration to Great Britain Figure 1 is a simplified representation of the number of Irish-born recorded in Great Britain from 1841, the first time a place-of-birth question was included in British censuses, up until 2001. Two trends are immediately obvious: • The twin peaks of Irish migration to Great Britain are those who arrived after the Famine and those who arrived after World War II. • Irish migration to Scotland declined through the 20th century, and England became increasingly important as the primary site of settlement.
In addition to these broad statistics, during the 19th century in particular, large numbers of Irish migrated annually for seasonal work. As many as 100,000 people
may have been involved in this seasonal tradition; work gangs of Irish, made up of men, women, and children, were a familiar sight across Great Britain. Working parties, often organized along extended-family lines, would spend up to 6 months working on farms, employed primarily in the labor-intensive agricultural work. These migrant workers, known as “Spalpeens” and “Tatie Hookers,” were an important part of western Ireland’s economy. Their seasonal earnings sustained communities in Ireland’s northwest areas up until the 1970s. This is a key feature distinguishing Britain’s Irish from the Irish in North America, the Antipodes, Africa, and elsewhere in the world; for many, migration was temporary. Moreover, this large and mobile community was not recorded in the census. More fundamentally, censuses in Great Britain prior to 2001 recorded only the Irish-born, not the descendants of Irish immigrants. Nonetheless, the graph’s twin peaks provide an easily grasped impression of the numerical and temporal scale of migration from the island of Ireland to Great Britain.
Ethnic Incorporation As Linda Colley has shown in her account of the development of British national consciousness in the 18th and 19th centuries, a shared enmity for Catholicism helped gel the English, Welsh, and Scottish together into a single British people. Overt anti-Catholicism characterized British nation building of the 18th century, symbolized by the 1701 Act of Settlement, which expressly forbids a Catholic or someone married to a Catholic from ascending to the throne. As the 18th century turned into the 19th century, attitudes toward Catholics became less antagonistic. Nonetheless, the arrival in Great Britain in the middle of the 19th century of hundreds of thousands of impoverished Irish Catholics accelerated the debate around how a Protestant state ought to deal with the Catholic Irish. Irish nationalism has always threatened and continues to threaten the integrity of the United Kingdom; Catholicism does not. The British government’s establishment of a system of state-aided Catholic schools became the means by which the children of Irish immigrants, a potentially politically dangerous ethnic minority, could be turned into lawabiding, loyal British subjects. The Catholic clergy, with rare exceptions, did not take on the role of sustaining Irish ethnic consciousness. They were concerned with keeping people in the
Britain’s Irish
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1,200,000
1,000,000
800,000
600,000
400,000
200,000
0 1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001 England and Wales
Figure 1
Scotland
Irish-Born Recorded in Great Britain: 1840–2001
Sources: Adapted from Jackson, 1963; Office of National Statistics, 2002; General Registrar’s Office (Scotland), 2002.
faith, while at the same time assisting their integration into British society. The strategy proved remarkably successful. The key, sustained, and most visible impact of Irish immigration is the 5-million-strong British Catholic Church. The Irish were not the only Catholic migrants to Great Britain; southern Europeans, Maltese, Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese have all added to the ethnic mix, but the Irish were by far the largest component. The overtly Protestant British state, in a masterstroke of ethnic management, allowed middle-class British Catholics to prove their loyalty by handing over to them the task of educating and integrating the children of immigrant Irish Catholics.
The Impact of New Immigration The secularization of British society from the 1950s onward coincided with the arrival of significant numbers of non-White immigrants in the south and midlands of Great Britain. Both these factors refocused indigenous antipathy to immigrants and away from the Catholic Irish. Nonetheless, in the few areas of Great Britain where the Protestant religion is still central to the identity of the “indigenous” population, ethnic Irish communities made up of the descendants of Catholic immigrants remain highly visible. This is particularly the case in West Central Scotland, where even after four generations of settlement, the Catholic
descendants of Irish immigrants flag their Irishness in a way that is quite overt and quite unlike in any other part of Great Britain. Since the 1960s, Irish migrants have not been subject to the immigration legislation that the British government introduced beginning with the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act. Within 11 years, successive British governments had effectively closed the door to the immigration of non-White subjects of the British Commonwealth. Irish migrants from the Republic of Ireland were exempt. This concession was not necessarily based on any sense of inter-White ethnic solidarity. It was a pragmatic response to the geopolitical realities; part of the United Kingdom was on the island of Ireland, and independent Ireland was an integral part of Britain’s sphere of interest. The difficulties in policing the boundary between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland were clear to all involved. Moreover, the Irish government of the day skillfully played on these difficulties to secure continued access for Irish workers to the British labor market. In any event, by 1973, both the United Kingdom and Ireland were members of the European Economic Community, and movement between member states was permissible anyway. Thus, Irish migrants (with the exception of restrictions during World War II) have had and continue to have unlimited access to Britain and all the rights and entitlements of British natives.
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Irish Identity in Contemporary Britain The last 10 years have witnessed a transformation in relationships between Ireland and Britain. Key to this has been the signing of the peace agreement between the British and Irish governments on Good Friday 1998, aimed at resolving the conflict over the constitutional position of Northern Ireland, the northeastern six counties of the island of Ireland, which remain part of the United Kingdom. Over the same time scale, Ireland’s reputation as an international economic success story has helped to redefine, in a dramatic and positive way, what it means to be Irish. The so-called Celtic Tiger has drawn to Ireland thousands of immigrants from Great Britain, mostly Irish-born and their British-born children, but also British people with no obvious connection to Ireland. This reversal of the immigrant flow between Britain and Ireland is unique in modern times. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has written of how proud he is of his Irish roots. This is also unprecedented. Irish cultural and sporting products and personalities have become immensely popular in Britain. The hibernophile tone of contemporary Britain has dramatically changed the profile of Irishness. Yet there appears to be little evidence of an emerging Irish–British community. Nonetheless, the future is open. Given the transformed context of Irish–British relations, the seemingly assimilated British-born descendants of Irish immigrants may yet discover and embrace their roots in Ireland as a key and important aspect of their contemporary social identity. Kevin G. Howard See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Identity Politics; Ireland; Irish Americans; United Kingdom
Further Readings
Bradley, Joseph. 2005. Celtic Minded: Essays on Religion, Politics, Society, Identity, and Football. Argyll, UK: Argyll. Colley, Linda. 1996. Briton’s Forging the Nation 1707–1837. London: Vintage Press. Government of Ireland, Taskforce on Emigration. 2002. Ireland and the Irish Abroad. Dublin, Ireland: Department of Foreign Affairs. Hickman, Mary J. 1995. Religion, Class, and Identity. Aldershot, UK: Avebury Press. Howard, Kevin. 2006. “Constructing the Irish of Britain: Ethnic Recognition and the 2001 U.K. Censuses.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 29:104–123.
Sewell, Denis. 2002. Catholics: Britain’s Largest Minority. London: Penguin.
BROWN BERETS The Brown Berets emerged in the late 1960s as an organization that reflected the politicization of Chicano youth and their frustration with reformist politics. The Brown Berets incorporated a militant practice of community empowerment as Chicanos, members of a racial and ethnic minority. Their history and impact are described in this entry.
Group Origins The origins of the organization exemplify the progressive politicization of youth in the era of the 1960s as they began to see a need for more direct action approaches to challenge institutional racism. Initially, a group of young Mexican Americans who were emerging leaders in their communities called themselves “Young Citizens for Community Action” (YCCA). As these young people addressed the issue of school reform and political representation of the Mexican American community, they renamed themselves “Young Chicanos for Community Action,” signifying a shift toward selfidentification and self-assertion rather than the assimilationist paradigm of the “young citizen.” At the same time, increasing experiences of police brutality in the East Los Angeles community and the harassment of young people who frequented the La Piranya Coffeehouse called for more direct action approaches. The Brown Beret organization originated in East Los Angeles, where the chapter was central to key events in the Los Angeles activities of the Chicano Movement. Among these events, the East Los Angeles chapter participated in the East Los Angeles high school student walkouts of 1968, when thousands of Mexican American youth protested the lack of a quality education. The Brown Berets were also instrumental in the development of the National Chicano Moratorium Committee (NCMC), as they joined Rosalio Muñoz, a leader in the antiwar effort, to organize the largest minority-based antiwar march in the United States, held on August 29, 1970. Many of these activities were reported in the organization’s newspaper, La Causa, which centrally featured local events and involvements but also discussed chapter activities
Brown Berets
across the United States. Finally, this chapter founded the East Los Angeles Free Clinic, a successful effort to provide medical services to the local community. While the East Los Angeles chapter was a major actor in the Chicano movement, it was not long after its founding that many young men and women donned the Brown Beret, referencing the Black Panther Party and the revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and proclaimed their role as protectors of the community throughout the Southwest and in some parts of the Midwest, such as Minnesota and Wisconsin. Most chapters of the Brown Berets identified with the slogan “La Causa” and were part of the National Brown Beret organization. There were some variations of the slogan during this time, reflecting local political cultures as well as larger ideological positions and differences. In Texas, some chapters of the organization developed in close affiliation with the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) to emphasize the need for brotherhood. In California, chapters of the organization adopted the slogan “Aztlán,” in recognition of their more internationalist concerns. In general, the organization often represented its natural constituency as male youth and members of local gangs but counted among its members Vietnam veterans, college students, high school students, and women. Although the Brown Berets were a key organization central to the history of Chicano militancy in the 1960s and 1970s, it is important to note that a variety of youth militant groups developed during this time. In California, Colorado, and New Mexico, a group organized as the Black Berets espoused a grassroots community orientation rooted less in a specific cultural nationalism and more in economic concerns. Members of Los Comancheros, founded in Northern New Mexico, identified themselves with the struggles of land grant heirs who were seeking to reclaim their land and to maintain the link between cultural identity and land. Finally, La Junta, which included former members of the East Los Angeles Brown Berets, emphasized the importance of culture as a tool of revolutionary change.
Women in the Berets While the ideal recruit to the Brown Berets appeared to be the vato loco, or former gang member, women participated in various chapters of the organization. As Brown Berets, women engaged in a variety of activities, from the “traditional” gender roles to which many women during this time were relegated, such as
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preparing food or taking notes at meetings, to less traditional activities such as marching, organizing, and public speaking. Some chapters adopted the Mexican revolutionary figure of the Adelita, or “woman soldier,” as a means of understanding where women fit into the organization. The East Los Angeles chapter is noteworthy for having attracted a core of women participants who became central to the organization’s day-to-day activities by staffing the Brown Berets office and eventually staffing the East Los Angeles Free Clinic. A number of women in this cohort who were involved early in the organization’s development also became members of the NCMC. Due to the lack of appreciation for their work and contributions on the part of the chapter leadership, these women left the organization in February 1970. In 1972, the Brown Beret organization was declared disbanded by the prime minister of the national Brown Berets, David Sanchez, one of the founders of the East Los Angeles chapter. His declaration was made after the final series of events in which a significant number of Berets participated: The Caravana and Marcha de la Reconquista. After traveling throughout the Southwest and Midwest, the group, composed primarily of California-based Berets, staged their final major action, the takeover of Catalina Island, to bring attention to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the U.S.Mexico war and agreed to the annexation of Mexico’s northern territories. Although Sanchez declared the end of the organization, chapters of the Brown Berets continued to develop and evolve through the 1980s. In Austin, Texas, an active group of Brown Berets pursued their vision of social justice. They focused their attention on the segregation of space in the city of Austin and on environmental issues raised by the city’s sponsorship of boat races that produced exhaust and pollution near the city’s working-class and poor neighborhoods. In the 1990s and 2000s, new generations of young people have continued to respond to the need for direct action and community involvement and have formed new “autonomous” chapters in locations such as Watsonville, California, and Salt Lake City, Utah, to organize around community issues such as immigrant rights and the environment. Dionne Espinoza See also Aztlán; Black Panther Party; Chicano Movement; La Raza; Mexican Americans; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848); Young Lords
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Further Readings
Chavez, Ernesto. 2003. ¡Mi Raza Primero! [My People First!] Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles, 1966–1978. Berkeley: University of California Press. Espinoza, Dionne. 2001. “‘Revolutionary Sisters’: Women’s Solidarity and Collective Identification among Chicana Brown Berets in East Los Angeles, 1967–1970.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 21:1–38. Marin, Marguerite. 1991. Social Protest in an Urban Barrio, 1966–1974. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
BROWN V. BOARD
OF
EDUCATION
Arguably one of the most significant cases in the 20th century, Oliver L. Brown et al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) marked a judicial turning point in America. Although Brown v. Board of Education was not the first to challenge the notion of “separate but equal” in education, it became a landmark case. The decision stretched beyond education and served as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. Indeed, Brown became the platform on which civil and human rights initiations would burgeon. The impact on U.S. society in general and the education of Blacks in particular has been momentous and undeniable.
own Before Bro To understand the significance of the Brown case, it is imperative to examine from a historical perspective African Americans’ status in society, as well as in education. Throughout history, significant historical and legal events have served as markers for addressing racial inequality and discrimination. Contention surrounding Black education in the United States can be connected to various forms of discrimination that began in 1619 and have continued to the present day. While the Emancipation Proclamation issued in 1863 freed the slaves, the practical effect was virtually nonexistent in southern states. Even with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, which abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which granted citizenship to African Americans and guaranteed equal protection under the law, covert and overt forms of discrimination and inequality persisted. Throughout the 1860s in the South, the law forbade the
education of slaves, while many northern communities refused to allow Blacks to attend public schools. The struggle for Black education has been lengthy and formidable. Three significant legal cases were argued before Brown that reinforced inequality and segregation in the United States. In 1849, in the case of Roberts v. the City of Boston, the Massachusetts Supreme Court unanimously ruled that segregated schools were permissible under the state’s constitution, under the justification that segregated schools benefited both races. This case would later serve the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the “separate but equal” doctrine. Less than a decade later, in 1857, came the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. Although Scott had been a resident of Illinois for 4 years, his status in the South remained that of property. The ruling that stated African Americans were “so far inferior that they had no rights which the White man was bound to respect” reaffirmed the disposition of both northerners and southerners. Prior to Brown v. Board of Education, the legal justification for racial segregation was maintained by the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson. The arrest of Homer Plessy in 1892 led to two appeals, reaching the Supreme Court in 1896. The plaintiff argued that provision of separate facilities on a railroad car was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment, because it denied Plessy his equal-protection rights, and the Thirteenth Amendment, because it perpetuated essential features of slavery. In its ruling, the Court adjudicated the Louisiana state law that mandated separate but equal accommodations for Blacks and Whites on intrastate railroads. Eight of the nine justices contended that neither amendment was applicable to Plessy’s case. The Thirteenth Amendment, the justices argued, protected political equality, not social equality. The ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson provided legal justification for Jim Crow laws while fortifying notions of White supremacy and Black inferiority.
The Case Although Oliver Brown was the case’s namesake, Brown v. Board of Education was actually a class action lawsuit that combined five cases and over 200 plaintiffs, all sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), with Thurgood Marshall as the chief counsel. Using Brown’s name was a legal strategy to have a man represent all of the plaintiffs. In 1952, the argument was
Brow wn v. Board of Educa atio on
heard in court; reargument occurred in 1953; and a decision was reached in 1954 by the Supreme Court. The Court ruled unanimously in favor of Brown, overturning numerous precedents set by the Supreme Court. When coming to their conclusion, the Warren Court resolved that segregation of children in public schools, even if the facilities or other “tangible” factors were equal, was unconstitutional. Reargument for Brown centered largely on deciphering the Fourteenth Amendment. Under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the plaintiffs argued it was unconstitutional to impose educational distinctions based on race. The clause states, “No State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.” Accordingly, the decision held that racially segregated schools deny a group the benefits of public education based solely on race. Using psychological studies to support their claim, the plaintiffs argued that educational segregation extends beyond the classroom, leading to detrimental effects on Black children and other forms of inequality. The plaintiffs showed the link between housing and schooling, noting that school segregation has reinforced housing segregation. Even more important to their argument was proving the ambiguity of the Fourteenth Amendment and understanding the context in which it was drafted. When it was written, widespread public education had not yet taken hold and schools were usually private institutions. Those who passed the Fourteenth Amendment most likely did not consider the consequences or implications, especially since most Black children were not attending school at the time. The defense’s argument was dubious and limited. The Board of Education of Topeka maintained that the facilities for Black children were equal to those for White children. They also emphasized that although people should be treated equally, it did not imply they should be treated the same. Unlike in preceding cases, the Supreme Court took into consideration educational segregation’s effects, rather than only the definition of rights, and ordered schools to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.” However, it is important to understand that the Brown ruling did not abolish segregation in other public areas, such as restaurants, nor did it support the end of de facto segregation. At the time Brown came into the Court’s jurisdiction, it was glaringly obvious that “separate” was never “equal.” The Supreme Court had to acknowledge the basic right to an equal education for all citizens or abandon the goal of equality.
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National coverage of the unanimous Brown decision on May 17, 1954, provided a glimpse into the country’s differing perspectives on school integration. Many newspapers in the South showed opposition, while northern cities were more celebratory in their reactions. Between 1955 and 1960, more than 200 school desegregation hearings were held by federal judges. Riots, massive resistance, and the creation of “splinter districts” (building new, all-White schools) produced a tumultuous journey to school desegregation and equality. In 1963, the Alabama National Guard intervened so that two African American students could attend the University of Alabama despite Governor George Wallace’s attempt to physically block the doors. Desegregation was met with such hostility that some districts attempted to close schools rather than integrate. A decade after Brown, Title IV of the Civil Rights Act was adopted in 1964, which authorized the federal government to file school desegregation cases. Title VI of the act prohibited discrimination in programs, including schools, which receive federal financial assistance. Although the Brown decision was met with much disobedience, it was not until 1968 that the Supreme Court took action and ordered states to dismantle segregated schools “root and branch.” The Court identified five factors—facilities, staff, faculty, extracurricular activities, and transportation—to be used to measure a school system’s compliance with the Brown mandate in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County.
Resegregation? Since Brown, numerous Supreme Court decisions have all but overturned the desegregation policy. By 1973, the Supreme Court had ruled that education was not a “fundamental right” and that the Constitution does not require equal education expenditures within a given state. The consequence of this ruling consigns minority and poor students who live in low-income areas to substandard schools. One year later, the Court blocked a plan to desegregate urban schools with high minority populations. For urban school districts with high minority populations, the impact of Brown today appears almost insignificant. In 1986, a federal court allowed all school districts that met the Green requirements to be released from the desegregation plan and returned to local control; by 1995, the Supreme Court had revised its desegregation plan by returning schools to local control.
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In recent years, there has been much research about the resegregation of public schools across the nation, particularly in urban centers. Public schools today are more segregated than they were prior to court-ordered busing and other desegregation techniques established decades ago. As school desegregation is being abandoned, many fault the Supreme Court’s more recent decisions that ended desegregation orders. Whether de jure or de facto, segregated schools are inherently unequal. While the overwhelming majority of citizens favor desegregation, the diligence in maintaining integrated schools has fallen by the wayside. Originally a necessary step to ensure constitutional rights for African Americans, the reasons to support integrated schools are more varied—yet still imperative—today. The connection between school segregation and economic class is undeniable. Research has shown nearly 90% of severely segregated schools for Blacks and Latinos are the same schools in which at least half of the student body is economically disadvantaged. Moreover, the benefits of attending a racially diverse school are enormous: enhanced learning, additional civic engagement, higher academic achievement for minority students, and increased positive social interaction among all students. Discounting the importance of an integrated education ignores the struggle for equality fought in Brown, as well as the influence it has on all other branches of society.
Legacy of Brown The decision reached in Brown v. Board of Education was pivotal in the struggle for racial desegregation and equality in the United States. As well, although the Brown case referred to educational equality, the ruling signified much more. Brown v. Board of Education was a case that confronted discrimination and stereotyping based on one’s race, ethnicity, religion, and cultural characteristics. Brown also paved the way for Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination in schools against students with physical or mental handicaps. The decision to end this discriminatory behavior has had implications far beyond the classroom. Across the country, the Brown decision protected the natural rights of citizens and placed the sovereign power in the hands of the people. While Brown was undoubtedly a turning point in U.S. history, it was the impetus, not the end, in the battle for equality; educators, public
officials, and citizens must continue to pursue equality and carry Brown into the 21st century. AnneMarie Cesario See also African Americans; Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District; Civil Rights Movement; Discrimination; Educational Stratification; Minority Rights; One-Drop Rule; Plessy v. Ferguson; Racism; Resegregation; School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning; Title IX
Further Readings
Boger, John Charles and Gary Orfield, eds. 2006. School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back? Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Clotfelter, Charles T. 2006. After “Brown”: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kozol, Jonathan. 2005. The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. New York: Crown. Martin, Waldo, ed. 1998. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ogletree, Charles J. 2004. All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: Norton. Raffel, Jeffrey A. 1998. Historical Dictionary of School Segregation and Desegregation: The American Experience. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
BULGARIAN AMERICANS Bulgarian Americans are immigrants from Bulgaria, a country of 7.7 million in 2007, as well as their descendants. According to the 2000 census, a total of 35,090 people born in Bulgaria were resident in the United States, of whom 27.6% were citizens. Two groups make up the Bulgarian American population: those who came from Macedonia (currently southern Yugoslavia and northern Greece) and those who came from Bulgaria proper. The main difference between the two groups is that Macedonian immigrants also identify with their geographic region, as well their Bulgarian descent. This entry looks at the background of immigration from Bulgaria to the United States and the contemporary picture of Bulgarian Americans.
Burakumin n
Latvia
Baltic Sea
Russia
Lithuania
Belarus
Poland
Ukraine
Czech Republic
Slovakia Austria Mold ova
Hungary Romania
Croatia Bosnia & Herzegovina
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Se a
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According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, there were 82,828 people of Bulgarian national origin in the United States in 2005. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states were California, Illinois, New York, Florida, and Georgia. Of the Bulgarian-born immigrants present here in 2000, only 1.5% had entered the country prior to 2000. According to the 2000 census, 40.7% spoke English less than “very well.” Their median family income was $46,668, compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Among famous Bulgarian Americans are Carl Djerassi, chemist and developer of the first oral contraceptive pill; Christo, artist/creator of environmental art, such as “The Gates” in Central Park, New York; John Atanoff, inventor of the first computer; and Stephane Groueff, writer/journalist, who wrote Manhattan Project. Jennifer M. Klein
Mediterranean Sea Cyprus
Immigration Patterns The first wave of Bulgarian immigration occurred between 1900 and 1910, bringing an estimated 50,000 to the United States. These early immigrants came to the United States because of economic hardship and overpopulation in their homeland. The majority of these immigrants were single men, peasants and unskilled laborers, who came with the intention of earning some money and then returning home. Many succeeded with their goal, for between 1910 and 1929, there were more returnees than new immigrants. Between 1919 and 1939, women and children made up the majority of the second wave of immigrants to the United States, joining the men who had decided to stay. The last period of immigration began after World War II, continuing to the present. The most recent immigrants have come to the United States as political refugees.
See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Baker, Randall. 1994. Summer in the Balkans: Laughter and Tears after Communism. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press. Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs .gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Pundeff, Marin. 1994. Bulgaria in American Perspective: Political and Cultural Issues. New York: Columbia University Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Bulgaria. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/ foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www Vazov, Ivan. 1971. Under the Yoke. New York: Twayne.
Contemporary Community In recent years, people from Bulgaria have sought permanent residency and completed the naturalization process to become U.S. citizens. From 1997 through 2002, about 4,200 Bulgarians immigrated to the United States annually. At least 15,000 Bulgarian Americans have become naturalized citizens since 1997.
BURAKUMIN The largest minority group in Japan, with numbers ranging from 1.5 to 3 million, the Burakumin (“the people of the hamlet”) are often known in Western
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scholarship as an “invisible minority.” This so-called invisibility comes from an American and European understanding of definitions of many minority groups. From this perspective, defining characteristics between minority and majority groups include racial and ethnic differences, yet the Burakumin in Japan fit neither of these categories. The Burakumin are Japanese, physically, ethnically, and culturally, and they follow the same varied religious beliefs as majority Japanese. In short, there is nothing that clearly marks the Burakumin as minorities, other than a continuing social stigma in membership. Discrimination against the Burakumin was based on occupational marginalization prior to emancipation in the late 19th century, when the categorization shifted to residency. The majority of the districts where the Burakumin live tend to be in western Japan. Great strides have been made in changing the living and social conditions of the Burakumin through national laws first implemented in 1969. Owing to how the Burakumin are counted, their numbers are not as easily substantiated as those of other minorities in Japanese society, such as resident Koreans. For the government, the statistics on the Burakumin, including the number of Burakumin, are based on residence in an area recognized as a Buraku district, and once someone moves from that area, he or she is no longer counted. For the Buraku Liberation League, the largest Buraku social movement organization, membership is based on ancestry, not area of residence; thus, migration will not change the numbers.
Historical Background The group now defined as Burakumin has, as its historical lineage, a number of social categories, including living in particular locations and performing ritualistically “impure” but necessary work, such as dealing with animals, working with leather, or caring for the dead. Other categories included those who were traveling entertainers and yet others who were used as bounty hunters. Historically, discrimination against Burakumin was based on religious, social, and political rationales, through a system of continued discrimination defining those who perform this work as “impure,” based on Shinto and Buddhist tenets on death and blood. This discrimination also served a political purpose. The military government was able to maintain a society that was rigidly controlled and heavily taxed, while using an outcast group to act as a scapegoat for social ills. The single greatest form of social control
was the control of particular industries, limiting the work Burakumin could perform and establishing that work as hereditary positions. For example, though not all Burakumin were in the leather or butchering industries, these were areas in which the Burakumin were overwhelmingly involved, and these positions were, by law, hereditary. However, an occupation that was considered a Burakumin occupation in one area was not necessarily the same throughout the country.
Emancipation With the Emancipation Edict of 1871, legal controls on employment for the Burakumin ended. The Emancipation Edict, however, did not eliminate discrimination. Government proclamations eliminating discrimination against a group of people seldom result in immediate changes. In addition, no programs were promoted to aid the Burakumin in the period following emancipation; the boundaries of discrimination simply shifted after emancipation. The Burakumin were still labeled as “different,” and through social and economic controls, they remained within the communities in which they had lived for generations. These communities were known as Tokubetsu Buraku, or special hamlets, and became the source for calling the people Burakumin, or the people of the hamlet. The boundary of defining the Burakumin had shifted from their occupations to their residences, yet the discrimination remained. The categorization, however, continued to be fluid. Over time, through migration and urbanization, residents and even districts have been both added to and removed from official records. Yet because of the Japanese government’s system of family registry, the koseki, it is still possible to determine family background through government documents.
Aid to Buraku Communities Initially, after emancipation, there was little done by the national government to aid Buraku communities. This led to continued gaps in employment, education, and other social categories between Burakumin and majority Japanese. Large-scale aid from the national government to Buraku districts was provided from 1969 to 2002, greatly improving living conditions for the Burakumin. These laws provided funding for improving Buraku district infrastructure; increasing social welfare and health policies; and improving education. Under these laws, much of the structural discrimination
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against the Burakumin decreased, but discrimination against the Burakumin continues, most notably in areas of marriage and employment. Finally, because of a lack of any distinguishing features, many Burakumin can, and do, move freely through the majority society without those around them being aware of their minority membership. Unless one shares one’s background, it is impossible to know who is and who is not Burakumin. Christopher Bondy See also Discrimination; Japan; Nikkeijin
Further Readings
Davis, John H., Jr. 2000. “Blurring the Boundaries of the Buraku(min).” Pp. 110–122 in Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan, edited by J. S. Eades, T. Gill, and H. Befu. Victoria, Australia: Trans Pacific Press. DeVos, George and Hiroshi Wagatsuma. 1966. Japan’s Invisible Race: Caste in Culture and Personality. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kitaguchi, Suehiro. 1999. An Introduction to the Buraku Issue: Questions and Answers. Translated by A. McLauchlan. Surrey, UK: Japan Library. Neary, Ian. 1997. “Burakumin in Contemporary Japan.” Pp. 50–78 in Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity, edited by M. Weiner. London: Routledge.
BUREAU
OF INDIAN
AFFAIRS
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is the U.S. federal executive agency charged with oversight of “recognized” Indian tribes and discharge of its “trust” responsibility over them. The BIA is the oldest federal agency in continuous existence. In what has been described as “the largest land trust in the world,” the BIA has jurisdiction over 55.7 million acres of land (“Indian Country,” i.e., lands created by statute: reservations, dependent communities, and allotments) held in trust by the United States for American Indians and Alaska Natives. (Some federally recognized tribes, however, are landless.) The Snyder Act of 1921 authorizes the BIA to “direct, supervise, and expend such moneys as Congress may from time to time appropriate, for the benefit, care, and assistance of the Indians throughout the United States”; for “administration of Indian affairs,” including “general support and civilization”;
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and for “relief of distress and conservation of health.” In executing its federal trust obligation to American Indians, the BIA oversees Native land and water, heritage preservation, energy and minerals, probate, Indian gaming, law and order, fish and wildlife, health and human services, housing, education, tribal economic development, trust fund management and reform, and self-determination and self-governance. Thus, the BIA exercises federal superintendence on a massive scale. American Indians have a unique status under American law. Administrative responsibility for congressional policies affecting American Indians and Alaska Natives rests primarily with the BIA. BIA history, therefore, is closely tied to congressional policies, which have undergone dramatic shifts over the course of the BIA’s existence. Indian history—and the history of the BIA as an integral part of it—may be periodized in time periods reflecting distinctive phases of American Indian policy: Removal and Relocation (1828–1887), Reservation and Allotment (1887–1934), Reorganization and SelfGovernment (1934–1946), Termination and Relocation (1946–1961), and the Self-Determination Era (1961–present). Consequently, the BIA has an anomalous and complex relationship with Indian nations. Tribal recognition is a requirement for BIA services. By 1871, when Congress abolished treaty making with Indian nations, a total of 372 distinct tribes were recognized. Of these, 258 tribes were acknowledged under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. As of 2007, there are a total of 561 federally recognized tribal governments in the United States, which now maintains “government-to-government” relationships with these American Indian nations. BIA services do not extend to unacknowledged Native tribes, however. In theory, while BIA nonrecognition may deprive a tribe of statutory benefits, it cannot divest that tribe’s vested treaty rights. Thus, the BIA panoptically “sees” only “recognized” American Indian tribes (as opposed to unacknowledged Indian “groups”) and oversees these Indian nations as “wards”—while now committed to respecting their internal sovereignty and taking measures to restore to American Indian nations some measure of their precolonial independence. This is far easier said than done. As a general rule of policy, the BIA oscillates between two polar opposites: Native American sovereignty and tribal dependence. Despite colonial recognition of Native American sovereignty, Native tribes constitute, under U.S. law, “domestic, dependent
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nations”—thus precluding domestic and international political recognition yet theoretically ensuring them self-government. “Domestic, dependent nations” are powerful federal Indian law words that sound in U.S. Supreme Court cases and resound throughout the entire body of federal Indian law and corresponding BIA regulations. The BIA was created by Congress as part of the War Department in 1834. (In 1824, the War Department had created an Office of Indian Affairs, but without congressional authorization.) The BIA’s enabling legislation couched malign policies in benign objectives. In theory, the BIA’s mission was to assist Native Americans and Native Alaskans in managing their affairs under a trust relationship with the federal government. In reality, this was a subsistence dependency of the conquered on their conqueror. In past practice, the BIA became an instrument of subjugation, land appropriation, forced assimilation, and, in some cases, annihilation. On September 8, 2000, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Kevin Gover (Pawnee), speaking on behalf of the BIA, offered a historic apology for the agency’s policies and actions over its 175-year history, particularly for the BIA’s devastating impact on American Indian nations—whether federally recognized, unrecognized, or extinct—through policies that in their most extreme forms ranged from extermination (physical genocide) to assimilation (cultural genocide). Thus, Gover took the occasion of the BIA’s 175th anniversary as an opportunity to make history by apologizing for it. Fortunately, BIA policy in the latter part of the 20th century transformed into an era of Indian “self-determination.” Accordingly, BIA history can best be seen within a framework of five distinct phases of congressional policy shifts in Indian affairs.
Removal and Relocation (1828–1887) Originally part of the War Department, the BIA was transferred to the Department of the Interior (DOI) in 1849. But the war metaphor persisted, and there were more “Indian wars” to be fought. A series of subsequent massacres of American Indians cast a pall over U.S. history: Blue Water Creek (1854), Bear River (1863), Sand Creek (1864), Washita River (1868), Sappa Creek (1875), Camp Robinson (1878), Wounded Knee (1890), and over forty others. There were also settlers pushing westward, and so it was deemed necessary to remove Native tribes that impeded the “manifest destiny” of the United States to
occupy the entire continent. Yet long before Columbus, American Indians had governed their own territories as sovereigns. Thus, they had original title (under concepts of stewardship) to their own lands. One may then ask, Why does the United States now own these lands, and how is it that the BIA oversees Indian Country? Under what has been described as “conquest by law,” the discovery of America dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of their lands. The “Discovery Doctrine” ripened into law under the landmark Supreme Court case Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823). Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the “discovering” European nations (and later the United States) held fee title to Indian Aboriginal lands, in that “that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it”—subject to the Indians’ right of occupancy and use. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) established the Trust Doctrine. Facing the prospect of forced removal, the Cherokee fought on legal grounds all the way to the Supreme Court. Justice Marshall declared that American Indians “may, more correctly, perhaps, be denominated domestic dependent nations” whose members were “wards” within the United States. Under existing peace treaties, the Cherokee were entitled to retain possessory interests (rights to occupy without owning land) and to exercise reserved rights. Worcester v. Georgia (1832) finally procured a favorable ruling for the Cherokees. But President Andrew Jackson ignored the Supreme Court. Jackson reportedly remarked, “Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now” (as reported by New York Tribune editor Horace Greely). The nonenforcement of the Court’s decision led to the infamous Cherokee “Trail of Tears” (1838–1839). The Indian Removal Act of 1830 extinguished Indian land rights east of the Mississippi River, forcing displacement of the Five Civilized Tribes west to Oklahoma territory (“Indian Country”). The BIA’s “first mission,” Gover stated in his historic apology, “was to execute the removal of the southeastern tribal nations.” By 1840, the BIA and the U.S. military had relocated more than thirty tribes to territory west of the Mississippi. Congress then enacted the Indian Appropriation Act (1851), the Homestead Act (1862), and the Railroads Act (1862), which established the legal basis for creating American Indian “reservations” and enforcing relocation of Indian tribes from traditional homelands onto Indian reservations. Treaty making is the one mechanism that the Constitution clearly provides with which the federal government may interact with sovereigns other than
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the states. During this period, however, treaties were made with American Indian nations to “treat away” Indian lands and to extinguish their claims to them. While many treaties ceded lands, some contained provisions for tribes to retain hunting, fishing, and gathering rights on the ceded lands. In theory, these treaty rights were preserved in perpetuity and, from a legal standpoint, were to be respected. From 1853 to 1856, however, the United States acquired 174 million acres of Native American lands through 52 treaties, all of which were subsequently broken. Unmoored from Supreme Court precedents, treaty making with American Indians was abolished. In 1871, Congress, by dint of its plenary power, decreed “that hereafter no Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty” (Indian Appropriations Act of March 3, 1871, ch. 120, § 1). The emergence of the Plenary Power Doctrine (allowing Congress to override treaties) in Indian affairs in the 19th century has been a cornerstone of federal Indian law administered through the BIA.
Reservation and Allotment (1887–1934) Private allotment of reservation land was one of the primary tools of assimilation policy. It called for the dissolution of tribal land tenure through allotment of collectively held tribal land, to be divided into individual parcels deeded to tribal members (160 acres to each family head, 80 acres to each single person over 18 years old and to each orphan under 18). Between 1887 and 1932, this parceling of tribal lands through individual allotments to tribal members—administered through the BIA—resulted in a drastic reduction of the aggregate tribal land base, with “surplus” land either ceded to the government or sold to White settlers. In 1887, Native Americans held 138 million acres of reservation lands. By 1934, when the Dawes Act was repealed, Native landholdings were reduced to only 52 million acres. Privatizing Native land seriously eroded tribalism, increased welfare dependency, and paved the way for forced assimilation. Forced assimilation through Indian boarding schools was a policy also administered by the BIA. In 1892, Captain Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Industrial Indian School, articulated the theory that became the justification for forced assimilation. Pratt argued that society had a duty to “civilize”
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Indians by eliminating their Indian identity; the school’s goal was to “kill the Indian to save the man.” Forced assimilation was a form of social engineering. In what has been termed natal alienation—removal from homeland and severance of cultural ties, a concept originating in Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death (1982)—Native American children, under BIA auspices, were removed from their parents and reservations at an early age. In a practice that lasted as late as 1968, the BIA granted churches land patents to run mission (boarding) schools and gave them control of Indians’ treaty rations. Native children were placed in boarding schools where Native languages and religions were suppressed. Many children were subjected to beatings, whippings, and sexual abuse well into the 20th century. Denial of parental visitation advanced the process of assimilation. Here, the BIA was the effective instrument of cultural patrimony occasioned by the alienation and indoctrination of indigenous children. In 1924, Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, granting citizenship to all American Indians born in the United States. In 1928, the Institute for Government Research conducted a 2-year survey of Indian affairs and published “The Problem of Indian Administration” (known as “the Meriam Commission report”), which issued a stinging indictment of federal Indian policy and called for sweeping changes, recommending that the goal of Indian policy should be the development of all that is good in Indian culture “rather than to crush out all that is Indian.” This highly influential finding paved the way for policy reform known as the “Indian New Deal.”
Reorganization and Self-Government (1934–1946) The Wheeler-Howard Act, known as the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934, promoted tribal reorganization and self-government. The IRA halted land allotments, ordered the return of Indian lands, provided reservation economic development capital, and authorized tribes to adopt constitutions (based on boilerplate constitutions) subject to approval by tribal membership and the secretary of the interior. This otherwise benign policy had a negative impact, however. While the IRA conferred the power of self-government, the BIA effectively forced majority rule (“IRA governments”) on tribes, thereby usurping existing tribal social and political leadership through abandoning
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traditional tribal organization (systems of kinship, clan, and community) and traditional, consensus-based approaches to decision making. To finally resolve all residual tribal claims, the Indian Land Claims Commission Act (1946) established the Indian Claims Commission, to hear suits brought by Indian tribes against the United States. The act set August 31, 1951, as its deadline, foreclosing any claims that arose between 1776 and 1946. Some 852 petitions were filed by tribes, establishing 370 cases. But these cases were not heard until 1974. This tribal renaissance was short-lived, however.
Termination and Relocation (1946–1961) In 1953, Congress adopted House Concurrent Resolution 108 (popularly known as the “termination policy”). In order “to end [Indians’] status as wards of the United States,” this resolution sought to extinguish the political status of tribes and their trust relationship with the United States. Between 1953 and 1968, more than 100 American Indian tribes were legally “terminated”—thus severing federal trust obligations— and more than 1,360,000 acres of tribal land were transferred to the public domain, privatized, and sold. To make matters worse, the BIA, through its Direct Employment Program (better known as the “relocation program”), induced American Indians to move from rural to urban areas, where employment prospects were thought to be better. Between 1953 and 1970, “relocation centers” in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Minneapolis, and Chicago drew more than 90,000 American Indians away from their reservations. In effect, termination was the ultimate assimilation policy.
The Self-Determination Era (1961–Present) The current BIA policy of “self-determination” has its origins in President Nixon’s “Special Message to the Congress on Indian Affairs” (July 8, 1970). Passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (ISDEAA) in 1975 permitted tribes to operate federally funded educational programs. On the formal request of an Indian tribe, the ISDEAA directs the secretary of the interior and the secretary of health and human services to turn over to that tribe the direct operation of its federal Indian programs. The secretary and the tribe then enter into a “self-determination
contract” that must incorporate provisions of a model contract included in the ISDEAA. In further legislation enacted in 1988, the Tribally Controlled Schools Act directed the BIA to make grants to tribes operating BIA-funded schools. This policy has empowered many tribes to gain a de facto sovereignty by exercising power to direct their own tribal development. The BIA operates school systems on sixty-three reservations in twenty-three states and provides adult education for some 30,000 adult Native American students at twentyfive BIA-funded, tribally controlled community colleges and universities—with an additional 1,600 Native American adults at two colleges operated by the BIA. Tribal justice is an integral aspect of selfgovernment. In 1968, Congress imposed limits on tribal criminal jurisdiction under the Indian Civil Rights Act by limiting tribal powers to define and punish offenses. It also imposed upon tribal governments the provisions of Article III and the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. However, the BIA is precluded from imposing federal standards on tribal courts. The BIA also funds courts commonly called “Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Courts,” which are considered agencies of both the federal government and tribal courts. The BIA also administers twenty-two Courts of Indian Offenses. Through its Office of Law Enforcement Services (OLES), the BIA implements the Indian Law Enforcement Reform Act (1990). Trust management, education, energy, law enforcement, and self-determination were highlighted in President George W. Bush’s proposed $2.2 billion budget for the BIA for fiscal year 2007. Of these, ongoing trust reform and fiscal discipline of the Bureau’s trust management system remains a top priority, as it has been since a class action lawsuit in 1999 scandalized the BIA and led to pressure for trust reform. Pursuant to federal statutes, the BIA manages certain funds on behalf of individual American Indians and tribes. Despite its trust obligations, however, the BIA has breached its common law fiduciary obligations in its gross mismanagement of over $500 million in 300,000 Individual Indian Money (IIM) accounts. In Cobell v. Babbitt (1999), a class action lawsuit that dominated the actions of the BIA for several years, a federal court found that the real purpose of the trust doctrine was to effectively “deprive [Indians] of their native lands and rid the nation of their tribal identity” and to avail tribal lands and resources to non-Indians. At one point in the litigation, district court judge Royce Lamberth
Bureau of Indian Affairs
declared, “I have never seen more egregious misconduct by the federal government.” Subsequent trust reform has led to major BIA reorganization. Indian self-determination entails self-governance, actuated by a gradual transfer from the BIA to tribes, of programs previously administered by the BIA, as well as funding to run them. In 1994, Congress established the Self-Governance Program under Title II of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act amendments. In the DOI, the Office of Self-Governance (OSG) administers tribal self-governance as it relates to BIA programs. Up to fifty tribes (or consortia of tribes) annually can participate in the program. Self-governance tribes must negotiate a self-governance “compact” that applies to all bureaus within the DOI, not just the BIA. Each tribe also concludes an Annual Funding Agreement with the BIA that specifies those programs that are transferred to the tribe and those retained by the BIA. In October 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the Indian Self-Determination Contract Reform Act. In 1994, the Self-Governance Permanent Authorization Act was passed, in which Congress expressed its satisfaction with the BIA Self-Governance Demonstration Project and established self-governance as a permanent program within the DOI. On April 30, 2004, on express recommendations by the National Indian Education Association (NIEA), President George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13336 on American Indian and Alaska Native Education, declaring support for tribal sovereignty, tribal traditions, languages, and cultures. “Self-determination” and “sovereignty” are policy markers that are here to stay. The future of federal Indian policy therefore depends on how tensions between greater tribal self-governance and continuation of the federal trust responsibility are best resolved. Christopher George Buck See Appendix B See also Canada, First Nations; Identity Politics; Internalized Racism; Kennewick Man; Marginalization; Minority/ Majority; Native American Health Care; Nativism; Pluralism; Prejudice; Race, Social Construction of; Racialization; Religion, Minority; Social Capital; Sovereignty, Native American; Water Rights
Further Readings
Buck, Christopher. 2006. “‘Never Again’: Kevin Gover’s Apology for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.” Wicazo Sa Review: A Journal of Native American Studies 21:97–126.
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Cross, Raymond. 2003. “The Federal Trust Duty in an Age of Indian Self-Determination: An Epitaph for a Dying Doctrine?” Tulsa Law Review 39. Gover, Kevin, Assistant Secretary Indian Affairs. 2000. “Remarks at the Ceremony Acknowledging the 175th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Sept. 8, 2000).” Reprinted in American Indian Law Review 25:161, 2000–2001. McCarthy, Robert. 2004. “The Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Federal Trust Obligation to American Indians.” BYU Journal of Public Law 19:4–160. Wilkins, David E. and Tsianina Lomanwaima. 2001. Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Federal Law. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Legislation
Indian Removal Act of 1830 (Act of May 28, 1830, 4 Stat. 411). Act of June 30, 1834, Ch. 162, 4 Stat. 735 (codified in part as amended at 25 U.S.C. §§ 9, 40, 45, 48, 60, 62, 68) (creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs by Congress). Indian Appropriation Act of February 27, 1851 (9 St. 587) (granting Congress authority to establish Indian reservations). Homestead Act of 1862, 12 Stat. 392 (granting 250 million acres of Indian land to settlers for as low as $1.00/acre). Indian Appropriations Act of March 3, 1871, ch. 120, § 1, 16 Stat. 544, 566 (codified as amended at 25 U.S.C. § 71, 1994) (ending treaty making between the federal government and the tribes but upholding the obligation of existing treaties). Act of July 1, 1862, ch. 120, 12 Stat. 489, amended by Pacific Railroad and Telegraph Act of July 2, 1864, ch. 216, 13 Stat. 356 (creating Union Pacific Railroad). (“The United States shall extinguish as rapidly as may be the Indian titles to all lands falling under the operation of this act.”) The Indian General Allotment Act (Dawes Severalty Act), ch. 119, 24 Stat. 388 (1887) (codified as amended at 25 U.S.C. §§ 331–334, 339, 341–342, 348–349, 354, 381, 2000) (repealed 1934). Act of November 2, 1921 (Snyder Act), Pub. L. No. 115, 42 Stat. 208 (codified as amended at 25 U.S.C. § 13, 2004). Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Act of June 2, 1924, 43 Stat. 253. Indian Reorganization Act (Wheeler-Howard Act), ch. 576, 48 Stat. 984 (1934) (current version at 25 U.S.C. §§ 461–479, 2000). Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946, Pub. L. No. 726, Ch. 959, § 2, 60 Stat. 1049, codified at 25 U.S.C. §§ 70–70v-3 (1976). House Concurrent Resolution 108, H. R. Con. Res. 108, 83rd Cong., 1st Sess., 67 Stat. B132 (1953) (popularly known as the “Termination Policy”). Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, 25 U.S.C. § 1301 (2000).
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Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, 25 U.S.C. § 450(a), (f) (2004). Tribally Controlled Schools Act of 1988, 25 U.S.C. §§ 2501–2511 (2004). Tribal Self-Governance Program, under Title II of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act Amendments of 1994. Act of Oct. 25, 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-413, 108 Stat. 4250 (codified at 25 U.S.C. § 458aa–gg). Indian Law Enforcement Reform Act, Public Law (1990), Pub. L. No. 101-379, 25 U.S.C. 2801.
Self-Governance Permanent Authorization, Title II, Indian Self-Determination Contract Reform Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-413, 108 Stat. 4254.
BURMESE AMERICANS See MYANMARESE AMERICANS
C communist reforms instituted by the Khmer Rouge, who controlled Cambodia’s government from April 1975 to late December 1978. Cambodians arrived in the United States during an economic recession and a time of growing social and political conservatism, which would lead to significant reductions in public assistance programs. Because Cambodians had no prior immigration history with the United States, there were no well-established Cambodian communities to provide linguistic, emotional, and economic support for adjustment. Strong communities have since formed, and a variety of social and economic advances have been made, but many of the traumas, illnesses, and disadvantages from the early days of immigration remain evident within the population. This entry looks at the history of Cambodians in the United States and then describes the current community.
CAMBODIAN AMERICANS Cambodians are a relatively new immigrant group to the United States, arriving in significant numbers following the U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia in April 1975. As a group, Cambodians made up about 15% of the over 1 million refugees arriving from Southeast Asia between 1975 and 1993. A key feature of this immigrant group is that they came to the United States as refugees with a high degree of physical and psychological trauma resulting from the radical
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Immigration History Cambodian Americans generally divide their immigration to the United States into three time periods, corresponding with the changing political situation in Cambodia and their experience of war and trauma. The first period of immigration began in the 1950s and includes some 200 students and professionals who came to study and work in the United States. This period ended in 1965, when Norodom Sihanouk, then head of state of Cambodia, cut off diplomatic relations with the United States. The second immigration period began in 1970 after Marshall Lon Nol took control of the Cambodian government and restored relations with the United States. Between 1970 and 1974, roughly 500 military
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personnel, students, and immigrants arrived. In April 1975, as the Khmer Rouge solidified their control of the country, 4,600 individuals who had connections to the U.S. government and military were evacuated from Cambodia to the United States. Between 1976 and 1978, another 2,700 military, ambassadors, students, and professionals who were outside Cambodia when it fell to the Khmer Rouge were admitted to the United States as part of a family reunification program. The third period of immigration is the largest and longest and was composed of the nearly 140,000 individuals arriving after 1979, most of whom had lived in Cambodia during the deadly “Pol Pot Time,” so called by Cambodians for the man who headed this regime. Within days of taking control of Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge evacuated the cities, abolished money, and shut down all businesses, markets, and public institutions, including schools and hospitals. In many parts of the country, families were separated by age and gender and assigned to work groups. Every aspect of life was monitored by the Khmer Rouge, including where people lived, who they talked to, and what they could eat and when. Educated individuals were targeted for extermination, and anyone who disobeyed the orders of the Khmer Rouge faced the very real possibility of execution. It is estimated that 1 to 1.5 million men, women, and children were murdered or died of disease and overwork during this time. Distinctions in socioeconomic background and personal experience between individuals of the first two immigration periods and those of the third are significant. The first two groups were composed of individuals who were educated in Western-style schools and had some experience with both urban settings and countries and cultures outside Cambodia. This contrasts significantly with the 93% of Cambodians arriving in the United States between 1979 and 1993 who came from rural areas.
Resettlement in the United States A primary concern for U.S. policymakers has been how to ease the economic burden of resettling not just the Cambodians but all of the over 1 million Southeast Asian refugees. The U.S. government favored getting people to work quickly and preventing them from forming dense communities, which it was believed would adversely affect English language learning,
encourage dependency on co-ethnics, and slow down assimilation. In 1981, the Office of Refugee Resettlement instituted the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Associations Project (CMAAP) to design and direct a “Cambodian Cluster Project” (also known as the Khmer Guided Placement Program). Cambodian refugees were placed in one of twelve midsized cities throughout the United States, which had been selected based on criteria that included employment opportunities, an existing refugee population, and affordable housing. However, through a phenomenon known as secondary migration, nearly half of all refugees moved away from their initial resettlement areas within the first 2 years, usually to be with family or large refugee communities. In the case of Cambodian Americans, the areas of greatest attraction were Southern and Central California; Lowell, Massachusetts; and Seattle, Washington.
Population Characteristics The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 172,000 Cambodians lived in the United States in 2000. An additional 34,000 individuals identified themselves as Cambodian in combination with other ethnicities, for a total of approximately 206,000. Of this total population, 137,000, or roughly two-thirds, gave Cambodia as their country of birth. Cambodians live in all fifty states; however, the largest number resides in California, which is home to 84,500, or 41%, of the total Cambodian population in the United States. The largest single population is in Long Beach, California, often referred to as the “Cambodian capital of the United States.” Although accurate population figures for Long Beach are not available, the Los Angeles County metropolitan area contains nearly 44,000 Cambodians, the majority of whom are believed to live within the Long Beach city limits. Lowell, Massachusetts, is home to the secondlargest population, and Seattle, Washington, is home to the third. Sizable and well-known populations are also found in San Francisco; Stockton; Philadelphia; Providence; Washington, D.C.; San Diego; Fresno; Minneapolis; New York; and Dallas. The Cambodian American population is diverse in terms of ethnicity, language, class, education, and experience of war and deprivation. The major ethnic group from Cambodia is Khmer (pronounced without the final “r”). Other ethnic groups making up the Cambodian
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refugee population in the United States include Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Lao, Cham (a Muslim minority group), and Khmer Leou (highland Khmer).
part of the informal economy centered on the garment industry, doing piecework in their homes or in smallscale sewing “factories.”
Socio oecconomic Characte erisstics
Health
Socioeconomic indicators for Cambodian Americans are lower than those of other Asian groups in the United States but have shown significant improvement over the last 10 years. In the 1990 census, the estimated per capita income for Cambodian Americans was $5,000 but had risen to over $17,600 by 2000. In the same 10-year span, the percentage of Cambodian American families living below the poverty level was reduced from 42% to just over 25%. The high rate of poverty is linked to a number of factors. Debilitating trauma and limited English language skills play a major role. In addition, the majority of Cambodian Americans had been rural agriculturalists with limited formal education and little understanding of the U.S. job market. Those individuals who did hold professional degrees were underemployed in the United States, which aggravated depression in this segment of the population. As a new immigrant group to the United States, Cambodian Americans had no well-established communities that could mitigate some of the adjustment problems by providing places to live, jobs, and translation. One exception was the Cambodian community in Long Beach, California, which had been in existence a little over 3 years when the largest group of Cambodians began arriving in 1979. Another contributing factor to the high poverty rate was the disproportionate number of widows. Of those families living below the poverty level in 2000, over 46% were headed by single females, who on average earn 25% less than their male counterparts. The 2000 census showed Cambodian Americans have found their greatest employment opportunities in manufacturing, sales, and office occupations. In local communities, Cambodian Americans are employed in social services and education and as medical and court interpreters. Like other immigrant groups to the United States, many have opened small, family-run businesses catering to non-Cambodians. Among the most successful have been doughnut and auto repair shops. Where the community is large enough, Cambodian Americans have opened businesses serving the needs of the community. These include groceries, restaurants, video rentals, tailors, and jewelers. In larger cities, Cambodian Americans have become
The majority of Cambodians who came as refugees suffered from an array of physical and emotional illnesses directly attributable to the extreme conditions of daily life under the Khmer Rouge. The types of trauma individuals were exposed to included physical injury or torture, imprisonment, and witnessing the killing or torture of others, most often of close friends and family members. Two-thirds of Cambodian women experienced rape, loss of a spouse, or loss of a child. Illnesses present among Cambodian Americans born in Cambodia included tuberculosis, hepatitis (leading to high rates of liver cancer in the present population), and gastrointestinal problems. The population also suffers from high rates of posttraumatic stress disorder and major depression, usually associated with severe headaches, backache, dizziness, and recurring nightmares. Language barriers, differing cultural definitions of illness, and differing health seeking behaviors have meant that many of these problems have been, and continue to be, inadequately treated.
Cultural Recreation and Maintenance Language
The national language of Cambodia (a country with an estimated 2007 population of 14.4 million) and the language spoken at home by over 90% of Cambodians is Khmer, a nontonal Austroasiatic language of the Mon-Khmer language family. Cambodian Americans of Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, or Laotian descent may also speak and read the languages associated with their ethnic heritage. English language learning has been relatively easy for younger Cambodian Americans who are in school but has been more difficult for adults, especially the elderly and those who are isolated from the English-speaking population because of health or emotional disabilities that prevent them from working or because they work in their home. The Khmer script seen on many Cambodian American businesses is derived from a Brahmi script from South India, which was probably introduced to the Khmer sometime prior to the 2nd century. It is not
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uncommon for literate Cambodian American parents to teach their children the fundamentals of reading and writing Khmer. More formal Khmer literacy classes have been established in many communities across the country. Relig gious Practice es
The majority of Cambodian Americans are Theravada Buddhists. The form they practice incorporates animistic beliefs (a trait shared with many culture groups in Southeast Asia) and Hindu elements (retained from the Khmer Empire, which controlled most of Mainland Southeast Asia from the 9th to the 14th century). Traditional Cambodian culture centered on the daily activities of the wat, the Khmer word for the Buddhist temple complex. The wat was not only the religious but also the social and educational center of village life. For Cambodian Americans, the establishment of Buddhist temples in the United States has been a high priority. Every large population able to gather the funds has constructed at least one temple. Long Beach, California, as home to the largest concentration of Cambodians in the United States, has at least ten temples of varying sizes. Christians were a minority in Cambodia prior to 1975, making up about 1% of the population. The number of Cambodian Christians in the United States is growing as a result of exposure to Christian aid workers in the refugee camps in Thailand; the high number of Christian individuals, churches, and organizations that sponsored Cambodians to the United States in the early years of migration; and continuing contact with Christians in the United States after resettlement. Upon arriving in the United States, young Cambodians found church activities offered a good opportunity for meeting Americans and learning English. Muslims made up 3% to 4% of the Cambodian population prior to 1975. The dominant Muslim group in Cambodia was the Chams, an ethnic group originally from central Vietnam that was forced to migrate to Cambodia in the 1700s under pressure from the southward-moving Vietnamese. About 20% of the Muslims in Cambodia were ethnic Khmer. An estimated 2,000 Cambodian American Muslims currently live in the United States. Dan nce and Music
Classical Khmer court dance and music are core elements of Cambodian culture and identity. The
image of the apsara (celestial dancer) can be seen everywhere in Cambodian American communities, along with images of Angkor Wat, the 12th-century Hindu temple of the Khmer empire. Often referred to as the “heart and soul of Khmer culture,” dance is considered to be a form of worship and prayer. Prior to 1975, this highly stylized, formal dance was performed only for the king and other important officials. Ordinary people rarely saw it performed. Among Cambodian Americans, the dance is both a receptacle and symbol of their culture, and it is performed frequently for Cambodian and American audiences. Practically every Cambodian American community, no matter its size, has organized dance classes for its young girls. When an instructor is not available, videotapes are used. The dance is performed at many Cambodian American cultural events and celebrations, such as the Cambodian New Year in midApril. Most often, the dancers are accompanied by taped music, but a few communities, such as Long Beach, have musicians who perform with the dancers and also teach young boys how to play the instruments. Susan Needham See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Asian Americans; Assimilation; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Genocide; Health, Immigrant; Immigrant Communities; Informal Economy; Refugees
Further Readings
Ablin, David and Marlowe Hood, eds. 1987. The Cambodian Agony. New York: M. E. Sharpe. Chan, Sucheng. 2004. Survivors: Cambodian Refugees in the United States. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Chandler, David. 1991. The Tragedy of Cambodian History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ebihara, May. 1985. “Khmer.” Pp. 127–147 in Refugees in the United States: A Reference Handbook, edited by D. Haines. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Mortland, Carol and Judy Ledgerwood. 1987. “Secondary Migration Among Southeast Asian Refugees in the United States.” Urban Anthropology 16:291–326. Ong, Aihwa. 2003. Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Phim, Toni Samantha and Ashley Thompson. 2001. Dance in Cambodia. Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia: Oxford University Press. Ratliff, Sharon K. 1997. Caring for Cambodian Americans: A Multidisciplinary Resource for the Helping Professions. New York: Garland.
Canada
Reeves, Terrance and Claudette Bennett. 2004. We the People: Asians in the United States. Census 2000 Special Reports. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.
CANADA The original inhabitants of Canada are the Aboriginals, or First Nations. They suffered from colonization and loss of their land due to the arrival of the French and English, known as Charter Groups because of their role as the first immigrant groups and the nation’s founding communities. Other racial and ethnic groups, including Asians and Blacks, arrived in Canada well before the 19th and early 20th centuries through forced or voluntary migration, and large-scale immigration to Canada continues today. These groups have also suffered from exclusion and discrimination and for years struggled for political rights and social recognition. Today, Canada—a country with an estimated population in 2007 of 32.9 million people—is known as a bilingual and multicultural society that has demonstrated success in managing the interests of Aboriginals, French and English Charter Groups, and many other diverse racial and ethnic groups. The official languages of Canada are English and French. Still, throughout most of Canada’s history, the country has been perceived as predominantly British in its orientation. At the time of confederation, 60% of the population was British and 30% French; in 1991, 41% were British and 28% French. This entry provides an overview of issues related to race and ethnicity in Canada, looks at the historical experience of several key immigrant groups, and describes today’s multicultural environment. The First Nations are discussed more completely in a separate entry.
Background Geographically, Canada has the second-largest land area of all the world’s nations. It is made up of 10 provinces: in Western Canada, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia; in Central Canada, Ontario and Quebec; and in Eastern Canada, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The three territories are the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon. The Confederation of Canada came about on July 1, 1867, through the British North American Act. Canada is a constitutional monarchy, which has Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. As a federal
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system of parliamentary government, there are three levels of government: federal, provincial, and municipal. The Charter Groups played an important role in establishing the political, social, and economic institutions of the country. The founding of Canada was based on the colonization of its Indigenous Peoples, the exploitation of immigrant labor, and the reality that the White settlers of Canada held privileged political, social, and economic power in the country. Historically, Canada’s past includes policies and practices that overtly discriminated against the Chinese Canadians, South Asian Canadians, Japanese Canadians, Blacks, Jewish émigrés, and Ukrainians. For instance, the 1910 Immigration Act determined which immigrants were and were not allowed into Canada. People were rejected on the assumption that some groups would not fit into Canada due to the climate and their educational and social standing. Such selection criteria gave immigration officials the ability to discriminate on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, and creed. In addition, the government established a list of preferred and nonpreferred countries from which to receive immigrants. The preferred countries were the United Kingdom and United States, followed by northern and western Europe. People from Greece, Syria, and Turkey, along with European Jews, needed a special permit class to be able to emigrate. Today, the Ministry of Industry notes that Canada welcomes over 200,000 immigrants each year, and they account for almost 60% of the nation’s population growth. According to the 2001 census, immigrants from China, India, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Taiwan accounted for over 40% of all immigrants who came to Canada between 1991 and 2001. Of the total Canadian population of 30 million, 4 million individuals identified themselves as visible minorities: people who are non-White, non-Aboriginal, and non-Caucasian, whatever their place of birth. Between the years 1993 and 2003, quality-of-life surveys have ranked Canada as one of the best places to live in the world in regard to wealth, education, and life expectancy.
Historical Discrimination The historical experiences of various groups have left reminders of racism with its changing forms. This section looks at some of those immigrant communities.
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Chinese Canadians. Anti-Chinese legislative acts were implemented in the 1800s to limit the political and civil rights of Chinese people and their ability to immigrate to Canada. Because Canada needed cheap labor to build the Canadian Pacific Railway, the government still allowed the entry of the Chinese into the country, so long as each person paid a head tax of $50 in 1888, raised to $500 by 1903. Chinese Canadians played an important role in contributing to the prosperity and building of Canada. They were the ones who did the most menial, dangerous, and difficult work that no one else wanted to do, including the building of railways, bridges, and roads and work in coal mines and mills. Between the years 1923 and 1947, the Canadian government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred any immigration to Canada from China. The Chinese Canadians did not receive the right to vote until 1947. African (Black) Canadians. The racial segregation of and discrimination against “free” Black people is also a part of the history of Canada. Black slaves who had been emancipated in American colonies and entered Canada as “free” persons still worked as indentured servants. Furthermore, many unemployed Whites of the period resented Blacks being paid for work, despite the fact that Blacks earned one-quarter of the wages of White people. The first race riots broke out in Shelbourne and Birchtown, Nova Scotia, in 1784. The historical and persistent hatred and resentment toward Blacks has resulted in many Blacks living today in segregated communities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Ontario. Japanese Canadians. The Japanese Canadians have been in Canada since the 1870s. Like Chinese Canadians, they experienced economic exploitation and received lower pay than the White laborers. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Japanese Canadians, along with the Chinese and East Indians, experienced negative discrimination, which resulted in one of the worst race riots in British Columbia’s history. Fueling anti-Asian sentiment in the 1930s was the Japanese invasion of China. Xenophobic attitudes and racist political responses to the Japanese throughout North America resulted in the unprecedented action of the Canadian government relocating Japanese Canadians, including Canadian born and naturalized citizens, to detention camps in isolated areas of British Columbia. Their property was confiscated, and they were incarcerated in jails and
made to do forced labor on road construction projects or sugar beet farms. It was not until 1988 that a formal apology was made by the Canadian government and a $20,000 financial compensation was given to Japanese Canadians still living who had suffered from past discrimination. South Asian Canadians. South Asian Canadians include people from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Bangladesh regardless of place of birth. People who have roots in South Asia but who emigrated from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the Caribbean nations, and other countries are also included in this category. South Asians experienced harsh racial discrimination and in British Columbia were negatively labeled as the “Hindu invasion.” South Asian Canadians were denied political rights similarly to the Chinese and Japanese. In 1907, even though many South Asians had British citizenship rights, they were disenfranchised by the Canadian government and were not allowed to vote in provincial elections. Ukrainian Canadians. Ukrainian Canadians helped to settle Western Canada, and despite having white skin, they too experienced discrimination. The focus of the discrimination was based on the belief that certain groups could not adapt to Canadian values and society. The Ukrainian Canadians, along with the Finns and Jews, were seen as “dangerous foreigners” who potentially were socialist or communist sympathizers.
Today’s Multicultural Environment Despite its historical past and continuing struggles with racism, Canada has implemented government acts that are considered to be the “first” in the world. The Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947 was the first to grant the same social, political, and economic rights enjoyed by native-born citizens of Canada to those who were new immigrants. In addition, the Immigration Act of 1967 abolished the selection criteria of new immigrants on the basis of quotas or race and ethnicity and established an immigration structure based on the skill sets of the émigrés, their level of education and knowledge of English and French, and the labor shortage needs of the country. Most important, Canada is the first country in the world to constitutionally recognize Aboriginal and treaty rights. In Canada, a persistent and predominant theme for government and policymakers is to address national identity, unity, multiculturalism, and
Canada, Aboriginal Women
Aboriginal rights in the context of managing minority power relations. Canada is a nation that prides itself on maintaining national unity in the context of an ethnically and racially diverse society, despite a history that includes racism. Through the tenets of multiculturalism, Canada has encouraged people to maintain their ethnic identity, while at the same time acknowledging what it means to be Canadian. Such recognition by government lawmakers is reflected in the Multiculturalism Act of 1988, which was earlier entrenched in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. June Ying Yee See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Canada; Canada, Aboriginal Women; Canada, First Nations; Foreign Students; Hate Crimes; Muslims in Canada
Further Readings
Bolari, B. Singh and Peter S. Li. 1988. Racial Oppression in Canada. 2nd ed. Toronto, Canada: Garamond Press. Canada eBook. 2007. The People. Retrieved from http://www43.statcan.ca/02/02_000_e.htm Fleras, Augie and Jean Leonard Elliott. 2007. Unequal Relations: An Introduction to Race, Ethnic, and Aboriginal Dynamics in Canada. 5th ed. Toronto, Canada: Pearson Prentice Hall. Frideres, James S. 1999. “Altered States: Federal Policy and Aboriginal Peoples.” Pp. 115–146 in Race and Ethnic Relations in Canada, edited by P. S. Li. Toronto, Canada: Oxford University Press. Henry, Frances and Carol Tator. 2006. The Colour of Democracy: Racism in Canadian Society. 3rd ed. Toronto, Canada: Nelson Thomson Canada. Ministry of Industry. 2005. Population Projections of Visible Minority Groups: Canada, Provinces and Regions, 2001–2017. Ottawa, Canada: Statistics Canada. Weinfeld, Morton and Lori Wilkinson. 1999. “Immigration, Diversity, and Minority Communities.” Pp. 55–87 in Race and Ethnic Relations in Canada, edited by P. S. Li. Toronto, Canada: Oxford University Press.
CANADA, ABORIGINAL WOMEN Efforts to define and control its indigenous population have a long history in Canada, often with serious consequences for women in the Aboriginal community.
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For more than a century before the Indian Act was amended in 1985, women who were born Indian in Canada lost legal status as Indians when they married men who were not Indians. This includes Aboriginal men from Canada or other countries not registered under the Indian Act. The clauses that first discriminated against Indian women and their children in the 1869 Enfranchisement Act gradually became more restrictive, remaining in effect until Bill C-31, an Act to Amend the Indian Act, was passed in 1985. Despite the several legislative revisions, Aboriginal women and their descendants still argue that they are being treated inequitably. This entry reviews the history of Indian acts as they have affected women.
Legislative History The Legislature of the Province of Canada enacted two Indian acts in 1850 ostensibly designed to protect Indians and the property they occupied in Upper Canada and Lower Canada. This early legislation included inclusive definitions of Indians. The Upper Canada legislation was designed to protect Indians and persons who married Indians, while the Lower Canada legislation identified specific groups of people as Indians. Indians included persons of Indian blood who belonged to a particular body or tribe of Indians and their descendants. Persons intermarried with and living with Indians and their descendants were also considered Indians, as were persons living with Indians whose parents on either side were Indians and persons adopted by the Indians as infants, and their descendants. The Province of Canada amended both acts 1 year after implementation to include all women married to Indian men and their descendants and to exclude all non-Indian men married to Indian women. After confederation, Parliament further revised the legal definition of Indian in the Lands and Enfranchisement Acts of 1868–1869. The 1869 act included a onequarter Indian blood quantum and stripped Indian women and their children of their status if the women married non-Indians. In addition, women who married Indians from other tribes or bands became members of their husbands’ tribes or bands, as did any children of these marriages. The Place of Women
When the 1869 legislation relegated Indian women to a status similar to that of European Canadian
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women, it did not reflect Indian customs. According to Jamieson, Aboriginal peoples such as the Iroquois and Maliseet were often matrilineal and matrilocal. In addition, Kirkness explains that since women are the first teachers, respect for Aboriginal women comes partially from this role, as illustrated by the absence of any distinction between male and female pronouns in many Aboriginal languages. The 1869 legislation not only failed to reflect Indian customs but was also based on a seemingly misguided belief that White husbands were a greater threat to Aboriginal communities than were White wives. While concerns that aggressive White men might monopolize reserve lands were perhaps understandable in an agrarian economy, Weaver points out that White wives were frequently powerful forces behind their Aboriginal farmer husbands. In addition, White wives could be seen as a threat to the culture of Aboriginal communities because they could not provide cultural and linguistic links for their children, seldom being well-versed in local customs. When the all-encompassing 1876 Indian Act became law, replacing various earlier pieces of legislation, it controlled every aspect of Indian life and redefined who was considered Indian. Indians were males of Indian blood, their children, and women lawfully married to Indian men. Indian women who married non-Indians were no longer considered Indians under the Indian Act, but they could still receive Indian monies. Under the 1920 Indian Act, however, a woman’s right to receive Indian monies could be commuted without her or the band’s permission. Intrroducing th he Registe er
There were additional major changes to the legislation in 1951. Provisions included an Indian Register maintained by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to record the name of every registered Indian and conditions for recognizing illegitimate children. Another provision that became known as the “Double Mother clause” denied registration to those whose mothers and fathers’ mothers were not registered Indians. In addition, prior to 1951, Indian women who married non-Indians could remain on the band list to receive annuities and band monies if they did not accept a lump sum payment when they lost their status, but they were not permitted to hold land on the reserve, and their children were not eligible for Indian status. According to Jamieson, however, after 1951, the
Governor in Council could declare Indian women who married non-Indians enfranchised as of the date of marriage. When the enfranchisement order was issued, women were required to sell or otherwise dispose of any property held on the reserve within 30 days. They were then entitled to receive a portion of the Indian monies the Crown held for the band plus an amount equal to 20 years’ worth of treaty payments. The increasingly restrictive Indian Act provisions remained in effect until Bill C-31 was passed in 1985. It is estimated that 25,000 Aboriginal peoples lost their status as Indians between 1876 and 1985. Douglas Sanders explained that the 1967 Royal Commission on the Status of Women helped draw public attention to the issue of sexual discrimination in the Indian Act, as did individual women who spoke publicly about how their lives were affected by what has been called their “statutory excommunication.” Jeannette Lavell, from Manitoulin Island, Ontario; Yvonne Bedard, from Six Nations, Ontario; and Sandra Lovelace, from Tobique, New Brunswick, waged a lengthy battle on numerous fronts before Bill C-31 became law.
The Women’s Appeal In 1973, the Supreme Court of Canada heard the joint cases of Jeannette Lavell and Yvonne Bedard, both of whom had lost their status after marrying nonAboriginal men. According to Sanders, the Aboriginal community perceived legal challenges such as those by Lavell and Bedard as a threat to status under the Indian Act. Therefore, the provincial and territorial status Indian organizations and the National Indian Brotherhood (now the Assembly of First Nations) intervened against the women, while the Native Council of Canada and the short-lived group Indian Rights for Indian Women intervened for the women. The Supreme Court of Canada decided that Section 12(1)(b) of the Indian Act was exempt from the Canadian Bill of Rights. This section of the Indian Act declared that Indian women who married non-Indians were not entitled to be registered as Indians unless they subsequently became wives or widows of men who were considered Indians under the legislation. Consequently, taking this issue to the international forum was the only remaining avenue available to Aboriginal women. Therefore, Sandra Lovelace, a Maliseet woman from Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, fought the denial of her Indian status and band membership after her marriage to a non-Indian
Canada, Aboriginal Women
ended in divorce by lodging a complaint with the United Nations Committee on Human Rights under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Anne Bayefsky pointed out that while the United Nations Committee on Human Rights eventually ruled in Lovelace’s favor, the Canadian government’s failure to respond to repeated requests for information from the time Lovelace filed her complaint, on December 29, 1977, until the decision was adopted, on July 30, 1981, delayed the decision. Lovelace asserted in a submission to the United Nations that the major consequences of being excluded from her birth community included loss of identity and the right to live in an Indian community with her family, friends, and neighbors. The United Nations Human Rights Committee decided Lovelace was still being denied the right to live in her natal community and practice her native culture and language, which contravened Article 27 of the Covenant. Although the United Nations Human Rights Committee reached its decision in 1981, the Canadian government did not implement Bill C-31, “An Act to Amend the Indian Act,” until 1985. One reason for that delay was the death in Senate of the Liberal government’s proposed remedy—Bill C-47, an Act to Amend the Indian Act—just before the Liberals were defeated in the September 1984 election. Parliament finally passed Bill C-31 on June 17, 1985, backdating it to April 17, 1985, to comply with the equality rights outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. When the 1985 Indian Act became law, it purportedly removed all discrimination from the Indian Act, restored Indian status and band membership rights to persons who had lost them, and granted partial control over band membership to Aboriginal communities.
The Current Plight Unfortunately, the legislation has not obtained its lofty goals. For instance, Bill C-31 failed to remove all discrimination from the Indian Act; reinstated women do not have the same ability to pass on status to their offspring as do others with status, such as White women who gained Indian status upon marriage. The Native Women’s Association of Canada finds this provision of the revised legislation deplorable, since members of Aboriginal peoples are forced to limit their choice of life partners to others within the decreasing status Indian population for their children to avoid losing status through the legislation’s second-generation cutoff.
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Since they rarely receive band membership and reserve residency, it can be virtually impossible for those reinstated under Bill C-31 to meet others with status, let alone marry them. However, failing to completely remove the sexual discrimination from the Indian Act is only one way that the 1985 amendment falls short of its goals. The legislation granted each band the right to assume partial control of its own membership, while providing automatic entitlement to membership for certain individuals. The legislation could not restore status and band membership to persons who had lost them, since the federal government grants status to those who apply for reinstatement but Aboriginal communities decide who receives membership. Aboriginal peoples who are still being denied Indian status have taken legal action against several bands that included the exclusionary provisions formerly in the Indian Act in their membership codes. Fern M. Paul See also Assimilation; Blood Quantum; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Canada; Canada, First Nations; Hate Crimes, Canada; Intermarriage; Native American Identity; Native Americans
Further Readings
Bayefsky, Anne F. 1982. “The Human Rights Committee and the Case of Sandra Lovelace.” Canadian Yearbook of International Law 20:244–266. Bear Nicholas, Andrea. 1994. “Colonialism and the Struggle for Liberation: The Experience of Maliseet Women.” University of New Brunswick Law Journal 43:223–239. Holmes, Joan. 1987. Background Paper: Bill C-31, Equality or Disparity? The Effects of the New Indian Act on Native Women. Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women. Jamieson, Kathleen. 1978. Indian Women and the Law in Canada: Citizens Minus. Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women. Jamieson, Kathleen. 1986. “Sex Discrimination and the Indian Act.” Pp. 112–136 in Arduous Journey: Canadian Indians and Decolonization, edited by J. R. Ponting. Toronto, Canada: McClelland and Stewart. Kirkness, Verna. 1986–1988. “Emerging Native Women.” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 2:408–415. Sanders, Douglas. 1985. “The Renewal of Indian Special Status.” Pp. 529–563 in Equality Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, edited by A. F. Bayefsky and M. Eberts. Toronto, Canada: Carswell.
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Weaver, Sally M. 1983. “The Status of Indian Women.” Pp. 56–79 in Two Nations, Many Cultures: Ethnic Groups in Canada, edited by J. L. Elliot. Scarborough, Canada: Prentice Hall.
CANADA, FIRST NATIONS The First Nations of Canada are Indigenous Peoples whose cultures, traditions, and languages are as distinct as their regions of habitat. After immigrating to the North American continent long ago, their lifestyles diverged, ranging from the nomadic hunters of the West Coast, with their totems blanched by age and weathered environs, to the semisettled farmers of the East Coast, with fields of zea mayz. Europeans arrived to seize or reduce hunting and farming territories, and the First Nations became strangers in their own land. With European colonization, Indigenous Peoples saw their tribal religions, family lives, and cultures drastically changed and their tribal paraphernalia taken to museums. They were encouraged to reform their basic tribal personality structure and become “civilized” into the European mass culture. Indigenous Peoples continue to meet contemporary challenges. This entry describes the origins of the varied First Nations, their experience of colonization, and the contemporary situation.
Prehistory Once, scholars believed the only source of entry to the Americas from other continents was on foot over Beringia, or the Bering land bridge, prior to or after an ice age. Today, they are open to the possibility of shoreline and boat migrations from the Atlantic Coast as well as the Pacific. Prior to European contact, these tenacious First Nations populations had creatively and resourcefully assimilated environmental lessons and thereby dwelt in accordance with their homelands. Depending on their home regions, their customs and lifestyle differed. The Arctic People. The Inuit (“the People”) include the Labrador, the Ungava, the Baffin Island, the Iglulik, the Caribou, the Netsilik, the Copper, and the Mackenzie; they speak in three dialects: Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, and Inuvialuit. Derived from the xanthomelanous PaleoEskimo ancestry of the Dorset and Thule cultures, these people occupied areas of arctic climate around 2000 BC. Small migratory hunting groups with patriarchal
leaderships used acute navigational skills and developed ingenious adaptations to their harsh tundra environment. They built semisubterranean dwellings with a central hearth. Their conical summer huts were constructed of skins, as were their boats. Whales became their staple, apportioned among the villagers to provide food, fat for burning oil, bones for housing, and runners for the dogsleds. Walrus, polar bear, seal, and caribou were also hunted. Intricate carvings on bone and ivory by both ancient and contemporary arctic peoples are internationally renowned. The Eastern Subarctic People. The linguistic Eastern Algonquian tribes—the Cree, the Innu (MontagnaisNeskapi), the Ojibwa from Labrador, and the Kutchin from Quebec to Ontario—are seminomadic hunters. The men hunted caribou, moose, or buffalo, while women and children remained at a camp. Traditionally, these people traveled in small bands with no chief, but with guidance entrusted to a patriarchal leadership. Garments were intricately embroidered with dyed quills. The Grand Medicine Society (the Midewiwin) of the Ojibwa was a healing arts society with members of both sexes. The Eastern Woodlands People. Following seasonal game, the seminomadic Eastern Algonquian hunters of the Appalachian Highlands—the Chippewa (Ojibwa), Malecite, Micmac (Mi’kmaq), Montagnais, and Nipissing—relied on the caribou, deer, bear, seals, and walrus to provide food, clothing, bones for bows and arrows, and other implements for their survival. They also gathered berries and nuts and used sap from birch and maple, birch bark for their canoes, and bent saplings for shelter frames, with coverings of strips of sewn bark. The St. Lawrence Low Land and Southern Ontario People. The Iroquoian Farmers—the Huron, Cayuga, Mohawk, Neutral, Oneida, Onondaga, Petun, Seneca, and Tobacco tribes—built sturdy communal longhouses with sleeping quarters below and storage above. These were agricultural peoples, with granaries built underground and watchmen to guard their fields from birds and animals. The tribes were largely sedentary, resettling approximately every 10 to 15 years, contingent upon the soil’s condition. Their healers were members of the False Face Society, who carved their masks from living trees, and the crop prophets of the Husk Face Society. The Five Nation Confederacy, formed by the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Seneca, was divided into five strips of land from
Canada, First Nations
the Hudson River to Lake Erie. Like the Tlingit tribes of southeast Alaska, these tribes were fierce warriors who enforced an abbroachment (monopolizing goods or forestalling a market) concerning the fur trade between the surrounding tribes and the Europeans. The Plains People. Evidence of the Clovis culture, the most ancient peoples recorded as yet, has been discovered in the plains area of the Buffalo People, the Algonquians (the Blackfoot, Plains Cree, and Plains Ojibwa); the Siouan (the Assiniboine and the Sioux); and in the west, the Athabaskan tribe, the Scarcee. Their sustenance, though they lived on arable lands, consisted of the bounteous buffalo, which yielded provisions of meat, hides for clothing and shelter, fuel, and other necessities. With the advent of the horse, the buffalo hunt was greatly improved, and this dramatically revolutionized the culture of the Plains People. The horse proved to be yare (responding quickly and truly), compared with the temperament of the dog, for travois pulling and packs. By gelding their horses, the Plains People developed a smaller, faster horse, for example, the Pinto. They also invented an argot of hand signals to
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overcome language barriers and communicate with the numerous Plains People and surrounding tribes. The Plateau People. The Interior Salish tribes—the Shuswap, Lillooet, Thompson, Lakes, and Okanogan— along with their extended family, the Kutenai (Kootenay), and the Athabaskan tribe, the Carrier, are the widely dispersed seminomadic tribes that live between the coastal mountains and the Rockies. Their subsistence came from salmon, caribou, moose, deer, mountain goat, and bear. Due to their central location on the continent, their customs and mannerisms are an agglomeration of traditions from the surrounding tribes: potlatches and hierarchies of the Pacific Coast, along with clothing styles and dwelling construction from the Plains People. The Columbian Plateau region possesses the rich history of their rock art, illustrating humans, embodied spirits, and animal figures. There are also petroglyphs and pictographs of the Old Cordilleran culture, and Stanley A. Copp has dated some of the figures at more than 2,000 years old. Pacific Coastal People. The complex societies of the “Hunters of the Sea” consisted of the Kwakwaka’wakw
A Haida gift offering to the Tlingit. There has been a debate between the Tlingits and the Haida over the ownership of Prince of Wales Island (POW) in Alaska. The Haida Gwaii of the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia began migrating to the POW and occupied villages with Tlingit names, except for Hydaburg. Here, Kaigani Haida Sáádùùts Peele (in the stern) is bringing the Spirit of Peace canoe to the Tlingit village of Klawock, as a gift offering. Source: Photograph by Pamela Rae Huteson.
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(Kwakiutl), Salish, Haida, Tsimshian, Heiltsuk (Bella Bella), Nuxàlk (Bella Coola), and Tlingit. The salmon and cedar were indispensable for their societies. Minimal hunting on land was required, as most winter provisions were obtained from the four abundant varieties of salmon gathered and dried for winter, along with halibut, red snapper, and other seafood. These tribes were adroit carvers and weavers, embodying their legends in cedar upon their “Big Houses,” canoes, totem poles, bentwood boxes, and woven Chilkat blankets. The economic base of the Pacific Coastal People centered on the ceremony, prominence, and xenial (or hospitality) protocol of the potlatch, with the accruement and distribution of property. These were a powerful people; warriors wore wooden slate or moose hide breastplates and carried stone head clubs called “slave killers” and steering paddles used to pierce eyes. The Western Subarctic People. The Dené (Athabaskan) tribes—the Kutchin, Slave, Dogrib, and Chipewyan— and the Inland Tlingit had a culture that reflected the Athabaskan, along with the Wolf and the Crow, whereas the coastal Tlingits followed the Wolf/Eagle and the Raven traditions. The Métis, who learned the art of embroidery at French Canadian convents on the East Coast, brought this skill along as they migrated westward, using it with designs resembling the birch paper “bite” designs. They shared this art with other tribes, so that the Octopus Bags of the Tlingit resemble the Fire Bags of the Dené, which are similar to the Friendship Bags of the Great Lakes. These were the seminomadic Caribou People, with small bands following those great herds. Theirs was a life of sharing; even in contemporary times, a hunter will share his catch with the village.
Early European Contact The eastern tribes were the first to encounter the Europeans, and Friendship Treaties were signed along the St. Lawrence River area. Outright war between tribes in ancient days was a rarity; an act of bravery was respected and could settle most conflicts or situations. The advent of guns, however, as part of the European’s art of war, brought increased warfare and tragedy among the Indigenous People. Between diseases brought by the Europeans and violent confrontations with them, entire tribes experienced hardship that decimated their numbers throughout Canada. Indeed, the Beothuk people of Newfoundland became extinct in 1829.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 (later to be known as the Indian Bill of Rights) designated the entire center of Canada as a Native Reserve. After assisting both sides in the Europeans’ fight for territory in the “New World,” the First Nations found their remuneration was to become the new enemy of the budding governments. Officials sometimes viewed the First Nations as keeping the government from attaining more land; as a result, treaties were soon broken by the very governments who initiated them. Part of the agenda of missionaries and boarding schools was to erase the Indigenous Peoples’ cultures and accustom them to European standards, a way of life that was unnatural to the First Nations. In some instances, matriarchal training and supervision among native peoples was stopped, and traditional family lifestyles were disrupted when numerous young families were relocated for industrial employment, separated from the support system of elders and extended family. Coupled with the challenges of strong racial prejudices, this resulted in the widespread introduction of alcohol.
The Contemporary First Nations Aboriginal peoples worldwide are banding together and taking a stronger political stance, demanding to be recognized and asserting their rights. A case in point is the heightened attention to global-warming issues among the Inuit Peoples of the United States, Greenland, Chukotka, and the Federation of Russia at the Inuit Circumpolar Conventions. These tribes have seen their winter landscape modified, with an impact on their subsistence and the animal habitat. A Healing Treaty concerning the Aboriginal children who had been sent to boarding schools and were abused is under discussion. The First Nations Education Council is taking a stand against anti-Native racism in the media; casual derogatory comments about Natives have an adverse effect, especially on the youth. Youth suicide is evident throughout the Native communities, prompting the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs to commission a study of the reasons for this problem and ways to prevent it. The number of Aboriginals who are prison inmates has increased substantially. More Aboriginal children are becoming offenders, as are Aboriginal women. The Native Women’s Association of Canada has stated that poverty and the lack of educational advancement are contributing factors. As a result of their poverty, for instance, cash-strapped First Nations people have begun selling local tobacco to non-Natives, which
Canadian Americans
is illegal. Canada has an extremely high tobacco tax, however, and so the market for under-the-counter tobacco is tempting. Arrests of those involved have increased. Indigenous justice and intervention with cultural significance is still in its infancy. In the late 1970s, Frank Brown became the first teenager of the Heiltsuk tribe in over 20 years to undergo an Aboriginal banishment as an alternative punishment. Brown’s banishment was supported by his Bella Bella tribe. In contrast, some Tlingits opposed the banishment of two Tlingit and Haida youths in the mid-1990s by the Combined Tribal Court of Tlingit Law. For Brown, however, banishment became a life-changing experience, which brought him closer to his culture and made him an asset to his community. From the beginning, treaties have appeared to favor Europeans, leaving the Indigenous Peoples with the sense that the agreements were unfair. In enacting the 2000 Nisga’a Treaty, for instance, the Nisga’a realized only after signing the treaty that it meant relinquishing their “Indian” status and tax exemption in 2012. In response, elders of the Nisga’a Community of Kincolith are challenging this treaty. The government has broken treaties, for example, agreements with the Cree concerning the James I and James II hydroelectric projects. On November 7, 2006, the Snuneymuxw First Nations Thi-Lelum (longhouse), a coalition of chiefs, elders, and other representatives of over forty First Nations, signed an exigent Chief Negotiators Protocol Agreement for negotiating fair treaty agreements. After years of struggling to be recognized, the Constitution Act of 1982 acknowledged the Métis (a mixture of European and Native descents) as their own individual people. There has been a resurgence of tribal identity as the First Peoples culture reemerges through efforts of Native councils, education, and arts, along with Native radio, TV, movies (e.g., The Fast Runner), music, and an increasing Internet presence. Aboriginals are integrating modern technology with traditional integrity and veneration of ancestors in constructing cultural collegial bonds with all First Nations People. Pamela Rae Huteson See Appendix B See also Aleuts; Americanization; Assimilation; American Indian Movement; Blood Quantum; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Canada; Canada, Aboriginal Women; Hate Crimes, Canada; Native Americans; Pan-Indianism; Tlingit
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Further Readings
Bandi, Hans-Georg. 1964. Eskimo Prehistory. Translated by A. E. Keep. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press; Seattle: Distributed by the University of Washington. Flannery, Regina. 1939. An Analysis of Coastal Algonquian Culture. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Ives, John W. 1990. A Theory of Northern Athapaskan Prehistory. Boulder, CO: Westview Press; Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Keyser, James D. 1992. Indian Rock Art of the Columbia Plateau. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Rushforth, Scott and James S. Chisholm. 1991. Cultural Persistence: Continuity in Meaning and Moral Responsibility among the Bearlake Athapaskans. Tucson: University of Arizona. Stevenson, David S. 1968. Problems of Eskimo Relocation for Industrial Employment: A Preliminary Study. Ottawa, Canada: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Northern Science Research Group.
Web Sites
The Canadian Encyclopedia: http://www.canadianencyclopedia.ca National Aboriginal News: http://firstperspective.ca
CANADIAN AMERICANS Canadian Americans are immigrants and their descendants from Canada, a country of 31.9 million, as of 2007 estimates. According to the 2000 census, 820,770 people born in Canada were residing in the United States, of whom 46.1% were citizens. This entry looks at the background of immigration to the United States from Canada, the contemporary picture of Canadian Americans, and the experience of French Canadians in the United States.
Immigration Patterns A certain number of Canadians have always migrated to the United States. Compared with the majority of other immigrants’ experiences, Canadians experience a relatively uncomplicated immigration (as well as remigration), if only due to the proximity of the two nations. With the building of the railways, traveling was simple, and an estimated 2.5 million people made their exodus to the United States between 1850 and the 1890s. It wasn’t until the Great Depression that migration
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slowed, due to lack of economic opportunities in the United States. In fact, many returned to their farms in Canada to wait out the hard times. In addition, crossing the border was fairly simple. For those who traveled back and forth over the border, one typically needed identification that proved citizenship to the United States or Canada; later regulations included verification of identity by way of a photo. For many years, U.S. citizens and Canadians had not been required to present a passport to enter or reenter the United States. The events of September 11, 2001, led to the tightening of border controls between Canada and the United States. The Department of Homeland Security developed the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which has changed the document requirements for those entering the country. More specifically, one now needs to present a passport to enter or reenter the United States.
Contemporary Community Greater job opportunities and higher wages brought an estimated 2.3 million Canadian immigrants to the United States between 1930 and 1980, including welltrained professional workers, skilled craftsmen, laborers, and domestic workers. Since 1980, about 290,000 Canadian immigrants have arrived in the United States. In recent years, people from Canada have sought permanent residency and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. About 80,000 Canadian Americans became naturalized citizens between 1997 and 2006. Of those Canadian-born present here in 2000, only 18.5% had entered the country prior to 2000. Their median family income was $61,708, compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Even though Canadians feel a sense of kinship with Americans, many stress the differences between Canadian and U.S. cultures and maintain a sense of distinctive Canadian identity. Overall, Canadian immigrants are the national group whose members are least likely to become naturalized citizens, even after many years of living in the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, there were 487,451 people of Canadian national origin in the United States. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states were California, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, and New York. Within the Canadian American community is an important group: French Canadian immigrants and
their descendants. Immigration and census data do not distinguish this group from the larger group of Englishspeaking arrivals. However, scholarly studies suggest French-speaking migrants have a different history. Their migration has been influenced by changing perceptions of the opportunities they have in Anglophone Canada; prior to 1930, shortage of affordable agricultural land in Canada was also a factor in immigration decisions. These “push” factors were coupled with the perceived receptivity of French Canadian communities in the United States, which are often organized around French-speaking parishes and schools, typically in New England. French Canadians in the United States, like their counterparts in Canada, have sought to identify themselves as an ethnic group independent of Canadian nationals. Consequently, French Canadians coming to the United States have been much more likely to seek out the appropriate ethnic enclaves and remain living in clusters. Therefore, the assimilation experience for them has more closely followed the patterns of non-Englishspeaking Europeans than of English-speaking arrivals from Canada. Working against acculturation is the proximity to Quebec and the desire to maintain their individuality while living within the United States. Among famous Canadian Americans are Jack Kent Cooke, entrepreneur; Alanis Morissette, singer; Pamela Anderson, model/actress; Michael J. Fox, actor; and William Shatner, actor. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Canada; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; French Americans; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity Further Readings
Bumsted, Jack. 2007. A History of Canadian Peoples. New York: Oxford University Press. Chiswick, Barry R., ed. 1992. Immigration, Language, and Ethnicity: Canada and the United States. Washington, DC: AEI Press. Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs .gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Ramirez, Bruno. 2001 Crossing the 49th Parallel: Migration from Canada to the United States 1900–1930. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Cape Verde
U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Canada. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/ socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
Web Sites
Quebec History: http://faculty.marianopolis.edu/c .belanger/QuebecHistory/index.htm
CAPE VERDE The Cape Verde Islands, a nation with an estimated 2007 population of 5 million and which lie about 300 miles off the coast of Senegal in western Africa, were colonized by the Portuguese in the 15th century. Due to its important position within the transatlantic slave trade, Cape Verde served as a meeting place for various people. As a result, a Crioulo or mestiço population emerged in the archipelago. As a result of their complex colonial history, geographical location, and history of migration, Cape Verdeans are a multiracial people with a single ethnic identity. Further, Cape Verdean racial taxonomy is clear evidence of the social construction of race and its Italy Portugal
Atlantic Ocean
Spain
Mediterranean Sea
Tunisia
Morocco
Algeria
Libya
Western Sahara
Mauritania Mali
Niger
Guinea
Burkina Faso
Côte ‘Ghana’ d‘Ivoire
Santo Antão
Congo, DRC
São Nicolau Boa Vista Maio
Atlantic Ocean
Brava
Cape Verde
During the initial phase of colonization, there existed two racial groups in Cape Verde: brancos (Whites) and prêtos (Blacks), along with some evidence that people of Moorish descent were sometimes classified as moreno (dark skinned). The brancos consisted of crown officials, including military governors known as capitãos; noblemen; merchants; and other European settlers (e.g., degredados and lançados). In many respects, brancos served as a homogeneous term that overlooked the Moorish, Jewish, and Mediterranean diversity, which is deeply embedded in Portugal’s racial inheritance. Prêtos, on the other hand, were those of African origin, such as Susu, Papeis, Balantas, Bijagos, Jalofas, Felupes, Fulas, Mandingos, and Manjacos. Prêtos were almost all slaves, with the exception of those who served in the local militia (grumete) or as coastal translators for slave traders (tangomãos). During the early days of Portuguese colonization, prêtos made up the overwhelming majority. However, as was the case in Brazil, race mixing between Europeans and enslaved Africans was common, especially given that the Portuguese did not place strict measures on social separation as the French and British did. To this end, a large Crioulo population was established. By 1550, the racial composition of the islands was nearly 70% mestiço, while Whites constituted only 2% of the population. In 1950, again, nearly 70% of the islands’ population was considered mestiço. Today, the official racial composition of the country is unknown, for the race category was dropped from the census following independence in 1975.
Defining Race and Ethnicity
Gabon Congo Sal
Fogo
The Portuguese Arrive
Nigeria
Cameroon
São Vicente
connection to culture and nation. This entry examines how this taxonomy evolved during the colonial and postcolonial history of Cape Verde and how contemporary Cape Verdeans are affected by this history.
Chad
Senegal Cape Verde
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Ethnic identity was often preserved in slave shipping registers. For example, one finds observations about ethnic origins and various features deemed of great significance. Although color was most often reported simply as prêto(a), there were many slaves who were recognized as prêto fula, or simply fula. This distinction is with reference to the somewhat lighter complexion of the interior Fula people, who had figured among the pre-19th-century slaves.
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As in Brazilian racial taxonomy, skin colors in Cape Verdean racial taxonomy could also take the reference mulato(a) or mulato(a) claro(a) (light tan); mulato(a) securo(a) (dark tan); or pardo(a), or brown. If this was not sufficient, the complex system of racial taxonomy could then turn to other phenotypic markers like hair and nose type. For instance, hair types included the cabeca seca (dry or wiry headed), the cabo crespo (frizzy hair), and cabo encrespado (curly hair), while types of noses included chato (flat) or muito chato (very flat). Although official “race” categories have ceased to exist in contemporary Cape Verde, Crioulo folk culture has distinct and overlapping racial categories. Sampadjudo, for instance, are considered mulato, but weak. Conversely, mulato elites look negatively on the badiu. The badiu tend to be phenotypically darker than most Cape Verdeans and are the core of the peasant population of the island of Santiago. The badiu have retained a certain degree of African-based cultural distinctiveness in their customs, folklore, religious practices, and dialect of Crioulo. They are often viewed as the primary representatives of an African heritage and, as such, have historically been denigrated by the colonial authorities and looked down upon by other Cape Verdeans. Badiu has the connotation of being an uncivilized barefooted renegade. Yet, at times, both the badiu and sampadjudo have looked disparagingly at the Portuguese, or Tugas, especially during decolonization. Other colloquial terms relating to racial categories are manjaco and nyambob. The term manjaco is often used as a pejorative term for continental “Black” Africans from Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, and Guinea, while nyambob is a negative reference meaning “White person.” However, these words are being used less and less in contemporary Cape Verde. In Cape Verde, the system of racial taxonomy was confounded by higher levels of wealth, power, and educational status, which “lightened” one’s appearance, while poverty, crude behavior, and illiteracy “darkened” it. To this end, this phenomenon is similar to Brazil. In the early 20th century, Cape Verdean racial identity again was complicated by colonial decree creating the legal status assimilado. The status of assimilado was assigned for indigenous Africans in the Portuguese African colonies whose cultural standards of literacy, education, and class position would entitle them to fuller rights as Portuguese citizens, while the overwhelming majority of Black Africans were
relegated to the lowest-paying jobs and inferior schools and subjected to extralegal taxes, restricted movement, and more severe and arbitrary punishment within the criminal justice system. In other words, the status of assimilado was constituted by race and culture and lent itself to justify discriminatory colonial policies, limited civil rights, and inequality of opportunity. Further, many Cape Verdean assimilado complicated their position by serving as strategic intermediaries in the colonial system as local administrators and functionaries in all parts of the Luso-African world.
A Nation of Emigrés Due to the country’s history of persistent drought, famine, disease, and poverty, many Cape Verdeans have emigrated to Europe and the United States. Given that more Cape Verdeans live outside Cape Verde than within, the nation has become one of emigrants. To this end, issues of racial identity have been expanded and played out in diaspora. Because Cape Verdeans carried Portuguese passports during the early and mid-20th century, they became known in the United States as “Black Portuguese,” while in places like Brazil they are referred to as “Black White men.” Despite not fitting easily into the Black-White dichotomy of the United States, Cape Verdeans are often ascribed the status of Black. Being ascribed Black was something earlier settlers admittedly denounced, and they knowingly segregated themselves from African American populations. Today, many second-generation Cape Verdean youth actively construct their identities at the intersection of race and ethnicity, successfully negotiating notions of blackness and “Cape Verdeanness.” Paul Khalil Saucier See Appendix A See also Africans in the United States; Assimilation; Brazil; Colonialism; Creole; Diaspora; Portuguese Americans
Further Readings
Halter, Marilyn. 1993. Between Race and Ethnicity: Cape Verdean American Immigrants, 1860–1965. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Lobban, Richard. 1995. Cape Verde: Crioulo Colony to Independent Nation. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Lobban, Richard and Paul Khalil Saucier. 2007. Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cape Verde. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Caribbean
CARIBBEAN Caribbean racial or ethnic identity is complex because identities inside and outside the Caribbean region encompass people from most parts of the “old” worlds of Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Consequently, descriptions of the region differ according to cultural and historical perspectives of the region’s people, as well as the perceptions outsiders have of the region. Mass immigration to Europe and North America, particularly from the middle of the 20th century, has significantly helped to define the people from the region, and so has the process of globalization. While it breaks down barriers, globalization also enables groups to maintain old and create new identities across physical distances and cultural boundaries. This entry looks at the diversity of the Caribbean and the contemporary identities of its people, both at home and abroad.
Caribbean Pluralism While the name of the region derives from the indigenous Caribs encountered by Christopher Columbus in his first contact with what was to become known as the New World, comparatively few indigenous people
remain as elements of the present population of the region. The complexity of the region must be seen in the diversity of its geography, its politics, and its cultural traditions and values. In physical terms, the region covers such diverse places as Mexico and Isthmus Central America, countries on the northeastern tip of the South American continent, and the islands within the Caribbean Basin, as well as those on the rim facing the Atlantic. Like the Mediterranean, the Caribbean Sea is shared by a large number of states, often with little in common. Their proximity to other seas, such as the Atlantic or the Pacific, may be far more defining of some countries and their people. Unlike the concept of Europe or North America, the notion of the Caribbean as a physical entity does not denote a common identity or shared destiny. Another paradox is that some countries often thought to be Caribbean are geographically outside the region but share common histories and cultural norms with those that are clearly Caribbean. Thus, Guyana, Guyene, Surinam, and Belize in South and Central America as well as the Bahamas in the Atlantic are perceived as Caribbean rather than Latin American or North American. The identity of being Caribbean may therefore be more general than an unambiguous racial, ethnic, or geographical definition.
Florida
A t l a n t i c O c e a n
The Bahamas
Cuba
Turks and Caicos Islands
Mexico Haiti
Cayman Islands
Vigin Islands (U.S. & UK.)
Dominican Republic
Anguilla
Jamaica
Puerto Rico St. Kitts and Nevis
Belize
Antigua & Barbuda
Montserrat Guadeloupe
C a r i b b e a n
Honduras
Dominica
S e a
Martinique St. Lucia
Aruba
Nicaragua
Netherlands Antilles
St. Vincent & the Grenadines
Barbados Grenada
Trinidad & Tobago
Costa Rica
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Colombia
Venezuela
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Caribbean diversity is also to be found in the variety of politics in the region. For example, Haiti has experienced violent regime change repeatedly since the beginning of the 19th century; Cuba is one of the last remaining communist regimes in the world and has been embargoed by the United States since the early 1960s; Puerto Rico remains semiautonomous as part of the United States; the Commonwealth democracies remain; and Guadeloupe and Martinique are overseas departments of metropolitan France. These factors suggest the range of societies to be found in the Caribbean. They also point to the rich mosaic of Caribbean racial and ethnic identities, because the postColumbian peopling of the region represents many of the world’s population and cultures. Predominantly, the region has been shaped by centuries of different European nation-states’ struggle for power from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Thus, there are British, Danish, Dutch, French, and Spanish Caribbeans, distinguished by the key factors of language, religion, customs, traditions, and mores. The region’s linguistic diversity is almost matched by the kaleidoscope of its religious practices, including Catholicism, various denominations within Protestantism, Hinduism, Islam, retentions of African religions such as Voodooism, newer communities of Rastafarians, and so forth. The notion, therefore, of a singular or unambiguous Caribbean identity or consciousness within the region is relatively weak. Each cultural segment continues to relate to its historical European home or roots— principally Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Spain. From the 1890s, the United States asserted its presence in the region, and as the regional and world power over the last century, it has exerted a powerful cultural influence throughout the region, with the city of Miami, Florida, being often spoken of as the de facto capital of the region. Thus, the notion of being Caribbean remains more of a geographical expression than a coherent sense of a regional destiny or consciousness outside the existence of the Organization of American States and, more recently, the Anglophone-driven Caricom (a loosely defined economic common market). Each of these groups has developed distinctive musical and literary traditions, and while many outsiders may regard these as having a Caribbean flavor, these traditions tend to relate as much to their European antecedents as to each other. It is also in music, literature, and the visual arts that the various peoples of the region have drawn inspiration from shared African, and sometimes Asian, pasts. The
racial and ethnic definition of the consciousness of being Caribbean is, nonetheless, to be found more outside than within the region and perhaps more so in Europe than in the United States.
Caribbeans in North America and Continental Europe A major characteristic of the region has been the constant inward and outward flow of population over the last half millennium, and this experience of migration has come to define the region’s people, their fluidity, and their emergence as part of the process of modernity and cosmopolitanism. Although the United States is the main destination for Caribbean migrants, they have not formed a common identity in that country. Caribbeans are represented in terms of their European historical and cultural entities as West Indians (mainly English speaking), Hispanics (mainly Spanish speaking), and Haitians and other French-speaking groups. They appear to be distinct groups and communities sometimes aligned with other communities, such as African Americans or other Spanish, French, or English speakers from elsewhere. In North America, it appears that Caribbeans retain their specific national identities as Haitians, Puerto Ricans, Barbadians, Guyanese, Jamaicans, Bahamians and so forth. The scale, scope, and prosperity of North America allow Caribbeans, like others, to retain, develop, and invent distinct identities, traditions, myths, and customs to an exceptional degree, and groups from the Caribbean, as have others, have taken advantage of these opportunities. These factors have helped them to distinguish themselves from the major disadvantaged communities, namely, the indigenous nation groups as well as African Americans with whom perhaps the majority of Caribbeans share a common history of African ancestry and chattel slavery. This distance appears to have allowed Caribbeans, identified as specific island groups, to progress in mainstream society in the United States at an apparently faster pace than African Americans, and this is sometimes expressed as a source of pride in Caribbean achievement in such spheres as education, occupation, and ownership of residence. In Europe, the situation may be more complex. Different European models operate within the European Union, each reflecting past colonial and imperial histories of respective nation-states, principally Britain, France, and the Netherlands. To take
Caribbean
these in reverse order, it may be said that in the Netherlands, Caribbeans are mainly from Surinam and Aruba, and they are drawn from African (generally described as Creole) and South Asian (known as Hindustani) populations. In general and when compared with immigrants from other former colonies of the Netherlands in Indonesia, they are regarded to have integrated into Dutch society relatively well, although there are differences between those of African and Hindustani backgrounds. In the case of France, while there are refugees and asylum seekers from troubled Haiti, the majority of Caribbeans are from the departments overseas (DOMs), Martinique and Guadeloupe. These Caribbeans are as formally French as their fellow citizens from FrancheComté, Paris, Corsica, or any other department in continental or European France. Perhaps because of this political integration between mainland France and the islands, as well as the insistence in France that all citizens and newcomers must adjust to the republican culture, there appears to be comparatively little demand by Caribbeans in France to actively assert a distinctive identity. There are, of course, Caribbeans in other parts of continental Europe, but there is little written about them, perhaps because their numbers are very few. For example, there have been close links between Caribbean Evangelicals in the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian countries of Denmark and Sweden. There are small numbers of Caribbeans in these countries as a result of Denmark’s early participation in the Atlantic slave trade between West Africa and the Caribbean and islands, which still retain links with these seafaring people. It is understood that there are new emigrants from the Caribbean to increasingly prosperous Spain. But it remains to be seen whether these developments will lead to any new assertion of Caribbean identity or whether in these countries the immigrants will return to the region or be absorbed into the historic majority populations.
Caribbeans in Britain It is perhaps in Britain that the notion of Caribbean as a racial and ethnic identity has been most strongly or robustly asserted. This assertion may well be a point of contestation, but this would be so precisely because of the unsettled nature of what it means to be Caribbean. There may be several reasons why this is so. For example, Britain has the largest Caribbean
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population in Europe (around a half million) and also a cultural presence or representation far beyond their number in a population of around 60 million. The Caribbean presence is due to factors such as high levels of participation in popular sports (particularly football and athletics), popular music, theater, and politics. For example, the Notting Hill Carnival, initiated and run by Caribbeans and hosting over a million participants, has become the largest cultural street event in Europe and is a feature of the London annual diary. These are all positive features of Caribbeans in Britain. On the negative side, Caribbeans in Britain are strongly represented in social indicators of dysfunctionality, such as poverty, lone mothers heading households, crime, the prison populations, and low levels of male participation and attainment in education. These factors have been well documented in nationwide survey reports from the 1960s and continue to be cause for concern for community leaders, politicians, and those entrusted with implementation of public, social, and educational policies. Like Caribbeans and other migrants in continental Europe and North America, Caribbeans in Britain settled mainly in urban areas and secured work in industry, even though most came from agricultural backgrounds. Sharing much the same language and many cultural values and assumptions as the indigenous majority population, Caribbeans quickly became integrated into the British working classes, absorbing aspects of their social practices and imparting aspects of Caribbean ways of living to them. Caribbean families tend to be among the most integrated across the Black/White racial boundaries. While in recent years there have been some disturbances between Caribbeans and Asians in the city of Birmingham, in Britain on the whole there has been a remarkable unity between these communities in the struggles for social and racial justice as well as cultural recognition. Indeed, from the 1960s to the late 1980s, the notion of blackness as an identity encompassed both Caribbeans and South Asians, and general cooperation between these groups against racism still largely conditions the vocabulary of protest and demand for justice for all groups, including nonracial and nonethnic groups and causes. Most profoundly, Caribbeans in Britain have been caught up in a search for a collective identity to encompass what might have been common in their historical pasts and their shared experience of racial
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discrimination in Britain. The historical past includes Atlantic slavery, shared but lost backgrounds in West Africa, and the distinct benign form of British colonialism in the Caribbean after the 1860s. Thus, the bicentenary events marking the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 throughout the British Empire have garnered much energy and activities not only in mainstream British institutions but also within Caribbean communities across the country. It should be noted here that the narrative of a collective Caribbean identity in Britain tends to select only the major theme, namely, the story of people of African backgrounds. This may be because the majority of emigrants from the region to Britain were from the majority African-descended populations in the region. It is also possible, as some would argue, that racism against people of African backgrounds was particularly virulent and they were considered to be at the very base of the racial pyramid. Yet another explanation may be the existence of more clearly demarcated racial and ethnic groups into which the majority indigenous population and officials wish to place Caribbean minorities. After all, the construction of a Caribbean identity in Britain has not been in sole control of Caribbeans; with the growth of the African-descended majority in the English-speaking islands, it has been assumed that the subregion is a Black region, and “Black” has come to mean “African.” As a consequence, therefore, of identity formation of Caribbeans in Britain, people, for example, of Chinese, Indian, European, and Middle Eastern backgrounds from the region have been excluded or have excluded themselves, although at any social or political gathering of Caribbeans, there are likely to be many individuals from these “othered” or excluded groups, particularly people of South Asian heritage.
emigrated elsewhere now return in significant numbers to parts of the region. What it means to be Caribbean or what the destiny or fate of the region’s people may be continues to tie them into transnational and diasporic kinds of communities across the North Atlantic world, because they have been at the forefront of the making of the modern or postColumbian world from the 16th century. In Britain, as in the United States, outstanding individuals with Caribbean heritage have long had significant impacts on public life, sports, music, and other areas of the arts, and this continues into the present century. Consequently, on both sides of the Atlantic, there is a continuing ebb and flow of “Caribbeanness,” and at least in the Anglophone Caribbean, governments and business enterprises are keen to draw on the material and cultural capital resources of these transnational communities. Harry Goulbourne See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Belize, Colonialism; Creole; Dominican Republic; Haiti; Latin America, Indigenous People; Pan-Ethnic Identity; Return Migration; Santería; Symbolic Ethnicity; Trinidad
Further Readings
Chivallon, Christine. 2004. La diaspora noire des Amériques: Experiences et théories à partir de la Caraïbe. Paris: CNRS-Editions. Cohen, Robin. 1999. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Foner, Nancy, ed. 2001. Islands in the City: West Indian Migration to New York. Berkeley: University of California Press. Goulbourne, Harry. 2001. Caribbean Transnational Experience. London: Pluto Press. Heuman, Gad. 2006. The Caribbean. London: Hodder Arnold.
A Growing Caribbean Consciousness Even in the most straightforward instance of the existence of a Caribbean community in the North Atlantic world, there is great difficulty in drawing the lines of demarcation between Caribbeans and others. This arises from the very nature of the Caribbean as a destination for immigrants from across the globe and, from the 19th century to today, as a region that has sent its people back across the Caribbean and the Atlantic. With easy means of communication, inexpensive travel, comparative peace, and prosperity, newcomers arrive in the region, and those who
CARIBBEAN AMERICANS In May 2006, U.S. president George W. Bush signed a law, effective immediately, proclaiming that June would be nationally recognized as Caribbean American Heritage Month. Such a declaration is as much political as symbolic, indicating the changing political status and spheres of influence of Caribbean Americans in the United States. This entry discusses the emergence of the category Caribbean American, the histories of
Caribbean Americans
migration, and social characteristics of the contemporary (post-1965) immigrant population (first generation and beyond).
Definition Far from being a geographic descriptor, the term Caribbean American is a recent one, emerging in the late 1990s as a more popular term to characterize immigrant populations from Caribbean commonwealth countries (i.e., those formerly referred to as “West Indian”), which were colonized by Britain from the 17th to the early 20th century: Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Lucia, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, the Bahamas, and Guyana. The term is also used to describe immigrants from Central American countries (e.g., Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Panama) who originate from the Caribbean coastal areas and are descendants of labor migrations of West Indians of the late 19th century. As a category of analysis, Caribbean American does not typically include immigrants from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, who also constitute a large and visible presence in cities in the United States. As such, the category reflects the emergence of a salient racial-ethnic group and identity that is distinct from categories such as Latino and African American. The ethnic makeup of immigrants’ home societies reflects their multiple histories of forced and voluntary emigration from Africa, China, Syria, Portugal, and India. Some of these societies are of predominantly African origin (e.g., Jamaica, Barbados, and Haiti), whereas others are multiracial/multiethnic (e.g. Belize, Guyana, Dominica, and Trinidad and Tobago). However, the category Caribbean American is socially constructed as a subset of the larger group racialized as “Black” in the United States, reflecting both historical patterns of immigration—the majority of immigrants are of African descent—and the distinct racial structure of the United States.
Migration Histories The earliest movement of Caribbean persons to the United States is registered in the 18th century in the southern slaveholding states of South Carolina, Louisiana, and Georgia. In the early 20th century, the first wave of Caribbean immigrants—approximately 40,000 between 1900 and 1930—arrived by steamship to ports in New York City and Baltimore, seeking
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life-improving opportunities. The majority settled in northern neighborhoods, such as Harlem, located in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City. Immigrants were primarily young, had some education or skill, and were highly ambitious. Nonetheless, they faced significant discrimination based on gender, skin color, national origin, and cultural attributes (i.e., language, interpersonal styles, and accents). In the first half of the 20th century, access to job opportunities came through formal state-sponsored programs, such as the British West Indies Temporary Alien Program, which recruited agricultural workers, primarily men, to work in orchards and cane fields in the United States, and the more informal programs like the Bronx Slave Markets, where immigrant women vied with each other to be hired as domestic workers. Overall, immigrants relied primarily on social networks (i.e., family and ethnic) for social and economic support, for child care, and for help finding jobs as seamstresses and pressers in the garment industry, porters, and waiters and positions in the skilled trades (e.g., printers, cabinetmakers, etc.). Enmeshed in social relations of both cooperation and conflict with African Americans, the new immigrants nevertheless made notable impact on the social landscape in a number of arenas: political activism (e.g., the anticolonial nationalism of Marcus and Amy Ashwood Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association [UNIA]); union and labor activism (e.g., challenging the exclusion of Black women in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union [ILGWU]; participation in political establishments (e.g., the U.S. Communist Party and the Democratic Party’s Tammany Hall); social protest (e.g., street corner preachers decrying social injustices, organizing boycotts against racial desegregation, and advocating for racial justice and inclusion); formation of community institutions (e.g., religious denominations like Moravian, Wesleyan, and Anglican/Episcopalian; benevolent societies boardinghouses); and cultural production (e.g., the West Indian Parade, which began in 1969; the literary works of Claude McKay and the Harlem Renaissance; and the intellectual leadership of W. A. Domingo, Amy Jacques Garvey, and Claudia Jones).
Social Characteristics After 1965 Resid den ntia al Patterrns
In the late 1950s, Caribbean immigrants began moving from Harlem in Manhattan to the borough of
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Brooklyn. The West Indian American Day Parade, held annually on Labor Day, takes place on and around the boulevard of Eastern Parkway in the borough of Brooklyn. It is the single largest ethnic parade in the United States, drawing crowds and participants of over 2 million each year. Since the passage of the 1965 immigrant laws, Caribbean immigrants have increasingly settled in (first generation and beyond) and are primarily concentrated in the urban metropolitan areas of the northeast and southeastern states (e.g., Boston, Hartford, New York City, Jersey City/Newark, Baltimore/ Washington, Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami), as well as midwestern (Chicago), southern (Houston), and western (Los Angeles and Oakland) states. In terms of where Caribbean Americans desire to live, as well as where they are able to reside, distinct ethnic clusters or enclaves have emerged, which vary by economic status. For example, some areas in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, like Brownsville, Bushwick, and Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, have been slowly rehabilitated through homeownership of working-class immigrants. This trend is similar in the lower- and solidly middle-class communities of Springfield Gardens, New York; Canarsie, New York; Dorchester, Massachusetts; and Pine Grove, Florida. The growth of these communities reflects the outward movement of more educated, upwardly mobile families from the more established urban, working-class neighborhoods of Flatbush and the northern Bronx into areas that were experiencing “White flight” as well as aging populations. Also notable is the emergence of working-class neighborhoods in nontraditional gateway communities such as Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Rockland County, New York. Similarly, middle- and upper-middle-class families in the state of New York are increasingly relocating to predominantly White suburban communities of Westchester County, Silver Springs, and western Long Island. Nonetheless, the social spaces of neighborhoods, schools, jobs, nightclubs, corner stores, and urban streets, which are traversed by first- and second-generation Caribbean immigrants of the post1965 period, are more likely to be heterogeneous in terms of race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class than those accessed by earlier generations of immigrants. Familly and Households
Caribbean American family forms are significantly influenced by the economic and social status of
immigrant women in both the home countries and immigrant context. The majority of immigrant families are headed by women, and they are increasingly intergenerational, as aging parents become more dependent on their immigrant children and as the cost and quality of elder care in home countries and in the United States increases. Since the earliest periods of migration, family and kin networks and well-being in the United States have depended heavily on women’s (more than men’s) occupational status and access to social resources. Women with stable jobs (e.g., as nurses in the health care industry) act as primary sponsors for spouses, children, and family members and are critical in the process of family reunification. For working-class families, women’s access to sex-typed, low-wage jobs in ethnic niches of the growing service economy—as domestic workers, caretakers for the elderly, nurse’s aides, and food service workers—allow family members to earn and combine multiple sources of income in order to address basic needs (housing, education, etc.) and help to keep the family one step above poverty. While Caribbean American women have often adopted the strategy of “transnational mothering”— that is, they leave their children in the care of relatives and friends in the home countries—such strategies are increasingly untenable in light of declining social and economic conditions in the home country, the mistreatment and stigmatization of children left behind by their migrant parents, and the emotional costs incurred by the separation of parents and children. Despite the efforts of many women and men to reunite their families, the inflexible work schedules and the inadequate incomes lead many parents to spend most of their time working rather than interacting with the children they have brought to live with them. New regulations enacted by federal immigration services, which require proof of a genetic or biological connection between parents and the children and relatives they seek to sponsor, also pose an obstacle to Caribbean American family formation. Educatio on and Occu upatiion
While there has been considerable attention to and debate about the economic mobility of Caribbean immigrants vis-à-vis African Americans since the early 20th century, the evidence is mixed. On average, first-generation Caribbean immigrants have been more likely to graduate from high school and have some postsecondary education than most immigrants
Caribbean Americans
from Latin America. However, more recent groups of immigrants (post-1990) have lower levels of education, aspiration, literacy, and proficiency in English and less social capital that would translate into the favorable job market performance and social status of previous generations. While the children of working-class first- and second-generation Caribbean families tend to attend nonelite, publicly funded state schools (e.g., City University of New York, State University of New Jersey), the children of middle- and upper-middleclass families are more likely to attend elite colleges and universities, which is parallel to the experiences of African American elites. This bimodal trajectory directly contradicts the notion that Caribbean Americans have better educational outcomes than African Americans because of a higher cultural value placed on education as a ticket to upward social mobility or that Caribbean immigrants are privileged by their “outsider status” and as such are more favored by European Americans. Instead, socioeconomic class and social capital remain important determinants of educational outcomes for this group. Since 1980, first-generation immigrants have been heavily concentrated in a small group of ethnic- and gender-segregated occupations within health care (nurses, nurse’s aides, and orderlies), education (elementary and early childhood education), finance (clerical), trades (carpentry, masonry, and automotive), and service work (food service, domestic work, and hair salons), which created gender differences in the actual and potential earnings of men and women, respectively. On one hand, there is an indication of stagnant mobility within the group in terms of gender (women are more likely to be employed, to pursue educational opportunities, and to work within a stable industry than men). There is also evidence of downward mobility across generations such that parents’ occupational status and perceptions or expectations of social mobility are not shared among their children, whose education and job market outcomes begin to decline in the second generation. This is the case for working-class families living in urban areas segregated by race and class, which have experienced significant White flight, declining social infrastructure, and high rates of poverty and crime (e.g., Newark and Jersey City, New Jersey). Relig gious and Politiccal Particcipattion n
Caribbean Americans generally take socially conservative positions on issues of abortion, gender
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equality, homosexuality, and social welfare policies. In general, the population is highly religious and constitutes the growing majority in Christian fundamentalist denominations such as the Seventh-Day Adventists (millenarian), Jehovah’s Witnesses (millenarian), and Church of God (Pentecostal). Alliances with U.S. rightwing religious conservatives are increasingly common, with the goal of addressing societal decline in their home countries as well as immigrant neighborhoods. While women are the majority of most congregations, church leadership tends to be male dominated, hierarchical, and dominated by a specific national origin. Caribbean immigrants have been involved in mainstream politics since the early 20th century, making significant contributions to the political machinery of the Democratic Party and voting alongside African Americans on most issues related to race (e.g., affirmative action, reparations, etc.). The political incorporation of Caribbean Americans has been relatively slow, leaving this group of immigrants to rely on a combination of the openings presented in local governments, party affiliations, racial identity politics, and individual ingenuity in order to make significant inroads. While seeking to build coalitions with African Americans, Caribbean Americans also continue to rely on the pragmatic appeal to ethnic and nationalist sentiments in order to build alliances that will promote Caribbean immigrant political leaders. The declaration by President Bush of Caribbean American Heritage Month in 2006 is an example of such political pragmatism. Rates of naturalization have increased among Caribbean immigrants since the late 1990s, as a result of a massive mobilization effort to stave off the effects of 1996 policies of immigration and welfare reform. The proportion of undocumented persons continues to increase as the waiting period for permanent residency becomes longer and visas (work or visitor) become less accessible. Many persons overstay their visas in the hope of securing legal status through employment- or family-based sponsorship or through “green-card marriages.” Since 1996, and increasingly after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, there has been heightened surveillance of Caribbean immigrants, leading to a significant increase in rates of detention and deportation for crimes such as homicide and drug trafficking. Caribbean American immigrant communities have become a recognizable part of the U.S. urban cultural landscape (e.g., the mainstreaming of Caribbean music and fast foods, like patties, jerk chicken, etc.). They
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Carmichael, Stokely (1941–1998)
have also deepened transnational ties with communities in Europe and Canada and established religious, economic, and political ties within Caribbean civil society. As such, the movement of ideas, families, cultural resources, and political capital occurs as much between diasporic communities (e.g., between Toronto and Brooklyn) as between immigrant communities and the home countries. Such ties have generated new social movements (e.g., an international campaign against homophobia in Caribbean musical forms) and strengthened others (e.g., renewed the debate about dual citizenship, which would permit Caribbean Americans to have formal voting rights and a political voice in shaping public policy in their nations of origin). Important Fig gures
Caribbean Americans who have had a significant and recognizable impact on cultural and political institutions in the United States include Constant Baker Motley (first woman Supreme Court judge of New York State), Shirley Chisholm (first Black woman to run for the U.S. presidency), Audre Lorde (poet laureate of New York and authoritative feminist lesbian scholar, poet, and activist), Colin Powell (first Black secretary of state), Malcolm X (significant political figure in the post–Jim Crow movement for racial justice), Mabel Keaton Staupers (led the desegregation of the nursing profession, including its training schools and hospitals), Sidney Poitier (political activist and the first Black actor to receive the Oscar lifetime achievement award), Renee Cox (feminist photographer and artist), and Mervyn Dymally (former congressperson from California). Natalie Bennett See Appendix A See also African Americans; Belize; Caribbean; Creole; Cuba: Migration and Demography; Cuban Americans; Diaspora; Discrimination; Dominican Republic; Haiti; Haitian Americans; Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison; Hispanics; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Jamaica; Pan-Ethnic Identity; Racism; Santería; Trinidad; West Indian Americans
Further Readings
Buff, Rachel. 2001. Immigration and the Political Economy of Home: West Indian Brooklyn and American Indian Minneapolis, 1945–1992. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Foner, Nancy. 2001. Islands in the City: West Indian Migration to New York. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Henke, Holger. 2000. The West Indian Americans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Hoving, Isabel. 2001. In Praise of New Travelers: Reading Caribbean Migrant Women’s Writing. Los Angeles, CA: Stanford University Press. Kasinitz, Philip. 1992. Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lorde, Audre. 1982. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. New York: Crossing Press. Marshall, Paule. 1959. Brown Girls, Brownstones. New York: Feminist Press. Rogers, Reuel. 2006. Afro-Caribbean Immigrants and the Politics of Incorporation: Ethnicity, Exception, or Exit. New York: Cambridge University Press. Waters, Mary. 2004. Black Identities: West Indian American Dreams and American Realities. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Watkins-Owens, Irma. 1996. Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900–1930. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
CARMICHAEL, STOKELY (1941–1998) Stokely Carmichael, also known as Kwame Ture, was a Trinidadian American Black activist and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party (BPP). He later moved to Guinea, West Africa, and became a Pan-African Socialist. This entry looks at his life and his contributions to African American and African politics.
Early Years Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Carmichael is said to have been a rebellious child. In Ready for Revolution, Carmichael is described as defiant of scoldings by older friends of the family to avoid playing with “barefoot, scruffy little boys,” and “bad company.” He often responded to such admonitions by questioning the morality of avoiding others because of their socioeconomic status. Such rebellious zeal in his younger years is cited as an early sign of his belief in the equality of all people, regardless of racial or class divisions. While
Carmichael, Stokely (1941–1998)
disobedience to elders was atypical of children’s behavior in West Indian culture, Carmichael based his defiance on Christian doctrine by citing verses from the Bible. Carmichael himself acknowledged uncertainty over whether his boyish actions reflected a “guileless, simple faith” or a “strategic maneuver.” Regardless, such actions appear to have laid the bedrock for his adult activism: Carmichael would years later use the same tactic to appeal to White southern conservatives in the Bible Belt of the U.S. South. When he was 11 years old, in June 1952, and due in part to the death of his grandmother 6 months earlier, Carmichael moved into a three-bedroom apartment with seven other relatives (his two parents; his four sisters, Umilta, Lynette, Janeth, and Judith; and his aunt “Mummy Olga”), at 861 Stebbins Avenue, in the South Bronx area of New York City. He began fifth grade in the New York City schools and expressed consternation at the disrespect, lack of control, and disengagement with learning among students there relative to those in the British colonial schooling system of his homeland. Not long after, his mother and father bought a home on Amethyst Street (in the Morris Park/White Plains Road area, near the Bronx Zoo), which to Carmichael’s surprise was a mostly White neighborhood. In 1956, he entered the Bronx High School of Science, where he surpassed his classmates in various subjects as well as IQ tests. Carmichael would remark that it was during those school years that he learned that intelligence and intelligence testing reflected cultural bias and social inequality. Also during this time, he was approached by the Communist Party but did not join because of his early connection with religious ideology; its centrality in the everyday life of the West Indies kept him from fully embracing Marxist thought. Yet because of his attendance at the Bronx High School of Science and its scientific materialist orientation, his religiousity gradually lessened but never waned completely. In his last years of high school, he heard the socialist Bayard Rustin speak, and his awareness of Black Nationalist thought was broadened by his introduction to the writings of two landmark intellectual activists who were also West Indian: C. L. R. James and George Padmore.
Conversion to Black Nationalism As he became more familiar with Black Nationalism, Carmichael was struck by its divergence from the
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nonviolent movement espoused by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., but he still felt that Dr. King’s ideology was worthwhile simply because of his influence and success. On March, 21, 1960, during his senior year of high school, the Sharpsville Massacre occurred—South African police fired on nonviolent, unarmed Africans, killing 69 and wounding over 300. That event propelled Carmichael to a series of rallies, one of which took him to Washington, D.C., where he met members of the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG) from Howard University, to which he decided to matriculate. Through his enrollment at Howard University and his participation in cocurricular student life, Carmichael was introduced to SNCC, an organization that emerged in April 1960 from student meetings led by Ella Baker at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. In his first year at Howard, Carmichael participated in “freedom rides” with SNCC and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and was frequently arrested and jailed. Over the course of his life, he was arrested many times, saying that he lost count after thirty-two. Carmichael was invited to a major SNCC organizing conference in Nashville, Tennessee, along with other progressive intellectuals of the time, like August Meier, Kenneth Clark, C. Eric Lincoln, L. D. Reddick, and Herbert Hill. He took on more of a recognized role among SNCC members and spent a great deal of time working for SNCC initatives. Although he had begun to doubt whether he would continue at Howard University, the unexpected death of his father persuaded him to finish school. Upon returning to his studies, he met and was taken under the wing of philosophy professor Conrad Snowden. Carmichael changed his major to philosophy and obtained a job advising youth in the local high schools for the National Council of Negro Women. As he helped to organize voting rights drives in Mississippi in 1964 and in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, Carmichael began to realize that many in SNCC had grown skeptical about the tactics of nonviolence. After the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965, some SNCC members sought to break their ties with the mainstream Civil Rights Movement and the liberal organizations that supported it, arguing instead that Blacks needed to seize power rather than seek accommodations from the White power structure. Carmichael agreed, and he was thrust into the leadership position (replacing John Lewis) of SNCC in May 1966.
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A Black Power Leader On June 5, 1966, just a few short weeks after Carmichael took over SNCC, a sniper shot James Meredith during his solitary “March Against Fear,” from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. Carmichael joined Dr. King, Floyd McKissick, and others to continue Meredith’s march. He was arrested during the march and upon his release on June 16, 1966, he gave his initial “Black Power” speech in Greenwood, Mississippi. Carmichael argued that Blacks should be free to use violence in self-defense and later advocated revolutionary violence to overthrow oppression. Carmichael rejected many, but not all, of the civil rights legislative measures as mere palliatives. While Black Power was not an entirely new concept at the time, Carmichael’s speech brought it into the spotlight, and it became a rallying cry for young African Americans across the country. In June 1967, Carmichael stepped down from SNCC to join the BPP. H. Rap Brown (later known as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin) replaced him as the head of SNCC. Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton then wrote the book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, and he traveled to North Vietnam, China, and Cuba to seek collaboration with the efforts of oppressed people of color all over the world. Some leaders of civil rights groups, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), rejected Carmichael’s ideas and accused him of Black racism. In 1968, Carmichael was made an honorary prime minister of the BPP and became a strong critic of the Vietnam War. After he denounced the war, his passport was confiscated and held for 10 months. When his passport was returned in 1969, Carmichael and his first wife, the South African singer Miriam Makeba, moved to Guinea in West Africa. There, he became an aide to the Guinean prime minister, Ahmed Sékou Touré, and helped establish the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party. In 1971, he wrote the book Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism. The book expounded an explicitly Socialist PanAfrican vision, which he retained for the rest of his life. In 1978, he changed his name to Kwame Ture to honor the African leaders Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sékou Touré. In 1984, after the death of Touré, Carmichael was arrested by the new military regime and charged with
trying to overthrow the government. However, he spent only 3 days in prison and was then released. In 1996, Carmichael was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was treated in Cuba and received financial help for his treatment from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Carmichael finally succumbed to cancer on November 15, 1998, in Conakry, Guinea. Matthew W. Hughey See also Black Nationalism; Black Panther Party; Black Power; Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); Marxism and Racism; Newton, Huey; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Further Readings
Blake, John. 2004. Children of the Movement. Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books. British Broadcasting Company. 1998. Black Panther Leader Dies. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ americas/215245.stm Carmichael, Stokely. 1971. Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism. New York: Random House. Carmichael, Stokely and Charles V. Hamilton. 1967. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. New York: Vintage Books. Garrow, David J. 1986. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. New York: Vintage Books. Ture, Kwame and Ekwueme Michael Thelwell. 2003. Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). New York: Scribner’s.
CASTE What makes Indian society unique is the phenomenon of caste. Economic, religious, and linguistic differentiations, even race-based discrimination, are known elsewhere, but nowhere else does one see caste but in India (and, by extension, the subcontinent). This entry reviews the history of caste and discusses its impact on individuals and society.
Background Caste is unique because it ordains a hierarchy that is based on the extent of purity, or lack of it, that
Caste
supposedly characterizes the bodily substances of every person. Accordingly, the earliest Hindu text, the Rg Veda (c.1500 BC) puts the Brahmans, as the purest, on top, followed by warriors (Kshatriyas), commoners (Vaisyas), and helots (Sudras) at the bottom. This schematization is known as the Varna system. There is also a fifth category, the Untouchables, but this cluster of castes came to be designated as such much later, perhaps around the 1st or 2nd century AD. In addition, as time went on, the fourfold Varna category in the Rg Veda yielded to hundreds of endogamous units, or jatis. Technically speaking, only the latter are called castes. These units prescribe the frontiers of marriage alliances, and each jati has specific rituals peculiar to itself and, in a large number of cases, a traditional occupation attached to its members. All jatis are regional in character; none of them have an all-India spread. In fact, most jatis are relevant and recognized only within a radius of about 200 to 300 miles.
Hindu children of high caste, Bombay, India (1922). Caste still continues to function in India as discrete ethnic groups rather than as constituents of a continuous hierarchy of purity in which every Hindu acquiesces. Today, it is possible to say that caste as a system is dying but that identities are alive and well, and it is taking many generations for caste to wither away. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-103634.
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Race and Caste
There are clear differences between race and caste. Unlike in race, the physical markers are not visible in caste. The bodily substances that are meant to distinguish between castes are intangible and culturally coded, but the belief is that they can be easily transferred through touch and proximity. This is why the caste order includes strict rules of social intercourse and of sexual/marital relations to ensure that bodily substances of different provenances do not commingle. Further, caste ideology holds that such commingling of substances pollutes both parties, not just members of the so-called superior caste, though the latter are more seriously affected. Each caste has its domain, and it is the duty of everybody in that community to strictly maintain norms regarding pollution. Again, unlike with race, in the caste system, a child whose parents belong to different castes is not considered to carry equal amounts of both substances from the parents, but is characterized by a third. In this sense, all children born of intercaste sexual liaisons are anomalous in that they are actually outcastes. This is why many of the ancient Hindu texts warned against alliances between members of different castes. The same sources also legitimize the abhorrence of low-caste Untouchables, as they are deemed to be offspring of illicit, intercaste sexual unions. As a result, it is reasoned, low-caste people are polluting in the extreme. This official textual view is held in most intellectual circles and also among specialists; there is only one hierarchy that Hindus accept as proper and morally just. Thus, they believe that a person who is low in the purity hierarchy would accept this subordinate status willingly because the markers of differentiation are universally accepted. Louis Dumont, the most renowned proponent of this position, said that caste is an immutable state of mind for all Hindus. Modernity may come to India but only in regions that this state of mind allows. This state of mind prevails right down the caste hierarchy, according to proponents of this view, and that is why low castes willingly participate in their own subjugation. Ideology at the Botttom of th he Hiera arcchy
This idea, that even those at the bottom of the hierarchy will accept these values, is what renders caste so incomprehensible to outsiders. Around the world, no
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Caste
community thinks it is essentially base or degrading, no matter how wretched its actual conditions might be. Kalahari bushmen, Native Americans in the Pueblo, the Kachins in Burma, the Chinese, the English, the French, and so on—whatever others might think about them, no group thinks poorly of itself or exalts another group above it in essentialist terms. Some may get a better deal out of life, but no one sees themselves as inherently less worthy. As it turns out, this is true in the caste order, as well. The elitist view that the lower groups accepted their status was so strong that few paid attention to what the so-called lower castes were actually saying about themselves. The low castes have no origin myth that actually accepts that the bodily substances of members are wanting in terms of purity. They explain their current fall from grace in a number of ways: lost wars, chicanery, and deceit of people who were brothers once, as well as the mercurial disposition of gods who should have known better. All these origin tales suggest that a day will come when these low castes will reclaim their rightful positions in society. This does not mean that those who are considered polluting by orthodox standards do not believe in pollution. They do—but they don’t believe the stigma should adhere to them. Other castes may be polluting, but not their caste. In this sense, one might say that people believe in the purity and pollution of bodily substances, but there is no unanimity on caste hierarchy. A phenomenologist view of caste would probably recognize as many hierarchies as there are castes simply because each caste overvalues itself. This is true for other primordial community identities, so why should it be different for castes?
Caste Uprising In the past, the caste hierarchy was more or less undisturbed primarily because of the closed nature of the rural agrarian economy, which did not allow any mobility. As McKim Marriot argued, caste positions were kept more or less immobile by the unchanging nature of social interactions in the villages of India. This fixity led to the illusion that everybody was content with where he or she belonged. Scholars usually took the Brahmanical view on this matter and came away with the conclusion that caste was an immutable state of mind for all Hindus, and, as if this were a contaminating virus, it had also affected Muslims, Christians, and other religious denominations in the subcontinent.
Against the background of a stagnant rural economy, where little mobility took place, it was relatively easy to pin occupational roles to specific castes. This led to the widespread assumption that caste and the kind of work one did had an umbilical bond. Even in the past, however, not all members of a particular caste stuck to their supposedly ordained positions. How many cobblers or potters can a village afford, after all? The excess was absorbed in other jobs, primarily in the commodious field of agriculture. This was not unnoticed by scholars, but the belief that caste was ultimately a state of mind did not allow them to draw more realistic conclusions, but led them instead to an essentialist and somewhat caricatured view of Hindus. The popular myth of Hindus being “otherworldly” came in handy again to explain the relative rigidity of the Indian social structure. Many of these positions have now come under greater scrutiny primarily because of the way castes have been politically mobilized in India’s democratic polity. Caste competition for power belies the longheld belief that there is an unswerving loyalty to the hierarchy that framed the much-studied caste system. Castes that were considered and dismissed as “low” have now come out openly with origin myths that give them a higher status, often that of the Brahman or warrior category. In some parts of India where the merchants are looked up to, as in Gujarat, the reference group for emulation is the Vaishya, or business castes. Such contestations also put the Varna hierarchy into question. Many castes prefer to call themselves Kshatriyas (warriors) or Vaishyas (merchants) and valorize these Varna categories above the Brahman. It has not only been in recent years that caste and politics have come together. History is replete with instances in which castes held in low esteem waded their way through slaughter to a throne. The story of Shivaji, the 17th-century warrior prince of Maharashtra, is illustrative in this context. Before this, there were other cases too, such as that of the Marathas and the Jats, who fought their way up to Kshatriya nobility from lowly Sudra status in the 7th and 14th centuries, respectively. But because these were medieval instances of mobility, such philippics happened rarely, quite unlike the daily mobilizations that characterize a modern democratic polity. It is not that contemporary political freedoms put ideas in the heads of the lower castes. Those ideas were always there but could not be expressed easily in the past without episodic upheavals.
Census, U.S.
A New Order An appreciation of these realities certainly “deexoticizes” the caste order. In fact, it can also be said that the caste system, as it was known to be, is more or less on its way out. It is now being replaced by caste identities. The caste system famously ordained a position to every jati that was fixed and covered all aspects of one’s life, from birth to death. Now, jati is no longer connected with occupation. Even the rules of interdining that preempted the transfer of incompatible body substances are practically nonexistent outside one’s village home. Migration and the opening up of jobs that have urban linkages have broken down traditional jati-based occupational structures. The only thing that remains of tradition is endogamy. In India, people overwhelmingly still marry within their jatis and abhor alliances that contravene this rule. It is necessary to underscore that no caste ever accepted its degraded status, howsoever low it may have once been considered to be. Only then can we understand the symbolic energy that powers caste mobilizations, as well as political and economic rivalry, so common in India today. In a closed village economy, there was no scope for these ambitions to be realized. But once the doors opened, tentatively around the early 20th century, castes began wriggling out of the socalled system and began to assert their identities. This may appear counterfactual, but in the first round of urbanization, caste identities are the most strident among those who have only recently shaken off the burden of disprivileges that characterized them and their rural forebears for centuries in the past. Castes, therefore, function more like discrete ethnic groups and not as constituents of a continuous hierarchy of purity to which every Hindu acquiesces. This realization will certainly take away the exotic aura that surrounds the phenomenon of caste. Now, it is possible to say that caste as a system is dying but that identities are alive and well. It will, however, take many generations of urban depth for caste identities to wither away. Dipankar Gupta See also Discrimination; India; Indian Americans; Labeling; Privilege; Segregation
Further Readings
Babb, Lawrence A. 1998. “Rejecting Violence: Sacrifice and the Social Identity of Trading Communities.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 32:387–407.
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Beteille, Andre. 1977. Inequality among Men. London: Blackwell. Cox, Oliver Cromwell. 1970. Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics. New York: Monthly Review Press. Desai, I. P. 1976. Untouchability in Rural Gujarat. Bombay, India: Popular Prakashan Press. Dumont, Louis. 1970. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Gupta, Dipankar, ed. 1991. Social Stratification. Delhi, India: Oxford University Press. Gupta, Dipankar. 2000. Interrogating Caste: Understanding Hierarchy and Difference in Indian Society. New Delhi, India: Penguin Books. Jha, Vivekanand. 1975. “Stages in the History of Untouchables.” Indian Historical Review 2:14–31. Leach, Edmund R., ed. 1960. Some Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon, and Northwest Pakistan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Marriot, McKim. 1959. “Interactional and Attributional Theory of Caste Ranking.” Man in India 39:92–107. Parry, Jonathan P. 1985. “Ghost, Greed, and Sin: The Occupational Identity of the Benares Funeral Priests.” Man 15:88–111. Singer, Milton. 1975. Traditional India: Structure and Change. Jaipur, India: Rawat. Srinivas, Mysore Narasimhachar. 1962. Caste in Modern India and Other Essays. Bombay, India: Popular Prakashan.
CENSUS, U.S. The evolution of the U.S. Census, a decennial account of the nation’s demographics, is intimately intertwined with formation of racial identity and politics in this country. The definitions of race and ethnicity and their enumeration constantly changed for the past 20 years and will continue to change for years to come.
The Census Begins Following Article 1, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution, which made the United States the first nation to make a census mandatory in 1787, the first census was taken in 1790, led by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. While the main purpose of the census was enumeration of the residents for political representation and taxes, by 1850, the information collected through the census grew substantially to include churches, crime, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, mining, housing,
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local governments, commerce, transportation, business, and fisheries. This was also the year measurement of ethnicity and national origin began. Geographically, censuses grew to also include areas under U.S. sovereignty or jurisdiction. As the need for economic and social information grew, censuses started to play an increasingly important role, and the U.S. Census Bureau became a permanent institution in 1902. The redistricting of political boundaries based on the decennial census has been a controversial topic, as gerrymandering of political districts has been used by various constituents, including members of racial, religious, and class groups, to favor the ruling incumbents or political parties. As the need for more detailed information about the population increased, not only the contents of the decennial census changed but also the ways in which the information is collected. To increase the content, additional households were sampled for additional questions. These additional sets of questions that only randomly selected households receive are widely known as the long form, as opposed to the short form, which every household is asked to fill out. The early days of the census included questions about the number of White males 16 years of age or older in order to determine young men available for draft into wars and the labor force as well as the gender and color of all other persons in the household. The first census, which counted 3.9 million inhabitants, included free persons as well as slaves, who were counted as three-fifths of a person. Native Americans, however, were not included, since they were not taxed. On the contrary, the U.S. population between 1990 and 2000 increased by 33 million people, making this period the largest census-tocensus increase thus far in U.S. history.
Racial Categories The racial categories on census questionnaires have changed over time, reflecting changes in societal perceptions, political circumstances, and labels for racial categories. For instance, to count Blacks, or anyone with at least three-eighths to five-eighths Black blood, terms such as quadroon, octoroon, and mulatto were used from 1850. The term Black became common in the 1960s, and, in the 1980s, African American reflected the movement to assert pride in African origin. Other significant modifications include addition of the racial category called Mexican in 1930, only to be dropped in 1940 and then replaced by an additional
question on Hispanic origin later on. This change was to recognize the distinction between race and ethnicity, particularly for a rapidly growing group that contains diverse immigrants from various Central and South American countries and Mexico. Acknowledging the socially constructed and politically defined nature of race, the categories do not attempt to define race according to biology or genetics, and the way in which race was determined changed. Until 1950, it was obtained largely through observations by enumerators, who were not specifically instructed to ask the individual’s race. In 1960 and 1970, both direct interview and self-identification were used, and selfidentification was used in 1980, 1990, and 2000. The language of the questions evolved during this time to a point where in 1990 and 2000, respondents were specifically asked to select the racial category or categories the person “considers himself/herself” to be. As of 2000, the categories of race are White, Black/African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and Some Other Race, which then can be further subdivided into Hispanic Origin, or Hispanic or non-Hispanic. The races of those in the category of Hispanic Origin, Latino, have been coded in a number of different ways because the Census Bureau does not consider Hispanic/Latino to be a race group. The population of Hispanic origin first appeared in the decennial census in 1970. Prior to 1970, it is believed that most enumerators coded most members of the Latino population as White, and other question items, such as country of birth, country of birth of parents, and language, were used to identify those of Latino origin. The concept and interpretation of “origin” expanded over time to heritage, nationality, or country of birth for the respondent or the respondent’s ancestors prior to arrival in the United States. In cases of Hispanic Origin, those who identify themselves as Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino of any race are categorized as being of Hispanic Origin, and everyone else is classified as being of non-Hispanic Origin. Data on Hispanic Origin was gathered using a number of criteria in 1970 and was obtained using only self-identification in 1980, 1990, and 2000, with changes in question wording. On the long form, a question regarding ancestry provides another way to measure race and ethnicity. This self-identified question attempts to measure a person’s ethnic origin, descent, or place of birth that he or she most closely identifies with, recognizing the
Central Americans in the United States
complexity within each race. While ethnic identities such as Polish, Moroccan, or Pennsylvania Dutch are counted, those that are based on religious affiliations for ancestry are not. In censuses based on enumerators’ observations, those persons of mixed White and another race category were typically classified with the non-White race. Through 1970, a person of mixed race other than White was frequently classified according to the race of the person’s father, and according to the race of the person’s mother in 1980 and 1990. The 2000 census was the first time people of mixed race were counted by allowing respondents to report as many races as necessary to describe themselves without providing a single “multiracial” category. Given that there are six categories of race, there are 57 possible combinations, and, by incorporating Hispanic Origin, there are up to 126 possible combinations of racial and ethnic categories. Given the history of shifts in the ways in which race is defined, measuring trends of any given group over time is not always easy. The residual “Other Race” category, for example, contains any racial categories not believed to be listed in the available form in a given year, and the way Hispanics are coded varied by year as well.
Future Plans In preparation for the 2010 census, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has evaluated the readiness of the Census Bureau and has determined that the 2005 modification of race and ethnicity questions, which included deleting the “Other Race” category, is awkward for enumerators and confusing for respondents. In addition to constant changes in racial and ethnic categories, the decennial census also faces the challenge of undercount, particularly of minority populations. The postenumeration surveys by the Census Bureau in 1980 and 1990 estimated that the two surveys missed 2.2 million and 5 million people, respectively. If population is undercounted, various levels of local governments and agencies stand to lose both federal and state funds, particularly organizations that are geared to serve those minority populations. Some believe that statistical sampling methodology would yield more accurate results than enumeration; for example, the U.S. Conference of Mayors supported the use of statistical sampling in the 2000 census. However, as of the 2000 census, enumeration mandated
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by the U.S. Constitution has prevailed as primary method over statistical sampling despite support from the experts and some politicians. Constant demand for census information and data has changed the format of the collection so that starting with the 2010 census, the plan is to supplement enumeration in the decennial census with a survey called the American Community Survey (ACS), which will survey 3 million households every year between 2005 and 2010 to gather more detailed information on smaller geographical units. The goal is to capture those populations that are difficult to estimate, such as undocumented residents and the homeless, and minimize the error in estimation. Kiljoong Kim See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Blood Quantum; Gerrymandering; Hispanics; Hispanic Versus Latino; Multiracial Identity; One-Drop Rule; Panethnic Identity; Race, Social Construction of; Racial Formation; Racial Identity
Further Readings
Gibson, Campbell and Kay Jung. 2002. Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, for the United States, Regions, Divisions, and States. Working Paper Series No. 56. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division. U.S. Government Accountability. 2005. 2010 Census: Basic Design Has Potential, but Remaining Challenges Need Prompt Resolution. Report to Congressional Requesters. Washington, DC: Author.
CENTRAL AMERICANS IN THE UNITED STATES While Mexico has long been the principal source nation of Latin American immigrants to the United States, from the late 1970s onward, Central Americans also began to settle in the United States in substantial numbers. From 1980 to 2000, over 1 million Central Americans from seven nations—Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama—entered the United States as legal immigrants. Central Americans made up approximately 5% of the Hispanic population in the United States in 2000, with the greatest number of immigrants coming from
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Central Americans in the United States
United States
Gulf of Mexico
The Bahamas
Mexico
Cuba Turks & Caicos Is. Cayman Is.
Belize
Jamaica
Haiti
Honduras
Dominican Republic
Caribbean Sea
Guatemala El Salvador Nicaragua
Costa Rica
Venezuela Panama
Colombia
Pacific Ocean Ecuador
Peru
Brazil
El Salvador and Guatemala (see Table 1). Important communities of Central Americans have been established in Los Angeles (Salvadorans and Guatemalans); Washington, D.C. (Salvadorans); Miami (Nicaraguans); New Orleans (Hondurans); and New York (Panamanians). As Central Americans have come to play an increasingly important and visible role in U.S. society, scholars have identified unique features that distinguish this population from other Hispanic groups. These key issues of research and debate include the combination of political and economic factors that have driven Central Americans to migrate to the U.S.; political challenges that Central Americans have faced in gaining legal residency; the individual and collective impacts of economic hardship and political violence; and the specific obstacles faced by women, the indigenous, and young immigrants. This entry reviews the history of Central American immigration and looks at conditions in their U.S. communities.
Origins of Central American Migration Many scholars link contemporary patterns of Central American international migration to the region’s historical forms of insertion into the global economy, as well as U.S. economic, military, and political interventions. A number of Central America’s small, dependent
economies were first closely integrated into the world economy with the expansion of coffee production in the 1800s. In the post–World War II period, exports of beef, sugar, and bananas to U.S. markets increased rapidly across the region. While this agro-exportdriven model of development contributed to relatively high rates of regional economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s, landholdings became increasingly concentrated, and many of Central America’s rural and indigenous poor had growing difficulty in meeting basic subsistence needs. High levels of economic and social inequality were further exacerbated by a prevalence of authoritarian governments in the region, with the important exception of Costa Rica. Inequality and poverty served as a “push” factor that encouraged Central American migration from the countryside to urban centers, between Central American countries, and to international destinations. In the 1960s and 1970s, a limited number of relatively well-educated Central Americans settled in the United States, seeking opportunities for employment and higher wages. During this period, U.S. manufacturing investments in El Salvador and Guatemala linked some individuals economically and culturally with the United States, increasing their propensity to migrate. In Panama, the preponderant economic and military role of the United States—its control of the Panama Canal and military bases— encouraged English-speaking Afro-Panamanians who worked in these sectors to seek opportunities to settle in the United States. The late 1970s and 1980s saw a sharp upsurge in Central American migration to the United States, as tens of thousands of people fled the physical, social, and economic disruption linked to civil wars and Table 1
Central American Population in the U.S., 2000
Country of Origin El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Nicaragua Panama Costa Rica Other Central Americans Total Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2002.
Number in U.S. 655,165 372,487 217,569 177,684 91,723 68,588 103,721 1,686,937
Central Americans in the United States
political violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. In El Salvador and Guatemala, leftist nationalist guerrillas challenged authoritarian governments that were supported economically and militarily by the United States. Approximately 75,000 Salvadorans died during that nation’s conflict, as political violence impacted not only rural households located in war zones but also students, union organizers, and political activists in urban areas. In Guatemala, rural indigenous communities were targeted for massacres in the early 1980s, and the death toll reached 200,000. In both countries, Truth Commission reports attributed 85% or more of deaths to government forces and right-wing death squads. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overthrew the 40-year Somoza family dictatorship in 1979 and established a revolutionary government. The Reagan administration soon began to provide economic and military support to “contra” rebels seeking to overthrow the FSLN. In the decade-long war that ensued, tens of thousands of Nicaraguans migrated to the United States to escape wartime violence and evade the military draft, as well as Nicaragua’s economic crisis of the late 1980s.
U.S. Government Policy Toward Central American Immigrants With the adoption of the Refugee Act of 1980, the United States recognized as refugees persons who are unable to return to their country of origin because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution. During the 1980s, however, Reagan administration officials and U.S. Immigration and Naturalization officers tended to view individuals fleeing from Guatemala and El Salvador as economically motivated migrants and applied very stringent criteria to those seeking refugee status. During the 1980s, only 3% of political asylum claims by Salvadorans and Guatemalans were granted. Jennifer Lundquist and Douglas Massey contend that during periods of conflict, as experienced by Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, political violence and persecution often interacted with and intensified economic disruption and hardship faced by Central Americans. Others scholars have characterized U.S. immigration policies of this era as “discriminatory,” contrasting hostile attitudes toward those fleeing Central American governments supported by the United States with the open-door policy toward Cuban and Vietnamese
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refugees. One group of church members and activists who opposed U.S. government policies of the era initiated the sanctuary movement in Arizona in 1982. Drawing upon Judeo-Christian beliefs and values of “welcoming strangers,” sanctuary movement participants across the country engaged in civil disobedience, creating an underground railroad to assist undocumented Central Americas in entering the United States and offer them protection, support, and advocacy on their behalf. In part because of the difficulties that Central Americans faced in gaining refugee status, more than 250,000 people from the region entered the United States illegally in the early 1980s. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 established an amnesty program for individuals who had been illegally and continuously present in the United States since January 1, 1982. While a number of undocumented Central American immigrants were able to take advantage of this law, others were negatively impacted by its threat of sanctions against employers of the undocumented. With the return of peace to the region in the 1990s, the number of Central Americans immigrating to the United States, as well as political asylum claims, began to drop. As of 2001, an estimated 1.5 million undocumented Central Americans resided in the United States.
Economic Conditions of Central Americans in the United States The legal challenges faced by Central American immigrants have also influenced their opportunities for economic and social mobility once in the United States. In comparison to undocumented Mexican migrants, Central Americans often incur additional costs and risks in traveling to the United States: the need to cover long geographical distances, increased expenses in paying guides and sometimes bribing government officials in Mexico, and the risk of robbery and sexual violence. Once across the border, the 1980s wave of undocumented Central American migrants tended to settle in low-income Hispanic neighborhoods. While Nicaraguans established a strong presence in Miami, Salvadorans and Guatemalans moved to the greater Los Angeles area, drawn in part by the availability of jobs in the garment sector. In some instances, immigrants denied their Central American origins, adopting a more general “Hispanic” identity in hopes of blending in and avoiding possible deportation to their home countries, where their lives might be at risk.
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Central Americans in the United States
Central Americans in America participate in the paid labor force in high numbers and also have a relatively high poverty rate of 25%. Scholars suggest that patterns of economic mobility among Central Americans are linked to the specific characteristics of immigrants, as well as structural barriers and opportunities that they encounter in the United States. Central American immigrants typically arrive in the United States with relatively low levels of formal education and limited English language skills. Additional factors that may limit Central Americans’ possibilities for upward economic mobility include legal status, caretaking responsibilities, forms of incorporation into the U.S. economy, and gender, racial, and ethnic identities. Women from Central America typically work in fields that correspond closely to their traditional gender roles in the private sphere: domestic service, the care industry, the garment industry, commercial cleaning, and street vending. Central American men, in turn, are commonly employed in maintenance work, in hotels and restaurants, and as day laborers. Guatemalan immigrants who settled in rural Florida have sought out agricultural work. These immigrants typically work long hours and receive low pay. With patterns of global restructuring of the U.S. economy, the traditional means of immigrant upward mobility—relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs—has generally not been available to Central American immigrants. Despite these obstacles, however, a number of Central Americans have been able to achieve middle-class status with degrees and technical credentials and have revitalized their neighborhoods through the establishment of a range of small businesses.
Social Ties of Central Americans in the United States Like other immigrant groups, Central Americans often rely on assistance from extended family and friends in their first days and weeks in the United States. Such help may take the form of shared housing, information on job opportunities, and exchange of services and favors. Studies of Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrant communities suggest, however, that while family, friendship, and community networks are important sources of support, the ability of more established Central Americans to assist newcomers and social ties among immigrants more broadly are profoundly impacted by the structural conditions and
challenges that all must confront in the United States. Family- and community-based forms of solidarity do not happen automatically, and as more established immigrants continue to face structural obstacles to mobility and economic hardship, they may be less able and willing to assist newcomers. In addition, while Central Americans who arrived in the 1980s and early 1990s did not gain access to the types official support and resources offered to Cuban and Vietnamese refugees, they still have had to cope with the psychological and social impacts of violence that they may have experienced or witnessed in their countries of origin. Counselors who have worked with Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans in the United States report that cases of post-traumatic stress disorder are not uncommon. Other scholars have noted that the trauma and legacy of fear persist even in the United States and that immigrants are often reluctant to speak, even among family and friends, of the violence and human rights abuses of their countries of origin.
Women, the Indigenous, and Youth Central American women in the United States have also faced gender-specific conditions and challenges. When their spouses were the target of political violence in their countries of origin, some women moved into nontraditional roles and served as heads of household and economic providers. In the case of Guatemala, women have migrated in greater numbers than men. Central American women in the United States have very high rates of participation in the paid labor force, although they are often limited by gender ideologies and discrimination in the types of work that they may engage in and their ability to seek better conditions and pay. Ethnographic studies of Guatemalan and Salvadoran women have found that women face challenges of patriarchal gender norms, or machismo, in the private sphere as well—particularly in the form of of abandonment, domestic violence, and alcohol abuse by spouses. Indigenous Mayan women from Guatemala often must deal not only with gender discrimination but also with racial and ethnic discrimination. For example, they may be mocked for their limited ability to speak Spanish or English and face very constrained job opportunities. Despite these challenges, indigenous women and men from Guatemala have struggled to reassert Mayan identities and practices and to challenge dominant negative stereotypes of Central American communities.
Central Americans in the United States
Similar to the children of other foreign-born groups in the United States, the daughters and sons of Central American immigrants tend to move toward cultural assimilation, with greater affinity toward English and U.S. culture. In the Los Angeles area, some Salvadoran youths were forced to contend with already established Mexican gangs and began to form gangs themselves as a means of self-defense. Other factors that have contributed to the growth of Salvadoran gangs include family instability and long periods of family separation linked to migratory processes; long work hours that undermine parental supervision of children; and experiences of youth being uprooted as well as discrimination and violence in their countries of origin. By the mid-2000s, the Salvadoran gangs, or maras, had expanded from California to other U.S. urban centers and taken on a transnational dimension, spreading their criminal activities to Central America.
Social and Cultural Activism of Central Americans Central Americans in the United States have also been active on a range of social and cultural issues. In the 1980s, Central Americans were organized around issues of human rights, opposition to U.S. military and economic interventions in the region, and immigrant rights. Central American lobbying efforts in this latter area contributed to the passage in 1990 of a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) law, which enumerated a series of conditions in their countries of origin—ongoing armed conflict, natural disaster, a nation unable to handle the return of its citizens, or other extraordinary circumstances—that have allowed a number of Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans to legally remain in the United States. Seven years later, Congress also passed the Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NACARA), which lowered the standard that Salvadorans and Guatemalans had to meet to remain in the United States, and granted Nicaraguans in the country by 1995 legal residency. In the 1990s, Central American nonprofit organizations, such as the Central American Refugee Center (CARACEN), provided services to community members in areas such as education, health care, and job training. In some instances, particularly in the Southern California region, tensions linked to ethnic transformation of neighborhoods, perceived labor competition, and loss of relatively well-paying union jobs have arisen between recent Central American
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arrivals and more-established immigrant and African American communities. In other instances, however, Central American activists have been at the forefront of well-known interethnic campaigns for worker rights, such as the “Justice for Janitors” campaign. In addition to such formal organizational efforts for social change, Central Americans have striven in their everyday lives to manage often complex transnational identities, seeking opportunities in the United States while also striving to practice and adapt Central America’s rich and varied cultural beliefs and practices. Central American households prepare pupusas, tortillas filled with beans and cheese; nacatamales, corn and pork tamales; and sancocho, a savory chicken soup. They celebrate 15th birthdays (quinceañeras) and community patron saint days. Central Americans have also established numerous transnational networks, in particular hometown associations that send material resources back to Central America. As individuals, in 2001, Central American immigrants sent more than $3.5 billion in remittances to their countries of origin, providing vital economic support to their families. Over the past 3 decades, Central Americans have fled war and poverty and faced economic and cultural challenges with a determination and innovation that suggest that these communities will continue to play an important role in the United States and be of interest to scholars and policymakers. Lynn Horton See Appendix A See also Barrio; Belize; Border Patrol; Guatemalan Americans; Hispanics; Honduran Americans; Immigration, U.S.; Latin Americans, Indigenous People; Machismo; Nicaraguan Americans; Panamanian Americans; Salvadoran Americans
Further Readings
Cordova, Carlos B. 2005. The Salvadoran Americans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Hamilton, Nora and Norma Stoltz Chinchilla. 2001. Seeking Community in a Global City: Guatemalans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Hernandez, Romel. 2004. Immigration from Central America. Philadelphia, PA: Mason Crest. Kohpahl, Gabriele. 1998. Voices of Guatemalan Women in Los Angeles: Understanding Their Immigration. New York: Garland.
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Lundquist, Jennifer H. and Douglas S. Massey. 2005. “Politics or Economics: International Migration during the Nicaraguan Contra War.” Journal of Latin American Studies 37:29–53. Menjívar, Cecilia. 2000. Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Popkin, Eric. 1999. “Guatemalan Mayan Migration to Los Angeles: Constructing Transnational Linkages in the Context of the Settlement Process.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22:267–289. Schmalzbauer, Leah. 2005. Striving and Surviving: A Daily Life Analysis of Honduran Transnational Families. New York: Routledge.
CHÁVEZ, CÉSAR (1927–1993)
father, coupled with compassion for others and a disdain for violence learned from his mother, Chávez became known as a passionate advocate for farmworkers. He is most famous for founding the United Farm Workers Union (UFW) with the assistance of longtime friend and colleague Dolores Huerta. His work on behalf of others began long before the UFW and had a reach that affected many, including workers in other industries as well as national leaders, such as Robert F. Kennedy, President Bill Clinton, and, most recently, the majority leader for the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. In 1993, Chávez came full circle, passing away in his sleep in a home not far from the farm where he was born.
Early Chávez History
Born to Librado and Juana Chávez, César was named after his grandfather Césario, who, according to family legend, escaped from slavery in Mexico and homesteaded land in the 1880s near what is now the town of Yuma, Arizona. Chávez’s earliest years were spent on that land. His father worked that land and ran a small country store in Gila Valley. When César was 10 years old, his life changed. Because of the Great Depression and a series of unfortunate events, the Chávez family lost both the store in Gila Valley and the family farm. The Chávez family left Arizona for California and began life as migrant farmworkers. They experienced harsh working conditions and uncertain wages. Health care was nonexistent, and job security unheard of. This early experience helped to shape the passions of Chávez’s life and set the course for his future activism. Education was not a priority in Chávez’s early life. His ambivalence toward schooling was due in part to his early difficulties with English and the strict discipline he received. After attendCésar Chávez and Coretta Scott King. To keep the United Farm Workers out of ing over thirty elementary and middle California lettuce and vegetable fields, most Salinas Valley growers signed schools, Chávez left after the eighth contracts with the Teamsters union during the summer of 1970. Some 10,000 grade and began working full-time as farm workers on the California central coast responded by walking out on strike, a vineyard worker to help support his and labor rights leader César Chávez (third from right) called for a nationwide family. Even though his formal education boycott of lettuce. He is pictured here with Coretta Scott King (fourth from right) leading a lettuce boycott march down a street in New York City. ended at that point, he possessed an Source: Getty Images. appetite for knowledge that was evident Born on March 31, 1927, on his family’s farm near Yuma, Arizona, future labor activist César Chávez had a challenging life, beginning with his family losing their home and business during the Great Depression and then their years of hard living as migrant farmworkers. Learning hard work from his
Chávez, César (1927–1993)
throughout his life. His family was able to rent a small home in San Jose, California, in a neighborhood known as Sal Si Puedes (“Get out if you can!”). In 1944, Chávez joined the navy and served during World War II in the Western Pacific for 2 years. Of those years, Chávez recalled them as “the 2 worst years of my life.” Upon his return to California, he married Helen Fabela, whom he had met while working in vineyards prior to joining the military. Throughout his life, Chávez credited his wife with her help and support through some very difficult times. Together, they had eight children, who eventually gave him a total of thirty-one grandchildren. They honeymooned by traveling the length of the state of California, stopping and visiting the missions along the way. César and Helen eventually settled in San Jose, California, in the same community where he had lived with his parents (Sal Si Puedes). He soon returned to his work as a field hand, picking apricots, grapes, and cotton. Hoping conditions for workers would improve after the war, Chávez was sorely disappointed and within a few short years would begin to take action to make positive changes to help farmworkers like himself.
A Political Turn Chávez’s life took a new direction in 1952, when he met a man by the name of Fred Ross while working in apricot orchards outside of San Jose. Ross was an organizer for the Community Service Organization (CSO), a grassroots organization that was founded to battle segregation, lead voter registration drives, and fight to enact new legislation that affected Mexican Americans. Chávez joined the CSO and over the next decade rose through the ranks from organizer to eventually take the helm of the organization in 1958 as executive director. This required a move for him and his family to Los Angeles, California, where the CSO was headquartered. During his early time with the CSO, he met and befriended Dolores Huerta, who would become integral in his future work fighting for the rights of Mexican American workers. After trying unsuccessfully to persuade the CSO that farmworkers needed to organize in order to ensure fair wages and safe working conditions, Chávez saw the need to take matters into his own hands. In 1962, Chávez left the CSO and along with Dolores Huerta made the risky decision to found the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), with the goal of helping those he had worked alongside for years. It was a
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difficult task, trying to convince workers to organize, while facing hostile growers and field owners who often responded with violence. Even so, the numbers of workers joining the NFWA slowly increased. Just 3 short but productive years later, the NFWA joined with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), an organization made up primarily of Filipino workers, when they struck against Delano grape growers due to pay cuts during the busy harvest season. Finding success by joining forces, the NFWA and AWOC came together and formed the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee in 1969, which would later become the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). While this endeavor had begun as a strike against grape growers, this organization became known as La Causa, “the cause.” The success they experienced reflected Chávez’s personal motto, “Si se puedes,” which means “Yes, we can.”
The United Farm Workers (UFW) For many years prior to the official formation of the UFW, Chávez resisted calling it a “union” for the simple fact that previous efforts to organize agricultural workers into unions had either been spectacularly unsuccessful or had disintegrated into violence toward farmworkers and those attempting to organize them. In 1966, Chávez led a 250-mile march from Delano, California, to the state capital in Sacramento to take the workers’ demands to the state government and to make the nation aware of the plight of farmworkers. They were successful in negotiating the contract between the farmworkers and the Schenley Wine Company, the first time that farmworkers made up the negotiating committee for a collective bargaining agreement with an agricultural corporation. This was only the first of many successes for Chávez and the organizing committees. They continued to work with laborers not only in the grape industry but also in the vegetable industry and organized a second boycott in reaction to violence that resulted in the deaths of several farmworkers. This boycott of grapes, lettuce, and Gallo wines brought together community workers, student protesters, peace groups, religious groups, Hispanic associations, and feminists to fight for the rights of farmworkers. Chávez and the UFW continued their work across the United States, inspiring similar movements in South Texas, where the UFW helped organize fruit
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workers, leading a march to Austin to ensure the rights of farmworkers. In that same year, Obreros Unidos was formed in Wisconsin and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in Ohio the year after. Early in Chávez’s life, he learned of the powerful influence of nonviolent activists such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. One of the ways that Chávez brought attention to the movement was inspired by their example. In 1968, Chávez showed that he was willing to sacrifice for the movement by embarking on a 25-day, water-only fast. He repeated this in 1972 for 24 days and again in 1988 for 36 days. He utilized this method of protest to show that nonviolent means can be effective in bringing attention to the plight of the farmworkers. When he broke the fast in 1988, his dedication was taken on by a series of notable individuals, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Jr.; Martin Sheen (actor); the Reverend J. Lowery; Edward Olmos (actor); Emilio Estevez (actor); Kerry Kennedy (daughter of Robert F. Kennedy); and many others. In 1975, due to the actions by the UFW, governor of California Jerry Brown signed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which legally allowed farmworkers to form a union that could negotiate with farm owners for better wages and working conditions. They founded the Robert F. Kennedy Medical Plan, the Farm Workers Credit Union, and the National Farm Workers Service Center to provide affordable housing and a Spanish Language radio communications network. Chávez and the UFW have lobbied for unemployment insurance for farm laborers and against guest worker programs, equating them to indentured servitude, allowing them to work at subsistence wages yet denying them the opportunity for citizenship. Chávez went as far as to try and convince illegal workers not to cross into the United States to temporarily replace striking farmworkers. His fight continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s, through changes in state government and apparent setbacks in the work for the rights of farmworkers. He lived from 1970 in the Tehachapi Mountain community of Keane, east of Bakersfield, California, the headquarters of the UFW. He received subsistence wages, as did other officers and staff of the UFW, which never exceeded $6,000 a year. In 1993, while visiting Yuma, Arizona, to assist UFW attorneys defending the union against an action brought by a large California-based vegetable producer due to losses they suffered during a boycott
organized by the UFW, Chávez passed away at the age of 66.
An Enduring Legacy Throughout his adult life, Chávez was praised for his work on behalf of the poor, the marginalized, the alienated, and the exploited. Both during his life and after his death, Chávez was recognized for his valuable contributions in the struggle not only for workers’ rights in the United States but also for human and civil rights. During the early days of his activism, Chávez was referred to by Senator Robert F. Kennedy as “one of the heroic figures of our time.” He garnered the support of prominent politicians and citizens alike. Later in his life, Chávez embraced education. His office at UFW headquarters was lined with hundreds of books, including biographies of the Kennedys and Gandhi, as well as books whose subjects ranged from economics and philosophy to successful cooperatives and unions. In 1973, Colegio César Chávez, the first 4-year Mexican American college in the United States, opened in Mount Angel, Oregon. Although significant financial and administrative problems caused it to close after only 10 years, it still made its impact on Oregon’s history. After his death, a law was passed in California instituting March 31 as a state holiday in honor of Chávez’s birthday. Texas also recognizes the holiday, and it is an optional holiday in both Arizona and Colorado. The cities of Sacramento, San Diego, San Jose, and Berkeley have renamed parks in his honor, and numerous schools and streets have since been given his name. Chávez has been awarded the highest honors of both Mexico and the United States. In 1991, he was honored with the Aquila Azteca, Mexico’s highest award presented to individuals of Mexican heritage who have made major contributions outside of Mexico. The Presidential Medal of Honor was awarded to him posthumously by President William Jefferson Clinton on August 8, 1994. He became only the second Mexican American to receive the award, the highest civilian honor in the United States, which was presented to his wife, Helen F. Chávez, and six of her eight children, who traveled to the White House to receive the honor on his behalf. On the date of his birth in 2007, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that she had cosponsored legislation with Congressman Joe Baca that sought to award Chávez the Congressional Gold
Cherokee
Medal for his distinguished service to the country. César Chávez would be the first Hispanic ever honored with this award. Karen S. Boyd See also Civil Disobedience; Guest Workers; Huerta, Dolores; Labor Unions; La Raza; Mexican Americans; Minority Rights
Further Readings
Ferris, Susan, Ricardo Sandoval, and Diana Hembree, eds. 1998. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement. New York: Harcourt Brace.
CHEROKEE The Cherokee make up the largest of the 563 federally recognized American Indian tribes in the United States, with a total population of 729,533 (including over 250,000 enrolled tribal members). Despite the impact of colonization and the long history of formal policies and attempts by the U.S. government to assimilate the Cherokee, they remain a distinct political, cultural, and linguistic group within the United States. Unlike other cultures around the world that were colonized and then regained their independence, the Cherokee and other American Indian nations within the United States remained subsumed under the United States, while at the same time having legal recognition as sovereign political entities and as U.S. citizens. Cherokee identity can be understood by examining the ways in which the culture and its people have adapted to wide-sweeping change and colonization. The ancestral homeland of the Cherokee is in the Allegheny region of the Southeast, in modern-day Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Virginia and West Virginia, and North and South Carolina. They are believed to be the descendants of the Mississippian mound-building culture. Due to forced removal from their ancestral homeland in 1838, the Cherokee are divided into the Western Band in Oklahoma and the Eastern Band in North Carolina. The political and legal status of federally recognized tribes is perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic vis-à-vis other ethnic groups in the United States. Currently, there are three federally recognized Cherokee
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nations or tribes: (1) the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma; (2) the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of North Carolina, headquartered in Cherokee, North Carolina; and (3) the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. In addition, there are over 300 nonfederally recognized Cherokee groups.
Cherokee Culture The Cherokee call themselves Yunwiya or Ani Yunwiya or Tsa lagi, which means “real people” or “principal people,” similar to other indigenous people in North America. The name Cherokee has been spelled at least 50 ways throughout history, but most historians believe it is a corruption of Tsa lagi. It first appears as Chalaque in the Portuguese description of de Soto’s expedition, published in 1557. Later, it appears as Cheraqui in a 1699 French document, and then in the English form of Cherokee in 1708. Cherokee oral tradition asserts that the Cherokee have always inhabited the Southeast. Archaeologists estimate that for thousands of years, their ancestors built villages along the region’s creeks and rivers, and since around 1000 CE, they cultivated corn. They are rooted in the Mississippian past. Archaeologists use this term to describe the hundreds of late, precontact societies that thrived throughout the Southeast and Eastern woodlands. The Mississippian period began in 750 CE and lasted until the time of Hernando de Soto in 1539. Many of the vestiges of Mississippian beliefs and the central importance of corn live on among Southeastern people. The puskita, or Green Corn Ceremony, survives as the most important postcontact ritual for tribes of the Southeast. Other descendants of the Mississippian mound-building cultures became tribes that are ethnically closely related: the Creeks, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Tuscarora, and Choctaws. Relig gion and Identiity
One of the greatest challenges for the Cherokee has been preserving and maintaining the traditional culture, beliefs, and practices that make them a distinct people. Beginning in the early colonial era, missionaries arrived in Cherokee settlements. Many Cherokee converted to Christianity throughout history, and a large number of contemporary Cherokee from all
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three nations identify themselves as Christians, typically Southern Baptist. Many Cherokee were pressured through persecution to give up their traditional religion. In 1883, the Major Crimes Act made the practice of Native American religions a federal offense. In response to this, those who chose to continue in the practice of Ah ni yv wi ya, traditional Cherokee religion, literally went underground. Ethnologists have asserted that the Cherokee who remained in the ancestral homeland in the Southeast have maintained more of their traditional social structures and religious traditions than those who moved or were forced westward. Despite removal from their ancestral homeland and ancient ceremonial sites, many Cherokee brought their ancient spiritual traditions to Oklahoma and adapted to the new land. The secret society Keetoowah, or the Keetoowah Nighthawk Society, is credited with preserving and reviving preremoval ceremonies and beliefs. While many members of these societies joined with the Old Settlers to form the aforementioned United Keetoowah Band, they are not a single organization, and members of the Western Cherokees may be members of both. In 1968, Congress enacted the Indian Civil Rights Act, which extended the Bill of Rights to Native Americans for the first time. Religious freedom, however, was not legislated until 1978. Today, Cherokees who practice Ah ni yv wi ya or choose to participate in traditional ceremonies can do so without fear of persecution. In contemporary times, spiritual leaders from both regions have great mutual respect for each other. Language and Identity y
Many Cherokee from each of the three nations still speak the tribal language. Unlike many Native languages facing extinction, Cherokee continues to be a viable language uniting all three nations. The early transformation of Cherokee from an oral to a written language by Sequoyah may be key its survival today. The Cherokee Phoenix, a newspaper first published in 1828, continues to have columns in both Cherokee and English. Culture is embedded in language, and language connects the Cherokee not only to each other but also to the worldview, values, and lifeways of their ancestors. Language is a powerful determinant of one’s membership in any ethnic group, and knowledge
of the tribal language is particularly important for Native people, as the preservation of language is synonymous with the preservation of identity.
European Contact and Colonization European contact and colonization brought widespread death and destruction to indigenous North Americans through epidemics, enslavement, and brutal military occupation. For those who survived, there was radical and rapid cultural change. For nations of the Southeast, this was first brought by the Spanish expeditions of Hernando de Soto (1539–1543), followed a century later by the French and the British. More than a century after Cherokee encounters with the Spanish, the English began to trade and colonize in Cherokee country. Although the English were not as overtly brutal as the Spanish, they were still an imperialistic people intent on colonizing native land, and, hence, relationships between native people and the English were fraught with conflict and violence. Anxious to form trade and political alliances, the English traders from Virginia and South Carolina visited the Cherokee regularly. In the complex world of the new colonies, the Cherokee and other Southeast tribes found themselves to be variously military allies, trading partners, and enemies of the English colonies. As the competition for land and resources increased with the pressures of expanding colonization, the Cherokee also found themselves engaged in on-andoff warfare with neighboring tribes. The Cherokee were highly adaptive, and by the 1700s, many had adopted many ways of life from the English, including Christianity. Intermarriage between Cherokee women and White traders became common as traders found that this allowed them acceptance in Cherokee communities. Intermarriage had enormous impacts on the traditional social, economic, and family structures of Cherokee society, which were matrilineal and egalitarian. Deep divisions arose within the nation between those who believed that the Cherokee should remain traditional and those who chose various levels of assimilation. The Cherokee people participated in and were greatly affected by the conflicts created by attempts by the British and the French to colonize in and around their homeland. Their struggle to remain sovereign and independent was complicated because they did not a single entity with which to treaties, make
Cherokee
trade negotiations, and form alliances. The Cherokee were involved in both sides of the French and Indian Wars and the Revolutionary War. Several hundred warriors known as the Chickamaugans fought against the American rebels until 1794.
Relations With the United States For the U.S. government, the most perplexing problem from its inception until modern times has been how to deal with sovereign independent American Indian nations existing within its borders. Until the civil rights and social reform movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the solution to the “Indian problem” had alternated between policies of assimilation, extermination, and forced removal. Cherokee responses to these policies have been, and continue to be, adaptation. Historically and currently, there are tensions and divisions that exist between retaining traditional culture and values and various levels of assimilation within the context of adaptation. Division n of Westerrn an nd Eastern Cherokee
The physical division of the Cherokee tribe into separate nations began during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. The federal policy became one of forced removal with the passing of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Despite the efforts of Cherokee leaders such as John Ross, and appeals to the Supreme Court, this act resulted in the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation in 1832 from the Southeast to present-day northeastern Oklahoma. This became known as Nunna Dual Tsunyi: the “Trail of Tears.” Many died in the detention camps before leaving, while thousands died during the trip. The 600 or so Cherokee that escaped the soldiers became the nucleus of the Eastern Band of Cherokees, now headquartered in North Carolina. Some Cherokees moved westward to Indian Territory prior to the forced removal and the Trail of Tears. These Cherokee generally rejected assimilation and moved voluntarily—perhaps sensing that removal was becoming inevitable. This group has been called the “Old Settlers.” In more recent times, the descendants of the Old Settlers together with traditionalists from the Western Band of Cherokees, called the Keetoowah Society or the Keetoowah Nighthawk Society, formed the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees.
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Rebuildin ng Again n—a and Again n
The continuation and strength of Cherokee tribal identity and the preservation of that identity has been, and is currently, directly linked with economic prosperity and strong self-government. Within a few decades, the Cherokee who survived the Trail of Tears successfully rebuilt their entire culture and social structure on the prairies of Oklahoma. Running their own governmental and educational systems ensured that the transmission of traditional Cherokee cultural values and identity would be accomplished in the West. This success was to be short-lived. In response to the hunger for land and the pressure of westward expansion, the U.S. government passed a series of legislation that attempted to solve the “Indian problem” by eradicating and assimilating the new Cherokee Nation. In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act, or General Allotment Act. This act terminated tribally held land by granting 160-acre allotments to each male to promote farming and assimilation. In 1898, under the Curtis Act, the U.S. government abolished Cherokee governmental systems. With the end of tribally run schools in 1913, many children were sent away to government boarding schools, which further eroded the transmission of cultural values. The period of western Cherokee history between 1887 and Oklahoma statehood in 1907 was grim. In 1926, the U.S. government finally recognized that the policies regarding Native Americans—including the Cherokee—had been failing since the 19th century. The Meriam Commission report uncovered the numerous problems that had plagued Native people for years, including poverty, malnutrition, disease, and poor living conditions. A call went out to reform the boarding school system and the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs). Reform and Legisslatio on
In 1924, Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, making Native Americans citizens of the United States. Later, reformers such as John Collier, appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt to be commissioner of Indian affairs, led the campaign and passage of the Indian Reorganization Act and attempted to bring Roosevelt’s New Deal to the suffering Cherokees. In 1934, the Wheeler-Howard Act, sometimes called the “Indian New Deal,” replaced the Dawes Act, ending the allotment policy and providing for political and economic development and the creation of
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autonomous tribal governments under supervision by the BIA. In efforts to end its obligations to Native nations, the U.S. government continued to develop policies and legislation to abolish those nations and fully assimilate their members into “mainstream” society. In 1949, the Hoover Commission recommended in its Report on Indian Affairs that Native Americans be fully assimilated into the mass of the population. The termination and relocation policies developed during the Truman years proved enduring and bipartisan. In 1953, Congress adopted the “Termination Policy” as the new solution to the “Indian problem” by passing House Concurrent Resolution 108, which was intended to end tribal status and Native Americans as “wards” of the United States. During the next 13 years, Congress enacted statutes terminating federal relationships with more than 100 Native nations. More than a million acres were removed from trust protection. Relocation policies promised improved housing, jobs, and education to Native families willing to leave their tribal land for large urban areas. Many Cherokee who moved resettled in cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee. Often, these promises were unfulfilled and only increased the suffering of Native families. These policies failed in their attempts to eradicate tribal identity and assimilate people into the “mainstream.” In many instances, tribal ties remained, and identity grew stronger. Socia al Refform Movem mentss
In 1969, Native American reformers, which included many Cherokees and tribes from across the country and Alaska, seized Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay in an occupation that lasted for 19 months. The hope was to draw attention to Native concerns and the growing problems faced by indigenous people in the United States. Cherokee individuals were involved with the Civil Rights Movement and the American Indian Movement (AIM), which occupied BIA offices in Washington, D.C., culminating in a march known as the “Trail of Broken Treaties.” As with the occupation of Alcatraz Island, once more, the intention was to focus national attention on Native American issues for all tribes. In 1970, the termination era ended, and the selfdetermination era of Indian policy began. Elections of chiefs to lead the Five Tribes replaced the practice of federal appointment of tribal leaders. In 1975,
Ross O. Swimmer was elected (as opposed to being federally appointed) to the first of three terms as a principal chief of the Cherokee Nations. A fifteen-member tribal council was seated. In 1976, the Cherokee Nation voters ratified a new constitution. Swimmer was instrumental in the formation of the United Band of Keetoowah. Other powerful leaders such as Wilma Mankiller and current chief Chad Smith have been instrumental for the success of the Western Cherokee Nation.
Issues of Race and Ethnicity In traditional Cherokee culture, identification as a Cherokee was more of a social-political orientation than one defined by race. Philosophically, tribal identity is associated with acceptance and membership within community, clan, and family relationships and the degree to which an individual knows the tribal history, language, spiritual traditions, and social customs. From a legal or political perspective, it is defined by tribal membership. Ancestrry Verrsu us Tribal Membersship p
During the process of removal and colonization, various legislation (i.e., the Dawes Act) led to the creation of official censuses or “rolls” (the Dawes Roll, 1902; the Baker Roll, 1924) to document Cherokee citizenship. There are many who can trace, document, and claim Cherokee ancestry but cannot be considered Cherokee citizens due to decisions their ancestors made regarding where they lived that caused them to lose their citizenship. Today, there is no legal certification or recognition process for those descendants whose ancestors are missing from the tribal rolls. Tribal membership is the status of citizenship in a sovereign nation. Each Cherokee Nation has determined its legal basis for tribal membership. Requirements vary with each nation, but in general include (a) a Certification of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB), which is a computation based on the blood quantum of the ancestor recorded on the final roll; (b) direct lineal descent established by legal documentation; and (c) the minimum CDIB established by the tribal government. Contro overrsy Over Fre eedmen
There has been recent controversy over the Cherokee Nations’ announcement in March of 2006 that the Cherokee Freedmen are eligible for tribal membership. The Freedmen are descendants of African
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Americans who were made Cherokee citizens by a post–Civil War treaty because they were classified as Cherokee on the Dawes Rolls. Many Cherokee traditionalists have opposed granting tribal membership to the Freedmen, even though the Cherokee also granted membership to Native Americans of Delaware blood based on old treaties with the United States. Other traditionalists have acknowledged the shared history, suffering, and contributions of the Freedmen and believe they have a rightful place in the Cherokee Nation. Relatiionship ps Amon ng th he Thre ee Chero okee e Natio ons
In 1984, at Red Clay, Tennessee, there was a reunion of the Eastern and Western bands of Cherokees. This was the first joint council held to discuss tribal issues in 146 years. Since that time, there have been numerous joint programs and counsel meetings between the groups regarding issues that affect both tribes. Despite the fact that many Western Cherokee are members of both the United Keetoowah Band and the Cherokee Nation, relationships between these two tribes from a legal perspective have been contentious. The United Keetoowah Band has repeatedly sued the Cherokee Nation, demanding the cessation of tribal land allotments and monetary damages over a variety of issues. Since the 1970s, the self-determination era has allowed for economic and political self-sufficiency and ability of all three Cherokee nations to excel and experience unprecedented economic growth and success. This is key to preserving cultural heritage and identity, as a prosperous tribe has the resources to devote to preserving its cultural heritage. Arieahn Matamonasa-Bennett See Appendix A; Appendix B See also American Indian Movement; Assimilation; Blood Quantum; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Dawes Act of 1887; Native American Identity; Sovreignty, Native American
Further Readings
Ehle, John. 1988. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. New York: Doubleday. Gilbert, William H., Jr. 1943. “The Eastern Cherokees.” Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 133, Anthropological Papers 23:169–414. Mails, Thomas. 1996. The Cherokee People: The Story of the Cherokees from Earliest Origins to Contemporary Times. New York: Marlowe.
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Mankiller, Wilma Pearl and Michael Wallis. 1993. Mankiller: A Chief and Her People and Autobiography by the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. New York: St. Martin’s Press. McLoughlin, William G. 1993. The Cherokees’ Struggle for Sovereignty 1839–1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Perdue, Theda. 1989. The Cherokee. New York: Chelsea House. Perdue, Theda. 1998. Cherokee Women. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Web Sites
Cherokee Nation: http://www.cherokee.org Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation: http://www.nc-cherokee.com United Band of Keetoowah Cherokee: http://www.unitedkeetoowahband.org
CHEYENNE The word Cheyenne is derived from the Dakota word sha-hi’ye-la, meaning “red talkers” or “people of an alien speech,” and the Cheyenne aboriginally referred to themselves as Tse-tsehese-staestse, or “people.” They speak an Algonquian language; the slight linguistic distinction between the Northern Cheyenne in Montana and their Southern Cheyenne relatives living today in western Oklahoma reflects their separation, which began during the late 1820s. Earlier, there existed two major dialects. Cheyenne was spoken by the Tse-tsehese-staestse proper, and Suhtai was spoken by the Soʔtaaʔe, a related tribe that was incorporated historically into the Cheyenne. Numbering about 4,000 in historic times, the Cheyenne were about average in size for a Plains tribe until reduced by 19th-century epidemics and warfare. By the end of the 19th century, the Cheyenne had undergone major social, political, and economic transformations. This entry recounts their history and culture.
Cultural History While it is difficult to link the Cheyenne with specific prehistoric traditions, oral tradition and historical accounts indicate that the Cheyenne originally lived west of the Great Lakes in what is now Minnesota.
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The separation of the Cheyenne began in the early 19th century, accelerated by the building of Bent’s Fort, south along the Arkansas River, and Fort William in 1834, on the North Platte River. The Northern and Southern tribal divisions became more permanent in the 1840s with the opening of the emigrant trails and the associated ecological destruction surrounding the trails. The 1849 Asiatic cholera epidemic drove three Cheyenne bands to near extinction, prompting the survivors to amalgamate with other Northern or Southern Cheyenne bands. The Northern Cheyenne increasingly allied with the Teton Dakota to resist U.S. expansion, while the Southern Cheyenne attempted to pursue a policy of accommodation through negotiation and treaty making. The 1851 treaty set the Southern and Northern Cheyenne divisions as politically distinct.
Subsistence Economy The focus of the Cheyenne subsistence economy was on harvesting bison and other game and gathering available plant resources. Horticulture, once a major activity, was abandoned after the adoption of the horse. Hunting bison was conducted using two primary methods. Most of the year, when the bands scattered across the landscape, small groups or individuals used the chase method. During the summer, when the Cheyenne gathered to conduct ceremonies, leaders organized a large, communal endeavor. The regulation of the communal hunt was under the strict jurisdiction of one of the military or men’s societies. Another policed communal hunt was done in the fall to gather supplies for winter. Hunting was considered men’s work. During the hunt, mounted men ran into the herds, shooting bows and arrows or lancing the bison. While bison remained central to the Cheyenne subsistence economy, deer, elk, wild sheep, and antelope were also important sources of food and skins. Trading and raiding emerged as important economic activities. Horses not only were valuable tools to carry out their lifeway but also evolved into an important form of wealth. Central to Cheyenne economic life is the entire complex of raiding and warfare. Although the Cheyenne cared for and bred horses, raiding for them from enemies became the most expedient way to increase wealth. A man’s and a family’s wealth and status were generally reckoned in horses. By 1830, the Cheyenne occupied a central position in the trade network across the Great Plains, becoming a major conduit for horses and other goods. The
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Cheyenne functioned as middlemen between village tribes of the Middle Missouri River and tribes of the interior plains. By the early 19th century, Cheyenne material culture had been affected by the introduction of goods of European origin. The Cheyenne had access at trading posts to trade guns, ammunition, knives, metal arrow points, awls, needles, kettles, cloth, and glass beads, among other items. Despite the addition of these goods to the cultural inventory, much was still made from native materials. Indigenous items included bison skin lodges, lodge furnishings, clothing, weapons, and other materials. Many of these things were made and used well into the reservation period.
Division of Labor Labor activities were divided and assigned on the basis of sex and age. Women’s customary labor also involved making and moving the lodge, which was owned by women. Maintaining the tipi cover, making furnishings, and manufacturing and decorating clothing were central to women’s household activities. Women decorated parfleches (storage containers made of hide) and tipi liners with geometric designs. Men and women shared butchering. Once the butchering was completed, the drying and storage of the meat was exclusively women’s work. Women processed hides and skins for clothing, lodge covers, and robes for trade. They also gathered fuel and carried water. Another aspect of women’s labor was child care. A critical labor activity performed by women was the gathering of wild plant foods, especially Indian turnip, chokecherries, and plums. While some fruits were consumed immediately, most were dried or mixed with meat and fat to make pemmican. Men made weapons, horse gear, ceremonial equipment, and all material items associated with a man’s activities. Men decorated bison robes with pictographs after they were processed by women. Men also made and painted war shields, tipi covers, and other goods that reflected personal exploits or medicine ways. After the acquisition of trade goods, ledger books were used in a similar manner. In addition to hunting and warfare, participation in ceremonial life, including doctoring the sick, required the construction and maintenance of ceremonial items. With respect to age, generally, older people performed more skill-oriented tasks reflective of their experience. Younger boys herded horses, assisted
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their older relatives, and prepared for adulthood. Girls assisted the mothers, aunts, and grandmothers in their labor tasks.
Life Cycle Ritual activity marking life cycle events were observed at birth, puberty, and death. When giving birth, women or midwives attended to the mother. Men remained away during the birth. The umbilical cord, when it dried and fell off, was preserved in a small beaded buckskin bag and saved until the child grew up. There was no immediate naming ceremony for infants. By 6 months of age, children’s ears were pierced ceremonially at some public gathering, and gifts were given away in their honor. At 5 or 6 years, children received a formal name, always drawn from their father’s relatives. Traditionally, the father’s oldest sister selected the name. Over their lives, men and women could publicly change their names to reflect an honor or noteworthy achievement. At puberty, different customs prevailed for boys and for girls. With the onset of puberty, a horse was given away in honor of a young girl’s first menstrual period. Isolation in a menstrual lodge was required then and each month thereafter. Afterward, young girls were carefully chaperoned, since virginity was expected. Each girl also was given a protective belt that she wore from puberty until marriage. After marriage, she was expected to wear the belt when her husband was away hunting or on raiding parties. For boys, there was no formal ceremony marking the transition to adulthood. Cheyenne boys were evaluated on the basis of adult accomplishments. Boys were urged to become hunters and warriors very early. Many boys began going on war parties at age 12 and hunting as soon as possible. If they were successful in their efforts, male relatives gave a horse away in their honor, or the boy might receive a new formal name to mark the accomplishment. Many adolescent boys also performed a vision quest to seek their personal medicine for spiritual power. After ritual preparation, they went go to a high, isolated location to fast and pray to receive medicine from a spirit being. Death was not marked by major ceremony. The deceased, finely dressed, were lashed in robes or blankets and carried by travois to the burial location. Preferred burial locations were cliff faces or rock crevices. However, tree burials and scaffold burials did occur. On select occasions, a tipi was erected and used
but was usually reserved for a prominent person. Personal effects were left with the body. A horse was sometimes killed at the burial site in honor of an important warrior. Men killed in warfare were generally left on the prairie to be consumed by predators. The spirit of the dead was believed to travel up the “Hanging Road” or Milky Way, to Seyan, the camp of the dead. Women cut their hair and gashed themselves in mourning, especially if the deceased had been killed in war. Men loosened their hair and wore old clothing to show their grief. All possessions of the bereaved household were given away, leaving the mourning family destitute. After a year, the household was refurnished with gifts of necessary items from other families.
Marriage and Kinship According to Cheyenne tradition, marriage to a relative of any degree was forbidden. The practice of band exogamy predominated until it was altered by warfare and introduced diseases. However, it remained the ideal marital pattern. Premarital sex was not permitted. Courtship was a formal affair, often lasting several years. Traditionally, a young man delayed marriage until he established himself as independent and had a war record. Once a young man made his intentions known to his family, they assisted him in making a formal proposal. Horses loaded with gifts were tied outside the woman’s lodge. If the marriage was acceptable, reciprocal gifts were given to the groom’s family. In making the final decision concerning whom a woman should marry, a woman’s brother had great authority. After the wedding, it was customary for the newly wed couple to camp for a period of time next to the bride’s family or matrilocal residence, although over the course of their history, the Cheyenne changed postmarital residence patterns. If a man decided to marry another wife, the second wife usually was the younger sister of the first wife. Sororal polygyny had a number of advantages, the most important being the strong alliance created between the two families. Wealthy men as well as political leaders most often had multiple wives, while most other unions remained monogamous. Either a wife or a husband could dissolve a marriage. The Cheyenne kinship system was bilateral, recognizing relatives through the father’s and mother’s line. Kinship terminology was bifurcate, merging for the parent’s generation, with the term for “my father” (nehoʔeehe) extended to father’s brothers and the term
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for “my mother” (nahkoʔeehe) extended to mother’s sisters. However, fathers’ sisters and mothers’ brothers were distinct terms. Special terms were used for older brothers and sisters, as opposed to younger siblings. Respect and avoidance also prevailed between a brother and his sisters. Cousins were equated with siblings. Brothers’ children were called “son” and “daughter,” but sisters’ children were “nephew” and “niece.” All respected older people were addressed as “grandfather” and “grandmother.” On the generational level of the grandparents, there is no distinction other than sex. This kin system created a flexible kin network that was ideal for carrying out cooperative endeavors.
Social Organization The seasonal cycle and environment profoundly affected Cheyenne social arrangements. Unique to Cheyenne social structure were the ten named bands (Manaho) that formed the foundation for their political structure. Every band had customary territories and favored wintering locations, before being fragmented by episodes of infectious diseases and, later, wars with the U.S. government. Each band had usual camping places in the tribal circle, which symbolically represented a tipi door with an opening in the east, or facing Bear Butte. Cheyenne political structure was founded according to the instructions of the prophet Sweet Medicine, who established the military societies and a chief’s society. Uniting the bands under this system, he made the chiefs responsible for their domestic well-being. Sweet Medicine gave the responsibility of declaring war to the military societies, separating civil and military leadership. Each band was entitled to elect four tribal chiefs to 10-year terms. These chiefs, with four held over from the previous term, constituted the Council of 44. In addition, a sweet medicine chief, custodian of a sacred medicine root, also was a council member. The council met as a body every summer to make decisions about tribal movements and hunting locations, schedule ceremonies, discuss issues of warfare, and settle disputes. Tribal chiefs were proven warriors, but chiefs traditionally did not participate in war. The chiefs were considered peace chiefs, separate from the military society leadership. Camp police and ceremonial assistance were selected by the chiefs to enforce their decisions. Position ensured the integration and
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harmony of the entire tribe. The arrow keeper never held daily political authority, but could intervene into any circumstance to resolve it. Six military societies were an important component of Cheyenne politics. Most men joined one of them, usually the one of their father. They were not secret, but open in membership and conduct. Originally, only four Cheyenne men’s societies existed. Sweet Medicine brought the Kit Foxes, Elks, Dog Soldiers, and Red Shields to the Cheyenne. Around 1815, the Cheyenne constituted the Bowstrings or Wolf Warriors, found primarily among the Southern Cheyenne. Among the Northern Cheyenne, the Crazy Dogs were organized about 1833. The members were divided most of the year by band movements and functioned most actively during the summer, when the tribe came together. To enforce their decisions about such matters, the Council called upon the military societies. By 1850, men’s societies were evolving into an important force in the formulation and execution of “public law.” Men’s society members acted as the military arm of the Cheyenne people, fighting enemies, acting as camp police, maintaining internal order, assisting in ceremonials, and enforcing the decisions of the Council of 44. Several societies allowed honorary membership of young women, who were selected for being virtuous in action and behavior to assist the men. Cheyenne men and women also had numerous other associations, usually organized around a specific purpose. Men’s associations focused chiefly upon warfare and healing. These were secret societies. Associations such as the Buffalo Men, Horse Men, Deer Men, and numerous others had spiritual powers and conducted rituals to heal. The most honored and important was the Quilling Society, which recruited women of the greatest skill and achievement.
Religion According to religious authorities, the Cheyenne worldview is a dynamic, operative system with structurally interrelated components. The philosophical foundations of Cheyenne religious thought derive from the prophesies of Sweet Medicine and other sacred oral traditions. Sweet Medicine gave them a social contract wherein all people comprehend their relationships to society and the universe. These relationships must be maintained and expressed through the performance of ceremonies. The sacred and profane universe is structured and maintained by these
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ceremonies. According to Cheyenne belief, the renewal of the universe is necessary if the Cheyenne world is to continue through time. If their sacred relationship with their world is not maintained, they will eventually face the destruction of their society and their universe. Hestanov is the term for their universe. This universe is divided further into the World Above and World Below. Bridging these two worlds is Vostostoom, the Earth-Surface Dome. It is the region beginning on the grass surface of the earth and ending where the roots of trees and grasses terminate. The zenith, which the Cheyenne considered the top of the universe, was the home of the Creator (Maʔheoʔo), while the nadir embodied the female principle (Heʔ estOtse). There existed a spiritual and material continuum from zenith to nadir, the nadir being associated with the material substance and the zenith with the spiritual. According to Sioux thought, a spirit lives (maiyuno) at the horizon where the earth and sky meet in each of the four directions. Each realm is associated with various creatures, colors, and other phenomena. They provide order and connections between the sacred and profane worlds. Plant and animal forms are intertwined with the levels of the universe, social order, and reproduction of life. The creator or Maʔheoʔ is the source of energy (ExAhestOtse) in the universe, which is transmitted to other anthropomorphic spirits, including the sun, moon, four directions, animals, birds, and plants. Humans can share in this energy through supplication, prayer, sacrifice (fasting), and participating in sacred ceremonies. Although there were numerous minor ceremonies and rituals, the Cheyenne conducted four major tribal ceremonies. The most important was the Arrow Renewal ceremony. The ceremonial performance rested on the personal biography of Sweet Medicine (Motseʔeoeve), who came to the Cheyenne when they lived in the Black Hills. He brought the spiritual heritage to the tribe. At Bear Butte, he was taken into a sacred cave by supernatural beings that delivered to him four Sacred Arrows (Maahotse). These included two man arrows for warfare and two buffalo arrows to provide sustenance through hunting. The renewal of the Maahotse was the most important of all ceremonies. It took place almost every summer. The Sacred Arrows would be renewed more frequently out of necessity. One reason for a renewal ceremony was homicide. Intratribal killing
was considered a criminal offense, defiling the arrows, driving away game, and jeopardizing the life and health of all Cheyenne. On other occasions, a pledger, the man who vowed to sponsor the ceremony, could ask to have the arrows renewed to halt family misfortune or tragedy. At the renewal camp, every person was required to keep silent for 4 days of the ceremony. During this time, the arrow keeper would perform the renewal as prayers were repeated for the people. At the conclusion of the ceremony men, never women, were invited to view the arrows, after which they were returned to the arrow tipi. The arrow bundle was cared for by a priest among the Southern Cheyenne. The New Life Lodge (Hoxeheome), or Sun Dance, was held each summer as a world renewal ceremony. During the ceremony, the universe was symbolically unveiled. Sacred actions and prayers were done for the welfare of the people, to increase the resources they required and to establish the world order. A leading priest instructed the main “pledger” of the ceremony. Other priests assisted in events lasting a week or more. Each dancer paid an experienced instructor to help him throughout. A major sacred entity guiding Cheyenne life is the Sacred Medicine Hat (Esevone), a headdress made of a buffalo hide and horns. Kept in a special tipi by a Suhtai priest, it was important to women and to a steady food supply, especially of buffalo. The hat bundle was opened occasionally, in ceremonies now forgotten. After tribal division, it remained in the North. The final ceremony was the Massaum (mAsEhaome) or Crazy Lodge. The ceremony portrays the tradition of Yellow-Haired Girl, who taught the Cheyenne how to obtain the animals they required for food, clothing, and religious purposes. During the ceremony, medicine men and women dressed in outfits emblematic of various animals, representing the healing powers they possessed as shamans. Beyond these four major complexes, Cheyenne religion included numerous aspects of healing and medicine. Supernatural beliefs covered a tremendous area. Spiritual beings included deities, ghosts, souls of the departed, and water spirits and monsters. Animals were believed to possess many powers. Amulets and charms were used widely. Such beliefs were embedded in a variety of tales told to children and repeated throughout life. The Cheyenne also possessed a rich and diverse body of oral traditions. Some traditions were sacred in nature but others were for instruction
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of children. Still others were told for entertainment and social purposes.
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the Chicago School, both in the narrower definition and during the periods before and after.
Gregory R. Campbell See Appendix A See also Kinship; Native American Identity; Native Americans; Sand Creek Massacre
Further Readings
Grinnell, George Bird. 1972. The Cheyenne Indians, 2 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Hoebel, E. Adamson. 1988. The Cheyenne Indians of the Great Plains. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace. Moore, John H. 1987. The Cheyenne Nation: A Social and Demographic History. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Moore, John H. 1996. The Cheyenne. Cambridge, UK: Blackwell. Powell, Peter J. 1969. Sweet Medicine: The Continuing Role of Sacred Arrows, the Sun Dance, and the Sacred Buffalo Hat in Northern Cheyenne History, 2 vols. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
CHICAGO SCHOOL OF RACE RELATIONS The Chicago School of Race Relations (1892–1960) was an intellectual movement that analyzed race relations in the United States, primarily between Black and White Americans, and established a powerful professional network. Many scholars define the Chicago School as a group of White and African American male scholars who worked and studied at the University of Chicago between 1920 and 1935. A much larger, interconnected enterprise was devoted to the study of U.S. racial patterns at that institution over a longer period, from 1892 to 1920 and again from 1935 to 1960. This extended period shows the full effect of this enterprise. Black and White scholars from the University of Chicago share a rich but often forgotten history in both the city and the discipline of sociology. This fight and intellectual heritage had a distinctive pattern at the University of Chicago from 1892 until 1960, embracing but extending beyond the more legitimated group that worked between 1920 and 1935. This entry examines the intellectual perspective and history of
The Legitimated Chicago School Who Belonged
A recent academic debate has centered on the difficulty of determining who to include in various traditions at the University of Chicago, including the Chicago School. Many efforts to define the Chicago School, nonetheless, have established important network affiliations, influences, and contributions. Thus, the following people are usually included as scholars in the Chicago School: Horace Cayton, Bingham Dai, Frederick Detweiler, John Dollard, E. Franklin Frazier, E. C. Hughes, William H. Jones, Charles S. Johnson, Guy B. Johnson, Forest La Violette, Oscar Lewis, Andrew W. Lind, Joseph D. Lohman, Charles Parrish, Donald Pierson, Robert Redfield, E. B. Reuter, Samuel A. Stouffer, Robert Sutherland, Edgar T. Thompson, and Louis Wirth. Most of the members of the Chicago School were students of George Herbert Mead or Mead’s students W. I. Thomas and Ernest W. Burgess. The major figure was Robert E. Park, a student of John Dewey; the latter was Mead’s closest colleague. What They Thought
The widely recognized, or “legitimated,” Chicago School emphasized (a) the social origins of group prejudice; (b) a pattern of race relations that was cyclical and involved conflict, accommodation, competition, and assimilation; (c) an urban pattern wherein southern Black migrants became disenfranchised in the city, particularly in the North; and (d) the importance of natural histories to account for the emergence of communities and everyday life. As a result of this overlapping training, the underlying ideas of the Chicago School are fairly coherent and consistent. Briefly, the Chicago School assumed that humans have great malleability, incorporated into the racialized genesis of the self, the definition of the situation, and the maintenance and creation of the community. These suppositions united the writings of the Chicago School not only during the period widely discussed in the scholarship, but throughout the period from 1892 to 1960, indicating that an extension of the school’s era may be warranted.
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Park held an intellectual and personal allegiance to the ideas of Booker T. Washington, who advocated an assimilationist model of race relations and vocational training for African Americans. Thus, the Chicago School played an accomodationist role in the analysis of the Black community that was crucial in the development of American thought. This often unexplored legacy of White bias was associated with Park’s use of Washington’s worldview and his patriarchal opposition to the work of women in sociology. Despite the many flaws in Park’s epistemology, nonetheless, he helped build a major institutional anchor for the training of African American men in sociology based on the common epistemology of the entire network of the Chicago School. The legitimated Chicago School presented a White, patriarchal, middle-class justification of relations between White and Black Americans and suppressed important, alternate sociological images and scholarship, including the more complex work of the early segment of the Chicago School and the work of African American men in the Chicago School who incorporated the work of more militant scholars, such as W. E. B. Du Bois.
The Veil of the Chicago School The African American men in the Chicago School were divided from the White men by a color line. Managing this color line while depending upon the recommendations, peer reviews, friendship, and alliances with White sociologists required a balancing act between intellectual independence and survival. In what might be called “the Veil of the Chicago School,” African American sociologists were accorded a different power, marginality, and legitimacy than their White colleagues within this structure of knowledge and higher education. The African American members of the Chicago School made up a network of African American scholars who worked within the Veil in the larger society and in sociology. These Black men were drawn to the ideas of W. E. B. Du Bois, despite Washington’s and Park’s animosity toward Du Bois. This attraction to Du Bois and his greater militancy distinguished the work of African American members from their White colleagues in the Chicago School. Thus, African American sociologists have a more epistemologically consistent body of work when analyzed from 1892 to 1960 when compared with the White male sociologists who adhered to Park’s worldview.
All African American Chicago sociologists lived behind the Veil, and this common experience generated a different epistemology and network from their White colleagues at Chicago. For example, E. Franklin Frazier, the first African American to earn a doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1931, was a friend of both Park and Du Bois and often added a “Marxist” dimension to his thought, while Park opposed Du Bois and Marxism. Many African American scholars were committed to fighting racism, even within the accomodationist goals of Park and Washington. Thus, there is a complex and basically unexplored history based on race within the Chicago School.
The Early Period, 1892–1920 The early sociologists at the University of Chicago who worked from 1892 to 1920 made up an early network in the Chicago School. The early male faculty in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago included Albion W. Small, its first chair; Charles R. Henderson, a founding member; Charles Zueblin, an extension professor of sociology and a Fabian socialist; Mead, noted above; and W. I. Thomas, a former student of Small, Henderson, and Mead. John Dewey also influenced many of the men in the early period as well as participating in the Hull House school of race relations. More problematic members of the early Chicago School were Park and Burgess, who are usually considered only as Chicago sociologists working after 1920 and therefore members of a different group of colleagues. The legitimated Chicago School was fundamentally linked, however, to the faculty and students who preceded them and established many of the ideas of the later sociologists. The legitimated Chicago School, moreover, was more constricted in its approach to race and gender, with an identifiable color line within it and a predominantly patriarchal worldview. One African American woman, Loraine Richardson Green, earned a master’s degree in the early Chicago School. Women, nonetheless, had a distinct intellectual perspective and career pattern in comparison to the many men in the African American group. They experienced a “gendered color line,” which indicates a different professional process that was applied specifically to African American women. With only two members, who graduated 40 years apart, however, it is too small and fragmented a segment to generalize about a pattern.
Chicago School of Race Relations
Many scholars today rarely consider these earlier sociologists as part of the Chicago School. These gatekeepers, Hull House activists, and theorists did not make any contribution to ideas or policy addressing race relations, while the male scholars in the academy made only a few contributions. Any historical precedents that were established, according to the literature in this area, were made primarily by one person, W. I. Thomas, and his ideas were developed and improved by his protégé Robert E. Park after 1920. Students and faculty in the early Chicago School were inspired by abolitionism and Abraham Lincoln and saw themselves as continuing the fight against racial injustice.
The Later Years, 1935–1960 Park’s tradition of studying race relations at the University of Chicago continued after 1935 through the legacy of White men on the faculty whom he had trained, especially Herbert Blumer, Everett C. Hughes, and Louis Wirth. Their central role in teaching students to study race relations and their specialized analysis of it are two reasons to argue that the Chicago School continued after Park left Chicago. At the same time, the brilliant Helen MacGill Hughes, also trained by Park and specializing in race relations, continued to influence sociologists at the university as a faculty wife and managing editor of the American Journal of Sociology, revealing the continuation of gendered barriers surrounding this extension of the Chicago School. Whereas the University of Chicago was the preeminent center for educating Black men for the doctorate in sociology, the first African American woman to earn a PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago was Wilmoth A. Carter, who graduated in 1959. Women experienced a “Gendered Veil With the Chicago School.” Carter was aided by the Black male network throughout her training as a student (but not necessarily during her career), as well as by a select group of congenial White students and faculty. For instance, the African American scholar Mozel Hill, who preceded Carter at Chicago by several years, recommended W. Lloyd Warner, the White anthropologist/ sociologist, as a strong faculty ally at Chicago. Other Black sociologists told Carter about certain professors to avoid and others who would help her before she even entered the university. These men thereby paved her way behind the “Veil of the Chicago School.”
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Comparing the Different Eras The differences between the three Chicago School eras are significant despite their common epistemology. The legitimated Chicago School strove to be more scientific than the early Chicago School, which supported applied sociology. The legitimated Chicago School only partially achieved its goal of objectivity, however, because the members of this group were also involved in the National Urban League and its Chicago branch and opposed racism. The legitimated Chicago School, moreover, opposed Du Bois, distinguished themselves from the women of Hull House after 1920 (when the latter were aligned more visibly with social work than sociology), and did not consider the work of African American women scholars, such as Ida B. Wells-Barnett or Fannie Barrier Williams. Both accommodation and conflict were modes of sociological theory and praxis intrinsic to the legitimated Chicago School that radically differed from the more confrontational and activist approach underlying the Hull House group and, to a lesser degree, the early Chicago School. Neo-abolitionism and Abraham Lincoln, moreover, were not prominent in the legitimated Chicago School. Finally, the latter segment neither advocated nor supported women’s rights, female faculty in sociology, or, generally, the study of women. Thus there are both strong commonalities and differences within the history of race relations scholarship in Chicago over the decades examined here. Mary Jo Deegan See also Assimilation; Black Intellectuals; Black Metropolis; Chinatowns; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Frazier, E. Franklin; Hull House School of Race Relations; Lincoln, Abraham; Park, Robert E.; Washington, Booker T.; WellsBarnett, Ida B.; Williams, Fannie Barrier
Further Readings
Deegan, Mary Jo. 2002. Race, Hull-House, and the University of Chicago: A New Conscience against Ancient Evil. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Faris, Robert E. L. 1967. Chicago Sociology: 1920–1932. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fine, Gary A., ed. 1995. The Second Chicago School? Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Frazier, E. Franklin. 1932. The Negro Family in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Frazier, E. Franklin. 1957. The Black Bourgeoisie. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
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Kurtz, Richard. 1984. Evaluating Chicago Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ladner, Joyce A. 1973. The Death of White Sociology. New York: Vintage Books, Random House. Lyman, Stanford M. 1990. Civilization. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. Mead, George H. 1899. “Working Hypotheses for Social Reform.” American Journal of Sociology 5:369–371. Mead, George H. 1934. Mind, Self and Society, edited and introduced by C. Morris. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Park, Robert E. 1950. Race and Culture, edited by E. C. Hughes et al. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Persons, Stow. 1987. Ethnic Studies at Chicago, 1905–1945. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Raushenbush, Winifred. 1979. Robert E. Park. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Reed, Christopher Robert. 1997. The Chicago NAACP and the Rise of Black Professional Leadership, 1910–1966. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Strickland, Arrarh E. 1966. History of the Chicago Urban League. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. [Thomas, W. I.], Robert E. Park, and Herbert A. Miller. 1921. Old World Traits Transplanted. New York: Harper. Reprinted, with the corrected authorship of “W. I. Thomas Together with Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller,” a new introduction by Donald R. Young. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith, 1971. Wacker, R. Fred. 1983. Ethnicity, Pluralism, and Race: Race Relations Theory before Myrdal. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
CHICANO MOVEMENT The Chicano Movement refers to a set of events, organizations, and individuals in the late 1960s and early 1970s, principally in the Southwest, that loosely coalesced to form a movement in which Chicanas and Chicanos challenged the Anglo power structure and reclaimed their cultural heritage. A core concept of the movement, Chicanismo, was an expression of ethnic pride in and knowledge of one’s culture and history. This entry examines the movement’s history and its achievements.
The Beginning While there is substantial agreement by Chicano Studies scholars on the organizations, issues, and
events that defined the movement, there are some disagreements. Some scholars, for example, aver that the movement was set in motion by the United Farm Workers (UFW) movement in California during the 1960s. Others, however, while acknowledging the influence of César Chávez and the farmworkers’ movement on Chicano Movement activists, argue that César Chávez never became an integral part of the Chicano Movement. The UFW and Chávez, they contend, represented a farmworkers’ movement, principally Mexican, which did not evolve as a movement for Chicano power and identity, a defining characteristic of the Chicano Movement. The Chicano Movement was partly a reaction to the civil rights Mexican American organizations of the 1940s and 1950s, organizations young Chicana/o activists believed were too accommodating and assimilationist. Among these were the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the American G.I. Forum. Chicano movement activists charged that these and other organizations’ demands were too weak and the tactics they employed too passive. Chicano activists sought to correct both.
Goals of the Movement Employing more radical tactics than their predecessors, including acts of civil disobedience and clashes with the police, Chicano Movement activists fought against the discrimination historically suffered by people of Mexican descent in the United States. Many in the movement saw the Chicano community as an internal colony of the United States and therefore saw the Chicano Movement as a liberation movement. In many respects, the Chicano Movement was a nationalist movement, but many of its members recognized that they were part of a broader struggle of working-class people and other people of color. Issues included job and wage discrimination, police brutality and discrimination in the criminal justice system, lack of education and an education that distorted or ignored Chicano history, poor health care, discrimination in housing, and voting discrimination. More radical elements of the movement questioned the legitimacy of the U.S. government in the Southwest. Chicano Movement organizations included La Raza Unida Party, the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), el Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA), the Crusade for Justice, La Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres, and the Mexican American Legal
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Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF). They often worked in isolation from one another but, in one way or another, challenged the White power structure. Perhaps no other organization embodied the movement better than La Raza Unida Party.
Important Organizations La Raza Unida Party was formed in 1970 in south Texas by members of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), as an alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties. Most prominent among its founders was José Angel Gutiérrez. The party enjoyed very little success outside of south Texas, where it managed to take control of school boards and city councils in a number of counties. The party became an official statewide party but never won an election on the state level. Meanwhile, in Colorado, the Crusade for Justice, formed in 1965 by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzáles (and in its own right an important Chicano Movement organization), organized a chapter of La Raza Unida Party. The party was much less successful in Colorado than it had been in Texas and was even less successful in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Still, La Raza Unida did mobilize many Chicanos politically. Chicanos began to participate in greater numbers in the electoral process and to hold elected officials accountable. The party specifically and the movement generally helped to radicalize the Chicano agenda and to create a sense of urgency around a wide range of issues in Chicano communities. Another important movement organization, the Crusade for Justice, founded by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzáles and others, was based in Denver, and most of its successes were local, including the creation of a new school, Tlatelolco. In addition to preparing children academically, the school sought to instill in Chicano children pride in their culture and history. The Crusade for Justice played an integral part in the emergence of the Chicano Movement when it hosted the National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in 1969 in an effort to bring together and to provide some direction to community and student activists, but especially young activists, from around the country. Resolutions were adopted on a wide range of issues related to the Gonzales nationalist ideology. The resolutions adopted composed a document, “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán,” that would serve as a blueprint for action for many Chicano Movement activists and organizations.
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One of the Chicano Movement’s most controversial organizations, La Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres, and individuals, Reies López Tijerina, burst on the scene in spectacular fashion in 1967. Founded in 1962, the Alianza proclaimed that Mexican Americans were entitled to land holdings that had been taken from them illegally in violation of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. They declared a free state in New Mexico and, on June 5, 1967, seized the Tierra Amarillo courthouse by force. The rebellion was suppressed quickly, and Tijerina and other Alianza members were arrested and served time in prison. Tijerina became a celebrated figure in the movement, especially among young radical members.
The Role of Students Young people, especially students, both in the high schools and on college campuses, played a critical role in the Chicano Movement. In 1968, Chicano students staged “blowouts” from a number of schools in Los Angeles, including Lincoln, Garfield, Roosevelt, and Wilson. They walked out en masse to protest the lack of Chicano teachers and administrators, penalties for speaking Spanish on school grounds, a curriculum that ignored or misrepresented their history and culture, and discrimination by teachers and school officials. Inspired by the blowouts and the 1969 National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference in Denver, Chicano and other Latino students on college campuses, some of whom had participated in the blowouts, organized around many of the same issues. In 1969, a conference on the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus was organized by the Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education (CCHE), principally to discuss ways in which to better serve and increase the number of Chicano students on college campuses. This became, in effect, the founding convention of the Chicano student movement. At this conference, MEChA (El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) was formed to promote cultural awareness among Chicano students and to mobilize them politically on campus and in their communities. Thousands of MEChA chapters exist today on college campuses and in high schools. Conference participants drafted “El Plan de Santa Barbara,” one of the most important documents of the movement. It contained, among other things, a plan for Chicano Studies programs and demands for more Chicano and Latino students, faculty, and administrators on all
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college campuses. This seed sprouted as evidenced by the many Chicano and Latino faculty, administrators, and students and Chicano and Latino Studies programs on college campuses all over the United States.
Achievements The “defining event of the Chicano Movement,” according to the anthropologist James Diego Vigil (1995), was an antiwar demonstration in Los Angeles on August 29, 1970. The event is referred to as the “Chicano Moratorium” and was organized principally by David Sanchez, the founder and leader of the Brown Berets, an important and radical paramilitary movement organization, and Rosalio Muñoz, a former UCLA student and among the first draft resisters in the Los Angeles Chicano community. Over 20,000 people participated in the protest, which ended in a violent confrontation between protesters and the police. By this time, the movement was losing steam, and the news coverage of the event, placing blame almost exclusively on the protesters, caused the movement to lose substantial support. Another hallmark of the movement, and one of its most enduring legacies, was a “renaissance” in Chicano arts and literature. Writers such as Alberto Urista, known as “Alurista,” introduced new ways of writing and thinking about the Chicano experience. Chicano visual arts and music, in which the much maligned pachucos and cholos were represented positively, thrived. El Teatro Campesino, a theater troupe founded by Luis and Daniel Valdez, depicted on stage the struggles of farmworkers but with time took on other social issues and abuses. Chicana artists had the additional burden of confronting the sexism of many of their male counterparts, as Chicanas did in the larger movement, demanding a place at the table (and not simply serving those sitting at it). Many male movement activists resisted, often accusing the women of undermining the movement and labeling them vendidas, or sellouts. Chicanas encountered sexism in academia as well, but they persisted and forced the movement to confront issues of sexism in the Chicana/o community. Many factors, both internal and external, contributed to the movement’s decline, sexism among them. But other forms of internecine struggle hurt the movement even more, including clashes between cultural nationalists and Marxists. Personalities clashed. The organizations that formed the movement never
came together sufficiently to form a unified movement, with a clear constituency and unified agenda. Furthermore, the movement lacked resources and was unable to neutralize well-documented infiltration by law enforcement agencies. The impact of the movement on the lives of Latinos, however, was substantial, but perhaps its most important legacies are the ethnic pride and sense of urgency and entitlement as citizens of the United States it instilled in Chicanos and other Latinos. Héctor L. Delgado See also Aztlán; Chávez, César; Civil Rights Movement; La Raza; La Raza Unida Party; Latina/o Studies; Marxism and Racism; Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF); Mexican Americans; Santería
Further Readings
Garcia, Alma M. 1994. “The Development of Chicana Feminist Discourse, 1970–1980.” Pp. 531–544 in Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History, edited by E. C. Dubois and V. Ruiz. New York: Routledge. Muñoz, Carlos, Jr. 1989. Youth, Identity, and Power: The Chicano Movement. London: Verso. Vigil, James Diego. 1995. “Que Viva la Raza: The Many Faces of the Chicano Movement, 1963–1971.” Pp. 224–237 in Origins and Destinies: Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in America, edited by S. Pedraza and R. Rumbault. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
CHILD DEVELOPMENT How do children grow from helpless infants to responsible adult members of a society? Understanding this process—how children acquire cognitive, emotional, and social skills—is the goal of research on child development. Multiple factors shape this process, including each child’s unique temperament, family dynamics, school experiences, and neighborhoods. Mainstream approaches to child development emphasize the importance of the child’s environment. For the most part, however, mainstream child development theories have not fully theorized how race and ethnicity may shape the child’s environment. Historically, race and ethnicity were ignored in theories of human development, or, if the subjects were
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African American grandmother and grandchildren. Relying on grandmothers for help in child rearing is an important component of African American heritage. Sometimes grandmothers serve as primary caregivers, and other times, they merely offer occasional child care, guidance, and support. Source: Photo by Michelle Frankfurter for the Bureau of the Census.
addressed at all, scholars concluded that non-White racial and ethnic groups were genetically or culturally inferior. More recent research usually incorporates the study of race and ethnicity but only at the periphery rather than at the center of inquiry. As a result, children of color are typically compared with White children and characterized as developing in a nonnormative fashion. This entry will discuss critiques of mainstream child development research and present new models that fully incorporate race and ethnicity into our understanding of child development.
Critique of Mainstream Research Perhaps the primary critique of mainstream child development research is the emphasis on a “deficiency” model—in other words, scholars compare children from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, using White children as the norm. Scholarship that uses a deficiency model often finds that minority children are lacking in key academic and emotional skills compared with their majority peers. A deficiency model is problematic because withingroup variation is ignored. The tendency, then, is to conclude that minority children are deficient in some way, as a function of their racial or ethnic backgrounds, rather than examining other factors that may underlie this pattern. Some scholars are moving away from the deficiency model by focusing on the process of child development within certain racial and ethnic
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groups, rather than outcomes measured at one point in time. What is a normative development path for a Hispanic child? An African American child? Relatedly, given the focus on comparisons across groups, many studies use problematic definitions of minority groups; it is not uncommon, for example, to see a study that separates children into White, Black, Hispanic, and “Other.” This practice obscures the diversity of minority experiences within groups, conflates ethnic heritage and race, and may misclassify children whose parents or grandparents are from different racial and ethnic categories. Finally, although mainstream child development theory emphasizes the importance of a child’s environment, these theories have not adequately addressed how racism, discrimination, and prejudice shape minority children’s development. Theories of child development theory must take into account how these social factors shape children.
Centrality of Race and Ethnicity To make race and ethnicity central to theories of child development, scholars must begin by acknowledging the challenges that minority children encounter while growing up in a discriminatory and racist society. Instead of pointing to developmental deficiencies, scholars should focus on charting minority children’s normative development. In the face of racism, discrimination, and segregation, what strategies do minority families and children develop? In other words, how do children become resilient? Recent studies describe how minority groups have developed an adaptive culture to buffer the negative effects of this environment. The first component of adaptive culture is a reliance on extended-kin networks. In the face of a discriminatory society, family members go to each other for help. As a result, a hallmark of nearly all minority groups in the United States is a reliance on extended-kin networks. This reliance is reflected both in household structure—higher rates of extended-family members living under the same roof—and in values—a cultural emphasis on familialism, harkening back to the often quoted African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child.” Extended-family networks offer security and protection—they provide tangible help (e.g., money, housing, housework, child care) and nontangible help (e.g., advice, guidance, social support). So, although a prevailing stereotype portrays the African American single mother as isolated and unable to provide
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guidance or material resources for her child, research shows that African American single mothers often have extended-kin networks to rely on. In particular, relying on grandmothers for help in child rearing is an important component of African-American heritage. The level of involvement varies: Sometimes, grandmothers serve as primary caretakers, and, at other times, they merely offer occasional child care, guidance, and support. Relatedly, role flexibility is a hallmark of adaptive cultures. In extended-family systems, members have to learn to take different roles. Grandparents or older siblings may provide a lot of caretaking for young children. Multiple breadwinners may contribute to household income. Overall, a reliance on extended-kin networks is thought to improve child development through emotional and instrumental support. Support systems buffer a mother’s mental health and increase positive parenting practices. However, some have argued that the emphasis on familialism can be negative if children forgo advancement and educational opportunities. However, for the most part, extended-family networks are seen as contributing to minority children’s resilience. A second component of adaptive culture is racial and ethnic socialization. By learning pride in their own culture when mainstream culture devalues it, children learn how to counter negative stereotypes about themselves and their families. They also learn to value collectivism and group loyalty. For example, the Vierge de Guadalupe serves as a religious and unofficial national symbol of La Raza. In Spanish, La Raza literally means “the people.” To Mexican Americans, the Vierge de Guadalupe and the idea of La Raza represent pride in Mexican heritage. Festival celebrations such as Ching ming for Chinese Americans or Kwanzaa for African Americans teach children to have respect and pride in their roots. Learning to have pride in one’s race and ethnicity can buffer children from the stressors of the negative stereotypes they see about their groups in mainstream culture. At the same time children are learning to take pride in their heritage, they must also learn how to navigate mainstream institutions. Minority families facilitate this by teaching children how to exist in both cultures. For example, some studies have demonstrated how African American adolescents develop a bicultural identity. This identity ensures that they maintain a strong sense of heritage but, at the same time, can excel academically. How is each of these components of adaptive culture beneficial for child development? These processes
may lead to two positive child outcomes. First, minority children learn cognitive flexibility by learning to successfully navigate two different cultures at the same time. Second, children develop “sensitivity to discontinuity”; in other words, they know how to act “normatively” in their home settings and their school settings. Scholarship on child development should no longer ignore how discrimination and racism affect the development of minority children. Rather than focusing on how minority children are deficient, theoretical models incorporating the idea of adaptive culture emphasize the strength and resiliency of minority children. Julie E. Artis See also Acculturation; Adoption; Family; Head Start and Immigrants; Kinship; Parenting; Transracial Adoption
Further Readings
Garcia Coll, Cynthia, Gontran Lamberty, Renee Jenkins, Harriet Pipes McAdoo, Keith Crnic, Barbara Hanna Wasik, et al. 1996. “An Integrative Model for the Study of Developmental Competencies in Minority Children.” Child Development 67:1891–1914. Harrison, Algea O., Melvin N. Wilson, Charles J. Pine, Samuel Q. Chan, and Raymond Buriel. 1990. “Family Ecologies of Ethnic Minority Children.” Child Development 61:347–362. Miller, David B. 1999. “Racial Socialization and Racial Identity: Can They Promote Resiliency for African American Adolescents?” Adolescence 34:493–501. Murry, Velma McBride, Mia S. Bynum, Gene H. Brody, Amanda Willert, and Dionne Stephens. 2001. “African American Single Mothers and Children in Context: A Review of Studies on Risk and Resilience.” Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review 4:133–155.
CHIN, VINCENT (1955–1982) Vincent Chin was a Chinese American who was beaten to death in 1982, on the night of his bachelor party, by two White autoworkers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, in Detroit, Michigan. Witnesses to the crime claim that his killers mistakenly identified him as being Japanese, a group they felt was responsible for the loss of their jobs. Despite the fact that Ebens and Nitz confessed to the crime, they were able to
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negotiate a plea bargain, which resulted in 3 years’ probation and a $3,000 fine each. Widely regarded as a hate crime, the murder of Vincent Chin came to symbolize the continuing racism against Asians in the United States and served as a platform under which pan-Asian organizations forged coalitions to fight racism in their communities. This entry describes the crime and its impact.
Crime and Punishment Vincent Chin, the adopted son and only child of Chinese immigrants, was raised in Detroit, Michigan. In 1982, Chin was working as an industrial draftsman and preparing for his wedding. On June 19, 1982, Chin and a small group of friends went to a strip club called “Fancy Pants,” in the Highland Park area of Detroit, to celebrate Chin’s upcoming wedding, just days away. There, they encountered Chrysler plant supervisor Ronald Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz, who had been laid off from work. At one point, a verbal altercation began over the attention of one of the dancers, at which point Ebens yelled at Chin, “It’s because of you little ‘motherf***ers’ that we’re out of work.” Witnesses also claim that Chin had been called a “nip” and a “chink.” Chin hit Ebens, and a fight between the men in the parking lot was broken up by the club’s security guards. Approximately 20 minutes later, Ebens and Nitz were driving in the area and spotted Chin and his friends eating at a nearby McDonald’s. Despite Chin’s attempt to escape, Nitz was able to grab Chin and hold him, while Ebens repeatedly hit Chin’s body, including the top of his head, with a baseball bat. Chin was taken to the hospital, where he spent 4 days in a coma before dying on June 23, 1982. Ebens and Nitz were charged with second-degree murder but were able to negotiate a plea bargain by confessing to the lesser charge of manslaughter. Ebens and Nitz were given no jail time for the hate crime, instead serving 3 years’ probation and being ordered to pay $3,000 each, plus $780 in court costs. Chin’s mother, Lily Chin, was not asked to testify at the trial, nor were any witnesses to the crime. The judge who presided over the case, Wayne County circuit judge Charles Kaufman, a World War II veteran who had served time as a prisoner of war in Japanese prison camps, defended his sentencing by saying, “These weren’t the kind of men you send to jail. . . . You don’t make the punishment fit the crime. You make the punishment fit the criminal.”
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Community Outrage The reaction to Judge Kaufman’s sentencing was a tremendous outcry within the Asian community, in Detroit and elsewhere. The sentence was largely seen as a slap on the wrist and for many Asians served as a testament to public disregard toward racism and hate crimes against Asian Americans. Soon after the sentence, a coalition of various Asian organizations and civil rights groups was formed, calling themselves American Citizens for Justice (ACJ). Working closely with Vincent’s mother, Lily Chin, the group began the process of appealing the verdict, touring the country to raise money and awareness about the Chin case. ACJ was able to persuade the FBI to investigate the case, and, in November 1983, new charges were filed indicting Ebens and Nitz on counts of civil rights violations and conspiracy. A new trial ensued, but neither man was found to be guilty of conspiracy. Nitz was cleared of all charges, but Ebens was found guilty of violating Chin’s civil rights. Ebens was sentenced to 25 years in prison but was immediately released on $20,000 bond. A federal appeals court overturned the conviction in September 1986 on the grounds that the ACJ attorney was coaching witnesses. Once again, there was public outcry and mobilization by ACJ over the Chin case. The Justice Department was persuaded to conduct a retrial, this time to take place in Cincinnati. While Cincinnati is relatively close geographically to Detroit, the economic and political climate was vastly different. Advocates for Chin’s case argued that the context of anti-Japanese sentiment due to the downturn in Detroit’s auto economy was central to a proper understanding of the racialized motives for this crime. Nonetheless, the trial in Cincinnati was unsuccessful, and Ebens was cleared of all charges. Finally, in 1987, a civil suit was conducted, ordering him to pay $1.5 million to Chin’s estate. While many thought this would finally bring justice for Chin’s murder, Ebens quickly disposed of all his assets and fled the state. To date, he has not paid a dollar to the Chin estate. Neither man has served a day of jail time for committing the hate crime against Vincent Chin.
Evidence of Racism The brutal killing of Vincent Chin serves as a potent example of the racism experienced by the Asian community in the United States. Many White Americans see Asians as the “model minority,” a successfully
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assimilated, problem-free community whose status is solely attributed to their hard work and value system. However, alongside this mythology is a strong stereotype about Asians’ inability to fully assimilate into life in the United States. This was evidenced by Ebens’s and Nitz’s assumption not only that Chin was “not American,” but that as “Japanese,” his presence ran directly counter to their entitlement as White Americans. This assumption about Asians’ inability to assimilate has had a legacy in U.S. history, both before and after Chin’s murder. Strong resentment of Chinese on the West Coast of the United States served as the impetus for the passage of the only immigration act to specifically target one nationality: the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Partially in response to this act, the United States saw an increase in Japanese immigration, which resulted in the passage of Alien Land Acts. By law, Asians were not eligible for citizenship and unable to own land and create wealth. A further evidence of discrimination against Asians is the well-known internment of Japanese, both citizens and noncitizens, during World War II. More recently, the registration of Arabs and Southeast Asians in the United States since the attacks of September 11, 2001, may be strongly linked to the continued idea that Asians can never fully become Americans. Chin, raised in Detroit, Michigan, behaved in the most American of ways and yet was still held accountable to the stereotypes of his race. For this, he paid with his life. Here Chin’s last words are compelling: “It isn’t fair.” The ACJ remains active decades after Chin’s death. In fact, Chin’s death served as the impetus for the creation of pan-Asian coalitions and a shared sense of panAsian identity for the first time in U.S. history. Such groups remain active in challenging continuing practices of racism and discrimination, challenging the faulty basis and negative effects of the “model minority” myth, raising awareness around hate crimes against Asian Americans, and empowering the Asian community to work for issues of social justice. While justice has not yet been served in the Vincent Chin case, the movement spawned in response to his killing has increased awareness of racism against Asian Americans.
Further Readings
Choy, Christine and Renee Tajima-Pena. 1987. Who Killed Vincent Chin? [videorecording]. Film News Now Foundation/Third World Newsreel. Ho, Christine. 2006. The Model Minority Awakened: The Murder of Vincent Chin. U.S.Asians.net. Retrieved from http://us_asians.tripod.com/articles-vincentchin.html Ma, Sheng-Mei. 2000. The Deathly Embrace: Orientalism and Asian American Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Yip, Aletha. 1997. “Remembering Vincent Chin.” Asian Week, June 5–13. Retrieved from http://www.asianweek .com/061397/feature.html Zia, Helen. 2000. Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
CHINA Although most people believe that China’s estimated population of 1.3 billion people (as of 2007) is relatively homogeneous population, it is, in fact, quite ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse. For an outsider looking in, sometimes Chinese citizens who are identified by a minority status seem less ethnically or linguistically diverse than others who are identified as the dominant majority. Yet the means by which the
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Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has codified and organized minority nationalities is based on historical, political, and social ramifications and continues to impact opportunities and disadvantages faced by Chinese citizens identified as members of ethnic minorities. This entry looks at majority and minorities groups and how they are related within China.
Diversity in China Officially, China recognizes fifty-six different minority groups, but the Han, or the dominant group, makes up about 91% of the population. The remaining fiftyfive groups, representing about 106 million people, are sprinkled across the marginal boundaries of China’s geography. Although China has only one official language, Mandarin, Han nationality members may speak many different regional dialects of Chinese. Almost all of the officially identified minority nationalities must learn to speak Chinese, and many also speak another unrelated language. Religious diversity in China includes a variety of Buddhist forms (including Tibetan Buddhism and Mongolian Lamaism), Islam, and Christianity, as well as more limited traditions like Dongba of the Naxi or the ancestor worship of the Dong nationality. While some minority nationalities reside in autonomous homeland regions, other groups, such as the Hui and Manchu, are spread throughout the country. Most of China’s border regions to the north and west, such as the provinces of Xinjiang, Xizang, Nei Monggu, and Yunnan, are home to most identified nationalities, most notably Uygurs, Tibetans, Mongolians, Bai, and Yi. In recent years, given the push to develop the borderland areas because they contain a large percentage of China’s water and mineral resources, Han Chinese from coastal regions are entering in such large numbers in search of economic opportunities that they are beginning to outnumber minority nationalities in many of the autonomous minority regions. At this time, minority nationalities recognized officially by the CCP include the Manchus, Koreans, Hezhe, Mongolians, Daur, Ewenki, and Oreqens in northeastern China. Islamic nationalities, ten in number, are found mostly in northwestern China and include the Hui, Uygur, Kazaks, Tatar, Kirgiz, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Dongxiang, Salars, and Bonan. Other northwestern minorities include the Tu, Xibe, and Russians. Central and southeastern China are home to the Zhuang, Yao, Mulam, Maonan, Jing, Tujia, Li, She, and
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Gaoshan nationalities. Finally, southwestern China, the area that includes Yunnan, Sichuan, and Xizang provinces, is home to the Tibetans, Moinba, Lhoba, Qiang, Yi, Bai, Hani, Dai, Lisu, Va, Lahu, Naxi, Jingpo, Blang, Achang, Pumi, Nu, De’ang, Drung, Jino, Miao, Bouyei, Dong, Shui, and Gelo minorities. In addition are the Tibetans in Tibet, most of whom there and in exile view themselves as independent of China but whose homeland has been proclaimed by China as politically a part of that country, called the “Tibet Autonomous Region,” since 1959, and hence is shown that way in the accompanying map.
Creating a Han Majority Although the term han has its roots in the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), which began around the Yellow River and then spread out, the concept really became nationalized early in this century. Sun Yat Sen, leader of the revolution that toppled the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911 AD), developed a five-colored flag to represent the “five races” of China: Han, Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans, and Muslim Chinese. While the CCP expanded the number of minority nationalities in the early 1950s, they also found it useful to maintain the Han identity as a means of uniting diverse parts of China after the1949 revolution. Officially designating as Han most Chinese living in the coastal and central areas of China helps diminish, to some degree, the great social and cultural differences extant among regional Chinese. Dialects spoken by Cantonese, Fujianese, and Shanghainese are virtually unintelligible to each other and to Mandarin speakers, yet they are all spoken by officially identified Han Chinese. Han Chinese living in one region develop strong preferences for cuisines (for example, rice-based cuisine in the south versus wheat-based cuisine in the north), styles of dress, dance and regional holidays, and other normative behaviors that are often more diverse than any differences between a minority nationality and the Han Chinese living in the same region. For example, Zhuang and Han people living in Hubei are far more similar in terms of these social and cultural characteristics than are Han Chinese living in Hubei and those in Fujien province. Regional differences are further exacerbated by the uneven development of economic growth throughout China, particularly between the relatively poor interior and the increasingly wealthy coastal and southern regions.
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Clearly, inhabitants of Hong Kong are developing a sense of identity that is distinct and unique from mainlanders, who may live just a half hour away by train or boat in Shenzhen or in Zhuhai.
Defining Minority Nationalities in China In 1953, postliberation Communist leaders sent researchers and party members throughout border regions to “officially” identify and recognize Chinese minorities. By 1954, 39 groups were identified; by 1979, an additional 16 nationalities were recognized to form the current 56. This may seem like an expansive and comprehensive list, yet over 400 indigenous groups applied for recognition. Often, for political reasons, many unrecognized groups were arbitrarily subsumed under one name to form a single nationality. This was true, for example, of the Yi and the Hui. Other groups, relatively small in number (like the Bai, who historically were Yi), were separated out and given a separate status. Some, like the Mosuo, still regularly apply for identification, although at this time, recognition seems unlikely to occur. During the early years of organizing and defining, the CCP applied a Marxist/Leninist/Maoist definition of minority group. This definition is not based on racial or physiological characteristics, but on the following criteria: (a) a distinctive language, oral or written; (b) a recognized indigenous homeland; (c) a set of distinctive customs; and (d) a cultural sense of identity. As well, minority nationalities were evaluated and ranked in terms of their social development following Marxist categorization. Groups that were combined to ultimately be the Yi were identified as both slaveowners and slaves and thus primitive in development. The Naxi, smaller in number, were identified as feudal and therefore more developed than their Yi neighbors and more akin to rural Han Chinese. The CCP provided additional benefits and power to those minorities who supported the CCP rather than the Guomingdan (GMD), or Nationalist Chinese, before 1949. For example, in Yunnan Province, Naxi, as CCP supporters, were given official status and ranked, while Mosuo, who lived in a remote area and were irrelevant in the conflict, were subsumed as Naxi and, in fact, viewed as more primitive than the Yi. Finally, the creation of clearly identified minority nationalities allowed the CCP a means to establish a stronger Han identity between northern and southern
coastal Chinese by emphasizing the differences between the progressive Han and those nationalities viewed as less developed. While hundreds of Chinese dialects are spoken across the nation, minority languages are viewed by the government as having greater distinctiveness than are the so-called dialects spoken among the Han. Many of the regional variations of Chinese are unintelligible between northern and southern Han speakers; in fact, differences between the dialects spoken in Shanghai and Wuhan, two cities on the Yangtze River that are only 750 miles apart, are strongly apparent to Han speakers. Meanwhile, many minority groups, such as the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Tarters, all speak a single language: Uygur. Two nationalities, the Hui and the Manchus, speak only Chinese. Twenty-nine minorities speak a language that resides in the Chinese-Tibetan family. Others include Altaic (northeastern China), Indo-European (e.g., Russian), and South Asian. According to the Chinese government, twenty-one official minority groups had unique writing systems prior to 1949, but in the late 1950s, a number of minority groups received new written systems from the CCP. In some cases, like the Yi, who already had a syllabic script dating from the 15th century, the CCP linguists reformed the script. Many of these created scripts have never been used except in official documents and remain unknown to most members of the minority groups for which they were created. All Chinese citizens, by the time they attend middle school, are taught in Mandarin. Some elementary schools may provide education in minority tongues for the first few years, but there is little to no support for those tongues as education progresses. While some of the larger minority groups (Tibetans, for example) do have government-provided education in their native language, others, such as the Yi, have faced uphill battles to provide regional language schools. It is clear that for many nationalities, members speak Mandarin in their daily lives, and it is likely that their traditional tongues will die out in the near future.
Life Among Minority Chinese Minority nationalities officially recognized by the state are expected to live in indigenous regions. Currently, China has 55 autonomous regions, 30 autonomous prefectures, and 124 autonomous counties. The government stipulates that nationalities must be represented in the leadership of each autonomous region, and the
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government reports that 15% of the National People’s Congress members are minorities, which the government says exceeds their 9% population rate. As long as special policies or exemptions enacted by autonomous regional legislatures do not violate national laws, areas are able to enact special provisions that represent accordance with minority customs. This is particularly true with respect to educational or cultural affairs. Interestingly enough, rising migration of Han Chinese to border areas means that only two autonomous regions (Tibet and Xinjiang) have more than half of their population as the designated minority group. In the other three, Han Chinese outnumber minority membership. Distinctive customs may include unusual dress, marriage rituals, cuisine, religion, special holidays, and the like. Although the CCP has always upheld the freedom of minority nationalities to express their own customs, the tendency through most of the decades before and after the Cultural Revolution was to encourage assimilation, sometimes forcibly. With the rising growth of tourism in border regions, minority groups are given greater latitude to enact unique cultural customs. Often, these are romanticized within Han culture, particularly customs of minority groups like the Dai and Bai in Yunnan province. Issues of authenticity or inauthenticity of customs have begun to emerge. Songs, dances, and marriage customs that are no longer a part of daily life become embellished and reenacted for tourist dollars. Religious freedom, limited or nonexistent until after the Cultural Revolution, has been somewhat expanded in recent years. Money from abroad as well as from the CCP is now available for the rebuilding of Buddhist and Taoist temples, Catholic and Protestant churches, and Islamic mosques and to support some indigenous traditions, like Naxi Dongba. Religious organizations must register with the government and meet several requirements in order to exist, and there have been Islamic upheavals, strongly repressed, in the last few years. In recent years, membership in minority nationalities has provided some distinct advantages to holders. They are not restricted to the one-child policy; they have relaxed admission standards to universities; and more than fifteen universities now exist to cater to minority nationality students. Special employment and health care services have been developed in minority nationality areas. These are unevenly developed, favoring some minority nationalities over others. However, the numbers of identified minority group members have risen in
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greater proportion than birthrates alone can explain. For many nationalities, such as Manchu, Bai, Zhuang, and Miao, intermarriage rates with Han are growing. For others, such as Uygurs, Kazaks, Tajiks, and others, discrimination and resistance exists and continues to grow. Marsha Smith See Appendix A See also Chinatowns; Chinese Americans; Chinese Exclusion Act; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Foreign Students; Hong Kong; Model Minority; Taiwan
Further Readings
Blum, Susan. 2002. “Margins and Centers: A Decade of Publishing on China’s Ethnic Minorities.” Journal of Asian Studies 6:1287–1310. Chao, Emily. 1996. “Hegemony, Agency, and Re-presenting the Past.” Pp. 208–239 in Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan, edited by M. J. Brown. Berkeley: University of California, Institute of East Asian Studies. Gladney, Dru C. 1994. “Representing Nationality in China: Refiguring Majority/Minority Identities.” Journal of Asian Studies 53:92–123. Gladney, Dru C. 2004. Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Harrel, Stevan, ed. 1995. Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Ma, Yin. 1994. China’s Minority Nationalities. Beijing, China: Beijing Foreign Language Press. Unger, Jonathan. 1997. “Not Quite Han: The Ethnic Minorities of China’s Southwest.” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 29:67–78.
CHINATOWNS Dual images and conflicting associations of “Chinatowns” have been constructed in social science and popular culture. The earliest 19th-century notions of Chinatown focused on a Chinese ghetto where clannish men lived and worked apart from the rest of the population. Later, Chinatowns became exotic destinations for tourists. As Chinese moved into new occupations and suburbs after World War II, Chinatowns appeared to be in decline, but later waves of immigration and contemporary patterns of residency have sustained them into a new century, as this entry records.
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Chinese New Year parade. The participants can be seen performing a dragon dance during the annual Chinese New Year Parade in the Chinatown section of Washington, D.C. (February 18, 2007). Chinese around the world celebrate the Lunar New Year. Such enclaves have attracted new immigrants and refugees, intermixing with working-class old-timers; they reflect a bimodal distribution of occupations, linguistic dependency, and social class resources. Source: Getty Images.
Refugee Havens Fueled by the southern Chinese diaspora, the rise of Chinatowns from Southeast Asia to North America followed the transnational migration of labor. Rampant anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States led to the first national origin immigration policy: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In response, the Chinese sought refuge in these early ethnic enclaves. Barred from most occupations in the larger society and from living in many urban neighborhoods, the first wave of Chinese sojourners were forced to settle in less desirable areas and on the periphery of towns. To minimize competition with Whites, Chinese developed enclave services like laundries and restaurants, originally for co-ethnics. Larger urban Chinatowns were highly organized according to traditional associations, including tsu, or clans, which provided mutual assistance and recognition of common ancestry. Facing a hostile environment, Chinese people needed some semblance of extended family. In the American West, small rural and frontier Chinatowns developed, providing safe havens for Chinese miners and workers, who were viewed as competition to local labor. The anti-Chinese movement
was centered in California, where, by 1870, over 80% of the 60,000 Chinese resided. A committee of the California state legislature sponsored hearings on Chinese immigration in San Francisco and published its findings in 1877 in a pamphlet, “An Address to People of the U.S. Upon the Evils of Chinese Immigration.” Its section on Chinese social habits claimed that Chinese were “so loathsome that even the atmosphere becomes pregnant with the effluvia of their abodes, and that entire streets in which they have settled . . . are held in disrepute.” Because of depictions in 19th-century pulp fiction of opium dens and hordes of unassimilable “Mongolians” contributing to sinister vice activities, Chinatown became a mysterious iconic presence in the American imagination.
Tourist Districts
By the turn of the 20th century, the “heart” of Chinese America, San Francisco’s Chinatown, gradually promoted itself as an exotic tourist district with unique foods, shops, and entertainment. In the 1890s, there were six Chinese theaters in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Anxious to transform the public’s attention and spending power beyond services in a red-light district to a quick trip into the “Orient,” Chinese business leaders sought new ways to entice customers. Creating unique Americanized adaptations of Chinese culture, Chinatown merchants catered to the American palate with fare like “chop suey,” “chow mein,” and fortune cookies. San Francisco’s Chinatown became the best-known Chinese enclave and a “must stop” for tourists— popularized by early “Charlie Chan” or “Fu Manchu” films and, later, a successful musical, Flower Drum Song. Other Chinatowns, including those in New York City, Boston, and Los Angeles, have welcomed tourists and visitors for the past 100 years; however, a guidebook to New York’s Chinatown around the 1890s proclaimed, “Mott, Pell and Doyers streets and vicinity are now given over to the Chinese. . . . The district is a veritable ‘Chinatown,’ with all the filth, immorality, and picturesque foreignness which that name implies.”
Chinatowns
Not only were Chinatown leaders eager to make the area appeal to tourists, but city officials were enthusiastic about supporting these tourist enclaves. Groups like the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce joined the effort to market Chinatown, with ads extolling the “exotic beauty of the Chinese colony.” Bus tour companies helped to put major Chinatowns on the map. In 1935 alone, San Francisco’s Grayline Company reported that it had brought more than 10,000 tourists to Chinatown. By the period of the Great Depression, Chinatown tourism was not a sideline affair, but a critical vehicle for the economic survival of the enclave and its residents. Although Chinese Americans were historically excluded from many occupations and professions, the depression of the 1930s took jobs away from many Chinese Americans, forcing them to get welfare aid. With almost 20% of San Francisco’s tourism dollars produced from Chinatown, the double-edged sword of tourism defended the ethnic ghetto from economic recession during this pre–World War II period but left denizens and merchants to wonder about the hidden costs of maintaining a tourist-oriented ethnic enclave.
Major Postwar Demographic Shifts The census of 1940 marked the first decade in which a majority of Chinese Americans were native-born in the United States. Given this second-generation dominance, culminating in 1960 with 60% of Chinese Americans being native-born, the character, demographics, and needs within Chinatowns were changing. While early Chinatowns served mainly bachelors or men separated from their families by exclusionary immigration laws and wars, this period brought families and children to Chinatowns, especially on the West Coast. Proportions of children under 14 years old shifted from a low of 3.4% in 1900 to a high of 33% by 1960. The traditional “bachelor societies” still remained on the East Coast, with the gender and nativity imbalance most visible in New York’s Chinatown, where the male-to-female ratio was 6:1 and the foreignborn to native-born was 2:1; in San Francisco, it was 2:1 male to female and 1:2 foreign- to native-born. Although the Chinese Exclusion Act was lifted in 1943, new immigration was still limited to an annual quota of 105. Nevertheless, higher numbers of Chinese women than men were admitted through the War Brides Act and Chinese Alien Wives of American Citizens Act, which opened up the process for war
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veterans to be reunited with their wives and children. Almost 7,500 Chinese women immigrated between 1945 and 1950, constituting almost 80% of immigrants from China. From the national gender ratio of 19 Chinese males to 1 female in 1900, such family unification acts resulted in more balanced ratios of 1.8 males to 1 female by 1950. For families and households with more resources, Chinatown increasingly represented a way station in pursuing the American dream. By the 1950s, Chicago School sociologists were predicting that during this postwar period, Chinatowns would deteriorate and “wither away” because of continuing immigration restrictions, accelerated occupational mobility, and increasing assimilation. Heralded by other human ecologists of the Chicago school, they anticipated that the more ambitious immigrants would transition quickly out of “ghettos and immigrant colonies” and into morecosmopolitan neighborhoods with other upwardly aspiring racial and immigrant groups. In 1940, there were twenty-eight Chinatowns in the United States; 15 years later, the number had declined to sixteen, raising doubts about the future for such enclaves. In addition, for a group who had been restricted from entering craft and industrial unions, including jobs related to the defense industries, World War II served as a catalyst in broadening occupational mobility for Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans. Pressured by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to address racial discrimination, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which prohibited discrimination in defense industries or government because of race or national origin. Immediately, in New York, about 30% of Chinese men found jobs in war-related industries on Long Island. During the 1940s, with more opportunities outside of the ghetto, enclave workers left their service jobs in droves; a significant number of Chinatown restaurants had to close because of a lack of waitstaff. Possessing high levels of human capital, second- and thirdgeneration Chinese Americans were liberated from their dependency on the ethnic ghetto. A significant number of Chinese—almost one out of five—served in the armed forces in 1940; the G.I. Bill offered another means to leave the ghetto and enter white-collar jobs. Armed with higher levels of education and native language skills, American-born Chinese were not limited to the ethnic enclave for jobs or residences. These “uptown Chinese” were attracted to new integrated
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neighborhoods outside the Chinatown area, including suburban locations with easy access to good schools and convenient living. They included highly educated professionals who entered the United States in the late 1940s and 1950s, from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China, as well as the stranded students who could not return to the new People’s Republic of China. In the New York City area, Flushing, in the borough of Queens, became such a mecca for the emerging middle and professional classes. Richmond, in the San Francisco area, represented another “uptown” cluster, marked by Mandarin-speaking, white-collar professionals, in contrast to the “downtown” Cantonese-speaking Chinese, who were linguistically and socially segregated in ethnic ghettos. This class-based geographic dispersal of the Chinese American population would escalate into high gear in the post-1965 and contemporary period with the rapid rise of satellite Chinatowns and “ethnoburbs,” or suburban ethnic enclaves. By the early 1960s, just when some Chinatown leaders were worrying about the viability of the residential enclave, with a dwindling population of mostly elderly and bachelors, a major shift in United States immigration policy emerged. Saved from becoming declining Chinatowns in purpose and services or being reduced to tourist economies with few residents, contemporary Chinatowns would be increasingly diverse and serving much wider audiences, both locally and transnationally.
New, Old, and Hybrid Chinatowns The Immigration Act of 1965 was a watershed event that radically altered the faces of immigration and impacted the development of new immigrant communities. The act abolished previous national origins quotas and created a system of preferences targeting immediate family members, special skilled professionals in the sciences and high-tech fields, refugees, skilled workers, and others. For the Chinese, this immigration law ended over 80 years of exclusion and conferred equal treatment with other nationalities. Stimulating a tenfold increase of the Chinese American population, from 237,292 in 1960 to 2,879,636 in 2000, the Immigration Act revitalized and spurred “new” Chinatowns across the United States. Comparing the wide continuum of types of Chinatowns today requires an understanding of the diverse profiles of residents and users. Traditional Chinatowns offer dual economies, with services for
co-ethnics and tourists alike (e.g., New York’s Lower East Side, Chicago, San Francisco). Such enclaves have attracted new immigrants and refugees, intermixing with working-class old-timers; they reflect a bimodal distribution of occupations, linguistic dependency, and class resources. For example, though there are large numbers of college-educated immigrant professionals and entrepreneurs, significant numbers of low-literacy, low-wage service and manufacturing workers co-exist in the underground and secondary economies. A visit to traditional Chinatowns with such dual or bimodal economies points to the growing inequality among residents in terms of access to goods or services or affordable housing. In some places, Chinatown real estate ranges from old substandard dwellings to new luxury townhomes on the same block. Some residents are linguistically isolated, bound to jobs in the ethnic enclave and tied to menial, low-wage work. Lowskilled, linguistically dependent residents become part of the contingent labor pool, vying for low-wage jobs within the enclave economy. Middle-class immigrant professionals and businesspeople have higher mobility to commute daily in and out of the Chinatown district, sometimes for work, schools, or pleasure. Traditional Chinatowns are no longer the homes of Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong or old-timers, but may just as likely absorb Mandarin-, Chaozhounese-, Fujianese-, or Taiwanese-speaking residents. Beyond the class diversity, traditional Chinatown residents vary widely by native homeland characteristics, including dialects. Others are “yuppie” professionals embracing the lifestyle offered by upscale enclave cafes and global franchisees, with easy access to public transportation downtown. What upwardly mobile Chinatown residents share in common is that they choose to live in the old neighborhood. New satellite or quasi-Chinatowns vary from concentrations of strip malls distinguished by transnational enterprises (e.g., Ranch 99 markets, Ten-Ren Tea shops, Bank of China) to full-service business and residential enclaves linked by regional ties and professional interests (e.g., in California, Taiwanese-speaking engineers in Silicon Valley and Mandarin-speaking FIRE professionals in Monterey Park). Visiting the numerous ethnoburbs in California with the highest percentages of Chinese American residents—Monterey Park, Arcadia, San Gabriel, and Alhambra—provides new spatial models of ethnic communities. Suburban Chinese Americans are more homogeneous in socioeconomic status, with sufficient
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human capital and economic resources to afford the lifestyle common in these bilingual, transnational communities. Gravitating toward new housing developments, reputable school systems, and hightech corporate corridors and lured by transnational enterprises that offer a wide array of pan-Asian goods and services, suburban Chinese Americans are more integrated into the dominant culture. They are not dependent on the traditional Chinatowns for jobs, services, or products, but rather visit the old enclave on special occasions. Pan-Asian Chinatowns represent the third modal type attracting mainly ethnic Chinese from countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. With the end of the war in Vietnam, many ethnic Chinese and Southeast Asian refugees revitalized “old” Chinatowns or developed new enclaves in close proximity. PanAsian enclaves include Seattle’s International District, Chicago’s Argyle area, Rowland Heights, Oakland, Philadelphia, San Diego, and Toronto’s Spadina district. Pan-Asian communities may serve strategically to facilitate coalition building and entrepreneurship among diverse ethnic Chinese and other Asian immigrant groups. In cities where Chinese and Asian Americans represent small proportions of the population, pan-Asian Chinatowns may be more viable and stronger vehicles for community empowerment. Yvonne M. Lau See also Chinese Americans; Chinese Exclusion Act; Diaspora; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908); Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Race; National Origins System
Further Readings
Dudley, William, ed. 1997. Asian Americans: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press. Kwong, Peter and Dusanka Miscevic. 2005. Chinese America. New York: New Press. Lau, Yvonne. 2006. “Chicago’s Chinese Americans: From Chinatown and Beyond.” Pp. 168–181 in The New Chicago: A Social and Cultural Analysis, edited by J. Koval et al. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Lee, Rose Hum. 1949. “The Decline of Chinatowns in the U.S.” American Journal of Sociology 54:422–432. Lee, Rose Hum. 1960. The Chinese in the United States of America. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Park, Robert. 1926. “The Urban Community as a Spatial Pattern and a Moral Order.” Pp. 3–18 in The Urban
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Community, edited by E. Burgess. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Takaki, Ronald. 1994. Ethnic Islands: The Emergence of Urban Chinese America. New York: Chelsea House.
CHINESE AMERICANS As the oldest and largest Asian ethnic group in the United States, Chinese Americans have survived a long history of legal exclusion, institutionalized discrimination, and racialized stereotyping. Since the Immigration Act of 1965, when legal barriers were lifted, the Chinese American population has increased tenfold, to 2,879,636, according to the 2000 census. The rapid influx of Chinese immigrants was accompanied by unparalleled diversity fueled by separate quotas for the main “sending” countries of Chinese: the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Instead of the 20,000 allotment set by the 1965 act, the current quota for Chinese from these areas totals 60,000; immediate family members of U.S. citizens are considered nonquota admits. Since 1965, Chinese immigration has been driven by admission standards that permit both family-sponsored and employment-based immigration. Consequently, Chinese in the United States vary widely by nativity, citizenship, linguistic origin, regional ties, educational attainment, socioeconomic class, occupational niches, length of time in the United States, and immigration status. These factors led to the formation of distinct Chinese American communities, some that are highly organized and structured by a physical center— traditional or new “Chinatowns”—and others more loosely connected. How these communities are constructed or imagined and whether these divergent communities of Chinese Americans interact is discussed in this entry. Although pre-1965 Chinese American enclaves contained more homogeneous subgroups, current Chinese Americans are much more widely dispersed, locally and regionally. They may build communities “beyond Chinatown,” in nontraditional settings or through new satellite centers. Maintaining transnational linkages may be independent of living or working in an ethnic enclave. Chinese American professionals may never identify with a “Chinatown” and choose to develop community through educational, homeland, occupational, or special-interest networks. Reviewing traditional and transitional communities,
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this entry examines the range of Chinese American residential and community patterns
Historical Background Chinese immigration to the United States can be followed over four historical periods: (1) open immigration from 1849 to 1882; (2) exclusion from 1882 to 1943, except for members of exempted categories (i.e., merchants, scholars, etc.); (3) restricted immigration permitting limited entry from 1943 to 1965; and (4) revived entry following the 1965 Immigration Act until the present, ending the 1924 national origins quotas and creating a new system of preference categories focusing on family reunification and occupational skills. Chinese immigrants entered the country through California starting in the 1840s, contributing to the building of the American West. Initially attracted by California gold prospects, rural Chinese mainly from the southern Guangdong province were later recruited en masse to work in railroad construction and small industries. Yet after 1869, when the transcontinental railroad was completed, the significant Chinese labor force became unemployed and was disbanded, left on their own to find another “rice bowl” (the Chinese metaphor for a job). Chinese Exclusio on
By the late 1870s, conditions had worsened. Fueled by a major recession in California, the antiChinese labor movement erupted. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, for the first time targeting members of a specific racial/ethnic group. The Exclusion Act prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the United States, and those already here were denied citizenship and civil liberties. Given this chilly climate on the West Coast, cities like Chicago and New York became more viable options. A critical mass of Chinese led to the development of Chinatowns by the 1880s in Chicago and New York, leading to Boston’s settlement in 1890. Barred from entering most occupations, Chinese chose retail enterprises and services associated with Chinese native products and niches to minimize conflicts in the larger society. For example, hand laundries and small restaurants were popular choices, reflecting the limited opportunity structure available to the largely unwelcome Chinese. The dominance of Chinese workers in the hand laundry business was the early
harbinger of today’s immigrant occupational niches, including services like dry cleaners, nail salons, and ethnic cuisine. In 1920, 30% of the employed Chinese in the United States worked in laundries. Even as late as 1950, a majority of Chinese toiled in small businesses by themselves or with several workers. In cities like Chicago, 430 of the 669 Chinese-operated businesses were hand laundries. Whether or not a traditional ethnic ghetto developed in an area of Chinese American concentration— merging ethnic businesses with immigrant residences— was fueled by several factors, including U.S. immigration laws. First, few Chinese women were allowed to enter the United States, given the discriminatory and gendered immigration policies. Other than large centers like San Francisco and New York (from 1910–1940, the Chinese population rose from 4,614 to 12,753), most cities lacked the support structure to develop a residential and business community district. With the severe gender imbalance, most Chinese enclaves were dominated by “bachelor societies” with minimal needs for community life. This stunted period of growth and delayed development of family-integrated Chinatowns would not change until after World War II and not significantly until after 1965, when the immigration laws changed and new waves of immigration began. Another reason for the limited immigrant economy, describing the pattern of immigrant groups clustering around specific occupations in order to survive in the intensely competitive urban economy, relates to the psychological orientation of the early Chinese male immigrants. Known as sojourners, they were described as viewing their lives in America as temporary. According to the works of Chicago School sociologists, sojourners were understood through extensions of the conceptions of the stranger and marginal man, seen as someone who refuses to identify psychologically as a permanent resident of the country where he lives and works. The modal group of Chinese laundry workers was not interested in building permanent communities, seeking status, or assimilating, but in making money to enhance their economic status at home when they returned to China. The Postw war Years
With the end of World War II and the 1949 establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the need for Chinatowns to service a growing immigrant community was fueled by some reforms in U.S.
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immigration laws and changes in U.S.-Asia relations, leading to major demographic shifts impacting Chinese Americans. With greater hopes of establishing families, many early Chinese immigrants, sojourners, and students no longer thought of returning to China. The exclusion laws against Chinese had been repealed in 1943, reunifying some Chinese American families. While immigrant quotas were imposed even on U.S. allies like the Philippines (100 per year) and China (105 per year), other avenues were available to create an “immigrant” community. Chinese Americans who had served in the war were able to bring over brides, wives, and children from China; they entered as nonquota immigrants through the War Brides Act. With the ascendancy of the Communists in China, over 5,000 Chinese students and professionals were stranded in the United States. Most of them gained permission to stay as immigrants under the 1948 Displaced Persons Act and 1953 Refugee Relief Act. By 1950, 53% of the 150,000 Chinese Americans were born in the United States, with a sex ratio of 168 males per 100 females. A decade later, the native-born population peaked at 61% of the approximately 237,300 Chinese Americans, with a sex ratio of 133:100. By 1970, the population had almost doubled to 435,000, with a reversal in numbers of native-born, declining to 53% of Chinese Americans, and a more balanced sex ratio of 110:100. Given the high influx of foreign-born Chinese, by 1990, the percentage of native-born had dropped dramatically to 30% of the over 1.6 million Chinese Americans, with a sex ratio of 99:100.
Contemporary Trends The rapidly changing demographics among Chinese Americans in recent decades challenge popular perceptions of Chinese Americans. Created by U.S. immigration policies, the widening “class divide” or bifurcation among Chinese Americans fuels the persistent media stereotyping of this group labeled as model minorities, whiz kids, kung fu gangsters, illegally smuggled, high-tech coolies, and so forth. As with many Asian American groups, Chinese Americans are lumped together as one group, regardless of class, national origin, nativity, dialect, generation, social mobility, or patterns of geographic residence. Yet in major Chinese American enclaves, a tremendous diversity prevails among Chinese Americans related to their tenfold growth in the United States from 1960 to
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2000; about 57% of the American-born have ancestry from Mainland China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. Unlike in the 1960s, when most of the Chinese immigration originated from Taiwan or Hong Kong, today’s Chinese diaspora is much more expansive, with sending nations including the People’s Republic of China, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Americas. The highly variable Chinese pipeline is linked through chain migration to seven major receiving states, including the state with the largest population of Chinese Americans, California (1.1 million), followed by New York, Hawaii, Texas, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois. About 60% of Chinese Americans live in California or the greater New York City area. Wherre They Liv ve
Why have Chinese Americans chosen to live in these states? To some degree, geographical preferences reflect the history of Chinese American settlements. The greater familiarity of urban centers and coastal states stems from transnational and extended-family networks that have long favored areas like San Francisco (Gam Saan, Cantonese for “Gold Mountain”). Today, Chinese Americans constitute 20% of San Francisco residents. California is home to 40% of all Chinese Americans, followed by New York with 16%, and Hawaii with 6%. Of the eleven cities with the highest proportions of Chinese Americans in 2000, ten of them are in California; Monterey Park’s Chinese Americans represent the largest and oldest Chinese “ethnoburb” residents, with 45% of the city’s population. Consequently, at first glance, one might expect that Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans in these high-population states would prefer to live in the highly developed and traditional Chinatowns or urban enclaves. To the contrary, while traditional Chinatowns in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York are still active communities and serve as gateway centers, they may be bypassed by new elite immigrants who directly move into the ethnoburbs or satellite Chinatowns. In fact, in 2000, only 2% of Chinese immigrants resided in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, 8% in San Francisco’s, and 14% in New York’s. Gentrified Chinatowns with new housing and commercial developments, like Chicago’s South Side Chinatown, enjoy a much higher resident ratio, with one out of four of Chicago’s Chinese Americans living in the Chinatown area. More commonly, equipped
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with high levels of human capital and English proficiency, these recent professional immigrants are not dependent on the traditional enclave. Culturally and linguistically, recent Mandarin-dominant elites are less likely to identify with the residents of the traditional Chinatown enclave, seeking out co-ethnics from alumni and professional networks. Using their greater access to social capital to identify the “best” neighborhoods beyond ethnic enclaves, upwardly mobile Chinese Americans seek a higher quality of life for their families; they are twice as likely to choose the suburbs if they have a master’s, professional, or doctoral degree. Classs Diffferences
Disparities between residents of traditional Chinatowns and newer Chinese American ethnoburbs point to a widening divide in levels of human and social capital tending toward a bimodal distribution of class resources. While working-class immigrants settle in traditional enclaves because of limited English and occupational skills, elite professionals transition easily into the upwardly mobile satellite communities, like North San Gabriel, California; Bellaire-Houston, Texas; Richmond, Canada; or Markham-Toronto, Canada. Instead of depending on the traditional Chinatown infrastructure of name, clan, or regional organizations, these “uptown” professionals are more likely members of special-interest voluntary organizations, including professional, alumni, sports, charitable, or other nontraditional groups. Visiting older Chinatowns, including those in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, with their high concentrations of recent arrivals, including the undocumented, one is struck by the limited opportunities among newcomers for better jobs, affordable housing, and “know-how” to navigate the system. Typically, Chinatown real estate with proximity to the central business district has enjoyed high inflation and values due to global investments by elite transnationals. Yet available housing ranges from old, substandard, pre–World War, dwellings to new luxury buildings on the same blocks. Newcomerr Challenges
Newcomers usually live with relatives or friends for a considerable period before being able to find suitable housing. Several single workers may share a small apartment in old tenement housing. Without English proficiency, most working-class immigrants
are linguistically isolated, dependent on jobs in the ethnic enclave that pay low wages and no benefits. Attending ESL (English as a second language) classes may not be an option when the newcomer is trying to survive and earn a livelihood. For new Chinatown families with school-age children, knowledge of public school systems and better school choices may be hard to access. In New York City Public Schools, Chinese students represent 11% of the total English-language-learner population; among students from China, 46% are identified as limited English proficient. Asian students in 2002 experienced a 12% dropout rate. Immigrant parents who are working long hours are unlikely to have easy access to local schools or be familiar with school policies to directly intervene when there are problems. Highly educated Chinese American parents, however—including those who received their graduate and professional degrees in the United States—are likely to be well-informed about school choices and policies, knowing how to help their children access the public elite and magnet schools with their accompanying services. Since Chinese American immigrant families tend to disproportionately invest in their children’s education to attain higher socioeconomic status, quality education serves as a unifying agenda for all Chinese Americans. For both newcomers and old-time residents of traditional Chinatowns, competition for scarce resources has been exacerbated by the continuing influx of the undocumented from primarily rural counties of China. Conservative estimates speculate that around 50,000 Chinese enter illegally each year, mainly from the rural counties of Fuzhou province. The cost of human trafficking is high, averaging $55,000 per person to be equipped with false documents or other papers. Speaking the distinct dialects of Fuzhounese or Min, the approximately 150,000 Fujianese in New York’s Chinatown are experiencing conflicts with longtime residents and other dialect-speaking immigrants. Depicted as those who are willing to take any job at any wage, Fujianese are being targeted by longerestablished Chinese groups as the new threat to an already vulnerable economy. Particularly after the attacks on September 11, 2001, New York’s Chinatown has witnessed major closings of factories and businesses, relocating the contingent labor force to urban satellite enclaves, including Sunset Park, in Brooklyn, or Flushing, in Queens. With a decentralization of population, capital, and funding from core Chinatowns to satellite enclaves, intra-ethnic competition will be even more intense with downturns in the economy.
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Communitty Cohesiv veness
Greater diversity of Chinatown residents has also impacted the once closer and homogeneous networks of residents within the ethnic enclave. For example, dialect differences have always separated different linguistic groups. One realtor in Chicago claimed that in 1975, 90% of Chinatown residents spoke Cantonese or Toishan. Today, as numbers of Chinese from the mainland increase, more Mandarin speakers reside in Chinatown, with estimates at 30%. Greater diversity of backgrounds, then, has led to greater factionalism and self-segregation. The “old-timers” are known to still control the old parts of Chinatown; for example, in Chicago, this is “south of Cermak and down Wentworth.” The newcomers have gravitated toward other gentrifying neighborhoods. Dialect and generational differences also separate some of the organizations and nonprofits where Cantonese, English, or other dialects may still reign. The future solidarity of Chinese American communities may rest on how effectively these divergent communities collaborate on promoting a unifying agenda. With diverse constituencies divided by socioeconomic class, advocates for Chinese American communities will need to bridge the wide gulf between groups based in traditional Chinatowns and those in affluent ethnoburbs. Articulating a common Chinese American agenda may be increasingly challenging with continuing new immigration and changing U.S.-China relations. Beyond local and national affairs, in this “Pacific century,” Chinese American leaders will have to recognize how transnational linkages, foreign affairs, and public policies impact the well-being of Chinese Americans and their diverging multifaceted communities. Yvonne M. Lau See Appendix A See also Alien Land Acts; Asian Americans; Asian Americans, New York City; Asian American Studies; Chinatowns; Chinese Exclusion Act; Community Empowerment; Diaspora; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908); Immigrant Communities; National Origins System
Further Readings
Kwong, Peter and Dusanka Miscevic. 2005. Chinese America. New York: New Press. Lau, Yvonne. 2006. “Chicago’s Chinese Americans: From Chinatown and Beyond.” Pp. 168–191 in The New
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Chicago: A Social and Cultural Analysis, edited by J. Koval et al. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Lee, Erika. 2003. At America’s Gates. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Lin, Jan. 1998. Reconstructing Chinatown. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Siu, Paul. 1987. The Chinese Laundryman: A Study of Social Isolation, edited by J. Tchen. New York: New York University Press. Sung, Betty Lee. 1967. The Mountain of Gold: The Story of Chinese in America. New York: Collier Books. Takaki, Ronald. 1989. Strangers from a Distant Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Zhou, Min. 2003. “Chinese: Once Excluded, Now Ascendant.” Pp. 37–44 in The New Face of Asian Pacific America, edited by E. Lai and D. Arguelles. San Francisco, CA: Asian Week.
CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was the first discriminatory immigration law in U.S. history to bar immigration of people of a particular national origin. Politicizing widespread racist anti-Chinese sentiment and agitation, the act had significant impact on the daily life of Chinese immigrants as well as those from other nations in the world who were denied entry to the United States and access to citizenship and employment opportunities. After its initial passage by Congress in 1882, the act was periodically amended, renewed, and eventually made U.S. law. Indeed, restrictions imposed on the rights of Chinese immigrants at each of these stages became tighter and tighter. Although the Chinese Exclusion Law was eventually repealed by the Magnuson Act in 1943, given that China was an important ally of the United States in Asia during World War II, anti-Chinese discrimination to a large extent remained in the Magnuson Act, which prohibited a large-scale influx of Chinese immigrants from China and other nations. The history of the Chinese Exclusion Act reflects the struggles of Chinese immigrants to survive and succeed after their arrival in the United States, raising a critically important question with a larger view: What is the role played by the U.S. law and government in national affairs for (or against) racial and ethnic minorities who have made and are making tremendous contributions to the wealth of the United States, a nation that proclaims a deep faith in free will, human rights, and equality? This entry consists of four
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parts, primarily in chronological order: the passage of the first Chinese Exclusion Act, amendments and renewals of the act, the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Law, and the administration and enforcement of the law.
The First Chinese Exclusion Act On May 6, 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first immigration act in U.S. history that targeted a specific ethnic minority group, was passed by Congress to deny entry to the United States to all laborers from China for a period of 10 years. It also indicated that immigrants from China were not eligible for citizenship. By “Chinese laborers,” the Chinese Exclusion Act meant both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining. It should be kept in mind, however, that upper-class Chinese individuals, such as merchants, government officials, teachers, and the like, were exempt from the exclusion. The passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act was a reaction to the rapidly growing number of Chinese immigrants to the United States, although they represented less than 0.2% of the total population by 1890. The early Chinese immigrants who arrived on the West Coast in the 1840s had been well received by Americans. Many of them were wealthy, successful merchants, along with skilled artisans, fishermen, and hotel and restaurant owners. These Chinese immigrants thus gained favor not only from business employers but also from the government and the public. Between 1851 and 1860, more than 41,000 Chinese immigrants were recorded as arriving in the United States, attracted by the California gold rush at a time when China was in a state of great turmoil due to political and religious rebellions. During the 1860s, the Central Pacific Railroad’s great demand for a labor force created another significant wave of Chinese immigrants. The arrival of 64,301 new Chinese workers was recorded during this period of time, of whom a majority were on 5-year labor contracts for building the railroad tracks through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and across Nevada. After the railroad’s completion in 1869, the flow of Chinese immigration continued to grow. By 1890, there were 106,488 Chinese immigrants in the United States, most of them in California and other West Coast states. Renowned for their hard work and dependability, Chinese immigrants became victims of intensive racial sentiment and agitation against them as the migration flow of European Americans from the East to
California grew rapidly and job opportunities became scarce. The anti-Chinese animosity was quickly politicized by California Governor John Bigler and the Workingman’s Party, led by Dennis Kearney, when the post–Civil War economy was on the decline. Their reason for proposing a ban on Chinese immigration was that the Chinese “coolies” depressed average wage levels of White laborers in local job markets. The passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act was detrimental to Chinese immigrant communities in the United States. In the early 1880s, Chinese workers were forced out of the mainstream economy and away from small towns, settling in the Chinese enclaves of large urban cities, such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, where they were relegated to a limited range of poorly paid occupations, such as restaurant and laundry work.
Amendments and Renewals The Chinese Exclusion Act was amended in 1884, and significant renewals took place in 1888, 1892, and 1902. The 1884 amendments clarified that regardless of the country of origin, all ethnic Chinese were subject to the Chinese Exclusion Act. The act also required customs collectors at ports of departure to collect identifying information on all Chinese leaving the United States and to provide them with certificates for reentry. A few years later, in 1888, Congress imposed additional restrictions on the rights of Chinese immigrant laborers, making it more difficult for them to return to the United States after temporary visits abroad. In 1892, the Exclusion Act was extended by the Geary Act for another period of 10 years. Under this renewed act, all Chinese residents in the United States were required to show an “internal passport” whenever asked. Those who failed to meet such a requirement would run the risk of being deported. In 1902, the act was made law, which indefinitely barred the immigration of Chinese persons, with no terminal date being indicated.
Repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Law The Chinese Exclusion Law was repealed by the Magnuson Act in 1943, for China was a major ally of the United States in Asia during World War II. The repeal made Chinese immigrants eligible for naturalization and therefore to a certain degree improved their status, even though it set a small annual quota of 105 Chinese immigrants. Large-scale Chinese immigration to the United States, however, didn’t occur
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until 1965, when the New Immigration Act was passed in Congress. Analysts have pointed out that the Magnuson Act had several flaws in addition to its restrictive quota. First, it stipulated that 75% of the annual quota of admissible Chinese must be born and reside in China; over 10 million ethnic Chinese who resided outside of China were still denied entry into the continental United States. Moreover, the Magnuson Act did not place China on an equal footing with other nations in terms of immigration. The repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act by the Magnuson Act actually accentuated the continuing and widespread practice of anti-Asian discrimination in the United States. It necessarily gave rise to concerns about the status of other Asians, such as Filipinos and Asian Indians, who continued to face substantial anti-Filipino and anti-Asian Indian bias in U.S. immigration law.
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Further Readings
Chan, Sucheng. 1991. Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Gyory, Andrew. 1998. Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Lee, Erika. 2003. At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882–1943. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Lyman, Stanford M. 1974. Chinese Americans. New York: Random House. Salyer, Lucy. 1989. “Captives of Law: Judicial Enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Laws, 1891–1905.” The Journal of American History 76:91–117. Takaki, Ronald. 1989. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
Administration and Enforcement Government documents show that collectors of customs and immigration officials played a significant role in administering and enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Law after its initial passage in 1882. Originally, the Treasury Department was delegated to administer the 1882 act. At the same time, however, customs collectors and their staffs of “Chinese inspectors” at various points of entry were appointed to enforce the law. About a decade later, in 1891, the Bureau of Immigration was established in the Treasury Department to take over the responsibility of administering immigration laws. During this period, the Chinese Exclusion Law, unlike other immigration laws, still remained under the jurisdiction of customs officials. Analysts have noted that even though the general supervision of the exclusion policy was officially transferred to the Immigration Bureau in 1900, customs officials were able to retain actual control of the enforcement of the law. Some argue that the full responsibility for the administration of the Chinese Exclusion Law did not come under the purview of the immigration bureaucracy until 1903, a year after the 1902 renewal of the law without a terminal date, when the Immigration Bureau was transferred to the newly established Department of Commerce and Labor. Eric Yang Liu See also Alien Land Act; Asian Americans; China; Chinatowns; Chinese Americans; Ethnic Group; Immigrant Communities; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Racism
CHOCTAW The Choctaw people are a large nation of Indigenous Peoples whose ancient homelands stretched over much of Mississippi and parts of Alabama and Louisiana. They were related to four other southeastern indigenous nations, collectively called the Five Civilized Tribes by the U.S. government, all but one of whom spoke a variation of the Muskogee language. They formed a significant presence and were important allies of the United States during the early years of the 19th century. The Choctaw people’s language and culture thrive today, and they form the third-largest nation of Indigenous Peoples in the United States. This entry summarizes their history and current situation.
Early Times According to traditional Choctaw beliefs, the Choctaws originated in the great Mother Mound, Nanih Waiya, long ago in the distant past. Nanih Waiya is located in Winston County, Mississippi, and is still revered by many Choctaw people. Choctaw people were always matrilineal; that is, they viewed themselves as all descended from one female ancestor. Every person was born into the clan of his or her mother, and this identity formed the basis of all relationships. Like other Indigenous Peoples, the Choctaws believed that they were an integral part of creation and that all the animals, trees, rocks, water, sun, and fire had spirits to whom they were bound in
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reciprocal relationships. They believed that serenity and peace were obtained through maintaining a state of harmony and balance among all things, which was articulated through a very complex belief system that included religious observations, laws, mores, and rituals. Choctaw people highly valued generosity. The more a person could give away, the more he or she was esteemed. No one accumulated individual wealth; it was simply unthinkable. Thus, all Choctaws shared feast and famine, with no class divisions based on wealth. The first White men seen by the Choctaws were from the De Soto expedition, around 1540. Hernando De Soto was a Spanish adventurer who came to the Western Hemisphere to search for gold. He and his men rampaged through the South, killing, enslaving, and raping residents until they were ultimately driven out of the region and back to their ships. Many scholars believe that the Spanish introduced diseases that ravaged indigenous populations, killing thousands of people and severely weakening their social and political institutions. In the early 1700s, the Choctaws, like other Native peoples, became involved in the political and martial intrigues of Spain, England, and France in North America. Throughout the century, the Choctaws allied themselves primarily with France, but they never hesitated to play one European power off against another. Choctaw hunters traded animal hides and furs for manufactured goods, particularly knives, hatchets, guns, lead, powder, pots, and kettles. The Choctaws fought for many years against Chickasaws, who repeatedly invaded their territory to kidnap women and children for sale to British slave traders in Charleston. Hundreds of Choctaws were sold into slavery in the Caribbean, living brief, brutal lives with no hope of escape. In their quest for hegemony in North America, the French and British encouraged and sponsored almost continual warfare between their indigenous allies. The French and Indian War finally ended this strife, but it also left the Choctaws without allies against the British and American colonists.
Relations With the United States During and after the American Revolution, many White men entered the Choctaw nation as traders, adventurers, refugees, or deserters from Canada and the British colonies. Some of these men married
Choctaw women and settled for life among the Choctaw nation. They introduced herding cattle and other livestock as a livelihood, and some brought African slaves into the nation to exploit in agricultural pursuits. Their children were reared with a dual heritage, which produced a number of shrewd leaders who understood the ways of the Whites. The subsistence economy of the Choctaws began to seriously decline as game animals became scarce in the traditional lands of the Choctaws. Hunters were forced to travel west for great distances to locate herds of animals that had always been plentiful in their homelands. Their long absences from the villages forced changes in the conduct of everyday life. The customary responsibilities of men, such as teaching boys hunting and warrior skills, declined, as did their availability for sacred rituals. The women continued to plant and harvest crops, but the entire rhythm of everyday life changed significantly with the long absences of hunters from the villages. Alcohol and drunkenness also took a severe toll on traditional Choctaw life. White traders and adventurers imported vast quantities of cheap liquor, which had a deleterious effect on Choctaw society. Incidents of violence increased enormously. As the scarceness of game and the disruptions of cheap liquor increased, the Choctaws became poorer and experienced hunger and other deprivations. The game animals became scarce, but the price paid for animal hides declined as well, further impoverishing the Indigenous Peoples, who had come to rely on many European- and American-manufactured goods. In 1786, the United States sent treaty negotiators to the Choctaws and exchanged pledges of goodwill and friendship, which the Choctaws took very seriously. However, friendship was not the main goal of the U.S. government, and, beginning in 1801, the Choctaws agreed to a number of land cessions that demonstrated the duplicity of the government. For example, in the Treaty of Fort Adams, the government forced the Choctaws to relinquish more than 2.5 million acres of land for the grand sum of $2,000 and three sets of blacksmith’s tools. This was rich Mississippi bottomland, extremely valuable for agriculture and of critical strategic importance to the United States. When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1800, he encouraged U.S. traders to extend easy credit to the Choctaws, so that when their debts became untenable, they could be forced to cede land in exchange for the United States paying off their trade debts. This scheme
Choctaw
worked well, and the Choctaws were forced by indebtedness to traders to relinquish another 10 million acres of their homelands over the next 20 years. Force ed Exile
Andrew Jackson became president in 1828, in large part due to his promise to force the indigenous nations out of the southeastern United States and into permanent exile in the West. He was determined to use every conceivable tactic available and led the United States into crimes against humanity. With Jackson’s approval and complicity, Mississippi unilaterally extended its laws over the sovereign Choctaw nation, passing new laws that outlawed the existence of the nation. The government then encouraged thousands of Whites to invade the nation and forcibly take over the homes and fields of the Choctaws. If any resisted, the state militia was sent in to enforce the claims of Whites. Of course, the federal government was pledged under numerous treaties to protect the sovereignty of the Choctaw nation, but Jackson decided to allow the unofficial conquest to proceed so that the Choctaws would be forced to flee their homelands as a matter of self-preservation. Still, the Choctaw leadership refused to sign a removal treaty, even when Jackson’s secretary of war met with them in person and threatened to have the U.S. Army exterminate them. Undeterred, the Jackson administration found a renegade chief whom they bribed to sign a treaty giving up the entire homeland of the whole nation, and this fraudulent treaty was then ratified by the Senate and pronounced to be law by President Jackson. From 1831 to 1834, the U.S. government forced the Choctaws to leave their farms, villages, and vast cultivated cornfields behind and exiled them to a completely undeveloped territory in what is today the state of Oklahoma. More than 4,000 of them died on the way there. This new area was named “Indian Territory,” and it became the place of permanent exile for thousands and thousands of Indigenous Peoples dispossessed from all over the United States. The Choctaws’ portion of Indian Territory consisted of what is today the southern half of Oklahoma. A few of the Choctaws refused to leave Mississippi. They were almost all dispossessed and were forced to hide in the swamps and other unwanted lands, suffering from homelessness and want. As the years passed, they found work picking cotton, managing to eke out a
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subsistence. These people eventually became recognized by the state of Mississippi and the United States as the Choctaw Band of Mississippi, and today they are a cohesive, thriving community of people who have retained their traditional language and heritage despite their difficult experiences. Liffe in Oklahom ma
About 10 years after their arrival in the new land in the West, the emigrant Choctaws began to slowly recover from the devastating effects of their dispossession. In 1861, the Choctaws joined the side of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, after trying to maintain neutrality. At the end of the Civil War, the Choctaw nation was forced to sign a treaty with the United States in which it ceded one-half of its territory as reparation for allying with the Confederacy. They agreed to extend citizenship to African Americans enslaved in their territory or to pay them restitution. However, the Choctaw government ignored this part of the treaty until late in the century, when its leaders finally acquiesced. As the end of the 19th century drew near, the extensive indigenous territory in Oklahoma, home to the Choctaws, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Muscogees, Kiowa, Comanches, Osage, and many other indigenous nations that had been dispossessed over the previous century, was also seized. Each indigenous family received about 160 acres, and the enormous acreage remaining was brought onto the market. By the end of the 1920s, 138 million acres of indigenous land was in White hands, while the Indigenous Peoples retained only 47 million.
The Nation Today Today, the Choctaw nation is a vibrant, large, federally recognized American Indian tribe of approximately 160,000 enrolled members. The lands of the Choctaw in Oklahoma consist of ten and one-half counties that formerly belonged to the tribe. The Mowa Band of Choctaws resides in southwestern Alabama on approximately 300 acres, while the Mississippi Band reservation comprises 32,000 square miles. Louisiana is home to several small bands of Choctaws, including the Choctaw-Apache of Ebarb, the Bayou Lacomb Choctaws, and the Clifton Choctaws. The Jena Band of Louisiana is a federally recognized Choctaw band,
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Cissneross v. Corrpus Chrissti School Distrrictt
and the United Houma Nation of more than 17,000 members is Choctaw related. There are about 10,000 speakers of the Choctaw language. Donna L. Akers See Appendix A See also Colonialism; Dawes Act of 1887; Native American Identity; Native Americans; Racism
Further Readings
Akers, Donna L. 2004. Living in the Land of Death: The Choctaw Nation, 1830–1860. Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Debo, Angie. 1972. The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. De Rosier, Arthur H. 1970. The Removal of the Choctaw Indians. Memphis: University of Tennessee Press. Hudson, Charles M. 1976. The Southeastern Indians. Memphis: University of Tennessee Press.
CISNEROS V. CORPUS CHRISTI SCHOOL DISTRICT Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District (1971) was a desegregation class action against a school district and its board of trustees. Statutorily mandated segregation in the education system was unconstitutional in the United States at that time. However, the federal courts were asked to decide whether segregation of children of a certain race without a statute mandating such segregation was also unconstitutional. The U.S. Court of Appeals declared that segregation of Mexican American children, whether on the basis of statute or not, is constitutionally impermissible. Thus, actions and policies of school authorities that deny students equal protection of the laws based on race or ethnicity are unlawful, it said, prescribing a series of remedies. This entry looks at the background of this case, the decision, and its impact.
The Case Geography is a big factor in understanding the Cisneros case. The Corpus Christi Independent School District encompassed the metropolitan area of Corpus Christi, Texas. The Mexican American and Black population of the district was concentrated in a narrow
area that makes up the middle part of the district, known as the Mexican “corridor.” The southern part of the district was almost exclusively a White residential area. Marked residential segregation thus existed. When the school board imposed neighborhood school zones in these residentially segregated neighborhoods, this resulted in Mexican American and White children being substantially separated in the public schools. In 1968, José Cisneros and twenty-five other Mexican American parents filed suit against the Corpus Christi Independent School District, charging operation of a dual school system at all levels on a de facto basis. The attorney for the plaintiffs, James de Anda, was a well-regarded Mexican American civil rights lawyer. De Anda argued that Mexican Americans were an identifiable minority group and had been illegally segregated by state action because of the school district plan. The school district maintained that since there was no state law requiring segregation, there was no dual school system. Further, the school board said it did not take any action that fostered segregation with that objective in mind. The school board did not deny that severe racial and ethnic separation existed in the Corpus Christi public schools. It submitted that this separation was not the result of school board actions and policies, however, but rather of housing patterns, geographic fluctuations, and other social and economic factors prevalent in the city. There was no discriminatory motive or purpose on its part, the board said.
The Rulings The Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 arose in the context of segregation by state law, often termed classical or historical de jure segregation. Brown prohibits segregation in public schools as a result of state action. It requires the making of two distinct factual determinations to support a finding of unlawful segregation. First, a denial of equal educational opportunity, in terms of racial or ethnic segregation, must be found to exist. Second, this segregation must result from state action. In the Brown case, because state laws were involved, the plaintiffs could demonstrate “state action” as required for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Cisneros, no laws of the state were involved in the discrimination. However, the Court of Appeals decided to include actions of public school authorities as being within the ambit of “state action.”
Cisneros v. Corpus Chrissti Sch hool Disstrrict
Both courts that heard this case found in favor of the Mexican American parents. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, at Corpus Christi, Woodrow B. Seals, judge (324 F. Supp. 599, 330 F. Supp. 1377), entered judgments from which defendants appealed. The Court of Appeals, Dyer, circuit judge, confirmed what the U.S. district court had found. The courts found that evidence established that the use of the neighborhood school plan was a direct and effective cause of segregation in schools of the city. Since school authorities had created a dual school system, which was de facto segregation, these actions violated principles of equal protection, according to the court. The court found that the school board had consciously fostered a system that perpetuated traditional segregation. Among other facts, it relied on findings about busing of students, renovation of old schools in Black and Mexican American neighborhoods instead of building new ones, assignment of Black and Hispanic teachers to segregated schools, and discriminatory hiring of minority teachers in the schools. The court stated that Mexican Americans were an identifiable minority group based on physical, cultural, religious, and linguistic distinctions and thus were entitled to the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equality in public education. It also found that both Mexican Americans and Blacks were unconstitutionally segregated in the public schools of Corpus Christi, as a result of official action by the school board.
The Court’s Instructions Enlarging on its decision, the Court of Appeals held that student transportation requirements should be minimized in a school plan, whether or not the schools are in contiguous or noncontiguous zones. Length and time of travel for students under any desegregation plan must be considered in light of children’s age and risk to their health. The time required for transportation as distinguished from distance is a better measure of these factors, the court said. The court also ruled that the minority communities should not be disproportionately burdened by the desegregation efforts (such as busing) in a discriminatory manner. Thus, while making transportation plans to eliminate segregated schools, the school board and district must avoid any hidden or nonobvious discrimination on the basis of race or national origin through imposition of the burden of desegregation on one or both minority groups.
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The court found evidence to establish that the school board had discriminated against Mexican Americans by failing to employ Mexican American teachers in the school system. The appellate court decided that, in view of segregated faculty and administrative staff, the school board was properly directed to assign Black and Mexican American teachers in schools throughout the system in the same percentages in which they were found in the district overall. The appellate court directed the district court to extend the remedies outlined by the district court to Black students as well. The court made a strong statement of the futility of using terms like de jure and de facto to scrutinize ethnic and racial separation of students in public schools. It found the Brown decision to be a clear statement of legal principles forbidding all kinds of segregation. This decision is significant because the court created a flexible test to understand segregation, rather than formulating a mechanical checklist of what constitutes segregation. The court did not define the quantity of state action or the severity of the segregation necessary to sustain a constitutional violation. The test would be to find the real and significant relationship, in terms of cause and effect, between state action and the denial of educational opportunity occasioned by the racial and ethnic separation of public school students. Discriminatory motives and purpose, while they may reinforce a finding of effective segregation, are not necessary ingredients of constitutional violations in the field of public education. This ensures that defendants cannot deny the consequences of their actions by merely denying motivation. Devyani Prabhat See also Bilingual Education; Brown v. Board of Education; Educational Performance and Attainment; People of Color; Plessy v. Ferguson; School Desegregation; United States v. Fordice
Further Readings
Corpus Christi Independent School Dist. v. Cisneros, 404 U.S. 1211 (1971). Grayson, Zebie A. 1993. Comment: Marshall’s Dream Deferred: Almost Four Decades after Brown, the Vestiges of de Jure Segregation Linger as the Implementation Process Continues. Southern University Law Revue 20:53. Wilson, Cory Todd. 1994. “Mississippi Learning: Curriculum for the Post-Brown Era of Higher Education Desegregation.” Yale Law Journal 104:243–282.
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Wilson, Steven H. 2003. “Brown over ‘Other White’: Mexican Americans’ Legal Arguments and Litigation Strategy in School Desegregation Lawsuits.” Law and History Review 21:109–144, 145–194.
ancient Greek city-states, in the form of the polis (a term that gives us today’s politics), Aristotle (300 BC) defined humans as political beings needing to belong to a sociopolitical community, ensuring the mutual protection that was required for both to exist.
CITIZENSHIP
Roman Thin nkin ng
Citizenship is a categorizing term with legal, civil, political, and social content. As a legal, formal concept with sociopolitical connotations, citizenship defines a status of membership—of belonging to a community, a complex relationship of mutual interdependence between a sovereign (nation-)state forming a society and its subject, the citizen, implying a specific set of rights and duties on both sides. The content and extent of citizenship as a predetermined form of membership in a given society has shifted over time, its applicability varying from one geohistorical context to another. As such, the concept is related to the process of democratization in the respective societies, and, by that, to formalizing disparities between their different members, through the exclusionary character of citizenship—also indirectly defining who did not belong to it and therefore also did not partake in those stated equal rights. That leads to the informal traits of citizenship, related to active participation in the society one belongs to and the subjective dimension of citizenship as identity and group belonging, going beyond the formally defined legal concept of belonging. This entry describes the evolution of citizenship.
Historical Evolution Citizenship as an inclusive or exclusive category appeared in connection with the forming and consolidation of distinct, stable geopolitical entities, its actual context reflecting the respective sociopolitical structures. The first citizenship form can be traced to Solon (638–559 BC), father of Athenian democracy. He advocated allotting citizenship based on functional social merit, even to immigrant artisans, rather than based on mere blood descent; this was to be a foundation of democracy together with the principles of habeas corpus and equality before the law. Economic independence remained a condition of citizenship in the Greek perspective, and thus slaves were excluded and a democracy was still limited to the top echelons of the society. Following the consolidation of the
A distinctive form of defined citizenship stems from ancient Rome. Residents of the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire were divided into several categories: the most favored were the patricians, sometimes referred to as pater familias, or “family fathers.” The citizens of the time, civitas, enjoyed exclusive rights in their family and the larger society that could be taken from them only rarely. They were virtually untouchable by the state; were exempted from taxes and other obligations; and could not be subjected to torture, scourging, or the death penalty, except for treason (and then, never by crucifixion). In any case, they had the right to due process (to sue and be sued or to appeal a sentence) and, of course, enjoyed the rights to vote in the Republic, run for office, and make legal contracts, including having a lawful marriage. Roman citizenship was exclusive in the Roman society; the toga was a garment reserved for citizens and therefore prohibited for noncitizens (e.g., women, slaves). Roman women, even if they belonged by birth and marriage to patrician families, were never awarded full-fledged citizenship, but enjoyed variable—yet always restricted—rights (e.g., no electoral rights, but the right to own property), and they were always subject to decisions of their pater familias. Natives of Roman colonies and allies could get a second-class, limited form of Roman citizenship, such as the Latin Right; slaves, barely considered human, were the property of their masters, who had absolute rights over them (of life and death, whatever form of maltreatment, or being sold as merchandise). However, a freed slave could be granted a form of citizenship. The Mid ddles Ages
Toward the Middle Ages, the increasing influence of Christianity and the role of the church in ensuring allegiance and compliance of the individual to the interests of authorities (earthly and celestial) shifted the earlier relationship of laically codified mutual protection between state and citizen to a predefined hierarchical social stratification on authoritarian, nonnegotiable
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terms. The more power was concentrated at the top, in the hands of noblemen replacing the former patricians, the further away ordinary people got from roles other than vassal; the lowest levels of the society got very close to the status of former slaves. The free citizens with rather insecure positions were closest to “classical” citizen status, mostly as a factual relationship of belonging and identification with the local community. With the development of a sizable middle class, whose growing influence could no longer be ignored, the old idea of a more democratic link between state and “ordinary” members of the society revitalized the old concept of citizenship as codified relationship of reciprocity. The gradual consolidation of the institutions of power coincided with the medieval society developing into a manufacturers’ society, then into an industrial society, and finally into a nation-state. These changes created the conditions for reactualization of citizenship experienced as a membership in the society and a loyalty bond toward authority and state. The Migratory Period (300–700 AD), also called by some the Period of Barbarian Invasions, corresponds to a transition from Late Antiquity (300–600 AD) to the Early Middle Ages (500–1000 AD), the latter almost juxtaposed to the Dark Ages (476–1000 AD)—a contested term due to its associations. The Byzantine Era (1050–1150 AD) conferred citizenship as an expression of Christian identity (allegiance to creed and divinity and civic loyalty to the earthly rulers of the monarchy) while allowing social mobility within the given framework. Belonging to the Roman Empire and the Christian (Orthodox) identity remained the main characteristics of the Byzantine citizen until the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, when Constantinople became Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire, its conqueror. The medieval citizenship was built upon the old Greek and Roman model with an in-built paradox that partially survived to modern times: It constructs a model of exclusive equality on top of the social pyramid on a local basis, while consolidating the class inequality on which its power rests. T. H. Marshall analyzed citizenship in terms not only of civil and political rights but also of social rights—as related to socioeconomic and historical development. A double process of geographical fusion and functional separation marked an important step toward modern citizenship and citizenship rights, in an enlarged perspective, when in the 12th century, the royal justice system received effective powers to
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define and defend individual civil rights as a matter of national common law, not only as local custom. The Renaissa ance and Enlig ghten nment
During the Renaissance and Humanism Period (Late Middle Ages) (1350–1600), the citizenship concept developed in the spirit of ancient Greece, functionally connecting citizens as individuals to the society they belong to and serve. Althusius (1557–1638), an early advocate of popular sovereignty and modern federalism, linked citizenship to membership in the community. In 15th-century England, no difference was made between naturalized citizens and denizens. While the laws of nature and power of knowledge tended to become a new religion to Rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz), mercantilism took over by 1650, gradually undermining obsolete feudal economic structures. The economic upswing of the emergent industrial revolution brought along severe structural changes, leading to a civic and urban “renaissance,” following the social movement from rural to urban environment and its social impact on everyday life. In the 17th century, aliens were incorporated into the community by English law. In the 18th century, the ideals of the Illuminism/ Enlightenment bridged the way from reformation to revolution and parliamentary democracy. The 16thcentury Reformation grew as a reaction to the excessive power of the Catholic Church; the side effects of humanism and renaissance were rediscovery of ancient ideals, enlarged access to education, and economic development, leading away from unquestioning submission to power—whether churchly or human— to a different kind of individual submission to virtue based on rationality and morality (Montesquieu, Rousseau). This defined, especially for Rousseau and his social contract, the link between the free citizen of the new civic society, embodying the rule of law, and the overarching importance of the community. The ideals of liberté, egalité, and fraternité became the symbols of the 1789 French Revolution, a popular, urban revolution that promoted the universalism of human rights, in an ideal society of equal citizens, codified in a declaration of human rights. Even though the French Revolution ended in a despotic bloodbath and Restoration, preceding the Napoleonic expansion, it also led to the Code Civil of 1804, a landmark of modern legislation. Even the social character of internal conflicts became clearer, with an impact upon the right to reside
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and the crystallization of citizenship as category and legal concept, regulating the rules of acquisition and loss of citizenship as well as its significance within and without its national territory, related rights, and duties, as well as symbolic weight. The second half of the 19th century was one of growing power conflicts repeatedly shaping borders of unions and more or less newly consolidated nation-states, many of them with multiethnic internal structure, often marked by discrimination and inherent inequality of treatment. The Collonial Perio od to Mod derrn Times
The formation and consolidation of national states enhanced patriotic feelings of common identity but also ethnic conflict, as well as national and international tensions that increasingly led to violence and armed conflicts. The year of 1848 saw national revolutions in several European countries, which were striving to consolidate their borders as sovereign nation-states. The 19th century and beginning of the 20th century witnessed the rise and fall of empires whose borders extended far beyond their national ethnogeographical realms. Two extensive world wars engaged countries on three continents, and unimaginable atrocities were committed based on ethnonational differentiations (e.g., the Holocaust). Consequent successive reshaping of borders, power structures, and forms of government also contributed to growing tensions. The first half of the 20th century was characterized by unprecedented technical progress, global conflict, and the beginning of international cooperation on a global level, including the forming of the League of Nations, which, after the end of World War II in 1945, became the United Nations. In time, this international trend facilitated supranational cooperation and structurally innovative agreements like those leading to the Nordic Passport Union and the development of the European Union (EU), which, in 1992, minted a new concept of citizenship, the supranational European citizenship. Colonialism (from 1492 to the 1970s) created specific forms of dependency and interaction among colonizing nations and the colonized. Different countries approached the colonization process differently, targeting various degrees of implicit or explicit acculturation and administrative solutions to regulate colonial natives’ degrees of access to the colonizing country’s citizenship status in more or less restrictive forms, including or precluding immigration. This approach was changeable in time and form (as the expansion of
the Portuguese and of Spain in South America; the differential treatments applied during early and later periods of British colonial rule in India, Africa, and Asia; the French rule in Algeria and other parts of Africa or Asia; the Dutch in South Africa, Indonesia, and Surinam; and the Italians in Ethiopia). In postcolonial times, migration to former colonizing/settler countries became sizable, yet the status granted to natives became quite controversial and discriminatory (in the United Kingdom, there are ten different forms of citizenship status, not all of them granting residential rights in U.K. territory). The second half of the 20th century also left room for extreme discriminatory treatment, such as the apartheid rules and “bantustanization” of South Africa, a de facto systematic exclusion of certain minorities in various parts of the world, and discrimination of the Roma throughout Europe (not necessarily entailing explicit deprivation of citizenship). Contemporary statutory citizenship embodies full membership in the state, with horizontal and vertical aspects—the horizontal regarding prerequisites of national membership (conditions of allegiance, acquisition or retention, change, loss; rights and duties according to domestic law) and the vertical regarding related consequences extended on an international plane (protection by the state upon allegiance, supranational aspects according to applicable international law provisions). In practice, however, due to disjunctive political considerations over time, the actual application of the citizenship concept is not always as smooth as definitions would suggest. There are still persons and sometimes entire groups of people, most often ethnic or religious minorities, who remain stateless (e.g., Palestinians in Israel, Biharis in Bangladesh, Australian Aborigines unwilling to abandon their traditions, refugees and postwar displaced persons); enjoy limited citizenship rights (e.g., some British overseas citizens, colonial and postcolonial rulers throughout Africa and the Asia-Pacific area, Burakumin in Japan); or are otherwise deprived of, excluded from, or limited in their exercise of citizenship, often on ethnic/racial or gender grounds (e.g., children of Egyptian women married to foreign fathers, Afghan women, etc.).
Types of Citizenship Residence and citizenship status traditionally coincided: As a rule, citizens of a state lived within its territory. Migration changed that to an extent. Most
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citizens resided in their countries of origin, but exceptions existed. Legal migrants were gradually granted residential status, which nowadays confers rights comparable with those of citizens. Citizens living abroad could preserve their initial citizenship or acquire the citizenship of their country of residence, renouncing their initial citizenship or becoming dual citizens. Not all states accepted dual citizenship, and in some cases, acquisition of a new citizenship automatically resulted in loss of the former citizenship. Under the 1963 European Convention for limiting multiple citizenship, it was almost impossible for persons migrating from countries rejecting renunciation to their citizenship to acquire another citizenship. The 1997 European Convention on Citizenship accepted dual citizenship. Some even acquired multiple citizenships. At the other end, there were also stateless persons who did not enjoy the protection of any state. Statutory citizenship refers to the legal and political status encompassed by the term and refers to the codified rights and duties defining the mutual relationship between the state and its citizens. In the particular case of EU citizenship, it envisages access to the four freedoms. Regarding attribution/acquisition and renunciation/ loss of citizenship, citizenship can be acquired at birth, by jus sanguinis (blood descent) or jus soli (birthplace), or as an adult, by naturalization, by what is referred to as jus domicilii (residence), which is the most usual way of acquisition for migrants and their children. A main difference between birthright acquisition and naturalization is that while the former is (normally) considered an absolute human right, the latter confers by comparison a weaker entitlement and can be denied, which is why even longtime residents (or denizens) are sometimes refused the citizenship of their country of residence. Refugees and asylum seekers may acquire citizenship after being granted a permanent residence status and having resided long enough to justify their naturalization. Other forms of acquisition are by legitimation (acknowledgment of parenthood) or adoption by a citizen; by extension to a minor, unmarried child by a naturalized parent; or by reacquisition if regained after loss. Spousal transfer of citizenship (at marriage), very common after World War II, is less common today. There are also simplified administrative procedures for granting citizenship by simple application, for example, for immigrant children who grew up in their countries of residence.
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The naturalization procedure may involve specific requirements, such as good conduct, a clear link to the country (e.g., by longtime residence or school), and knowledge of the local language, and sometimes even of its history, legislation, and traditions. The United States, Germany, Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands, for example, are among nations that impose a citizenship test; others (e.g., Sweden) don’t. Special rules may apply for family reunification cases. Citizenship issues usually belong on the national level; in Switzerland, however, citizenship is a cantonal matter. Citizenship can be lost by renunciation, when a person emigrates from the country of origin and doesn’t want to retain his or her initial citizenship; in connection with the acquisition of another citizenship (often a requirement for that); or automatically, due to lack of connection to the country of citizenship, for example, through prolonged residence abroad. Citizenship acquired by extension can be lost if the naturalized parent that extended his or her citizenship lost or renounced it. Some modern legislation provides an exception to such situations if the effect would be to render the person stateless. The concept of citizenship also implies a form of membership based on identity and sociocultural belonging of a subjective nature, beyond nationality. In the enlarged context of transnational migration, it is possible to have multiple identities, with a wider, even global, span. The national state, traditional guarantor of citizenship, used to be considered the expression of a mononational, ethnically homogeneous entity sharing a common cultural-linguistic and territorial ground. Ethnically, culturally, and historically distinct minorities tended to be ignored, forgotten, and even discriminated against. Most usually, national citizenship would coincide with (ethnic identity-based, territorial) nationality. There were also exceptions: For example, until recently, Germany granted German citizenship to descendants of German nationals even when they lived somewhere else, while refusing citizenship to numerous immigrants even though they were longtime residents of Germany. Some states are characterized by specific ethnocultural diversity, which either has historical explanations, as in the case of Belgium or Canada, or occurred through intensive migration, as in the case of traditional receiving countries, such as the United States, Australia, and most of the western European countries (the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, etc.). Inspired mostly by Canadian
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society, Will Kymlicka minted the term multicultural citizenship, which theoretically accommodates the factual diversity of multicultural states. With the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and the introduction of EU citizenship, a new supranational dimension appeared. The functional content of the term is still developing, as yet simply conferring access to privileges within the entire EU area related to the freedom of movement: mobility, residence, employment and social security, electoral rights, and diplomatic or consular protection. EU citizenship is only an additional dimension to the national citizenship awarded by individual member states and cannot be obtained outside the national framework. Only EU member states’ citizens are considered citizens of the EU, but not all formal citizens automatically have access to this form of EU citizenship, such as, for example, British overseas citizens not residing in U.K. territory or other nationals whose origins lie in former colonies and who reside outside EU territory. Cosmopolitan citizenship was a term in use long ago by Diogenes, Comenius, and Kant, who in the spirit of universalism and humanism considered themselves “citizens of the world,” a self-ascertained identity beyond traditional nationalistic borders. Global citizenship may be the next step in an enlarged view of common belonging and identifying with humanity, in some ways opposed to the former, narrower views of nationalism and local patriotism. Elena Dingu-Kyrklund See also Apartheid; Colonialism; Cosmopolitanism; Europe; Holocaust; Minority/Majority; Peoplehood
Further Readings
Castles, Stephen and Davidson, Alastair. 2000. Citizenship and Migration: Globalization and the Politics of Belonging. London: Macmillan. Delanty, Gerard. 2000. Citizenship in a Global Age. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Dingu-Kyrklund, Elena. 2007. Citizenship, Migration, and Social Integration in Sweden: A Model for Europe? CERIS Working Paper No. 52. Toronto, Canada: Center for Environmental and Regulatory Information Systems. Habermas, Jurgen. 1992. “Citoyenneté et identité nationale. Réflexions sur l’avenir de l’Europe.” Pp. 17–39 in L’Europe au soir du siècle. Identité et démocratic, edited by J. Lenoble. Paris: Esprit.
Hammar, Tomas. 1990. Democracy and the Nation State: Aliens, Denizens, and Citizens in a World of International Migration. Research in Ethnic Relations Series. Avebury, UK: Gower. Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Marshall, Thomas Humphrey. 1950. Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Soysal, Yasemin. 1994. Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zilbershats, Y. 2002. The Human Right to Citizenship. Ardsley, NY: Transnational.
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE Civil disobedience consists of public acts in deliberate violation of law for the purpose of challenging a law or stimulating social change. It is nonviolent in nature, with participants willingly accepting fines or imprisonment for the sake of their cause. Many forms of civil disobedience have been used by minority racial and ethnic groups to protest laws that contribute to their subordinate status. During the 1950s and 1960s, the modern Civil Rights Movement made extensive use of boycotts, sit-ins, freedom rides, and mass marches to overturn the Jim Crow system of racial segregation. Other movements subsequently adopted these techniques to advance their objectives. This entry looks most closely at civil disobedience as a tactic during the Civil Rights Movement.
Historical Background The philosophical origins of civil disobedience can be traced to the Greek philosopher Plato, who questioned a citizen’s duty to obey an unjust law. Christian thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas advanced the concept of natural law or universal principles that are superior to man-made statutes. American author and thinker Henry David Thoreau is credited with coining the phrase civil disobedience in an 1844 lecture in which he asserted that an individual has a moral obligation to disobey a law that perpetuates injustice. Since government depends on the consent of the governed, he reasoned, citizens have the right to withdraw their support from unjust laws such as those upholding
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slavery. Thoreau famously elected to spend a night in jail rather than pay taxes to support the Mexican War. The most influential modern proponent of civil disobedience was Mahatma Gandhi, who developed his philosophy of nonviolent resistance while working to win civil rights for Indians in South Africa and later while campaigning to end British rule in his native India. Gandhi’s teaching of satyagraha, or “soul force,” emphasized that unfair laws must be opposed by moral means. He stressed that protesters must not be motivated by hatred of their adversaries, must not retaliate if attacked, and should be willing to accept punishment without complaint. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was Gandhi’s best-known American disciple. He combined a commitment to justice with the Christian notions of “loving one’s enemy” and “turning the other cheek” in the face of assault.
Montgomery Bus Boycott The most celebrated instance of civil disobedience in the United States took place in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, when African American Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a White passenger on a segregated city bus. Other African Americans had been arrested for defying segregation laws, but Parks’s arrest sparked a bus boycott lasting 381 days. Dr. King’s prominent role in the boycott provided a national platform from which he articulated his version of Gandhi’s philosophy. Not all participants in the Civil Rights Movement accepted nonviolence as a way of life, but most agreed that it could be a powerful tactic in the struggle for human rights. Ironically, the legal doctrine of “separate but equal,” which Parks challenged, was an unintended consequence of an earlier act of civil disobedience. In June 1892, Homer Plessy, a light-skinned African American, defied a Louisiana Jim Crow law by riding in a Whites-only train car. When the Supreme Court decided the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, it ruled that separate facilities did not violate the Constitution, thus giving legal sanction to segregation.
Sit-Ins On February 1, 1960, four African American students at North Carolina A&T College, in Greensboro, attempted to purchase food at a Woolworth’s lunch counter. They were denied service but remained seated until closing time. The following day, they returned
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with twenty more students. Their demonstration continued for 6 months, until the store’s management agreed to desegregate. The sit-in movement quickly spread; by that summer, similar protests had taken place in more than sixty southern cities. In Nashville, Tennessee, African American college students were coached in nonviolent tactics by James Lawson, who had studied Gandhi’s methods as a missionary in India. The highly trained students targeted lunch counters at downtown department stores. When one group was arrested, another took its place. The students sometimes encountered harassment from White onlookers but never retaliated. The success of the sit-ins recruited hundreds of energetic young activists to the Civil Rights Movement. The use of sit-ins to oppose Jim Crow eating facilities did not originate in Greensboro. In 1943, students from Howard University, in Washington, D.C., and Chicago activists from the newly formed Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) entered segregated restaurants and refused to leave until Black customers were served. In 1958, Youth Councils of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Wichita, Kansas, and Oklahoma City employed similar tactics. None of these protests, however, attracted the national attention that followed the Greensboro sit-ins.
Freedom Rides In May 1961, another form of civil disobedience made headlines across the United States as an interracial team of thirteen CORE members attempted to ride Greyhound and Trailways buses from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans. They were testing compliance with a Supreme Court ruling that found segregated interstate transportation facilities unconstitutional. They were briefly jailed in South Carolina, and when they reached Alabama, they encountered violence. One bus was burned outside Anniston, and Freedom Riders on a second bus were savagely beaten in Birmingham. A group of Nashville students vowed to continue the Freedom Ride when the original CORE group withdrew. These new Freedom Riders also were attacked when they reached Montgomery. Undeterred by the brutality directed against them, the students continued on to Jackson, Mississippi, where all were arrested as they entered the segregated bus terminal. That summer, hundreds of Freedom Riders traveled to Mississippi to promote integration. Many accepted prison sentences to dramatize their commitment. Their
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nonviolent witness forced the federal government to issue regulations desegregating interstate travel. The 1961 rides were a revival of a little-known effort organized in 1947 by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which sent sixteen volunteers on a bus trip through the upper South to confront laws requiring Jim Crow seating. Four members of the group were arrested in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and sentenced to 30 days on a chain gang. Bayard Rustin, who was jailed in North Carolina, became a leading strategist of the Civil Rights Movement.
Mass Demonstrations Peaceful marches and picketing are not usually considered forms of civil disobedience. However, when local authorities banned demonstrations by civil rights forces, nonviolent confrontations often ensued. In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. led weeks of mass marches in Birmingham, Alabama. He was opposed by Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, an ardent segregationist who arrested hundreds of marchers for parading without a permit. When his jail was full, Connor turned fire hoses and police dogs on the youthful protesters. Two years later, Alabama demonstrators attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery were gassed and clubbed by mounted sheriff’s deputies. The public reaction to these heavy-handed actions galvanized public opinion in support of civil rights legislation.
Civil Disobedience by Other Groups Members of other ethnic groups have also employed civil disobedience to fight for their rights. In 1942, Fred Korematsu defied a military order to evacuate his California home. He contested President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of all people of Japanese descent from the West Coast. When the case of Korematsu v. United States reached the Supreme Court in 1944, the justices decided against Korematsu, ruling that the internment of Japanese Americans did not violate the U.S. Constitution. During the 1960s, César Chávez led Latino farm laborers in their fight for better working conditions. They used nonviolent tactics to win recognition for their union, the United Farm Workers. In 1965, Chávez launched a successful national boycott of table grapes. In 1988, at the age of 61, he fasted for
35 days to call attention to the use of pesticides in the fields where farm laborers worked. On November 20, 1969, eighty American Indians representing twenty tribes landed on Alcatraz Island, in San Francisco Bay. They seized the abandoned federal prison on the island to dramatize their opposition to government policies toward Native Americans. Their highly publicized occupation lasted nearly 18 months and forced the U.S. government to reevaluate its treatment of Native American citizens. The success of these movements during the 1960s inspired many other groups to use nonviolent direct action to call attention to their grievances. In combination with legal challenges and mass mobilization, civil disobedience proved to be an effective tool in gaining human rights for oppressed people. Paul T. Murray See also African Americans; American Indian Movement; Chávez, César; Civil Rights Movement; Civil Rights Movement, Women and; Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); Internment Camps; Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Further Readings
Arsenault, Raymond. 2006. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. New York: Oxford University Press. Carson, Clayborne. 1981. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Halberstam, David. 1998. The Children. New York: Random House. King, Martin Luther, Jr. 1958. Stride toward Freedom. New York: Harper & Brothers. Lewis, John. 1998. Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement. New York: Simon & Schuster. McWhorter, Diane. 2001. Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster.
CIVIL RELIGION The term civil religion, also known as national religion, civic piety, or religious nationalism, has been used in academic discussions and at times public
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merely as a convenient interpretive device for scholars, and whether it is unique to the United States or is translatable to other cultures around the globe (or across time). While much of the scholarship has focused on civil religion as a rhetorical expression of quasi-religiosity, a growing body of literature examines civil religion in various spatial and ritualistic manifestations. A growing body of literature also examines the hegemonic presumptions and constructions of centralized power inherent in the concept of civil religion. This entry summarizes that literature.
America as Religion
Pledging allegiance to the flag. Fourth graders at Longstreth Elementary School are shown pledging allegiance to the flag in Warminster, Pennsylvania (March 24, 2004). The phrase “one nation under God” in the pledge is one instance of U.S. civil religion—the deification of the polity. Some argue that religion, and Christian faith in particular, receives too much encouragement in public life, but others argue that religious expression is too often stifled. Source: Getty Images.
rhetoric to refer to a variety of concepts that cluster around the deification of the polity, most recently in and with reference to the United States. Traced to the Hellenic period, the term is often identified with its 1762 use in The Social Contract, by French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. More recently, the term was given new life after serving as the focus of a 1967 Daedalus article by sociologist of religion Robert N. Bellah. In the 40 years since the appearance of this article, the term has been the subject of considerable debate on a variety of points, including its definition, whether it has any substantive reality or exists
Focusing on speeches delivered by U.S. presidents from Washington to Johnson, Robert Bellah examined the “religious dimension” of public life in the United States, which coexists with (and often reinforces) tradition-based institutional religion (primarily but not exclusively Protestantism) but often serves to legitimate the authority of the state. This dimension— evident in the beliefs, symbols, and rituals surrounding the presidential speeches (and other civic acts)— Bellah called the American civil religion, in deference to, but not to be confused with, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s use of the term 2 centuries earlier. In The Social Contract, Rousseau grappled with the nature of a state’s authority, asking, for example, how a democracy could justify as fair the abrogation of the rights of the minority just because they were outnumbered. Rousseau argued that a democracy must retain at its core a belief in the myth that at some foundational moment, there was universal agreement that the majority would rule and that the minority would abide by a temporary loss of privilege to accommodate this agreement. This myth justifies the possibility of being in the minority and having to sacrifice to the will of the majority. It also creates a covenanted relationship not just among all possible parties in the polity but also between the people and a higher, transcendent authority that serves as the focus of the entire political enterprise and the final arbiter of rights. As Bellah wrote in the 1967 Daedalus article, civil religion is “a collection of beliefs, symbols, and rituals with respect to sacred things and institutionalized in a collectivity [that] served as a genuine vehicle of national religious self-understanding” (p. 8). Focusing specifically on speeches delivered by Presidents Washington, Lincoln, and Kennedy, Bellah illustrated three stages in the development of the covenant
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among the American people and between those people and their God.
A Developing Covenant Bellah identified the first stage, the founding of the nation, by the regular use of the exodus of the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage as a central symbol. Public figures in this first stage—roughly from the first inklings of independence among the colonists until the achievement of unambiguous political autonomy (that is, well after the War of 1812)—comfortably used images of a common people, led by God, seeking out a new land under a new covenant. Although not cited by Bellah, Massachusetts Bay governor John Winthrop’s sermon delivered aboard the ship Arbella, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630/2008), is a classic example: For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill: The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world: we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us, till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going. (p. 19)
The second stage, which Bellah called a “time of testing,” is identified by symbols of sacrifice, death, and rebirth and is most heavily influenced by the impact of the Civil War on the American psyche. The war itself could therefore be reinterpreted not as sectional violence or ideological clashes, but as growing pains for the once new nation, and President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address or even his second inaugural address provided much of the imagery of this stage. In the third stage, the nation faced the demands of global responsibility in an unsettled world. Referring to the post–World War II decades in which he was writing, Bellah found that the covenant was increasingly threatened—by the mid-1970s, he would declare it “broken”—by American irresponsibility and an overreliance on force. Beyond its use of references to God, civil religion assumes that there is a common spiritual vocabulary among the citizens that appeals to their differing but
not mutually exclusive beliefs in the supernatural force (usually the vaguely Christian notion of God) and that transcends (but does not challenge or burden) specific denominational attachments. Civil religion broadly defined contains and yet reinforces the mythos of U.S. history, from its emphasis on the Puritans (although nonreligious settlers, even those from Europe, were here earlier), through “Manifest Destiny,” to justifications for geopolitical competition (as in the cold war). Presidents tapping into this mythos have appealed to the spiritual sense of American citizens, including President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s response to the attacks on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, or President George W. Bush’s imagery of an “axis of evil” in his State of the Union address in January 2002, just months after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Debates and Extensions Whether the phenomenon actually exists or is simply the creation of scholars has been the focus of some debate. Some have argued that the construction of the concept of civil religion forces a religionlike template of interpretation onto a pattern of political and civic behavior that appears only in times of crisis—during wars, for example—but then recedes during times of political stability. Others take issue with Bellah’s role of “discovery,” identifying earlier constructions of something like civil religion in scholars of American religion well into the 19th century. Still others dismiss the phenomenon entirely, suggesting that the use of religious language is not a separate ideological construction, but merely a rhetorical construction in a vaguely Protestant but clearly theistic American society. Nonetheless, the concept of civil religion has been a popular and powerful interpretive tool among academics seeking to understand the relationship between religion and social (and political) organization, and a number of scholars have taken up Bellah’s work, using it as a starting point for their own analyses. Catherine Albanese and Milton Klein, for example, have each separately examined the role of civil religion in the Revolutionary War period, each finding a religionlike attachment for documents like the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and for the actions of those fighting for U.S. independence. Jonathan Woocher has used the concept to explore the nature of the organized (that is, institution-based) American Jewish community, while
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Charles Reagan Wilson used the concept to examine post–Civil War Confederate religiosity. It has also been a useful tool for some scholars examining nonAmerican phenomena, including Charles Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya, in their examination of religion and politics in Israel, and Bellah himself, who, with Phillip E. Hammond, examined the nature of civil religion in Italy, Japan, and Mexico. While Bellah placed most of his emphasis on political rhetoric, others sought to examine the same religious “dimension” in the rituals and behaviors of average Americans. Of particular note is Lloyd Warner’s work on Memorial Day, but more recently, others have examined civil religion in the context of public rituals and the debates over the ongoing meaning of public spaces such as Mount Rushmore, Gettysburg, Wounded Knee, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Perhaps because he had earlier focused on religion in Japan and therefore was attuned to the relationship between the believer and the state in Shinto, Bellah focused most of his analysis on the relationship between the citizens, the state, and a fairly Western, biblical construction of God. More recent studies have tended to examine not just the dominant narrative, however, but also the dynamics of power at play in the spatial relations and ritual exchanges. They have therefore tended to include in their analyses greater attention to those who are being marginalized by the language of a transcendent national identity.
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Mathisen, James A. 1989. “Twenty Years after Bellah: Whatever Happened to American Civil Religion?” Sociological Analysis 50:129–146. Winthrop, John. 2008. “A Model of Christian Charity.” In American Religions: A Documentary History, edited by R. M. Griffith. New York: Oxford University Press.
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT The Civil Rights Movement consisted of concerted efforts by African Americans and their allies during the 1950s and 1960s to dismantle the Jim Crow system of segregation and gain equal rights for citizens of all races. Civil rights activists employed litigation, boycotts, nonviolent direct action, mass demonstrations, and grassroots organizing to advance their cause. Goals changed over time, first focusing on access to public institutions and later shifting to political empowerment. The movement succeeded in
Eric Michael Mazur See also Americanization; Black Nationalism; Citizenship; Colonialism; Emancipation Proclamation; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Lincoln, Abraham; Minority Rights; Sacred Versus Secular
Further Readings
Bellah, Robert N. 1967. “Civil Religion in America.” Daedalus 96(1):1–21. Reprinted, Daedalus 134(4): 40–56, 2005. Bellah, Robert N. 1975. The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Bellah, Robert N. and Phillip E. Hammond. 1980. Varieties of Civil Religion. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. Marty, Martin E. 1987. “Civil Religion: Two Kinds of Two Kinds.” Pp. 77–94 in Religion and Republic: The American Circumstance. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Civil rights march. African Americans and sympathetic Whites gather at a civil rights march in Washington, D.C. This was a critical period in the Civil Rights Movement, as A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin orchestrated the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, the culmination of which took place at the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. The optimism from the march and the speech was soon put in perspective when a bomb planted in a Birmingham, Alabama, church killed four African American children on September 15. A delegation of leaders then angrily confronted President Kennedy for action but that responsibility fell to President Lyndon Johnson following Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963. Source: National Archives, Special Media Division, NWDNS306-SSM-4C366.
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invalidating segregation laws, substantially increasing the number of Black voters and elected officials, and broadening access for African Americans in employment, education, and housing. This entry summarizes the movement’s history and achievements.
Historical Background The birth of the modern Civil Rights Movement can be traced to a gathering of Black intellectuals at Niagara Falls, Canada, in June 1905. Led by W. E. B. Du Bois, they endorsed a platform calling for full manhood suffrage and the abolition of all distinctions based on race. In 1909, the young radicals of the Niagara Movement joined with like-minded Whites to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). With Du Bois at its helm, the new organization initiated a crusade to win constitutional rights for African Americans, advocating equal treatment and lobbying Congress to enact antilynching legislation. Its lawyers challenged racist practices such as peonage, restrictive covenants, and the exclusion of Black citizens from juries. In 1940, Black labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened a March on Washington to protest the lack of jobs for African American workers. President Franklin Roosevelt responded by issuing Executive Order 8802, banning discrimination in defense industries. Around the same time, NAACP lawyers directed by Charles Hamilton Houston launched a legal assault on segregated education. A series of favorable court decisions culminated in the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education opinion, which declared separate educational facilities “inherently unequal.” Southern politicians reacted to Brown with defiance, vowing never to permit Black children to attend school with Whites. The 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi showed that change would not come easily.
Key Initiatives Mon ntg gom mery y Bus Boycottt
On December 2, 1955, the arrest of Rosa Parks, a Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress, for refusing to yield her seat to a White passenger on a city bus, sparked a successful 1-day boycott by African American passengers. This led to the creation of the Montgomery Improvement Association to coordinate the protest.
A young Baptist minister, Martin Luther King, Jr., was elected as its head. City officials refused to negotiate, and the boycott continued for 381 days. Boycott leaders were jailed, and King’s home was bombed, but protesters remained true to their nonviolent philosophy. The boycott ended when the Supreme Court ruled that the buses must be operated on an integrated basis. The boycott thrust King into the national spotlight. In 1957, he and other ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to spread the struggle against Jim Crow to other southern cities. Sit-IIns
On February 1, 1960, four students at North Carolina A&T College took seats at the Whites-only lunch counter in the Greensboro Woolworth’s store. When denied service, they remained seated until the end of business. They returned the next day with more students, and the “sit-in” movement was born. Within weeks, their protest had spread to more than sixty cities across the South. African American college and high school students took the lead in organizing the sit-ins. The disciplined and dignified youths defied hostile crowds, frequently accepting arrest to protest segregated eating facilities. In April 1960, student leaders met at Shaw University in North Carolina and organized the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to carry on their campaign. Free edom Rid des
On May 4, 1961, an interracial team of thirteen activists recruited by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) left Washington, D.C., bound by bus for New Orleans. They planned to test compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Boynton v. Virginia prohibiting segregation in interstate transportation. When they entered Alabama on May 14, a gang of Whites stopped one bus outside of Anniston, attacked the passengers, and set the bus on fire. When a second bus arrived in Birmingham, the Freedom Riders were savagely beaten by Klansmen. The battered CORE band canceled the rest of their journey, but a group of Nashville students pledged to continue the protest. Their resolve created a crisis for the Kennedy administration. Attorney General Robert Kennedy persuaded Alabama authorities to let the riders proceed, but when their bus reached Montgomery on May 20, they were assaulted by another violent
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mob. National Guard troops escorted the riders on the final stage of their journey to Jackson, Mississippi, where they were promptly jailed. Hundreds of activists from across the country continued the Freedom Rides until the Interstate Commerce Commission banned segregated travel facilities in November 1961. Albany and Birm mingham
In November 1961, Black students staged a sit-in at the Albany, Georgia, bus terminal. Their arrest triggered mass protests against segregation. The Albany Movement mobilized enthusiastic African American supporters but faced determined opposition from the all-White city government. Police Chief Laurie Prichett arrested hundreds of nonviolent demonstrators over the next months. Despite the intervention of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Albany protesters were unable to win any concessions. Following his setback in Georgia, King targeted Birmingham, Alabama, a city with a long history of racial violence. When demonstrations began in April 1963, Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor arrested the protesters led by King. When jails could hold no more prisoners, Connor used police and fire departments to disperse the demonstrators. Newscasts showing Black youths bitten by police dogs and knocked off their feet by fire hoses shocked viewers around the world. Soon after, President John Kennedy addressed the nation describing discrimination as a moral problem and promising legislation to ban segregation in public accommodations. Birmingham business leaders finally agreed to desegregate their stores and to begin hiring Black sales clerks. A March on n Washin ngto on
On August 28, 1963, A. Philip Randolph organized a second March on Washington, which drew 250,000 people in support of the pending civil rights bill. The highlight of the day was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s inspirational “I Have a Dream” speech. After intensive lobbying, the Civil Rights Act was passed and signed by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964.
School Desegregation Although some border states desegregated their schools without incident shortly after the Brown decision, efforts to implement the court’s ruling continued for
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more than 20 years. In 1956, Autherine Lucy became the first African American student admitted to the University of Alabama, but howling mobs soon drove her from the campus. A dramatic confrontation between state and federal authorities occurred in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Governor Orville Faubus used state troops to prevent nine Black students from entering Central High School. President Dwight Eisenhower responded by sending the 101st Airborne Division to accompany the “Little Rock Nine” to classes. Screaming White parents hurled obscenities at 6-year-old Ruby Bridges as she desegregated New Orleans public schools in November 1960. Federal marshals shepherded James Meredith to the University of Mississippi campus on September 30, 1962, as thousands of irate segregationists rioted. President John Kennedy dispatched 23,000 soldiers to ensure Meredith’s safety. Despite Alabama Governor George Wallace’s vow to “stand in the schoolhouse door,” he stepped aside when federal authorities ordered African American students to be enrolled at the University of Alabama in 1963. School integration proceeded slowly in the Deep South. Politicians devised stratagems such as “freedom of choice” to limit the impact of court orders. Not until the Alexander v. Holmes County decision in 1969 were Mississippi public schools desegregated. When federal courts required 1,000 African American students to be transported to previously all-White schools in Charlotte, North Carolina, “forced busing” became the new center of controversy. During the 1970s, resistance to integration surfaced in opposition to court-ordered busing. The city of Boston gained notoriety for the intensity of its antibusing protests in 1974.
The Right to Vote When SNCC field secretary Robert Moses met with Mississippi Black leaders in 1960, he found that their highest priority was voting rights. Although they accounted for 42% of the state’s population, few African Americans were registered to vote. Some majority Black counties had no Black voters. Moses and fellow SNCC members began a 3-year voter registration campaign, but their grassroots organizing often encountered violent opposition and yielded few new voters. In 1964, Moses announced plans to bring 1,000 northern volunteers to the Magnolia State. The June abduction and murder of three of those volunteers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Mickey
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Schwerner, in Neshoba County brutally illustrated the extent of White resistance to “Freedom Summer.” Mississippi civil rights workers formed the Freedom Democratic Party (FDP) to fight for Black political representation. In August, FDP spokeswoman Fannie Lou Hamer testified at the Democratic national convention to challenge the state’s all-White delegation. Additional pressure for voting rights came from Alabama, where SNCC and SCLC workers tried to register Black voters, with little success. On March 7, 1965, John Lewis and Hosea Williams directed 500 people who attempted to march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery. After crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were attacked with clubs and tear gas by highway patrolmen and mounted sheriff’s deputies. The resulting national outcry produced a federal court order allowing a larger march 2 weeks later. President Lyndon Johnson introduced legislation to remove barriers to Black voting. Congress acted swiftly, and, on August 6, 1965, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.
When SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael called for Black Power during the 1966 Meredith march, he articulated the growing strength of nationalist sentiments. In the early 1960s, Black Muslim spokesman Malcolm X had questioned the goal of integration and the use of nonviolent resistance. In their place, he advocated building stronger Black institutions and self-defense “by any means necessary.” Malcolm’s 1965 assassination did not end his influence, as his views continued to win supporters, especially in large cities. When Black leaders endorsed the Black Power agenda, White support for African American civil rights declined. The 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis, where he was supporting striking sanitation workers, brought the nonviolent movement he guided to an end.
The Movement in the North
Origins of the Movement
The Civil Rights Movement also pressed for change in the North, where segregation and racial inequality were pervasive, though not always as blatant. Unequal educational facilities were a concern in communities from Chicago to New Rochelle, but lawyers had limited success attacking de facto school segregation as Whites abandoned inner-city neighborhoods for the suburbs. Discrimination against Black workers, especially in the construction trades, sparked demonstrations in New York, Philadelphia, and other cities. Residential segregation attracted the attention of Martin Luther King, Jr., who led open-housing marches into all-White Chicago neighborhoods. King observed that the hatred he encountered at these demonstrations surpassed anything he had seen in the South. Police brutality was another source of frequent conflict. In Oakland, California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party to monitor police harassment of African Americans. The Panthers’ militant rhetoric and community service programs attracted a wide following in northern cities. Intense surveillance by the FBI culminated in a series of raids and arrests that ended the Panthers’ brief period of influence. Frustration with persistent inequality and the absence of visible progress in
Scholars have identified several factors that gave rise to the Civil Rights Movement. In Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, Doug McAdam argued that migration of Blacks out of the South and their growing political influence in the urban North resulted in symbolic changes in federal policies. These, in turn, contributed to optimism among African Americans that further gains were possible. Aldon Morris, however, pointed to developments within southern Black communities. He maintained in The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement that the growing strength of Black institutions in southern cities, most importantly the church, provided the leadership and organizational framework for the movement. Both authors agree that underlying structural changes in U.S. society made possible the movement that reshaped race relations in the United States.
northern ghettos fueled the “long hot summers” of rioting that scarred major cities from 1963 to 1969.
Black Power
An Assessment The impact of the Civil Rights Movement can be seen in the demise of Jim Crow laws and in the unhindered access to public accommodations by African Americans. Increased Black political power and the proliferation of Black elected officials are undeniable advances. Improved educational and employment
Civil Rights Movement, Women and
opportunities have stimulated a growing Black middle class. The national holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. and the prominence of individual African Americans are other indicators of success. Although the triumph of the movement is often attributed to charismatic leaders such as King, the determination and courage of thousands of ordinary people made it possible. Victories at the national level would never have happened without the organized pressure coming from communities across the United States. Skeptics insist that racial equality has not been realized, pointing to persistent poverty among African Americans, racial isolation in urban school systems, the large Black prison population, and higher death rates for Black infants. Although most Americans acknowledge the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, they are divided on how best to remove remaining barriers to full equality. The African American struggle for civil rights was a source of inspiration for marginalized groups such as Chicanas/os, Native Americans, women, gays, lesbians, and the disabled. Techniques of nonviolent resistance developed by the Civil Rights Movement have spread to Poland, China, South Africa, and other nations. “We Shall Overcome” has become an anthem for oppressed people around the world. Paul T. Murray See also African Americans; Black Power; Brown v. Board of Education; Carmichael, Stokely; Civil Disobedience; Civil Rights Movement, Women and; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Jim Crow; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Parks, Rosa; Racetalk; Segregation; Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); Voting Rights
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Dittmer, John. 1994. Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. McAdam, Doug. 1982. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. McAdam, Doug. 1988. Freedom Summer. New York: Oxford University Press. McWhorter, Diane. 2001. Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster. Morris, Aldon D. 1984. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change. New York: Free Press. Payne, Charles M. 1995. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. Berkeley: University of California Press. Williams, Juan. 1987. Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965. New York: Viking.
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, WOMEN AND The Civil Rights Movement changed the course of race relations in the United States, destroying de jure segregation in the South and winning equal rights for African Americans. In recent years, scholars have paid significant attention to the once overlooked contributions of women to this fight for racial change. This entry examines women’s roles in the Civil Rights Movement, focusing on the contributions of both African American and White women to movement development, recruitment, participation, and leadership.
The Early Leaders Further Readings
Arsenault, Raymond. 2006. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. New York: Oxford University Press. Branch, Taylor. 1988. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963. New York: Simon & Schuster. Branch, Taylor. 1998. Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65. New York: Simon & Schuster. Branch, Taylor. 2006. At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68. New York: Simon & Schuster. Carson, Clayborne. 1981. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
From the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement, African American women were key figures in organizing activism and recruiting participants. One such woman, Septima Clark, was a public school teacher in South Carolina who was fired from her job because she refused to relinquish her membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She promoted the teaching of literacy to poor African Americans, which she knew would enable them to better challenge White control of the political process. Across the South, registrars often denied African Americans the right to vote by challenging them to read and interpret difficult sections of state constitutions.
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Through her work with the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, Clark created a network of citizenship schools that taught uneducated African Americans how to read and engage in the political process. Another woman who recognized the importance of developing leadership at the community level was Ella Baker. Baker became the national field secretary of the NAACP and traveled throughout the South in 1941 and 1942 to organize local NAACP chapters. In 1958, she went to work for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the civil rights organization created in Atlanta by Martin Luther King, Jr. Baker was often frustrated with the ministers who led the SCLC because they felt the movement should be organized around the charismatic leadership of the ministers themselves and run like a church. They also did not think a woman should be in a top leadership position. Baker, on the other hand, felt the key to success was empowering local people to lead at the community level. She was especially drawn to the model of Clark’s citizenship schools. Baker helped organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and, motivated by her frustration with its leadership and strategy, left the SCLC. Other women played key roles in helping to ignite the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. In 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress who was a local leader in the Montgomery, Alabama, NAACP, refused to give up her bus seat to a White man. Parks was arrested, and the African American community immediately responded by organizing a bus boycott. The Women’s Political Council had already tried to convince the local community to force desegregation of the bus system through a boycott. The bus boycott began the day after Parks was arrested, largely because of the work of the Women’s Political Council. A year after the boycott began, the buses were desegregated. In 1957, Daisy Bates, a leader in the Arkansas NAACP, helped organize the desegregation of Little Rock High School. Leading up to and during the admission of the “Little Rock Nine,” as the African American students who integrated the school were called, Bates supported the students and led the local African American community. Ultimately, Bates and her husband lost the newspaper they owned, and Bates’s contributions to the movement were often overlooked. African American women were important leaders in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, although their tireless efforts were often overshadowed because men occupied traditional leadership
positions in religious, civic, and political organizations. Women developed strategies for challenging segregation, galvanized local communities, and recruited movement participants. They continued to be central figures in the movement as it developed in the 1960s.
SNCC and Freedom Summer By the early 1960s, African American students were getting involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and they brought a new, more radical energy to their activism. In 1960, four students launched the “sit-in” movement in Greensboro, North Carolina, and a wave of sit-ins spread throughout the South. Ella Baker, excited by the new tactic and the students’ energy, encouraged the SCLC to fund a conference that would bring these student activists together. In 1960, the students convened in Atlanta. Although the ministers of the SCLC wanted the students to join their organization, Baker encouraged the students to form their own, and SNCC was born. Baker was instrumental in the creation of SNCC’s guiding strategy. She felt that the movement should be organized at the community level. Baker encouraged SNCC to organize local people and develop leadership at the grassroots level. In rural communities, African Americans had long been oppressed by White landowners and White violence. They were often very poor, uneducated, and afraid to try to register to vote. Baker’s strategy of community organizing gave them a stake in what was happening and helped them to feel empowered to challenge the system of segregation. SNCC, like the SCLC, advocated the use of nonviolent direct action. One of SNCC’s early leaders, Diane Nash, began her civil rights activism with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Nashville. In 1961, CORE sponsored a bus of Freedom Riders who traveled as an integrated group to the South and tested the recent Supreme Court ruling that desegregated interstate transportation. When the first bus encountered a violent White backlash in Alabama, Nash intervened to get them home and rallied other activists to continue the rides with a second bus, even as established civil rights leaders discouraged her. Nash became a powerful leader in SNCC, soon moving to Mississippi to help organize the movement there, a state where White violence reigned and African American ministers were afraid to use their churches as meeting places.
Civil Rights Movement, Women and
Due to its philosophy of decentralized leadership, SNCC was the civil rights organization most amenable to the development of women’s leadership. As SNCC began to penetrate Mississippi, African American women of all ages became indispensable to the success of the movement. Fannie Lou Hamer, an uneducated sharecropper, became the voice of the Mississippi movement and an early recruit of SNCC. She lost her job when she tried to register to vote, and once nearly lost her life when she was beaten in a jail. Annie Devine, a single mother of four children, became a leader for CORE in Canton. Unita Blackwell sought out the SNCC activists who came to recruit local people and became an important organizer. Younger African American women became active in SNCC as well. Joyce and Dorie Ladner, who were kicked out of Jackson State College for their activism, became SNCC project directors. In Mississippi and across the South, women were visible leaders in SNCC, but they also filled important roles behind the scenes that have often gone unacknowledged in accounts of the movement. For example, local African American and White women often made sure SNCC volunteers were housed and fed. Such participation was necessary for the movement to survive. Other women served as what sociologist Belinda Robnett called “bridge leaders.” Robnett found that civil rights organizers often relied on women to serve as a bridge between the movement and local people, who were often suspicious of outsiders and scared to risk their jobs and lives. While both men and women were bridge leaders, this type of work, not traditionally thought of as leadership, was a main route of leadership open to women. White women were also active in SNCC. Jane Stembridge, a White woman from the South, organized SNCC’s central office in Atlanta. Casey Hayden, Mary King, and Penny Patch, young White college women, became important members of SNCC. Eventually, White women were more likely to voice frustration with the fact that societal gender norms were replicated in the movement. Some African American women, however, later reflected that they were treated equally or that they felt the movement was a time to let African American men take the lead. Tensions regarding gender and race in SNCC came to the surface during 1964’s “Freedom Summer.” Frustrated with the federal government’s reluctance to intervene in Mississippi, SNCC decided to launch Freedom Summer. Freedom Summer brought
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privileged White college students to Mississippi to spend the summer helping with African American voter registration, teaching in Freedom Schools, and running community centers. SNCC’s hope was that they would force federal intervention in Mississippi, assuming that the government would pay attention to violence against the children of wealthy White families. SNCC was right. The project was successful in forcing the federal government’s attention, although it came with a cost of human lives. Scholars have paid significant attention to the ways gender and race mattered during Freedom Summer. Freedom Summer volunteers’ job assignments were often distributed in accord with gender norms, and some White women were frustrated that they did not get the more dangerous assignments. However, SNCC knew that having White women interact with local African American men in voter registration drives would ignite the anger of local Whites, who found any form of intimacy between African American men and White women to be the ultimate taboo. Despite the fact that sexism did exist in the project, women were central leaders in the Mississippi movement. Women played invaluable roles in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), an alternative political party created to challenge the allWhite Democratic delegation to the 1964 National Democratic Convention. When the MFDP traveled to the Atlantic City convention in 1964 and was offered a symbolic gesture of two at-large seats as a compromise, Fannie Lou Hamer spoke on behalf of her fellow African American Mississippians when she refused to accept what established civil rights leaders said was a good offer. Hamer led the MFDP back to Mississippi, where she, Victoria Gray, and Annie Devine ran for political office on a slate of freedom candidates. Not long after the convention, SNCC disintegrated. While some wanted to continue the path of nonviolent direct action, others advocated a more radical approach, signaling the emergence of the Black Power Movement of the late 1960s. While scholars have shown that sexism did exist in the Civil Rights Movement, they have also acknowledged that women were empowered by their activism and were often leaders in ways not recognized by traditional scholarship. With a new consciousness about civil rights and inequality, women activists went on to participate in other social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Many women became very active in the women’s movement, having learned the lessons of
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movement organizing and leadership in the Civil Rights Movement. Jenny Irons See also African Americans; Black Power; Civil Rights Movement; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Parks, Rosa; Segregation; Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Further Readings
Collier-Thomas, Bettye and V. P. Franklin. 2001. Sisters in the Struggle: African-American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement. New York: New York University Press. Crawford, Vicki L., Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods, eds. 1990. Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941–1965. Brooklyn, NY: Carlson. McAdam, Doug. 1988. Freedom Summer. New York: Oxford University Press. Olson, Lynne. 2001. Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970. New York: Scribner. Robnett, Belinda. 1997. How Long? How Long? AfricanAmerican Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights. New York: Oxford University Press.
CODE
OF THE
STREET
The code of the street, a term coined by sociologist Elijah Anderson, refers to a hypothesized set of informal rules and expectations that dictate interpersonal behavior among urban residents. Individuals in urban settings must display a propensity to engage in and employ violence when necessary, according to this theory. This amounts to becoming physically aggressive or simply appearing as if one will become aggressive in order to deter an altercation. Anderson said that this particular form of presentation of self is a cultural adaptation to the structural constraints of urban settings, specifically, high unemployment; inadequate schools; high rates of crime, including the proliferation of illegal drugs; and an unreliable and racially biased police force. Together, these factors leave many urban residents alienated, angry, and hopeless; consequently, Anderson
said, adhering to the defense mechanism of the code of the street is a way of successfully negotiating their sometimes dangerous environments. This concept is important because it gives social scientists a framework for understanding the actions of disaffected urban residents and for creating social policies that target and eventually help them.
Structural Factors Multiple scholars have detailed the drastic structural changes that occurred in urban cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The high-paying and low-skilled manufacturing jobs present in the 1950s and early 1960s moved offshore to other countries, such as Mexico or India, where cheaper labor was available. Service sector jobs that required postsecondary degrees were available, yet many minorities in inner-city areas did not have access to these types of jobs because of the low percentage who attended or graduated from college. Subsequently, high rates of unemployment occurred. In addition, this was a time of “White flight” and an exodus of Black middle-class individuals to the suburbs. When these two groups left, scholars say, they took with them the necessary capital to maintain these communities and create adequate-to-superior school systems. As property values decreased, school systems declined in quality, ill-equipped to give students the requisite skills for the new service sector economy. Also, major urban services, such as sewer maintenance and garbage removal, which were readily and consistently performed with the presence of middle-class Blacks and Whites, became inconsistent or nonexistent without them, according to the findings in this research. Moreover, according to some scholars, lower- and working-class Blacks lost their role models with the exit of middle-class Blacks. Quite literally, inner-city residents were abandoned. The loss of the middle class and of manufacturing jobs crippled urban areas, but what replaced them was worse. Due to the dire conditions in inner cities, scholars argue, some residents turned to illegal activities, such as drug selling, to make money. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a large explosion of drugs, particularly the addictive, potent, and mind-altering drug crack cocaine. After individuals become hooked on such drugs, they develop dysfunctional and pathological behaviors in order to maintain their “high.” Thus, studies show increasing rates of crimes, such as theft,
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assault, and murder, among other illegal activities, resulting from drug abuse. These criminal activities create fragile communities with volatile relationships between residents. Moreover, many studies have found that underrepresented minorities who live in city neighborhoods believe that police are unresponsive or indifferent to the concerns of innocent bystanders. Instead, many city dwellers think that police officers uniformly treat minorities as criminals because they live in ghettos or substandard communities. According to this thinking, police officers cannot differentiate between “decent” individuals, those who adhere to mainstream norms and values, and “street” individuals, those who rebuke mainstream norms and instead possess oppositional cultural beliefs. Furthermore, some research has found that employers exhibited bias when hiring or firing for entry-level jobs—minorities were the last ones hired but the first ones fired. As a result of the aforementioned structural factors, scholars say, many residents, both “street” and “decent,” were forced to adapt to the new environment; that is, they created and abided by a “street etiquette,” or a way of handling themselves in public environments.
Cultural Response One of the greatest fears of urban inhabitants is that they will become victims of crime, especially in public settings. Yet many residents believe that due to high crime, open areas—the streets—have become danger zones. According to the code of the street theory, possessing knowledge of street etiquette helps urban residents successfully navigate their social environments by preventing potentially dangerous assaults. The primary component of the code of the street stipulates that an individual must not be disrespected, or “dissed.” Disrespect occurs when a person is not granted deference or a person’s manhood or womanhood is verbally or physically challenged and ultimately his or her character is maligned or belittled. Examples of verbal disrespect include calling someone a derogatory term that essentially emasculates, such as “punk” or “bitch.” Specific examples of physical disrespect include being punched, pushed, kicked, or slapped, among other acts. There are several reasons why one should not be disrespected, the most obvious being that physical attacks can cause severe bodily harm, resulting in hospitalization or death. The second and more subtle reason is the potential of becoming “marked”; specifically,
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once a person is disrespected and does not respond in kind in a public setting, where other residents can view what takes place, he or she becomes defined by the outcome of the interaction. For example, if a person is beaten up, the code says, he or she is defined as “weak” and may continually be physically challenged in social settings. The same reasoning is said to apply to verbal insults: If a person does not respond, he or she will continually be insulted. Thus, whereas middle- or upper-class individuals might suggest that someone simply walk away from the encounter or call the police, the code of the street says this is not a viable option because of the supposed message it conveys to others—“I am weak”—as well as the possibility of an unresponsive police force. According to Anderson, the majority of urban residents understand the consequences of the code of the street, and thus they follow it when challenged. Following this reasoning, when faced with the threat of disrespect, inhabitants present themselves in a manner that conveys to their potential assailants that they will engage in any behavior necessary to forestall disrespect, whatever form it may entail. Hence, if someone is verbally insulted, the appropriate response is to retaliate with, if possible, a more demeaning insult. If someone is punched, the code requires that the response be more severe than the initial assault. Ironically, appearing as if one will employ violence, in many cases, creates and maintains peace. Indeed, extending Anderson’s analysis, abiding by the code can create stability in urban communities. According to this view of urban life, those who do not comprehend or adhere to the code, for example, suburbanites, potentially place themselves in harm’s way when visiting the inner city. For example, actions such as prolonged staring at another person or asking for directions may invite confrontation, resulting in assault. Urban residents may believe that suburbanites or other nonresidents will have the protection of the area police force to resolve any problems they face as well as the economic resources to replace any jewelry or money stolen in a robbery. By this reasoning, such outsiders will not return to urban neighborhoods because of their bad experience and thus will not face the continued threat. It is imperative to understand the code of the street as a creation and response to structural constraints in inner cities, which provide a context for the violence that takes place there. Inner cities and their residents are not operating under a state of anomie, according to this perspective, and to characterize these areas as
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chaotic and disorderly misses the larger societal problems that many inner-city residents face. The dangers are in part due to the lack of opportunities, creating a situation where some residents prey upon one another. Thus, for the purpose of survival, many individuals, particularly those who hold mainstream values and beliefs, must follow the code of the street. The strength of this concept is that it debunks the notion of monolithic low-income ghetto communities of individuals who hold similar, dysfunctional values and beliefs; rather, both “street” and “decent” people are forced to enact the code for their personal safety. Matthew Oware See also Drug Use; Ghetto; Homicide; Racial Profiling; White Flight; Wilson, William Julius
Further Readings
Anderson, Elijah. 1990. Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Anderson, Elijah. 1999. Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York: Norton. Kirschenman, Joleen and Kathryn Neckerman. 1991. “‘We’d Love to Hire Them, but . . . ’: The Meaning of Race for Employers.” Pp. 203–232 in The Urban Underclass, edited by C. Jencks and P. E. Peterson. Washington, DC: Brookings. Wilson, William J. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, William J. 1996. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Vintage Books.
COLLINS, PATRICIA HILL (1948– ) Patricia Hill Collins is a social and standpoint theorist. Her scholarly work has examined issues of race, gender, social class, sexuality, and nation. In 1990, Collins published her first book, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. In this seminal work, she sought to provide a theoretical framework that espouses Black women’s standpoint. She makes three central claims regarding Black women: (1) Intersectionality characterizes the oppressions of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation; (2) outsider definitions of Black
women have pervaded notions of Black womanhood; and (3) Black women’s worldviews shape their selfdefinition and must necessarily work toward social justice. Collins constructs Black feminist thought as critical social theory that reflects the distinctive themes of African American women’s experiences: work, family, sexual politics, motherhood, and political activism. This paradigm aims to empower African American women within the context of social injustice sustained by intersecting oppressions and the dialectical relationship between oppression and activism and to link their diverse experiences and ideas to similar challenges with collective recognition of differential group treatment. Collins points out the connective thread and dialogical relationship between collective experience and group knowledge/standpoint and the integral contributions of African American women intellectuals to account for, validate, distinguish, and exalt the experiences of Black women. Historically, Black feminist thought has been enacted through collective social activism. The articulation of Black women’s consciousness is expressed creatively through the lived experience of their everyday lives. Black women have a particular niche within U.S. social relations in that they navigate within and among multiple intersecting oppressions. Embodied in a history of slavery, civil rights, patriarchy, and sexual politics, these oppressions inform Black women’s consciousness and identities, both individually and collectively. In her other works, such as, “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought” (1986) and Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice (1998), Collins described Black feminist conceptions of Black women as the “outsider within” and the significance of self-definition toward social justice praxis. In this way, Collins has been noted as a standpoint theorist in linking Black feminist thought to the outsider within position. In Fighting Words, she further expounded on the importance of Black women’s selfdefinition toward advancing their sense of worth and fostering resistance to oppressions that result from internalized oppression and the overarching matrix of domination. Collins’s conception of intersectionality evolved out of the individual’s lived experience of negotiating the complexities of social power, as well as the inequalities of race, gender, class, sexuality, geosocial location, and age. Intersectionality aims to facilitate
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analysis at multiple system levels: individually, culturally, and institutionally. The individual can occupy multiple status positions within these systems or even simultaneously occupy spaces of privilege and domination. The resulting power differentials are a consequence of the matrix of domination. This concept of the matrix of domination evokes consciousness around two conflicting epistemologies: one representative of White male interests and the other expressing Black feminist concerns. Conceptualized together, the concepts prove to be useful tools in examining domains of oppression. Collins believes that an intersectional examination of the relations of power is essential to the work of social activists who hope to oppose systems of racial, patriarchal, and class oppression. According to Collins, it is through social activism that Black women gain collective momentum, power, and influence by finding strength in the utility of the interrelational power of the collective. These woman-centered spaces synergistically move toward pointed resistance to institutional oppression, as well. In her more recent works, Black Sexual Politics (2004) and From Black Power to Hip-Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism (2006), Collins used intersectional analysis to address issues that serve to dismantle relationships between Black men and women, and, subsequently, within the Black community. In Black Sexual Politics, she focused a critical lens on the dynamics of race, gender, and sexuality in the Black community. In From Black Power to Hip-Hop, she examined the relationship of Black Nationalism, racism, and feminism on young Black women in the hip-hop generation today. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Collins obtained a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Brandeis University in 1969 and a master of arts degree in teaching from Harvard University in 1970. After teaching for several years in Boston, she became director of the African American Center at Tufts University. In 1984, she completed her doctorate in sociology at Brandeis University. Currently, Collins is a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She was formerly head of the Department of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where she remains the Charles Phelps Taft Emeritus Professor of Sociology. Shaconna Marie Haley See also Feminism; Feminism, Black; Gender and Race, Intersection of; hooks, bell
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Further Readings
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1986. “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought.” Social Problems 33(6):14–32. Collins, Patricia Hill. 1998. Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2004. Black Sexual Politics: AfricanAmericans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2006. From Black Power to Hip-Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43:1241–1299. Johnson, Alan G. 2001. Power, Privilege, and Difference. Oakland, CA: Mayfield. Weber, Lynn. 2001. Understanding Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality: A Conceptual Framework. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
COLOMBIA Colombia is a South American country with an estimated 2007 population of 46.2 million people and is full of history and diversity. Bordered by Panama to the north; Venezuela to the east; and Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil to the south, Colombia sits as the active portal into South America. Two major rivers, the jungle, the Caribbean Sea, and the Andes Mountains provide a lush habitat for its citizens. With thirty-two states, one capital district, and roughly 43.5 million people, Colombia maintains the highest concentration of Spanish speakers next to Mexico. The results of civil war and strife, however, have displaced around 1.5 to 3 million citizens of the country to places like Argentina, Panama, and the United States. This phenomenon places Colombia with the highest number of internally displaced persons after those of Sudan in Africa. At the time of Colombia’s colonialization, Spain was engrossed with other aspects of its empire, and, as a result, very little is known about the ethnic makeup of the original residents. What is known is that there were approximately eight linguistic groups of Native Americans living in the territory now known as Colombia. Many indicators point to the fact that they
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Nicaragua Costa Rica
Venezuela
Panama
Colombia
Guyana Suriname French Guiana
Ecuador
Peru Brazil
Bolivia
Pacific Ocean
Paraguay
Chile
Argentina
Uruguay
Atlantic Ocean
Falkland Is Tierra del Fuego South Georgia & the South Sandwich Is
were most likely hunters and trappers, like the Arakwaks or Caribs. Although there was no ancient metropolis to conquer, as was the case with the Inca (except at Nariño), the Maya, and the Aztec, the settlers did find the Chibchas of the Andes highlands sufficiently numerous and technologically advanced to force them into labor. The Chibchas were wealthy in agricultural prowess and knowledge of the creation and maintenance of small structures. African slaves were purchased and used in areas where the indigenous populations were sparse or underdeveloped. The viceroyalties at Lima and Mexico City were much more of a focal point of Spanish activity in 1533, when Cartagena was settled on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Little was known of the indigenous populations living in the Amazon Basin, as gold bullion and the transport of goods were the major reason for Spanish settlement in the area. Eventually, Bogatá was established toward the center of the territory to facilitate shipments of bullion between the coast and Lima. By 1717, there was sufficient trade in Bogatá to become independent of the Peruvian viceroyalty. The area was named Nueva Granada. Although in many countries the road to independence was paved by dissent and conflict, Colombia’s independence was a result of the Creole elite (Spanish descendants born in the New World) wanting greater control of the land.
Colombia is truly diverse, with Africans (4%), Europeans (20%), Indigenous (1%), Mestizo (European Indigenous, 58%), Mulatto (African European, 14%), Zambo (Indigenous African, 3%), and various mixtures. Considering this level of intermingling, it becomes difficult to derive accurate percentages in demographic analysis. The Colombian census, nevertheless, attempts to come to such a conclusion. Differences within the population are generally attributed to regional differences. Dress, food, art, dance, literature, and other indicators of culture are not as ethnically motivated in Colombia as they are in other countries. The idea of intermingling the races into one national identity has been successful on some fronts. There are not many purely indigenous inhabitants of Colombia as a result of this effort, for example. Government statistics indicate that there remain roughly 400,000 (2.5%) indigenous inhabitants in Colombia, the majority of them having been absorbed by the Mestizo and Zambo populations. The racial composition of Colombia is on the surface no different from that of other colonialized countries. Yet under the surface, one finds that the racial lines that divide Colombia are not as clear. An interesting factor deals with cultural relevance. Some natives of the Andes mountains, for example, are clearly indigenous descendants, yet dress in the style of the general population and speak Spanish rather than an indigenous language. This phenomenon is clearly distinct from other indigenous populations of the Andes Mountains in other countries. World War II brought many European refugees to Colombia, mainly Germans, Italians, and French, and although there is a higher amount of racial mixing than in other colonial countries, the difference in race becomes clear again in terms of class and economics. In Colombia, class is more important than race, yet there is a strong connection between the two. Generally speaking, those with access to employment, education, and resources necessary to become successful in the Colombian economy are White, while the working class and impoverished, those lacking education, tend to be people of color. This, of course, generates a huge disparity in employment and business opportunities for certain groups. C. Centae Richards See Appendix A See also Caribbean; Central Americans in the United States; Colonialism; Diaspora; Latin America, Indigenous People; Native Americans
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Further Readings
Dix, R. 1887. The Politics of Colombia. New York: Praeger. Kline, H. F. 1983. Colombia: Portrait of Unity and Diversity. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Washabaugh, W. 2001. “Music, Race, and Nation: Musica Tropical in Colombia.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7:620.
COLONIALISM Colonialism is the expansion of a sovereign nation to other territories and sovereign nations. The colonizing nations exercise administrative, political, cultural, military, and socioeconomic power over the indigenous population in the colonized lands. Colonialism is a system of domination and value based on the belief that the subjugated people are inferior to the colonizers. The development of the European colonial project since the 16th century coincided with the development of the concept of racism and ethnocentrism, as well as the theory of Social Darwinism. These concepts and theories were used to justify White European domination over non-White European populations. In the 1960s, former African colonies gained independence from the colonial empires, such as Britain, France, and Germany. While the majority of the nations in the world have become independent today, these previous colonized countries continue to experience the historical legacy of colonialism and imperialism. Colonialism is often used interchangeably with imperialism; however, there are some differences. The term colony comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning “farmer.” While colonialism involves the command of one sovereign nation over others, it also indicates the transfer of the colonizing population to the colonies. The transferred populations are settlers in the colonies and exploit the land, resources, and labor of the colonized. The most extreme measure of the colonization process involves the extermination of the indigenous population, such as the Native Americans by the British empire. The word imperialism comes from the Latin word imperium, which means “command.” Therefore, imperialism means the domination of one sovereign nation over another. It may not involve the implantation of a colonizing population. In some ways, colonialism is under the rubric of imperialism. Since the beginning of the European colonial project in the 15th and 16th centuries, the legitimacy of
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colonization has been debated. The height of the domination of European empires coincided with the development of the Enlightenment tradition. The Enlightenment tradition emphasized the importance of universalism and quality, yet political philosophers at the time also defended the legitimacy of colonialism. The argument lay in the necessity to Christianize the colonized populations. In other words, the legitimacy was based on the argument that the European empires carry the Christian mission to civilize the “uncivilized” and the “barbaric.” This involves the imposition of culture and ideology on people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds by White European Christians. This civilizing mission constitutes the central principle in the development of the European colonial project. The colonization process intensified in the 18th and 19th centuries, but it is important to note that colonialism existed in ancient times. For example, the Greeks, Romans, and Ottomans all established colonies. These ancient empires extended their impact beyond their sovereign territories. Since the 16th century, with technological developments, the colonization process grew stronger. At this time, nations in Europe started to establish colonies in Australia, the Americas, Africa, and Asia and succeeded in subjugating indigenous populations in many parts of the world. European colonialism and imperial projects started in the 15th and 16th centuries, with Portugal’s occupation of Ceuta and the Spanish conquest of the Americas and the coasts of Africa, India, and East Asia. England, France, and the Netherlands established their colonies in the 17th century. These European nations competed with one another for colonies. The first era of decolonization did not happen until the end of the 18th century. The industrialization of the 19th century accelerated the colonization process. After World War II, the second era of the decolonization process started, culminating in the liberation of African nations from the previous colonial powers. Even though most colonial countries have been liberated, the legacy of colonialism continues to affect them. People term this phenomenon neocolonialism. U.S. foreign policy can be seen as a good example of neocolonialism. For example, the United States has intervened in the domestic politics of and invaded various countries in Latin America, such as Chile, Panama, and Grenada. In particular, the United States also exercised influence through international monetary
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institutions, military threat, and strategic investment. Some see Puerto Rico as a colony of the United States. Postcolonialism, similar to neocolonialism, refers to the historical legacy of colonialism. It is a theory in philosophy, literature, and film that deals with the impact of colonialism. Edward Said’s Orientalism is considered the foundational and seminal work of postcolonialism. Said brought attention to the predicament of former colonies in reconciling their colonial pasts. Postcolonialism appeared in the context of the decolonization process in the second half of the 20th century. There have been a lot of debates concerning postcolonialism. Postcolonialism theorists have pointed out that colonized nations continue to be under the influence of colonialism even though the nations may have gained independence. In that sense, it is similar to the phenomenon of neocolonialism. Neocolonialism continues to affect global politics and perpetuate the subjugation of people of various races and religions. With the intensification of the globalization process, colonial power continues to be firmly rooted in the former colonies. Shu-Ju Ada Cheng See also Australia, Indigenous People; Canada, First Nations; Citizenship; Diaspora; Ethnocentrism; Fanon, Frantz; Globalization; Immigration and Race; Internal Colonialism; Latin America, Indigenous People; Racism; Transnational People
Further Readings
Cooper, Frederick. 2005. Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, and History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Said, Edward. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books. Young, Robert J. C. 2001. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
COLONIAS The term colonia is often used in the Spanish language to describe a community or neighborhood. Along the 2,000-mile U.S.–Mexico border, hundreds of colonias are home to thousands of the working poor in the United States. Although some diversity
can be found in these communities, the preponderance of the colonia residents are of Mexican descent, which allows these enclaves to nurture Mexican culture, traditions, practices, and beliefs. While some have existed for more than 100 years, efforts to improve the environment of colonias and the lives of their residents have come only recently, and they are rather limited. In 1990, the United States set forth an official definition for colonias in Section 916 of the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act (NAHA) as a preliminary to providing a limited amount of aid. In this federal legislation, colonias are defined as identifiable communities in the U.S.–Mexico border region (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California), lacking potable water supply, adequate sewage systems, and decent, safe, and sanitary housing. Colonias are within 150 miles of the U.S.–Mexico border, must be designated by the state or county where they are located, and must have been generally recognized as a colonia prior to October 1990. If a colonia meets these guidelines, it is eligible to apply for funds that have been earmarked by the government for infrastructure improvements in colonias. This entry summarizes the history of colonias and examines life in these poor communities and efforts to improve the situation.
Community History Colonias are not a new phenomenon; they have physically been in existence for many years. In Arizona, some colonia residents can trace ancestors living in the community as far back as the mid-1800s. Many colonias date back to the 1940s and 1950s, with a boost in numbers in the 1960s after the Bracero Program was halted. While the Bracero Program was in existence, between 1942 and 1964, the U.S. government invited an estimated 5 million laborers from Mexico to come into the country to work. When the program was stopped, in accordance with Public Law 40, braceros were supposed to return to Mexico. In reality, the cessation of the program by congressional declaration did not stop the need for laborers, so many braceros stayed and worked in the United States, albeit illegally. They settled down wherever they could find affordable land to build, and, eventually, their families joined them. Today, by conservative estimates, colonia residents across the four states exceed 1 million, and approximately 65% of them are legal U.S. citizens.
Colo onia as
Often, the land where colonias grew up was affordable because it was located in the floodplains and not usable for farming. Land developers seized the opportunity and began to subdivide these plots of land to fill the need for low-income housing. Also known as “irregular settlements” or “quasi-formal homestead” subdivisions, colonias are predominantly found in rural, unincorporated areas, beyond city limits. The fact that this land is outside of taxable servicing perimeters enables land developers to sell it at cheaper rates. Residents, however, face the obvious disadvantage that there may be no water, no sewage or solid waste disposal, no paved roads, and no building codes to ensure safety in the construction of homes.
as Life in Colonia Whether it is due to lack of education, lack of marketable skills, or failure of retirement checks to stretch as needed, the annual income of typical colonia residents precludes them from purchasing a home through conventional means, so land developers sell them land through contract for deed negotiations. A contract for deed allows for smaller payments, but ownership of the land remains with the seller until the full amount of the contract is paid. This creates two significant problems for colonia residents: If at any time they miss a payment or cannot come up with the full amount, the developer can take the land back, and since the property remains in the name of the developer, the residents cannot take out loans to make home improvements. The types of homes found in colonias are varied, ranging from prefabricated homes to mobile homes, trailers, campers, and shacks. Homes are often built by the owner, and, frequently, a family will live in a camper or trailer while the permanent dwelling is being constructed on the same lot. This process may take years, since owners build in their spare time and sometimes can buy materials only seasonally, as income allows. When something in the house breaks down, due to lack of money or inaccessibility, makeshift repairs must often suffice, which leads to dilapidation. Generally speaking, colonia residents in all four states are living at less than poverty-level incomes due to low educational levels, intermittency of seasonal work, and lack of skills. Low-income levels force them to seek alternate options to housing, water supplies, sewage disposal, and numerous other amenities that most Americans take for granted. They rely on
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septic tanks, cesspools, or outhouses for sewage disposal; water is transported and stored in containers; and roads are unpaved and devoid of the convenience and safety of streetlights. The absence of paved roads makes passage impossible if rains are heavy and leaves colonia residents at a disadvantage if a fire or need for medical assistance emerges. Alternate options often contribute to an unsafe and unsanitary environment that leads to poor quality of life for colonia residents.
Addressing the Problems Over the years, legislative efforts have attempted to curb the growth of colonias, as well as address some of the many issues that plague residents. In 1995, Texas legislators passed Texas House Bill 1001, making it illegal for land developers to resell smaller parcels of land without installing an infrastructure. Also in 1995, Senate Bill 336 curtailed selling land through contract for deed negotiations. Within the 1990 CranstonGonzalez affordable-housing legislation, each of the four states along the border is required to set aside up to 10% of their Community Development Block Grant money annually for colonia improvements. Nonprofit agencies have also intervened to bring multiple colonia families together to provide the labor or sweat equity necessary to build a house for each family involved. By investing their own labor, the cost of the home is reduced significantly, and if repairs are necessary in the future, the homeowner will have the skills to complete them since he or she built the house in the first place. This program has the capacity to build not only homes but also communities. In addition, more colonias are developing organized decision-making bodies, which make it easier for residents to seek assistance. In some cases, this occurs because the colonia has grown over the years and the residents have organized sufficiently to command change. In other cases, as in Arizona, communities are already incorporated when they seek the colonia designation, making them eligible for funding to make improvements. The issues are numerous, and much help is needed to alleviate the conditions that are experienced by the hardworking residents of the colonias. Alma Alvarez-Smith See also Barrio; Borderlands; Bracero Program; Ethnic Enclaves, Economic Impact of; Immigrant Communities; Mexican Americans
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Further Readings
Bath, C. Richard, Janet M. Tanski, and Roberto E. Villarreal. 1998. “The Failure to Provide Basic Services to the Colonias of El Paso County: A Case of Environmental Racism?” Pp. 125–137 in Environmental Injustices, Political Struggles: Race, Class, and the Environment, edited by D. E. Camacho. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lorey, David E. 1999. The U.S.-Mexican Border in the Twentieth Century. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. Ward, Peter M. 1999. Colonias and Public Policy in Texas and Mexico: Urbanization by Stealth. Houston: University of Texas Press.
COLOR BLINDNESS The term color blindness expresses the ideal of a nonracial society wherein skin color is of no consequence for individual life chances or governmental policy. Central tenets of color blindness include nondiscrimination, due process, equality of opportunity, and equal protection of rights under the law. Although the ideal predates the mid-20th century, discourse on color-blindness grew in salience in the 1950s and 1960s in the context of the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and antiracist movements abroad. Color blindness stands in opposition to color consciousness and its historical associations with ideologies and practices of segregation and discrimination. While most people agree on these values, there is considerable disagreement on whether such a society has been achieved and on what this should mean for public policy. On one hand are those who argue that changes in the law in recent decades have produced a color-blind society, one wherein equal protection of the laws is enforced and equal opportunity for all citizens is embraced, regardless of race. They assert that individuals should be judged on the basis of the “content of their character,” not skin color, as in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s wellknown formulation. Any further use of color-conscious policy may be a new form of racism, they say. Others argue that it is premature to declare the achievement of a color-blind society, pointing to considerable evidence of continuing inequities organized around race and ethnicity. According to this perspective, the notion of color blindness serves to paper over continuing inequalities and to foreclose color-conscious policy approaches that are needed in order to act
against racial hierarchy. Thus, the seeming normative consensus around color blindness hides a more messy terrain of struggle over how to interpret its meaning. Both viewpoints are briefly explored in this entry.
Mission Accomplished In the post–civil rights era, commitment to the ideal of color blindness has facilitated the removal of barriers that had for generations blocked the entry of racial minorities into the mainstream economy and society. Legislatures and courts have employed the color-blind ideal to strike down the formal edifice of segregation and eradicate the most blatant manifestations of racial discrimination. In the United States, evidence suggests that public opinion overwhelmingly supports nondiscrimination and the ideal of racial equality, although favorable opinion on the part of Whites tends to waver over the appropriate political measures to pursue or defend the ideal. Many African Americans also profess commitment to color blindness, but they are more prone to support government race-conscious efforts to achieve racial equality (such as affirmative action or school busing). Moreover, media advertisements, music videos, television, and other sites of popular culture are dominated by multiracial images of friendship and tolerance that celebrate the color-blind society. The ubiquity of support for the color-blind ideal has rendered illegitimate the denial of citizenship rights to people of color that was dominant just a half century ago. Much internal debate exists, however, with regard to the precise meaning of color blindness and its implications for government policymaking. Some, especially the right wing of the political spectrum, argue that enforcement of nondiscrimination makes the playing field level and so represents the limit of state action. Any measure that violates the color-blind ideal, such as the color-conscious pursuit of poverty alleviation or employment opportunities, for example, represents illiberal race preferences or even “reverse racism,” they argue. Departure from the color-blind ideal is thought to promote racial divisiveness, inflict fresh harms on Whites (by denying equal protection of the laws), and stigmatize beneficiaries of colorconscious remedies such as affirmative action. Since the opportunity structure is formally open and fair, many believe that persistent racial gaps in outcome in areas such as education and employment are due to in-group factors within communities of
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color themselves or simply to personal deficits of merit. Successful Black individuals such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas are celebrated as evidence that merit is rewarded in color-blind fashion. According to this perspective, for government to mandate the achievement of equal outcome rather than simply guarantee equal opportunity would be not only misguided and destructive but also racist. Such thinking has translated into high-profile successes such as the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI, or Proposition 209) in the United States banning affirmative action in that state, as well as new and as yet unsuccessful efforts to ban the collection of racial statistics (Proposition 54). Many countries, such as Britain and France, do not collect racial statistics at all in an effort to maintain strict adherence to color blindness, a stance hotly debated for the consequent difficulties encountered in effectively tailoring antiracist measures. Strict advocacy of color blindness also fuels attacks on the so-called race relations industry in many western European countries for itself causing racial divisiveness and hostility. Violation of the color-blind ideal (i.e., antiracism), rather than racism, becomes the target for concern on the part of conservatives worldwide who believe that equal opportunity legislation has created a postracist world.
A Barrier to Progress A contrasting perspective situated on the progressive end of the political spectrum holds that while the core values of color-blind ideology are sound, the realities of persistent racial legacies and continuing patterns of racial inequality demand color-conscious measures as a means by which to combat racism. Not only is it legitimate for government to implement these measures, colorconscious advocates argue, but not doing so results in the further entrenchment of patterns of racial privilege and disadvantage inherited from the racist past. Recent studies in sociology in particular have defined what is labeled a new form of laissez-faire or color-blind racism wherein abstract and formally raceneutral principles function to legitimize and defend the racially inegalitarian status quo. Most common are surveys of White racial attitudes and examination of the functions that color blindness serves for Whites in protecting the cumulative benefits of being White. Color blindness allows Whites to claim the moral high ground of being “beyond race” while forestalling further racial
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progress by denying the enduring significance and reality of racial inequality. In a context wherein almost all socioeconomic indicators point to persistent levels of inequality between the races (in employment, access to quality health care and education, income, and wealth), the willful blindness to race represents for these scholars an attempt to stall further transformation of the racial order in the direction of greater and more substantive equality. Although de jure segregation has already been eliminated with civil rights legislation, they believe government must continue to take an active role in eliminating barriers related to de facto segregation. While agreement is ubiquitous on the usefulness of color blindness in removing discriminatory barriers at the level of formal political and legal institutions, debate continues over the role and status of race in the post–civil rights era. Some new work is beginning to break out of the conservative-versus-liberal mold and chart new ground, most notably Paul Gilroy’s book Against Race, which cautions from the Left against the dangers of strategic color consciousness in terms of the impact it has on the promotion of essentialist racial identities. Amy E. Ansell See also Antiracist Education; Civil Rights Movement; Critical Race Theory; Discrimination, Unintentional; Intergroup Relations, Surveying; Racetalk; Reverse Discrimination; Whiteness Further Readings
Ansell, Amy. 1997. New Right, New Racism: Race and Reaction in the United States and Britain. New York: New York University Press. Ansell, Amy. 2006. “Casting a Blind Eye: The Ironic Consequences of Color-Blindness in South Africa and the United States.” Critical Sociology 32:333–356. Appiah, Kwame and Amy Gutmann. 1998. Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2003. Racism without Racists: ColorBlind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Brown, Michael K. et al. 2003. Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Carr, Leslie G. 1997. Color-Blind Racism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Gallagher, Charles. 2003. “Color-Blind Privilege: The Social and Political Functions of Erasing the Color Line in
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Post-race America.” Pp. 575–587 in Rethinking the Color Line: Readings in Race and Ethnicity, edited by C. Gallagher. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Gilroy, Paul. 2000. Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
COLOR LINE In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in the Souls of Black Folk that “the problem of the 20th century will be the problem of the color line.” The continued use of Du Bois’s quote in many texts reflects the persistence of the problem into the 21st century. The color line is not a simple concept with an easy definition. Instead, like race, the color line is both illusory and objective. It is ultimately a protector of power, identity, and community boundaries. The concept has been created around the idea that physical features reflect natural human differences and valuations. Through these ideologies and practices, the color line, central to society, has worked to maintain White privilege and power. In some ways, the color line is more fluid today than in years past; people of color are represented in almost all levels of institutional life, thus leading some to suggest that racism no longer exists. However, scholars have shown that while a few have made it, the color line remains a powerful mediator of life chances in the United States.
History of the Color Line The color line in the United States reflects a history of colonization, slavery, property rights, immigration codes, and myriad other legal and extralegal social arrangements. Race thinking developed in the United States around and through questions of citizenship and resource distribution. The history of U.S. immigration and citizenship reflects a system deeply embedded in the protection of White privilege and the denial of rights to people of color. Numerous legal and extralegal sanctions have been used to define and defend the color line by creating clear distinctions between people defined as White and all others. When the distinction seemed threatened, new sanctions were enforced, including penalizing those who challenged the color line with physical punishment, banishment, prison, enslavement, or death.
Moreover, ideologies and theories used to maintain the color line relied on religion, science, and the law. Slaveowners and those sympathetic to the slave system needed and sought out justifications for the brutal system they created, perpetuated, and benefited from. The justifications were made and then naturalized through the color line. Once in place, various theories could be drawn upon to justify injustice. The most prominent historical explanation has been the assumption that the color line is merely the reflection of genetic differences among humans, whether divinely granted or scientifically “proven”; the explanation supported the action, and the action supported the explanation. At the same time, those defined as “other” were also struggling to make sense of the racialized system. Under the brutality of slavery, Africans began to claim the color line as a way to demarcate friend from foe, and thus the color line was used on both sides, albeit for different reasons and with differing outcomes. Whites protected the color line to maintain power; Blacks protected the line for solidarity in the struggle for liberation from White domination. Skin color and physical features have historically been used to identify and locate people on one side or the other of the color line. Little room was left for ambiguity. Under slavery, many slave women faced rape and coerced sex. The outcome meant generations of slaves who appeared less African and more European. Contrary to existing patriarchal rules, children remained with the mother, as slaves. Eventually, some slave children began to appear to be White. Because the slave system was upheld ideologically on the basis that physical differences reflect other inherent human qualities and values, slaves who appeared to be White could undermine the structure of the system. The color line had to somehow be reconstructed to maintain a system of White supremacy; thus, various versions of the “one-drop rule,” that even “one drop” of Black ancestry defines a person as Black, were adopted and antimiscegenation laws enforced. The codified versions were aimed at curbing the inheritance of property by Blacks. At stake in the defining of the color line, then, was the building of private property ownership and wealth. In a capitalist economy, in which private property is a cornerstone of wealth and privilege, the ideology and practice protected advantages for those defined as White. In other words, because property could be held and inherited by Whites only and property ownership was required for full citizenship, those
Color Line
defined as Black were denied the right to own property and could not become citizens. Through these practices, “whiteness” and “Americanness” became closely aligned. In an 1883 speech to the National Convention of Colored Men, Frederick Douglass noted that for Blacks, the color line mattered for all aspects of their survival in the United States and ultimately worked to “shut out” African Americans’ chances for a better life. According to this view, the delineation was used by Whites to protect them, by providing a clear definition of who would have access to resources and who would be denied. The legacy of the color line can be clearly traced today in the housing market, educational institutions, and the economy.
Contemporary Color Line The color line continues to be held in place through individual and institutional practices, even as African Americans and other people of color are achieving prestige and wealth. The housing market continues to reflect the legacy of exclusionary and racist practices, such that the most desirable housing is disproportionately controlled by Whites. The social implications of this legacy reach beyond the housing market, since typically the funding for the public educational system depends heavily upon property taxes. In the context of a global economy in which students are defined as human capital, less money is invested in inner cities (another line demarcating Whites and people of color), and more money is funneled to predominantly White suburbs. The children growing up in predominantly White areas will graduate with a better opportunity to compete for higher education and the shrinking number of good jobs. In this light, the color line is quite clear. On an individual level, much effort is expended to maintain the color line around which individuals build a sense of identity and community. Michael Omi and Howard Winant have noted that without a racial identity, people risk having no identity at all in a society in which the color line is of central importance. From birth, individuals are assigned to a particular racial category. As they grow, they learn about themselves as racialized beings through their lived experiences in every social institution, including family, school, sports, politics, the economy, media, and religion. Scholars suggest that once individuals learn about themselves as racialized beings, they internalize the
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color line and begin to police their own behaviors, thoughts, and dreams, and they begin to police others. This work has been called “border patrolling.” Border patrolling occurs when a person (or persons) believes that racial categories are both natural and static and that “authentic” racial beings do and should inhabit these categories. In other words, they assume racial categories and the color line are easily defined and worthy of upholding. When they “detect” a possible breach of the color line, they begin a process of questioning the individual or individuals assumed to be crossing the line. The patrolling takes place on all sides of the color line, and behaviors, clothes, hairstyles, speech patterns, vernacular, musical tastes, street addresses, goals, and friendship circles are areas that are policed—each scrutinized for a pattern of racial authenticity or inauthenticity. On the level of daily experience, all individuals live with border patrolling. For most individuals, the color line has been internalized, and self-policing follows. However, a growing number of self-consciously defined multiracial families are challenging traditional ideas. Moreover, definitions of who is White are also shifting, such that light-skinned (and especially multiracial) Latinos and Asians are now often accepted as White and may even claim a White identity. These shifts are taking place in the context of a post–civil rights, color-blind era, in which the myth of meritocracy is maintained as reality and the idea of racial injustice is mythologized. The shift to colorblind ideologies began in earnest in the early 1980s in response to the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. Some suggested that the color line would disappear if society stopped theorizing, legislating, and talking about race—race mattered because people made it matter. Others suggested that race-based legislation was unjust in a society in which individuals should be judged on merit. In this context, race-based legislation was constructed as discriminatory against Whites. Unfortunately, in the context of a society in which the color line continues to work to White advantage and is reproduced through institutional mechanisms, a move toward color blindness actually works to strengthen the color line to White advantage. In the end, the color line remains both an illusion—a human creation—and an objective reality: Whites maintain power and privilege. Recently, many have questioned the construction of the color line in Black-White terms. Indeed, the color line is drawn in myriad ways, affecting other
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Community Cohesion
people of color, and has specific histories such as the Bracero Program, the Trail of Tears, the Japanese Internment, the Chinese Exclusion Acts, and the Patriot Act. In each case, the color line can be seen to work to protect the privileged.
established in the British Home Office in 2002, and advice has been issued to local authorities on the implementation of community cohesion initiatives. This entry looks at the concept and its application in Great Britain.
Heather M. Dalmage
Describing the Concept See also African Americans; Border Patrol; Color Blindness; Discrimination, Housing; Institutional Discrimination; Marginalization; One-Drop Rule; Racial Formation; Segregation; White Privilege
Further Readings
Brunsma, David L., ed. 2006. Mixed Messages: Multiracial Identities in a Color Blind Era. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Dalmage, Heather. 2000. Tripping on the Color Line: BlackWhite Multiracial Families in the United States. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Gallagher, Charles. 2006. Rethinking the Color Line: Readings in Race and Ethnicity. New York: McGraw-Hill. Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1996. Racial Formation in the United States: 1960 to 1980. New York: Routledge.
COMMUNITY COHESION Terms like social cohesion have long been used in the context of race relations throughout the Englishspeaking world, but it is only recently in the United Kingdom that community cohesion has been identified as a government policy with its own distinctive agenda. In 2000, the Report of the Commission on the Future of Multiethnic Britain emphasized the need to highlight cohesion alongside issues of difference and equality. A year later, there were ethnic riots in several cities in the north of England, and the term community cohesion came to dominate the plethora of reports and official recommendations that followed. The disturbances were blamed on the segregation (or “self-segregation”) of ethnic minority communities, which led them to live “parallel lives” with little understanding of or interaction with other communities or the broader society. The answer to the perceived problems of fragmentation, disengagement, and lack of a shared civic identity was judged to lie in a new policy of community cohesion, which soon became a major new strand in the government’s race relations strategy. A Community Cohesion Unit was
Like other multicultural metaphors (such as melting pot, mosaic, and cultural bridge), community cohesion carries a message about solidarity, social equality, and connectedness to which many people can respond positively. It implies that all communities should look for a unifying common purpose and commitment and that the broader society should stick together rather than fragment in a way that privileges some over others. The new discourse of community cohesion lacks the accrued baggage of disagreements that surrounds terms like antiracism and multiculturalism, and this has provided the government with the opportunity to relaunch a debate about issues such as shared values, integration, race relations, equality, inclusion, interdependence, participation, and minority rights in a way that is closer to communitarian values and third-way politics. What has emerged from this ongoing debate on community cohesion is a soft line and a harder line on interethnic relations. The soft line stresses the importance of inclusivity and the positive valuing of diversity in the broader community, so that all groups feel equally at home in it and none feel excluded or disconnected. Adherents believe that people are able to relate to each other in an atmosphere of mutual trust despite possible disagreements and differences, because they understand what ties them together as members of that broader community and feel they have a stake in that community as full citizens and a shared commitment to its well-being. They recognize that this loyalty may make demands on them in return for the privileges it grants. Undergirding the soft line is the sense that people have similar opportunities irrespective of their backgrounds, and community institutions like schools and social services nurture positive relationships between people from different backgrounds. The harder line involves the belief that cohesion cannot be achieved without a common vision, a common language, a common commitment to national institutions, a higher level of social control, and a substantial set of shared values. In this view, the solution to the suspicions and misunderstandings experienced
Community Cohesion
by some ethnic minority groups lies with those groups themselves. Hard-liners believe they must avoid selfsegregation, dissociate themselves from intolerance and extremism, and conform more fully to the values of the broader society.
Implementation Issues British policy in the early 21st century combines both approaches. On one hand, legislation has been designed to tackle remaining inequalities and to eradicate racism and discrimination. Measures have been taken to deal with low educational achievement and high levels of poverty and unemployment among certain ethnic minority groups to help young people understand the rights and responsibilities associated with citizenship and to regenerate economically deprived districts, ensuring an equitable access to services and resources for all. These efforts are echoed at a local level by initiatives such as interfaith education centers and youth parliaments, bringing the community cohesion agenda to the attention of young people. On the other hand, some moves to increase the sense of a common national identity among ethnic minority groups (such as the citizenship test and the requirement that imams coming from outside the United Kingdom must take an English proficiency test) have been perceived as oppressive. This sense of oppression has been compounded both by perceptions of unfairness in policing policies toward minority communities, particularly in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, and by media coverage that has sometimes appeared to stir up resentment and ill feeling against minorities. Like earlier assimilationist and integrationist policies, community cohesion raises a number of complex practical and philosophical problems. Insofar as community cohesion puts the onus on minorities to take on the values and norms of the broader society, this may distract attention from the structural inequalities and the atmosphere of fear that have led to their isolation and disengagement in the first place. Cultural segregation may be linked to residential segregation, and the latter may have multiple causes, including “White flight” from certain districts, racist housing policies, and the sense of insecurity felt when living alongside others from the different groups. Residential segregation, in turn, leads to educational segregation as children attend local schools. However, any attempt to use housing policies to promote community
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cohesion needs to be sensitive to issues of safety and race relations as well as to the distinctive cultural needs of minority communities in terms of places of worship, shopping facilities, and entertainment. Integrated schooling raises similar issues. At a deeper level, there are problems with the concept of developing a commitment to shared norms and values. If this refers to values that are actually shared by all minority communities, then the framework of values is likely to be a fairly thin one (including acceptance of a common system of law and a basic social morality, including tolerance and a rejection of violence). But if it refers to values that should be shared by all minority communities, then questions arise about what those values are that can unite disparate communities into an integrated whole, who has the right to decide which values should be shared, and whether the use of education to reinforce those values would unjustifiably restrict a child’s freedom to choose his or her own future way of life. Questions therefore arise about the compatibility of community cohesion policies with an individual’s right to liberty and difference. Despite these reservations, community cohesion policies may be an effective way of encouraging dialogue and contact between ethnic groups and developing mutual respect and understanding. This may, in turn, contribute to the development of a more cosmopolitan society and the recognition and acceptance of multiple identities. J. Mark Halstead See also Assimilation; Citizenship; Community Empowerment; Ethnic Enclave; Ethnic Group; Immigrant Communities; Pluralism; Segregation; United Kingdom; White Flight
Further Readings
Cantle, Ted. 2001. Community Cohesion: A Report of the Independent Review Team. London: Home Office. Home Office. 2005. Improving Opportunity, Strengthening Society: The Government’s Strategy to Increase Race Equality and Community Cohesion. London: Home Office. McLaren, Vic, ed. 2003. Developing Community Cohesion: Understanding the Issues, Delivering Solutions. London: Runnymede Trust. Robinson, David. 2005. “The Search for Community Cohesion: Key Themes and Dominant Concepts of the Public Policy Agenda.” Urban Studies 42:1411–1427.
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Community Empowerment
COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT The terms community and empowerment were joined at the hip semantically from the 1960s through the 1980s. In combination, they connoted local citizens exercising the fundamental elements of democracy in a far broader manner than the political processes represented by party labels, partisan campaigning, and voting behavior. Communities of color became the chief focus of these empowerment efforts, which centered on organizing to confront absentee slumlords, encroachment by dominant institutions, and unresponsive government decision makers. This entry discusses the terms, concepts, historical perspective, and contemporary practices within the community empowerment context, which have important implications for public policy, racial and ethnic spatial arrangements, and urban studies.
Definitions Commun nity y
The literature leads us to three general definitions of community, based on geography, common interests, and ascribed characteristics. Geographic community connotes definitive boundaries such as streets, railroad tracks, or other physical landmarks. In most community empowerment discussions, this definition, with a focus on geographic subareas of a city, is the functional unit of work and analysis. The community of common interests is not necessarily bounded. Religious, cultural, ethnic, and social interest groups that may have originally migrated to a common neighborhood now may span the metropolitan area. Yet they still reunite to socialize or even strategize around specific actions. In limited instances, conventional community empowerment approaches feature these communities of common interest, such as faithbased community development organizations and activities. Yet even those groups tend to be focused geographically, within the vicinity of a church’s location. The community of ascribed characteristics is often considered an aggregate without subscribed membership. Demographers, marketers, politicians, organizers, and planners ascribe interests to aggregates of people (e.g., African Americans, low-income families, the elderly) that they may or may not share. Policies and programs are targeted to this aggregate. However,
once a discernible group gels around a specific issue, that aggregate becomes a community of sorts. Emp pow werme ent
The root word, power, reflects an ability to influence change, to promote or prohibit it. Empowerment is the process that allows people to exert influence over decisions that affect their lives and well-being. Community empowerment refers to a process whereby residents of disadvantaged geographic areas gain the means to influence policies, programs, and practices that affect their collective lives.
Vehicles for Community Empowerment Advocacy and Org ganizzing
Neighborhood block clubs and community-based nonprofit organizations have formed to oppose toxic waste dump sites and real estate development projects that promote gentrification or to lobby for more police support to combat neighborhood crime and even to press governments to preserve local landmarks and programs that reflect the artistic and cultural traditions of a particular area. With the emergence of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in the late 1950s, former union organizer Saul Alinsky coached community residents in unionlike, direct-action tactics such as boycotts, pickets, and other confrontational techniques aimed at influencing the practices of slum landlords, exploitive merchants, and unresponsive public and private institutions. Alinsky’s IAF-trained professional organizers and community members formed community-based organizations such as FIGHT ON in Rochester, New York, and the Woodlawn Organization in Chicago to empower people at the grassroots level to confront larger, more powerful forces negatively affecting their lives. IAF training was directed toward residents who had a geographic focus, groups of tenants who had formed communities of common interests, and civil rights activists representing communities of ascribed characteristics. While groups such as IAF, the Midwest Institute, and the Gamaliel Foundation continue to provide advocacy and organizing training today, other practitioners have turned to community development and community development corporations as vehicles for empowerment.
Community Empowerment
Community Development and Community Economicc Development (C CED)
The basic elements of community development involve collective action by a group of people aimed at solving problems and addressing issues that affect their social and economic well-being. Community economic development (CED) is a subset of community development. It assumes a narrower focus than the broad-based, problem-solving efforts of community development in general. Specifically, CED refers to efforts of communities, generally through their organizations and institutions, to implement solutions directly affecting the flow of capital into and out of geographically identified areas. This includes efforts to foster asset accumulation in ways that benefit the community as a whole and generally is accomplished by organizing residents to pool their financial resources and talents in order to create jobs, income, and managerial and ownership opportunities for themselves. Examples include strategies to retain existing industries or to induce new industries to locate in a community to generate job opportunities and income for residents. Retaining existing industries or attracting new ones usually is tied to hopes of raising income levels and, in the most empowering instances, fostering managerial and ownership opportunities. The model of the community development corporation (CDC), initiated in the 1960s as part of the war on poverty, was a key organizational vehicle used to generate economic growth through the development of multifaceted holding companies collectively owned by the residents of low-income African American and Latino communities. These holding companies owned various subsidiaries, such as a credit union, a day care center, a manufacturing business, and a housing development company. The subsidiaries were linked by their objective: to provide communal ownership, jobs, and an enhanced “quality of life” for the community as a whole. Proponents hoped that these CDCs would spur community empowerment by restoring economic vitality to communities through democratic decision making by resident-dominated boards and governance committees. Some combination of funding from the federal Office of Economic Opportunity and the Ford Foundation characterized initial CDC support. Organizations such as the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in Brooklyn, the Woodlawn Community Development Corporation in Chicago
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(two African American organizations), and the predominately Mexican American East Los Angeles Community Union in California were among some sixty recipients of this type of funding. As government and foundation spending on CDCs waned, CDCs began diversifying their revenue streams with developer and management fees for housing projects and through joint ventures with private, for-profit entities, with which they shared an equity stake in residential, industrial, and commercial deals.
Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) In 1971, a group of Chicago bankers, community work professionals, businesspeople, and representatives from local and national foundations and religious organizations came together to create the Illinois Neighborhood Development Corporation (INDC) (later renamed Shorebank Corporation), a bank holding company focused on establishing a sustainable source of capital and credit rooted in a local neighborhood. To engender a business approach toward social and economic development that would promote revitalization without displacement, the corporation bought a local community financial institution, South Shore Bank, to “greenline,” or target, credit and capital investments within Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. Five years later, INDC capitalized two nonbank development subsidiaries and attracted philanthropic support to create a nonprofit affiliate. As a conglomerate of development tools, INDC pioneered locally focused Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs). The Shorebank model became the impetus for new legislation in the 1990s that broadened the scope of federal support for CDFIs. By 2005, the U.S. Treasury Department had certified more than 1,000 loan funds, credit unions, microlending organizations, and local development entities as CDFIs.
Asset-Based Community Development Individuals, associations, and institutions have been mobilized to leverage the substantial human and financial capital available in what appear to be devastated communities. In the book Building Communities From the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets, John McKnight and John Kretzmann offer examples of how community assets have been assessed, mapped, and mobilized by
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Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
residents convinced that positive change must be selfgenerated and communities must be rebuilt from the inside out. The asset-based approach has been credited with turning on its head the view that a community must be defined by its problems.
Conclusion Community empowerment in the 21st century is complicated by the fact that relationships between people, especially their social and economic interactions, extend far beyond their place of residence. Nonetheless, place matters. Neighborhood improvement strategies depend on people’s continued interest in the places where they live, work, and conduct business. Federally funded initiatives such as the Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Communities program or private philanthropic efforts such as the MacArthur Foundation’s New Communities Program remain focused on empowering individuals, families, organizations, and institutions in low-income and minority communities to influence their own social and economic well-being. Michael I. J. Bennett See also Barrio; Black Power; Chicano Movement; Chinatowns; Civil Rights Movement; Community Empowerment; Ethnic Enclave; Ghetto; Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison Immigrant Communities
Further Readings
Alinsky, Saul D. 1969. Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. New York: Vintage Books. Kretzmann, John P. and John L. McKnight. 1993. Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets. Chicago, IL: ACTA. Rubin, Herbert J. 2000. Renewing Hope within Neighborhoods of Despair: The Community-Based Development Model. Albany: State University of New York Press. Taub, Richard P. 1994. Community Capitalism: South Shore Bank. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
CONGRESS OF RACIAL EQUALITY (CORE) The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded by a group of interracial students in 1942 on the
campus of the University of Chicago. Influenced by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the members of CORE firmly believed that civil rights for Blacks in the United States could be achieved through nonviolence. To this end, CORE pioneered the strategy of nonviolent direct action, including freedom marches and sit-ins. This entry describes the organization’s history. Originally a decentralized organization, CORE expanded nationally in 1942, when James Farmer, former race relations secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and Bayard Rustin, field secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, traveled the Midwest recruiting members. In the beginning, CORE was largely constituted by White middle-class college students. However, as the organization grew in size and scope, tensions emerged within its ranks. Issues over leadership, strategy, and method were important. Some chapters emphasized direct action. Others preferred educational activities. Early chapters wanted to maintain the organization’s decentralized, nonhierarchical system of leadership, while others saw the consolidation of power as necessary in order to have a greater impact nationally. As a result, James Farmer became the first national director of CORE in February 1943.
National Prominence Although it had some early successes integrating public facilities in the early 1940s, it was not until 1947 that CORE began to have a national impact. To test compliance of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling against segregation in interstate travel, CORE sent sixteen of its members on the “Journey of Reconciliation” through the South. As a result, seven of its members were arrested, and some were required to serve on a chain gang for violating interstate travel laws. In 1955, CORE lent the Montgomery bus boycott its philosophical commitment to nonviolent direct action. The bus boycott served as a turning point, because prior to the bus boycott, CORE had confined itself to the North, and its membership was small. With the Montgomery boycott, CORE turned its attention to the Deep South, and its membership began to change. Poorer and less-educated African Americans came to make up the majority of the organization’s new membership. As the Black rank-and-file membership increased, so did the Black leadership, yet Whites still remained in prominent positions. Despite shifts in leadership and the ever-present tension
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
in methods and strategy, CORE was still staunchly committed to nonviolent direct action. CORE’s reputation as an important civil rights organization grew following the 1960 Greensboro, North Carolina, lunch counter “sit-ins.” Although the four individuals who initially took part in the sit-ins were not CORE members, CORE provided guidance and support. Further, some of its leaders were influential in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), in 1960. In May 1961, CORE organized the famous “Freedom Rides”—bus trips throughout the South that challenged segregation in interstate travel. CORE consciously modeled the Freedom Rides on the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation. The Freedom Rides consisted of an interracial group of volunteers who boarded two buses in Washington, D.C. The volunteers sat together, and when the bus stopped, the group used all terminal facilities regardless of racial restrictions. CORE anticipated reactionary violence once the riders entered the Deep South. Gradually, they made their way southward, ignoring signs reading “Colored” or “White” over toilets, lunch counters, and so on. First assaulted in South Carolina, the riders were later met by a violent White mob in Alabama. As a result, CORE ended its participation on May 17 but provided logistical and philosophical support for riders who continued under the auspices of SNCC. At the end of 1962, the Interstate Commerce Commission banned segregation and discrimination in interstate travel. To this end, CORE was transformed into a major civil rights organization that acquired the resources to establish a presence in many southern states.
Major Leadership Following its success, CORE, along with SNCC and others, agreed to participate in President Kennedy’s Voter Education Project in 1962. In 1963, CORE organized school boycotts and rent strikes and focused public attention on police brutality in the North. At the same time, CORE demonstrated against segregation and mounted successful voter registration campaigns in the South. By 1963, the number of CORE chapters jumped from 60 to over 100. It was also a participant in the 1963 March on Washington. In 1964, CORE participated in the “Freedom Summer” project, aimed at registering and educating Black voters in Mississippi. On June 21, 1964, the
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project was met with violence when three volunteers were abducted and murdered; two of the three volunteers murdered were CORE members, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner. In the Meredith march of June 1966, initiated by James Meredith, CORE and others took up a protest march through Mississippi after he was shot. As violent attacks on civil rights workers increased, CORE began to transform the struggle for desegregation into a struggle for self-determination. In 1966, Floyd McKissick replaced Farmer as national director. Nonviolence, according to McKissick, was a “dying philosophy”; thus, CORE abandoned its initial emphasis on integration, interracialism, and nonviolence. As a result, CORE began to implement local community organizing projects that sought improvements in the living conditions of poor people, and, in doing so, its membership shifted from primarily White to mostly Black. CORE also became the only major civil rights organization to support SNCC’s militant turn to “Black Power.” In 1968, CORE stalwart Roy Innis became its national director, a post that he still holds today. Under Innis’s leadership, CORE denied membership to Whites and abandoned its newfound radical orientation for a more conservative one. Rather than support the desegregation of southern schools, CORE supported segregated schools in the 1970s. CORE also became a staunch supporter of Black capitalism, endorsing the presidency of Richard Nixon. Due to its conservative turn, many members left, including founder James Farmer. Recently, Farmer and other Black leaders have accused Innis of selling out CORE’s historic reputation to corporations and doing little to help Black communities. To this end, CORE seldom engages in nonviolent direct action and remains a popular Black conservative organization. Paul Khalil Saucier See also African American Studies; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Boycott; Civil Disobedience; Civil Rights Movement; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Further Readings
Kimbrough, Mary and Margaret W. Dagen. 2000. Victory without Violence: The First Ten Years of the St. Louis Committee of Racial Equality (CORE), 1947–1957. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
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Contact Hypothesis
Meier, August and Elliott M. Rudwick. 1973. CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942–1968. Oxford, UK: University of Oxford Press. Morris, Aldon. 1986. Origins of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Free Press.
the debates about its applicability to contemporary society.
Formulating a Theory
Proponents of the contact hypothesis argue that intergroup contact reduces prejudiced attitudes and discriminatory behavior by affecting stereotyping. CONTACT HYPOTHESIS Negative stereotypes are seen as nurtured by social isolation and diffused by personal acquaintance. In The contact hypothesis in its simplest form argues his original formulation of the contact hypothesis, that the greater the contact between individuals from Gordon Allport carefully restricted his definition of antagonistic social groups (defined by language, culprejudice to those cases in which there was no basis ture, skin color, nationality, etc.), the greater will be for intergroup hostility arising from real conflict. He the undermining of stereotypes that are the basis for regarded the clashes of interests and values that do prejudice and discrimination. By reducing prejudice, occur to not be in and of themselves instances of contact is hypothesized to improve intergroup relaprejudice. Rather, he argued that a group that one is tions by making people more able to relate with each prejudiced toward does not actually have the negaother as equals. The contact hypothesis has interested tive traits one attributes to it. Although contact scholars in many disciplines and has been offered as would aid in the dissolution of these negative stereoan explanation for many issues, ranging from school types, it would not resolve antagonisms anchored in desegregation and ethnopolitical conflict resolution to real conflict, whether material or cultural. Allport’s the inclusion of disabled children in public schools. restrictive definition of prejudice and his insistence This entry will review the origin of the hypothesis, its on treating prejudice and real conflict differently emphasis on reducing prejudice, the optimal condihas generally been ignored as contact theory has tions under which it holds, the research literature, and expanded. Allport and subsequent scholars expanded the basic contact hypothesis in order to account for the contingencies in which contact may or may not reduce prejudice. Thomas Pettigrew, a leading contact theorist, pointed out that more intergroup contact can lead either to greater prejudice and rejection or to greater respect and acceptance, depending upon the situation in which it occurs. The basic issue, he argued, concerns identifying the kinds of situations in which contact leads to harmony rather than disharmony. A large number of different mediating variables have been suggested by different contact theorists, but four major variables have been repeatedly cited as Office relations. A diverse group of businesspeople are shown gathering outside representing the “optimal conditions” their office building. According to the contact hypothesis, the more one comes to for reducing intergroup prejudice: know personally individual members of a minority of equal status and in noncom(1) equal status between the groups petitive situations pursuing common goals, the less likely one is to be prejudiced against that minority group. in the situation, (2) no competition between groups, (3) common goals, Source: Marcy Smith/iStockphoto.
Contact Hypothesis
and (4) the presence of social norms supporting intergroup contact. By putting some qualifications on the basic contact hypothesis, advocates of the expanded hypothesis sought to overcome the most damaging objections (i.e., numerous cases where greater intergroup contact seemed to foster greater conflict) without abandoning the underlying ideas of the simple hypothesis. Having outlined the optimal conditions, research largely turned its attention to what situations fostered the right kind of contact and how to ensure that the situations in which contact already occurs would foster positive effects.
Testing the Hypothesis Gordon Allport’s formalized version of the intergroup contact hypothesis, expanding on the earlier ideas of Robin M. Williams, has been the main focus of an extensive body of empirical investigation over the past half century. Thomas Pettigrew and Linda Tropp reviewed this large body of work, finding that at least 515 studies have evaluated the hypothesis since 1940, employing a wide variety of research methods and procedures, including archival research, field studies, laboratory experiments, and surveys. Three major strands of research have tested different aspects of the conflict hypothesis. One strand of research focuses on testing the basic hypothesis in various settings and levels of aggregation to determine whether greater contact reduces prejudice. Support for the basic contact hypothesis often varies depending on the level of analysis. Studies at the individual level have by and large found that greater intergroup contact is associated with less intergroup prejudice. Pettigrew and Tropp’s meta-analysis found that 93% of the studies found an inverse relationship between personal contact and prejudice. This conclusion holds for study participants’ prejudice related both to other participants in the immediate contact situation and to the entire out-group. Experimental studies have typically yielded the strongest effects, showing that personal contact can cause reductions in prejudice. Contrary to the individual-level data, Donald Forbes argued that a substantial body of historical and sociological research illustrates a positive correlation between contact and prejudice when examined at the aggregate level. Forbes’s observation is consistent with the two major intergroup trends in the world over the past century: massive migration and increased
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group conflict. For example, the tensions between the different nationalities in the Balkans have grown worse during the past century, despite the increasing opportunities they have had to meet and to form close personal relations. Many populations that neighbor each other, such as the Indians and the Pakistanis, have had greater trouble getting along than those who live farther apart. Robin M. Williams, Jr.’s classic study of communities across the United States perhaps best demonstrates that a negative relationship between contact and prejudice at the individual level can exist simultaneously with a positive relationship at the aggregate level. That is, although individuals with more intergroup contact had lower prejudice in all communities, the communities with greater aggregate levels of Black-White contact, largely in the South, also had higher levels of prejudice. In their classic study of Black and non-Black relations in Chicago in the 1940s, St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton made similar observations about contact and prejudice in mixed neighborhoods. Forbes demonstrated that a negative association between contact and prejudice at the individual level can coexist with a positive association at the aggregate level because the individual-level relationship is simply distinct from the aggregate-level one, even though they are both computed from the same variables and individuals. The positive aggregate relationship may suggest less than optimal contact conditions, inappropriate focus on conflict rather than prejudice, or a flaw in the contact theory.
Additional Research The second strand of research tests the effect of Allport’s optimal conditions to better understand which variables in which settings moderate the relationship between contact and prejudice. Studies of face-to-face contact under carefully structured situations designed to meet Allport’s optimal conditions demonstrate a more significant reduction in prejudice than other samples. A number of studies have also demonstrated the consequences in which Allport’s conditions are not met. For example, Daniel Powers and Christopher Ellison find that the effects of contact on interracial attitudes hinge on various aspects of social location, such as socioeconomic status and age of participants, that are infrequently similar in realworld situations. In his 1964 study, Williams reasoned that the contact situations in the South were not
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Contact Hypothesis
optimal because they took place in situations of inequality, without cooperative interdependence in the pursuit of common goals, and contrary to law and convention. The third strand of research explored contact outcomes for different groups. Tropp and Pettigrew’s review of work in this area found that the relationships between contact and prejudice tend to be weaker among members of minority than among majority status group members, even in cases in which Allport’s optimal conditions were carefully established. These results suggest that members of different groups likely perceive and experience contact situations differently. In addition to status group differences, research suggests that the effects of intergroup contact vary across different outgroup targets and contact settings. For example, a larger negative effect between personal contact and prejudice has been found for personal contact between heterosexuals and gay men/lesbian women than for different ethnic and racial groups. The ability for contact to reduce prejudice is also more significant in laboratory, educational, and recreational settings than in tourism and travel settings. Although intergroup contact at the individual level typically reduces prejudice, the positive relationship at the aggregate level and lower prejudice reduction for minorities suggests a need to consider revising intergroup contact as a strategy for improving intergroup relations. The minority-majority group differences suggest that Allport’s optimal conditions should be treated as elements that individuals perceive differently depending on their status rather than as objective features of the contact situation. The individualaggregate differences in correlations between contact and prejudice suggest that contact can simultaneously improve and worsen ethnic relations. Forbes argued that these opposing correlations reveal how contact theory is incomplete because it does not suggest how contact can break down stereotypes to reduce cultural differences, on one hand, but also increase prejudice and discrimination by threatening a group’s existence and distinctiveness through assimilation. Dana Bramel asserted that the failure of contact theory to reconcile the individual and aggregate findings stems from an erroneous and unrecognized assumption of “no difference” between groups. That is, the original formulations of the contact theory made the unexamined underlying assumption that most ethnic/national/racial groups were more culturally similar to each other than their members imagined.
The assumption of basic similarity had been fostered in part as a reaction against “scientific” racism in the social sciences that emphasized fundamental differences in groups as proven (e.g., IQ, criminality). Bramel argued that the recent cultural shift toward questioning the assumption of homogeneity and the reemergence of strongly felt and often socially approved assertions of groups’ differences (e.g., praise of diversity and multiculturalism, identity politics, and religious fundamentalism) underscores the conflict-ridden social reality that belies the idealistic optimism of conflict theorists. Brent Berry See also Ethnic Conflict; Immigrant Communities; Intercultural Communication; Intergroup Relations, Surveying; Minority/Majority; Prejudice; Robbers Cave Experiment; Segregation; Social Distance; Stereotypes
Further Readings
Allport, Gordon W. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Bramel, Dana. 2004. “The Strange Career of the Contact Hypothesis.” Pp. 49–67 in The Psychology of Ethnic and Cultural Conflict, edited by Y.-T. Lee, C. McCauley, F. Moghaddam, and S. Worchel. New York: Praeger. Drake, St. Clair and Horace Cayton. [1945] 1993. Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Forbes, Harold D. 1997. Ethnic Conflict: Commerce, Culture, and the Contact Hypothesis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pettigrew, Thomas F. and Linda R. Tropp. 2000. “Does Intergroup Contact Reduce Prejudice? Recent MetaAnalytic Findings.” Pp. 93–114 in Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination: Social Psychological Perspectives, edited by S. Oskamp. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pettigrew, Thomas F. and Linda R. Tropp. 2003. “A MetaAnalytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90:751–783. Powers, Daniel A. and Christopher G. Ellison. 1995. “Interracial Contact and Black Racial Attitudes: The Contact Hypothesis and Selectivity Bias.” Social Forces 74:205–227. Tropp, Linda R. and Thomas F. Pettigrew. 2005. “Relationships between Intergroup Contact and Prejudice among Minority and Majority Status Groups.” Psychological Science 16:951–958. Williams, Robin M., Jr. 1947. The Reduction of Intergroup Tensions. New York: Social Science Research Council.
Cosmopolitanism
Williams, Robin M., Jr. 1964. Strangers Next Door: Ethnic Relations in American Communities. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
COSMOPOLITANISM The term cosmopolitanism means focusing on the world as a whole rather than on a particular locality or group within it. It also means being at home with diversity. While its main meanings refer in this sense to an orientation or capacity of individuals, the noun cosmopolitan is also used to describe the actual diversity of specific countries or cities and the growing interconnection of the whole world across national and other boundaries. Precisely because the world is so intensively interconnected today, cosmopolitanism has become an important theme in philosophy and social science— and, indeed, in practical affairs. Interest in cosmopolitanism has also been fueled by anxieties over identity politics, including issues of race and gender, and multiculturalism. Many commentators are worried that efforts to support different ways of life undermine the common culture required by democracy. They think that too much respect for ethnic and cultural differences among nations undermines attempts to enforce universal human rights. There are, however, two potential lines of confusion built into the idea of cosmopolitanism. First, does it refer to what is common to the whole world and unites humanity, or does it refer to appreciation of the differences among different groups and places? And, second, does it refer to an individual attitude or ethical orientation, or does it refer to a condition of collective life? Part of the attraction of the idea of cosmopolitanism is that it seems to refer at once to a fact about the world—particularly in this era of globalization— and to a desirable response to that fact. Ulrich Beck suggests thinking of two linked processes. The growing interconnection of the world he calls “cosmopolitanization,” reserving “cosmopolitanism” for the attitude that treats these as a source of moral responsibility for everyone. This is a useful reminder that growing global connections can become a source of fear and defensiveness rather than appreciation for diversity or sense of ethical responsibility for distant strangers. Globalization can lead to renewed nationalism or strengthening of borders—as has often been
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the case since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But, of course, Beck hopes that instead a cosmopolitan attitude will spread. He emphasizes that risks such as environmental degradation turn the whole world into a “community of fate.” Cosmopolitanism is, for him, the perspective on what humanity shares that will help us deal with this. The link, for Beck and many other cosmopolitan thinkers, is ethical and political. A cosmopolitan cares about people to whom he or she does not have a strong personal connection and about the world as a whole. But there are other approaches to cosmopolitanism that place more stress on diversity: appreciating difference and forging connections across lines of difference that are potentially transformative even if they don’t necessarily operate at the level of the world as a whole. This entry reviews the history of cosmopolitanism and looks at four different approaches to cosmopolitanism and their implications.
History of Cosmopolitanism The ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope is credited with inventing the term cosmopolitan. His idea was elaborated by the Stoic philosophers of the Roman Empire as the notion of “citizenship of the world.” For both Diogenes and the Stoics, citizenship of the world connoted mainly a life of simplicity, caught up neither in wealth, nor war, nor politics. It means attempting to live by ethical precepts that would apply equally to everyone. In this sense, cosmopolitanism informed the preaching of St. Paul and other early Christians who spread the Gospel beyond the Jewish context in which it was initially offered. A similar appeal to transcend political divisions informed the spread of other world religions, including Buddhism. During the European Middle Ages, the Catholic Church informed a cosmopolitan vision loosely joining the various feudal domains and occasionally shaping collective projects, like the Crusades. But, as these suggest, the cosmopolitan vision that partially united Europeans did not extend well to the rest of the world. Unity at the level of all humanity remained an abstract potential, apparently awaiting the conversion of all to Christianity. Likewise, Muslims considered themselves joined in a cosmopolitan community, the Umma Islam, and imagined it potentially to extend to all humanity. Religious cosmopolitanism remained active throughout the modern era, informing, among other things, missionary activity.
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In the meantime, however, modern nationalism divided the world in new ways, with an emphasis on sharp territorial boundaries and the cultural as well as political integration of populations. This was in fact shaped by the wars that split Europe during the era of the Protestant Reformation. Religious conflicts reinforced the consolidation of political power. The rise of nations and nationalism was in part a process of state making through warfare. Desire to limit this was one important occasion for renewal of cosmopolitan thinking. During the 17th and 18th centuries, more rationalistic philosophers renewed classical cosmopolitanism with more universalistic and less “faith-based” visions. The most famous 18th-century advocate for cosmopolitanism, Immanuel Kant, made cosmopolitanism into a moral imperative as he sought a basis for perpetual peace. Cosmopolitanism, in his view, would start with recognizing the rights of all human beings and on this basis set limits on the ambitions of all states. It would extend, wrote Kant, to a notion of “universal cosmopolitan existence” as “a perfect civil union of mankind.” This was central to the Enlightenment and has been basic to discussions of cosmopolitanism in political philosophy ever since. But conflict among nations seemed clearly anticosmopolitan; the development of modern nations often seemed part of the development of a more cosmopolitan worldview. Many thinkers, like the German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder and the sociologist Ferdinand Toennies, stressed the ways in which language and common culture—a matter of creativity as well as shared inheritance—could knit together people from diverse localities and walks of life. The nation-state seemed often to embody the cosmopolitan as capital cities brought ethnic groups together, universalistic citizenship transcended religious division, and better roads brought connections among diverse localities. Capitalism promoted cosmopolitanism in the 19th century, but there was also nationalist resistance. Nationalists in Germany and Russia complained of Jews who had migrated throughout the world and often maintained stronger loyalties to their religion than to any one country. They called them “rootless cosmopolitans.” The same term was later used to criticize intellectuals in the Soviet Union. But globalization did proceed and, indeed, has intensified in recent years, especially since the collapse of communism in 1989. Cosmopolitan is widely used as a compliment today, connoting experience of different countries, knowledge of the whole world, and the capacity to
appreciate different cultures. But globalization is also a source of anxiety and has very unequal effects. Ethnic and national loyalties remain strong.
Four Approaches Eth hiccal Universalissm
As ethical universalism, cosmopolitanism describes a commitment to that which is right everywhere and for everyone. In this sense, cosmopolitanism opposes special commitments to or preferences for one’s own nation, ethnic group, local community, or perhaps even family. This approach has been termed extreme cosmopolitanism. This takes world citizenship as fundamental, clearly, and always morally superior to more local bonds—such as ethnic or national solidarities— which are good when they serve the universal good and tolerable only when they do not conflict with world citizenship. In response, contemporary writers such as Anthony Appiah argue for a “rooted cosmopolitanism” in which local ties still matter even amid far-flung connections and with a global ethical consciousness. He urges the most “enlarged” view of the world but still recognizes that each of us comes from somewhere and that particular ties are still valuable. His examples reflect the perspective of those who leave home and find enlarged opportunities in the larger world, for example, those who leave small towns for elite colleges, as Appiah himself left Kumasi in Ghana for boarding schools and Cambridge, Harvard, and Princeton universities. This is a relatively elite perspective. But others stress the extent to which a range of different occupations, even warfare, may bring recognition of the larger world beyond local (or national) cultural roots. In all these cases, however, cosmopolitanism is an “outlook.” It is about either ethical obligations or cultural openness. Cosmopolita an Govern nance
As a political position, cosmopolitanism includes ideas of fairness and equal rights, but it also focuses on a program to build governmental institutions that may better administer the world as a whole. This might enable better enforcement of universal rights, but here the emphasis is not on the equality or ethical obligations of individuals, but on the need for collective decision making and enforcement structures. Cosmopolitanism can be viewed as addressing equitable institutional arrangements. Wherever people are
Cosmopolitanism
joined in significant social relations, they have a collective right to share in control of these. David Held is a good exemplar of moderate cosmopolitanism, since he stresses the importance of multiple and overlapping allegiances of different scales. In a sense, both political and ethical cosmopolitanism respond to nationalism and especially the idea that national identity is a kind of prepolitical basis for politics—including the strong sense of who the “we” is in phrases like “We the people,” as it is used in the U.S. Constitution. In this view, there is a moral basis for politics—but this should rest not on the alleged priority of ethnic, national, or other specific loyalties, but on the general loyalty of each person to all humanity. Held, by contrast, holds that there are no prepolitical moral bases for politics and offers an intrinsically political theory, advancing cosmopolitanism as an alternative way of establishing the appropriate units of democratic government. It is still a theory of what is right, however, rather than of how people might pursue the right or of how they come to be who they are in their different groups. Urbane Socia al Psychology
Another important sense of cosmopolitanism is the individual capacity to appreciate diversity and to feel at ease with strangers and at home in new and different cultural contexts. Travelers are thus cosmopolitan and so are inhabitants of multicultural cities, students who like universities that are more culturally diverse than their home communities, and people who work in organizations like the United Nations or, indeed, in the upper reaches of many multinational corporations. Migrants may be cosmopolitan in this sense, but not necessarily, since they often become more culturally conservative when confronted with the different cultures of a new country. This is a sociopsychological usage associated especially with urban life, rather than political organizations. This sense of the term implies that cosmopolitanism involves an appreciation of diversity, not just in the sense of toleration for the peaceful coexistence of separate spheres, but as a fact of common spaces within which one “moves.” It is not obvious that this is altogether compatible with ethical universalism. Hybridity y
Still other scholars claim the term cosmopolitan not for any singular overarching view of the good or of
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universal norms, but for the coexistence and mutual influence of multiple cultural influences and values. In this fourth sense, cosmopolitanism may be understood as the social process that connects people and changes them by exposure to each other and to different cultures. Migrants are central to this sense of cosmopolitanism, for they are changed by their experiences and they change the societies that receive them. Cross-cultural knowledge and experience may come through the media, through schooling, or through working in a multinational corporation. This fourth sense of cosmopolitanism emphasizes neither ethics, nor politics, nor the personal capacity to appreciate difference in the abstract. It emphasizes the actual juxtapositions of different groups and cultures and the consequences of these juxtapositions. These consequences may include hybridity, the production of new and mixed identities. Both these third and fourth notions of cosmopolitanism start from the premise of diversity. For the third, that of the urbanite at ease with difference and strangeness, diversity is the core value. The fourth sense of cosmopolitanism does both. It presents diasporas, the interplay of oral and literate traditions, and the relations among village, nation, and transnational society as matters of multiple memberships and mixture. It is more fully focused on participation than the third, less constituted by observation. Alone of the four versions of cosmopolitanism, it incorporates, rather than only tolerates, ethnicity. To be sure, this fourth notion does not incorporate the illusory claims of many advocates of ethnicity (as of nationalism) to discern a pure core to ethnic culture or precise boundaries to the ethnic community. But it understands participation in cosmopolitan relations as participation in specific cultural traditions and cultural relations that partially transcend and partially incorporate others—including others that may be more particular and others that may be comparably general. It refuses the notion that the cosmopolitan is somehow above or outside the particularities of culture, though he or she may participate in cultural productivity and sharing that recognizes each cultural tradition only in the context of others and thus in a partial form. It is easy for the privileged to imagine that their experience of global mobility and connection is available to all, if only everyone would “be” cosmopolitan. Indeed, the extent to which people feel cosmopolitan depends on privilege. The genuinely attractive ethical orientation toward a common human community of fate can be undermined by an unattractive
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self-congratulation and lack of self-critical awareness of privilege. Craig Calhoun See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Citizenship; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Globalization; Identity Politics; Terrorism; Transnational People
Further Readings
Appiah, Anthony. 2006. Cosmopolitanism. New York: Norton. Beck, Ulrich. 2006. Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Binnie, Jon and Beverly Skeggs. 2006. “Cosmopolitan Knowledge and the Production and Consumption of Sexualized Space.” Pp. 220–245 in Cosmopolitan Urbanism, edited by Jon Binnie. London: Routledge. Calhoun, Craig. 1997. Nationalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Calhoun, Craig. 2002. “The Class Consciousness of Frequent Travelers: Toward a Critique of Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism.” South Atlantic Quarterly 101:869–897. Cheah, Pheng and Bruce Robbins, eds. 1998. Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Held, David. 1995. Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kant, Immanuel. [1784] 1983. “Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent.” Pp. 30–136 in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays. Translated by T. Humphrey. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Nussbaum, Martha. 1996. For Love of Country. Boston, MA: Beacon. Pollock, Sheldon. 2000. “Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in History.” Public Culture 12:591–625. Sennett, Richard. 1992. The Fall of Public Man. New York: Norton.
CREOLE The term Creole is derived from Portuguese crioulo, which originally referred to people of Portuguese descent born and raised in Portuguese colonies. Later, crioulo was also used to refer to people of mixed Portuguese and non-European ancestry. The term made
its way into English via the French term créole. The term Creole refers to communities that have a multiracial ancestry and a multicultural heritage that were born out of the transatlantic slave trade and colonial encounters between colonial powers and Indigenous Peoples. Creole communities retained cultural traits from their multiple heritages and at the same time developed cultures and identities that are distinct from those of the communities from which they evolved. By combining multiple cultural traits, they created a new culture that can be either an ethnic group or a nation. In Sierra Leone, for example, Creole is an ethnic group. The nation of Cape Verde is Creole. In the United States, Creole identity has been overshadowed by racial identities. However, there is a Creole ethnic identity in Louisiana that has been preserved. Creole communities represent a lens through which one can understand the historical beginning of race relations in the modern world. On one hand, the history of Creole people tells the story of race relations in the New World, while, on the other hand, it depicts the problematic race relations between European colonial powers and the people of the southern part of the world. Furthermore, Creole history reveals the human tragedies associated with some of the processes that have contributed to the development of the modern world. In a sense, the history of Creole people is an integral part of the history of the slavery and colonialism that were major factors in the development of the modern world. The emergence of Creole communities is linked to global economic and political processes as well as local, cultural, and social forces. The most significant global processes are the transatlantic slave trade and the European colonization of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, especially during the 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery and colonialism, which underpinned the relation between Europeans and nonEuropeans, promoted European economic interests and assumptions of racial superiority. The colonial powers that most significantly influenced the emergence of Creole communities around the world are Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands. These countries dominated the slave trade and colonized numerous territories around the world. The local factors that influenced the development of Creole communities included racial discrimination against non-Europeans, economic exploitation and social segregation of non-Europeans, problems of identity among the dislocated and mixed-race people, and the struggle for cultural preservation and liberation by the
Creole
oppressed racial groups in White-dominated societies. These global and local factors often defined the relations between Europeans and non-Europeans and created the conditions for the emergence of Creole communities in various parts of the world. This unique constellation of forces has made the emergence of Creole communities simultaneously a global and a local phenomenon. While the Creole phenomenon is global, each Creole community has a unique history and culture that is rooted in its immediate political, economic, social, and physical environment. During the transatlantic slave trade, millions of Africans were brought to the Americas. Even though Africans were segregated, they interacted with the White communities in the New World and became acculturated to European ways of life and languages. The interactions ranged from forced labor in the plantations, mines, and homes of slaveowners to everyday encounters in segregated public places and sexual relations that often violated local norms of marriage and family life and victimized non-European women. These relations gave birth to people of mixed races and cultures who eventually formed Creole communities in the Americas. After the end of slavery, some ex-slaves were repatriated to Africa, most notably to Liberia and Sierra Leone. They brought the European cultures that they had acquired in the New World to Africa, which set them apart from the indigenous Africans. They maintained a separate identity, which was reinforced during colonial rule, and formed Creole communities. Creole communities were also born out of the “coolie” trade and the settlement of Europeans among colonized indigenous people. This is most evident in the Americas where Creole communities emerged out of the intermingling of Europeans, Native Indians, Asians, and Africans. The Asians were brought to the Americas after the end of the slave trade. For the most part, they were treated as bondage workers. In countries such as Cape Verde and Angola, Creole communities emerged largely as a result of the intermingling of the huge numbers of European settlers with the native peoples in those countries. There are Creole communities in many countries, including the United States, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname, Panama, Micronesia, Seychelles, Mauritius, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cape Verde, Angola, and Guinea Bissau. Many of the small island countries in the Caribbean, Pacific Ocean, and Indian Ocean are predominantly Creole. In mainland countries, such as Sierra Leone and Liberia, Creole communities tend to account for
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a small proportion of the population. In the United States, the small Creole community is heavily concentrated in Louisiana. Their ancestors include Native Indians and people who settled in the area, most notably from Spain, France, China, Russia, Germany, and various parts of Africa. The community has developed a distinct identity and culture, especially in areas such as architecture, language, and gastronomy. Like all other groups of people, however, Creole communities have subgroups. At various points in history, Louisiana Creoles have been divided according to race, heritage, and class. They have been classified as White and ethnic Creoles, free Creoles of color, and Black Creoles. White and ethnic Creoles have often included people who identify with their European ancestry, while Black Creoles have consisted of slaves and free lower-class people. Free Creoles of color tend to be upper-middle-class people who are mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons. Creole communities are important components of the ethnic landscape of many postcolonial countries. In the United States, for example, the Creole community in Louisiana has added an ethnic dimension to African American identity, which has mostly been constructed around the notion of race. In the small island countries, Creole identity has been a vehicle for promoting national identity. Creoles have been significant players in government and urban centers in many countries in Africa and the Americas. In many cases, their ties to European culture gave them access to urban areas and advantages in acquiring Western education during colonial rule. This helped them gain positions in the civil service. In Sierra Leone, for example, Creoles held numerous positions in the civil service of the colonial government. This gave them significant political and economic advantages over other ethnic groups. Since the end of colonial rule, Creole control of the civil service has been gradually eroded. In the case of Liberia, the Creole community ruled the country until 1980. During this period, Creoles dominated the government, the military, and the formal economy. In Panama, Creoles form a majority of the urban elite. Creole communities speak Creole languages, which have combined the vocabulary of multiple European and non-European languages and developed unique grammars. There are several kinds of Creole languages, and the most significant differences between them lie in their European heritage. Creole is often heavily based on French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, or Dutch vocabulary, in addition to other non-European
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languages. For example, Haitian Creole is heavily based on French vocabulary, while Jamaican Creole is mostly based on English. However, most Creole languages include vocabulary from several European languages, in addition to non-European languages. This is largely due to the multiple European influences on nonEuropeans during slavery and colonialism. In many multiethnic countries with Creole communities, Creole has emerged as the common language. In Sierra Leone, for example, Creole is the common national language, even though the Creoles are a minority ethnic group. Abu Bakarr Bah See also Belize; Cape Verde; Caribbean; Colonialism; Dominican Republic; Haiti; Haitian Americans Multiracial Identity; National Rainbow Coalition; Racial Identity; Slavery; Spanglish; Trinidad
Further Readings
Bosma, Ulbe. 2004. “Citizens of Empire: Some Comparative Observations on the Evolution of Creole Nationalism in Colonial Indonesia.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 46:656–681. Bryan, Beverley. 2004. “Jamaican Creole: In the Process of Becoming.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27:641–659. Faraclas, Nicholas. 2005. “Globalization and the Future of Creole Languages.” Journal of Language and Politics 4:331–365. Goudie, Sean. 2006. Creole America: The West Indies and the Formation of Literature and Culture in the New Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hirsch, Arnold and Joseph Logsdon. 1992. Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Jamieson, Mark. 2003. “Miskitu or Creole? Ethnic Identity and the Moral Economy in a Nicaraguan Miskitu Village.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9:201–222. Spitzer, Leo. 1974. Creoles of Sierra Leone: Responses to Colonialism, 1870–1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Van der Pijl, Yvon. 2003. “Room to Roam: Afro-Surinamese Identifications and the Creole Multiple Self.” Focaal— European Journal of Anthropology 42:105–114.
CRIME AND RACE African Americans and Latinos are overrepresented in the U.S. criminal justice system. Although each group makes up about 13% of the U.S. population, African
Americans account for about 40% of all state and federal prisoners, and Latinos, who can be of any race, make up about 20% of all state and federal prisoners. These disproportionate numbers of African American and Latino inmates may reflect real racial and ethnic differences in criminal behavior, but they may also reflect racial and ethnic discrimination by the criminal justice system. As these contrary possibilities suggest, the disproportionate involvement of African Americans and Latinos in the criminal justice system has occasioned much debate and controversy. Focusing on African Americans, the subject of most research and debate on the crime-and-race nexus, this entry addresses several aspects of the race-and-crime controversy: (a) whether the disproportionate number of African American defendants and inmates reflects racial differences in offending or discrimination in the legal system, (b) the reasons for racial differences in offending, (c) news media coverage of crime by African Americans, (d) public opinion related to race and crime, and (e) promising measures to reduce African American crime rates.
Racial Differences in Offending Most criminologists conclude that the disproportionate involvement of African Americans in the criminal justice system as suspects, defendants, and inmates largely reflects their actual heavier involvement in serious crime. This does not mean that most African Americans commit crimes, only that the rates of criminal behavior among African Americans are higher than those among members of other races. Several kinds of evidence support this conclusion. Arrest rates for homicide, the crime for which data are most reliable, are about six times greater for African Americans than for Whites. In self-report studies, for which respondents provide information about their own delinquent and criminal behavior, African Americans usually report heavier involvement in serious offending. Respondents in victimization surveys, who provide information about crimes they have experienced and also about the race, gender, and other characteristics of their offenders, also disproportionately identify African Americans as the offenders in crimes of personal violence. On the whole, then, African Americans do appear to be disproportionately involved in serious crime. This conclusion comes with several important caveats. First, as noted earlier, most African Americans do not commit any crimes. Second, most crimes by African Americans are committed against
Crime and Race
other African Americans, as crime tends to be intraracial (occurring within a race). Third, Whites monopolize white-collar crime and especially crime by corporations. Fourth, the apparent heavier involvement of African Americans arises from certain social conditions, the subject of the next section, and not from any inherent tendency toward violence and other criminal behavior. Although racial differences in serious offending appear to exist and to explain most of the disproportionate involvement of African Americans in the criminal justice system, racial discrimination in the criminal justice system may account for some of this involvement. Such discrimination is neither systematic nor overt, however, and studies of its possible presence yield inconsistent results. Some studies, for example, find no racial differences in prison sentence lengths once factors such as offense severity and the defendant’s prior record are taken into account, but other studies find that African American males receive longer sentences than White males. In general, racial discrimination is more often (though not always) found regarding the decision to incarcerate (the “in/out” decision) than regarding the actual length of a sentence for those given prison terms in the first place. It is also more often found for less-serious offenses than for more-serious offenses. Evidence of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system is stronger for two groups of offenders: juvenile offenders and drug offenders. Many studies find that African American and Latino juvenile offenders receive harsher treatment than White offenders in several stages in the juvenile justice system, even when offense severity and other factors are taken into account. The current legal “war against drugs” also yields evidence of racial discrimination, because the penalties for crack cocaine are much harsher than those for powder cocaine, a pharmalogically identical substance. Because African Americans are more likely than Whites to use and distribute crack cocaine (while Whites are more likely to use and distribute powder cocaine), the legal war against drugs has had a much heavier impact on African Americans than on Whites. As of early 2008, no change in the legislation mandating sentences for crack versus powder cocaine had been made. However, in December 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in a pair of decisions that federal judges may use discretion and depart from the strict guidelines.The end result, even without further Congressional action, will be to reduce some sentences given to offenses involving crack cocaine.
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Clear evidence of racial discrimination is also found in the application of the death penalty. Some, but not all, studies find that African Americans accused of homicide are more likely than their White counterparts to be accused of a capital offense and to receive the death penalty if convicted. However, more consistent evidence is found of racial discrimination involving homicide victims. When the victim is White rather than African American, the defendant is more likely to be accused of a capital offense and to receive the death penalty if convicted. In effect, the criminal justice system places more importance on the life of a White victim than on the life of an African American victim.
Reasons for Racial Differences in Offending If, as these findings indicate, African Americans have higher rates of involvement in serious offending, what accounts for this? In the first half of the 20th century, these higher rates were attributed to African Americans’ supposed biological inferiority. Contemporary scholars rightly reject these explanations as racist and instead point to several structural conditions that help account for the relatively high rates of serious crime among African Americans. One structural condition is extreme poverty (also called economic deprivation). For several reasons, including feelings of frustration or anger, family stress, and economic need, living in poverty contributes to higher crime rates by people of all races. Because African Americans are more likely than other racial groups (except for Native Americans) to live in extreme poverty, they have relatively high crime rates. A second social condition is urban residence. Large cities generally have higher crime rates than smaller towns or rural areas, thanks to several factors, including population density (which leads to high levels of interaction and more opportunity for crime and victimization to occur), residential instability, dilapidation, and weakened social institutions, such as families, schools, and religion. Regardless of race, people who live in large urban areas are more likely both to commit crime and to be victimized by crime. Because African Americans outside the South are especially likely to live in such areas, they have higher rates of crime and victimization. Taken together, these two structural conditions, extreme poverty and urban residence, help to account for the higher crime rates of African Americans. Many scholars believe that if Whites lived in similar conditions, their crime rates would be similar to those of
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African Americans. Conversely, scholars say, if African Americans lived in the more favorable conditions that many more Whites enjoy, their crime rates would be much lower than they are today. A third reason underlying African American crime rates is racial discrimination. Experiencing racial discrimination has been shown to produce feelings of anger and frustration that, in turn, produce various types of criminal behavior. The racial discrimination that African Americans continue to experience contributes to their higher rates of criminal behavior. Another possible reason is cultural. Although theories in the 1960s emphasizing a subculture of violence (i.e., attitudes favoring violence) among urban Blacks were rejected by many scholars as racist or lacking sufficient evidence, recent work has highlighted the strong need for self-respect that is said to arise from the conditions already discussed: extreme poverty, urban residence, and racial discrimination. According to this perspective, this leads to a “code of the streets” that demands violent responses to verbal slights and physical assaults to maintain and even increase one’s self-respect, which is denied by the larger society.
News Media and Public Opinion Studies show that Whites especially fear being victimized by African Americans and other people of color, though, in reality, Whites are primarily victimized by other Whites. A growing amount of research indicates that racially distorted news media coverage of crime greatly contributes to such fears and related perceptions about race and crime in the United States. Studies have shown that the media provide racially biased depictions of crime and criminals in several ways. First, crime stories in newspapers and TV news broadcasts devote disproportionate attention to crimes involving African American and Latino offenders. Second, they also devote disproportionate attention to crimes involving Whites as victims. Third, and combining these first two findings, crime stories disproportionately involve crimes in which an African American person is the offender and a White person is the victim, even though, as noted earlier, most crime is intraracial. Fourth, newspaper stories of White homicide victims are longer than those of African American homicide victims. Fifth, the media tend to portray African American and Latino suspects in menacing contexts (e.g., in handcuffs or in a mug shot) more often than White suspects. For all these reasons, news media coverage of crime is
thought to increase perceptions among Whites of disproportionate involvement of African Americans and Latinos in violent crime and to instill fears among Whites of victimization by such offenders. Other studies show that many Americans favor harsher sanctions for criminals. In national surveys, about two-thirds of Americans favor the death penalty for persons convicted of murder and believe that the courts do not deal harshly enough with criminals. These sentiments are cited as a basis for the “get tough” approach that has guided U.S. crime policy since the 1970s. However, two sets of evidence suggest caution in basing crime policy on these sentiments. First, the public’s overall punitiveness regarding crime and criminals may mask significant racial differences. African Americans are much less likely than Whites to favor the death penalty and somewhat less likely than Whites to favor other harsh sanctions for criminals. The lower punitiveness of African Americans appears to reflect their perception and concern that the criminal justice system is racially discriminatory and that African Americans are disproportionately arrested for criminal behavior. To the extent, then, that U.S. crime policy has been influenced by the public’s punitiveness, it has been influenced more by the beliefs of Whites than by the beliefs of African Americans. Second, and more important, the high levels of punitiveness among Whites may rest in part on racial prejudice. A growing amount of evidence finds that racial prejudice is an important factor in explaining White support for harsher court sanctions for criminals, for the unjustified use by force by police against suspects, for the death penalty, and for spending more money to reduce crime. Citing this evidence, some scholars say that the influence of White support on crime policy is antidemocratic. According to this way of thinking, it is appropriate in a democracy for public views to influence public policy in general and crime policy in particular. It is further appropriate for many factors, including fear and concern about crime, to influence public views about the treatment of criminals and about the operation of the criminal justice system. However, it is not appropriate in a democracy that espouses egalitarian treatment, as the United States does, for racial prejudice to influence views about criminals and criminal justice and for these views to influence crime policy. To the extent, then, that U.S. crime policy is especially influenced by beliefs of Whites and that these beliefs rest in part on racial prejudice, U.S. crime policy may be seen as antidemocratic.
Criminal Processing
Looking Ahead The structural and cultural reasons that are thought to promote higher crime rates by African Americans suggest several possible pathways for reducing these crime rates. Social policies that create fuller education and employment opportunities for the poor, especially those residing in urban areas, would help reduce the extreme poverty and other negative structural conditions that are believed to promote African American criminality. Because continued racial segregation in housing helps trap African Americans in deteriorating neighborhoods with high crime rates, policies that end housing segregation would also help reduce African American criminality. Measures that improve the weakened social institutions characteristic of urban areas would promise a similar benefit. In this regard, many criminologists and other social scientists advocate expansion of early childhood intervention programs for poor children and their families and greater funding to reduce the dilapidation of urban schools and in other respects improve the educational experience of urban children. They also advocate improved prenatal and postnatal nutrition and other medical care for poor urban children and their mothers, as studies show that poor nutrition and medical care may lead to neurological impairment in infancy and, in turn, to antisocial behavior in later years. Future research needs to address all the issues covered in this brief entry. Although the entry has focused on African Americans because of their relatively high crime rates and the number of studies of these rates, scholars are turning their attention to two other groups with relatively high rates, Latinos and Native Americans. Research findings on these two groups parallel those for African Americans and indicate that the relatively high crime rates for all three groups stem largely from the extreme poverty and other criminogenic (crime-causing) conditions in which members of these groups disproportionately live. Greater understanding of all these conditions will help promote ameliorative social policies and, perhaps, also help reduce racial and ethnic prejudice directed at African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. Steven E. Barkan See also Criminal Processing; Death Penalty; Deviance and Crime; Discrimination; Drug Use; Gangs; Hernandez v. Texas; Homicide; Incarcerated Parents; Juvenile Justice; Media and Race; Pachucos/Pachucas Prejudice; Prisons; Racial Profiling; Urban Riots
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Further Readings
Barkan, Steven E. and Steven F. Cohn. 2005. “Why Whites Favor Spending More Money to Fight Crime: The Role of Racial Prejudice.” Social Problems 52:300–314. Gall v. United States, No, 06-7949 (2007). Hawkins, Darnell F., ed. 2003. Violent Crime: Assessing Race and Ethnic Differences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kimbrough v. United States, No. 06-6330 (2007). McNulty, Thomas L. and Paul E. Bellair. 2003. “Explaining Racial and Ethnic Differences in Adolescent Violence: Structural Disadvantage, Family Well-Being, and Social Capital.” Justice Quarterly 20:1–31. Peterson, Ruth D. and Lauren J. Krivo. 2005. “Macrostructural Analyses of Race, Ethnicity, and Violent Crime: Recent Lessons and New Directions for Research.” Annual Review of Sociology 31:331–356. Sampson, Robert J. and William Julius Wilson. 1995. “Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality.” Pp. 37–54 in Crime and Inequality, edited by J. Hagan and R. D. Peterson. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Simons, Ronald L., Yi-Fu Chen, Eric A. Stewart, and Gene H. Brody. 2003. “Incidents of Discrimination and Risk for Delinquency: A Longitudinal Test of Strain Theory with an African American Sample.” Justice Quarterly 20:827–854. Tonry, Michael. 1994. Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Walker, Samuel, Cassia Spohn, and Miriam DeLone. 2007. The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America. 4th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
CRIMINAL PROCESSING After remaining conspicuously stable for nearly 100 years, the number of people under criminal justice control increased nearly fivefold during the last quarter of the 20th century. During this “prison boom,” racial and ethnic disparities in criminal justice outcomes remained high. Today, U.S. prisons and jails house nearly 2 million people, and Blacks are three times more likely than Latinos and six times more likely than Whites to be in jail or prison. In the post–civil rights United States, most discussions about racial and ethnic disparities in criminal processing concern the apparent disjuncture between raceneutral law and racially disparate punishment outcomes, as reviewed in this entry.
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Criminal Processing
Stages of Criminal Processing Individuals arrested for allegedly committing crimes are processed through the criminal justice system. During pretrial processing, the defendant’s charge is finalized, and a criminal justice official makes several decisions that affect whether or not the defendant will be kept in jail while awaiting trial. The first decision involves whether or not a defendant’s release is conditional upon posting bail; if no bail is required, this is called a “nonfinancial release.” The second set of decisions is relevant only if bail is required; these decisions involve the amount of the bail and the forms of payment that will be accepted as bail. Third, in many states, a criminal justice official can decide that a defendant must stay in jail while awaiting trial; this is generally called “denying bail.” After pretrial processing is over, defendants either agree to a plea bargain or go to trial. In a plea bargain, defendants enter a guilty plea in exchange for fewer charges, a decrease in the severity of charges, a lighter sentence, or a combination of the three. Following either a plea arrangement or a trial conviction, offenders are sentenced to a variety of punishments, including fines, treatment, probation, and incarceration. Once offenders are serving sentences, criminal justice officials decide when they are to be released and, later, if that release is to be revoked. Disparities—or differences—in each of these punishment outcomes are associated with both legal characteristics, such as the crime of conviction and prior record, and “extralegal” characteristics, such as race, employment status, sex, and age.
Racial Disparities Pre etria al Pro ocessin ng
Over a quarter of the individuals incarcerated in the United States are being held in local jails, and over half of these individuals are being held pending trial. Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented among those held pretrial. This disparity is generated by a combination of factors. First, many characteristics that are correlated with race and ethnicity, like residential stability and employment status, have been codified as legal factors that criminal justice officials are supposed to consider when making pretrial decisions. Second, there is strong evidence that racial and ethnic stereotypes influence criminal processing at this stage. Finally, because Black and Latino people have fewer financial networks and resources, they are
less likely to be able to post bail when it is required for release. Besides being a significant and detrimental experience in itself, pretrial incarceration also affects later processing decisions. People who are held pretrial are more likely to be sentenced to incarceration than those who are released pretrial, and, when sentenced to incarceration, they are given longer sentences than those who were released pretrial. Thus, disparities in pretrial incarceration are significant both in themselves and due to their contribution to disparities in later criminal justice outcomes. Sen nten ncin ng
Studies of the effects of race on sentencing conducted from the 1920s to the 1970s generally examined the effects of race or unemployment on sentencing and excluded women defendants and offenders. These studies found that Black men and unemployed men received more punitive criminal justice outcomes than employed White men. However, these studies rarely controlled for legally relevant factors, such as prior record or seriousness of offense, and they used inadequate statistical methods. In the 1970s, many scholars reanalyzed the data from these earlier studies including controls for legally relevant factors and using more sophisticated statistical techniques; they concluded that little, if any, discrimination existed. As a result, many scholars wrote that the “discrimination thesis” had been disproved and that what appeared to be effects of racial or class discrimination were actually the effects of legally relevant variables that are correlated with race and class, such as prior record. Since then, several new developments have occurred that help to show where discrimination exists and why it was invisible in these earlier studies. First, scholars began to separate the sentencing decision into two parts: the decision to incarcerate and sentence length. These studies have two findings. First, Black and Latino people are more likely to be sentenced to incarceration than are White offenders with the same legal characteristics. Second, among offenders sentenced to incarceration, the length of the sentence is almost completely determined by legal characteristics. While judges have wide discretion when deciding whether or not to incarcerate an individual convicted of a crime, sentencing ranges are often “recommended,” if not mandated, leaving judges little room to adjust sentences for a given offense.
Criminal Processing
Second, researchers began to test for interactions. Although the main effects for race and class variables were often modest, their interaction, often with sex and particularly in young, unemployed Black males, was consistently strong and significant. Studies have shown that the effects of sex are not constant across different racial groups. Third, studies have begun to look at the effects of race on sentencing by offense category and have found that being Black or Latino is more disadvantageous for offenders charged with some offenses than for offenders charged with other offenses. This is often explained by one of two competing, but not necessarily incompatible, theories. Kalven and Zeisel’s “liberation hypothesis” argues that during the criminal processing of more serious cases, the outcome is strongly determined by the seriousness of the crime and by the defendant’s prior criminal record. In contrast, in less serious cases, the outcome is not clearly indicated by features of the crime or by the defendant’s criminal record, allowing criminal justice actors more discretion and thus increasing the likelihood of discrimination. Another perspective, often called “focal concerns,” argues that judges rarely have complete information about cases or defendants, and, as a result, they often try to reduce uncertainty by relying not only on the defendant’s present offense and prior criminal conduct but also on attributions linked to the defendant’s gender, race, social class, or other social positions. For example, Black-White disparities are largest among individuals charged with or convicted of violent offenses, while Latino-White disparities are largest among individuals charged with or convicted of drug offenses. Finally, new studies have begun to include variables that look at county-level demographics, such as economic inequality between Black and White populations. These studies find that sentencing disparities are more substantial and consistent in some counties than others and that this is linked to the demographics of those counties. For instance, race affects sentencing decisions most in counties where the percentage of Blacks and economic inequality are both low. Release and Rev voca atiion
Incarcerated individuals are often released from prison after serving a portion, rather than the entirety, of their sentence. In some states, release is determined by parole boards; in other states, release is calculated using a formula that considers the original sentence,
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“good behavior,” and other quantifiable traits. In states with parole release, Black offenders serve longer portions of their sentences before being released than do White offenders. This may be due to the influence of traits such as family instability and unemployment, both correlated with race, in parole decisions. Once released, parolees, those adults conditionally released to community supervision after serving a prison term, whether by parole board decision or by mandatory conditional release, are subject to being returned to jail or prison for rule violations or other offenses. Black people are more likely to have their release revoked due to a technical violation—like failing to keep a job or returning home after their established curfew—than either White or Latino people; of federal parolees, 20% of Latinos, 21% of Whites, and 34% of Blacks were revoked for such violations in 2003. Because this is an understudied area, there is a pressing need for future research that examines how racial and ethnic disparities in release and revocation are produced and maintained. Traci Schlesinger See also Crime and Race; Discrimination, Measuring; Drug Use; Homicide; Incarcerated Parents; Juvenile Justice
Further Readings
Albonetti, Celeste. 1989. “Bail and Judicial Discretion in the District of Columbia.” Sociology and Social Research 74:40–47. Callahan, Lisa and Eric Silver. 1998. “Revocation of Conditional Release: A Comparison of Individual and Program Characteristics across Four U.S. States.” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 21:177–186. Florida Department of Corrections. 1988. Adult Probation and Parole Revocation Process Research Report. Tallahassee, FL: Florida Department of Corrections. Rankin, Ann. 1964. “The Effect of Pretrial Detention.” New York University Law Review 39. Schlesinger, Traci. 2005. “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Pretrial Criminal Processing.” Justice Quarterly 22:170–192. Spohn, Cassia and Jerry Cederblom. 1991. “Race and Disparities in Sentencing: A Test of the Liberation Hypothesis.” Justice Quarterly 8:305–327. Steffensmeier, Darrell and Stephen Demuth. 2000. “Ethnicity and Sentencing Outcome in U.S. Federal Courts: Who Is Punished More Harshly?” American Sociological Review 65:705–729.
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Critical Race Theory
Unnever, James. (1980). Direct and Structural Discrimination in the Sentencing Process. PhD dissertation, Duke University. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International.
CRITICAL RACE THEORY Critical race theory (CRT) is an academic movement that emerged in the mid-1970s to critically engage the intersection of race and the law and to advocate for fresh, more radical approaches to the pursuit of racial justice. It is defined by a new generation of U.S. civil rights scholars and activists dissatisfied with traditional civil rights discourse, the slow pace of racial reform, and the seeming inability of mainstream liberal thinking on race to effectively counter the erosion of civil rights accomplishments. CRT scholars caution that mainstream civil rights doctrine, focused as it is upon the principle of nondiscrimination, is not up to the tasks facing the post–civil rights era wherein new, more subtle varieties of racism, often based on practices that are ostensibly nonracial, remain entrenched.
Early Strands CRT existed in embryonic form in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s in the writing of individual legal scholars concerned that the gains of the Civil Rights Movement were vulnerable to erosion and backlash. Notable originators of CRT include the late Alan Freeman, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Cheryl Harris, Charles Lawrence, Mari Matsuda, and Patricia Williams. Perhaps the most prominent exponent in the early generation was Derrick Bell. A veteran civil rights lawyer and the first tenured Black professor at Harvard Law School (now a visiting professor of law at New York University), Bell argued that U.S. jurisprudence on racial issues, even when seemingly liberal in thrust, serves to entrench racism and that in the post–civil rights era, although legal segregation and institutional discrimination have been struck down, formally neutral laws continue to uphold White racial domination. Bell developed a theory based on “converging interests,” or the idea that Blacks will advance only if their interests converge with the interests of the White majority. Since racism benefits many Whites materially and psychologically, as a group they have little
incentive to transcend it. In the face of White resistance, justice for Black Americans will be sidelined; some evidence for this may be seen in setbacks surrounding school busing and other integration measures following in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). In its critique of liberalism and its pessimism visà-vis incremental approaches to racial reform, CRT draws broadly from older currents of thought borrowed from Antonio Gramsci, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and W. E. B. Du Bois, as well as newer ways of thinking linked to the Black Power, Chicano, and radical feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s, these currents distilled into what could be discerned as an intellectual movement. It first emerged in 1981, when students at Harvard Law School organized a boycott in the wake of the departure of Professor Bell and in protest against what they viewed as the inadequate legal-institutional engagement with race. One consequence was the formation of a studentorganized alternative course on race and the law. In the mid-1980s, there occurred a series of forums hosted by Critical Legal Studies (CLS), a closely aligned progressive movement within the law that aims to debunk the ostensibly value-neutral posture of the law and expose its deeply political role in maintaining an unjust social order. CRT scholars challenged CLS with paying undue attention to class and economic structures at the expense of race and urged CLS to pay better attention to the particularity of race and its formative role in not just reflecting and upholding but also producing racial power and constituting racial subjects.
Formalizing Its Place CRT formed as a self-conscious entity in 1989, the year of its first conference, and has since been credited with the publication of numerous readers and more than 400 law review articles and books. A core idea is that White racism did not end with passage of civil rights legislation, but rather endures as an endemic feature of U.S. society. A central animating concern for CRT scholars is the retreat from racial justice in the post–civil rights era and the retrenchment of many Civil Rights Movement achievements. Although some misunderstand CRT as embodying the voice of liberal against conservative legal scholars, in fact, CRT stands in protest against both. On matters of
Critical Race Theory
race-related law and policy, both liberals and conservatives share in a consensus approach that emphasizes antidiscrimination law, the result of which is to largely perpetuate the status quo (i.e., fail to correct the racial injustices of the past). Indeed, one of the most overarching concepts animating CRT thought is the critique of liberal, colorblind ideology. Universal principles associated with color blindness—such as nondiscrimination, formal equality of opportunity, and the rule of law—are lauded for their potent mix in bringing down the Jim Crow laws of legalized segregation. Yet these same principles are also found limiting in the postsegregation context; for in their adherence to race neutrality and equal protection of individuals before the law, they unwittingly present legal and moral obstacles to those acting politically (i.e., race consciously) against racial hierarchy. The formalistic conception of equality expressed in color-blind strictures of equal treatment can remedy only the most blatant forms of discrimination, such as the refusal to employ a person of color, but cannot address processes based on equality of outcome. Color consciousness is embraced as a pragmatic strategy to address the nation’s racial problems, which relates to CRT’s critique of the hidden racial dimensions embedded within celebrated American notions of meritocracy and individualism. Meritocratic ideology is sometimes deployed in a manner that blames people of color for their own failures and undermines state efforts that aim toward greater racial equality. CRT scholars unite in a shared “call to context” to allow better understanding of how such universal and abstract liberal principles serve in contexts of racialized social systems to preserve patterns of racial inequality and disadvantage. This “call to context” is evident in the range of applications to which CRT addresses itself, including hate crime and hate speech legislation, crime, women’s reproductive liberty, affirmative action, poverty, globalization, antidiscrimination law, and education. For example, with regard to hate crime and hate speech legislation, CRT scholars object to the view, most recently expressed by Justice Antonin Scalia, that speech should be protected irrespective of content. Content and context matter, argue critical race theorists, such as in the case of cross burnings. Such a speech act has behind it a historical and social context linked with intimidation and violence that demands attention in any assessment of the potential harm such an act might inflict on its intended audience.
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CRT has similarly engaged in debates surrounding affirmative action policy, drawing attention to the context of persistent racial disparities in education and society in order to rebut the increasingly popular resonant argument that the policy violates the rights of White Americans to equal treatment before the law. In detailing all the ways that racism still matters— whether it be in reference to securing a bank loan, apartment, or job or in contributing to disproportionate Black and brown poverty and prison populations— CRT scholars offer unique voices and modes of expression. Most innovative in this regard is the embrace of “legal storytelling.” Growing out of CRT’s pessimism vis-à-vis litigation as an avenue of change, many have engaged in a postmodernist exercise to tell stories and counterstories, often based on biographical or autobiographical detail or even fiction, humor, and satire, in order to expose the hidden normative bias toward Whiteness in the law and the construction of social reality more generally. First-person stories are celebrated as a legitimate way for Black and brown writers to express and register the reality of racism.
Attracting Controversy Borrowing from radical feminism and Black feminism both, CRT shares in the celebration of “standpoint epistemology,” or the view that a person of minority status has a competence and authority to speak about racism unmatched by those of a different racial status. Owing to the different histories and experiences with oppression, the voice of color can communicate to Whites and others something unique and valuable. This voice and the different frame of reference from whence it comes have the potential to explode the façade of neutrality of law when it comes to race matters, as well as hegemonic whiteness more generally. This defining narrative style of writing has brought CRT a measure of controversy, especially as it slides into a defense of adversarial scholarship and engaged lawyering. Even more controversial is the notion of “legal instrumentalism,” a version of Black empowerment developed as a response to the discretionary power exercised against the Black community (historically and contemporarily) by the police and the courts. Sometimes this takes the form of advocating for Black juries to acquit Black defendants who are not dangers to the community, as in the example of a Black youth convicted on drug charges. At its most extreme, legal
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Critical Race Theory
instrumentalism translates into the suggestion that Black jurors nullify certain laws if it is deemed that the instrumental goals of the Black community would be better served by not sending a Black defendant to prison. Sometimes Black lawbreaking itself is justified as a form of self-help in the context of an U.S. legal system complicit in centuries of racial oppression. Such logic received its widest public reception during the trial of O. J. Simpson in the mid-1990s. Defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran adeptly enacted a sort of applied CRT by selecting an African American jury, playing the “race card” by emphasizing the history of racial friction between the Los Angeles Police Department and the Black community, and proposing a version of jury nullification by calling on jurors to ignore the evidence in the case and instead send a powerful message to the police and White society, as payback for America’s shameful racial legacy. The discordant public response to the acquittal of Simpson for the killing of his ex-wife and her companion further confirmed the CRT belief in racial perspectivism, or the idea that there exists a racial bifurcation of perspectives between Blacks and Whites in U.S. society.
New Directions New themes and perspectives continue to emerge as CRT evolves. Although the movement began in the legal academy, it has spread beyond to fields as varied as education, Critical White Studies, political science, ethnic studies, and American Studies. Its themes have broadened, too. The second published reader includes essays on, for example, critical race feminism, Critical White Studies, and gay-lesbian queer issues. Especially provocative is the trend to push beyond the BlackWhite binary, as represented in the work of a number of subdisciplines under the broadening umbrella of CRT: Latino/a legal scholars known as “Lat-Crits” (such as Richard Delgado, Kevin Johnson, Margaret Montoya, and Juan Perea); Asian American Critical Race Studies, or “AsiaCrit” (such as Neil Gotanda, Eric Yamamoto, and Mari Matsuda); and American Indian Critical Race Studies, or “TribalCrit” (such as Robert Williams). One result has been the introduction of understudied themes into CRT, such as immigration theory and policy, language rights, discrimination based on national origin, indigenous people’s rights, and land claims. Another result of the move beyond the Black-White binary has been to
highlight the theme of “differential racism,” or the idea that racism affects particular racial and ethnic groups differently in different contexts. Emergence of the new subdisciplines has necessitated a closer look at intergroup relations between and among different minority groups of color. Other insurgent strains have been similarly productive in adding nuance to core CRT ideas. Both critical race feminism and queer theory have deepened CRT’s concern with how race, gender, class, and sexual orientation interact together in a system of oppression. Such appreciation of intersectionality, together with a more robust antiessentialism offered by these newergeneration authors, has problematized the assumption of a unitary minority experience or singular voice of color. The political necessity of actively constructing strategic alliances is emphasized instead. Critical White Studies, for its part, extends the notion of race as a social construction to include an examination of how whiteness itself was historically constructed by the Supreme Court and how it operates today as an invisible yet privileged norm in law and society. CRT is not without its critics. Disagreement over proposed race-conscious legal strategies is perhaps the most predictable. Other sources of discord have already been mentioned above, such as disapproval of “legal storytelling” and warnings against the pitfalls of “adversarial scholarship” and subversiveness of “engaged lawyering.” Some feel that CRT overemphasizes the centrality of race as a variable in the law, while others rebut what is regarded as the undue pessimism about prospects for racial change. Finally, some charge CRT’s belief that only Black and brown scholars can advocate on behalf of antiracist causes as constituting a vulgar sort of race essentialism. Despite these criticisms, CRT represents an exciting new body of creatively engaged scholarship at the nexus of race and the law that is well situated to engage emerging themes in the more general field of race and ethnic studies. Amy E. Ansell See also Color Blindness; Discrimination; Feminism, Black; Institutional Discrimination; People of Color; Racism; Whiteness; White Privilege
Further Readings
Bell, Derrick. 1992. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. New York: Basic Books.
Croatian Americans
Bell, Derrick. 2004. Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hope for Racial Reform. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Crenshaw, Kimberlé W. 1988. “Race, Reform, Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation in Anti-discrimination Law.” Harvard Law Review 101:1331–1387. Crenshaw, Kimberlé W., Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas, eds. 1995. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. New York: New Press. Delgado, Richard, ed. 1997. Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic, eds. 2000. Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge. 2nd ed. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Dixson, Arienne and Celia K. Rousseau. 2006. Critical Race Theory and Education. New York: Routledge. Haney Lopez, Ian F. 1996. White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York: New York University Press. Harris, Cheryl. 1993. “Whiteness as Property.” Harvard Law Review 106:1707. Parker, Laurence, Donna Deyhle, and Sofia Villenas, eds. 1999. Race Is . . . Race Isn’t: Critical Race Theory and Qualitative Studies in Education. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Rosen, Jeffry. 1996. “The Bloods and the Crits.” New Republic, December 9, pp. 27–42. Valdes, Francisco, Jerome McCristal-Culp, and Angela P. Harris, eds. 2002. Crossroads, Directions, and a New Critical Race Theory. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Williams, Patricia. 1991. The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wing, Adrien K. 1997. Critical Race Feminism: A Reader. New York: New York University Press.
Immigration Patterns A significant number of Croats began arriving in the United States about a century ago. Many of these immigrants were single men from the various regions of Croatia (Slavonia, Dalmatia, Istria, BosniaHerzegovina) who worked as sailors, merchants, craftsmen, and missionaries. These men arrived from Adriatic ports to North American trading centers such as New Orleans and San Francisco. There, they found a climate similar to their homelands of the Adriatic and Mediterranean regions. Some 16,000 to 20,000 Croatians from the region of Dalmatia had begun to make the United States their home in the 1860s. The largest wave, bringing an estimated 400,000, came between the years of 1890 and 1914. Many were drawn to the United States because they heard about the gold rush. Others migrated because of work opportunities due to the expansion of copper and coal mining in other states. This mass exodus to the United States prompted Croatian authorities to issue regulations and ordinances to curb migration; however, it was unsuccessful due to lack of government support. During the years before and after World War I, the immigrants who came to the United States were male, landless peasants, those affected by overpopulation, displaced merchant seamen, men escaping military
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CROATIAN AMERICANS
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Croatian Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from Croatia, a country of 4.4 million, as of 2007 estimates. According to the 2000 census, there was a total of 40,910 people born in Croatia resident in the United States, of whom 60.1% were citizens. This entry looks at the background of immigration from Croatia to the United States and the contemporary picture of Croatian Americans.
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conscription, and people fleeing political oppression. Many were illiterate, which left them without the skills needed to work in an industrial economy. As a result, working as unskilled laborers was their only choice. However, by living in boardinghouses or in cooperative households, many were able to save money and return to their homelands to buy land and property. A return migration back to Croatia was popular during the years between 1899 and 1943. The remainder of the immigrants settled to make the United States their permanent home. The next wave of Croatian immigration occurred during the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the communist revolution took place in Yugoslavia in 1945. In the following decades, Croatians migrated to the United States because they were attracted by the opportunity to better themselves financially.
Further Readings
Carmichael, Cathie. 1999. Croatia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCLIO. Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs .gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Krestic, Vasilije D. 1998. Through Genocide to a Greater Croatia. Belgrade, Serbia: BIGZ. Mertus, Julie and Rada Boric, eds. 1997. The Suitcase: Refugee Voices from Bosnia and Croatia. Berkeley: University of California Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Croatia. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/ socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
Contemporary Pattern Of those Croatian-born present here in 2000, only 5.9% had entered the country prior to 2000. In recent years, people from Croatia have sought permanent residency and refugee status and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2006, about 1,500 Croatians immigrated to the United States annually. An additional 6,000 refugees arrived between the years of 1999 and 2005. Since 1997, about 700 Croatian Americans have become naturalized citizens annually. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, there were 261,680 people of Croatian national origin in the United States in 2005. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states were Pennsylvania, California, Ohio, Illinois, and New York. According to the 2000 census, 43.9% spoke English less than “very well.” Their median family income was $57,339, compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Among famous Croatian Americans are golfer Fred Couples, mathematician William Feller, actor John Malkovich, baseball player Roger Maris, and world boxing champion “Croat Comet” Fritzie Zivic. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Balkans; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Ethnic Conflict; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees; Serbian Americans; Symbolic Ethnicity
CROSS-FRONTIER CONTACTS Cross-frontier contacts are relevant to situations in which members of the same national, ethnic, religious, linguistic, or cultural group are separated by international boundaries. Groups like these, which are often referred to as transfrontier minorities, are a by-product of nation-state formation. Existing frontiers are a consequence of long-standing historical processes that involved the transformation of hitherto separate jurisdictions (feudal fiefdoms, city-states, bishoprics, tribal lands, etc.), first into dynastic states or empires and then into nation-states. Nation building was conducted through two distinct albeit mutually reinforcing processes of differentiation between states and consolidation within states. The end result is an international system that places a premium on the territorial integrity of existing states as necessary for order within and between states. A practice of territorial inviolability originally arose in the context of the overseas imperial sovereignty of European powers in the non-Western world, the consequent breakup or dismantling of those empires, and the emergence of a large number of newly independent states that previously had been colonial dependencies or internationally administered mandated or trust territories. Most sovereign, ex-colonial jurisdictions do not contain unified populations that
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identify strongly with the sovereign state in whose jurisdiction they reside. On the contrary, the population is usually divided internally and often deeply along religious, cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and other lines of territorial cleavage. In the large majority of such states, there is not today nor has there previously been any unified nation in the communitarian sense of the word; there are several and often many subnational or transnational groups that do not align with existing international borders. The international community is nevertheless determined to preserve the territorial integrity of all such preexisting and seemingly artificial territorial jurisdictions and to refuse any minority demands for territorial revision based on their asserted “right” to self-determination. That practice of refusal was adopted to preclude and prevent an otherwise expected rush of claims for secession by such groups, which numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands, across the length and breadth of the international system, and thereby to prevent or forestall international instability that was expected to occur if those claims were accommodated. The preemptive policy of preserving state jurisdictions in their existing territorial shape was successful in the vast majority of cases. However, this impressive achievement has not come without a price, namely, dissatisfaction and frustration on the part of those many groups who are prisoners of the current territorial status quo. Groups like these have failed to achieve independent statehood (e.g., the Basques), have been cut off from their kin states (e.g., the Hungarian minority in Slovakia and Romania), or represent scattered populations that are at odds with the territorially defined character of the modern nationstate (such as Indigenous Peoples in North and South America or the Roma in Europe).
Rights of Minorities The idea of cross-frontier contact seeks to improve the circumstances of groups like these by facilitating movement and communication across international boundaries. Explicit provisions for contacts between members of minority communities separated by existing frontiers may be found in paragraph 32.4 of the 1990 Copenhagen Document of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which guarantees minorities the right to “establish and
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maintain unimpeded contacts among themselves within their country as well as contacts across frontiers with citizens of other States with whom they share a common ethnic or national origin, cultural heritage or religious beliefs.” Moreover, article 17.1 of the 1995 (European) Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities prevents states from interfering in “the right of persons belonging to national minorities to establish and maintain free and peaceful contacts across frontiers with persons lawfully staying in other States, in particular those with whom they share an ethnic, cultural, linguistic or religious identity, or a common cultural heritage.” Less clearly, such a minority right of transfrontier contact may also be derived from those general provisions in favor of freedom of movement and freedom of expression that can be found in all the leading human rights documents, including the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights. It should, however, be stressed that such arrangements are intended to support, not to subvert, the existing territorial status quo. The application of provisions for transfrontier contacts is not therefore intended to support minority claims for secession. Far from it, the minority right to transfrontier contact operates within the confines of prevailing international standards with respect to existing boundaries and those domestic legal and administrative arrangements designed to enforce border controls and entry requirements. Accordingly, transfrontier contacts apply only to persons, not to states, are restricted to persons “lawfully residing” in the territory of a state, and are limited to “free and peaceful contacts,” thus excluding, for example, contacts intended to support terrorism or other criminal acts. Such arrangements may be curtailed in the interests of territorial integrity, the prevention of disorder or crime within and between states, and the protection of the reputation or the rights of others. J. Jackson Preece See Appendix B See also Alamo, The Borderlands; Ethnonational Minorities; Ethnoviolence; Genocide; Minority/Majority; Minority Rights; Roma
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Further Readings
Allcock, John, ed. 1992. Border and Territorial Disputes. 3rd ed. Detroit, MI: Gale Research. Anderson, Malcom. 1997. Frontiers: Territory and State Formation in the Modern World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Day, Alan, ed. 1987. Border and Territorial Disputes. 2nd ed. Harlow, UK: Longman. de Marchi, Bruna and Anna M. Boileau, eds. 1982. Boundaries and Minorities in Western Europe. Milan, Italy: Franco Angeli. Horowitz, Donald. 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jackson Preece, Jennifer. 1998. “Ethnic Cleansing as an Instrument of Nation-State Creation: Changing State Practices and Emerging Legal Norms.” Human Rights Quarterly 20:817–842. Jackson Preece, Jennifer. 1998. National Minorities and the European Nation-States System. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Jackson Preece, Jennifer. 2005. “Article 17.” Pp. 487–506 in The Rights of Minorities: A Commentary on the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, edited by M. Weller. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Jackson Preece, Jennifer. 2005. Minority Rights: Between Diversity and Community. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN This diverse neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, lies at a charged intersection of the Black and Jewish diasporas. The neighborhood is known for a history of intermittent tension and conflict between the Lubavitch Hasidim—a tight-knit community of orthodox Jews who make up a small but significant portion of the local population—and their largely AfroCaribbean neighbors. These tensions came to a head in August 1991, when 3 days of violence and angry demonstrations were sparked by the deaths of Gavin Cato and Yankel Rosenbaum—the former a young Black boy from Guyana struck by a car in the motorcade of the Lubavitch community’s leader, the latter an Australian orthodox Jew stabbed by a Black teenager hours later. This entry traces the social history of Crown Heights, focusing on the settlement patterns of the neighborhood’s Black and Jewish communities. It examines the history of Black-Jewish conflict in
Crown Heights, focusing on conflicting perceptions of the violence of 1991.
Social History and Geography The geographic boundaries of Crown Heights are not entirely clear, as Black and Jewish neighborhood residents tend to define their community in rather different ways. The neighborhood is semiofficially defined, however, to include a large swath of north-central Brooklyn—some 200 square blocks, bordered by the neighborhoods of Bedford-Stuyvesant to the north, East Flatbush to the south, Brownsville to the east, and Prospect Heights to the west. This area is home to approximately 200,000 residents (according to 2000 census data), roughly 65% of whom are Afro-Caribbean immigrants and their families, while about 15% are African American, about 9% are Hispanic, and about 9% are White—a White minority made up largely of Hasidic Jews. The neighborhood took its present-day geographic and architectural form in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Prior to this time, the area known as “Crow Hill” was a sparsely populated tract of farms and forests. Its only substantial settlements were the neighboring Black villages of Weeksville and Carrville, founded in the 1830s on land developed by African American entrepreneurs. These independent towns were largely destroyed, however, by the urbanization of the area, and the newly developed “Crown Heights” was soon home to an upwardly mobile, rapidly assimilating elite of Eastern European Jews and other White European immigrants. In the 1940s and 1950s, these established residents were joined by the communities that have come to make up today’s Crown Heights: Hasidic Jews, arriving in New York as Holocaust refugees, and Black migrants, both African American and Afro-Caribbean, drawn in part by the city’s booming wartime economy. In 1940, the Lubavitch Hasidic community established its global headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway, on the same major thoroughfare that has been home, since 1969, to the annual West Indian American Day Parade, or Labor Day Carnival. As the Black population of Crown Heights grew in the 1960s and 1970s, the vast majority of White neighborhood residents followed the nationwide trend of “White flight” from city to suburbs. The Lubavitch Hasidim was the only substantial Jewish community that chose to stay in Crown Heights, and they did so at the insistence of their spiritual leader—the
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Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson— who gave a public address in April 1969 declaring his unequivocal opposition to any exodus from the neighborhood. Over the decades that followed, the Lubavitch community of Crown Heights grew substantially, from a few thousand members in the 1960s to some 12,000 or 13,000 today, but the neighborhood continued to change around them, becoming a center of Afro-Caribbean settlement in the New York area.
History of Black-Jewish Conflict Most of the time, Blacks and Jews in Crown Heights live together in peace, coexisting as intimate strangers and sharing the streets of their neighborhood at a respectful distance. Yet many Crown Heights residents are acutely aware of politicized differences between Blacks and Jews, and, on a number of occasions, their sense of difference has been cast in stark relief by violent conflict. The first such conflict occurred in 1964, when incidents of Black-on-Jewish crime led the Hasidim to found a community patrol known as the “Maccabees” that was soon accused of anti-Black vigilantism. Similar conflicts have followed other incidents of violent crime over the years—as in 1978, when Black leaders formed their own patrol, following the Hasidic beating of a Black teenager whom Hasidim alleged had assaulted an elderly Hasid. In addition to these and other public skirmishes, Black and Jewish community leaders have frequently sparred over issues of housing development, policing, and local governance. Though there are no substantial socioeconomic differences between the neighborhood’s Black and Jewish communities, Black Crown Heights residents have often charged that Hasidim receive “preferential treatment” from the police and other state agencies. This history of conflict formed a backdrop for the deadly violence of 1991. On August 19, 1991, a car in the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s motorcade was involved in a traffic accident—after driving though a red or yellow stoplight, according to Black and Jewish neighborhood residents, respectively—and struck two Black children. Seven-year-old Gavin Cato was killed instantly, and his cousin Angela Cato was seriously injured. Many Black Crown Heights residents charged that a Hasidic volunteer ambulance neglected to care for the Cato children, while tending to the driver of the car that hit them. An angry crowd gathered at the scene, and members of this crowd later attacked an orthodox Jew named Yankel
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Rosenbaum, who was walking in a different part of the neighborhood. Rosenbaum was stabbed four times and died the next morning. An Afro-Caribbean teen named Lemrick Nelson was ultimately convicted of the stabbing, and an African American man named Charles Price pleaded guilty to inciting the attack, but only after a lengthy series of trials that cast doubt on the finality of these verdicts. For 3 days after the deaths of Cato and Rosenbaum, Blacks and Jews faced off in angry demonstrations on the streets of Crown Heights—hurling rocks, bottles, slogans, and slurs. Six stores were looted, and a few predominantly Black youths assaulted Jews, journalists, and police. The dramatic story of the “Crown Heights riots” became a potent symbol of racial conflict, but neighborhood residents are often divided by their differing perceptions of this conflict in racial or religious terms. Most Black Crown Heights residents describe the violence of 1991 as a “riot” or “rebellion” motivated by Black frustration with White privilege, while most Lubavitch Hasidim describe the violence as a “pogrom” motivated by gentile hostility toward Jews. This perception of an anti-Semitic pogrom is exacerbated by the common Hasidic charge that New York City’s mayor and police chief, both African American at the time, intentionally withheld police protection from the Jews of Crown Heights. These conflicting perceptions of racial and religious conflict made it difficult to resolve the bitterness that lingered after the violence of 1991. Throughout the 1990s, a number of community organizations and state agencies developed programs for Black-Jewish dialogue in Crown Heights, but few neighborhood residents participated. The neighborhood eventually returned to its previous pattern of stable coexistence, but the possibility of future conflict remains in a neighborhood where diverse Black and Jewish communities share a common social world yet understand that world in radically different ways. Henry Goldschmidt See also Caribbean Americans; Ethnic Conflict; Ethnic Succession; Jewish Americans; Jewish-Black Relations: The Contemporary Period; Race; Religion; Urban Riots Further Readings
Goldschmidt, Henry. 2006. Race and Religion among the Chosen Peoples of Crown Heights. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
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Kasinitz, Philip. 1992. Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mintz, Jerome. 1992. Hasidic People: A Place in the New World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Smith, Anna Deavere. 1993. Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Other Identities. New York: Anchor Books.
CUBA Any inquiry into the meaning and significance of race and ethnicity in Cuba, a nation with an estimated 2007 population of 11.2 million people, must begin with an awareness of the fundamental difference between North American notions of racial purity and distinctiveness, on one hand, and Latin American and Caribbean understandings of racial mixture (or mestizaje), on the other. It would be grossly misleading to apply to Cuba formulations derived from the character of racial and ethnic relations in other national contexts, particularly that of the United States. Unlike in the United States, where African Americans have long constituted a clear, distinctive, and fairly unified ethnoracial group, in Cuba, the notion that “Afro-Cubans” exist as a distinct social or ethnic group with its own separate racial identity is not commonly accepted, even among those with African ancestry.
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Blacks in Cuba often think of themselves as Cuban first and foremost, with their racial designation playing a secondary role in their identity. While a distinctive Afro-Cuban identity (especially in its sociocultural and religious aspects) has reemerged since the beginning of the economic crisis in 1990 (partially due to the reemergence of racial inequalities), the North American notion of “two nations, separate and unequal” is quite foreign to the Cuban reality. This entry looks at how race is defined in Cuba and briefly examines the position of Afro-Cubans over time.
The “One-Drop” Rule The long history of legal segregation and biracial thinking in the United States has led to the internalization of what is known as the “one-drop rule” of racial identity; that is, “one drop” of African blood/ancestry defines a person as Black, with “blackness” traditionally understood as a contamination of “whiteness.” In Cuba, on the other hand, racial identification is much more flexible and context dependent. Indeed, if there is a Cuban equivalent to the “one-drop rule,” it is that “one drop” of European blood/ancestry defines a person as non-Black. Thus, many Cubans who would not think of themselves or be identified by others as Black in Cuba (because of the European element of their mestizo ancestry) would be considered Black in the United States (based on the African element of that same mixed ancestry). Furthermore, given the great extent to which the cultural, religious, and linguistic characteristics associated with Africans have been absorbed into the very idea of what it means to be Cuban, all Cubans practice at least some of the cultural traditions that originally came to Cuba from Africa. This reality is reflected in the popular expression, “He who has nothing of the Congo, must have something of the Calabar” (“El que no tiene de Congo, tiene de Carabalí”). This popular belief that all Cubans share in the island’s African heritage (regardless of their particular ancestry or phenotype) has been captured even more emphatically by Juan de Marcos, the Cuban music impresario behind the musical success of the “Buena Vista Social Club.” “Get one thing straight, man,” de Marcos declared to Washington Post reporter Eugene Robinson, “Cuban music is Afro-Cuban music. There are no Whites in Cuba. There are people who think they are White, but they are all African.” This more dynamic and flexible racial categorization scheme has given way to a rich popular lexicon of
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mixed ancestry based more on color and context than actual ancestry. Some of these “racial” terms include blanco (White), jabao (high yellow), trigueño (wheat colored), mestizo (mixed race), mulato (mulatto), mulato adelantado (advanced mulatto), mulato blanconazo (light mulatto), pasa (raisin), negro azul (blueBlack), indio (Indian), prieto (dark), and negro (Black). Thus, in Cuba and in most of the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, it is not a question of “one drop” or “taint” of blackness making a person Black, but an equally racist economic and sociobiological quest to “improve the race” by adding whiteness to it, giving rise to the common Cuban/Caribbean expressions of mejorar (better) or adelantar la raza (advance the race) and blanquear (Whiten). Thus, while in the United States, “Black” has been categorized as distinct from (and inferior to) pure whiteness, in Cuba, the tradition has been to measure oneself in terms of degree of distance from (and superiority to) pure blackness.
Transculturation and the Cuban Ajiaco Although Cuba was one of the last countries in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery (in 1886) and racism and racial inequality have still not been completely eradicated by the revolutionary government (since 1959), during the course of the 20th century, Cuba has gradually redefined itself as a transculturized nation of Afro-Hispanic origin. This key term, transculturation, coined in the 1940s by eminent Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, attempts to describe Cuban national identity as the combination of many distinct ethnic groups, Spaniards and Africans being the most prominent. The American “melting pot” ideal often presupposes a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant mainstream into which new elements (or “ethnic groups”) gradually melt, adding distinctive flavors and accents in the long process of acculturation and assimilation. Like the U.S. population, Cubans think of themselves as a people melded into one from many diverse origins. However, unlike the American melting pot, the Cuban notion of the ajiaco (a tropical stew) reflects a single national identity shared among all Cubans (whatever their specific ethnic origin or racial ancestry). This transculturalized identity recognizes African and European (as well as Indian, Chinese, Jewish, English, French, American, and Yucatec Maya) cultural elements as cocontributors, without claiming any single one as the mainstream. Interestingly,
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even the well-known Cuban term for a rural “White” farmer, guajiro (as in the famous song, “Guajira guantanamera”) is thought to originate with the fact that those indigenous people who did not die of disease, from overwork, or in battles against the occupying Spanish forces ended up assimilating into the Spanish population. Thus, the emblematic Cuban guajiro (a word borrowed from the Arawak language of the Taíno) is itself a transculturized combination of both Spanish and indigenous heritage.
Race in Early Cuban History The difference between the American melting pot and the Cuban ajiaco should come as no surprise, given the fact that the single island of Cuba received more African slaves (1.3 million) than all of North America. Furthermore, the slave trade and the institution of slavery itself survived far longer in Cuba than in the United States, constantly revitalizing the varied African elements of Cuban culture. Finally, though Cuba’s White Creole population (born in Cuba, of Spanish origin) was notoriously reluctant to admit free Blacks or mulattoes (not to mention African slaves) as equal members of colonial society, this dynamic shifted after Cuban independence was achieved in 1902. During these years of frustrated nationalism in the face of repeated U.S. interventions under the Platt Amendment, Creole nationalists began to symbolically recognize and actively embrace African cultural elements (that had always been there) in their effort to forge a unified, specifically non– North American national Cuban identity. However, this new mestizo national identity has always been a highly ambivalent construction. On one hand, the myth of racial democracy could be used by marginalized Blacks as a way to claim full and equal rights as Cubans. On the other hand, the very existence of the ideology of racial equality made it difficult, if not impossible, for Afro-Cubans who did suffer from systematic discrimination under the Republic (1902–1958) to fight for their rights as Blacks. This dilemma led to decades of discrimination against Afro-Cubans as second-class citizens during the first half of the 20th century. Rights routinely granted to White Cubans were systematically denied to Blacks, especially in the areas of housing, education, health care, employment, political participation, and membership in private clubs and professional associations.
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Castro Takes Power In response to the desperate economic and social situation of many Afro-Cubans, soon after Fidel Castro came to power in January 1959, he declared that eradicating Cuba’s systematic racial discrimination was among the revolution’s highest priorities. Castro specifically singled out discrimination in employment and segregation in social life. Setting the stage for an unprecedented assault on institutionalized racism, the revolution reversed Blacks’ lack of access to jobs and eradicated their exclusion from most social clubs, parks, and beaches. Achieved largely through the nationalization of private property, henceforth jobs, education, and social facilities would be open to all Cubans regardless of class or skin color. Despite this frontal assault on racial discrimination in the initial years of the revolution, after 1962, the efforts of the revolutionary government to do away with racial discrimination had the effect of demobilizing any independent activity on the part of Blacks themselves. Subsequently, Afro-Cuban leaders who dared point out remnants of racism and discrimination were accused of being ungrateful racists themselves, sewing division in a nation under attack. Since the problem of racial inequality had supposedly been solved by the revolution, speaking of it was interpreted as a counterrevolutionary threat to national unity. Ironically, while in the past, being racist had been considered counterrevolutionary, now claiming racism had not been totally eradicated was considered counterrevolutionary. By the 1990s, when the economic crisis forced the socialist Cuban economy to open up to international tourism as never before, many young Black Cubans began to feel relegated to second-class citizenship in their own country once again. As inequality expanded across the island, so did the racial demography of that inequality. For example, because the vast majority of Cuban exiles are White, few Blacks on the island receive remittances from abroad. Similarly, jobs in the expanding and lucrative tourism sector often exclude Afro-Cubans with the requirement that potential employees possess “good presence” (code for “light skin”). Finally, when young Afro-Cuban men and women refuse to be excluded from participation in the most lucrative sector of the economy by going underground as hustlers and prostitutes, their behavior is immediately used against them as evidence of their “natural” criminality and inferiority. This cycle of
blaming the victim leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy that traps Afro-Cubans in a no-win situation. Ted Henken See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Brazil; Caribbean; Cuba: Migration and Demography; Cuban Americans; Diaspora; Melting Pot; One-Drop Rule; Santería; Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Further Readings
Casal, Lourdes. 1989. “Race Relations in Contemporary Cuba.” Pp. 471–486 in The Cuba Reader: The Making of a Revolutionary Society, edited by P. Brenner, W. M. LeoGrande, D. Rich, and D. Siegel. New York: Grove Press. de la Fuente, Alejandro. 2001. A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Moore, Robin D. 1997. Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920–1940. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Ortiz, Fernando. 1995. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pérez Sarduy, Pedro and Jean Stubs, eds. 2000. Afro-Cuban Voices: On Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Robinson, Eugene. 2004. Last Dance in Havana: The Final Days of Fidel and the Start of the New Cuban Revolution. New York: Free Press. Sawyer, Mark Q. 2006. Racial Politics in Post-revolutionary Cuba. New York: Cambridge University Press.
CUBA: MIGRATION AND DEMOGRAPHY Over the centuries, migration to and from Cuba, beginning with the slave trade to the Americas, has played an important role in its society and in the social construction of race within Cuba. Its proximity to Florida has also meant that the United States is a primary destination for people seeking to leave the island, and departures over the course of the Castro regime have had a significant impact. This entry examines how slavery and immigration have combined to influence the demographics of the Cuban population.
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Historical Background
Effects of Emigration
Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, Cuba was inhabited by Amerindians called the Taíno and the Ciboney. The Taíno were primarily involved in horticulture. The Ciboney were hunters and gatherers. They migrated between the islands of the Greater Antilles. Spain’s arrival on the island in the 1490s was detrimental to the indigenous people. Attempts made to resocialize them were unsuccessful. The Taíno and Ciboney refused to adopt Christianity and revolted against all attempts to enslave them for labor. The majority of the Taíno who did not flee to other nearby islands died due to illnesses unknowingly brought by the Europeans and the maltreatment used in attempts at enslavement. The numbers of Cubans who have a multiracial heritage that includes Amerindians is unknown. Interracial marriages may have occurred, but there is insufficient DNA testing to determine the magnitude of these relationships. The Spaniards were unwilling to forgo their plans of colonizing the island and looked to Africa and the slave trade as a means to provide labor needed to plant and harvest cane sugar, coffee, and tobacco. This colony provided Spain with products in high demand within Spain and throughout Europe. So popular were these products throughout Europe that the British took an interest in Cuba and actually took control in 1762. A year later, Spain regained the island, but a few Britons stayed. Cuba’s closest northern neighbor, the United States, considered Cuba an ally in the slave trade. Americans were interested in Cuba as a port of call for slave ships. After all, Cuba was only 90 miles from the Florida coast. American southerners were interested in investing and owning sugar and tobacco plantations on the island. Slavery was a mechanism for making this venture profitable. The continuation of slavery increased the numbers of Africans living on the island, and this relationship would play a role in the American Civil War. This relationship would continue until the abolition of slavery. This close proximity has had a major effect on Cuban-American relations to the extent that migration from the island to the United States has affected the racial composition on the island. Over 1 million Cubans have emigrated from the island to the United States.
Emigration from the island has long been a problem the Cuban government has yet to control. The first migration streams, from 1959 to 1964 or 1965, included nearly 400,000 exiles, the majority of them upper- to middle-class White Cubans. Their motivations for fleeing the island were both political and economic. The Castro regime was installing a communist system that would have a detrimental effect on their capital resources and negate their political voice. Subsequent waves of migration, including the Mariel boatlift (referring to the point of departure) of 1979 to 1980 and the balseros flotillas (referring to the type of craft many used to reach Florida shores; balsero is the Spanish translation for “rafter”) from 1995 to present, had racially diverse compositions. The Mariel boatlift included more than 100,000 Cubans, including great diversity in age, class, racial, and ethnic composition, as well as criminal and social status. President Castro spread news reports that many were prisoners, mentally ill, elderly, or homosexual. The actual numbers of prisoners or the mentally ill among those who went to Florida was small, as discovered through intensive interviews. The next major migration, from 1995 to the present, known as the “balseros migration,” has resulted in a net migration of 1.57 people per thousand total population. Not all exiles use rafts; many hire smugglers, attempt to cross the border from Mexico, or attempt to reach Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands. The balsero flotillas were primarily younger, literate, and working-age émigrés. These émigrés were also racially and ethnically diverse. The net effect of these waves of emigration was a loss of younger workers Cuba needed to rebuild and renovate the Cuban economy. The loss of Cubans of childbearing age to migration has also had an effect on overall fertility. The total fertility rate of Cubans is 1.66; that is, a woman will bear on average 1.66 children in her lifetime, which does not even represent replacement of a couple. The consequence of a low total fertility rate and continued problems with illicit migration patterns has resulted in a natural decrease in population, which has had a negative effect on Cuba’s economic development. Typically, it is the young and better skilled who see migration as a means to better their quality of living. The literacy rate in Cuba, 97%, is comparable to that
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in developed countries. The difference in literacy between males and females is 0.4%. This has an effect on who migrates. Both males and females are migrating at nearly equal rates. Those left behind are older, infirm, or less willing to take the risks that are often associated with economic development. The life expectancy is reported to be 77 years. The Cuban government has incorporated a visa program that allows 20,000 Cubans to leave the island annually; however, few are able to complete this process of leaving the island legally. This number was a compromise based upon the 1994 Castro-Clinton accords.
Demographic Impact Cuba conducted its latest census in 2002, reporting a total population of 11,177,743. The report describes Cuba as a multiracial nation-state whose demographic composition is primarily of Spanish and African origin. The CIA World Factbook states that Chinese Cubans and over 10,000 Nicaraguans also inhabit the island. Many of the Chinese came to the island as laborers to build railroads and work in the nickel mines. As a result of its historical role as a major port for the slave trade, American English was commonly heard on the island. Americans were not only engaged in slave trading but also lived on the island as part of the import and export of a variety of cash crops. Their continued presence had an effect on the culture and social construction of race on the island. Not affected, however, was the primary language of the island, which is Spanish. Religiosity was affected by the communist regime. Previous to 1959, an estimated 85% of Cubans were members of the Roman Catholic church. Temples and synagogues were supported by Jews from Russia and Poland escaping the pogroms and Sephardic Jews who trace their ancestry to Turkey. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Protestant denominations were a minority. Some Catholics also practiced Santería, a blend of African and Catholic rituals that allowed slaves to continue some religious practices from their country of origin, along with the Catholic rituals that were reinforced by their slave masters. Religion, however was not supported by the Castro regime. The focus of the Cuban people was designated as the state, not the church. Religious holidays were
considered ordinary days until recently, when the Pope visited Cuba for both political and humanitarian reasons. It is estimated that today, over 50% selfdefine their religion as agnostic and 6% self-define their religion as atheist. The census reported the racial breakdown as 52% mulatto, 37% White, 11% Black, and 1% Chinese. The United Nations Human development index reports that 1% of Cubans are foreign-born. This includes thousands of North African preteens and teens who are classified as refugees and are engaged in military training. About 20% of the Cuban population is between the ages of 0 and 14. The median age of Cubans is 35.9. An older population has a negative effect on the overall fertility on the island. With a gross domestic product that ranks the island as a lesser-developed country, Cuba has been forced to diversify its economy from a predominantly agricultural one, based on sugar and tobacco, to one based on innovations in biotechnology and tourism. The human development index of the United Nations states that 19% of the Cuban population is undernourished. This indicates that agricultural production on the island is not meeting the needs of the people. The poverty on the island has also impacted infant mortality rates. With an infant mortality rate of approximately 7%, Cuba has made significant strides in practicing preventive health care. There is little difference across racial lines in accessing health care, education, and employment. The social construction of race is less significant than involvement and integration in the political regime. Sandy Alvarez See Appendix A; Appendix B See also “Boat People”; Caribbean Americans; Cuba; Cuban Americans; Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison; “Marielitos”; Santería
Further Readings
Central Intelligence Agency. 2006. The World Factbook, “Cuba.” Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/ publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cu.html McCoy, Terry, William Kennedy, and Arthur Miller. 2003. Cuba on the Verge of Transition. London: Bulfinch Press. Perez-Hernandez, Julio Cesar and Angelikan Taschen. 2006. Inside Cuba. Cologne, Germany: Taschen Press.
Cuban Americans
CUBAN AMERICANS Responding mostly to political and economic changes and realities in Cuba, Cubans have migrated to the United States for nearly 2 centuries. Although most Cubans who migrated to the United States did so hoping for a quick return to the island, history dictated otherwise, and in the process, Cuban migrants have left permanent marks in major U.S. cities from Key West and Tampa, Florida, to New York City, Philadelphia, and Miami. The latter is by far the largest and most permanent Cuban community in U.S. history. As a result, since the late 1960s, Cuban migrants in the United States, as well as their descendants, adopted Cuban American as a label that proclaimed their equally Cuban and U.S. cultural identities. The Cuban community in Miami, Florida, represents the largest concentration of Cubans in the United States. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 900,000 of the 1.5 million Cubans in the United States reside in Florida, making it the largest immigrant group in the state. The present ethnic community traces its origins to 1959, when reactions to political and social changes implemented by the Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro, triggered a mass migration of political exiles to South Florida. Since then, Miami has served as the main point of entry for Cuban immigrants, and the city has experienced four
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massive waves of Cuban migration (1959–1962, 1965–1973, 1980, and 1994–1995) in 35 years. Today, Miami is the city with the third-largest concentration of Cubans in the world. This entry describes the long history of immigration from Cuba and the present Cuban American community.
Political Exile The state of Florida has welcomed Cuban migrants since the 1830s, when high tariffs and labor strife in Cuba led to the relocation of the cigar industry to Key West and the creation of the first Cuban community in the state. In the 1860s, the cigar industry expanded into Tampa, attracting thousands of Cuban cigar workers and their families, who helped found Ybor City. The two communities grew rapidly and steadily for 30 years, until Cuba won its independence from Spain in 1898, triggering a sizable return migration to Cuba. In the 20th century, Florida became a favorite and convenient haven for Cuban political leaders and activists. From the 1920s to the 1950s, political opponents of every Cuban government sought asylum in Miami. Those exile communities were usually small in numbers, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. In Miami, as in New York City, they patiently waited, raised funds, and organized until the political climate improved in Cuba and it was safe to go back. When Fidel Castro overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, there were 35,000 Cuban exiles living in the United States. Most returned after the revolutionary triumph and were soon replaced by those disaffected with the revolutionary government.
The Politics of Migration
Cuban immigrants. Here, Cuban immigrants are shown playing dominos in Maximo Gomez Park (“Dominos Park”) in the Calle Ocho, Little Havana, area of Miami. Latin immigration to South Florida has changed the entire region, but the presence of Cuban Americans has particularly transformed Miami, Florida. Source: Jeff Greenberg/The Image Works.
From the inception of the Cuban revolutionary government in 1959, the U.S. strategy was to use political refugees as a main weapon in seeking to overthrow that regime. The U.S. government mounted a propaganda campaign that publicized every departure from Cuba as a political rejection of the revolution. All Cubans who decided to immigrate to the United States were automatically categorized as political refugees. The U.S. press routinely reported the departures as an exodus of people “voting with their feet,” which was translated as “a referendum on Castro and communist repression.”
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In addition to the propaganda value of the Cuban exodus, the Eisenhower administration also developed a military component for its strategy and began training a secret exile army to invade Cuba and overthrow the revolutionary government. The exile army invaded Cuba at the Playa Girón (or “Bay of Pigs”), on April 17, 1961, but was defeated by the Cuban revolutionary army in less than 72 hours. Although the Bay of Pigs invasion failed, plans to overthrow the Cuban government continued through the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The secret war, coupled with the U.S. economic embargo, brought great suffering and hardship to the people of Cuba but failed to overthrow the revolution. The defeat of the exile army allowed Fidel Castro to solidly consolidate his power in Cuba, which, in turn, led more disgruntled or persecuted Cubans to take refuge in the United States. In a highly ironic twist, by 1965, it was Fidel Castro, not the U.S. government, who began to benefit from the U.S.-designed Cuban refugee strategy. As the Cuban economy deteriorated and political opposition grew on the island, Castro saw the open-door policy of the United States as a way of eliminating the disaffected and political opponents. In October 1965, the Cuban government unilaterally launched a boatlift from the port of Camarioca, a port city near Havana, to Key West, Florida. The boatlift led to negotiations between the two governments that resulted in the creation of a U.S.-governmentsponsored airlift that brought 265,000 Cubans to the United States from 1966 to 1973.
Cuban Americans and Politics Like their predecessors in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the current Cuban communities in the United States were founded by political exiles hoping to return to Cuba as soon as the political climate there changed. This time, however, the longevity of the Cuban Revolution, U.S. policy failures (e.g., the Bay of Pigs invasion, Operation Mongoose, and the economic embargo), and the passing of the first generation of exiles, coupled with the coming of age of a second and third generation of Cuban Americans, transformed the community from one of temporary political exiles to permanent residents and citizens. To that end, in 1966, the U.S. Congress took the first step toward regulating the migratory process from Cuba when it passed the Cuban Adjustment Act. The law allowed Cubans arriving in the United States, by any
means possible, to normalize their migratory status within 1 year and 1 day after their arrival. The transformation led to a significant increase in Cuban participation in local and national politics. In 1980, Jorge Más Canosa, a successful Cuban entrepreneur and political activist, founded the conservative political action organization, the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). The well-financed organization has been equally successful in influencing U.S.-Cuba policy of Republican and Democratic administrations. Ten U.S. presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush, at the risk of losing international prestige and respect, have chosen to satisfy the Cuban American community’s demands for a hard-line policy toward Cuba. The economic embargo the United States imposed on Cuba in 1962, and still maintains, is a good example of the remarkable influence Cuban Americans have in U.S. foreign policy. The embargo’s evident failure to isolate Cuba from the international community and destabilize its economy and its harsh, inhumane nature have been criticized and repudiated throughout the world. For the past 15 years, the United Nations General Assembly has voted in overwhelming numbers (in 2006, the vote was 183 to 4) against the U.S. unilateral embargo against Cuba. In Florida, Cuban Americans gained control of city governments in key South Florida cities. Miami, Hialeah, Coral Gables, and Sweetwater all had Cuban mayors by 1985. Cubans also made impressive gains in the Florida legislature, and, in 1989, Ileana RosLehtinen, a Republican Florida State Legislator, became the first Cuban woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2004, Mel Martínez (R.-Florida) became the first Cuban elected to the U.S. Senate, and Cuban American representation in the U.S. Congress also includes brothers Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart (R.-Florida). Although Cuban Americans have a marked preference for Republican candidates, the community also backs Democrats, some with liberal domestic social agendas but a hard-line, antiCastro position. Such is the case with Robert Menendez (D.-New Jersey), the only Cuban American Democrat in the U.S. Congress.
A Successful Community Clearly, a half century after the revolutionary triumph in Cuba, the first generation of Cuban Americans still considers itself a political migration with a single-issue agenda: overthrowing the Cuban
Cultural Capital
revolutionary government. This is true despite the fact that nearly 40% of Cuban Americans were born in the United States and have only a cultural identity with Cuba and that since 1980, most Cubans who have migrated to the United States have done so for economic reasons. The Cuban community’s success in U.S. politics has been surpassed only by its economic and educational success. Cubans have the highest income and educational rates of all Latino groups in the United States, and their entrepreneurship has helped make Miami a financial center for Latin America. Today, the city boasts more than fifty international banks, many of them owned or managed by Cuban Americans, two major Latin American television networks (Univision and Telemundo) that transmit exclusively in Spanish, dozens of Spanish language community newspapers, and more than 40,000 Cuban-owned businesses. Cuban Americans’ successes in politics, education, and business are nothing less than remarkable for a community that is not yet 50 years old. Thus, while the first generation of exiles still dreams of overthrowing Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government and returning to Cuba, if only to retire there, the Cuban communities in the United States are a permanent reality. Félix Masud-Piloto See Appendix A; Appendix B See also “Boat People”; Caribbean Americans; Cuba; Cuba: Migration and Demography; Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison; “Marielitos”
Further Readings
García, María Cristina. 1996. Havana U.S.A.: Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959–1994. Berkeley: University of California Press. González-Pando, Miguel. 1998. The Cuban Americans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Grenier, Guillermo and Lisandro Pérez. 2003. The Legacy of Exile: Cubans in the United States. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Masud-Piloto, Félix. 1996. From Welcomed Exiles to Illegal Immigrants: Cuban Migration to the United States, 1959–1995. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Portes, Alejandro and Alex Stepick. 1993. City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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CULTURAL CAPITAL Cultural capital, a concept made popular through the writings of Pierre Bourdieu, can be best defined as the experiences, knowledge, and skills that individuals acquire at the intersection of their economic and social capital. Cultural capital has been of particular interest to scholars of education, inequality, and race. This entry examines how cultural capital is expressed and how it affects social interaction, according to research in this area.
Status Marker Cultural capital is displayed through an individual’s language (verbal and body), including syntax and vocabulary, and the myriad distinctions individuals make in their lives, including claims to what is humorous, beautiful, appropriate, and tasteful and what are enjoyable experiences. Bourdieu suggested that the “distinctions” individuals make in life reflect social class and work to reproduce the social order. Social capital, or the networks individuals have that will enable access to sought-after privilege and power, and economic capital will strongly mediate how individuals understand themselves in the world. For instance, an individual who comes from an established wealthy family will have a set of experiences and mannerisms shared by others of that social class. Weekends for this individual may involve the “high arts,” and vacations may be taken abroad. The people with whom he or she interacts have a shared understanding of the structure of the interaction, and myriad shared distinctions that are made in the course of a variety of interactions will feel like “common sense.” The social networks and experiences of individuals from lower economic classes are likely to be vastly different, according to this perspective. An individual from a lower economic class may travel abroad or attend an opera, yet this individual will have differing social capital and will make sense of the experiences from a different habitus. Bourdieu spoke of the habitus as the internalized structuring dispositions that helps individuals experience aspects of their life as “common sense” or as unfamiliar. When people from different social classes interact with one another, each may feel strained by the unfamiliarity of the other. When a person attempts to move in a social class beyond the reaches of what the
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habitus deems “common sense” and comfortable, this individual will begin to feel discomfort and will have to consciously negotiate the interaction through a set of recently discovered (rather than internalized) rules. In this case, Bourdieu suggests the individual will likely be discovered as a “passer”; the habitus will belie the person’s conscious attempts to fit into another social class. The “reading” of cultural capital is subtle and often unconscious in the context of social interaction, and yet, it is through the process of these interactions that social classes are recreated, scholars say. For example, if an individual claims to be college educated (a sign of status) and then uses “good” when grammar would dictate “well,” those with more language skill will suspect that person of “passing.” In other words, the claimant does not have the cultural capital to back his or her claims of social status. Someone of an upper class would learn appropriate usage as a child. While that person may not be able to explain the rule that guides appropriate usage, his or her ear will be able to hear when the rule has been violated. The sensibilities, internalized (habitus), guide individuals’ sense of belonging, status, and affinity toward others.
Rewarding Cultural Capital The cultural capital that the dominant society rewards may not be acceptable or valued by groups outside of the dominant one, this viewpoint notes. For example, the working-class college student is rewarded for seeking mainstream credentials, utilizing a particular language and style of interaction (including use of the body and dress), and setting “appropriate” goals in college. This individual may learn to display the requisite cultural capital while interacting in mainstream institutions, and yet, when among family and neighborhood friends, a different kind of cultural capital may be rewarded (even as the student is being pushed to be successful by his family and peers). The student may be chastised and questioned for his or her display of mainstream cultural capital, especially if working-class cultural capital is not being displayed. In every instance, this student must display the appropriate cultural capital in order to gain acceptance or insider status. Of course, what is appropriate or inappropriate is not clear and is continuously shifting. Moreover, other locations or statuses matter a great deal in the interpretation by others of the student’s cultural capital, scholars say. In the end, if a person does not display
the appropriate cultural capital, he or she risks being labeled an “outsider” and inauthentic and may lose the respect of and inclusion into his or her social class. Sociologists have long known that which people will marry or partner can be predicted on the basis of a variety of factors associated with cultural capital. Individuals are most comfortable around people who share their cultural capital.
Ascribed Status and Cultural Capital At times, an individual’s physical body and cultural capital do not match popular ideas or stereotypes about how a person who “looks like that” ought to act and think about the world, research in this area shows. In these cases, the people who are deemed “mismatched” will likely be judged and held under suspicion and their behaviors policed by others. Examples are a White person who speaks in a “Black vernacular” (however it is defined), a woman who displays an in-depth knowledge of sports or cars, a working-class person who has intimate knowledge of the great composers, and an elite person who speaks “improper” English (however that is defined) or who lives and works with working-class folks. In each of these cases, the cultural capital being displayed may come from the experiences of the individual and may reflect the individual’s comfort in social interactions. However, to those with whom the individual interacts, the display of cultural capital that sits contrary to the ascribed category (gender, race, class) will be read as “passing” (not their natural state), with an assumption that the individual will eventually be “found out.” In other words, the person who is deemed mismatched between body and cultural capital is pathologized, while the persons making the judgment can work to maintain their own sensibilities grounded in their acceptance of the social order as normal, natural, and static. Oftentimes, people who live across various status borders find that they are being “patrolled,” scholars say. They will be judged by how they speak; what they wear and how they wear it; the music, arts, and entertainment they choose; their neighborhoods; their parentage; and their styles of learning, goals, and economic status. Those who are believed to be displaying cultural capital that runs contrary to their ascribed statuses (as others read it) will be judged and policed. The experiences of people who live across borders and may be comfortable interacting in many social classes give insight into the staying power of social
Cultural Relativism
classes. Those who patrol or police others are attempting to feel secure in their status and thus need others to play by the same social rules, and through their individual efforts within a larger institutional context, categories of inequality (social classes) are held more firmly in place.
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their communities of origin (without deeming it bad or inappropriate). Heather M. Dalmage See also Educational Performance and Attainment; Educational Stratification; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Family; Leisure; Social Capital; Social Inequality; Social Mobility; Wealth
Reproduction and Resistance Cultural capital has been the focus of studies addressing “reproduction” of social inequality. It is suggested that despite various forms of resistance, individuals will ultimately act in ways that ensure maintenance of social classes. Moreover, dominant institutions reward mainstream or dominant forms of cultural capital. Those raised within the dominant culture are able to interact in mainstream institutions with a sense of comfort and ease that may escape those whose cultural capital falls outside the mainstream. Moreover, most institutions are governed by individuals with dominant forms of cultural capital. Studies show that given hierarchical relations, they will likely reward (and feel most comfortable with) those who display similar cultural capital (especially if physical body and cultural capital match). For this reason, middle-class children have an easier time in school than do working-class children. Perhaps one of the most notable studies is Paul Willis’s look at working-class youth in England. As these youth resist their class location and status in society, they actually work to reproduce their status. By resisting mainstream education, they ensure their place in the working class. Some of the critiques of the use of cultural capital in reproduction theory focus on the ability of individuals to use cultural capital for both resistance and mainstream success. In other words, as individuals critically analyze their own cultural capital, they begin to understand why they make particular choices or distinctions. Meanwhile, they must learn the cultural capital of the dominant class in order to succeed, but the learning should be accompanied with a critical analysis of why particular forms of cultural capital are rewarded while others are punished (or perhaps ignored). When individuals understand why some cultural capital is rewarded in the mainstream, they can also begin to develop a critique of mainstream demands, even as they struggle to succeed. In this way, they are situated to challenge mainstream cultural capital and maintain the cultural capital from
Further Readings
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Carter, Prudence L. 2005. Keepin’ It Real: School Success beyond Black and White. New York: Oxford University Press. Lareau, Annette. 2003. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. MacLeod, Jay. 1995. Ain’t No Makin’ It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low Income Neighborhood. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Willis, Paul. 1981. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press.
CULTURAL RELATIVISM Cultural relativism is the principle that says an individual’s beliefs and behavior can be understood only in the context of his or her own culture and society. The idea was first developed within anthropology in the early part of the 20th century, but it has since enjoyed wide circulation among the other social sciences and society in general and is now often conflated with moral relativism. Cultural relativism initially became popular as a reaction against blatantly ethnocentric research about the “primitive” peoples of the world conducted by 19th-century European explorers and writers, which encouraged theories of Social Darwinism and racial hierarchies. More recently, the concept has been attacked as a way of excusing human rights abuses in different countries.
Development of Cultural Relativism Anthropologist Franz Boas is credited with initially developing the notion of cultural relativism at the turn of the 19th century to counter what he saw as the
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observer bias of Western anthropologists who used their own cultural values and practices to judge the cultural mores of non-Western societies. Boas argued that the causes of observed ethnological phenomena are embedded in the specific cultural context of the societies being studied. It is fallacious to assume that seemingly similar ethnological phenomena observed across different cultures must have developed from the same cause and in the same manner and therefore can be compared, he said. In fact, the simpler the ethnic phenomena being observed, the more likely they developed from different sources, Boas argued. He gave the example of the use of masks, which is found in many cultures but has many different origins. In some cases, masks are used to ward off evil spirits; in others, the mask represents the spirit that is personified by the wearer; still other masks are commemorative. In all cases, understanding the culture of the society is critical in understanding the true significance of these phenomena. Thus, to Boas, the key was cultural contextualization and historical particularism. In opposition to the comparative method that was popular at the time, he was in favor of a slow and detailed study of cultural phenomena in relation to the total culture of the tribe or society practicing it, in order to understand the historical causes that led to the formation of the phenomena in question. Only once these true causes had been isolated could any comparisons be conducted, Boas believed, and comparisons should be restricted to an investigation of the geographical distribution of comparable phenomena among neighboring tribes. As a reaction against the earlier ethnocentric work of Western anthropologists who indiscriminately contrasted and judged foreign cultures based on a superficial understanding of their cultural practices and an inherent notion of Western cultural superiority, cultural relativism became a popular epistemological and methodological technique. Boas and his students, including Margaret Mead, Melville Herskovits, and Ruth Benedict, applied cultural relativism extensively in their work, and today it is considered one of anthropology’s greatest contributions to the social sciences.
Crisis of Cultural Relativism Grounded in the idea that foreign cultures are worthy of as much respect as one’s own and should be treated accordingly, cultural relativism called for greater tolerance and pluralism in and across societies. It encouraged
a deeper study of foreign cultures that was more consciously value neutral than had been the case in the past. More recently, however, cultural relativism has become a contentious topic within the social sciences precisely for these reasons. It is now often conjoined with the ethical stance that there is no objective standard by which to evaluate a society’s moral codes; rather, different societies have different codes that vary according to their historical and cultural development, and each one is equally valid, this viewpoint holds. Moral relativism as such stands in opposition to the idea of absolute nonrelative moral values that hold true for everyone. Some scholars argue that though cultural relativism was initially developed to prevent racist thinking against non-Western societies, it is now used to promote an inverted racism against Western societies. These scholars argue that Western cultural anthropologists’ hostility toward the values of their own societies is what leads them to be overly sympathetic to societies they perceive as being victims of Western civilization. Discontent over what is seen as a Western obsession with private property, individualism, and capitalism, as well as guilt over past Western abuses of power, is manifested in the raising of the status of “primitivism” and all that it stands for, the argument goes. As such, cultural relativists are accused of continuing to practice a form of cultural bias, but in reverse. Other scholars argue that cultural relativism encourages a nihilistic way of thinking. If everything in the world is significant, then nothing is. If everything is good, then nothing can ever have been bad and the idea of moral progress over time is false. These scholars argue that the social sciences cannot function without making value judgments about good and bad, ought and ought not. The third criticism leveled at cultural relativism is that it defends abhorrent social practices and human rights violations, whitewashing these incidents as valid cultural expressions of certain societies that cannot be denounced. This last criticism accuses cultural relativists of being apologists for acts such as genocide, female genital mutilation, and infanticide. It should be pointed out here that relativism assumes a fundamental disagreement over the value of a particular behavior or custom alongside complete agreement over the actual facts of the case. Two societies might have different opinions about a particular cultural practice because they have differing ideas about what it actually entails and what its effects might be on the people concerned. It is possible that if these societies
Culture of Poverty
were able to agree on the nature of the cultural practice being evaluated, then their disagreements over the value of the practice might also disappear. Anju Mary Paul See also Boas, Franz; Ethnocentrism; Racism, Cultural; Social Darwinism
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number of theoretical and empirical grounds, it still continues to influence popular discourse and political debates on poverty in the United States. This entry describes (a) the historical origins and the basic tenets of the culture of poverty thesis, (b) its application to contemporary problems of poverty among ethnic and racial minorities in the United States, (c) the impact of the thesis on U.S. social welfare policy, and (d) the major critiques of the thesis.
Further Readings
Boas, Franz. 1948. Race, Language, and Culture. New York: Macmillan. Cohen, Ronald. 1989. “Human Rights and Cultural Relativism: The Need for a New Approach.” American Anthropologist 91:1014–1017. Geertz, Clifford. 1984. “Distinguished Lecture: Anti Antirelativism.” American Anthropologist 86:263–278. Moser, Paul K. and Thomas L. Carson, eds. 2001. Moral Relativism: A Reader. New York: Oxford University Press. Spiro, Melford E. 1978. “Culture and Human Nature.” Pp. 330–360 in The Making of Psychological Anthropology, edited by G. D. Spindler. Berkeley: University of California Press.
CULTURE
OF
POVERTY
As originally described by anthropologist Oscar Lewis in the 1950s and the 1960s, culture of poverty refers to a distinct way of life—a set of attitudes, outlook, and behavior—that purportedly characterizes the poor. Under the culture-of-poverty thesis and its variants that have emerged over the years, a wide-ranging number of characteristics have been attributed to the poor, many of them negative and stigmatizing. For example, a lack of aspiration and commitment to work, the inability to defer gratification, sexual promiscuity, and a propensity for violence are a few of the many traits that according to the thesis constitute a culture of poverty. Central to the thesis is the belief that these pathological and maladaptive values and behaviors are passed down from generation to generation, becoming self-perpetuating barriers that prevent the poor from taking advantage of improved conditions or opportunities. Because racial and ethnic minorities remain disproportionately affected by poverty, the culture-of-poverty thesis has been of enduring interest to students of poverty and inequality, as well as students of race and ethnicity. Although the thesis has been harshly criticized and now largely discredited by scholars on a
Historical Origins The idea that culture can explain the social and economic positions of disadvantaged groups did not originate with Lewis. However, the term culture of poverty was first coined by Lewis, and it was through his extensive and detailed ethnography of poor families in Mexico and Puerto Rico that the idea gained widespread currency. Lewis contended that the poor who live in a culture of poverty display remarkable similarity in the structure of their families, in their interpersonal relations, and in their value systems. Lewis referred to these similarities as “universal” characteristics, which he delineated in a list consisting of as many as eighty economic and psychosocial traits. Included in this list were feelings of inferiority and dependency, lack of social organization, early initiation into sex, female-headed households, and child abandonment, among many others. Lewis observed that these characteristics are both an adaptation and a reaction of the poor to their marginalized status. He argued, however, that once these psychological and behavioral patterns become established, they assume a “life of their own” and act as independent forces that impede social mobility and perpetuate the cycle of poverty from one generation to the next. Lewis suggested that not all poor live in a culture of poverty. Instead, he argued that a culture of poverty is most likely to be present among the poor in a class-stratified, highly individualized, and capitalistic society and least likely to be found in socialist countries. Lewis believed that the poor in socialist countries are active members of trade unions, which equip them with class consciousness and a sense of solidarity, and have hope that insulates them from a culture of poverty.
Contemporary Applications Although the culture-of-poverty thesis was originally developed to explain the attitudes and behaviors of the
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poor in developing Third World countries, it became popular among scholars seeking to explain the persistence of poverty in the contemporary United States. A number of early scholars used the idea of a culture of poverty to explain the subculture of White Appalachians who lived in poverty. By and large, however, the application has been used to explain urban poverty among racial and ethnic minorities. While the 1960s produced a number of important studies that emphasized macrostructural economic sources of urban poverty, much of the 1970s and the early half of the 1980s were dominated by research that tended to focus on behavioral and cultural aberrations or deficiencies of the inner-city poor. In particular, proponents of the culture-of-poverty thesis attributed a wide-ranging number of social problems of the Black poor—teenage pregnancy, out-of-wedlock births, drug addiction, crime, and unemployment—to what came to be known as the “Black ghetto culture.” This same type of cultural analysis was also used to explain poverty among Latinos. For example, many Hispanic immigrant groups at lower socioeconomic levels have been described as unable or unwilling to assimilate through the adoption of mainstream Anglo-Protestant values. The Latino poor are also allegedly impeded by their natural tendency toward crime and welfare dependence and by a lack of internal traits, such as initiative and ambition, that are necessary for social mobility. Proponents of the culture-of-poverty thesis often have attempted to illustrate the alleged moral deficiency of Blacks and Hispanics at lower socioeconomic levels by contrasting them to other groups that are considered to be “model” or “successful” minorities, such as Jews or Asian immigrants. Whereas Jews and Asian immigrants frequently are viewed as possessing ambition, industry, thrift, and strong family and communal values, Blacks and Hispanics at lower socioeconomic levels are seen as lacking these essential qualities. This characterization or stereotype, in turn, has been used to explain why Blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately mired in poverty.
Impact on Social Policy In the 1980s, a number of well-known public intellectuals relied on the culture-of-poverty thesis to forcefully argue that because poverty was culturally and psychologically rooted, it could never be eliminated by simply providing the poor with improved
economic resources and opportunities. Under this view, the only viable option for reducing poverty appeared to be cultural and moral rehabilitation of the poor. Moreover, proponents of the culture-of-poverty thesis argued that government assistance to the poor was not only ineffective, but self-defeating and dangerous. According to this perspective, welfare and related government programs that provided assistance to the poor, especially to single mothers, had the perverse effect of promoting the culture of poverty by offering incentives, not for work, but for such undesirable behavior as out-of-wedlock childbearing. Although opponents of the thesis criticized these arguments as ignoring important structural causes of poverty and blaming the poor for their plight, the conservative view became a powerful catalyst for a shift in public policy that insisted on the moral reform of the poor and limits on government intervention. In the 1990s, this shift culminated in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, a major overhaul of the U.S. welfare system that signaled a decisive turn away from the model of government-sponsored social welfare programs. Consistent with the growing belief that what kept the poor in poverty were dependency and lack of family values, rather than lack of economic opportunities, contemporary antipoverty policy has been marked by efforts to expand the role of religious institutions and faith-based charities.
Critiques The culture-of-poverty thesis has been sharply criticized on a number of grounds. The first area of criticism raises questions about the content and purported distinctiveness of a culture of poverty. A number of scholars reject the claim that a wholly separate culture or value system exists among the poor; they argue that the poor share the same basic values as the mainstream society. For example, research has demonstrated that many people in urban ghettos possess a remarkably sustained work ethic and believe in the value of work despite the scarcity of jobs in inner-city neighborhoods. Other critics, on the other hand, do not deny that a distinct set of values and norms exists among the poor, but they contend that this culture is neither deviant nor pathological. In studies of “oppositional culture,” for example, scholars have shown that the rejection of middle-class values by many inner-city youth is a rational, coherent, and functional
Cypriot Americans
strategy that fosters a sense of collective identity and security among them. A second area of critique is directed at claims about the self-sustaining nature of the culture of poverty through intergenerational transmission. Although a significant aspect of Lewis’s theory is that the culture of poverty is passed down from generation to generation, his studies were not longitudinal in nature, and thus it was impossible to test this claim using his data. A number of subsequent studies, however, have shown that children from families on welfare do not inevitably perpetuate their initial socioeconomic disadvantage. Some studies have also found that measures of parental attitudes are often poor predictors of children’s later economic attainment. Finally, scholars have criticized the culture-ofpoverty thesis on the basis that it misconstrues the causal ordering between culture and poverty and that it ignores the importance of structural determinants of poverty. For example, many scholars agree with cultural theorists that because the poor are spatially cut off from mainstream resources and opportunities, they are forced to adopt ghetto-specific values and behaviors. But, unlike cultural theorists, these critics argue that when material conditions or opportunity structures change, concomitant changes can be expected in the cultural norms and behavioral patterns of the poor. That is, these scholars deny the autonomous nature of the culture of poverty. Consistent with this view, many studies of poor urban neighborhoods have shown that residents in these communities do respond positively to improved economic conditions, as reflected in their employment and school attainment patterns.
Valentine, Charles. 1968. Culture and Poverty: Critique and Counter Proposals. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, William J. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Winter, J. Alan, ed. 1971. The Poor: A Culture of Poverty or a Poverty of Culture? Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
CYPRIOT AMERICANS Cypriot Americans are one of the smaller ethnic groups in the United States. The Cypriot community includes immigrants from the island of Cyprus, a nation of an estimated 1 million people in 2007, as well as the descendants of immigrants. Given that the inhabitants of Cyprus are Greeks, Turks, Armenians, and Maronites, the Cypriot community comprises immigrants from any of these groups. The criterion for the identification of Cypriot Americans as a distinct ethnic group is country of birth. This entry describes their emigration and discusses their life in the United States.
Bulgaria
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Turkey
Emily Ryo See also Assimilation; Ghetto; Immigration, U.S.; Melting Pot; Stereotypes; Underclass; “Welfare Queen”; Welfare Reform
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Lebanon
Iraq
Mediterranean Sea West Bank Israel
Jordan
Further Readings
Gans, Herbert. 1995. The War against the Poor: The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy. New York: Basic Books. Harrington, Michael. 1961. The Other America: Poverty in the United States. New York: Macmillan. Lewis, Oscar. 1959. Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty. New York: Basic Books. Moynihan, Daniel, ed. 1968. On Understanding Poverty: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. New York: Basic Books.
Saudi Arabia
Egypt
Red Sea
Phases of Emigration Modern emigration from Cyprus is divided into five stages, based upon the events associated with each
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period: Early Beginnings (1900–1954), Emergency Years (1955–1959), Mass Exodus (1960–1963), Intercommunal Strife (1964–1974), and the Turkish Invasion and Its Aftermath (mid-1974–present). In the first or Early Beginnings (1900–1954) phase, a total of 11,142 Cypriots immigrated mainly to Egypt, Greece, Australia, the Belgian Congo, Argentina, Britain, and the United States. In 1906, the first Cypriot set foot on American shores at a time when large numbers of immigrants from Greece and other southeastern European countries were arriving in the United States. More Cypriots immigrated to the United States, and during the 1910s, they organized their own coffeehouses. In 1930, according to British colonial sources, 1,000 Cypriots immigrated to the United States. By the early 1930s, certain clusters of mostly young single male immigrants from the same village formed in New York City. These pioneers formed local societies (topika somatei), whose only criterion of membership was the village of origin. This type of activity was also common among other Greek immigrants. Several of these societies are still active. The main “push” factors of emigration were mostly economic, with the droughts of 1902 and 1932 to 1933 exacerbating a difficult rural life. The principal source areas were villages in the poorer rural districts of the island that historically supplied the bulk of emigrants. In the second phase, or Emergency Years (1955–1959), a total of 29,135 Cypriots emigrated from their homeland, mainly because of the political upheavals that engulfed the island. The Greek Cypriots launched an anticolonial campaign with the goal of enosis (union) with Greece. After 4 years of bloody armed conflict, the Republic of Cyprus was born on August 16, 1960. Most of the immigrants settled in the United Kingdom, where a small community was already in existence. A total of 749 immigrants settled in the United States. In the third phase, or Mass Exodus (1960–1963), a total of 37,288 Cypriots emigrated. The uncertainties surrounding the birth of the new republic, high unemployment, and the restrictive Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962 that was passed by the British Parliament explain the heightened emigration. During 1960 and 1961, a record number of emigrants (14,589 and 13,489, respectively) left for the United Kingdom to beat the closing of the gates. Out of this total, 720 Cypriots arrived in the United States. In the fourth phase, or Intercommunal Strife (1964–1974), a total of 30,545 Cypriots emigrated.
The annual number of emigrants fluctuated, reflecting the rise and fall in fighting between the Greek and Turkish communities. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) data show that a total of 3,361 Cypriots immigrated to the United States. In the fifth phase, or Turkish Invasion and Its Aftermath (1974–2004), Cypriots emigrated in record numbers because of the Turkish military invasion of Cyprus on July 20, 1974. Turkey occupied the northern part of the island from which they expelled the Greek Cypriot population, and they moved in the Turkish population from the government-controlled part of the island. This de facto separation created a wholesale redistribution of the population of the island. Office of Immigration Statistics data show that 8,343 Cypriots immigrated to the United States. An examination of the entire record of emigration shows that the driving forces underlying emigration were poor economic conditions, droughts that periodically affect the island, and political upheavals. The passage of restrictive legislation by the British Parliament played a major role in curtailing the number of Cypriot immigrants to the United Kingdom. In the case of the United States, a record number of Cypriots immigrated there during the years 1975 to 1977, immediately following the Turkish invasion of the island in 1974, with the maximum number (828) immigrating in 1976.
Cypriots in the United States The patterns of Cypriot emigration can be conceptualized in terms of “chain migration.” A member of the family, usually a young male, emigrated first. Once established at the new destination, he sent for his wife or other immediate family members, relatives, and friends from the same village. One should not underestimate the role of the often glowing letters that early immigrants sent back about their adopted country. This positive feedback regarding the destination and the support that the established immigrant provided for the newcomers encouraged others to make the trip. Despite their rural origins, Cypriot immigrants showed a strong preference for the urban centers of the nation. New York City has the largest Cypriot community in the United States. With 2,587 persons of Cypriot ancestry, the state of New York has the largest cluster of Cypriots, followed by New Jersey and Florida. By region, the Cypriots are distributed as follows: northeastern region, 4,077; midwestern region, 861; southern region, 1,898; and western region, 827.
Czech Americans
Like Greek immigrants, early Cypriot immigrants sought employment predominantly in the restaurant and confectionery businesses. A handful of immigrants branched out into other areas, such as farming, insurance, architecture, and furniture restoration. As a group, Greek Cypriot immigrants integrated themselves socially within the Greek communities of the areas where they settled. In areas where large numbers of Cypriots clustered, they organized their own voluntary associations based upon village of origin. The goals of these societies were to help new immigrants adjust to their new surroundings, help each other cope with the many challenges facing them, and later send remittances to family members back home or improve the village school or church building. In terms of religious affiliation, the Greek Cypriots adhere to the Greek Orthodox branch of Christianity, and the Turkish Cypriots are Muslims of the Sunni sect. Members of the Roman Catholic, Armenian, and Maronite communities of Cyprus belong to Christian churches. With respect to language spoken, Greek Cypriots speak Greek, and Turkish Cypriots speak Turkish. Members of the Armenian community speak Armenian, and Maronites speak Arabic and Greek.
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Georgiades, G. 1947. “I kypriaki parikia en norfolk tis Amerikis” [The Cypriot Parish of Norfolk, U.S.A]. Elefthera Foni [Free Voice], January 1, p. 4.
CZECH AMERICANS Czech Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from the Czech Republic, a country of 10.3 million as of 2007 estimates. According to the 2000 census, there was a total of 83,080 people born in the Czech Republic resident in the United States, of whom 65.8% were citizens. This entry describes the background of immigration from the Czech Republic (and former Czechoslovakia) to the United States as well as a contemporary picture of Czech Americans. Norway Sweden Latvia
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Lithuania Russia
Stavros T. Constantinou Poland
See Appendix A See also Greek Americans; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Turkish Americans
Germany Czech Republic
Ukraine Slovakia
France Austria
Further Readings
Hungary
Switzerland Slovenia
Romania
Croatia
Constantinou, Stavros T. 1990. “Economic Factors and Political Upheavals as Determinants of International Migration: The Case of Cyprus.” Pp. 139–172 in Historical and Sociological Perspectives (Proceedings of an international conference on Cypriot migration), edited by Ministry of Education, Service for Overseas Cypriots. Nicosia, Cyprus: Imprinta. Constantinou, Stavros T. 1997. “Cypriots.” Pp. 205–209 in American Immigrant Cultures: Builders of a Nation, vol. 1, edited by D. Levinson and M. Ember. New York: Macmillan Reference. Diamantides, Nicholas and Stavros T. Constantinou. 1989. “Modeling the Macrodynamics of International Migration: Determinants of Emigration from Cyprus, 1956–85.” Environment and Planning A 21:927–950. Georgiades, G. 1946. “I kypriaki parikia en Norfolk tis Amerikis” [The Cypriot Parish of Norfolk, U.S.A]. Elefthera Foni [Free Voice], December 25, p. 4.
Bosnia & Herzegovina Italy
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Serbia
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a
Macedonia
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Albania
Greece
Immigration Patterns The immigration patterns of Czech Americans occurred in three phases. The first wave occurred during the colonial period and was small and partly religious; the second wave occurred during the 19th and 20th centuries, bringing the majority of the Czech immigrants to the United States; and the third wave occurred during the mid-20th century and was predominantly a political migration.
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Although not much information is known about Czech immigrants before the 19th century, there is some evidence of a Czech presence in the colonial and revolutionary periods. One of the first known Czechs in the New World was Herman Augustine. He compiled the first map of Maryland, founded the Bohemian Manor, and named the Bohemian River of Maryland. He also established himself with the cultivation and trade of tobacco in the 1630s. The second wave of immigration occurred during the 19th and early 20th centuries, bringing more than 170,000 Czechs. Many came to the United States to seek relief from droughts and crop failures and to establish a better life and employment opportunities. After the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, many obstacles that once prevented Czechs from emigrating (such as legal, social, and psychological barriers) were overcome, thus opening up the opportunity for others, such as intellectuals, craftsmen, and peasants, to immigrate to the United States. Immigration was uncomplicated, because the Czechs brought more money to the United States than most immigrants (average declaration per Czech person was $23.12 compared with the $14.84 average for all new entrants), thus facilitating transportation and settlement here. The last wave occurred during the mid-20th century and brought an estimated 25,000 immigrants. Included in this group were professionals and highly skilled workers, who may have been escaping Nazi persecution or felt threatened by the new regime of the communist coup of 1948. An additional 10,000 Czechs arrived over the following decade, mainly due to the Soviet intervention in 1968. Czech Americans first settled in urban areas such as New York City and Chicago. Chicago became the leading Czech American metropolis in the 1860s, and, by 1900, it was the third-largest Czech urban center, following Prague and Vienna. Czech Americans also settled in rural areas such as Nebraska, Wisconsin, Texas, Iowa, and Minnesota.
Contemporary Pattern Current patterns of migration have been minute, due to the fact that Czechs have the freedom to come and go. However, there was a minor population of immigrants who left during the Velvet Revolution (ending in 1989). Of those Czech-born present here in 2000, only 3.9% had entered the country prior to 2000.
In recent years, people from the Czech Republic have sought permanent residency and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2006, about 2,800 Czechs obtained permanent resident status. Since 1997, about 500 Czech Americans (from both the Czech Republic and the former Czechoslovakia) have become naturalized citizens annually. According to the 2000 census, 31.1% spoke English “less than very well.” Their median family income was $54,829, compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, there were 681,017 persons of Czech national origin in the United States, and the top five states were Texas, California, Nebraska, Illinois, and Florida. Among famous Czech Americans are Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State; Miloš Forman, director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984); Tom Selleck, actor; Antonin Dvorˇak, composer; Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s restaurants; Francis Korbel, founder of the Korbel winery in California; George Halas, “Papa Bear,” founder and owner of the Chicago Bears football team; and Andy Warhol, artist and filmmaker. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees; Slovak Americans; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs .gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Habenicht, Jan. 1996. History of Czechs in America. St. Paul, MN: Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International. Linton, Cynthia, ed. 1996. The Ethnic Handbook. Schiller Park, IL: Business Press. Rechcigl, Miloslav, Jr. 2005. Czechs and Slovaks in America. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs; New York: Columbia University Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in the Czech Republic. Available from http://www.census.gov/ population/www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
D Early Arrivals
DANISH AMERICANS Immigrants from Denmark in the mid-1800s made the United States a major destination and established significant settlements in many parts of the United States. The Danes who immigrated to the United States contributed to the mosaic of U.S. culture through their customs and traditions in ways that persist even in contemporary U.S. society. This entry summarizes their migration and present community.
Norwegian Sea
Norway
Baltic Sea
Sweden
Denmark
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Poland Netherlands
Belgium
Germany Czech Republic
France
Slovakia Austria
Though many Danes emigrated to gain religious freedom and to escape the Lutheran State Church, many Lutheran Danish immigrants retained the religion of their home country. The Danish churches built in immigrant communities resembled many other Lutheran churches in the Midwest, an area inhabited by a high percentage of Scandinavians during the various waves of immigration, but later architectural attempts imitated the village churches in Denmark. A high percentage of early Danish immigrants were Mormon, nearly 50% in some periods, and came to the United States in an attempt to join the significant Mormon population in Utah. The Danes also brought with them the folk high school, a concept developed by N. F. S. Grundtvig, a Lutheran pastor who presented a view of a forgiving, loving God and who encouraged his congregation’s members to develop their own minds through constant betterment and education available at a folk high school. This educational institution, first established in Denmark in 1844, is comparable with the U.S. technical school, though it should not be understood as a precursor to the U.S. system. At a folk high school, a person may take one or two courses offered at various times of the day and evening, or may attend in a more formal setting, taking courses in a particular field to earn a degree or enter a university. Five folk high schools were established in the United States between 1878 and 1911, encouraging the Danish language and retention of Danish ideals in popular education, but these schools were faced with low enrollment and financial difficulties from their inception because of the already active U.S. educational system.
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Partly because of increased abilities in shipbuilding and the shift from sails to steam engines, communication between recent Danish immigrants and people in the home country became easier and more frequent, encouraging many more immigrants because of the increased professional and personal opportunities. Most immigrants have been between the ages of 15 and 29, and about one-third have been women. Most have worked in the rural sphere, but also popular have been jobs in the domestic and industrial arenas. Some Danes were fortunate to continue working as the craftspeople they were Danish Lutheran Church, Evan, Minnesota (1910). Although many Danes in Denmark. The Danish immigrants travemigrated to gain religious freedom and to escape the Lutheran State eled beyond New York City and Chicago to Church, many Lutheran Danish immigrants retained the religion of their Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and home country. Michigan; Danish settlements in Wisconsin Source: Minnesota Historical Society. and Nebraska are examples of such settlements or ethnic enclaves. There was a sudden increase in Danish emigration Danish immigrants to the United States assimilated in the 1860s, largely because of the Mormon mission quite smoothly, more rapidly than many other ethnic in Denmark, which was subjected to religious persegroups, as George Nielsen claims. Permanent historicution. At the peak of emigration, Danes were concal associations and museums dedicated to the presercerned because those who were choosing to leave the vation of the Danish American experience were country were of a higher education level and better mostly established late in the 20th century, indicating qualified professionally than were those who a lesser need for these social and historical institutions remained. As a result, the immigrants to the United at the time of and shortly after immigration. The States could be considered to be of a higher caliber Danes in the United States were more scattered than than is commonly assumed of immigrants. The emiwere other immigrant groups and, as a result, formed gration continued until the beginning of World War I, stronger bonds with other ethnic groups and shared at which point Danish immigration slowed signifiwith them a common bond of Americanism. By 1911, cantly because of concerns about the safety and secu97% of Danes in the United States spoke English, and rity of travelers and wartime financial constraints of by 1930, this had increased to 99%. citizens. The few early heritage societies and the more Also instrumental in the emigration history is the numerous late ones have encouraged the establishSlesvig (Schlesvig)–Holstein debate and the refigurment of a Danish American identity along with proing of Danish borders after the Dano-Prussian war of moting communication between Denmark and the 1864. Although earlier emigrating Danes tended to United States. The Danish American Society, founded come from urban areas, significantly more Danes in 1906, collected money with which to buy a parcel emigrated from rural areas between 1870 and 1890, of heath land in Denmark that was to be formed and with a peak difference (and peak numbers generally) run as a state park; this project was fully carried out in around 1880. There was less emigration from 1912. Also established because of the efforts of memDenmark than from Norway and Sweden, and this has bers of this group, particularly Max Henius, was an often been attributed to Danes’ quick adjustment to archive for Danes in the United States, the Danchanges in the world economy. When economic times American Archives, which later became the Danes were troubled because of U.S. export of grains, Worldwide Archives, in Allborg, Denmark. This Danish farmers began making butter and cheese, archive was established in Denmark because the relawhich enabled many farmers to continue their lives in tively broad distribution of Danes throughout the Denmark. United States made it difficult to choose one prominent
Dawes Act of 1887
Danish American city or town in which to locate this archive.
Today’s Community Some towns retain a distinct influence of Scandinavian architecture, and of these, Solvang, California, is one of most prominent. Many buildings in this town are copied from those in Copenhagen, creating a sense of a small-scale representation. Distinctive to this feeling is the Tudor style, with the white stucco broken geometrically by darkly stained or painted crossbeams. Visitors to Solvang will notice the statue of the Little Mermaid, a figure first presented in the tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen before being used by Walt Disney Studios in the well-known film production. The businesses and residences fly Danish flags, and folk costumes are used to display the national pride in some shops. The town was founded in the spirit of continuing Danish-ness in the United States in all seriousness, though occasionally, to the chagrin of many residents, the town is seen as a sort of Danish theme park. Many Danes traveled here during and after World War II, seeking escape from occupied Denmark and refuge from the aftermath of the war. Solvang has been contrasted with Racine, Wisconsin, another Danish American town with a very different representation of Danish-ness. Racine, on the coast of Lake Michigan between Milwaukee and Chicago, is an industrial town with a high proportion of Danish Americans. Although it may technically be more “Danish” than Solvang, visitors will not find Danish flags flying on every flagpole and endless shops with Danish souvenirs. Indeed, the town makes a claim to its European heritage, but the Americanization and industrialization are in the forefront. A visitor may certainly enjoy a Danish kringle and shop for “authentic” Danish goods, but ethnotourism is not emphasized in this town to the extent that it is in Solvang. Two of the major educational institutions developed by the Danish Americans are Dana College in Blair, Nebraska, and Grand View College in Des Moines, Iowa. Both colleges specifically claim their Danish heritage and attempt to strengthen the bond between the new country and the old country in the work of the college and in the view of student life. These claims to Danish-ness are apparent on their campuses. The sports teams at Dana are named the Vikings, and the college colors are red and white after
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the Danish flag; the library contains one branch of the Danish Immigrant Archive. The other branch is located at Grand View College, where the Danish heritage is apparent in the same athletic team name, and the courses in Scandinavian, which usually focus on Danish. Dana College offers courses in four languages; the one Scandinavian language is Danish. The continued study of Danish American heritage broadens the multiculturalist perspective and contributes to the view of U.S. society as a mosaic rather than as a melting pot. Research at universities and colleges complements the efforts of Danish American communities to uphold the traditions of their immigrant ancestors. Suzanne B. Martin See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Ethnic Group; Europe; Finnish Americans; Icelandic Americans; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Mormons, Race and; Norwegian Americans; Sami; Swedish Americans; Symbolic Ethnicity; Whiteness Further Readings
Friis, Erik, ed. 1976. The Scandinavian Presence in North America. New York: Harper. Lago, Don. 2004. On the Viking Trail: Travels in Scandinavian America. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Nielsen, George R. 1981. The Danish Americans. Boston, MA: Twayne. Pedersen, Erik Helmer. 1987. “Danish Emigration History.” In From Scandinavia to America: Proceedings from a Conference Held at Gl. Holtegaard, edited by S. E. Jergensen, L. Scheving, and N. P. Stilling. Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press.
DAWES ACT
OF
1887
Early in the history of relationships between the U.S. government and Native Americans, the government began to grant allotments—legal title to pieces of land—to American Indians. The first allotments were issued in the Southeast in the 1830s and 1840s as part of the removal to Oklahoma of tribes such as the Cherokee and Creeks. The Dawes Act of 1887 (also referred to as the General Allotment Act) generalized this process, which had occurred on a case-by-case
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basis for many years. Under the Dawes Act, an Indian who received an allotment became a citizen of the United States (before 1924, reservation Indians were not U.S. citizens). An Indian’s allotment was placed in trust by the federal government for a 25-year period; during that time, the recipient of the allotment could neither lease, sell, nor will the land. This entry looks at the history of the allotment process and the Dawes Act and summarizes its impact.
Background Beginning in the early years of the United States, Congress passed special laws for “Indian Country”— Indian-held land west of the frontier. Indian tribes often had a recognized territory either as a result of original (Aboriginal) occupancy or by treaty. By the 19th century, the law said that private parties could not buy Indian land from a person or tribe; tribal land first had to be acquired by the federal government and then sold to others. Allotment offered another way to convert tribally held land into individually owned land with fee-simple title. The first allotments were granted in the 1830s and 1840s when tribal lands in the Southeast were ceded to the federal government during the removal of the tribes. When the rest of the tribe moved west, some families were issued allotments for their farms, which allowed them to remain and live among the new settlers if they wished. Treaties that created reservations in the 1850s often had a provision that called for the eventual allotment of land to members of the tribe. Some reservations were allotted by treaty or special legislation throughout the 1870s and 1880s.
Formalizing the System The Dawes or General Allotment Act followed years of this experimentation with allotment of lands to individuals. Several tribes—notably the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole (the Five Civilized Tribes); the Osage in Oklahoma; and the Seneca in New York—were specifically excluded from the Dawes Act. Special treaties between 1897 and 1902 created allotments for most of the tribes in eastern Oklahoma that were exempted from the Dawes Act. The legislation represented a compromise between those who saw privatization as a key to push forward the assimilation of American Indians into White society and those who wanted to open large amounts of Indian land to settlement. The predominately Protestant
reformers who pushed for the passage of the Dawes Act believed that dividing reservations into privately owned farms would break the hold of the chiefs over individual American Indians, encourage them to become farmers, and hasten their assimilation into White Christian culture. This approach was part of a larger evangelical Protestant movement that had earlier fueled the antislavery movement. The theoretical basis of this belief was a largely inaccurate model of Indian societies as hierarchical and communal; the belief was popular among social scientists in the 1880s. Some reformers also saw allotment as a way of protecting Indian lands from further loss to White settlers or arbitrary actions by the federal government. The law passed with little opposition because it satisfied both reformers and the interests of White settlers, who could purchase surplus lands ceded by tribes to the federal government. The General Allotment Act of 1887 remained at the center of federal Indian policy from its passage in 1887 until Congress ended the policy of privatizing land with the passage of the Wheeler-Howard Act in 1934. Allotment was a gradual process, and the federal government issued allotments every year from 1887 until 1933. Some reservations, mainly in the Southwest, were never allotted, and some allotments were given to American Indians from the public domain.
Implementation and Revision Once the Dawes Act was passed, the allotment of reservations was in the hands of the Office of Indian Affairs, a division of the Department of the Interior. The government’s choice of whether and when to allot a reservation was supposed to reflect the best interests of the tribe, but in practice, policy was influenced by outside interests. Excluding the Five Tribes, 3.72 million acres were allotted from 1888 to 1899. Most of these were on reservations in western Oklahoma, the eastern Plains states (Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa), and the western portions of Washington and Oregon. The largest number of acres was allotted from 1900 to 1916, when the federal government allotted 14.74 million acres, not including allotments from the public domain of the Five Tribes. Many of these allotments were on large reservations in the western plains. The pace of allotment slowed after 1916. From 1916 to 1933, 5.4 million acres were allotted. In remote areas, where little pressure was placed on the government to open Native American lands or where tribes were using most of the land, as in the
Dawes Act of 1887
Southwest, a reservation might never be allotted. In states with a growing Indian population, the president could enlarge or create a reservation by executive order with land taken from the public domain. An important example is the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico where the federal government added substantial territory in the 20th century. On some reservations, all American Indians received their allotments at the same time. On other reservations, especially larger reservations in the West, allotments were issued gradually over many years. Occasionally, land was opened for sale to Whites before most American Indians had received allotments. A major survey of the federal Indian programs in 1928 complained that agents sometimes did little to help American Indians choose an allotment. Congress modified the basic provisions of the Dawes Act several times. In 1891, Congress amended the Dawes Act so that each adult received an allotment of 80 acres (rather than give 160 acres to the head of the household). More importantly, the amendment allowed the commissioner of Indian Affairs to lease allotments to White farmers. In 1902, Congress allowed the commissioner to authorize the sale of heirships (allotments of deceased American Indians that had been divided among multiple heirs). In 1903, the Supreme Court held in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock that the federal government did not need the tribe’s consent to sell surplus land, regardless of prior treaty stipulations. This greatly weakened the position of tribes attempting to hold surplus lands as tribal property. An important change in how allotments were administered came with the Burke Act of 1906. This act allowed the Bureau of Indian Affairs to grant an allottee a patent in fee before 25 years were up or to extend its term. An Indian did not become a citizen until granted a “patent-in-fee” (fee-simple title). In 1907, Congress authorized the commissioner of Indian Affairs to sell the allotments of any Indian in trust status where the commissioner or his agents deemed it appropriate. In 1910, Congress allowed American Indians in trust status to make wills. The thrust of these changes was to make Indian property subject to direct bureaucratic supervision. From 1917 to 1920, the Office of Indian Affairs granted a large number of American Indians fee-simple title and citizenship.
Impact of the System Allotment was justified as a way of promoting Indian farming. Yet, under allotment, the amount of Indian
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farming declined rather than grew. A number of American Indians had become farmers or ranchers using modified forms of use rights in the late 19th century. By 1910, there were more than 3.1 million acres in Indian farms in Oklahoma and the ten states in which most allotments were issued. By 1930, this had declined to less than 2.4 million acres. This decline was partly because of allotment itself. The way in which lands were allotted discouraged Indian farmers by making it easier to sell or lease lands. At the same time, federal policy failed to adequately train American Indians to be farmers, left them with no access to credit for improvements or machinery, and sometimes divided reservations into fragmented holdings that were hard to farm efficiently. About 26 million acres were allotted from reservations or the public domain by 1934, and an additional 15.7 million were allotted to members of the Five Tribes in Oklahoma. There is no way to know how many American Indians sold their allotted lands, but about 17.6 million acres held in trust for individuals by the federal government were still held in the name of Indian allottees or their heirs in 1934. No new allotments were issued after 1934, although allotments held in trust were sold to the tribe or others after that date. Selling or leasing land was not necessarily against Indian interests. But in many cases, the sales were without Indian consent and left tribes with a diminished base that was inadequate for a growing population. Sometimes reservations were checkerboarded with mixes of Indian and non-Indian lands, making it hard to form efficient sized farms or ranches. Critics in the 1920s sought to modify policy to further encourage the development of Indian farming. This was the thrust of the famous Meriam Commission report in 1928. The Great Depression and the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 led to a more radical reform of Indian policy in the 1930s. Leonard A. Carlson See also Bureau of Indian Affairs; Menominee; Native Americans; Reservation System
Further Readings
Carlson, Leonard A. 1981. Indians, Bureaucrats, and Land: The Dawes Act and the Decline of Indian Farming. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Greenwald, Emily. 2002. Reconfiguring the Reservation: The Nez Perces, Jicarilla Apaches, and the Dawes Act. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
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Hoxie, Frederick. 1984. A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. McDonnell, Janet A. 1991. The Dispossession of the American Indians, 1887–1934. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Meriam, Lewis and Associates. 1928. The Problem of Indian Administration. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press. Prucha, Francis. 1986. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Abridged ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Young, Mary. 1961. Red Skins, Ruffle Shirts, and Red Necks: Indian Allotments in Alabama and Mississippi, 1830–1860. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
DEATH PENALTY The United States is virtually alone among industrialized countries in maintaining the use of capital punishment. Although the death penalty has been a consistent part of the U.S. legal system, many scholars argue that issues of race and class have always affected its application. They contend that the color of a person’s skin plays a major part in determining who ends up on death row, not because of a racist conspiracy against minorities but because of serious flaws in the system that allow for bias and error. Opponents of the death penalty cite discretion by prosecutors, jurors, and judges that may reflect race- and class-based discrimination. Opponents further argue that structural problems in the appellate process make it difficult for mistakes and prejudices to be discovered. Advocates for capital punishment, on the other hand, maintain that it is applied fairly and that procedural safeguards are adequate to prevent its arbitrary or biased usage. This entry examines the historical relationship between race and the death penalty, the constitutional issues surrounding capital punishment, and current issues in the debate about legal executions.
Historical Background The colonists who settled North America brought with them the English legal system, which included frequent use of the death penalty. There were so many capital crimes in 18th-century British law that it was called the “Bloody Code.” In adapting the law to the New World, the colonists modified the approach to execution. On the one hand, it could be economically
unwise to kill valuable slaves given the chronic labor shortage in the colonies, so the colonists used capital punishment less often than their British counterparts did. On the other hand, colonists also developed a longer list of capital offenses as part of the slave codes that governed the “peculiar institution” of slavery. Slaves could be sentenced to death for administering medicine, for burning property, for enticing others to run away, or for striking a White person. Slaves owed their owners absolute obedience, according to the laws of slavery, and that obedience could be enforced through fear and physical punishment, including death. Maintaining the system of slavery involved a balancing act between the financial loss and the deterrent value of a public execution to keep the other slaves “in their place.” The process for condemning a slave to death was simpler than that for White offenders. Instead of a jury trial, justices of the peace could hear and render a speedy judgment in a case where a slave was the defendant. Not surprisingly, such a system resulted in sentencing disparities. In North Carolina, for example, more slaves were executed in a 25-year period than Whites were executed in the entire 18th century. After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the disproportionate application of capital sentences to African Americans continued. From the 1890s through the 1980s, of 5,726 persons legally executed in the United States, more than 54% were non-White. Among 4,736 illegal executions (lynchings), 73% of those killed were Black. Many scholars have argued that the criminal justice system and capital punishment in particular were used as instruments to maintain White supremacy, especially in the South.
Constitutional Issues The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) organized a project in the mid-20th century to gather data about the disproportionate use of the death penalty against Black men. The association hoped to use the statistics to mount a constitutional challenge based on the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection as well as the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of capital punishment in the 1972 decision Furman v. Georgia. The Court did not address the equal protection issue but held that the death penalty as currently applied violated the Eighth Amendment.
Death Penalty
Five justices concurred in the decision, although each of the nine members of the court wrote a separate opinion. Their major point of agreement was that existing state laws did not provide sufficient guidance to judges and juries and thus allowed too much discretion in determining who should be sentenced to death. The administration of the death penalty, the Court found, was so arbitrary and capricious it was comparable to being struck by lightning. Several justices noted especially that such discretion opened the door to discrimination. If sentencers operated without sufficient guidance, they could easily decide to impose capital punishment on the poor, the powerless, and especially on racial minorities. The Court held that such unbridled discretion constituted cruel and unusual punishment. One effect of Furman was to commute the death sentences of all on death row to life as the capital statutes of 39 states were invalidated. Most of those states, however, quickly attempted to rewrite their laws in conformity with the Court’s decision. The new statutes took two forms. Some tried to address the problem of the arbitrary application of the death penalty by making it mandatory for certain offenses. The Court rejected the mandatory sentencing approach in Woodson v. North Carolina (1976). The Court preferred the Georgia, Texas, and Florida laws, which offered guided discretion to judges and juries. In its 1976 ruling in Gregg v. Georgia, the Supreme Court held that laws that narrowed the list of death-eligible offenses, allowed juries to consider aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and separated the guilt phase of a trial from the sentencing phase reduced the likelihood of arbitrary or discriminatory punishments. Thus, 4 years after finding the death penalty as applied unconstitutional, the Court allowed states to reinstate capital punishment if they wrote laws that limited the opportunity for bias in its use. During much of U.S. history, African American men were executed in inordinate numbers for allegedly raping White women. Before Furman, of 455 men put to death for rape in the 20th century, 405 were Black. In 1977, the Court ruled in Coker v. Georgia that capital punishment for raping an adult woman violated the Eighth Amendment. Justices did not choose to address the issue of racial disparity, however, but held that the death penalty was disproportionate in a crime where the victim did not die. The most significant Supreme Court case dealing with race and capital punishment was McCleskey v. Kemp in 1987. McCleskey, who was African American,
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was convicted of killing a White police officer during an armed robbery. McCleskey claimed that the Georgia capital process was unconstitutional because it violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. To support his claim, McCleskey offered the Baldus Study, a massive empirical analysis of more than 600 homicide cases in Georgia. The Baldus Study found, among other things, that defendants charged with killing Whites were 4.3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than were those charged with killing Blacks. Additionally, Black defendants were 1.1 times as likely to receive a death sentence as other defendants. In other words, McCleskey argued that statistics showed the Georgia capital system was infected with racial bias and that the lawmakers who created it should have foreseen its discriminatory quality. McCleskey’s challenge had wide-ranging implications because similar patterns of sentencing could be seen in other death penalty states. If Georgia’s law were found unconstitutional based on its discriminatory effects, the use of capital punishment might once again be prohibited. The Court, however, did not reach that decision. In a 5–4 ruling written by Justice Lewis Powell, the Court found that statistical evidence of discrimination was insufficient. McCleskey would need to prove that racial bias affected the decision in his case. The justices also acknowledged that a ruling for McCleskey would open the door to innumerable other constitutional challenges based on patterns of racial discrimination throughout the criminal justice system. The dissenting justices could not reconcile the constitutional requirement of equal protection with the pervasive evidence of racial bias demonstrated by the Baldus Study. After his retirement, Justice Powell admitted to a biographer that if he could rewrite any of his opinions, he would have changed his vote in McCleskey. One vote would have dramatically changed the judicial system’s standards for the constitutional application of the death penalty.
Persistent Patterns Three years after the decision in McCleskey, the General Accounting Office did a study of race and capital punishment that supported the findings of the Baldus Study. An examination of the federal death penalty in 1994 found evidence of racial bias in federal sentencing. Many scholars have tried to identify the reasons for these patterns. Why are African Americans disproportionately represented on death
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row, and why are those whose victims are White more likely to be sentenced to death? Some have noted the wide discretion prosecutors enjoy when deciding whether to ask for the death penalty. Appellate courts, including the Supreme Court, tend to defer to prosecutors’ decisions. The Court ruled in United States v. Bass (1971) that if a defendant claims he was prosecuted improperly, he must prove that the prosecutor’s actions were intentionally discriminatory and that they had a negative impact on the case. Others argue that the disparity in the sentencing of minority defendants may be attributed to the confluence of race and class. It is a common observation that there are no rich men (or women) on death row. Most of those who receive the penalty were represented at trial by attorneys provided by the state. Examples of poorly trained, underpaid, unprepared, inexperienced, and even sleeping or drunk defense lawyers abound. Judges, especially in states where they stand for election, are often under pressure to be “tough on crime” and to rule accordingly, particularly in high-profile cases. Some critics of the death penalty also argue that the fact that 98% of chief district attorneys are White works to the disadvantage of non-White defendants. The issue of jury bias has also been scrutinized. The twelve people who end up on a capital jury have gone through a selection process that some say slants the final panel toward the prosecution. First, many states draw jurors from property tax rolls, automobile registrations, or voter lists. In many places, minorities’ names may not appear in those groups. Second, anyone who expresses opposition or even serious reservations about the death penalty will be excused from a capital jury. Finally, prosecutors are known to use their peremptory challenges to remove potential jurors who may be perceived as “pro-defendant.” African Americans may thus not be adequately represented on capital juries. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled in Miller-El v. Cockrell that the defendant’s right to an impartial jury was violated. Miller-El, who is African American, was tried by a panel from which ten of eleven eligible Blacks were excluded by the prosecution’s use of peremptory challenges. In addition, the prosecutor had repeatedly shuffled the order in which the prospective jurors would be questioned. When several African Americans appeared to be next in line for jury selection, he “shuffled” the jury pool, bringing Whites from the back of the room up to the front. The prosecution also distributed different sets of questions to Black and White prospective jurors.
Aware of the many areas where racial bias can taint a capital case, the American Bar Association in 1997 asked for a moratorium on all executions. In 2000, Illinois Governor George Ryan expressed grave concern about the fairness of the capital system in his state. He declared a moratorium on the death penalty and commuted the sentences of those on death row. Studies in other states, such as Texas and Maryland, also indicated links between race, social class, and the death penalty. As of 2007, little has changed with respect to the overrepresentation of racial minorities on the nation’s death rows and the pattern of punishing those who killed Whites more severely. In a nation where about 12% to 13% of the general population is African American, 42% of those awaiting execution are Black. Since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated, 34% of those executed have been African American. The victim’s race also remains a salient point. Although the numbers of African Americans and White homicide victims are roughly comparable, 80% of those who have been put to death murdered a White person. Mary Welek Atwell See Appendix B See also Crime and Race; Criminal Processing; Homicide; Marshall, Thurgood; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Further Readings
Cole, D. 1999. No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System. New York: New Press. Del Carmen, R. V., S. Vollum, K. Cheeseman, D. Frantzen, and C. San Miguel. 2005. The Death Penalty: Constitutional Issues, Commentaries, and Case Briefs. New York: Lexis Nexis. Dieter, R. C. 1998. The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Who Decides. Retrieved October 10, 2006, from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org /article.php?scid=45&did=539 Gabbidon, S. L. and H. T. Greene. 2005. Race and Crime. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kennedy, R. 1997. Race, Crime, and the Law. New York: Vintage. Walker, S., C. Spohn and M. DeLone. 2004. The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. Zimring, F. 2003. The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment. New York: Oxford University Press.
Declin nin ng Sig gniificcance of Race e, Th he
Web Sites
Death Penalty Information Center: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org
DECLINING SIGNIFICANCE OF RACE, THE The declining significance of race is a scholarly thesis that posits three periods of race relations in U.S. history: the Preindustrial, which covers the time from before the Civil War through the 1870s; the Industrial, which covers the 1870s through the New Deal; and the Modern Industrial, which covers the New Deal through the present. In this school of thought, each period embodies a different form of racial stratification structured by the particular arrangement of the economy and the polity; in turn, this imposes constraints on how racial groups interact and gain access to rewards and privileges. This entry describes the declining significance model and summarizes criticisms and alternative research.
Historical Evolution According to William Julius Wilson, author of The Declining Significance of Race, orthodox Marxist theory is applicable to the Preindustrial period, which was characterized by plantation slavery. Edna Bonacich’s split labor market theory is applicable to the Industrial Period, which was characterized by the institutions of Jim Crow in the South and de facto segregation in the North. Neither theory is applicable to the Modern Industrial period. In the Preindustrial and Industrial periods, racial inequality can be seen as emerging directly from the social relations of production. The government protected and legitimated racial inequality during this time. In the Modern Industrial period, various changes invalidated earlier theories. For example, legislation passed during the New Deal prevented employers from undercutting the White labor force by hiring cheaper Black labor. Acting autonomously from the economy and responding to the demand for civil rights, the government removed racial restrictions in the labor market, including discriminatory barriers imposed by state and local authorities. Today, neither the secondary sector nor the primary and government sectors of the labor market provide the basis for the
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interracial competition and conflict that characterized the previous periods. Formally stated, the declining significance model holds that structural changes in the economy and political changes in the government contributed to a process where race gradually lost its importance in determining socioeconomic status attainments in the United States. However, in the sociopolitical order, racial competition persists. Here, the have-nots, both Black and White, struggle over access to and control of schools, neighborhoods, and politicians. These changes produced a segmented labor market in which poorly trained and educated Blacks in the inner city (especially teenagers and young adults) see their job prospects restricted increasingly to the secondary and informal sectors; unemployment rates soar, potential movement out of poverty slows, and welfare rolls increase as a consequence of deindustrialization and disinvestment. On the other hand, as a consequence of affirmative action programs, vigorous recruitment by major corporations, and the expansion of government employment in housing, welfare, medical care, and criminal justice, highly trained and educated Blacks are experiencing unprecedented job opportunities. Therefore, the Black experience has moved from the historical racial oppression experienced by all Blacks to economic subordination for the Black lower classes. The recent mobility patterns of Blacks lend support to the view that social class is more important than race today in determining occupational placement and future earnings. The thesis of the declining significance of race posits that no theory of discrimination is valid for the entirety of U.S. history because so many variables have changed over time. Therefore, the thesis defends delimited explanations of historically discrete, yet interacting periods—that is, a high level of historical specificity and a low level of generalizability. Race relations are complex, unique, and changeable from period to period. A preoccupation with race shifts attention from changes in the political economy over time and makes it difficult to see how the fate of Blacks is connected to these changes.
Contemporary Research Sociologists agree generally that understanding the nature of the interrelationship of race and social class in determining life chances is one of the most important tasks facing the study of race relations today. Since the publication in 1978 of Wilson’s The
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Decliinin ng Sig gniffica ance of Racce, The
Declining Significance of Race, a substantive body of research has emerged examining the respective roles that race and class play in the social processes that allot various kinds of access and resources. Most of the controversy regarding the thesis of the declining significance of race has centered on Wilson’s claim that, since the 1960s, the variable of social class has become more important than the variable of race in determining Black life chances. Supporting research shows that opportunities for Blacks in general have improved, as measured by educational, occupational, and earnings attainments. Especially, Blacks have moved into the middle-level positions in the government and primary sectors that provide the training, experience, and opportunities necessary to advance to top-level positions. Other variables show improvement as well, including the increasing percentage of Blacks elected to political office at the national, state, and local levels. These research findings are consistent with the claim that acquiring human capital, such as educational credentials, will facilitate the assimilation of Blacks. Scholars critiquing Wilson’s theory argue that this acquisition is a necessary but insufficient condition to move Blacks closer to equality with Whites. These scholars assert, for example, that Wilson underestimated the extent of continuing discrimination against Blacks in corporate hiring and promotion practices, access to training, and social closure processes. Compared with Whites, Blacks find it more difficult to learn about job opportunities and obtain referrals, sponsors, or mentors, this research suggests. Other studies have shown that some corporations have resisted full implementation of affirmative action programs or practice statistical discrimination by screening out Black candidates early in the hiring process on the basis of residence, perceived quality of high school education, or class background. These factors are used as proxies for judgments about worker productivity. Employers assume before the fact that these candidates do not have the requisite skills. Critics of Wilson’s thesis argue that the fact that greater numbers of Blacks are moving into highpaying professional and managerial jobs does not by itself constitute proof that race has become less significant in determining life chances. Structures of opportunity are sensitive to the politics of race, they say. Examples include jobs that corporations created during the 1960s and 1970s that are oriented largely to minority issues or public relations, as well as jobs that
resulted from compliance efforts in government contracts. In this respect, the growth of the African American middle class was mediated politically. The government sector has provided more opportunities for Blacks to move into middle and high status jobs and to earn incomes comparable to Whites than has the primary sector. However, when Blacks are employed in the government sector at the state and local levels, they disproportionately serve the Black population, including housing, corrections, welfare, and health services, some studies show; Blacks are underrepresented in service systems aimed at the general public. When budget cuts occur, Blacks in these positions are vulnerable to being dismissed. Wilson was also criticized for underestimating the importance of the continuation of residential segregation through racial steering, neighborhood redlining, restrictive housing covenants, and discrimination in mortgage financing. Some studies suggest that, these practices—despite their illegality—are widespread in certain regions of the United States. Blacks today are more segregated than they were in the early 1960s. Research findings show that Blacks are less able than other groups to translate current socioeconomic status attainments into spatial mobility, which is necessary to future success. The high level of Black segregation cannot be explained by Blacks’ socioeconomic characteristics (which serve as a proxy for social class), their housing preferences, or their limited knowledge of White housing markets. Debates about the declining significance of race now must address the fact that race affects the social and economic well-being of Blacks primarily through the housing market. Little evidence exists to show that Blacks choose freely to live in segregated neighborhoods. Jack Niemonen See also African American Studies; Black Metropolis; Labor Market Segmentation; Political Economy; Underclass; Wilson, William Julius
Further Readings
Bash, H. H. 1979. Sociology, Race and Ethnicity: A Critique of American Ideological Intrusions Upon Sociological Theory. New York: Gordon and Breach. Bonacich, Edna. 1972. “A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market.” American Sociological Review 37 (5, October):547–559.
Deficit Model of Ethnicity
McKee, J. B. 1993. Sociology and the Race Problem: The Failure of a Perspective. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Niemonen, J. 2002. Race, Class, and the State in Contemporary Sociology: The William Julius Wilson Debates. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Wilson, W. J. [1978] 1980. The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
DEFICIT MODEL
OF
ETHNICITY
The phrase deficit model of ethnicity refers to the process in which people’s authenticity as members of an ethnic group is examined by others. The reason for the name lies in the process through which a person’s legitimacy or authenticity as a member of an ethnic group is questioned or seen as “deficient.” This process involves the subtraction of “legitimacy points” from a person based on the absence of ethnic or cultural characteristics that are deemed as primary or “fundamental” for group members to have. This entry looks at the model and related theories.
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language might be seen as a major absence (resulting in a major deduction), but not having family in the ancestral land might be less of an absence (and thus less of a deduction). The more deductions, the greater the deficiency of the person and the less authentic or legitimate that person is seen in the eyes of other ethnic group members. This process assumes that there is a taken-forgranted agreed-upon sense of what makes a person an identifiable member of an ethnic group. Though perhaps not overly explicit, these features should be rooted in everyday life. For instance, the social construction of the ideal type is achieved through ethnic institutions (such as religious organizations, community organizations, academic and media depictions, and other ethnic community organizations) that present a certain archetype or composite of what a member should be like. This can be referred to as a type of ethnocultural fundamentalism, where group members should adhere to certain fundamentals to be identified as a member of the ethnic category. The use of the deficit model is more common when there are major distinctions within an ethnic group, especially pertaining to different waves of immigration to a host country. Thus, if two major immigration
How the Model Works Common primary or fundamental traits related to ethnicity include (but are not limited to) the ability to speak the ancestral language, the number of generations removed from the ancestral land, visits to or family residing in the ancestral land, one or both parents being a member of the ethnic group, and marriage partner being a member of the ethnic group (or endogamy). As a person is found not to possess such traits, his or her authenticity is questioned through the process of subtraction. For example, if 100 points (or percent) represents an ethnic ideal type, then any deviation from that ideal type would result in a figurative subtraction of legitimacy points from that person, with the absence of different traits carrying with them variable deductions. Thus, not being able to speak an ancestral
Cuban exile in Miami. Approximately 1 million exiles live in this Cuban enclave, where all of the signs are in Spanish and English is rarely heard spoken. The deficit model of ethnicity addresses the issue of authenticity of identity. A Cuban American who does not speak Spanish fluently or, in the eyes of many immigrants, does not strongly oppose the government of Cuba may be seen as less authentically Cuban American. Source: Getty Images.
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Deloria, Vine, Jr. (1933–2005)
waves are separated by time, resulting in separate ethnic subcommunities, there can be challenges between members of these subcommunities regarding who actually carries the “true” or desirable ethnic characteristics. In this way, members of the more recent immigration wave, who are seen as being more “authentic” because of their more recent arrival, can act as ethnic gatekeepers through the application of this process. This results in people who are from earlier generations not being seen as authentic members of the cultural ethnic community.
Related Issues This raises the following questions: (a) Is there one ethnic ideal type to which members should adhere, (b) is it the nature of culture and ethnicity to be homogenous, and (c) do changes in ethnicity and culture over time equal a diminishing of the ethnicity itself? Research on immigrant ethnic communities has found that members of those communities tend to suspend the evolution of the ancestral culture at the point at which they emigrated from the ancestral land. This means that, for many immigrants, their version of ethnic culture is one that is potentially out of step with the culture as it is experienced in the ancestral land. This process can be referred to as “tangential development,” where the culture as practiced and maintained in the “new land” becomes different from that in the “homeland.” Even though their ethnic group culture has developed separately in the immigrant community, the ethnicity as practiced by group members is taken to be an authentic representation of the ancestral culture as currently practiced in the “homeland.” Furthermore, the ideal type often can be a version of the homeland culture that is distinct to the region from which the community emigrated. For instance, if an immigrant group originates from one part of another country, that group’s version of ethnicity may be germane only to that region. In the immigrant community, however, that ethnicity is portrayed as representing the entirety of the ancestral land (often in the form of a nation-state). Despite evidence that the version of ethnic culture proffered by members of the immigrant ethnic community is different from that culture practiced in the homeland, much is made of the “loss of culture” that occurs over generations in the new land. This indicates that the mixing of cultural influences between the homeland and the new land is a “zero-sum game,”
where any addition from one must result in a subtraction from the other. Furthermore, the concept of “losing one’s culture” indicates that even though a person can be generations removed from the ancestral land, have no relatives living there, and have never visited there, the expectation still exists that the person should be in possession of certain cultural traits. Thus, any culture elements that are “lost” need to be “found” again to achieve legitimacy, authenticity, and make up for the deficit of ethnic traits. This can be done through the learning of a language, visits to the ancestral land, taking an interest in the history of the ancestral land, and becoming active in certain political causes that are related to the ancestral land (if such causes do exist). By doing so, one can “find one’s culture” and ultimately “find one’s self.” Another view would be to apply the concepts of hybrid identity and hybrid cultures, which hold that people are not reducible to any one cultural trait but, rather, are composites of a variety of cultural influences. This does not mean that there is no commonality or consistency across individuals regarding how ethnic group membership is rendered observable. Rather, there is no expectation that portrayal of the ethnicity in the “new land” is expected to be reducible to any ideal type. In the end, the goal of research is to examine the variety of ways in which membership in an ethnic category is demonstrated and portrayed in everyday life. Gary C. David See also Assimilation; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Immigrant Communities; Marginalization; Symbolic Ethnicity; Symbolic Religiosity; Third-Generation Principle
Further Readings
David, Gary. 2007.“The Creation of ‘Arab American’: Political Activism and Ethnic (Dis)Unity” Critical Sociology 33(5):833–862. Schaefer, Richard T. 2008. Racial and Ethnic Groups. 11th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
DELORIA, VINE, JR. (1933–2005) Vine Deloria, Jr. was the most effective and respected spokesperson of Native Americans during the last half century. A prolific writer, speaker, and storyteller and
Deloria, Vine, Jr. (1933–2005)
a recognized scholar, Deloria was a Standing Rock Sioux who managed to maintain respect among tribal peoples and gain an admiring general audience. This entry describes his life and achievements.
His Life Deloria was born March 26, 1933, the son of an Episcopalian clergyman in one of the nation’s poorest areas, then and now, the town of Martin, South Dakota, near the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux reservation. After a stint in the U.S. Marine Corps, he received his bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University in 1955 and his master’s degree from the Lutheran School of Theology in 1963, followed by a law degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1970. After teaching at the University of Arizona, he returned to the University of Colorado to teach history, political science, law, and ethnic and religious studies until he retired in 2000. Soon after receiving his theological training, he joined the National Congress of American Indians in 1964 as its executive director. He worked to reverse the federal government’s termination policy, which sought to force tribal people to relocate to urban areas by ending government support on selected reservations. He also became a tireless advocate working on many initiatives, legislative reforms, and actions to protect sacred sites, ancestral remains, and artifacts. Reflecting his family background and seminary training, Deloria remained fascinated by spirituality of all types. Critical of Christian missionaries and traditional Western theology, he contended that tribal religions were more relevant to the issues confronting people today, not just Native Americans, than was traditional Christian thinking. He saw Christianity as reinforcing imperialism, dependency, and environmental destruction. In March 2004, the Regents of the University of Colorado approached Deloria about bestowing an honorary degree on him. Initially he was reluctant, feeling that he had not accomplished enough to deserve it, but he agreed to accept it. However, ever the man of his principles, Deloria later declined it because of his outrage regarding how the university handled the scandals facing the athletic department that spring.
His Work A best-selling author, Deloria reached a broad audience from college students to the general public, but
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he always saw himself as writing for the American Indian people themselves. The works were primarily nonfiction treatises but also included memoirs and edited collections of documentary material such as treaties. His first, and still his most celebrated book, was Custer Died for Your Sins, published in 1969, an appropriate title for a book written by a descendant of Sitting Bull. At the time, the book was greeted by many non-American Indians as incendiary and an angry rant. Deloria described the defeat of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry by the combined force of Sioux and Northern Cheyenne in 1876 as “a sensitivity-training session.” He also portrayed Custer as anything but a hero and described the officer as the “Adolf Eichmann of the Plains.” Using such humor and often-barbed criticisms, this work contributed significantly to changing the public’s consciousness toward tribal people. Its popularity supplemented the activism of the American Indian Movement as well as paralleled the growth of activist literature supporting the civil rights and women’s movements. Early in his scholarly career, Deloria took the unpopular position of opposing the theory that Native Americans arrived in the Americas via the Bering Straits. He argued that there was ample evidence that the Indian peoples migrated from east to west and that if they were “tourists” along the Bering Straits, they were going to Asia, not migrating from it. As outlined in Red Earth, White Lies, Deloria continued the themes of American Indians as active, not passive, participants in their own destiny. For example, he argues that the Klamath tribal people witnessed the cataclysmic Crater Lake explosion and that their oral histories and those of other native peoples represent reliable accounts of distant historical events. Deloria did not hesitate to enter into the Kennewick Man controversy. In the summer of 1996, a skeleton was discovered near the Washington-Oregon state line; radiocarbon dating suggested that its age was approximately 9,300 years. Deloria saw the ensuing controversy about whether the remains were American Indian as all about politics, not science, and an effort to trample legitimate Native interests. Drawing on both his academic training and his American Indian heritage, Deloria was often critical of anthropologists and the way their research could exploit and misrepresent tribal peoples. Particularly difficult for Deloria to accept was the failure to involve American Indians in research
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about their people, reflecting the colonial nature of the discipline. Deloria remained an active writer and lecturer until his death on November 13, 2005. Fitting of an activist scholar, Deloria is remembered for his engaging personality as well as his contributions. A lover of vintage cowboy music, he enjoyed serving as master of ceremonies at music events. He collaborated on Floyd Red Crow Westerman’s first album. Westerman’s song “Here Come the Anthros” (as in anthropologists) remains a mainstay in Indian country. Richard T. Schaefer See also American Indian Movement; Blood Quantum; Civil Rights Movement; Kennewick Man; National Congress of American Indians; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990; Native Americans Further Readings
Biolsi, Thomas and Larry J. Zimmerman, eds. 1997. Indians and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria, Jr. and the Critique of Anthropology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1969. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. New York: Macmillan. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1970. We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf. New York: Macmillan. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1974. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence. New York: Dell. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1983. God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. Golden, CO: North American Press. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1999. For the Land: Writings on Religion in America. New York: Routledge. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1999. Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact. New York: Scribner. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 2000. “Foreword.” In Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, by David Hurst Thomas. New York: Basic Books. Mankiller, Wilma. 2005. “An Original Thinker with a Warrior’s Spirit.” Indian Country Today (January 10). Pavlik, Steve and Daniel R. Wildcat, eds. 2006. Destroying Dogma: Vine Deloria, Jr. and his Influence on American Society. Golden, CO: Fulcrum.
DESI The word desi in various South Asian languages means “native” or “belonging to a country.” For clarity, desi can be contrasted with another word, bideshi or videshi, which means “not native” or foreign.
Etymologically, desi is related to the word desh, which means “country” or “land.” Thus, to be desi is to be of a land. In the United States, desis are young people whose parent or parents are members of the South Asian diaspora. This entry describes desi characteristics and experiences.
Who Are They? In the context of race and ethnicity in the United States, in the popular media as well as in academic journals, the word desi usually refers to the “new second generation,” that is, the children of post-1965 immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. Desi has multiple usages. In a restricted sense, it refers only to people of Indian origin who live in the West. It could also refer to Pakistani people in the West or to anyone of South Asian origin. This broad usage is quite common, especially because the immigrant parents may not identify with a single country (like Bangladesh or India) because they may have been displaced by the act of partition of the subcontinent and before these national identities became distinct ones. A desi necessarily resides in the West. To be more specific, the West is usually the United States or Britain, although arguably, the South Asian continental diaspora anywhere in the world could claim membership of the desi identity. Why would children of immigrants be referred to as “native” or “belonging to a country”? There is a hint of irony in the term and perhaps a touch of humor, too, because the term might be viewed two ways. In one sense, the children of immigrants are not always accepted as full citizens in their new country; even when political citizenship is granted, full cultural citizenship often lags behind. So they may enjoy calling themselves “of the land” where their parents were foreigners until recently. The term could also mean belonging to the subcontinent the parents have left behind, that is, desi of the original desh. The parents may have left the subcontinent, but the subcontinent lives on in them through cultural identification. Generally, however, desis in the United States do not identify with the subcontinent to the extent their parents do. Not surprisingly, there are comic linguistic twists to desi—the acronym ABCD is quite popular and irreverently stands for “American Born Confused Desi.” One desi may tease another about “being on desi time,” presumably referring to a shared comic stereotype of the Indian/South Asian as not punctual.
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A small body of research suggests that women tend to identify more as desis than men do. This may have to do with the different media portrayals of South Asian men and women, different levels of symbolic status of the South Asian boy or girl identity among peers, and a gendered process of migration by which women maintain stronger cultural roots in the new country. Sociological or anthropological research has not yet explored a range of issues: How is this identity constructed? How do people identify with it? Is the desi identity in opposition to any other competing identity? What do people who claim this identity share with each other? Are they self-identified or identified by a community of people as desis? Or do their peers have a strong role in identifying them?
Cultural Characteristics Many desis in the United States today are urban professionals or students who come from middle-class to affluent socioeconomic statuses. Of course, many immigrants from South Asia do not belong to either of these classes or socioeconomic statuses. It is unknown whether their children develop the desi identity and if so at what point. Desi may be a class-linked concept, and identification with it could be connected to upward mobility. Desis do not fit into the prevalent Black-White dichotomy of U.S. racial conceptualizations. To avoid binary pigeonholing, the term brown narratives has been used to define the experiences of desis. Because brown is neither White nor Black, these are “in-between people” who experience race and racism culturally. Apart from English, desis have no common language, but they do share several cultural practices to varying degrees. For example, Bollywood, the Hindilanguage motion picture industry of India, movies and songs are popular in the desi circles. Religion plays a significant role for many desis, with institutions such as Hindu temples, Sikh Gurdwaras, and mosques providing spiritual and cultural succor. Assimilation in mainstream culture while holding on to a multicultural life makes the experience of religion, like many other life experiences, very different for desis. Parties with South Asian music and dancing are big draws for desis. On festive occasions (such as religious festivals), music and dance help young people bond. Disc jockeys play remixes of Hindi movie numbers, and diverse dances like bhangra and dandiya are danced to this music. Free-style swaying is common.
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This music has become a popular genre. A testimony to this is MTV’s launch of MTV Desi in July 2005— a music channel specifically dedicated to the young bicultural desis. In addition, desi hip-hop has come of age, and desi rappers are common. Food is cultural cement as well. The Indian subcontinent boasts of a rich fare of delicacies. The spices, flavors, aromas, and visual effects of these dishes are cultural ambassadors for the region. The desis incorporate Indian dishes on many occasions. Dishes can be ordered from ethnic food stores and restaurants— many of which cater for special occasions. Pre-packaged food is a common sight in Asian supermarkets and popular among the desis who cannot cook those dishes from scratch or lack the time to do so. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center, race-based hostility toward Arabs and Muslims has sometimes been directed toward South Asians in the United States (whether immigrants or born here), and some Sikhs have been attacked. U.S. cultural citizenship and “Americanness” are important to desis, and this connection may seem threatened for some desis as a result of the terrorist incident and resulting fears. Devyani Prabhat See also Asian Americans; Assimilation; Globalization; Immigration, U.S.; India; Indian Americans; Symbolic Ethnicity; Third-Generation Principle Further Readings
Badruddoja, Roksana. 2006. “White Spaces and Brown Traveling Bodies: A Project of Re-Working Otherness.” International Review of Modern Sociology 32(1):1–34. Fenton, J. Y. 1992. “Academic Study of Religion and Asian Indian-American College Students.” Pp. 258–277 in A Sacred Thread: Modern Transmission of Hindu Traditions in India and Abroad, edited by R. B. Williams. Chambersburg, PA: Anima. Khandelwal, M. 2002. Becoming American, Being Indian: An Immigrant Community in New York City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kurien, P A. 2003. “To Be or Not to Be South Asian: Contemporary Indian American Politics.” Journal of Asian American Studies 6:261–288. Mehta, Monika. 2005. “Globalizing Bombay Cinema: Reproducing the Indian State and Family.” Cultural Dynamics 17(2, July):135–154. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2004. “Towards an AntiImperialist Politics: Reflections of a Desi Feminist.” South Asian Popular Culture 2(1, April):69–73.
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Rudrappa, Sharmila. 2004. Ethnic Routes to Becoming American: Indian Immigrants and the Cultures of Citizenship. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Warikoo, Natasha. 2005. “Gender and Ethnic Identity among Second-Generation Indo-Caribbeans.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28(5, September):803–831.
DEVIANCE AND RACE In general, social scientists approach the concepts of deviance and race as socially constructed categories that are superficially imposed to categorize, differentiate, and construct certain social groups as “others.” Deviance describes actions or beliefs that violate social norms, which often result in punishment or stigmatization in a variety of social contexts. Race is also understood, in the social sciences, to be a socially constructed category based on physical or biological characteristics that members of society come to define as significant. Deviance and race are inextricably linked in that racial groups are often associated with certain forms of deviance and are singled out for differential treatments compared with their White counterparts. The first part of this entry describes two approaches to studying deviance and race. The second part discusses how race is produced and sustained in criminal and social deviance.
Research Approaches Although the study of deviance in sociology is wideranging and divergent, two predominant, yet opposing, perspectives to deviance can be distinguished: positivist (e.g., anomie-strain, social learning, and social disorganization theories) and constructionist (e.g., labeling, feminist, phenomenology, and conflict theories). The positive approach is most closely associated with the objectivist position that deviant behavior is obvious or deterministic, suggesting that certain consistencies within society regarding some behaviors violate the social order. Positivistic lines of inquiry, with respect to deviance and race, seek to explain why some racial groups engage in certain deviant behaviors. In contrast, constructionists approach deviant behavior as a socially constructed phenomenon that arises out of the judgment, condemnation, or stigmatization of actions by various audiences in society. Rather than viewing actors as inherently deviant,
constructionists argue that definitions of deviance are externally imposed by audiences. Most sociologists adopt the constructionist approach and often view deviance through the lens of power relationships. Thus, they may examine how certain groups or moral entrepreneurs influence the definition of deviance to exert social control or to encourage conformity. As such, a constructionist approach to race and deviance might seek to explain who gets to define what is deviant along racial lines and examine what groups adopt certain definitions of racial deviance while others do not. Those who study deviance with respect to any social phenomena such as race often examine deviant associations, deviant identities, and deviant careers.
Racial Distinctions The linkages of deviance and race in U.S. society are rooted in early attempts to classify people along racial lines for the purposes of constructing otherness. Historically, in the United States, racial distinctions in terms of physical and biological characteristics became socially important as a rationale for the existence of slavery and as justification for the negative treatment of people of African ancestry. In this context, racial classification was defined and enforced along rigid color lines of Black versus White, with anything other than whiteness constructed as a deviant. Thus, race became arranged along hierarchical lines, with whiteness associated with positive categories such as purity and goodness, therefore being superior, whereas blackness became associated with negative connotations such as dark, predatory, evil, and abnormality, and thus, it was inferior and other. To be sure, the social construction of deviance and race extends far beyond distinctions of Black and White to other racial and ethnic minorities such as Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans. These racial constructions play out in both criminal and social deviance. Deviance and race are important to the construction of criminality as evidenced by the differing societal response to street crimes (underprivileged or street deviance) and white-collar crimes (privileged or elite deviance). Participation in these crimes often relates to access, or lack thereof, to social, political, and economic opportunities. White-collar crimes, often associated with the White political and economic elite, receive little attention from the news media and frequently go unpunished or receive lighter punishments.
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Conversely, street crimes are often associated with minority groups and receive significant media attention that reinforces the production of criminality along racial lines. Minority groups receive harsher punishments than do their White counterparts for criminal activities, and groups such as African American males are overrepresented in the criminal justice system as offenders and victims of violent crimes. Though deviance and crime have become synonymous concepts, deviance and race are also coproduced and sustained in a variety of other social phenomena that are not necessarily defined or labeled as criminal (all crime is deviance but not all deviance is crime). Take for example, linguistics (although there are many other phenomena such as music, food, fashion, religiosity, etc.). In the United States, “White” American English is considered to be the standard, and those who speak in different syntax or dialect (such as Black English or English with certain foreign accents) are often stigmatized as deviant because they are associated with deeply rooted social and historical notions of non-Whites as foreign, other, and inferior. Thus, racial distinctions are manifested in even the most basic component of human interaction and can provoke social sanctions, differential treatments, and discrimination. Therefore, what this example shows is that it is important to examine how race affects a variety of social phenomenon in terms of behaviors defined as socially acceptable or unacceptable with a view toward power and privilege. In sum, any discussion of deviance or race must look at how the two concepts are inescapably linked. Race and deviance are important social concepts because they have serious consequences for access to social, political, and economic opportunities. Michelle Newton-Francis and Steve Hamilton See also Crime and Race; Criminal Processing; Gangs; Labeling; People of Color; Race, Social Construction of; White Privilege
Further Readings
Adler, Patricia A. and Peter Adler. 2003. Constructions of Deviance: Social Power, Context, and Interaction. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Good, Erich and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. 1994. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
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Walker, S., C. Spohn, and M. DeLone. 2000. The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Winant, Howard. 2001. The World Is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy since World War II. New York: Basic Books.
DIASPORA Usage of the concept of diaspora has become quite commonplace in the early 21st century, both to explain the presence of refugees and migrant groups in unpredictable places and to define the relationship between immigrant groups and the places from which they migrated. Not surprisingly then, the term is now often used interchangeably with the notion of immigrant communities. The implicit assumption is that to be an immigrant is to “be in diaspora,” that is, located far away from some specific “home” that was left behind and to which one retains some attachment, whether sentimental, political, or cultural. This way of specifying the existence of “diaspora” (and presumably, the nonexistence as well) is relatively new, emerging in the last three decades amid heightening concerns—among both national governments and scholars—about the interrelationship between globalization, shifting global relations of power, and the political and economic well-being of immigrant communities in countries of the global North. This entry discusses the changing definitions of diaspora, the major debates about its methodological and analytical value, and the ways in which the concept is being used within various disciplinary frameworks.
Definition Since its introduction into social science scholarship between World Wars I and II, the term diaspora has remained politically contentious and is intimately linked to and shaped by questions of power, identity politics, and nationalism. In its most basic sense, the concept of diaspora refers to changing relationships between space, time, and place in relation to notions of identity, belonging, and lived experience. Diaspora is often used to describe groups of persons who are displaced or exiled (in relation to a specific nation-state) and who feel that they share an ethnicity, culture, community, and traditions with and have some kind of relationship
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to a perceived homeland. Related concepts such as race, collective memory, exile, home, national identity, political consciousness, physical territory, ethnic community, and borders are central to understandings of diaspora. Diaspora is often taken to be a singular unified entity organized around a specific historical event—as in the transatlantic slave trade from the 17th to 19th centuries, which generated “The African Diaspora”—rather than a composite or differentiated entity where dispersal is produced by multiple political, economic, and ideological events across centuries, as in a “Chinese diaspora.” The concept is also geographically marked; that is, diaspora is “elsewhere,” separate and distinguishable from the physical territory of “homeland.”
Diaspora as Descriptive Tool The term is most often cited as originating in the forced dispersion of Jewish peoples echoed in the verses, “Thou shall be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth” and a “scattering to other lands” found in the Judeo-Christian Bible’s Old Testament document of Deuteronomy (28:25). Greek translations of the same text define the term as “to sow widely” in relation to colonization and military conquest. These definitions emerge from different historical contexts and offer different frameworks regarding how diasporas are produced, as well as the outcomes of such developments for the homeland, which is the point of reference. Nonetheless, the explanation of “forced expulsion” held sway until the 1980s, characterizing diaspora as the contemporary outcome of past repression and exclusion, which created this collective trauma, for example, through genocide, slavery, war, and famine. In this framework, diaspora emerges as a condition, a consequence of the forced departure of people from a “homeland” to live “in exile” outside the territory of origin. Furthermore, the core identities and allegiances of the displaced are assumed to lie with the nationstate from which they were physically removed; they share a common cultural orientation that is identified as “traditional” and retain strong political and emotive attachments to a real or imagined “homeland.” Conceivably then, the problem of diaspora would be resolved with the physical and psychic “return” of those exiled to the territories of origin. The term diaspora is most frequently used to characterize the experiences of Jewish people living outside their traditional homeland; of people of African descent living outside of the continent as a result of
the transatlantic slave trade; and of Armenian, Chinese, Eritrean, Kurdish, Sikh, and Sudanese populations exiled from their ancestral homes. Scholarship informed by this theoretical orientation has focused primarily on group members’ attitudes toward assimilation, ethnic group consciousness and solidarity, forms of collective memory and nostalgia, efforts at cultural retention and preservation, and emergence of political movements in relation to exiles’ sense of belonging to the “homeland.” In general, diasporic communities can promote group-based ethnic identities, which are politically useful in providing a sense of solidarity in the face of political exclusion. The limitations of this approach to diaspora is that the approach treats the groups as culturally and socially homogeneous and assumes that other social categories such as race, religion, ethnicity, national status, gender, generation, language, political ideology, and place of settlement inter alia have no significant effect on a person’s relation to or ideas of the “homeland.” Indeed, while ideas of racial difference often shape the formation of diaspora, such ideas disappear as “ethnic difference” takes precedence in diasporic contexts. Similarly, the homeland is conceived as static, fixed, and bounded by history and physical and cultural borders, and it is taken as the singularly most important aspect of group identity. Under these assumptions, the effects of place of settlement, as well as difference, tensions, and power relations are downplayed within the group. As a result, this approach fails to recognize how a group’s claims—for example, to a common nation, history, territory, identity, community—are often fictive. At its worst, claims to a common source of identity often promote political projects that have negative material consequences for those who are not seen as belonging or conforming to the group ethos. For example, the symbols of national identity and diaspora (e.g., dress, ritual, music, language, etc.) are also shaped by gendered, sexual, religious, and other political meanings, which are themselves outcomes of social relations of power. Visible markers of identity (e.g., dress of Somali women, ritual scarification of Nuer and Dinka men, uncut hair and turbans of Sikh men) often become used to exclude and stigmatize other possible markers of group membership.
Diaspora as Process More recent conceptualizations of diaspora, especially those influenced by postmodern assumptions of
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fluidity, hybridity (mixed-race descent), and instability of identities, have moved away from the singular focus on nation-state and national identity. Instead, this approach challenges the claims of authenticity, community, nation-state, and identity and shows that notions of “home,” “belonging,” and “nation” are not static or unchanging, fixed in time and space. Rather, ambivalence, fluidity, nomadic identities, shifting territorial boundaries, and contestation are more characteristic of personal and group identities, in both the fictive homeland and in the new places of settlement. This approach to diaspora also questions the idea of a single bounded homeland that spawns multiple places of exile; the approach examines how people in diaspora actually construct and contest the relationships— political, economic, and cultural—and borders among the places of exile. Diaspora, as much as the nation and homeland, is a process rather than a place or product in this view and is shaped by the ways displaced people manipulate and create visions—of identity, community, and nation—in relation to both the structural features and the material realities of daily life. A key tension in this approach is whether the diaspora ought to confirm or destabilize the nation-state that produced exile in the first place. Some argue that a more nuanced approach facilitates an understanding of how people in power (e.g., military, ruling ethnic groups, etc.) create boundaries that exclude and marginalize and, therefore, work to undermine and disrupt any notion of a benevolent and inclusive nation-state. Others argue that even though the nation-state is seen as pervasive and all-powerful, the emergence of a diaspora itself reflects people’s efforts to subvert and undermine, and thus weaken the state, setting the stage for long-term social transformation.
Disciplinary Approaches to Diaspora Most disciplines engage the concept of diaspora in some way, bringing new insights and perspectives to bear on an established but still fertile topic. For example, literary scholars address the ways in which race, national identities, and notions of belonging are presented in and through textual, visual, and oral strategies. Scholars in anthropology (e.g., Leila Abu Lughod, Aihwa Ong, and Victoria Bernal) have used ethnographic approaches to examine the cultural and historical dimensions of diasporic practices in relation to state violence, dispossession, new economies, and new technologies. Similarly, historians (e.g., Winston James, Paul Gilroy, and Penny Von Eschen)
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map the ways in which specific temporal and social moments shape the features of diasporic consciousness and political activism. Cultural geographers focus on place as a category, rather than assuming that some places matter more than others do. This methodological approach sets aside the singular focus on homeland and instead turns to the meaning of “place” (regardless of its geographic location) along with the material conditions, relationships, and practices that people in exile create, imagine, and negotiate within. Sociologists and political scientists focus on the relationship between globalization and immigrant group identities, with a new focus on the emergence of hybrid identities and the production of new social relations called transnational social fields. These fields within which immigrants live and work are created and fostered through travel, leisure, economic investments, religious activity, and technologies such as digital phones, cassettes, and the Internet. Using those tools, immigrants can simultaneously manage their social and economic status in both the racestratified societies where they settle and the places from which they migrated (e.g., see the work of sociologists Stuart Hall, Peggy Levitt, and Nancy Foner). Interdisciplinary approaches continue to offer the most nuanced work on diaspora, drawing from various bodies of work—feminist and queer theory, ethnic studies, critical race studies, for example—to show how national (and all social) identities cannot be divorced from the contexts in which they are produced, nor from the agency of the persons who are most invested in them. Natalie Bennett See also Acculturation; Africans in the United States; Assimilation; Chinatowns; Ethnonational Minorities; Globalization; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Jewish Americans; Kurdish Americans; Palestinian Americans; Transnational People; Zionism
Further Readings
Abusharaf, Rogaia. 2002. Wanderings: Sudanese Migrants and Exiles in North America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Axel, Brian. 2001. The Nation’s Tortured Body: Violence, Representation and the Formation of the Sikh “Diaspora.” Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Basch, Linda G, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc. 1994. Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects,
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Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized NationStates. Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach. Clifford, James. 1994. “Diasporas.” Cultural Anthropology 9(3):302–340. Edwards, Brent Hayes. 2001. “The Uses of Diaspora.” Social Text 19(1 66):45–73. Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso. Hall, Stuart. 1990. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, edited by J. Rutherford. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Holsey, Bayo. 2005. “Transatlantic Dreaming: Slavery, Tourism and Diasporic Encounters.” Pp. 166–182 in Homecomings: Unsettling Paths of Return, edited by F. Markowitz and A. Stefansson. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
DIGITAL DIVIDE The digital divide is the gap between those who have access to digital technology and those who do not. The term garnered popular attention in the mid-1990s through a series of reports by the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) that measured Internet access disparity in relation to racial groups, socioeconomic status, and geographic location. For those who saw the Internet as a revolutionary means to redress social inequality, the digital divide was the main barrier to an equally wired and thus egalitarian world. Since then, access to digital technology for racial and ethnic minorities has increased, particularly within the United States. However, greater physical access to the Internet does not immediately result in equal opportunity, as described in this entry.
A Problem Emerges In 1995, the NTIA released the first high-profile examination of Internet access disparity, titled Falling Through the Net: A Survey of the “Have Nots” in Urban and Rural America. The study found that the poorest households in rural and central city locations had the least access to the Internet. With regard to race, rural Native American households scored the lowest in connectivity, with rural Black, central city Black, and central city Latino households also having lower levels of access relative to other groups.
To include minority populations in online activity, state-sponsored programs focused on increasing public access in schools and libraries. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, by 2003 Internet access reached nearly 100% for public schools in the United States. Access via education, coupled with increased prevalence of Internet terminals in public libraries, led some people to consider the digital divide closed, whereas others argued that the digital divide should be measured by more comprehensive means than mere access.
Defining Access Typically, the phrase digital divide refers to Internet access, but it can also apply to the accessibility of technology such as portable media players, gaming consoles, personal digital assistants, satellite television, and cell phones. Relative to Internet connectivity, however, the increasing rate of broadband access is cited as evidence that previous conceptions of the digital divide might be outmoded. The NTIA report from 2004, “A Nation Online: Entering the Broadband Age,” found increases in Internet access for all racial groups in both urban and rural areas, yet the data reveal persistent inequality in household connectivity for both dial-up and broadband. According to the 2004 NTIA report, White households have the highest percentage of some type of Internet connectivity at 65.1%. Asian American households closely follow at 63.1%, whereas 45.6% of Black households and 37.2% of Latino households reported access. Native American households were not included in the report. The disparity between racial groups increases when one looks at dial-up versus broadband levels of access. Asian American households have the highest level of broadband access at 34.2%. White households have 25.7% broadband access, followed by Black households at 14.2% and 12.6% for Latino households. Therefore, members of some racial groups are less likely to have household access and are less likely to have faster connections. Although many people use the Internet to build community, finding culturally relevant content can be difficult for some racial and ethnic groups. The predominance of English on the World Wide Web marginalizes some minority voices and challenges the accessibility of the Internet, regardless of the prevalence of public access points. Some argue that
Dillingham Flaw
increased attention to computer literacy programs for low-income and minority populations is a crucial part of addressing the content disparity. This belief stems from the fact that if people do not have the skills to engage in online activity, interventions to improve access are largely ineffective. There remains a persistent gap between some groups with regard to the ability to produce and make use of online content, but computer literacy is increasing among minority populations. For example, according to a 2006 study conducted by the Insight Research Corporation, Latinos are the fastest growing group of Internet users in the United States. Many Latinos have online access at work, where computer training is often a part of job training. Nevertheless, working-class minority populations often are denied opportunities to get the education needed to participate in the future of digital technology.
Global Digital Divide Regardless of how one defines access, the digital divide is more severe in less privileged countries. The global divide is sometimes referred to as a geographic split between the “information rich” northern countries and the “information poor” global South. Although the high per capita income and dense telecommunication infrastructure of places such as the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Japan provide a base from which to decrease the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots,” the comparatively limited resources in so-called peripheral nations inhibits the deployment of large-scale interventions designed to increase access. Although countries such as India are a common site for information technology outsourcing, the penetration of digital technology in rural and low-income areas is relatively slight. There is cause for hope, however. International attention to the growing problem of the global digital divide has prompted organizations such as the United Nations to take steps to bring the world’s population closer to the access levels of the economic elite.
Prospects for Digital Inclusion Municipal broadband is one way to help alleviate Internet access inequality for low-income minority populations. This does not address the lack of access
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to computer skill training, but it can provide a cheaper means to go online. Assuming the prices of computers and other digital devices continue to fall, this also will help expand access. Although more and more people of all racial and ethnic groups are being included in the digital future, there remain many individuals denied the ability to participate equally. Peter D. Schaefer See also Educational Stratification; Globalization; Media and Race; Social Inequality; Wealth Distribution; White Privilege
Further Readings
Insight Research Corporation. 2001. Web Portals, ISPs, IP Telephony & the Ethnic Consumer: Bridging the Digital Divide, 2000–2005. Boonton, NJ: Insight Research. Leung, Linda. 2005. Virtual Ethnicity: Race, Resistance and the World Wide Web. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Mack, Raneta, L. 2001. The Digital Divide: Standing at the Intersection of Race and Technology. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Mossberger, Karen, Carolin J. Tolbert, and Mary Stansbury. 2003. Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. U.S. Department of Commerce. 1995. Falling through the Net: A Survey of the “Have-Nots” in Urban and Rural America. Washington, DC: Author. U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), 2004. A Nation Online: Entering the Broadband Age. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce. Warschauer, Mark. 2003. Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
DILLINGHAM FLAW The Dillingham Flaw is a relatively new concept that describes a centuries-old phenomenon of faulty logic when nativists misinterpret and react to the presence of immigrants in their midst. This faulty logic ignores diversity and assumes homogeneity, thereby setting a framework for negativity about newcomers. The term draws its name from a special commission created in 1907 by President Theodore Roosevelt to look into the “immigration problem.” Chaired by
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Dillingham Flaw
Senator William P. Dillingham of Vermont, the commission, over a 4-year period, listened to testimony from civic leaders, educators, social scientists, and social workers and made on-site visits to Ellis Island and New York’s Lower East Side. In 1911, the commission issued a forty-one-volume report of its findings. Unfortunately, the report is now viewed as flawed in its application and interpretation of the data that the commission had so tirelessly collected. Social scientists agree that the commission erred in its use of simplistic categories for diverse immigrant groups. The second error was in an unfair comparison of “old” and “new” immigrants despite the changed structural conditions and longer time interval that previous immigrants had to assimilate and achieve some measure of economic security. Quite simply then, the term Dillingham Flaw refers to inaccurate comparisons based on simplistic categorizations and anachronistic observations. This erroneous thinking can occur in assessments of the past, present, or future, as described in this entry.
The Past Applying modern classifications or sensibilities to a time when they did not exist, or, if they did, had a different form or meaning is one version of the Dillingham Flaw. In this instance, modern perceptions are used to explain a past that its contemporaries viewed quite differently. For example, today’s term British refers collectively to the people of Great Britain (the English, Welsh, Scots, and Scots-Irish). However, in the 18th century, British had the much narrower meaning of only the English, and for good reason. The English, Scots, and Scots-Irish may have been English-speaking, but significant cultural and religious differences existed among them, and they did not view each other as “similar.” To presume that the colonial British, even just the colonial English, were a single cohesive entity and, thus, that the thirteen English colonies were homogeneous would be to fall victim to the Dillingham Flaw. Similarly, we fall into this trap if we speak about either African slaves or Native Americans as single, monolithic groups. Such ethnocentric generalizations fail to acknowledge that these groups actually consisted of diverse peoples with distinctive languages, cultures, and behavior patterns. Similarly, European immigrants were not alike, despite their collective groupings by mainstream society. Instead, all of these
groups—African American, Native American, and immigrant—were diverse peoples with many distinctions that set them apart from one another.
The Present Similar misconceptions can, and often do, occur in one’s own time. Here, the faulty logic about the past described earlier is used to evaluate the present. Working from a false premise about past rapid assimilation and cultural homogeneity, individuals employ what they believe is an objective comparison with the present scene, which they find troubling in its heterogeneity and supposedly non-assimilating groups. Like the presidential commission, they are susceptible to mistaken impressions about a “threat” posed by recent immigrants whose presence and behavior they view as different from earlier immigrants. The most common examples are expressed views that today’s steadily increasing ranks of Africans, Asians, Hispanics, and Muslims in the United States present an unprecedented challenge to an integrative society. Reacting to the increasing presence—even in many non-urban settings—of non-White newcomers speaking a foreign tongue, including many from a non–Judeo-Christian background, nativists view with alarm these demographic changes. Such fears are echoes of those raised about earlier groups, such as the racist responses to the physical appearance of Southern Europeans or the anti-Semitic reactions to Eastern European Jews. In reality, studies consistently reveal rapid English language acquisition among all immigrants groups and higher naturalization rates among non-Westerners.
The Future Using oversimplified categorizations and imposing present-day sensibilities—the essence of the Dillingham Flaw—also can occur when individuals engage in demographic projections. For example, the Census Bureau projects that Hispanics will constitute about one-fourth of the total U.S. population in 2050. Given past patterns and current trends, however, we cannot be certain that today’s group categories, such as Hispanic, will still be valid by then. Currently, most White Americans bear witness to mixed European ancestry, but two generations ago, U.S. residents of Southern, Central, and Eastern European backgrounds were far more likely to be of a
Discrimination
single national lineage and religion. Their single-group identities evolved into multiple-group identities, as large-scale intermarriages generated such a blending of peoples that “Whites” and “European Americans” became synonymous. Further, their mixed heritage is now more likely to be passively acknowledged, except for occasional symbolic celebrations. It is no longer an element of everyday ethnicity, subcultural participation, or minority status. Each succeeding year shows greater numbers of exogamous marriages among ethnic, racial, and religious groups. Therefore, it is not unreasonable, for example, to suggest—given the annual increase in Hispanics marrying non-Hispanics—that in two generations, many of the descendants of today’s Hispanic Americans will claim a mixed heritage, partly Hispanic and partly non-Hispanic. Projections that the mid-21st century will find the United States with a one-fourth Hispanic population suggests a demographic categorization by today’s realities that might not fit the reality then. A similar argument could be made for other groups because racial intermarriages continue to create a growing multiracial population. Using today’s categories for U.S. residents living in 2050 can easily be another unwitting application of the Dillingham Flaw. Projecting perceptions and the existing social distance between groups onto a distant future carries a presumption that they will remain the same. Present-day categories may be inadequate or irrelevant to our descendants. Vincent N. Parrillo See also Acculturation; Americanization; Assimilation; Immigration, U.S.; Nativism; Xenophobia
Further Readings
Parrillo, Vincent N. 1994. “Diversity in America: A Sociohistorical Analysis,” Sociological Forum 9:523–535. Parrillo, Vincent N. 2005. Diversity in America. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
DISCRIMINATION Discrimination is the denial of opportunities and equal rights to individuals and groups because of prejudice or for other arbitrary reasons. Some people in the
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United States find it difficult to see discrimination as a widespread phenomenon. “After all,” it is often said, “these minorities drive cars, hold jobs, own their own homes, and even go to college.” This does not mean that discrimination is rare. This entry looks at different kinds of discrimination and discusses measurement issues.
Relative Versus Absolute Deprivation An understanding of discrimination in modern industrialized societies such as the United States must begin by distinguishing between relative and absolute deprivation. It is not absolute, unchanging standards that determine deprivation and oppression. Although minority groups may be viewed as having adequate or even good incomes, housing, health care, and educational opportunities, it is their position relative to some other groups that offers evidence of discrimination. Relative deprivation is defined as the conscious experience of a negative discrepancy between legitimate expectations and present actualities. After settling in the United States, immigrants often enjoy more material comforts and more political freedom than they did in their old country. If they compare themselves with most other people in the United States, however, they will feel deprived because, although their standard has improved, the immigrants still perceive relative deprivation. Absolute deprivation, on the other hand, implies a fixed standard based on a minimum level of subsistence below which families should not be expected to exist. Discrimination does not necessarily mean absolute deprivation. A Japanese American who is promoted to a management position may still be a victim of discrimination if he or she had been passed over for years because of corporate reluctance to place an Asian American in a highly visible position. Dissatisfaction is also likely to arise from feelings of relative deprivation. The members of a society who feel most frustrated and disgruntled by the social and economic conditions of their lives are not necessarily worse off in an objective sense. Social scientists have long recognized that what is most significant is how people perceive their situation. Resistance to perceived discrimination, rather than the actual amount of absolute discrimination, is the key.
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Discrimination
Total Discrimination Social scientists—and increasingly policymakers— have begun to use the concept of total discrimination. Total discrimination refers to current discrimination operating in the labor market and past discrimination. Past discrimination experienced by an individual includes the poorer education and job experiences of some racial and ethnic minorities compared with those of many White Americans. It also includes inferior schooling, poorer health care, inadequate counseling, poor job record, and less inherited wealth—all economic and social factors that have consequences for the life a person lives in the present. When considering discrimination, therefore, it is not enough to focus only on what is being done to people now. Sometimes a person may be dealt with fairly but may still be at a disadvantage because he or she suffered from poorer health care, inferior counseling in the school system, less access to books and other educational materials, or a poor job record resulting from absence to take care of brothers and sisters. Another variation of this past-in-present discrimination occurs when apparently nondiscriminatory present practices have negative effects because of prior intentionally biased practices. Although unions that purposely discriminated against minority members in the past may no longer do so, some people are still prevented from achieving higher levels of seniority because of those past practices. Personnel records include a cumulative record that is vital in promotion and selection for desirable assignments. Blatantly discriminatory judgments and recommendations in the past remain part of a person’s record.
Institutional Discrimination Individuals practice discrimination in one-to-one encounters, and institutions practice discrimination through their daily operations. Indeed, a consensus is growing today that this institutional discrimination is more significant than that committed by prejudiced individuals. Social scientists are particularly concerned with the ways in which patterns of employment, education, criminal justice, housing, health care, and government operations maintain the social significance of race and ethnicity. Institutional discrimination is the denial of opportunities and equal rights to individuals and
groups that results from the normal operations of a society. Civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) and political scientist Charles Hamilton are credited with introducing the concept of institutional racism. Individual discrimination refers to overt acts of individuals; Carmichael and Hamilton reserved the term institutional racism for covert acts committed collectively against an entire group. From this perspective, discrimination can take place without an individual’s intending to deprive others of privileges and even without the individual’s being aware that others are being deprived.
Measuring Discrimination How much discrimination is there? As in measuring prejudice, problems arise in quantifying discrimination. Measuring prejudice is hampered by the difficulties in assessing attitudes and by the need to consider many factors. Measuring discrimination is limited by the initial challenge of identifying different treatment. A second difficulty of measuring discrimination is assigning a cost to the discrimination. Considering the significant differences in median income between different racial and ethnic groups can lead to some tentative conclusions about discrimination. Income data for 2005 and 2006 released by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2006 and 2007 show vividly the disparity in income between African Americans and Whites and also between men and women. This encompasses all full-time workers. In 2006, White non-Hispanic men, with a median income of $50,606, earned one-third more than Black men ($36,070) and nearly twice what Hispanic women earn in wages ($25,990). Are these differences entirely the result of discrimination in employment? No, individuals within the four groups are not equally prepared to compete for high-paying jobs. Past discrimination is a significant factor in a person’s present social position. Past discrimination continues to take its toll on modern victims. The public education of African Americans and Hispanics is often not funded at the same levels as are schools for White pupils, and today’s schools show the continuing results of this uneven spending pattern from the past. Education clearly is an appropriate variable to control.
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Table 1
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Median Income by Race and Gender, Holding Education Constant Race
Sex
White Families
Black Families
Asian Families
Hispanic Families
Male
$64,663
$37,005
$71,156
$39,053
45,759
35,095
Nongraduate
27,432
20,468
30,086
27,757
27,653
20,130
Graduate
33,090
31,264
40,330
30,610
37,031
26,737
Some college
51,148
40,280
50,167
39,653
47,072
31,954
Bachelor’s degree
86,553
67,487
87,444
66,717
60,906
45,408
Master’s degree
100,000
82,296
98,353
85,121
75,432
52,438
Doctorate degree
141,000
115,000
119,074
118,000
100,000
70,519
Total
Female
HIGH SCHOOL
COLLEGE
Sources: DeNavas-Walt, Carmen, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Cheryl Hill Lee. 2006. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005. Current Population Reports, Pp. 60–231. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; DeNavasWalt, Carmen, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica Smith. 2007. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006. Current Population Reports, Pp. 60–231. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Notes: Family data released in 2006 for income earned in 2005 and gender data for 2006 released in 2007. Figures are median income from all sources except capital gains. Included are public assistance payments, dividends, pensions, unemployment compensation, and so on. Incomes are for all workers over 25 years of age. High school graduates include those with GEDs. Data for Whites are for White non-Hispanics. “Some college” excludes associate degree holders. Data for doctorate-holder’s family are author’s estimate.
In Table 1, median income is compared, holding education constant, which means that the comparison is made between Blacks and Whites and men and women with approximately the same amount of formal schooling. More education often means more income, but even when education is the same, the disparity in income remains. Although the gap between races narrows somewhat as education increases, both African Americans and women lag behind their more affluent counterparts. The contrast is dramatic: Women with a master’s degree typically receive $52,438 a year, almost $9,600 less than do men who complete only a bachelor’s degree. Thinking over the long term, based on the data in Table 1, college-educated women will work 5 years to earn more than $225,000. The typical male can work 4 years, take the fifth year off without pay, still match the woman’s earnings, and bag an extra $20,000. Remember, these comparisons are limited to full-time workers.
Table 1 also compares income by households. Although highly educated Asian Americans earn a lot of money, they nevertheless trail well behind their White counterparts. With a doctorate holder in the family, the typical Asian American household earns an estimated $119,074 compared with $141,000 for a White household. To put this another way, these highly educated Asian Americans will work 6 years to earn what Whites earn in 5 years. What do these individual differences look like if they are considered on a national level? Economist Andrew Brimmer, citing numerous government studies, estimates that about 3% or 4% of the gross domestic product (GDP, or the value of goods and services) is lost annually by the failure to employ African Americans in jobs that are commensurate with their education. There was little change in this economic cost from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s. The estimate of lost GDP would be even higher if economic losses caused by the underuse of the
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academic talents of women and other minorities were included. When education has been held constant, is the remaining gap in earnings by race and gender caused by discrimination? Not necessarily. Table 1 uses only the amount of schooling, with no judgment about its quality. Racial minorities are more likely to attend inadequately financed schools. Some efforts have been made to eliminate disparities between school districts in the amount of wealth available to tax for school support, but with little success. The inequality of educational opportunity may seem less important in explaining gender discrimination. Although women usually are not segregated from men in schools, educational institutions often encourage talented women to enter fields that pay less (nursing or elementary education) than other occupations requiring similar amounts of training. Derrick Bell, an African American law professor, has made the sobering assertion that “racism is permanent.” He contends that the attitudes of dominant Whites, and typically men, prevail, and society is willing to advance programs on behalf of subordinate groups only when they coincide with needs as perceived by those Whites. Richard T. Schaefer See also Affirmative Action in Education; Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Americans with Disabilities Act; Color Blindness; Criminal Processing; Discrimination, Environmental Hazards; Discrimination, Measuring; Discrimination in Housing; Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; Housing Audits; Institutional Discrimination; Jim Crow; Prejudice; Racism; Racism, Unintentional; Redlining; Reverse Discrimination; Segregation; Title IX
Further Readings
Bell, Derrick. 1994. “The Freedom of Employment Act.” The Nation 258(May 23):708, 710–714. Brimmer, Andrew. 1995. “The Economic Cost of Discrimination against Black Americans.” Pp. 9–29 in Economic Perspectives in Affirmative Action, edited by M. C. Simms. Washington, DC: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. DeNavas-Walt, Carmen, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Cheryl Hill Lee. 2006. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005. Current Population Reports, Pp. 60-231. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.
DeNavas-Walt, Carmen, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica Smith. 2007. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006. Current Population Reports, Pp. 60–231. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Pager, Devah. 2008. “Sociology of Discrimination.” Annual Review of Sociology 34(August): forthcoming. Quillian, Lincoln. 2006. “New Approaches to Understanding Racial Prejudice and Discrimination.” Annual Review of Sociology 32(August):299–328. Schaefer, Richard T. 2008. “Discrimination.” Chapter 3 in Race and Ethnicity in the United States. 11th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Ture, Kwame and Charles Hamilton. 1992. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. New York: Vintage Books.
DISCRIMINATION, ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS Environmental discrimination refers to the unequal distribution of environmental hazards on the basis of societal discriminatory practices such as race, ethnicity, age, and social class. The term environmental racism was coined to emphasize the role of race in making decisions regarding the placement of environmental hazards. Just a few decades ago, when speaking of environmental hazards and discrimination, the conversation tended to focus on the dumping of toxic or hazardous wastes and the location of these dumps. In a prime example of racial politics, White middleclass citizens came up with “Not In My Back Yard” (NIMBY) politics, condoning the placement of toxic/hazardous waste sites and garbage landfills in areas populated by Black citizens, ethnic minorities, and citizens of the lower economic strata. With the support of the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans opposed the NIMBY politics by charging that the targeting of Black communities for the site of hazardous waste dumps was “environmental racism.” Thus, the historical practice of discrimination on the basis of race can be seen in environmental policies, as this entry shows.
The Environmental Protection Agency Initially, the main concern of the U.S. environmental movement focused on pollutants that harmed human health and degraded the natural environment. The
Discrimination, Environmental Hazards
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in 1970 to enforce standards and practices that would monitor environmental hazards that polluted the air, water, or land. The Superfund, the federal environmental program established to address abandoned hazardous waste sites, was specifically set up to identify the most toxic sites and enforce clean-up by the polluters. Environmental protection and cleanup was not equitably distributed, however. Minority and lower-income people recognized that their communities were carrying the burden of environmental hazards, compared with White and middleclass communities. This burden included exposure to noxious air pollution and contaminated land, along with proximity to hazardous waste industries; the result was adverse health conditions disproportionately affecting the health and mortality of minority communities. The clean-up of contaminated lands occurred more slowly and less efficiently in nonWhite communities and tribal lands. Additionally, the fines and penalties assessed to polluting industries were disproportionately lower if the pollution was in non-White, poor communities when compared with White and wealthier communities. These practices were recognized as environmental racism. In 1990, the EPA established the Environmental Equity Workgroup to address the claims of environmental racism. Environmental racism was substantiated by this workgroup, and several recommendations were established. The most significant action was the establishment of the Office of Environmental Equity. Two years later, in 1994, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order (EO) 12898, “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Population.” The name of the Office of Environmental Equity was changed to Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ).
The Environmental Justice Movement With the signing of EO 12898, all government agencies were required to make environmental justice part of their mission by focusing on outcomes in their action plans, initiatives, policies, and practices. This order did not have the effect of law nor could it be enforced. Many have attempted to use civil rights laws to oppose unfair and discriminatory acts and correct environmental inequities. However, many of those lawsuits have been unsuccessful because it is
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difficult to show intent to discriminate. The concepts of segregation and migration of minority communities and the poor have been reframed by critics of EO 12898 as self-selected determinants. Researchers and policymakers who support environmental justice look to other factors that result in environmental inequity. They take as their basic assumption that people don’t intentionally choose to expose their families and loved ones to toxic environments. Since 1994, environmental justice issues have gained national attention and have expanded the scope for understanding the oppression of minority communities. Many government agencies, including local and state governments, began to implement environmental justice initiatives recognizing that the policies that they set forth should not unfairly target a subgroup or subculture in their community. These agencies found that creating policies to eliminate known hazardous chemicals from certain industries can be complex and result in unfairly targeting minority communities. For example, many dry cleaners are minority-owned small businesses, often a single facility operated by family members. Initiatives that mandate the elimination of the hazardous chemicals used in the fabric care industry would negatively affect many minority-owned small businesses. Initiatives to eliminate environmental hazards must also consider the mission of environmental justice.
Health Outcomes Environmental hazards such as air pollution, water pollution, land pollution, and noise pollution are not equally distributed nationally or globally. Social groups, such as racial ethnic minorities, children in working-class and poor neighborhoods, and people in the lower social classes are more likely to be exposed to one or more environmental hazards that negatively affect their health, their well-being, and their mortality. Environmental discrimination is measured by looking at health outcomes such as the mortality rates of Black citizens compared with White citizens, the number of Black children hospitalized for asthma attacks (compared with White children), the disproportionate distribution of environmental cancers, and the continued disproportionate cases of lead poisoning among minority children and poor children. Older housing and substandard housing have a number of environmental hazards that affect the health and well-being of racial and ethnic minorities
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disproportionately. Discrimination and intimidation are market factors that push racial ethnic minorities into older neighborhoods. Housing constructed before the early 1970s often included toxins such as leadbased paint and asbestos insulation. Young children who live in housing with these toxins are more likely to experience lead poisoning and have adverse health and developmental conditions. Older housing is also prone to “sick-building syndrome” and pest control. Molds, airborne toxins, and substandard ventilation are related to lung and respiratory conditions in residents overly exposed to such environmental toxins. Additionally, in an attempt to keep older and substandard housing pest free, many types of pesticides are used to the detriment of residents.
International Environmental Harm The focus on national environmental discrimination has shifted somewhat to global environmental concern. With the globalization of trade, many environmentalists are concerned that polluting industries may migrate outside the United States to take advantage of less stringent environmental regulation and enforcement in developing countries, which focus on economic development at the expense of environment and the health of indigenous people. The North American Free Trade Agreement, for example, has been partly responsible for relocation of factories to Mexico. Although Mexico has similar environmental regulations, the enforcement of those regulations may not be as vigorous as in the United States. In addition, with advances in communication and transportation technologies, many U.S. corporations have transformed into multinational corporations, taking advantage of less stringent environmental and labor laws overseas resulting in “international environmental harm.” U.S. multinationals have been responsible for ecological destruction resulting in expansive human tragedy in countries throughout lesser-developed segments of the world. A precedent in which a U.S. multinational took responsibility for its conduct in foreign countries was set when Unocal settled a suit brought by mostly foreign plaintiffs. With de-industrialization and factory flight from minority communities to suburban areas, foreign countries, or overseas, many critics of the environmental justice movement have argued that there is a decline in the significance of race and that charges of environmental
discrimination or environmental racism are not substantiated. Such arguments attempt to downplay environmental discrimination. Reports on the health status of minorities, however, show that these communities are overrepresented among those with environmentally induced health ailments, from environmentally induced cancers to respiratory conditions.
Postindustrialism The postindustrial era has expanded the scope of environmental hazards beyond the politics of hazardous waste dumpsites and polluting factories and industries. Many types of environmental hazards besides toxic dumpsites are acknowledged today: garbage dumps, lead poisoning, vehicular emissions, new industrial poisons, pesticides, noise pollution, and toxic waste production, storage, and disposal facilities. New technologies in the military-industrial complex, the prison industry, and the medical-industrial complex have revealed new types of environmental discrimination and racist practices in the postmodern era: bioterrorism, biological-warfare, pharmaceutical testing, genetically modified crops and livestock, artificial chemical additives to food sources, hormoneinduced dairy products, fuel cell technology, and the emerging concerns of environmental hazards and environmental injustice in the wake of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. These postmodern concerns bring to the forefront new ways that race, ethnicity, gender, age, and sexuality may be predictive factors in the unfair distribution of environmental hazards and sustainability. Lydia Rose See also Discrimination; Environmental Justice; Health Disparities; Housing Audits; Native Americans, Environment and; Water Rights
Further Readings
Axelrod, Regina S., David Leonard Downie, and Norman J. Vig, eds. 2005. The Global Environment: Institutions, Law and Policy. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Bullard, Robert D., ed. 1997. Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books. Bullard, Robert D., ed. 2005. The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Discrimination, Measuring
Pellow, David Naguib and Robert J. Brulle, eds. 2005. Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement (Urban and Industrial Environments). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
DISCRIMINATION, MEASURING The measurement of discrimination is one of the most important topics in race and ethnicity and social measurement. In court, assessing discrimination has important implications for enforcing nondiscrimination laws. In public debate, support for active government efforts to reduce racial and ethnic inequalities is closely linked to views regarding the importance of discrimination as a barrier to equal opportunity. In practice, measuring racial or ethnic discrimination means either to assess the frequency with which individuals who are from different racial groups but otherwise similar receive unequal treatment in some area of life, or to assess the impact of such differential treatment in creating racial inequality in an outcome. This entry outlines the challenges of measuring discrimination, discusses types of discrimination and the measurement of discrimination in principle, and then reviews practical methods used in the social sciences to measure discrimination.
Challenges in Measuring Discrimination Several factors make accurate measurement of discrimination difficult. Measuring discrimination requires comparing treatment across different racial or ethnic groups, but individuals usually know of only the treatment they personally give and receive. Because of the evolution of norms against discrimination and legal prohibitions, perpetrators have reasons to conceal discrimination. In response, social scientists have developed a number of methods to measure discrimination. These methods have different strengths and weaknesses; the best method depends on the outcome studied and the goals of the study. In case law and many social science discussions, a distinction is made between two basic forms of discrimination. Differential treatment discrimination occurs when an individual is treated less favorably because of her or his race. Differential impact discrimination occurs when a group is disadvantaged by
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a practice that does not involve race or ethnicity directly but disadvantages members of a racial or ethnic group without a sufficiently compelling reason. In many social science discussions, institutional discrimination is often used to refer to situations similar to differential impact in law. For instance, differential impact discrimination might occur when a property owner refuses to rent apartments to single mothers without a good business justification, when this practice contributes to renting fewer apartments to members of certain racial and ethnic groups. Recent work on counterfactual questions as the basis for causality in social science has led social science methodologists to think of the measurement of discrimination’s effects as answering a counterfactual question: How different would an outcome for a target racial group have been had each person instead been a member of the dominant racial or ethnic group, but otherwise the same? The effect of discrimination on an outcome is based on the difference between the outcome that actually occurs and the outcome that would occur in the counterfactual state. In U.S. society, this question is how different would an outcome have been for a non-White individual if that person had been White? The basic problem in measuring discrimination is that we do not observe the outcomes for each non-White person if they were White but otherwise the same.
Techniques of Measurement Because we do not directly observe both states of the counterfactual, we must instead rely on indirect techniques to measure discrimination. Four types of methods are commonly applied. They are (1) the statistical decomposition of racial or ethnic differences in an outcome characteristic like wages or earnings; (2) reports from perpetrators, either of having committed acts of discrimination or measures of prejudicial attitudes thought to predict discrimination; (3) reports from targets of having been discriminated against; and (4) field audit methods that employ mock applications sent out by investigators to measure discrimination. Statissticcal Decompositio on Method
The statistical decomposition method takes as its starting point a racial or ethnic gap in some outcome measured across a population, such as wages, employment, health status, and so forth. Using data from
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large-scale surveys or administrative records that record the outcome for a racially and ethnically diverse sample, the investigator creates a statistical model of the outcome as a function of factors that influence it. The outcome of wages, for instance, could be a function of amount of education and length of tenure in the labor market, among other factors. The investigator then uses the model to estimate the remaining racial or ethnic gap in wages after controlling for these other factors, which provides an estimate of the extent of the racial or ethnic gap because of discrimination. The estimates of discrimination produced by the statistical decomposition method exclude discrimination that acts through the control factors. For instance, if discrimination by educational institutions reduces education attained by a minority group, that discrimination will not be included in the remaining race gap in wages after controlling for education. This is sometimes incorrectly viewed as a problem with the statistical decomposition method, but properly understood, it is simply a feature of how this method works and can be an advantage. By repeatedly applying statistical decomposition treating the control factors as the outcome of other, logically prior variables, investigators can obtain estimates of the extent of discrimination at several steps of a process that ultimately contributes to a racial gap. The statistical decomposition of differences is widely used in sociology, economics, and political science. This method has the advantages of being tractable for outcomes covered by many large population surveys or by administrative data, and it allows a quantitative assessment of the share of a gap in an outcome that can be attributed to discrimination. The major weakness of the statistical decomposition method is that it measures discrimination as a residual after controlling for other factors. Residual measurement only produces valid estimates when all factors other than discrimination that influence the outcome and vary by race are measured and included as controls. Because it is difficult to be sure that all such factors have been controlled, many methodologists view this as a more appropriate way to assess unexplained racial gaps that may be attributable to discrimination rather than a direct measure of discrimination’s influence per se. Reports From m Pe erp pettra ato ors
Reports from perpetrators of discrimination are based on surveys or qualitative interviews done with suspected perpetrators (e.g., employers or landlords)
about their treatment and beliefs regarding members of target groups. Reports from perpetrators and studies to assess prejudice are especially valuable for the insights they provide into interpsychic processes (such as prejudicial feelings) that lead to discrimination. The weakness of reports from perpetrators is that many believe that perpetrators will tend to underreport incidents because of the normative disapproval and (in some cases) the legal prohibition of discrimination. In addition, some evidence suggests that some discrimination occurs without conscious intent by perpetrators, resulting from subtle beliefs of which perpetrators may not be aware. Because of the likely underreporting of discrimination and prejudice from perpetrators, few scholars accept these reports alone as good measures of discrimination. Reports From m Targ getss
Reports from targets of the frequency of discrimination are easy to collect through surveys or in qualitative interviews. The main problem with using reports from targets to measure discrimination is that they capture targets’ perceptions of discrimination, which may not be a good substitute for actual incidents. Reports from targets may be subject to underreporting because discrimination can occur without the target ever knowing the reason for a negative outcome or incident, or to overreporting because negative outcomes can be incorrectly perceived as resulting from discrimination. Reports from targets are affected by factors that influence social awareness of discrimination, such as media coverage and social movement activism. Although reports from targets provide insight into how discrimination is perceived, they are regarded as vague indicators of actual discrimination. Audit Stu udie es
Audit studies rely on an experimental method to measure discrimination. In an audit, the investigator arranges for applications to be made for the outcome to be studied, most commonly getting a job or treatment in search for housing. Applications may be done through the mail using mock applications created by the investigator or in person by confederates of the investigator. The applications are designed to be similar in relevant qualifications except for race (or ethnicity). Often two applications from the investigator are made for each opening, one of each race. Across a substantial number of applications, the racial difference
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in treatment or outcomes provides a measure of the extent of discrimination. If well done, the audit study has the advantage of providing convincing evidence for or against the existence of discrimination in influencing the outcome studied. No other method can routinely produce such convincing evidence of discrimination. There are also important limits to the audit method. First, audits are usually impractical in situations where the decision maker and the subject have a long-established relationship, such as decisions about promotion made within a firm. Audits rely on the anonymity of applicants for their practical execution. Second, audit studies provide no way to estimate how much of the racial disparity in an outcome results from discrimination. Audit studies of housing discrimination, for instance, demonstrate that housing discrimination occurs, but there is no straightforward way of using the results of a housing audit to assess how much racial residential segregation is produced by discrimination. Recent work in the measurement of discrimination, in particular the increasingly frequent use of audit methods, has provided an increasingly solid evidentiary base to understand the prevalence of discrimination across a variety of domains. Careful attention to measurement and methods remains crucial for studies to provide clear and convincing evidence for or against discrimination. Lincoln Quillian See also Discrimination; Discrimination in Housing; Housing Audits; Prejudice; Racism; Social Inequality Further Readings
Bertrand, Marianne and Sendhil Mullainathan. 2004. “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination.” American Economic Review 94:991–1013. Blank, Rebecca M., Marily Dabady, and Constance F. Citro, eds. 2004. Measuring Racial Discrimination. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Fix, Michael and Raymond J. Struyk, eds. 1993. Clear and Convincing Evidence: The Measurement of Discrimination in America. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press. Pager, Devah. 2003. “The Mark of a Criminal Record.” American Journal of Sociology 108(5):937–975. Quillian, Lincoln. 2006. “New Approaches to Understanding Racial Prejudice and Discrimination.” Annual Review of Sociology 32:299–328.
DISCRIMINATION
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Housing discrimination refers to differential treatment in the sale, rental, financing, or insuring of housing based on race or any of a number of other ascribed characteristics. Housing discrimination, especially on the basis of race and ethnicity, became commonplace in the United States during the first half of the 20th century, and during that period, such discrimination received institutional support from the federal government, from state governments and state courts, and from real estate industry associations. Today, housing discrimination on the basis of race and a number of other characteristics is illegal, but subtler forms of discrimination persist, and housing discrimination has left a continuing legacy of racial housing segregation throughout the United States, as this entry describes.
Forms of Discrimination Housing discrimination can take a number of forms. In its most flagrant form, it can consist of refusing to rent, sell, finance, or insure housing on the basis of an ascribed characteristic such as race, or telling a person of a disfavored group that a house or apartment is no longer available, but the same unit is later made available to a person of a favored group. Often, however, housing discrimination consists of disparate treatment, that is, offering different prices, rents, interest rates, or terms of sale, rental, financing, or insurance. Often, too, housing discrimination takes the form of steering, that is, directing people to different locations on the basis of characteristics such as race, ethnicity, or familial status (i.e., whether or not they have children). Since the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, it has been illegal to discriminate in the sale, rental, or financing of housing on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, or national origin. Since the original passage of the law, familial status (pregnancy or having children under the age of 18) and disability have been added as protected categories, that is, characteristics on the basis of which it is illegal to discriminate. The Fair Housing Act, as amended in 1988, also requires that landlords make reasonable accommodations in their policies and services for persons with disabilities, and that they allow such persons, at their own expense, to make reasonable modifications for accessibility in the rental properties. In addition to the federal Fair Housing Act, many states and municipalities
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have laws against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and some forbid discrimination on the basis of veteran status or legal source of income.
Housing Discrimination Before 1968 Although most forms of housing discrimination are against the law today, that was not the case before 1968 in most states. Moreover, as noted earlier, there was widespread governmental and institutional encouragement of housing discrimination throughout much of the first half of the 20th century and, in some cases, even beyond that period. Between the Civil War and the beginning of the 20th century, housing discrimination in U.S. cities was not particularly widespread. Cities were not nearly as segregated by race and ethnicity as they would become later, and in particular, Whites and African Americans often lived together in the same neighborhoods. In general, African Americans faced more discrimination in the workplace than they did when they sought a home. By 1910, however, these patterns were changing. Industrialization, as well as rural-to-urban and Southto-North migrations of African Americans, increasingly brought Blacks and Whites in U.S. cities into competition for jobs, education, and access to desirable neighborhoods. The reaction of Whites to this increased competition from African Americans (and, to a lesser extent, from immigrants and other ethnic minorities as well) was to set up a system of housing discrimination and segregation. Through the use of restrictive covenants, entire neighborhoods were declared off-limits to African Americans and others, and real estate industry associations began to actively promote discrimination and segregation by opposing the sale or rental of homes in all or mostly White areas to African Americans and other minorities. Often, the codes of ethics promoted by local real estate boards forbade or discouraged sales or rental of houses to members of minority groups who were not wellrepresented in a neighborhood. This was based on a notion that the presence of minority group members would lower property values or “force” White residents to move out of the neighborhoods. In addition, violence was often used to promote housing discrimination and segregation. A wave of race riots, in which Whites were the aggressors, swept cities such as Springfield, East St. Louis, and Chicago, Illinois; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Evansville, Indiana; Atlanta, Georgia; and New York City in the early 20th century, with Blacks who lived or ventured
outside established Black neighborhoods beaten severely and in some cases killed. In addition to the riots, methods of intimidation such as cross-burnings, threats, vandalism, and physical attacks were used to force out Blacks who lived in or moved into predominantly White areas. Incidents of these kinds have continued sporadically in some cities. More than private actors such as home-sellers, real estate agents, or White rioters promoted housing discrimination, however. At all levels, governments actively engaged in and encouraged housing discrimination. For example, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) included sample restrictive covenants in its manuals and encouraged their use. From 1935 to 1950, these manuals also warned against “the infiltration of inharmonious racial and national groups” and “the presence of incompatible racial elements.” Local housing authorities throughout the South and in some parts of the North as well used federal dollars to run public housing projects that were formally segregated by race, that is, designated for only Whites or for only Blacks. Several cities, including Louisville, Kentucky; Baltimore, Maryland; Richmond, Virginia; and Atlanta, Georgia, had ordinances in the early 20th century that required racial housing segregation, designating different city blocks as for Whites or for Blacks. Until they were forbidden from doing so in 1948 by the Supreme Court’s Shelley v. Kraemer ruling, state courts routinely excluded Blacks, Jews, Asians, and other minorities from city neighborhoods by enforcing racially restrictive covenants and deed restrictions. So governments at every level—city, state, and federal—were actively and openly involved in housing discrimination through much of the first half of the 20th century. More recently, governments, particularly at the local level, have still frequently promoted housing discrimination in subtler ways. In many areas, subsidized housing has been located almost entirely in neighborhoods occupied by minorities, to discourage their movement into other areas. Often, planning and zoning decisions that exclude such housing from suburban areas have thinly veiled racial motivations—yet ones that may be difficult to prove in court.
Discrimination and Segregation A legacy today of past and continuing housing discrimination is widespread racial and ethnic segregation in U.S. urban areas. Segregation refers to a pattern whereby people of different groups live in
Discrimination in Housing
different neighborhoods, separate from one another. It can be caused by a variety of processes, but discrimination is certainly one important cause. In the United States, this is especially true in the case of segregation between African Americans and other groups. Segregation is often measured using the index of dissimilarity, sometimes simply called the segregation index. This measure shows how segregated any two groups are, on a scale from 0 to 100. It indicates the percentage of people in either group that would have to move to a different neighborhood to have no segregation whatsoever. An index of 0, or no segregation, would represent a situation in which every neighborhood has the same racial or ethnic composition as the overall area. For example, if a hypothetical city that is 60% White and 40% Black has a segregation index of 0, this would mean that every neighborhood in the city is 60% White and 40% Black, just as is the entire city. If, on the other hand, this city were to have a segregation index of 100, it would mean that every neighborhood in the city is either all White or all Black. Actual cities and metropolitan areas, of course, do not have segregation indices of 0 or 100. They fall somewhere in between. But when it comes to segregation between White and Black Americans, most cities are closer to 100 than they are to 0. The linkage between discrimination and segregation can be seen in the fact that, as housing discrimination became more common in U.S. cities in the first half of the 20th century, cities also became more segregated. For example, in American Apartheid, Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton have demonstrated that among eleven northern U.S. cities, the average Black-White segregation index rose from 45.7 in 1860 to 89.2 in 1940. Among eight southern cities, the average rose from 29.0 in 1860 to 82.0 in 1940. The largest increases in segregation occurred in the cities, such as Chicago and St. Louis, that experienced the largest in-migration of African Americans in the early 20th century. It is notable that these areas also experienced severe race riots by Whites against Blacks in the early 20th century, and were among the areas most heavily covered by restrictive covenants. From around 1940 until the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, levels of Black-White segregation remained steady and very high, reflecting the continuing widespread presence of discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. In the mortgage and insurance industries, Blacks and other minorities were often discriminated against through redlining, a practice whereby no loans or insurance
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were made available in geographic areas that had large numbers of African Americans or other minorities. The term redlining refers to the once-common practice of drawing a red line around the area in which no homes were to be financed or insured. Unscrupulous real estate salespeople and speculators often engaged in the practice of blockbusting, or encouraging rapid racial turnover for profit. White homeowners would be told that Blacks or other minorities are about to enter the neighborhood, and they would be offered a low price for their homes— often with a warning that the offer to buy was only good for a limited time, and that the home would be worth less after that time. After the Whites sold at a low price, the house would then be sold to minority purchasers at a higher price, reflecting the more limited choices of housing available for purchase by African Americans and other minorities. In the process, the real estate agent or speculator would profit, and both the White and minority homeowners would be taken advantage of. The practice of blockbusting perpetuated segregation by causing rapid racial turnover rather than stable integration, and enhanced racial fears and prejudices.
Impact of the 1968 Fair Housing Act In the decades since the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, racial housing segregation has declined gradually and modestly, and discrimination has become more subtle and somewhat less widespread. The positions of government and real estate industry associations have shifted to one opposed to rather than publicly supportive of discrimination. However, a good deal of research shows that, although discrimination has decreased somewhat, it remains quite widespread, and today’s more subtle discrimination is harder to detect than the open discrimination of the past. To assess the extent of housing discrimination, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) commissioned national studies of housing discrimination in 1977, 1989, and 2000. There were significant limitations in the first study, but the 1989 and 2000 studies, conducted by the Urban Institute, were more sophisticated and tested for subtler forms of discrimination, such as racial steering. These studies used the technique of discrimination testing or auditing, in which an individual from the majority group and one with similar characteristics from a minority group approach a housing provider and request similar housing a short time apart. The test is designed so
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that the majority and minority tester are as similar as possible except for their race or ethnicity. The testers note the number and locations of housing units, if any, that they were given information about, as well as the number and locations of units they were actually shown. The testers also make note of the terms and conditions of rental or purchase that were offered to them, and of anything that was said or done that might encourage or discourage their rental or purchase of a housing unit. Although there has been some decline over time in the rate of discrimination shown by such testing studies, the most recent HUD study indicated that African American and Hispanic home-seekers in 2000 encountered discrimination about 15% to 25% of the time. This was the case even using the fairly conservative measure of “consistent adverse treatment,” meaning that the minority tester was discriminated against in more than one way. Most forms of discrimination declined somewhat between 1989 and 2000, but in the case of Hispanics seeking rental housing, there was actually an increase in the rate of discrimination. It is important to remember that most homeseekers make more than one visit to a real estate or rental office during a home search. Hence, a 15% to 25% rate of discrimination per test means that, during the average home search, the chance that an African American or Hispanic home-seeker will encounter discrimination at some point in time is significantly higher than the 15% to 25% chance of discrimination on a single visit. Moreover, recent research shows that the method of testing used by HUD almost certainly understates the true rate of discrimination because the tests include only in-person visits. Many visits to real estate or rental offices are preceded by phone calls, and it is quite common for African American and Hispanic home-seekers to be discriminated against over the phone because they are recognized as minority group members by the sound of their voices. In fact, recent studies have found startlingly high rates of discrimination. A study in five states in which callers said they were Hurricane Katrina evacuees seeking housing found discrimination against African American callers 66% of the time, and a study in Marin County, California, by a fair housing group found a 70% rate of discrimination against Hispanic callers. Because these studies find much higher rates of discrimination than do face-to-face tests, it may well be that the anonymity of the telephone permits
discrimination to occur at a much higher rate than is implied by studies such as the national HUD studies. Despite some decline, housing segregation remains a widespread legacy of the long history of U.S. housing discrimination, especially in the case of African Americans. In metropolitan areas with sizable African American populations, it is still the usual pattern for Black-White segregation indices to fall in the 60s or higher, with indices in the 70s and 80s in many areas. This especially true for larger and older metropolitan areas, metropolitan areas with large African American populations, and metropolitan areas in the Northeast and Midwest. Segregation levels between Hispanic and White Anglo Americans are somewhat lower, often in the 40s and 50s. However, unlike BlackWhite segregation, Hispanic-Anglo segregation since 1990 has remained steady or risen in many parts of the country. This seems to reflect persistence and in some instances increases in housing discrimination because the Hispanic population has grown rapidly in this period. Segregation levels between Asian Americans and Whites and between White immigrant groups and U.S.-born Whites are lower, usually well below 50, reflecting lesser amounts of housing discrimination against these ethnic groups compared with Hispanics and, especially, African Americans. John E. Farley See also American Apartheid; Blockbusting; Color Line; Gautreaux Decision; Ghetto; Housing Audits; Hurricane Katrina; Redlining; Restrictive Covenants; Segregation; White Flight
Further Readings
Farley, John E. and Gregory D. Squires. 2005. “Fences and Neighbors: Segregation in Twenty-first Century America. Contexts 4(1, Winter):33–39. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. National Fair Housing Alliance. 2005. No Home for the Holidays: Report on Housing Discrimination Against Hurricane Katrina Survivors. Washington, DC: Author. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 2005. Discrimination in Metropolitan Housing Markets: National Results from Phase 1, Phase 2, and Phase 3 of the Housing Discrimination Study (HDS). Available from http://www.huduser.org
Domestic Violence
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Domestic violence is any abusive or coercive behavior by a person against an intimate partner or a family member. Intimate partner relationships include dating, cohabiting, and marital relationships, past or present, heterosexual or homosexual. Domestic violence is not limited to physical and sexual assault, but also includes psychological and emotional abuse such as humiliation and degradation; attacks against personal property or pets; threats of violence against the victim, others, or self; social isolation; economic abuse; stalking; or any other behavior intended to cause fear or maintain power and control over the victim. It occurs irrespective of age and gender, though statistically most abusers are men and most victims are women based on reported incidents. Because of their different cultures, and because poverty and language issues may create additional pressures on households, domestic violence raises different issues in communities of African Americans, Latino Americans, and Asian Americans. After a brief general examination of domestic violence, this entry focuses on those differences.
Overview Domestic violence in intimate partner relationships is almost always rooted in the possessiveness of the abuser and the abuser’s desire to control and dominate the victim because of his or her own insecurity in himself or herself and in the relationship. Abusers fear that their victims will eventually leave them, and thus, they create an environment of fear, terror, and degradation to keep their victims in the relationship. Domestic violence usually shatters the self-esteem of the victim, so that the victim believes that he or she deserves the abuse, that he or she is unworthy of better treatment, or that he or she is hopelessly trapped in the relationship. The Cycle of Vio olence
Domestic violence is rarely an isolated incident, and it involves a pattern of behavior, commonly referred to as the “cycle of violence.” The cycle of violence, defined first by Dr. Lenore Walker, occurs in three repeating stages: tension-building, acute battery, and relief. During the tension-building
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stage, the abuser engages in multiple “minor” incidents of control and abuse against the victim. Commonly, the abuser will find fault with the victim and abuse the victim verbally, emotionally, or physically. The victim typically acquiesces to the abuser in hope of appeasing the abuser and preventing the abuser’s anger and the abuse from escalating into an acute battery incident. The victim may engage in denial, excusing the abuser’s anger and blaming it on any external factor apart from the abuser; the victim may justify the abuser’s conduct by attributing it to a difficult day at work, stress, or often, the victim’s own behavior. The tension-building stage culminates in the acute battery phase, an episode more severe than any incident during the previous stage that usually results in severe physical and emotional injury to the victim as well as emotional injury to the children who might witness the abuse. The acute battery stage may signify a breaking point for both parties. The abuse has reached the limits of his or her desire to control and dominate, and the victim has reached the limit of his or her ability to cope with the fear. The victim may have grown so tired of the constant stress and terror of the tension-building stage that he or she accepts the inevitability of the battery, however violent and severe. The victim believes there is nothing that he or she can do to prevent it and accepts that he or she must endure it. Even if the abuser recognizes that he or she has lost control, the abuser nevertheless blames the victim or some other circumstance for the incident. It is most often in the acute battery phase that the victim may finally seek help from third parties. Regardless of whether the victim tries to leave, what follows is the relief, or “honeymoon,” phase where the abuser becomes repentant and sometimes engages in extremely loving and kind behavior toward the victim. Usually the abuser genuinely believes that he or she is able to change, and this earnestness will often convince the victim that the abuser will carry out this promise. The victim may be influenced by uncertainty and fear; the victim may not want to leave the abuser or see the abuser go to prison because the victim depends on the abuser financially, and this is further compounded if they have children together. Conversely, the victim may be moved by pity for the abuser, believing that the abuser needs the victim as much as the victim needs the abuser and that he or she can be a positive influence in the abuser’s life. If the victim does return to the abuser, they will enjoy a
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time of peace and respite until the cycle resets and repeats. The Legacy of Domestiic Vio olence
Most domestic violence counselors believe that domestic violence is not caused by anger, stress, alcohol, drugs, genetics, the behavior of the victim, or any other external circumstance. Rather, they believe domestic violence is learned through observation, experience, and reinforcement of parental models. Patterns of domestic violence are often passed on to subsequent generations. Individuals who end up being abusers and victims are statistically more likely to have grown up in abusive households where they were victims or witnesses of domestic violence. Without having experienced any alternative models, abusers often revert to the violent model of their parents for resolving conflict. Similarly, victims often inherit a distorted sense of self-worth and affection from parents in an abusive relationship and end up falling into similar patterns because they know no alternative.
Racial and Ethnic Variances African America an Comm munitie es
High poverty rates and the history of institutionalized racism in the United States create additional dynamics for domestic violence in African American communities. Year 2000 census data show that African Americans earn a median household income of $29,530 compared with the national average of $41,994, and that 25% of the African American population falls below the federal poverty line compared with the national average of 12%. African American males continue to experience high degrees of unemployment and underemployment, which may cause added psychological pressures because of cultural norms dictating that men are to be the breadwinners in the family. African Americans also continue to be victimized by racism and social stereotyping. This disempowerment and resulting frustration may be a factor in the violence vented by African American males against intimate partners and family members. Furthermore, poverty and historical racism may also deter African American women from reporting domestic violence. African American women may
mistrust a justice system that they perceive as traditionally racist; their reluctance to report violence may be exacerbated when the victim lives in poverty and relies upon her husband for financial support. Another obstacle that prevents African American women from seeking domestic violence support is the “superwoman” complex, where African American women are brought up to believe that they must bear hardships without support and without complaint. Latiino Americcan Communitie es
In addition to poverty, cultural factors and language access affect the ways in which domestic violence is dealt with in Latino households. According to 2000 census data, the median household income for Latino families in the United States is $33,676, and 23% of the population subsists below federal poverty. Additionally, 40% of the Latino population is foreign born, and 41% are limited English proficient. Many Latino cultures are patriarchal; domestic violence may be perceived as the legitimate right of a husband to discipline his wife and children. As a result, neither perpetrators nor victims may believe that there is anything wrong with domestic violence. In Latino cultures, women who seek a divorce may receive little economic support or may lose custody of their children. Latina women who are unfamiliar with U.S. laws may not understand that they have addition options in the United States. Limited English proficiency further prevents many Latina victims from reporting or seeking help. A woman who is undocumented may equate law enforcement with immigration officials. If her abuser is undocumented, she may not report because she fears he will be deported, especially if he is the main source of income for the family. An abuser may also use immigration status as a method of terror, humiliation, and control by threatening a partner with possible deportation. Asia an Amerriccan Com mmu unitiies
Like Latino American communities, Asian American communities also have cultural and language access issues when it comes to domestic violence. According to 2000 census data, 63% of the Asian American population is foreign born, and 36% is limited English proficient. Many Asian American cultures are extremely patriarchal. Gender roles are unequal and rigidly prescribed, and domestic violence
Domestic Work
is seen as a purely private matter that the government does not interfere with. Any public exposure of family discord is seen as shameful, and women who leave their husbands may be severely ostracized or worse. Like Latinas, Asian American victims face language access and immigration barriers in reporting. As a result, there is likely to be substantial underreporting of domestic violence in Asian American households. In many Asian cultures, the wife completely severs ties from her own family and joins her husband’s extended household; thus, an Asian American victim may experience abuse not only from her husband but also from his relatives. Though most of the Asian American population has median household incomes well above the national average except certain Pacific Islander groups and Southeast Asian refugee populations, many immigrant families experience downward career mobility when coming to the United States because of language access problems. Like African American families, there is often a reversal of gender roles in Asian American families, with similar psychological consequences for men that may contribute to domestic violence.
Remedies for Immigrant Victims When immigrant victims of domestic violence are undocumented, abusers may use immigration status as a method of power and control, threatening to have the victim deported or advising the victim that he or she will be deported if the victim calls police. An immigrant victim is more likely to have language access problems, which makes it even more difficult for him or her to seek police, medical assistance, or other services. An immigrant victim may be entirely dependent on the abuser and therefore easier to isolate socially. The victim has left his or her home country and has less access to family and community support networks. Recognizing the ability of abusers to use immigration status as an instrument of control, Congress enacted several laws between 1990 and 2000 to remedy the power imbalance. In the 1990 Immigration Act, Congress created a domestic violence waiver so that battered spouses with conditional residency could self-petition for their permanent residency status independent of their abusers. In 1994, Congress expanded protection for victims with the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to allow undocumented battered spouses and children of U.S. citizens or legal permanent
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residents to self-petition for their status independent of their abusers. In 2000, Congress passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) which created the U-visa, which allows victims of certain crimes, including domestic violence and sexual assault, to apply for nonimmigrant status if they cooperate with law enforcement authorities in the investigation or prosecution of the crime. Stewart Chang See also Family; Immigration and Gender; Parenting; Social Work; Victimization
Further Readings
Bancroft, Lundy. 2002. Why Does He Do That? New York: Berkley. Grieco, Elizabeth M. and Rachel C. Cassidy. 2001. “Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin 2000.” Census 2000 Brief. C2KBR/01-1. Washington, U.S. DC: Government Printing Office. Levinson, David. 1989. Family Violence in Cross Cultural Perspective. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Sokoloff, Natalie, ed. 2005. Domestic Violence at the Margins. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Tjaden, Patricia and Nancy Thoennes. 2000. Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. Volpp, Leti. 1995. Working with Battered Immigrant Women: A Handbook to Make Services Accessible. San Francisco, CA: Family Violence Prevention Fund. Walker, Lenore. 1978. The Battered Woman. New York: Harper & Row.
DOMESTIC WORK Paid domestic work encompasses a wide array of labor types usually referred to as care work or reproductive labor. Most paid domestic work positions involve housecleaning or child care, possibly cooking, or some combination of the three. Over time, minority women—first African Americans and later Latinas—came to be represented disproportionately in these jobs. This entry provides a brief history of domestic work and its relationship to race and ethnicity in U.S. society.
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Defining Domestic Work Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo identifies three common types of domestic work positions in her study Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence. She includes (1) the livein nanny/housekeeper, an employee who works for and lives with one family and is generally responsible for child care and caring for the household, (2) the live-out nanny/housekeeper, who works for one family full time but returns to own home at the end of the day and (3) the housecleaner, who cleans houses on a contractual basis often for several different employers. Scholars such as Mary Romero have argued that this last position provides greater flexibility and autonomy, shorter hours, and higher pay. Only a few decades ago, many had predicted the occupation would become obsolete; however, at the beginning of the 21st century, the occupation and its demand are growing. Several factors have contributed to this growth, including greater income inequality, the large movement of middle- and upper-class women into the workforce, and mass immigration of women from poor nations to fill caring roles in wealthy nations. As Hondagneu-Sotelo points out, in areas where there is a greater income inequality, there are often greater concentrations of paid domestic work. Although some women have long worked in wage labor (often not having the class privilege to not work), recent decades have shown a large influx of class-privileged women into white-collar and professional sectors. This movement of upper- and middleclass women into the workforce creates a demand for others to pick up “caring labor” in the home.
Women’s Work In most parts of the world, domestic work is associated with women. In the colonial period of U.S. history, domestic work was mostly preformed by slaves or indentured workers. In the middle and southern colonies, large numbers of convicts and indentured workers from England held domestic service positions, as did free willers, Europeans who sold themselves into slavery for passage to the Americas. Native American and Black slaves and servants were also found in large numbers in New England and the South, respectively. By the late 1700s, native-born free White labor replaced indentured labor in the North and Black enslaved workers replaced White servants in the
South. In Judith Rollins’s chronicling of this history, she argues that this period represents both the most egalitarian and dehumanizing period of the masterservant relationship—egalitarian in the North and dehumanizing in the South. Because workers in the North were wage laborers, often of the same ethnicity and religion as employers, they were perceived as being more socially equal. In the South, Black enslaved workers performed most domestic labor, making this relationship extremely dehumanizing, characterized by the violent exploitation of slavery. Following emancipation, these domestic slaves often assumed roles of low-wage workers and the relationship between employees and employers changed very little. This egalitarian attitude in the North was short lived as immigrants began to replace native-born Whites in these positions. During this period, which Rollins refers to as the third phase in U.S. domestic service, terms such as servant were reintroduced, rituals of deference were more formalized, and many houses were designed with separate “servant” quarters. These tensions were reflected in the high turnover rate of the profession, the flight to nondomestic jobs, and the transformation of domestic work from a live-in to live-out position. Furthermore, new technology, the movement of various household tasks into the commercial sphere, and changing ideologies among middle- and upperclass families regarding housework decreased the need for help with domestic tasks. World War I opened various nondomestic positions in factories and offices, and many workers left domestic service. However, these opportunities were often restricted to Whites, particularly native-born Whites. In addition, the decline in European migration during World War I coupled with Black migration to the North from the South facilitated the recruitment of Black women into northern domestic positions.
Racialized Work By the 1920s, Black women were disproportionately represented in domestic service in various places beyond the South. Institutionalized racism, reflected in blocked educational and occupational opportunities, restricted Black women’s intergenerational mobility out of domestic work, whereas many European immigrants had been able to use domestic work as a means of class mobility. White women were often considered help, but the labor of Black women was treated as servitude. Furthermore, unlike White
Domestic Work
women, Black women were not as able to use domestic service as an avenue of mobility to other occupations or as a temporary job until marriage. Historically, Black women could not rely on marriage as a guarantee that they would not have to work. Racial discrimination limited job opportunities for Black men, ensuring that many Black women would continue to work as domestics even if they married. Contemporary trends illustrate that White women are more likely than are women of color to be hired as nannies, are not expected to perform all housekeeping tasks such as cooking and cleaning, and are paid higher wages on average. The racialization of paid domestic work has been shaped by regional forces, and who performs domestic work varies between time and place. In the United States today, immigrant women primarily from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean perform most of this labor, although there are clearly exceptions largely based on regional differences. Whereas in Los Angeles, this labor is often performed by foreignborn Latina workers, in parts of the Midwest that do not have significant immigrant populations, workingclass and poor White women might dominate the field. Historically throughout the West and Southwest, domestic workers were mostly Mexican and Mexican American women, in addition to Asian women (and briefly Asian men), and African American and Native American women. For many years, domestic service represented the largest source of non-agricultural work for Mexicanas and Chicanas throughout the Southwest, often reflecting blocked opportunity structures and the deliberate recruitment of these women into the occupation by Americanization efforts and domestic training schools. The current rates of paid domestic work are difficult to ascertain given the large numbers of under-thetable transactions. However, domestic workers are disproportionately women of color. Until the 1970 census, domestic service represented the largest occupational category for Black women in the United States. Following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, many Black and Mexican American women left domestic work for jobs in the public sector. About this same time, the percentage of foreign-born Latinas working in domestic service jumped.
The Current Situation Adding to this trend is the growing feminization of migration, in which more than half of all the world’s
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immigrants today are women, many of whom migrate to fill domestic work positions. Gender, race, and class divisions have always been instrumental in delineating who performs both paid and unpaid domestic work; however, today nationhood and citizenship are also increasingly central issues. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas’s analysis of paid reproductive work encompasses this shift, highlighting that globalization has transformed the politics of reproductive labor into an “international transfer of caretaking.” Classprivileged women in receiving countries purchase the labor of immigrant women, whereas migrant workers purchase the labor of even poorer women left behind in sending countries. This labor is often not conceptualized as employment, largely because it takes place in a private home and it is a job that requires a large amount of emotional performance. However, employers’ hesitancy to see themselves as employers may have negative consequences for workers. By claiming that workers are members of the family, employers are denying their responsibilities as employers and reinforcing the gendered division of labor, treating female domestics as proto-mothers. The relationships between employees and employers have changed greatly over time. Whereas past relationships were often characterized as maternalistic, in contemporary domestic work relationships, many employers try hard to limit personal interactions with domestic workers. The nature, structure, and relationships in paid domestic work are constantly evolving. Economic forces, immigration patterns, and domestic workers themselves are extremely instrumental in this shift. For instance, Black women in the North and South are largely responsible for the large-scale shift from live-in to the often more preferable live-out positions, as Mexican American women transformed the profession in the Southwest to the common contractual arrangement found today. Current studies on domestic work provide insight into the international politics of citizenship, nationhood, and inequality, the gendered division of reproductive work, and contemporary relationships between women of different social locations. Amanda Moras See also African American Women and Work; Family; Feminism; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Globalization; Guest Workers; Immigration and Gender; Immigration and Race; Latina/o Studies; Racialization
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Dominican Americans
Further Readings
Amott, Teresa and Julie Matthaei. 1996. Race, Gender & Work: A Multicultural Economic History of Women in the United States. Boston, MA: South End Press. Anderson, Bridget. 2001. “Just Another Job? Paying for Domestic Work.” Gender and Development 9(1):25–33. Chang, Grace. 2000. Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy. Boston, MA: South End Press. Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2004. “Maid to Order: The Politics of Other Women’s Work.” In Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, edited by B. Ehrenreich and A. R. Hochschild. New York: Metropolitan/Owl Books. Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. 2001. Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mattingly, Doreen J. 2001. “The Home and the World: Domestic Service and International Networks of Caring Labor.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91(2):370–386. Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar. 2001. Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Rollins, Judith. 1986. Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Romero, Mary. 2002. Maid in the U.S.A. New York: Routledge. Thorton-Dill, Bonnie. 1994. Across the Boundaries of Race and Class: An Exploration of Work and Family Among Black Female Domestic Servants. New York: Garland.
DOMINICAN AMERICANS In the 2000 U.S. Census, more than a million people identified their ancestry as Dominican. Dominicans are the fourth largest Hispanic group in the United States; however, they are among the least understood. This entry provides both a brief overview of the historical context for Dominican migration and a demographic profile of the community. It also examines the perspectives of ethnicity and race theorists on the experiences of the Dominican community.
History and Socioeconomic Profile The Dominican Republic occupies the eastern twothirds of the island of Hispaniola, also known as Quisqueya, which it shares with Haiti. Santo Domingo,
the present-day capital of the Dominican Republic, was the point of departure for European colonization of the Americas. In the late 15th century, Spanish colonization culminated in the decimation of the indigenous Taíno people and the subsequent importation of Africans as slaves. In the early 19th century, the Spanish colony was occupied by Haiti, declared its independence in 1844, and then reannexed itself to Spain. A second independence was declared in 1865. Since the late 19th century, the Dominican Republic has had a neocolonial relationship with the United States, marked by an attempted annexation in the 1870s, two U.S. military occupations in 1916–1924 and 1965–1966, and ongoing U.S. economic, political, and cultural influence. Although a small pre-1965 Dominican exile community was present in the United States, mass migration did not commence until major changes occurred in U.S. immigration laws in 1965. During the 1980s and 1990s, Dominicans were the largest single-origin immigrant group in the New York City region. Dominicans are concentrated in the northeastern United States. The largest Dominican community lives in New York City, where more than half a million Dominicans are the second largest Latino group after Puerto Ricans. Dominican immigrants have near gender parity and are relatively young. A third of Dominicans were born in the United States. Dominicans have low levels of educational attainment. Almost half of Dominicans 25 years or older had not completed a high school education at the time of the 2000 census, compared with only 20% of the general U.S. population. There are stark differences between U.S.-born Dominicans and those born in the Dominican Republic. Only 19.4% of U.S.-born Dominicans aged 25 or older had not completed a high school education. Dominicans have the highest poverty rate in New York City (32%). In 2000, Dominicans had a mean annual per-capita household income of $11,065, which was half of that of the rest of the country ($22,086). This was also lower than that of Latinos, non-Hispanic Blacks, Asians, and Whites. More than a third of Dominican households are women-headed (38.2%), and among these households, half were poor. In the 2000 U.S. Census, Dominicans, like other Latinos, were not considered a race. Among Latinos, Dominicans have the largest number of people identifying as Black and the lowest number who identify as White. Dominicans also have the highest number of
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opportunities, Dominicans are expected to assimilate. Segmented assimilation theorists posit that both those who assimilate into “mainstream” middleclass values and those who retain their ethnic distinctiveness and benefit from strong cultural and social capital of their respective ethnic community will experience upward mobility; however, those who assimilated into the culture of the “down-trodden” minorities will experience downward mobility. A growing number of scholars focus on the racialization of Dominicans in the United States; these scholars argue that the racial meanings assigned to a given immigrant group—both at the Dominican Day parade. Spectators are shown holding flags at the Dominican Day macrolevel of laws, policies, and culParade in New York City on June 15, 1993. The annual parade was established in tural representations in the mass media, 1982 and has become one of the major parades in New York in attendance. schools, and residential housing patSource: Getty Images. terns, and at the microlevel of lived experience—are the key dynamics shaping the social mobility of a given individuals who identify themselves as “other.” immigrant group. Scholars have found that the racializaAlthough Dominicans are included as a Latino group tion of Dominicans in the United States have been quite in most analyses, their social indicators align more negative and engendered: Dominican men have been clearly with other Black groups. Most Dominicans constructed as potential drug dealers and thugs, and would be classified as Black in the United States Dominican women have been racialized as “mamasitas,” regardless of how they identify. sexually promiscuous and always available. Both immigrant and U.S.-born Dominican community activists and other leaders have actively resisted negative racialization An Ethnic Versus a Racial Lens by seeking public office and organizing at the grassroots In popular discourse, race and ethnicity are often used level to combat these negative images. interchangeably; however, it is important to differenNancy Lopez tiate between two analytically distinct but related concepts. Although both ethnicity and race theorists See Appendix A would agree that there is no biological basis for cateSee also Caribbean Americans; Central Americans in the United gorizing groups of individuals into races based on States; Dominican Republic; East Harlem; Immigration and physical appearance or phenotype, their analytical Race; Latina/o Studies; West Indian Americans foci are quite different. Ethnicity theorists focus on the assimilation process as the main force in shaping Further Readings an immigrant group’s experiences, whereas race theorists focus on racialization processes. Hernandez, Ramona. 2002. The Mobility of Workers Under Most of the existing literature on Dominicans in the Advanced Capitalism: Dominican Migration to the United United States has been anchored in the ethnicity paraStates. New York: Columbia University Press. digm, which focuses on the assimilation process. Against Lopez, Nancy. 2003. Hopeful Girls, Troubled Boys: Race and this backdrop, Dominicans are viewed as a cultural Gender Disparity in Urban Education. New York: group that shares a common collective memory, ancesRoutledge. try, language, and social ties. Like any other immigrant Torres-Saillant, Silvio and Ramona Hernandez. 1998. The group that came to the United States for better economic Dominican Americans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC The Dominican Republic is a country located in the North Caribbean Sea between Haiti to the west and Puerto Rico to the east. The Atlantic Ocean and the Bahamas lie just north of the island of Hispaniola, which the Dominican Republic shares with its western neighbor Haiti. Major towns include Santiago, Puerto Plata, San Cristóbal, La Romana, and Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital. The three major languages of the country are Spanish, Haitian Creole French, and English. There are currently thirty-one provinces and an estimated 2007 population of 9.4 million. The Dominican side of the island enjoys lush vegetation and produce, fertile green valleys, and pristine beaches. This entry looks at the history of the country and its racial and ethnic composition.
United States Bermuda
Atlantic Ocean
The Bahamas
Cuba Turks & Caicos Is.
Dominican Republic
Cayman Is. Haiti Jamaica Honduras
Puerto Rico
Caribbean Sea
Nicaragua
Costa Rica Panama Venezuela
Colombia Brazil
Early History Hispaniola was first inhabited by the Taíno Indians. The Taíno is a Native American culture that is formed from the larger Arawak race of indigenous Americans who originated in the Amazon River basin. These natives traveled north toward the sea and eventually populated the Caribbean islands. A peace-loving
group, the Taíno dedicated their lives to hunting and trapping, the construction of plazas and simple homes, basket weaving, and gathering. The larger communities were ruled by chiefs called caciques and shamans called behiques. Because of the fertility of the soil, there was an abundance of food, and the Taínos enjoyed an existence of relative peace and prosperity. They were often, however, subjected to the war tirades of the Carib Indians living on other Caribbean islands. Currently no Taínos exist on the island of Hispaniola because they were exterminated by European settlers. Nevertheless, the spirit of the Taíno people is very much alive in contemporary expressions of art, language, gathering, and mythology.
European Exploration and Independence The decline of the Taíno population is marked by the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island he subsequently named Hispaniola in December 1492. Disappointed by the lack of gold, but impressed by the island’s beauty and fertility, Columbus returned in 1493 with cattle and plans to create sugar processing plants. The Taíno were enslaved to labor in sugar fields, and their exploitation combined with European diseases diminished their numbers to the point of extinction. The Spanish, undaunted, began to import African slaves from Jamaica, and by the mid-16th century, there were more Africans on the island than any other race. During the late 17th century, Spain was forced to recognize French dominance over the eastern part of the island in an effort to strengthen trade agreements and control buccaneering. The French Revolution of the late 1700s triggered a cry for the rights of man on the French side of Hispaniola, which further developed in an armed slave revolt that expelled the French from the island. In 1804, Haiti was declared independent. In 1808, the Spanish side of the island was annexed by Napoleon, and the entire island was renamed Sainte Domingue. After a brief period of independence, the Haitians seized control and maintained it for almost 25 years. Haiti, having seen a bloody slave revolt for independence, was quick to free the slaves and place them in civil service positions. Internal dissatisfaction with international diplomatic relations with Haiti, however, caused two-thirds of the island to secede from the government of Haiti in 1844.
Double Consciousness
The lack of Dominican infrastructure, however, instigated a voluntary annexation to Spain once again in the late 19th century. Because Spain’s solution to the infrastructure was to install Spanish (White) workers in high levels of Dominican government, a sense that the country was headed toward a type of neocolonialism began to erupt among its citizens. The War of Restoration ensued, ultimately ending in the annulment of the Spanish annexation in 1865. Because of their prolonged investment in the history of the Dominican Republic, Europeans hold a greater population percentage than in other previously controlled islands of the Caribbean. Today, the descendants of the European colonists, pirates, and explorers constitute about 16% of the Dominican population.
Africans and Creoles Currently representing 84% of the population, Africans (11%) and Creoles (73%) constitute the common face in the Dominican Republic. Most Dominicans today have some claim to African heritage. Although some of the Africans arriving in the New World were freedmen (Pedro Alonzo Niño, the captain of the Spanish explorer ship La Niña, was Black), most arrived as slaves. Unlike other colonialists who insisted on the conversion to Christianity by their slaves, the Spanish allowed the African slaves to retain their music, dance, and culture that were not detrimental to the production of sugar. This is notwithstanding the often-conscious efforts to mix a myriad of African tribes to effectively diminish communication between slaves and to instill a sense of mistrust among them. This method of deculturalization was effective to the extent that slaves ultimately lost any generational connection to their past and true identities, yet most cultural practices were indeed conserved by the slaves in the colony, especially among the rural poor. In the Dominican Republic, the rural poor today live in the hillsides deep within the island’s interior and are descendants of escaped plantation slaves and workers. This is where many of the social practices of food preparation, dance, and matriarchy prevail. Although the Dominican Republic produced less sugar than other colonies of the Caribbean, the amount was enough to justify a slave population that vastly outnumbered the ruling class, a phenomenon that can be seen in the majority population today. Dominican society uses race as a social class measurement, yet
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whereas in the United States a minute amount of African blood classifies people as African Americans, the reverse is true in the Dominican Republic. As a result, the Creoles claim themselves as a part of the White matrix of power and assume a socially superior position over their Black ancestors. C. Centae Richards See Appendix A See also Caribbean; Colonialism; Creole; Dominican Americans; Haiti; Latina/o Studies
Further Readings
Brown, I. Z. 1999. Culture and Customs of the Dominican Republic. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Central Intelligence Agency. 2006. The CIA World Factbook. Washington, DC: Author. Stinchcombe, A. L. 1995. Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment: The Political Economy of the Caribbean World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS The term double consciousness is used in reference to W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, when referring to a dual awareness developed by Black Americans in the United States: knowledge of one’s own individual identity, as well as knowledge about how one will be read through a racial lens. This duality is also frequently interpreted as a dual and sometimes conflicting sense of being both American and not fully American, and likewise as the dual sense of being both American and African. Each interpretation has had its own trajectory in U.S. and international philosophy and thought, but they all reference the same basic theme of contradiction and complexity in the African American experience, as this entry describes.
Double Consciousness Defined The phrase double consciousness itself stemmed from a passage in the first chapter of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, called “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” In this chapter, Du Bois describes how the descendants of Africans feel not a single self-consciousness but a sense of twoness, of being a U.S. citizen as well as a Black. These two identities represent two simultaneous
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selves—American and African or American and Black. Although today the term double consciousness is almost always solely attributed to Du Bois and his work, the term itself was not created by him and would have been familiar to his contemporaries. The term had currency in at least two major avenues available to his educated readership: in medical psychology to refer to cases of split personality and in literature speaking of a transcendental division between the divine and the material world, which inhibited true self-realization. In each case, Du Bois likely relied on the phrase to make his ideas familiar to his readers, both in rallying Black Americans and in creating a basis of empathy among White Americans. In the psychological literature, the idea of double consciousness, made popular by several cases of split personality highlighted in Harper’s magazine, made clear that the two selves were not only distinct but fundamentally opposed to each other. Although seen to be abnormal, the state of double consciousness was not seen as deviant; there was genuine sympathy and integrity attached to the subjects of this psychological double consciousness. This created a helpful and nondamaging metaphor and familiar language for Du Bois when he spoke about the dignity of this struggle for African Americans, who Du Bois posited as struggling to synthesize an integrated self out of two conflicting identities. The term was similarly useful for those readers familiar with literature and transcendental thought. Much of Du Bois’s work carries a deeply spiritual aspect, and many have interpreted his concept of double consciousness to refer to what Du Bois felt African Americans had to offer U.S. society: a deeply spiritual African identity, which could help to offset the harms and conflict many felt inherent to the materialism of U.S. society. This strain of literary thought was well known in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s work, and was likewise adopted by many philosophers of the time, including Du Bois’s mentor at Harvard, William James.
The Veil In Du Bois’s thought, it is the veil that grants Black Americans a double consciousness. The veil has variously been interpreted as race itself and its impact on the lives of Black Americans, the racial lens through which White Americans view Black Americans, and
the double consciousness with which Black Americans experience their world. Du Bois spoke of the veil in the same chapter as his passage about double consciousness. In this context, Du Bois was writing about the first time he became aware of the role his race played in his life, when a classmate of his, a White girl, refused to exchange cards with him: the veil of race cast him as different in his classmate’s eyes. Du Bois uses the terminology of the veil many times throughout The Souls of Black Folk, always referring to the ways in which the true humanity of Black Americans had been inhibited by the evils and the constraints of U.S. racism. Because the term double consciousness would have been familiar to educated readers of Du Bois’s time, he was able to speak of his idea of a second sight, the perspective and body of knowledge that African Americans develop from their lives looking out from the veil of race. Du Bois saw this second sight, this spiritual alternative to mainstream White America, as both a gift and a burden for Black Americans, and likewise central to the experience of a double consciousness. As such, the concept of the veil is central to understanding double consciousness. The veil, for Du Bois, is something which Black Americans possess from birth, and is the very thing that makes it difficult for them to see themselves though the eyes of others, especially White people. Likewise, this veil of race both structures opportunity for African Americans and inhibits racial understanding between races in the United States. In terms of opportunity, Du Bois writes about the world “beyond the veil,” in which White Americans experience no racial constraints on their lives and ability to make choices. For Black Americans, the veil stands between them and White America, inhibiting access to the privileges reserved for White Americans. This veil, in turn, prevents a true ability to see the problems of race for many White Americans. Although Black Americans are gifted by this second sight, which allows for a first-hand understanding of the problems of U.S. racism as well as the ability to operate in both a White and a Black world, White Americans’ sight is limited. White Americans do not generally have the desire or the impetus to navigate Black America, and as such do not develop this dual awareness that has been central to the Black experience in the United States. Although the role of double consciousness, this life looking out from the veil of race, has strongly negatively
Douglass, Frederick (1818–1895)
affected the lives of Black Americans and other nonWhites in the United States, it is important to note how Du Bois also saw double consciousness as a gift. This “second sight” for Du Bois was not only a burden to bear with dignity, but also a common experience around which Black Americans could forge coalitions and share their standpoint with U.S. society. The struggle for an integrated, more whole self could also serve as a metaphor for a vision of an integrated, more whole U.S. society, one in which the veil of race does not limit the realization of Black Americans’ humanity but, rather, advances the nation from the zero-sum mentality of racism.
The Consciousness of White People A conversation about double consciousness is perhaps incomplete without giving attention to the ways in which White Americans do not experience it. If the veil is a reference for the ways in which African Americans’ lives have been structured by racial prejudice, then by the same process, White Americans’ lives have benefited from life free of the veil. Because White Americans’ race is often rendered a non-race— that is, because White Americans are seen as the norm among U.S. citizens—White Americans are free from both life underneath the veil and the double consciousness that stems from it. As a result, White Americans are often seen in terms of their individual attributes and personalities, rather than being viewed as representatives of their race and accordingly feared, distrusted, ignored, or otherwise marginalized. This has led to the reality that many White Americans do not recognize the role that their race plays in their lives, and thus, the inability to develop the kind of race consciousness that minorities in the United States may develop as a result of the veil. The experience of double consciousness is still present along racial lines in the United States. U.S. lives are still often structured by racial privilege and disadvantage, and the association between Whiteness and ideas of true U.S. entitlement persist. As such, more than 100 years after Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk, the United States still faces “the problem of the color line,” and non-White U.S. residents must still develop a dual awareness of themselves as individuals and likewise how they will be viewed according to the stereotypes of their race. Meghan A. Burke
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See also African Americans; American Dilemma, An; Black Intellectuals; Color Line; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Invisible Man; Marginalization; Racial Identity; Veil Further Readings
Balfour, Lawrie. 1998. “‘A Most Disagreeable Mirror’: Race Consciousness as Double Consciousness.” Political Theory 26(3, June):346–369. Browdin, Stanley. 1972. “The Veil Transcended: Form and Meaning in W. E. B. Du Bois’ ‘The Souls of Black Folk.’” Journal of Black Studies 2(3, March):303–321. Dayal, Samir. 1996. “Diaspora and Double Consciousness.” Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 29(1, Spring):46–62. Dickinson, D. Bruce, Jr. 1992. “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Idea of Double Consciousness.” American Literature 64(2, June):299–309. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] 1989. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Bantam Books. Gilroy, Paul. 2005. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and DoubleConsciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
DOUGLASS, FREDERICK (1818–1895) The battle for racial justice has been fought since the first slave ship docked in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. Born a slave, Frederick Douglass spent his life fighting to end slavery and to achieve racial equality in the United States. Frederick Douglass’s struggle for freedom is a commemoration of the power of human compassion and the U.S. spirit. This entry recalls his life and accomplishments.
Early Years Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1818 in Tuckahoe, Maryland. His mother was a slave woman by the name of Harriet Bailey, and it was speculated that his father was his master. Taken away from his mother as an infant, Douglass was reared by his grandmother on the outskirts of the plantation. At first innocent to the cruelties of slavery, Douglass witnessed the savage beating of a slave girl, which played a significant role in forming his abolitionist spirit. Around 7 or 8 years of age, Douglass was rented to another master in Baltimore, Maryland, and this move proved one of the most interesting events of his life because it ultimately led to his freedom.
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Freedom in the North
Frederick Douglass. Douglass was one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery in the United States during the decades before the Civil War. Douglass genuinely believed that racism could be ended and that Blacks and Whites could live together in harmony. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-15887.
In Baltimore, Douglass was taught to read by his master’s wife. However, the master objected to his wife’s teachings, and Douglass listened to the master warn his wife of the dangers of teaching slaves how to read. Douglass thought if the mere act of his mistress teaching him letters enraged his master, there must be power in words. Therefore, Douglass did all he could to secretly learn to read and write. Once literate, Douglass sought any discussion about slavery and soon was introduced to the word abolition. The discovery of a movement against slavery reinforced Douglass’s pursuit of freedom. In 1833, Douglass was rented to another master who was notorious for his cruelty. Under this control, Douglass experienced the worst slavery had to offer. The torturous methods resulted in a broken spirit and a weakened intellect. Douglass writes of hiding from this cruel slave master to escape certain death for disobeying his rules. While hiding, Douglass encountered a fellow slave who provided him with a symbolic gesture to remind him of his humanity: If he carried with him always a piece of a certain root, Douglass would be able to stand up against any oppressor. With this restored sense of his own manhood, Douglass stood up against this master and vowed to welcome death before any White man would whip him again.
By 1838, he escaped to the North and to freedom. In New York, Douglass married Anna Murray, and with the help of an abolitionist, changed his name to Frederick Douglass. Douglass and Anna continued north and settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Douglass and Anna had five children. During his time in New Bedford, Douglass was introduced to the Liberator, edited by William Lloyd Garrison, the leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society. By August 1841, Douglass joined Garrison’s antislavery movement, served as a lecturer for the Anti-Slavery Society, and was responsible for talking about his life and selling subscriptions to the Liberator and the Anti-Slavery Standard. In 1845, Douglass wrote and published the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. The publication of his autobiography put his freedom in immediate jeopardy, and to avoid possible recapture, Douglass fled to England and continued his antislavery lectures for the next 2 years. By 1847, Douglass moved his family to Rochester, New York, and began the North Star, a Black newspaper that focused on the problems that faced Blacks across the country. By the 1850s, Douglass officially split with Garrison and continued to fight vigorously against injustice toward Blacks. He played a key role in the Underground Railroad by providing shelter to fugitive slaves, and in 1852, he gave his famous “July 5th” speech questioning what this celebration of U.S. freedom would mean to a slave. Because of his notorious opposition to slavery, Douglass was accused of being an accomplice to John Brown and his raid on the Northern Virginia town of Harper’s Ferry in the mid-1850s. Although not part of Brown’s plot, Douglass fled to Canada to avoid persecution. In 1861, the Civil War started, and as President Abraham Lincoln fought to restore the Union, Douglass and abolitionists’ pressured the president to end slavery. On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring that all slaves in areas not held by Union troops were free. Douglass did not rest and fought for Blacks’ right to fight for their freedom. In March 1863, Congress authorized Black enlistment in the Union army and as a direct result, the Massachusetts 54th Regiment was the first Black unit formed. After the war, Douglass continued to prosper. By 1870, he became editor of a Washington, D.C.-based newspaper, The New National Era, where he published his opinions on race in the United States. In 1874,
Drake, St. Clair (1911–1990)
Douglass became president of Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, a bank founded to encourage Blacks to invest and save money. Unfortunately, this bank was on the verge of collapse when Douglass took charge, and it quickly failed. At the end of the 1800s, Douglass’s wife Anna died, then amid great public controversy, he married Helen Pitts, a White woman 20 years his junior. Frederick Douglass died of a heart attack on February 20, 1895—he was 77 years old. Leslie C. Baker Kimmons See also Abolitionism: The Movement; Abolitionism: The People; Emancipation Proclamation; Lincoln, Abraham; Slavery
Further Readings
Andrews, William and William McFeely, eds. 1997. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. New York: Norton. Douglass, Frederick. 1962. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. New York: Collier Books. Foner, Philip S. 1950. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. Vols. 1–5. New York: International. Quarles, Benjamin. 1948. Frederick Douglass. Washington, DC: Associated.
DRAKE, ST. CLAIR (1911–1990) St. Clair Drake was one of the most important social scientists, educators, and activists of the 20th century. Not only a successful academic, Drake was also a successful and much sought after public intellectual who dedicated himself to the eradication of racial injustice and social inequality both nationally and globally. In many respects, he was a pioneer in diaspora studies and ethnographic studies about Black communities. In his work, he paid close attention to the intersections of race and class. This entry discusses his life and work.
His Early Years Born John Gibbs St. Clair Drake in 1911 in Suffolk, Virginia, Drake attended Hampton Institute (graduating with a biology degree) and later Pendle Hill, a Quaker graduate school near Philadelphia. Drake worked for the Society of Friends (i.e., Quakers) on a project called “Peace Caravan” that solicited signatures and support
415
for the 1932 World Disarmament Conference in Geneva and, following graduation, taught high school at a Quaker boarding school for Blacks in Virginia. Drake later returned to Hampton in 1935 at the behest of his mentor, the well-known anthropologist William Allison Davis, where Drake became involved in an anthropological study in Natchez, Mississippi, that was later published as Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class (1941). With the help of the Rosenwald Foundation, which contributed generously to developing a cadre of scholars from disadvantaged backgrounds, Drake worked as an instructor of anthropology at Dillard University in New Orleans, splitting his time between Natchez and Dillard. Given his success as an amateur ethnographer, Drake was drawn to anthropology for its potential to eliminate and refute pseudo-scientific claims about Black people.
His Academic Career After taking summer classes at Columbia University, Drake enrolled at the University of Chicago in 1937 to formally undertake a degree in anthropology, studying under the tutelage of the eminent sociologist W. Lloyd Warner. Drake’s first book, Churches and Voluntary Associations Among Negroes in Chicago (1940), enjoyed considerable success. In 1945, Drake began to make a name for himself when he and fellow student Horace R. Cayton undertook fieldwork in Black Chicago and produced the groundbreaking work, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. This seminal text closely examined Black life within the Southside of Chicago and prefigured other works that purported an “internal colonialism” thesis. Black Metropolis has influenced numerous scholars, especially those working within urban anthropology and within the anthropology and sociology of race. In 1946, Drake became a professor at Roosevelt College (now University), an experimental school at the time, in Chicago. At Roosevelt, Drake developed one of the first African Studies programs in the United States. Again funded by the Rosenwald Foundation, Drake embarked on fieldwork in Cardiff (Wales) in 1947 to study the multiethnic community of Tigers Bay. The work, originally intended to be another case study directed by Warner, instead became Drake’s doctoral dissertation, Value Systems, Social Structure, and Race Relations in the British Isles. Within the Cardiff study, he explored the interconnections
416
Dred Scott v. Sandfford
between race, nation, and capitalism. Drake was awarded his PhD in anthropology in 1954.
Time in Africa In Cardiff, Drake had befriended a number of Africans and slowly turned his attention to pan-Africanism, especially after meeting Kwame Nkrumah of the Gold Coast (Ghana). Drake was close with other panAfricanists including George Padmore. In 1954, while still a professor at Roosevelt, Drake and his wife moved to Liberia, where he began a six-month teaching position at the University of Liberia. With funding from the Ford Foundation, he then conducted a year of fieldwork in Ghana, studying the impact of media on the local population. At this time, he was also appointed senior lecturer at the University of Ghana. Between 1958 and 1961, he again was on leave from Roosevelt so that he could serve as head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Ghana. During his tenure in Ghana, Drake was also central in training Peace Corp volunteers and served as an advisor to Nkrumah. In 1965, Drake returned to Ghana to conduct urban research and then turned his attention to the Caribbean after the 1966 coup in Ghana. His interest in the Caribbean was part of a larger project titled “Africa and the Black Diaspora.” His work on the African diaspora forced many to rethink international relations of power and the effect of the economy on Black people globally. Drake became one of the foremost scholars on the African diaspora.
Political Engagement A dedicated pan-Africanist, Drake later left Roosevelt to chair the African American Studies Department at Stanford University, where he taught from 1969 until 1976. While at Stanford, Drake established the curriculum for the African American Studies program and helped facilitate several student-initiated workshops that looked specifically at community development. In many respects, Drake was often concerned with creating politically engaged anthropology, uniting anthropology with social activism. Aside from being a prolific chronicler of racial inequality and the Black diaspora, Drake was also engaged at the grassroots level in the fight against racism and structural inequality. He was actively engaged in various antiracist protests throughout the world and was a member of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and other groups. Aside from Black Metropolis, Drake is also well known for Black Folk Here and There, a two-volume work. By the time he died in 1990, Drake was renowned for his research on African people in Africa and other parts of the world, including the U.S. South, the urban U.S. North, the Caribbean, and Wales. Today, Roosevelt University is home to the St. Clair Drake Center of African and African American Studies, and several fellowships exist in his name that honor his legacy and commitment to politically engaged anthropology. Paul Khalil Saucier See also African Americans, Migration of; African American Studies; Black Intellectuals; Black Metropolis; Diaspora
Further Readings
Davis, Allison, Burleigh B. Gardner, and Mary B. Gardner. 1965. Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class. Abr. ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Drake, St. Clair. 1940. Churches and Voluntary Associations in the Chicago Negro Community. Chicago, IL: Works Public Administration. Drake, St. Clair. 1954. “Value Systems, Social Structure, and Race Relations in the British Isles. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Drake, St. Clair. 1991. Black Folk Here and There: An Essay in History and Anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Drake, St. Clair and Horace R. Cayton. 1993. Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
DRED SCOTT V. SANDFORD The Supreme Court’s 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford starkly illustrates the intersection of race in U.S. society, law, and politics before the outbreak of the Civil War. Initiated by two slaves seeking their freedom through the U.S. court system, the case ironically had the short-term consequence of strengthening the slavery system. In the long run, however, the case invigorated the movement for abolition and
Dred Scottt v. Sandfo ord
General parody of the 1860 presidential contest. This cartoon highlights the impact of the Dred Scott decision on the political campaign. The controversial decision, handed down in 1857, ruled that neither the federal government nor territorial governments could prohibit slavery in the territories. In this parody, the four presidential candidates dance with members of their supposed respective constituencies. Fiddling in the center is Dred Scott, the former slave whose suit precipitated the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. In the upper left is southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, who dances with Democratic incumbent and ally James Buchanan, depicted as a goat or (as he was nicknamed) “Buck.” At the upper right, Republican Abraham Lincoln prances arm-in-arm with a Black woman, a pejorative reference to his party’s alignment with the abolitionists. At the lower right, Constitutional Union party candidate John Bell dances with a Native American, perhaps alluding to Bell’s brief flirtation with Native American interests. At lower left, Stephen A. Douglas dances with a ragged Irishman. The Irishman (wearing a cross) may be intended as a reference to Douglas’s backing among Irish immigrants and allegations of the candidate’s Catholicism. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-14827.
became one of the most often-cited events leading up to the Civil War and the eventual freedom of all Black people. This entry describes the history of the case and outlines its consequences.
Circumstances Leading to the Decision The events preceding the decision tell an intriguing story of how the institution of chattel slavery in the United States deprived Blacks of virtually all aspects of legal or social personhood. This includes parental and filial rights and even the right to determine one’s own name. For example, the individual known as Dred Scott, born around 1800, did not acquire that
417
name until 1833. Before that, he was known simply as Sam, one of five slaves purchased by Peter Blow in 1819. In 1820, the Blow family settled in Huntsville, Alabama. While there, Sam was hired out to work on the river as a dockhand. After the death of Mrs. Blow in 1831, Peter Blow migrated to what was then the promising frontier town of St. Louis, Missouri. One year later, Blow died. Sam was subsequently sold along with another unnamed slave to Dr. John Emerson, at which point he was renamed Dred Scott. (It remains unclear whether it was actually Sam or the other slave who was given this name). Dred Scott lived a more transient and perhaps more traumatic life with Dr. Emerson than he had with the Blows. For example, Scott ran away shortly after his sale to Emerson. Scott was soon found near St. Louis, however, and, in accordance with Article IV of the U.S. Constitution, was returned to Emerson’s possession. As a doctor with the U.S. Army, Emerson was frequently transferred to various military installations throughout the Midwest. Between 1834 and 1843, Emerson took Scott to the state of Illinois and the then-free territories of Wisconsin and Iowa. According to the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (a law stipulating that for each new slave state or territory added to the Union, a free one must be added), these were free regions. While in Wisconsin, Scott met a young slave named Harriet Robinson. Sources differ about whether Harriet’s owner sold her to Emerson or gave her to Dred Scott as a wife, but the two were married by a justice of the peace in 1838 and subsequently had two daughters, Eliza and Lizzie. In 1843, Dr. Emerson died, and in 1846, his widow hired Dred and Harriett Scott out to her brother-in-law and later to a Mr. Samuel Russell.
Key Factors of the Case In 1846, Dred and Harriet Scott filed separate petitions in the state of Missouri seeking permission to sue Mrs. Emerson for monetary damages on the grounds that she was illegally holding them in servitude. Their attempt to gain their freedom through the judicial system was a difficult one because slaves had no legal standing to sue on their own. After losing their initial cases, Dred Scott—apparently with the help of the Blow family—persisted in his suit against Mrs. Emerson. Scott based his claim on a well-settled (albeit informal) tenet of Missouri law that once a slave was taken by an owner to reside in a free state
418
Dred Scott v. Sandfford
or territory, the slave was emancipated. In 1853, Mrs. Emerson sold Scott and his family to her brother, John Sandford, at which point the case became known as Dred Scott v. Sandford. The case raised two pressing questions for the Supreme Court: (1) the citizenship status of slaves in particular and Blacks in general and (2) the validity of the Missouri Compromise. With a seven-to-two majority, the Supreme Court sounded the death knell for both. With regard to the question of Scott’s citizenship status, the Court held that all individuals of African descent were “beings of an inferior order,” and therefore “had no rights which the White man was bound to respect.” This also meant that Scott had no legal standing to bring suit in a court law and clarified that the children of slaves inherited their chattel status from their parents; indeed, slave parents had no rights over their children. In sum, the Court held that according to the Constitution’s framers, it was “too clear for dispute” that Blacks were “not intended to be included” in the U.S. polity. The Court’s decision on the Missouri Compromise and the larger question of federalism and states’ rights was equally sweeping. This was only the second time the Court had used its power of judicial review to strike down an act of Congress. Reasoning that the Missouri Compromise deprived lawful citizens of their property and imposed national power onto states’ rights to decide for themselves whether to allow the institution of chattel slavery, the Court held that the law was “not warranted by the Constitution, and [was] therefore void.”
Outcomes of the Decision Decisive as it was, the Dred Scott ruling was both a brief and dubious victory for supporters of slavery. On the one hand, it strengthened their hand considerably. Indeed, the Court’s decision was not entirely surprising given that several of the justices were themselves slave-owners. In this respect, the decision is notable in that the justices’ personal interests seemed to trump the standard considerations of legal doctrine and case precedent. Congressional Democrats apparently played a role here as well: As the case was wending its way through the federal court system, legislators passed the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. Condemned by abolitionist Frederick Douglass as “stand[ing] alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation,” this law made even free Blacks vulnerable to capture and
absorption into the chattel slave system. On the other hand, by severely restricting the earlier compromise approach to slavery, the Dred Scott decision energized abolitionists, intensified the conflict between the northern and southern states, and is thus widely considered to be the first shot in the Civil War. The decision also illustrated the significance of race in U.S. society during the antebellum era. First, the decision validated Whites’ deeply rooted precepts of Black inferiority. Second, the case restricted the concept of citizenship for both enslaved and free Blacks. Third, the Court rendered a decisive—and ultimately divisive—articulation of the relationship between the national government and the states during a crucial stage of the development of the U.S. system of federalism. Finally, the slow pace of this case symbolized its significance for U.S. law and society. The litigation lasted 11 years, and the final decision (exceeding 100 pages) was one of the longest rendered by the Court to that time.
Epilogue The postscript to Dred Scott v. Sandford is a noteworthy tale of one slave-owning family’s benign relationship with its chattel. Soon after the decision, one of Peter Blow’s sons purchased Scott and his family and emancipated them all. For the first time, the Scotts were able to live as free people. Sadly, however, their liberty was short-lived. Dred Scott died of tuberculosis in 1858; his wife and oldest daughter soon followed him. Yet in the end, the tenacity of this “small, pleasant-looking Negro” reinvigorated the abolitionist movement, set into motion the events that ultimately ended slavery, and paved the way to full citizenship status for U.S. citizens of African descent. Christina Rivers See also Abolitionism, The Movement; Abolitionism, The People; African American Studies; Civil Rights Movement; Emancipation Proclamation; Slavery
Further Readings
Douglass, Frederick. 1852. “The Hypocrisy of American Slavery, July 4, 1852.” Internet Modern History Sourcebook. Retrieved August 17, 2007, from http://www .fordham.edu/halsall/mod/douglass-hypo.html Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1957).
Drug Use
Fehrenbacher, Don Edward. 1981. The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Hayes, Floyd, ed. 2000. A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African-American Studies. 3rd ed. San Diego, CA: Collegiate Press. Higginbotham, A. Leon. 1996. Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process. New York: Oxford University Press. Higginbotham, F. Michael. 2001. Race Law: Cases, Commentary and Questions. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Hopkins, Vincent C. 1967. Dred Scott’s Case. New York: Russell & Russell. Irons, Peter. 1999. A People’s History of the Supreme Court. New York: Penguin Putnam.
DRUG USE Despite empirical evidence to the contrary, the common misperception that members of racial and ethnic minority groups use illicit and legal psychoactive substances at higher rates than White people persists. These false beliefs have had social and legal consequences, including perpetuation of stereotypes, stigmatization, discrimination, and race-based legislation, all of which have had disproportionately negative impacts on members of minority groups. This entry analyzes data from large-scale surveys about drug use, considers theories that are useful in explaining racial/ethnic differences in drug use, and discusses racial differences in the application of drug laws, using criminal justice system data on arrests and incarceration. The entry concludes with a discussion of U.S. drug policies that have contributed to substantial racial differences in the application of drug laws, and consequently, a significant overrepresentation of African Americans in arrests and incarcerations. To understand the relationship between race/ ethnicity and drug use, it is necessary to first define the term drug use. In common language, drug use usually refers to the use of illegal substances; however, in this entry, the term refers to the use of any psychoactive substance. This definition thus encompasses both illegal (e.g., marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine) and legal (e.g., alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical) drugs.
419
Drug Use Patterns by Race/Ethnicity Data from a large-scale probability survey of drug use across the five major racial/ethnic groups in the United States—Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asian/Pacific Islanders—shows that, with the exception of Native Americans, racial/ethnic minorities are generally no more likely than are White people to use legal or illegal drugs. Among adolescents, Native Americans and Whites are most likely to use legal and illegal drugs. The same holds true for legal drug use among adults; however, African American adults are slightly more likely to use illegal drugs than adults who belong to other racial/ethnic groups. Two issues arise from this research. First, although substantial differences in drug use exist within each of these large groups, most of the available data on drug use do not typically allow for more detailed comparisons among subgroups. Second, methodological concerns related to surveys may influence reported drug use by race/ethnic group. One of these concerns is specific to school-based surveys and the differential dropout rates of members of certain minority groups. Some researchers have suggested that the higher levels of drug use reported by White adolescents may be related to the fact that disadvantaged minority students who become more heavily involved with both legal and illegal drugs may be more likely than White students to drop out of school or show high rates of truancy. If this is the case, school-based surveys will underestimate rates of drug use among minorities. More generally, some research has suggested that both adolescent and adult minorities may be less likely to honestly report sensitive behaviors such as substance use. Legal Drugs
With those caveats, data from the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), collected from a large-scale probability sample and published by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), indicate that Native Americans and Whites generally report the highest levels of alcohol and problematic alcohol use, among both adolescents (aged 12 to 17) and adults (aged 18 and older). In the NSDUH, “heavy drinking” (defined as consuming five or more drinks in a row on at least 5 days in the month before the survey) was reported by 3.3% of White, 3.2% of Native American, 2.2% of Hispanic, 0.6% of African American, and 0.1% of
420
Drug Use
Asian adolescents. Among adults, heavy drinking was reported by 9.5% of Native Americans, 7.8% of Whites, 6.7% of Hispanics, 5.2% of African Americans, and 2.6% of Asians. With respect to past month tobacco use by adults, NSDUH data indicate that 45.6% of Native Americans, 33.4% of Whites, 31.9% of African Americans, 27.3% of Hispanics, and 20.9% of Asians reported such use. Use and abuse of prescription pharmaceutical drugs have become an increasing concern in recent years in the United States, and data on the abuse of such drugs reveals racial/ethnic differences that are similar to those seen for alcohol and tobacco. In the NSDUH data, abuse of prescription drugs was defined as the nonmedical use of any prescription-type (excluding “over-the counter”) drug in the past month. Among adolescents in the NSDUH, such abuse was reported by 4.4% of Native Americans, 4.4% of Whites, 3.9% of Hispanics, 3.0% of African Americans, and 2.2% of Asians. With respect to specific classes of pharmaceutical drugs, a 2005 study found that Whites were about three times more likely to use antidepressants than were Blacks and Hispanics. Collectively these (and other) data on the use and abuse of legal drugs across racial and ethnic groups reveal that, among both adolescents and adults, Native Americans and Whites are more likely, whereas Asians, African Americans, and Hispanics are substantially less likely, to report use and abuse. Illegal Dru ugs
One of the prevailing beliefs about race/ethnicity and drug use is that minorities consume illegal drugs at significantly higher rates than do Whites; however, extensive research has revealed that this is generally not the case. Instead, several studies indicate that among adolescents and young adults, African Americans report consistently low patterns of illegal drug use. In fact, with the exception of Asians, African Americans are the group least likely to report nearly all forms of illegal drug use. More specifically, data from the 2002 NSDUH reveal that Black, Hispanic, and Asian adolescents are less likely to report using illegal drugs in the past year than are Whites. For example, 24% of White adolescents reported illegal drug use in the previous year, compared with 18.5% of Blacks, 20.8% of Hispanics, and 10.6% of Asians. Native American adolescents were the most likely to
report the use of marijuana and other illicit drugs in the previous year (29.4% and 33.5% respectively). Among adults (aged 26 and over), survey data reveal that Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics report fairly similar patterns of illegal drug use, with Asians reporting the lowest levels of use. Data from the 2002 NSDUH indicate that 4.8% of Asian, 10.2% of White, 10.5% of Hispanic, 10.5% of Native American, and 13.5% of Black adults reported past-year use of any illegal drug.
Explaining Patterns of Drug Use Research focusing on explanations of racial/ethnic differences in substance use and abuse has emphasized the importance of socioeconomic differences across these groups. For example, the data discussed earlier reveal that, although the use of illegal substances by African American adolescents is relatively modest, illegal drug use by African American adults is comparatively high. Research has suggested that these comparatively higher rates of use among Black adults is related to poverty, joblessness, and a lack of educational opportunity, all of which can lead to drug use as a coping mechanism. Similarly, high patterns of both legal and illegal substance use among Native Americans can be attributed largely to the fact that, as a group, Native Americans in the United States experience extreme levels of social and economic disadvantage. With respect to the comparatively modest rates of both legal and illegal substance use evidenced among Asians, research has similarly focused on Asians’ relatively high social standing in the United States. Research has also suggested that lower levels of substance use by Asian youth are related to the commitment to education among Asian families. As such, Asian youth, who as a group devote more time to their studies, spend less time in peer-oriented activities that facilitate substance use.
Criminal Justice System Data Although the survey data reviewed earlier reveal that Blacks and Hispanics are not significantly more likely to use illegal drugs than are Whites, criminal justice system data paint a different picture. For example, it is estimated that 13% of all users of illegal drugs in the United States are African American, yet 38% of those arrested, 59% of those prosecuted, and 75% of those incarcerated for drug offenses are African
421
1.2
3.5
1.0
1.0
0.3
Inhalants
Analgesics
Tranquilizers
Stimulants
Sedatives
0.7
0.2
0.0
1.3
0.2
0.1
0.6
0.3
Cocaine
Crack
Heroin
All Hallucinogens³
LSD
PCP
Ecstasy
Methamphetamine
0.6
1.4
0.0
0.1
2.4
0.2
0.2
2.5
20.0
0.2
1.7
1.9
4.9
0.6
19.1
67.1
52.1
18–25
0.3
0.1
0.0
0.0
0.2
0.0
0.1
0.5
4.2
0.2
0.4
0.8
1.3
0.1
6.2
57.4
30.7
26+
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.1
0.2
0.0
0.0
0.0
7.1
0.1
0.2
0.3
2.6
0.6
0.6
11.1
8.8
12–17
0.1
1.0
0.2
0.0
1.4
0.0
0.1
0.8
15.6
0.0
0.1
0.4
2.9
0.3
5.7
48.3
33.5
18–25
Black
0.0
0.1
0.1
0.0
0.2
0.3
1.6
2.2
5.7
0.1
0.1
0.2
1.3
0.0
5.1
43.6
31.6
26+
0.0
4.8
1.2
4.8
5.6
0.4
0.9
4.8
16.8
0.0
0.0
1.2
3.6
2.3
3.2
21.7
29.7
12–17
1.5
0.7
0.0
1.2
5.0
0.1
0.4
3.2
20.1
0.0
2.7
8.0
7.0
0.1
11.0
58.2
53.9
18–25
0.2
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.3
0.0
1.1
1.1
2.2
0.0
0.2
0.6
0.2
0.0
10.2
45.5
43.8
26+
Native American
0.0
0.2
0.0
0.5
0.6
0.0
0.0
0.0
1.4
0.0
0.1
0.8
1.8
0.9
0.1
7.2
3.8
12–17
0.0
0.6
0.0
0.2
0.6
0.0
0.3
0.8
7.2
0.0
0.3
0.3
0.3
0.3
7.2
49.1
27.9
18–25
Asian
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.2
0.0
0.0
0.1
0.8
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.4
1.1
1.7
39.8
19.5
26+
0.3
0.6
0.2
0.3
1.1
0.1
0.2
0.9
6.9
0.0
0.5
0.3
3.4
1.0
2.2
16.7
11.8
12–17
Notes: ¹ Data for “legal” prescription drugs represents the percentage of persons who used these drugs without a doctor’s prescription. ² “Heavy alcohol” refers to the percentage of persons who reported consuming five or more drinks on at least five separate occasions in the past 30 days. ³ Includes LSD, PCP, ecstasy, peyote, and psilocybin.
Source: National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2002.
9.1
Marijuana
Illegal
3.3
20.1
Alcohol
Heavy Alcohol²
18.3
Tobacco
Legal¹
12–17
White
Percentage of Persons Using Drugs in the Past 30 Days, by Age and Race, 2002
Age Group
Table 1
0.4
0.6
0.1
0.1
0.8
0.3
0.1
1.7
11.1
0.2
0.5
0.9
3.1
0.2
9.6
49.0
33.2
18–25
Hispanic
0.3
0.1
0.0
0.0
0.1
0.0
0.1
0.5
1.9
0.0
0.3
0.2
1.9
0.2
5.9
46.3
25.7
26+
422
Drug Use
American. Almost 40% of Blacks incarcerated in state prisons were sentenced for the violation of drug laws. More Blacks are sent to state prisons for drug offenses (38%) than for the commission of violent crimes (27%). More specifically with regard to crack cocaine, more than 80% of those sentenced for crack offenses are African American, even though more than two-thirds of crack users are White or Hispanic. These racial disproportions in the application of drug laws are at least partially related to the fact that drug law enforcement is concentrated in large urban areas, where Blacks are more likely to reside; the disproportions are also a product of drug legislation.
Legislation and Enforcement of Drug Laws Historically, drug legislation in the United States and at least some other Western nations has been influenced by perceptions that the primary users of, and traffickers in, psychoactive substances are members of minority groups. For example, legislation banning opium in states such as California in the late 1800s was influenced by the belief that the drug was used primarily by Chinese immigrants. Similarly, cocaine was improperly identified as a narcotic drug and included as a banned substance in the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Act, largely because of its alleged association with Blacks. In this period, there was also the belief, widely promoted in the media, that the use of cocaine gave Blacks superhuman qualities and increased the likelihood that they would commit violent offenses against Whites. At least one contributing factor in the passage of the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act was the perception that Mexican immigrants were among the main traffickers of marijuana. Recent developments in U.S. drug legislation have similarly been at least partially based on the perception that the users of certain drugs are members of minority groups. In the mid-1980s, the media promoted the image that crack cocaine was primarily used by African Americans and devoted significant attention to the issue of crack babies. The association of crack with African Americans facilitated the passage of the 1986 federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which provided that a first-time offender convicted of possession of 5.01 grams of crack cocaine would be subject to a mandatory minimum penalty of 5 years imprisonment. However, under the same legislation, the 5-year mandatory minimum sentence did not apply until an individual possessed more than 500 grams of powder cocaine.
Several studies have demonstrated that this law has been disproportionately applied to African Americans, and in the mid-1990s, the U.S. Sentencing Commission noted that the legislation was racially discriminatory with respect to its impact. The Sentencing Commission recommended that the 100-to-1 quantity ratio between powder and crack cocaine be reduced to 1-to-1; as of early 2008 no change in the legislation had been made. However, in December, 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in a pair of decisions that federal judges may use discretion and depart from the strict guidelines. The end result, even without further Congressional action, will be to reduce some sentences given to offenses involving crack cocaine. Additional legislation that has been racially discriminatory in its impact includes “school zone” policies, which have been passed at the federal level and within several states. These laws provide enhanced mandatory minimum prison sentences for individuals convicted of trafficking in drugs within a specified distance (usually 1,000 feet) of schools and other locations where children congregate. A study examining the enforcement of these laws in Massachusetts found that 80% of those sentenced under such statutes were members of racial/ethnic minority groups, even though little evidence suggested that members of these groups were more likely to be involved in drug trafficking in school zones. A similar study focusing on school zone laws in the state of New Jersey found that African Americans and Hispanics, who constitute 27% of the state’s population, made up 96% of prison inmates in New Jersey whose most serious offense was a school zone violation. Racism and ethnocentrism have also led to the tendency of U.S. officials and public opinion to attribute blame for domestic drug problems to foreign (typically developing) countries. In the 1940s and 1950s, there were allegations by U.S. drug officials (in particular, Harry Anslinger, Director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics) that the United States’s emerging heroin problem was the result of communist China’s attempt to import large amounts of heroin to the United States. In the 21st century, production of illegal drugs is often associated with developing countries such as Colombia and Afghanistan, and much less attention is given to the demand created for these products from industrial countries and the critical processing and distribution network system within the industrial countries. Clayton Mosher and Nicholas Parsons
Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt (1868–1963)
See also Crime and Race; Criminal Processing; Deviance and Race; Gangs; Police
Further Readings
Gall v. United States, No. 06-7949 (2007). Kimbrough v. United States, No. 06-6330 (2007). Mosher, C. and S. Akins. 2007. Drugs and Drug Policy—The Control of Consciousness Alteration. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. 2003. National Survey on Drug Use and Health Report. Rockville, MD: Office of Applied Studies. Tonry, M. 1995. Malign Neglect. New York: Oxford University Press. Vega, W. and A. Gil. 1998. Drug Use and Ethnicity in Early Adolescence. New York: Plenum Press. Wallace, J. 1999. “Explaining Race Differences in Adolescent and Young Adult Drug Use: The Role of Racialized Social Systems.” Drugs and Society 14:21–33.
DU BOIS, WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT (1868–1963) William Edward Burghardt (known as W. E. B.) Du Bois was a pioneer in the study of race relations in the United States. Educator, author, editor, and social and
William Edward Burghardt (W. E. B ) Du Bois. Du Bois (1868–1963) became arguably the most notable political activist on behalf of African Americans during the first half of the 20th century. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-16767.
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political activist, Du Bois devoted his life to addressing the problems associated with racial prejudice and discrimination in U.S. society. Du Bois was also one of the pioneers of the U.S. sociological tradition. The Philadelphia Negro (1899) is a classic study in urban sociology. The Atlanta Sociological Laboratory represented one of the earliest U.S. sociological traditions, and the Atlanta University Annual Conferences generated classic empirical studies on African American social problems. These lesser-known facts help paint a more complete picture of Du Bois’s understanding of race relations in the United States. This entry describes his contributions.
W. E. B. Du Bois: An Overview Du Bois was born February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was an only child. By the time he graduated from Great Barrington High School in 1884, he was already publishing articles in Black newspapers. He received a scholarship to attend Fisk University and graduated in 1888. He received a second bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Harvard University in 1890 and earned an MA in history from Harvard in 1891. He was awarded funds to pursue 2 years of additional graduate training in Germany and received a PhD in History from Harvard in 1895. He was the first African American to obtain a PhD from Harvard. His dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America: 1638–1870, was subsequently published (1896). Du Bois accepted a position teaching classics at Wilberforce University, a historically Black college, in 1894. Two years later, he accepted an offer from the University of Pennsylvania to conduct a social study of African American life in Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward. Before completing the project, Du Bois accepted a position at Atlanta University, another historically Black school. He remained at Atlanta University from 1897 to 1910 as a professor and director of the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory and the Atlanta University Conferences for the study of Negro problems. During his first tenure at Atlanta University, he wrote The Souls of Black Folk (1903). The Souls of Black Folk is one of Du Bois’s bestknown works. This brief collection of essays has become a literary classic outlining the plight of African Americans in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. Blending sorrow songs, stories, and ethnographic description, Du Bois provided a portrait of life “within the veils” of prejudice,
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discrimination, and racism where one’s identity was determined largely by the “color line.” In a society fragmented by race and ethnicity, double consciousness became the norm. He hypothesized that African Americans experienced themselves as both individuals and as people seen through a racial lens. Du Bois thus became a leading voice in the African Americans’ quest for dignity, respect, and acceptance within the larger U.S. society. This voice became even stronger during the years (1910–1934) that he served as the editor of The Crisis, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)’s leading publication. A prolific writer, Du Bois continued his quest for racial equity throughout his life. This was evidenced in such works as Darkwater (1920), Dusk of Dawn (1940), and Color and Democracy (1945). He returned to Atlanta University from 1934–1944 as chair of the Sociology Department and once again worked for the NAACP from 1944 to 1948. In 1950, he mounted an unsuccessful bid for one of New York’s senate seats. At this point in his life, Du Bois became increasingly interested in international peace efforts and was affiliated with such organizations as the Council of African Affairs and the Peace Information Center. In 1951, he was indicted as a foreign agent but was acquitted. He chronicled this experience in the book, In Battle for Peace (1952). However, from 1952 to 1958, he was unable to obtain a passport. Du Bois’s political stand increasingly moved to the left in his later years, and he officially joined the U.S. Communist Party in 1961. Becoming more disillusioned with the lack of progress in the quest for racial equality, Du Bois left the United States for Ghana in 1961, and at the request of that country’s government, he began editorial work on the Encyclopedia Africana. He also became a citizen of Ghana in 1963. Having contributed so much to the understanding of race relations in the United States, Du Bois died in Ghana on August 27, 1963, just as the civil rights march on Washington cast U.S. race relations into the international spotlight. Although these events characterize the more familiar aspects of Du Bois’ life, his sociological legacy is now receiving more recognition within sociological circles. Du Bois was one of the pioneers of the U.S. sociological tradition. The Philadelphia Negro (1899) is cited as one of the first studies in urban sociology, and The Negro Church (1903) appears to be the first book length empirical study of U.S. religious life.
Writing on such diverse issues as education, work, health care, family, crime, and religion, Du Bois addressed many U.S. social problems. In fact, Du Bois’s early sociological endeavors provided the empirical foundation for the positions articulated in his more popular writing on the intersection of race and society.
A Classic Study of African American Urban Life While completing his doctoral work for Harvard University, Du Bois was provided with an opportunity to study abroad. At the University of Berlin, Du Bois enrolled in one of Gustav von Schmoller’s sociology seminars. Schmoller’s focus on the interaction of social and economic factors, the collection of empirical data, and social reform had a lasting impact on Du Bois’s sociological work. Du Bois also attended some of Max Weber’s lectures and adopted his position on researcher neutrality. Although Du Bois aspired to offer sociology classes in his initial teaching appointment at Wilberforce University, this did not materialize. An opportunity to conduct a social study did come 2 years later. Affiliating with the University of Pennsylvania, Du Bois spent 15 months (1896–1897) conducting a house-to-house survey of Philadelphia’s African American population residing in the Seventh Ward. Working within the Progressive tradition that was popular at the time, Du Bois assumed that if he could “present the facts,” the general public and persons in authority could make informed decisions. Du Bois believed that if the pervasive nature of racial inequality in the United States were documented, social change and reform would be forthcoming. In his comprehensive study of African American quality of life in a large urban setting, The Philadelphia Negro, Du Bois addressed such topics as population composition and age structure, African American migration streams, marital status and family life, educational and work opportunities, racial differences in mortality, social and organizational life, crime and poverty, alcoholism, race relations, intermarriage, and voting rights. With each topic, claims were supported by presenting data from multiple sources. In particular, Du Bois used available census data, information gathered from his comprehensive survey of the Seventh Ward and ethnographic descriptions of some of the specific households he visited. The findings from one source were used to validate the findings
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from another. Today, this approach is known as methodological triangulation. This validation technique became a trademark of Du Bois’s sociological approach. Upon closer examination, one recognizes that The Philadelphia Negro is a social problems primer; however, rarely is Du Bois mentioned in the social problems literature. Furthermore, most introductory sociology courses begin with a discussion of Émile Durkheim’s Suicide. This study is presented as a pioneering example of sociology’s empirical basis. Though published only 2 years before Du Bois’s seminal study, Durkheim’s study relied on extensive use of secondary data. On the other hand, Du Bois blended secondary analysis with findings derived from an extensive social survey and ethnographic description. Thus, The Philadelphia Negro belongs among the classic empirical sociological works. Throughout his career, Du Bois was interested in social policy. In The Philadelphia Negro and, later, in the publications of the Atlanta University Studies on Negro problems, Du Bois included a recommendations section. Often he appealed to actions that could be taken by the White and the African American communities. In The Philadelphia Negro, he called upon the African American community to speak out against instances of prejudice and discrimination. He also believed that strengthening the family would curtail crime. The value of education should continue to be stressed, he thought, and the family and religious institutions could provide young people with the needed social support systems. Likewise, the White community was called to curtail discriminatory practices in the workplace. African American economic success was viewed as a necessary foundation for social and economic advancement. Cooperation on these key issues was necessary.
The Atlanta Tradition During his first tenure at Atlanta University, Du Bois was the key figure associated with the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory. An undergraduate and graduate course of study in sociology was provided. Annual conferences were held featuring research findings on important African American quality of life issues. The proceedings of each conference were published, and financial support, particularly in the later years, was received from sources outside the university. Though the University of Chicago is generally viewed as representing the first U.S.
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“school” of sociology, the sociology program at Atlanta University at the beginning of 20th century was vibrant and challenges this long-standing assumption. Du Bois crafted an undergraduate and graduate program that featured the study of primary sources, extensive library research, training in statistical analysis, and student involvement in data collection and ethnography. Undergraduate sociology majors received a strong liberal arts training during their first 2 years. The junior year was devoted to the study of economics, and the senior year was devoted to the study of sociology. The impact of Schmoller and Weber’s discussions on the interaction between the economy and society was reflected in the design of the undergraduate curriculum. Believing that the available sociology texts of the time did not adequately address the social issues faced by the African American community, Du Bois sought to train a generation of scholars who would be able to study and document changing patterns in African American quality of life. During their senior year, undergraduate sociology students were introduced to census data, were trained in basic statistical analysis, and were assigned extensive library readings addressing important social issues affecting the African American community. On several occasions, they were given an opportunity to assist the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory staff in collecting data on the Atlanta community. The applied, practical focus of the curriculum was even more evident at the graduate level. Graduate students took an active role in the work of the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory and the activities of the annual Atlanta University Conferences for the study of Negro problems. Du Bois did not want students to merely study sociology. Rather, he was more interested in training a generation of scholars who could present the world with “empirical facts” that would document racial inequality. These facts would dispel ignorance and lead to social change, he believed, and this was the motivation behind the annual studies of African American social issues.
The Empirical Study of African American Social Problems Du Bois assumed the leadership of the Atlanta University Conferences for the study of Negro problems with the 1898 conference, the third. The shift to a more empirical focus was immediate. Grounded in
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the tradition of methodological triangulation, these studies used available census data, surveys administered by the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory, and ethnographic data to document patterns of racial stratification. Over a 10-year period, a set of social issues was to be explored. Topics included such issues as social mobility (social betterment and social uplift), grade school and college education, business and employment opportunities, religion and morals, crime, health, and the family. This cycle of studies was to form a baseline that would then be repeated every 10 years. Hence, a research program was established that would enable Du Bois and persons affiliated with the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory to document changes in the patterns of racial inequality. What were some of the major findings of these conferences? The 1908 study on the Negro family, The Negro American Family, addressed such issues as marriage practices, the legacy of slavery, family size and economic factors affecting families, social class differences in family life, and case studies of family life in urban and rural settings. In this study, Du Bois noted that African Americans were much less likely to own their own homes and to have experienced a significant degree of financial independence. These factors obviously affected the economic quality of African American family life. Religion was the theme of the 1903 conference. In The Negro Church, Du Bois argued that the Black Church functioned as the center of African American life. In addition to providing an avenue for worship, the Black Church was responsible for many of the currently available educational opportunities for African Americans. Likewise, the Black Church provided a forum for leadership development, and functioned as a mechanism of social support. Cultural activities were sponsored, and benevolent aid was often made available to members of the community. However, by the time Du Bois helped coordinate the second study on religious and moral life, Morals and Manners among Negro Americans (1914), he was becoming disillusioned with the Black Church’s power to effect change. Turning to the issue of crime, Some Notes on Crime, Particularly in Georgia (1904), Du Bois linked crime to social status and the status inequality generated by slavery and its continued legacy. Du Bois was particularly concerned about the lack of opportunities for African American youth and young adults with respect to employment and leisure time. He appealed to the White community to partner with
the African American community in encouraging prison and judicial reform and stressed the need for the religious, educational, and business communities to play a leading role in strengthening overall moral standards. Here, Du Bois was advocating structural changes as well as changes in social conscience. In the 1906 study of health related issues, Health and Physique of the Negro American, Du Bois identified race-specific differences in mortality. Availability of services, access to financial resources and questionable health insurance practices were all cited as factors affecting racial health disparities. Du Bois commented on the number of deaths from infectious diseases and noted how mortality was linked to an area’s social and economic development. To begin correcting the existing health disparities, Du Bois advocated that more attention needed to be devoted to improving the sanitation standards of available health facilities, providing better trained medical staff as well as placing more emphasis on the practice of preventive medicine. Four of the Atlanta University Studies were devoted to education: The College-Bred Negro (1900), The Negro Common School (1901), The College-Bred Negro American (1910), and The Common School and the Negro American (1911). Education was perceived as a major source of social mobility, and racial disparities in education were quite pronounced. Consequently, Du Bois was a strong advocate of teacher training programs. He stressed the need to provide adequately equipped schools and expressed concern over curriculum changes that appeared to track African American children to assume jobs as manual laborers and factory workers. Du Bois also noted that although the White and African American communities paid taxes that were earmarked for school improvements, Black schools received only a small proportion of these funds. Du Bois left Atlanta University in 1910 but continued to be associated with the work of the Atlanta University annual conferences through 1914. Du Bois returned to Atlanta University in 1934 as chair of the Sociology Department and remained there until 1944. During this tenure, he founded Phylon, a social science journal devoted to discussions of race and culture. Du Bois’ interest in Marxism and socialism also increased during this time and was reflected in the sociology curriculum. Du Bois was retired from Atlanta University in 1944 under a cloud of controversy. In his autobiography, he suggests the termination may have been triggered by his efforts to establish cooperative programs
Dutch Americans
of study among the Black land-grant colleges and universities, which could be used to provide a more comprehensive analysis of Negro problems.
Sociological Postscript In his latter writings, Du Bois commented on his involvement with the Atlanta Conferences. He concluded that although the conferences sought to document the presence of racial inequality throughout U.S. life, the studies appeared to have limited impact. It seemed to amount to “Negroes studying Negroes.” However, Du Bois’s sociological legacy is now being rediscovered and publicly recognized. His use of methodological triangulation represents a major contribution to sociological inquiry. The Atlanta Sociological Laboratory is one of the primary voices associated with the development of empirical sociology in the United States. Du Bois’s work in urban sociology, social problems research, and the sociology of religion identifies him as one of U.S. sociology’s founding figures.
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Du Bois, W. E. B. 1920. Darkwater: The Twentieth Century Completion of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Washington, DC: Austin Jenkins. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1940. Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept, introduction by I. Diggs. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1968] 2007. The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois, introductions by W. Sollors and H. L. Gates, Jr. New York: Oxford University Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1978. On Sociology and the Black Community, edited and introduction by D. S. Green and E. D. Driver. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lewis, David, ed. 1995. W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader. New York: John Macrae/Owl Book. Wright, Earl, II. 2002. “Using the Master’s Tools: The Atlanta Sociological Laboratory and American Sociology, 1896–1924.” Sociological Spectrum 22:15–39. Zamir, Shamoon. 1995. Dark Voices: W. E. B. Du Bois and American Thought, 1888–1903. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zuckerman, Phil. 2004. The Social Theory of W. E. B. Du Bois. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Robert A. Wortham See also American Dilemma, An; Black Intellectuals; Color Line; Double Consciousness; Multicultural Education; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Social Inequality; Veil
DUTCH AMERICANS Dutch Americans are the immigrants from The Netherlands, a country of 16.4 million as of 2007, and their descendants. According to the 2000 census,
Further Readings Norway
Du Bois, W. E. B. 1896. The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870 [microform]. Harvard Historical Studies, vol. 1. Library of American civilization. New York: Longmans, Green. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1899] 1996. The Philadelphia Negro, introduction by E. Anderson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1901. The Negro Common School Report of a Social Study Made Under the Direction of Atlanta University; Together with the Proceedings of the Sixth Conference for the Study of the Negro Problems, held at Atlanta University, on May 28th, 1901. Atlanta, GA: University Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] 1971. The Negro American Family. Westport, CT: Negro Universities Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] 1994. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Dover. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] 2003. The Negro Church, edited and introduction by P. Zuckerman, S. L. Barnes, and D. Cady. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Sweden
North Sea
Denmark
United Kingdom Netherlands
Germany
Belgium Luxembourg
Austria
Switzerland France
Italy
Spain
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94,570 people born in The Netherlands resided in the United States, of whom 55.4% were U.S. citizens. This entry will look at the background of immigration from The Netherlands to the United States and the contemporary picture of Dutch Americans.
Immigration Patterns Although Dutch immigration has been continuous since early 17th-century exploration, there are three distinct phases of migration to the United States— during the commercial expansion of the 17th century, between the 19th and 20th centuries, and following World War II. Colonization of New Netherland (present day New York) began because of fur trading ventures chartered by the Dutch West India Company. The colony attracted a small number of Dutch; however, most did not make the colony their permanent home, and many eventually returned home. When England seized control of the colony, this halted most, if not all, immigration from the Netherlands until the mid-19th century. The second wave, referred to as the free immigration period, brought 250,000 Dutch peasants, artisans, and their families to the United States. Many Dutch decided to migrate because of economic opportunities. However, other factors, such as a huge population growth, crop failures, and a pietistic revolt against the Dutch Reformed Church in their homeland, encouraged large numbers of Dutch people to migrate. This “group phase migration” of families, neighborhoods, and religious groups brought more than 20,000 immigrants to the United States between 1845 and 1855. Peak years of immigration took place between 1880 and 1893, 1903 and 1914, and 1920 and 1928. The third wave, following World War II, brought about 80,000 Dutch to the United States.
Contemporary Community In recent years, people from The Netherlands (including the Netherlands Antilles) have sought permanent residency and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2006, about
1,375 Dutch immigrated to the United States annually. About 700 Dutch Americans have become naturalized citizens annually beginning with 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, there were 2,846,575 people of Dutch national origin in the United States. In geographic distribution, the top five states were Michigan, California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida. U.S. Census data figures gave median family income of Dutch Americans $64,202 compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Among famous Dutch Americans are Lenny Dykstra, former professional baseball player; Betty Grable, actress, singer, and dancer; Thomas Edison, inventor and businessman; Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick; Franklin D. and Theodore Roosevelt, former U.S. presidents; Bruce Springsteen, singer and songwriter; Martin van Buren, former U.S. president; and Walt Whitman, poet. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Amish; Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Europe; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Brinks, Herbert J. 1995. Dutch Immigrant Voices, 1850–1930: Correspondence from the USA. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs.gov /ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Lucas, Henry. 1955. Netherlanders in America: Dutch Immigrants to the United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in The Netherlands. Available from http://www.census.gov /population/www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www Van Hinte, Jacob. 1985. Netherlanders in America: A Study of Emigration and Settlement in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries of the United States of America. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.
E the Bronx, and parts of Brooklyn, the availability of reliable transportation connected the outer boroughs and was vital to the future development of northern Manhattan. With the advent of public transportation, Central and Eastern European Jews began migrating from the overcrowded Lower East Side to the area that would become East Harlem. African Americans, Scandinavians, and Finns migrated to East Harlem simultaneously, with the 1920 census reporting twenty-seven different nationalities living in the area. The first Italians arrived in the 1880s as replacement labor for striking Irish trolley track layers and suffered extreme prejudice and discrimination in competition for jobs and housing.
EAST HARLEM East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or in Spanish simply as El Barrio (the neighborhood), is a New York City neighborhood generally bounded by Manhattan’s East 96th Street on the south and East 125th Street on the north, and by 5th Avenue on the west and the East River. Although the neighborhood’s history reflects the racial and ethnic diversity that defines New York City, the area has become identified since the 1930s as the unofficial capital of Puerto Rican New York. This entry describes its history and current environment.
Neighborhood Ethnic History From Puerto Rico to El Barrio
Dutch traders were the first European immigrants to settle in Manhattan following the establishment of Dutch trading posts during the early 1600s and Peter Minuit’s subsequent purchase of Manhattan Island from a native group, possibly the Lenape, in 1626. Modern day East Harlem was named Hellegat, or sinkhole, for the bay that forms along the East River’s curve just above modern-day 96th Street. This part of northern Manhattan became the center of Dutch tobacco cash crops and, as such, was popular as a bucolic country retreat for wealthy New Yorkers. A little over 200 years later, public transportation projects funded by the City of New York began transforming East Harlem. The construction of railroads and tunnels brought German and Irish Catholic construction workers to East Harlem. In addition to providing convenient and inexpensive access to Manhattan,
Migration from Puerto Rico to the U.S. mainland followed the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1898, with little more than 1,000 Puerto Ricans living in the United States by 1910. Made U.S. citizens by the Jones-Shafroth Act in 1917, Puerto Ricans on their home island were ruled by U.S.-appointed governors for the first half of the 20th century. Only at mid-century (1948) did the island elect its first governor, Luis Muñóz Marín, and adopt a new constitution (1952), making it a U.S. commonwealth (a “free associated state”). As a result of the overwhelming U.S. influence in Puerto Rican economic, political, and social development that followed annexation, the island was transformed from a rural, export-oriented, agricultural society into a center for multinational manufacturing primarily in the pharmaceutical, electronic, and chemical industries. 429
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These developments, in turn, gave rise to the outmigration of large numbers of displaced rural workers and their families to the continental United States. Since the 1930s, New York City’s East Harlem has become known as Spanish Harlem, taking on much the same geographical, economic, residential, and symbolic value in the lives of migrant Puerto Ricans that prototypical ethnic enclaves like the Lower East Side had for Eastern European Jews, Harlem has had for African Americans, and Washington Heights has today for Dominicans. Like these other neighborhoods, the geographical area now ethnically identified as Spanish Harlem (and increasingly marketed as “SpaHa” by real estate agents eager to gentrify the area) has a long history of ethnic succession—Dutch, Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, and African Americans—preceding the arrival en masse of the Puerto Ricans.
East Side Story Puerto Ricans began arriving in East Harlem in significant numbers in the 1930s and 1940s, replacing Italians and Jews in the garment industry. Many Italians continued to live in the neighborhood as the Puerto Rican population exploded, leading to competition for scarce educational, housing, and employment resources. Italians and Puerto Ricans found themselves engaged in constant conflict during the next 30 years with the bulk of the violence occurring between opposing street gangs, as highlighted in West Side Story (even if that story takes place in what is now the exclusive Upper West Side of Manhattan). As East Harlem became more crowded, Italians, Jews, and Puerto Ricans began taking advantage of the IRT subway and moving out of East Harlem into the Bronx. This new escape valve was still not enough to prevent the growth of interethnic violence. By 1960, East Harlem was experiencing three-way race riots: African Americans versus Italian Americans versus Puerto Ricans. However, it seems that gang warfare had already peaked in the early 1950s simultaneous with the peak years of Puerto Rican migration. In 1944, a significant wave of 11,000 Puerto Ricans migrated to East Harlem, with an additional 13,500 arriving in 1945—the year air service was introduced between San Juan and New York—and an astounding 40,000 in 1946. The 1950 census counted 187,000 Puerto Ricans in New York, along with another 58,000 second-generation Puerto Rican children, bringing the city’s total to nearly a quarter of a million. The apex of
this wave of migration was reached in 1953 when 58,500 Puerto Ricans arrived in the city. Worsening economic conditions in the city in the second half of the 1950s caused migration to taper off. Still, partly because of a high birth rate among Puerto Rican families, there were between 600,000 and 700,000 persons of Puerto Rican birth or parentage living in the city by 1960. Also by 1960, a significant proportion of all Puerto Ricans were living on the U.S. mainland, with 1.6 million out of a total 3.9 million having moved to or been born in the United States. At the end of the 20th century, the relative proportion of island versus mainland residents is nearly even: The population of Puerto Rico was 3.8 million in 1998, and 3.1 million Puerto Ricans lived on the U.S. mainland. Although the Puerto Rican presence in the city and metro region has remained significant, Puerto Ricans began to disperse to new locations all across the northeastern United States starting in the 1980s, with a growing stream of secondary migration spreading south to Florida along with a renewed return migration back to Puerto Rico itself. By 2000, the Puerto Rican population in East Harlem had plummeted to approximately 35,000.
Today’s Community Today, East Harlem is changing rapidly, with new condominiums, luxury apartment buildings, and bigbox department stores all making life in East Harlem increasingly comfortable for its new middle-class residents and expensive for the working-class. The ongoing debate regarding gentrification in East Harlem has recently intensified with a raft of new ethnographic research and investigative reporting on the transformation of the neighborhood from a working-class Puerto Rican enclave to a diverse, middle-class neighborhood. Although East Harlem has been a cultural center for Puerto Rican migrants since World War II, increased home ownership and rising city rents continue to push many Puerto Ricans out of the neighborhood to more affordable suburban areas including northeastern Pennsylvania, southwestern Connecticut, and upstate New York. At the same time, a small group of collegeeducated, middle-class Puerto Ricans have returned to the neighborhood seeking to reinforce its ethnic identity while, perhaps inadvertently, further gentrifying the area economically. Another recent development in the
Educational Performance and Attainment
neighborhood is the beginning of ethnic succession, with increasing numbers of Dominicans and newly arrived Mexicans moving into the area. As a result, tensions have risen in many shared public and private spaces, such as parks, schools, gardens, and churches, regarding whose culture and traditions will dominate. Added to these challenges has been a decline in the blue-collar, unionized, manufacturing jobs that had initially attracted many Puerto Rican migrants to the mainland, especially to New York City, since the mid-1970s. The subsequent arrival in the city of other immigrant groups (primarily Dominicans and later Mexicans) has meant that working-class Puerto Ricans are increasingly competing with later immigrants in sectors of the labor market where wages have been declining, in which opportunities for mobility are limited, and where working conditions are constantly downgraded. Deteriorating public health in East Harlem has also recently gained the attention of researchers and public health and community activists. In addition to having one of the highest asthma rates in the nation, the community’s health challenges include obesity and diabetes, specifically among African Americans and Hispanics. In May 2007, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released a report citing the lack of healthy food options in East and Central Harlem and noted that these residents are three times more likely to be obese and four times more likely to have diabetes than are their affluent Upper East Side neighbors. This survey found that there are more grocery stores than supermarkets in East Harlem, with very few that offer more nutritious options such as low-fat dairy products and fresh produce. Further, the health department maintains that more adults in East Harlem die from diabetes than in any other part of New York City, at more than double the citywide rate of 22 deaths per 100,000 people. The high prevalence of diabetes in East Harlem—principally type 2— correlates to the neighborhood’s ethnic composition, with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that one in every two children born in 2000 of African American and Hispanic parentage will develop diabetes in their lifetime. Gustavo Agosto-DaFonseca and Ted Henken See also Barrio; Culture of Poverty; Dominican Americans; Gangs; Gentrification; Ghetto; Harlem; Jewish Americans; Puerto Rican Americans; Young Lords
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Further Readings
Berger, Joseph. 2002. “A Puerto Rican Rebirth in El Barrio: After Exodus, Gentrification Changes Face of East Harlem.” The New York Times, December 10. Bourgois, Philippe. [1995] 2000. “El Barrio: A Street History.” Pp. 48–77 in In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Dávila, Arlene. 2004. Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City. Berkeley: University of California Press. Glazer, Nathan and Patrick P. Moynihan. [1963] 1970. Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gordon, C., N. Ghai, M. Purciel, A. Talwalkar, and A. Goodman. 2007. Eating Well in Harlem: How Available Is Healthy Food? New York: New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. May. Retrieved November 27, 2005, from http://www.nyc.gov/html/ doh/downloads/pdf/dpho/dpho-harlem-report2007.pdf Navarro, Mireya. 2000. “Falling Back: Puerto Rican Presence Wanes in New York.” The New York Times, February 28. Navarro, Mireya. 2002. “In Many Churches, Icons Compete for Space: Multiple Shrines to Patron Saints Testify to a Rivalry of the Devout.” The New York Times, May 29. Sánchez Korrol, Virginia E. 1994. From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City. Berkeley: University of California Press. Scott, Janny. 2003. “Here, Poverty and Privilege Are Neighbors: Income Gaps Are a Source of Resentment and Guilt.” The New York Times, March 5. Sharman, Russell Leigh. 2006. The Tenants of East Harlem. Berkeley: University of California Press. Van Dyk, Jere. 1990. “Growing Up in East Harlem.” National Geographic, May:52–75.
EDUCATIONAL PERFORMANCE AND ATTAINMENT Racial and ethnic differences in educational performance and attainment have been an issue of concern for those focused on racial and ethnic inequality. Educational performance refers to students’ behavior on assessments of skills, such as grade point average and test scores. In contrast, educational attainment refers to years of formal schooling or highest degree earned. There is a strong connection between educational attainment and income—those with higher education
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earn more money than do their less educated counterparts. Issues of racial inequality in education have become a greater national concern since the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, which has linked federal funding for public schools to their ability to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in education. This entry describes what is currently known about racial and ethnic differences in educational performance, in terms of scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, and reviews long-term outcomes such as educational attainment, or years of schooling completed. Next, the entry examines different perspectives on why racial/ethnic differences in educational performance continue. Finally, there is a brief discussion of NCLB and educational performance.
Educational Performance Racial and ethnic differences in academic performance are usually measured through the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, which are administered annually to randomly selected students in every state. The students are selected in such a way as to ensure the sample is representative of all elementary school students. The tests are administered in a variety of subjects, such as mathematics, reading, science, and geography, to elementary school students (Grades 3–8). Test scores can range between 0 and 500. The tests are created in such a way that theoretically all students could score 500 points. The tests are designed to measure achievement levels. A basic achievement level indicates a partial mastery of the knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at a given grade. A proficient level indicates a solid academic performance in that students demonstrate competency in challenging subject matter. An advanced level indicates a superior performance. For fourth-grade reading tests, a score of 208 indicates a basic level of mastery, 238 is proficient, and 268 is advanced. For eighth-grade reading tests, a score of 243 indicates a basic level of mastery, 281 is proficient, and 323 is advanced. For fourthgrade mathematics, a score of 214 indicates a basic level of mastery, 249 is proficient, and 282 is advanced. For eighth grade, the numbers are 262 basic, 299 proficient and 333 advanced. Despite early drops in the educational gap between Whites and Blacks in achievement after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, recent statistics
demonstrate that racial and ethnic differences in educational performance continue. Although the racial gap was decreasing, there was a noticeable leveling off after 1988, and, in some years, an increase in the gap between Black and White students. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the gap no longer seems to be increasing, and for some grades and racial and ethnic groups, the gap seems to be decreasing. Table 1 provides the most recently available average scores for Black, Asian American, Hispanic American, Native American, and White fourth-grade and eighth-grade students in mathematics and reading, the two areas directly addressed in the NCLB. Race and ethnicity are based on self-reports. The results demonstrate that some minority groups are doing poorly, but students in one minority group—Asian Americans—are scoring equal to or greater than White students in the key subjects of reading and math. As Table 1 shows, among fourth graders, Black students have the lowest test scores in reading and math. The average score for Black, Hispanic, and American Indian fourth graders in reading is below even the basic level of achievement. Hispanics and American Indians also score low in math and reading. White fourth graders have the highest reading score, beating Asian Americans by one point. In contrast, Asian American students have the highest math score, surpassing White students by five points. When eighth graders are examined, the pattern remains the same. Black students have the lowest reading and math scores, followed by Hispanic and American Indian students. Among eighth graders, Asian American students have higher scores than Whites in reading as well as math, although the difference in reading is only one point. Several questions emerge from these data. First, what impact do these observed differences have on long-term outcomes like educational attainment? Second, why are Black, Hispanic, and American Indian students doing poorly but Asian American and White students seem to do so well? Third, are these observed racial and ethnic disparities getting better as time passes?
Educational Attainment When long-term outcomes such as educational attainment are considered, racial and ethnic differences remain. As Table 1 shows, significantly more Whites graduate from high school than Blacks or Native Americans. For Hispanics, the number is even lower;
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Table 1
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Educational Performance and Attainment by Race and Ethnicity White, Non-Hispanic
Black, Non-Hispanic
Hispanic
Asian/Pacific Islander
American Indian/ Alaska Native
Fourth Gradea: Reading Math
228 246
199 220
201 225
227 251
205 227
Eighth Grade: Reading Math
269 288
242 254
245 261
270 294
251 266
Educational Attainmentb: Percentage High School Graduate Percentage College Graduate Percentage Advanced Degree
85.5% 27.0% 9.8%
72.3% 14.3% 4.8%
52.4% 10.4% 3.8%
80.4%c 44.1% 17.4%
70.9% 11.5% 3.9%
Notes: aSource: National Assessment of Educational Progress. 2005. “The Nation’s Report Card.” Washington, DC: The National Center for Educational Statistics. Available from http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2005 b
Statistics are based on the population 25 years old and older. Source: Bauman. Kurt J. and Nikki L. Graf. 2003. “Educational Attainment: 2000.” C2KBR-24. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. Available from http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/ c2kbr-24.pdf c
Data based on Asian Americans only.
52.4% of Hispanics aged 25 and older have a high school diploma, whereas 85.5% of Whites do. When college degrees are considered, Asian Americans are the group most likely to have a college degree. Hispanics are the group least likely to have a degree, followed closely by American Indians, then Blacks. A similar pattern emerges when advanced degrees are considered. Overall, the results seem to suggest that Black, Hispanic, and American Indians have lower test scores and less overall educational than Whites and Asian Americans do.
Explanations of Differences There are several perspectives on why racial and ethnic disparities in academic performance continue. The most frequently touted view is that the observed differences are the result of socioeconomic differences. This perspective maintains that the observed differences are a result of disparities in the education and income of Black, Hispanic, and Native American students. Black, Hispanic, and Native American families, on average, have less education and less income than do their White and Asian counterparts. This argument maintains that as social class differences among racial and ethnic groups decrease, disparities in
educational performance and attainment will also decrease. Critics of the social class perspective argue that more than social class matters, because when socioeconomic factors like parental education and income are held constant, the racial and ethnic gap in achievement, though diminishing, remains. Therefore, other perspectives have to be considered. Another common rationale for the continued racial and ethnic gap in achievement is culture differences. This perspective is called by many different names such as “culture of poverty” or “cultural deprivation theory.” Regardless of the name, the basic premise is the same: The observed educational differences among racial and ethnic groups are the result of cultural differences. Black, Hispanic, and Native American cultures are seen as being outside the mainstream and as including elements such as out-of-wedlock births and high unemployment that are detrimental to educational success. In contrast, Asian American culture is praised for its focus on hard work and other qualities linked to educational success. Opponents of the culture argument usually take one of two approaches— either they note that the perspective is based on gross overgeneralizations or they argue that the observed traits are really responses to poverty rather than being endemic to any particular community.
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An alternative approach is to argue that the alleged cultural differences are a direct response to the racial barriers or to structural limitations imposed on ethnic minorities. One well-known theory from this camp is John Ogbu’s oppositional culture or cultural ecology argument. According to this perspective, there are two types of minority groups, voluntary and involuntary minorities. Black and Hispanic Americans are considered involuntary minorities because Blacks originally came to the United States as slaves, and Mexican Americans, the largest Hispanic group, trace their origins to the annexation of Mexican territory at the end of the Mexican-American War. According to this perspective, involuntary minorities believe that discrimination will result in smaller returns on their investment in education than voluntary minorities can expect. This perceived discrimination leads involuntary minorities to put forth less effort than Whites and voluntary minorities. The perspective also maintains that voluntary minorities compare themselves with those in their native lands and are therefore more optimistic about their chances for economic success and put forth more effort in school. Research related to this topic has been mixed. A final cultural difference perspective is the idea of cultural capital. This argument maintains that in the school setting, certain behaviors and cultural attitudes, such as language and recreational activities, are valued more than others. The valued culture is that of the elite or dominant group. In this case, middle-class White American schools are seen as reinforcing existing hierarchies by rewarding students who have the valued cultural capital and penalizing those who lack it. From this perspective, the devaluation of racial and ethnic minority cultures results in poor school performance and attainment. Overall, there are numerous perspectives on why the racial and educational gap in achievement remains, and no agreement exists about which perspective best explains the gap. Not surprisingly then, there is also no consensus about what can be done to eliminate the racial and ethnic gap in achievement.
Federal Legislation: No Child Left Behind “No Child Left Behind,” put forth by President George W. Bush and originally approved by a bipartisan Congress, is one approach to try to end the racial and ethnic gap in achievement. The federal NCLB
legislation originally passed in 2001. The four main principles of the NCLB legislation were stronger accountability for educational results, expanded flexibility and more local control regarding how federal monies can be spent, expanded options for parents such as charter schools, and an emphasis on teaching methods that have been proven successful in increasing educational performance. Contained within the accountability principle is the call to hold schools more accountable for racial and ethnic differences in educational performance. Hence, all test scores have to be presented by racial and ethnic groups. The ultimate goal is for all students in Grades 3 through 8 to be proficient in reading and math. Connected to this is the mandate that each school show improvement in test score performance every year. If schools do not show improvement over time, they will become subject to corrective action and even restructuring. One key penalty for failing schools is that students can leave these schools, taking the money that the federal government provides for each student with them. Critics claim this remedy takes money away from schools that need it the most, further exacerbating existing problems within the schools. Since the implementation of NCLB, there has been some reduction in racial and ethnic gap as seen in the NAEP tests. The biggest reductions have been seen in math. Among fourth graders, the gap between Black and White students has dropped 5 points since 2000 (31 vs. 26 points). For Hispanics, the drop has been 7 points. Among eighth graders, math score disparities also decreased. Among Black and White students, the gap dropped by 6 points and, for Hispanic and White students, the gap dropped by 4 points. When reading is considered, the results are less compelling. The difference between Hispanic and White American fourth graders in reading has fallen from 35 points to 26 points. However, the Black-White gap has only dropped by 1 point since 2002. Also, when eighth graders are considered, the gap between White, Black, and Hispanic American students has remained relatively consistent between 2002 and 2005. Based on these results, the long-term success of NCLB regarding reducing racial and ethnic differences in test scores remains uncertain. Nevertheless, passage of NCLB makes it possible to continue to monitor the continued racial and ethnic gap in educational performance. To some, this monitoring is the most important element of the legislation because it contributes to the elimination of the racial
Educational Stratification
and ethnic gap in educational performance and attainment. Monique R. Payne-Pikus See also Bell Curve, The; Civil Rights Movement; Cultural Capital; Educational Stratification; Grutter v. Bollinger; Head Start and Immigrants; Higher Education; Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue; Intelligence Tests; Pipeline; Testing; Tracking
Further Readings
Ainsworth-Darnell, James W. and Douglas B. Downey. 1998. “Assessing the Oppositional Culture Explanation for Racial/Ethnic Differences in School Performance.” American Sociological Review 63:536–553. Bauman. Kurt J. and Nikki L. Graf. 2003. “Educational Attainment: 2000.” C2KBR-24. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved November 27, 2005, from http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-24.pdf Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction.” Pp. 487–511 in Power and Ideology in Education, edited by J. Karabel and A. H. Halsey. New York: Oxford University Press. Carter, Prudence. 2003. “‘Black’ Cultural Capital, Status Positioning, and Schooling Conflicts for Low-Income African American Youth.” Social Problems 50(1):36–55. Gamoran, Adam. 2001. “American Schooling and Educational Inequality: A Forecast for the 21st Century.” Sociology of Education 74, Supplement:135–153. Hallinan, Maureen T. 2001. “Sociological Perspectives on Black-White Inequalities in American Schooling.” Sociology of Education 74, Supplement: 50–70. Kao, Grace and Jennifer S. Thompson. 2003. “Racial and Ethnic Stratification in Educational Achievement and Attainment.” Annual Review of Sociology 29:417–442. Lamont, Michele and Annette Lareau. 1988. “Cultural Capital: Allusions, Gaps and Glissandos in Recent Theoretical Developments.” Sociological Theory 6(2):153–168. National Assessment of Educational Progress. 2005. “The Nation’s Report Card.” Washington, DC: National Center for Educational Statistics. Available from http:// nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2005 Ogbu, John U. 2003. Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Student of Academic Disengagement. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Schmid, Carol L. 2001. “Educational Achievement, Language-Minority Students, and the New Second Generation.” Sociology of Education 74, Supplement: 71–87.
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EDUCATIONAL STRATIFICATION Although education is viewed as the primary means of equal opportunity and social mobility in the United States, schools have been and continue to be racially segregated, both between schools and between classrooms. The racial differences in school experiences in the United States have led to two disparate systems of education where most White students benefit from access to the best schools and classrooms compared with African American and Hispanics, who are most often located in schools with the least resources to provide an adequate education. As a result, education as an institution reinforces inequality because of the extreme differences in schools and course placements experienced among racial and ethnic groups. This entry examines how experiences differ for students between and within schools, with specific attention to how race and ethnicity shape the allocation and quality of educational opportunities.
Between-School Stratification Between-school stratification has roots in the late 1880s with the emergence of public schooling where racial groups including African Americans, Mexicans, Native Americans, and Asians were not afforded the same educational opportunities as most White people. As a result, most non-White children were not allowed to attend schools with White peers. Separate schools were created throughout the United States and its territories to support White supremacy and reinforce the low social status of all others. During enslavement, African Americans in the South were denied formal and informal schooling, and after Reconstruction, they were not allowed to attend schools with White children. Instead, with limited public support and unequal funding, separate schools were created for African American children, establishing unequal educational systems. Mexican Americans and Asian Americans during this time were also often excluded from attending schools with White children in the United States. During the late 1880s, Chinese children were not allowed to attend public schools in northern California. When this practice was challenged in 1884 regarding Mamie Tape, a Chinese child who was born in United States, the California Superior Court ruled that this exclusion violated the equal protection clause of the
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Fourteenth Amendment. However, several school districts in the state, including San Francisco’s, created separate Chinese primary schools after this judicial decision. Native Americans were forcefully relocated from their indigenous land to communities west of the Mississippi, and they were subjected to separate schools including boarding schools that took children away from their communities so they would assimilate into White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. For many years, federal and state laws supported separate schooling. The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision upheld the practice of having separate passenger accommodations on railroads for African Americans and Whites. This case provided the legal precedent for “separate but equal” accommodations in all public institutions including schools. Despite the language used by the Plessy court, separate schools were inherently unequal. School segregation reflected a two-tier educational system where African American schools lacked the funding, school buildings, textbooks, and supplies-ensuring that most students were provided a poor education. The fight against legalized segregation was pursued by Mexican Americans and African Americans. Mendez v. Westminster (1946) was a class action suit challenging school segregation for 5,000 Mexican American children in California. The U.S. District court decided that separate schools violated students’ rights under the equal protection clause of the Constitution, but this case did not reverse the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. The most prominent federal case to end school segregation was pursued by the National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). That organization mounted a legal battle to end legalized segregation in all public institutions including schools throughout the early and mid-20th century, including the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case. In 1955, the Supreme Court decided that segregated schooling was unconstitutional and ordered the dismantling of separate schools by race, allowing African Americans the right to attend schools with White children. This case was pivotal in promoting public school integration for all racial groups, especially in the South. Despite these efforts, the multiple aims of the Brown case have not been fulfilled because contemporary schools are still racially segregated, especially in large urban cities. Although school segregation is no longer legal, it still occurs as a result of race-based
residential patterns. Present-day segregated schools, serving African Americans and Hispanics who are predominantly poor, continue to be plagued by inequitable funding, decaying school buildings, and a lack of resources including books and qualified teachers. These school conditions coupled with low-quality curriculum and instruction create difficult circumstances for fostering academic success.
Within-School Stratification Educational stratification within schools may result from the methods used to organize students into learning groups. Schools are generally organized by age and grade, and students may be sorted by academic status. Thus, schools and classrooms have been structured to accommodate variations in student backgrounds by differentiating educational programs and curricula based on students’ academic achievement, interests, and career aspirations. Being placed into learning groups may be racially skewed, but withinschool stratification can help to create an inequitable education system where White and Asian students are the beneficiaries of the best educational programs and African American and Hispanic students are in the most basic academic programs. Nevertheless, organizing students who are academically similar is viewed as an effective strategy for instruction because it allows teachers to appropriately meet specific learning needs. This is accomplished by ability grouping and tracking to stratify learning experiences. Ability grouping is the term used to characterize the organization of learning groups associated with a subject, including reading and mathematics in elementary and middle grades. For example, a first-grade teacher may organize students into three reading groups for those that have above average, average, and below average reading skills. These groups may not be formally labeled; however, students may have different reading texts and the pace of instruction may vary. Tracking most often refers to secondary school academic programs that relate to students’ plans following high school graduation. Therefore, students with college aspirations tend to enroll in college preparatory, honors, and advanced placement courses. Those with vocational aspirations often enroll in career-related courses that are supposed to adequately prepare them for entry-level positions after high school graduation. Although ability grouping and tracking are common methods used to organize students in schools,
Educational Stratification
there are additional ways to characterize learning groups. Students with exceptional learning needs are often placed in gifted and talented programs and special education. English language learners may spend some time in bilingual classrooms until they have achieved minimal English proficiency. Students lacking academic proficiency in a subject or grade level may be placed in temporary or permanent remedial programs. In elementary schools, students needing additional assistance may participate in supplemental instructional programs where they are pulled out of the regular education classroom to get individual or small-group attention. Secondary students also receive supplemental education through remedial courses for subjects such as reading and mathematics. A major concern about ability grouping and tracking is that separate educational programs perpetuate learning disparities because expectations vary across learning groups. Lower-level learning groups tend to experience less rigorous academic programs with a slower instructional pace. Learning often focuses on rudimentary academic work with students doing rote seatwork such as worksheets. In contrast, students in the highest learning groups experience a more engaging learning environment with challenging academic content and instructional practices that develop critical and higher order thinking. Differences in content coverage and instructional pace result in between learning-group differences where those in the highest ability groups and tracks outperform those in the lowest groups. Research consistently shows that African American and Hispanic students are disproportionately placed in low-level academic groups from elementary school through high school. African American students are also underrepresented in gifted and talented programs, and African American males tend to be overrepresented in special education. The reasons for the inequitable representation of African American and Hispanic students in ability groups and academic tracks are complex. Many factors contribute to learning group placement in elementary, middle, and high schools. Although standardized tests and other assessments of achievement are significant determinants of course location, subjective factors are also considered, including student behavior. At the secondary school level, student choice can also influence course placement. Some suggest that low academic expectations for African American students by school personnel leads to their placement in the lowest learning groups.
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During the 1994 People Who Care v. Rockford, Illinois Board of Education litigation, it was proven that discriminatory placement practices existed in Rockford, Illinois. Data from this school district showed that African American students with the same standardized test scores as their White peers did not have the same access to high-track courses. Despite the efforts to eliminate the vestiges of past racial discrimination in schools, it is reinforced by between- and within-school educational stratification where African American and Hispanic students are placed in learning environments that are racially isolated and lack the necessary resources required to promote high levels of academic engagement and achievement. Differential outcomes among racial groups can be seen as a reflection of the differences in what students are taught and expected to know across educational environments. There are tremendous consequences for racial stratification in education because most African American and Hispanic students are being prepared for vastly different postsecondary opportunities compared with White and Asian peers.
Remedies to Educational Stratification Given the ongoing challenges regarding educational stratification, federal and state policymakers have proposed state standards and high stakes testing as strategies to alleviate these inequities. The development of state-level standards establishing common educational expectations in all academic subjects is a policy designed to address the differences in curriculum and instruction between schools and classrooms. Common curricular goals help with creating alignment in educational experiences. High-stakes testing promoted by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act creates an expectation for universal student outcomes at each grade level. A unique aspect of NCLB is that it focuses greater attention on and makes schools accountable for the educational disparities among student subgroups by race, socioeconomic status, and special education and English language learner status. State standards coupled with testing provide a centralized framework to be used with all students regardless of race and school circumstance. However, the implementation of standards and testing does not eliminate the gross disparities in resources and experiences that exist in schools. Many racially isolated schools serving African American and Hispanic students continue to confront challenges
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regarding inadequate school funding and access to quality resources. In addition, these policies do not necessarily call for the dismantling of ability grouping and tracking or suggest viable alternatives for creating learning environments where teachers can appropriately meet students’ academic needs and challenge them academically. Donna Marie Harris See also Bell Curve, The; Brown v. Board of Education; Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District; Cultural Capital; Discrimination; Educational Stratification; Grutter v. Bollinger; Head Start and Immigrants; Higher Education; Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue; Intelligence Tests; Pipeline; Plessy v. Ferguson; School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning; Testing; Tracking
Further Readings
Braddock, Jomills Henry, II. and Dawkins, Marvin P. (1993). “Ability Grouping, Aspirations, and Attainments: Evidence from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988.” Journal of Negro Education 62(3):324–336. Oakes, Jeannie. (1985). Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Orfield, Gary and Eaton, Susan E. (1996). Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: New Press. Spring, Joel (2004). Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality: A Brief History of Education of Dominated Cultures in the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Immigration Patterns Immigration patterns of Egyptians vary from those related to other countries in the Arab world. Egyptian immigration to the United States is comparatively recent, beginning in the second half of the 20th century. Egyptian Americans identify themselves religiously as either Christian Copts or Muslims. Shortly after the 1952 Gamal Nasser revolution, most Egyptian immigrants arriving in the United States were Copts. Because they were a minority in Egypt, they were greatly affected by the social change occurring and had limited economic and educational opportunities. Parents encouraged children to study abroad and make a better life for themselves. A second wave of Egyptian Coptic immigration occurred during the 1970s, and many of these people were granted visas as refugees fleeing from religious persecution. Muslim Egyptians immigrated for economic and educational reasons; however, some came to the United States because of political uncertainty, others to escape the effects of the Egyptian-Israeli war. Egyptian immigrants (both Copt and Muslim) have arrived steadily since the 1970s. Romania
Russia
Serbia
Black Sea
Bulgaria Macedonia Albania
Greece
Turkey
Syria
Cyprus Lebanon
Mediterranean Sea
Iraq
West Bank Israel Jordan
EGYPTIAN AMERICANS Libya
Saudi Arabia
Egypt
ea
dS
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Egyptian Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from Egypt, a country of 73.4 million people, as of 2007 estimates. Egyptian Americans represent one of the many diverse groups of the Arab nation, which includes Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and the Republic of Yemen. According to the 2000 census, 113,395 people born in Egypt were resident in the United States, of whom 59.1% were citizens. This entry will look at the background of immigration from Egypt to the United States and the contemporary picture of Egyptian Americans.
Chad
Sudan
Eritrea
Contemporary Community In recent years, people from Egypt have sought permanent residency and completed the naturalization
Emancipation Proclamation
process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2004, about 4,700 Egyptians immigrated to the United States annually. The number of Egyptians who were granted legal permanent status rose significantly during the following 2 years, totaling 29,098. At least 3,200 Egyptian Americans have become naturalized citizens annually beginning with 1997. Data from the 2000 census indicate that Egyptian Americans’ median family income was $57,719 compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Just over half of Egyptian Americans hold occupations in management and professional positions, and about a fifth are employed in the educational, health, and social sciences field. According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, there were 161,205 people of Egyptian national origin in the United States. The top five states in geographic distribution were California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Virginia. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Arab Americans; Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Islamophobia; Muslim Americans
Further Readings
Bishai, Sally. 2004. Mid-East Meets West: On Being and Becoming a Modern Arab American. New York: iUniverse. Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs .gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Kaldas, Pauline. 2007. Letters from Cairo. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Sayyid-Marsot, Afaf Lutfi. 2007. A History of Egypt: From the Arab Conquest to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Egypt. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/ www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862. Although on its face, the proclamation may
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appear to end slavery, it was actually a much more complicated document—not just a humanitarian gesture but a political, military, and diplomatic strategy. This entry reviews its import. The Emancipation Proclamation purported to free all slaves residing in states that were in rebellion against the United States. The proclamation was to take effect and become law on January 1, 1863. The words of the measure gave immediate hope to slaves held in bondage all across the nation. Reading the document out of context gives the impression that President Lincoln has ended the institution of chattel slavery. But a careful perusal of the document reveals that the initial impression of abolishing slavery was not accomplished. The Emancipation Proclamation was as much a military strategy as it was a humanitarian gesture by the president. The primary idea for issuing the document was to save the Union and end the Civil War. This is shown by the lapse of more than three months between the time the proclamation was issued and the time it became law. Lincoln was hoping for a decisive battlefield victory to weaken the resolve of the South, but the proclamation also allowed any Confederates to renounce the rebellion, lay down their arms, and petition to rejoin the Union. If any southern state ceased hostilities before January 1, 1863, its residents would have been allowed to retain their slaves. Another reason for Lincoln’s move was to win European public support for the Union. Before the proclamation, abolition was not a goal of the war. European nations, especially France and England, were withholding support from both sides. But with the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, Europe—which had been pressuring the United States to end slavery—swung its support to the Union cause. At the very least, the Confederacy would not be able to count on any European power as an ally. Ironically, Lincoln’s carefully worded document didn’t free any slaves in the Union. Four slave states fought for the Union while retaining their slaves: Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia— the latter had been part of Virginia until the war began. Slaves in these states, which weren’t in “rebellion against the United States,” were not to be freed. Slaves also were not freed in the state of Tennessee because it had been recaptured by Union forces by 1863. Lincoln hoped the Emancipation Proclamation would speed the end of the war by freeing some of the slaves, all of the slaves, or none of the slaves. The
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official end of slavery came with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified on December 18, 1865. Howard Lindsey See also Abolitionism: The Movement; Abolitionism: The People; Frazier, E. Franklin; Lincoln, Abraham; Slavery
Further Readings
Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss. 2000. From Slavery to Freedom. 8th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill. Harding, Vincent. 1983. There Is a River. New York: Vintage Books. Higginbotham, A. Leon. 1996. Shades of Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press. Hines, Darlene Clark. 2003. The African-American Odyssey, vol. I, to 1877, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. National Archives and Records Administration. Featured document: The Emancipation Proclamation. Retrieved August 17, 2007, from http://www.archives.gov/ exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation
ENGLISH AMERICANS See UNITED KINGDOM, IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS IN THE UNITED STATES
ENGLISH IMMERSION In the United States, various educational program models address the needs of school-age students who are not yet fully proficient in English. Even though there is great variability in program design, there are two major distinctions: (1) bilingual programs that use the native language and English as a second language for instruction and (2) English-only programs that exclusively use English as a second language approach for instruction. Bilingual education models include transitional bilingual, heritage language, dual language or bilingual immersion, and maintenance bilingual programs. English-only models include English as a second language (ESL), newcomer center, and structured English immersion programs. For school districts, the choice of offering native language instruction
versus English-only instruction to English language learners (ELLs) depends on several factors, as described in this entry. One factor is the student linguistic demographics. In some areas of the United States, the linguistic makeup of prekindergarten through Grade 12 students is diverse, but in other areas, one minority language dominates, as in Arizona and Texas where Spanish is the predominant language spoken by ELLs. Although most second-language learners in the United States come from Spanish-speaking homes (57% according to Census 2000), many education systems across the country serve ELLs who speak a variety of languages (18% of ELLs speak Asian and Pacific Islander languages and 23% speak other languages as their mother tongue, according to the 2000 census). In cases where multiple languages are represented in the student body, school districts offer structured English immersion or ESL classes, or both. A second factor that determines English-only or native language education may be the availability of qualified bilingual teachers. In particular, the recent increase of language minority communities in previously homogenous geographic areas of the United States, such as Minnesota and Arkansas, has presented a challenge for school districts in recruiting and hiring bilingual teachers. A third factor is the specific legislation that governs the education system of each state. For example, Arizona, California, and Massachusetts have all passed legislation that limits bilingual education in favor of structured English immersion programs. A fourth factor that may contribute to the choice of English-only versus bilingual instruction can be politically motivated. Because the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal education law passed in 2002, requires that ELLs receive specialized instruction but does not stipulate whether this should be in the native language or in English, school districts pressured by public sentiments against immigration or in favor of Official English laws often opt for English immersion programs.
Defining Structured English Immersion Structured English immersion is an education model that provides specialized instruction primarily in English through ESL and is designed for school-age students who are not proficient in the English language. In this model, students receive all their instruction in English, relying on specialized ESL instructional
English Immersion
Arab American girl reading. An Arab American girl is shown reading the Dr. Seuss children’s classic Horton Hears a Who! in a bilingual second-grade class at Iris Becker Elementary School, Dearborn, Michigan. English immersion programs in schools insist that students be moved as quickly as possible to learning only in English with no teaching of course work in their native language. Source: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.
methods and approaches, such as Sheltered English, English language development (ELD), and specially designed academic instruction in English (SDAIE). Structured English immersion teachers must have teaching credentials in ESL. The curriculum and instructional materials used in immersion programs are adapted for second language learners and incorporate language as well as academic subject matter. The length of program depends on the state and local school districts. In California, for example, ELLs are expected to exit the English immersion program and enter the mainstream classroom after one year. However, this is often not realistic because the acquisition of a second language, particularly the academic language required to function in school, takes 5 to 7 years to develop fully. Other states and school districts allow students to continue to participate in the English immersion programs until they have acquired proficiency in academic English, which is usually measured by some type of standardized exam.
Distinctions Among Immersion Programs Structured English immersion programs gained popularity in the United States because of the success of French immersion programs in Canada. Policymakers
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and opponents of bilingual education often misunderstand the fundamental differences between immersion programs in Canada and the United States and how these differences drastically affect student outcomes. In immersion education in Canada, academic and language instruction is primarily conducted in the second language (French) in the initial grades, gradually increasing the amount of instruction in the native language (English) until the two languages are used equally. The aim is to develop additive bilingualism, biliteracy, and academic competencies in two languages. Immersion programs in Canada are designed to help English- and French-speaking students acquire the second language and develop their native languages as they become bilingual and biliterate in English and French. In contrast, U.S. structured English immersion programs are designed for language minority children (Latinos, Asians, etc.) to learn the majority language (English) and become monolingual and monoliterate in English. These differences prove problematic when one attempts to equate the two models. Consider some of the disparities: The goal in Canadian immersion is for students to become fully bilingual and biliterate, teachers are bilingual and knowledgeable about second language acquisition theory and pedagogy, there is some initial native language instruction for Anglophone students, English instruction increases over several grade levels to eventually reach a balance of French and English as the two mediums of instruction, and parents willingly choose to place their children in the program. Conversely, structured English immersion in the United States has as its primary goal to produce monolingual English-proficient students, teachers are monolingual and have some specialized training in second language acquisition theory and pedagogy, there is little to no native language instruction, the sole medium of instruction is English, and parents are required to place their children in the program. State policies have increasingly supported the structured English immersion program model as an alternative to bilingual education for English language learners. This method often offers a simplified version of the academic content in English as the medium of instruction. Proponents of this approach cite the success of Canadian immersion models. Researchers have warned that immersion programs in the majority language are not effective for language minority children. In contrast to the Canadian model, immersion programs in the United States have distinct
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social and political factors that affect their effectiveness for cultural and linguistic diverse students, the students’ first language bears a substantially subjugated position in regard to English, students tend to be from an impoverished socioeconomic class, parents have little say or opportunities for significant involvement; teachers are monolingual English speakers, and the primary objective is to become monolingual in English. Sonia W. Soltero See also Bilingual Education; Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District; Multicultural Education; Proposition 187; Social Inequality
Further Readings
Crawford, Jim. 2004. Educating English Language Learners: Language, Diversity in the Classroom. Los Angeles, CA: Bilingual Educational Services. Cummins, Jim. 2000. Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Genesee, Fred. 1987. Learning Through Two Languages: Studies of Immersion and Bilingual Education. Cambridge, MA: Newbury House. Shin, Hyon B. and Rosalind Brunos. 2003. Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000. Census Brief C2KBR-29. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved November 27, 2007, from http://www .census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-29.pdf Soltero, Sonia W. 2004. Dual Language: Teaching and Learning in Two Languages. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
overcome these inequalities, a true instance of the mutualism between the academe and civil society that many have called for in all areas of research. Concern for environmental justice has thus significantly grown over the years both within the United States and elsewhere. This entry describes the development of this movement, the research that examines it, and an expansion of the paradigm to environmental democracy.
Development of the Paradigm Three prominent research traditions characterize environmental justice scholarship, developing in tandem with social movements in civil society. First, the macrostructural approach, as it is often referred to, primarily deals with evidence for racial, ethnic, and class disparities in environmental inequality. Three early macrostructural studies grabbed the attention of scholars and activists. The first study, a General Accounting Office report, found that three of four landfills in the United States were located near predominantly African American communities. The United Church of Christ (UCC) conducted a second landmark study in 1987, using zip codes to show that 37.6% of U.S. landfills were located in or near predominantly African American neighborhoods and that, compared with Whites, African Americans were two to three times more likely to live near a hazardous landfill. A third classic study was that of Robert Bullard, who, in 1983, found that twenty-one of Houston’s twenty-five waste facilities were located in African American neighborhoods. Race e and Class as Pre ediccto ors
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE A disproportionate burden of environmental problems are borne by the poor and by communities of color, as documented by a large body of scholarship on what has come to be called environmental justice. Although the early literature on environmental justice primarily focused on questions of unequal distribution of environmental “bads” in the United States, recent years have witnessed studies of environmental justice on a global scale and a broadening understanding of what constitutes environmental justice. Both the U.S.-based and international studies have had a close relationship with the development of social movements working to
All three studies found that, after accounting for class effects, race remained an independent predictor of the distribution of commercial hazardous waste facilities and other environmental dangers. A range of subsequent case studies presented similar arguments that Native Americans and Latin Americans faced disproportionate impacts from environmental hazards. Additional studies on toxic releases, occupational exposure, waste facility siting, and unequal enforcement also found a race and ethnic effect in the creation of unequal environments. All these studies contributed an evidence base for social movements protesting environmental racism. Indeed, the phrase environmental justice was, through the mid-1990s, far less commonly used because the
Environmental Justice
focus of so much early work was primarily on the question of race and ethnicity. The 1980s and 1990s were also the time of numerous civil society movements against environmental racism, generally local in focus and generally led by women. The first such movement to get national attention was the fight, led by local resident Dollie Burwell, against the 1982 landfilling of 32,000 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated soil in predominately African American Warren County, North Carolina. The same year, Hazel Johnson founded People for Community Recovery, which has been fighting ever since to call attention to, and mobilize action against, the high rates of cancer, asthma, skin rash, and kidney and liver problems in her predominately African American neighborhood in Chicago’s Southside. Since then, literally hundreds, if not thousands, of local organizations have formed to protest issues of environmental racism, especially in the African American and Latino communities. In addition, several national groups, such as the Environmental Justice Coalition and the National Black Environmental Justice Network, work on these issues. Central to this early research and early social movement development was the sense that the environmental movement was “lost in the woods,” focusing too much of its attention on biocentric issues of wilderness protection and species loss. But if the environment is everywhere, anthropocentric concerns for conditions in and near where most humans live should be at least equally salient, activists argued. The concern that the environmental movement had potentially racist implications resonated uncomfortably with the observation that, at the time, almost no people of color had a place on the staff or board of the typical mainstream environmental nonprofits, nor worked for governmental environmental agencies. Much has changed since that time, however, and now virtually all the mainstream national environmental organizations have significant programs confronting issues of environmental inequality. In 1992, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency opened the Office of Environmental Justice, and in 1994, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, which requires all federal agencies to consider environmental justice concerns. Some subsequent studies of environmental inequality in the United States, however, did not find that race was an independent factor beyond class effects. For example, a review by Michael Bell of eighteen
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environmental justice studies between 1998 and 2002 showed five that found class significant but not race, seven that found race significant but not class, and six that found both significant. These findings unleashed a storm of debate, not least because the most prominent study that questioned the salience of race in environmental inequality had been funded by Waste Management Incorporated, operator of the largest hazardous waste landfill in the United States, which lies in the mainly African American community of Emelle, Alabama. Increasingly, however, scholars argue that this kind of is-it-race, is-it-class, or is-it-both debate is distracting and analytically shallow. Issues of race and class closely intertwine in the United States and elsewhere and are often difficult to distinguish in large-scale survey research. Also, instances of environmental inequality by income are no less appalling than those involving race and ethnicity. Many have argued that the struggles of Lois Gibbs in her White workingclass neighborhood of Love Canal, New York, are as significant for human well-being as are those of Dollie Burwell and Hazel Johnson. A Sociohisto oriical Approach
Consequently, the focus of both research and activism has shifted from environmental racism to the more inclusive phrase environmental justice. Associated with this shift has been a new theoretical approach to the study of environmental inequality, the sociohistorical/processual approach, which shifts the conceptual focus from statistical studies of environmental racism to analyses of the underlying social processes of environmental inequality more generally. This line of research emphasizes the need to adopt a more institutional framework that examines the sociohistorical legacies of racism and classism, which limit life choices and deny important political and economic tools to actors for addressing such violations. For example, in their study of environmental inequality in Santa Clara County, California, Andrew Szasz and Michael Meuser pointed out that efforts to present industrial siting as being imposed on “victimizable” communities despite their opposition is anachronistic. Instead, Szasz and Meuser argued that the situation needs to be viewed as the product of broader processes of racialization that determine and shape occupation, financial assets, and general life opportunities. Szasz and Meuser emphasize the
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embedded nature of racial discrimination in the historical experiences of minority communities and suggest that mere intentionality cannot explain this complex process. Another prominent example of the historical/ processual approach is David Pellow’s Environmental Inequality Formation (EIF) framework. Moving beyond a simple perpetrator-victim formulation, EIF argues that environmental inequities result from actions and interactions of multiple actors—state, corporations, environmental groups, residents, churches, and so on—whose crosscutting interests and overlapping allegiances shape environmental discourse and practice. A Third Pa aradig gm
Dorceta Taylor presents a third approach, which she calls the environmental justice paradigm. Drawing on the literature regarding how social movements frame their arguments, Taylor presents an analysis of the relationship between the ideologies and institutions that underlie the environmental justice movement. The success of the environmental justice movement, she suggests, lies in its effective aligning of the civil rights paradigm with the environmental paradigm. This frame alignment, Taylor points out, helps in building coalitions between environmental, labor, and minority concerns. As she argues, emerging environmental issues during the inception of the environmental justice movement provided the political opportunities that fostered the movement’s success. Indeed, Taylor’s own framing of her research question as the study of the “success” of the environmental justice movement is a testament to how far the movement has already come, partly through frame alignment with another institution: the research community.
Critique of Existing Frameworks Thus, the contours of environmental justice scholarship have changed since its inception. In addition to the rise of historical/processual and environmental justice paradigm studies, macrostructural studies are now increasingly international in focus, examining phenomena such as “garbage imperialism,” the transfer of risks and environmental hazards to developing countries through the export of toxic waste and hazardous industries. As well, it has internationalized through finding common cause with issues of environmental protection that affect the livelihood of people everywhere.
Indeed, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Kenyan professor, activist, and environment minister Wangari Maathai, who founded a green belt movement in Africa that has planted tens of millions of trees, so vital to the lives of Africa’s poor. Yet, even though environmental justice has come a long way in theory development and evidence gathering, there is still no effective definition of the “justice” in environmental justice. Justice theory has remained an important theoretical concern for political philosophy but has garnered little interest from social scientists. Yet social scientific judgment can never be, nor should it be, divorced from philosophical judgment. Understanding an existing phenomenon must begin with recognizing its existence, a philosophical question. Further, social scientific queries take philosophy a step further by providing a glimpse of the intricate workings of the social relations that constitute a phenomenon. All these processes of recognizing and seeing, in turn, are shaped by the doings and concerns of social agents. Social science and philosophy thus work hand in hand. The three main traditions of environmental justice speak to these doings and concerns in the form of the outcomes and processes of environmental justice. The work of Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize, provides one potential approach to uniting the social science and philosophy of environmental justice and ultimately bringing about better informed social action. Sen explored questions of development and social justice and points out that fair distribution of resources remains ineffective unless accompanied by people’s freedom to choose the resources they want, depending on the contexts in which they live. The pursuit of principles of fairness and freedom can only occur by building people’s capabilities, which in turn requires a social order based on principles of dialogue and democracy. Hence, environmental justice includes the distribution of resources (a social scientific concern) and the capability to pursue these resources within a framework of dialogue and democracy (a political philosophical concern). Environmental justice can thus be conceptualized as a quest for environmental democracy.
Environmental Democracy Conceptualizing environmental justice as a matter of environmental democracy widens the vision. To begin with, it opens possibilities for examining a broader range of inequalities, including questions of
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
the fair distribution of environmental goods, rather than just the fair distribution of environmental bads. Take for example the question of local cultures and heritages, often ignored in contemporary environmental justice scholarship. The forced removal of local peoples for the construction of dams and implementation of parks and national forests could be seen as an issue of environmental justice in the same way as more typically studied problems of the unequal distribution of hazards. Also, an environmental democracy approach more easily allows exploration of the role of cultural perceptions of the environment, so central to understanding the injustice of the forced removals of local peoples, even when they are given fair-market value compensation for their homes and lands. In these ways, environmental justice as environmental democracy helps build a “just us”—a society founded on common commitment to, and common consideration for, the fairness of inescapably environmental lives. Damayanti Banerjee and Michael M. Bell See also Discrimination; Discrimination, Environmental Hazards; Health Disparities; Maquiladoras; Medical Experimentation; Native Americans, Environment and; Water Rights
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Pellow, David N. 2004. “The Politics of Illegal Dumping: An Environmental Justice Framework.” Qualitative Sociology 27(4):511–525. Sen, Amartya K. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Anchor Books. Sen, Amartya K. 2002. Rationality as Freedom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Szasz, Andrew and Michael Meuser. 2000. “Unintended, Inexorable: The Production of Environmental Inequalities in Santa Clara County, California.” American Behavioral Scientist 43:602–632. Szasz, Andrew and Michael Meuser. 2003. “Environmental Inequalities: Literature Review and proposals for New Directions in Research and Theory.” In Environment, Energy and Society: Exemplary Works, edited by C. R. Humphrey, T. L. Lewis, & F. H. Buttel. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Taylor, Dorceta. 2000. “The Rise of the Environmental Justice Paradigm: Injustice Framing and the Social Construction of Environmental Discourses.” American Behavioral Scientist 43(4):508–580. United Church of Christ. 1987. Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States. New York: United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice. U.S. General Accounting Office. 1983. Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities. GAO/RCED-83–168. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Further Readings
Bell, Michael M., with Michael S. Carolan. 2004. An Invitation to Environmental Sociology. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Bullard, Robert D. 1983. “Solid Waste Sites and the Houston Black Community.” Sociological Inquiry 53(Spring): 273–288. Bullard, Robert D., ed. 1993. Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots. Boston, MA: South End. Bullard, Robert D. 1994. Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Bullard, Robert D. 1994. Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club. Pellow, David N. 2000. “Environmental Inequality Formation: Toward a Theory of Environmental Injustice.” American Behavioral Scientist 43:581–601. Pellow, David N. 2002. Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION (EEOC) The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was created when Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The agency is responsible for enforcing federal laws that prohibit employers from discriminating against individuals on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, age, disability, and gender. In 2005, the EEOC celebrated its fortieth anniversary of enforcing equal employment opportunities for the nation’s workers. When the agency was first created, America’s workforce was segregated and stratified by race and gender. There has been a great deal of progress, but as the EEOC’s chair recently observed, more work is needed to fulfill the promise of equal employment opportunity for all. This entry describes the commission and how it enforces the law.
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Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
The Commission’s Agenda The antidiscrimination provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 apply to the federal government, private employers that employ fifteen or more individuals, and state and local governments. The law also applies to employment agencies, labor organizations, and joint labor management committees controlling apprenticeship and training programs. U.S. companies that employ U.S. citizens in foreign countries and multinational employers that operate in the United States are covered under equal employment opportunity laws, with certain limited exceptions. The EEOC is also responsible for enforcing the Equal Pay Act, which protects women who perform equal work in the same company from gender-based pay discrimination; the Age Discrimination Act, which protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older; the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits employment discrimination against individuals with disabilities; and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities who work for the federal government. The commission also provides oversight and coordination of all federal equal employment opportunity regulations and policies. The EEOC is administered by five commissioners who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Commissioners are appointed to staggered, 5-year terms. The president designates a chair, who serves as the chief executive officer of the agency, and a vice chair. The commission carries out its responsibilities through the Office of Field Programs, the Office of General Counsel, and fiftyone field offices. The agency’s Office of State and Local Programs maintains work-sharing agreements and a contract services program with more than ninety state and local agencies that are responsible for enforcing state and local antidiscrimination laws. In the 2005 fiscal year, 75,428 charges were filed with the EEOC. During the same year, 417 court cases were filed by the agency.
Enforcement Procedures Individuals who believe that they have been the victims of unlawful discrimination may file a charge with the EEOC. The charge must be filed within 180 days after the alleged unlawful activity occurred or within 300 days after the action occurred if the individual had previously filed a charge with a state or local
agency. Most states and many localities have enacted laws that prohibit employment discrimination, and many of them have administrative agencies that are responsible for enforcing those laws. The EEOC anticipates that state and federal enforcement efforts will be complementary rather than duplicative. Thus, the state and local agencies are given an opportunity to investigate and resolve disputes if a charge is filed at the state or local level. However, the state agency must be approved by the EEOC, and, even in approved jurisdictions, a victim of unlawful discrimination can elect to pursue a claim under federal, rather than state, laws. However, filing an administrative charge with the EEOC is a prerequisite to filing a civil action in court. After a charge is filed, the EEOC will investigate the claims asserted. Throughout this process, conciliation is encouraged, and if both parties agree, the matter can be referred to mediation, a process in which the parties seek a resolution of the dispute without resorting to the courts. At the conclusion of the investigation, the agency will issue a finding indicating whether it has cause to believe that a violation of the act has occurred. In either case, the claimant may file a suit in federal court against the employer within 90 days after it receives a “right to sue” letter from the EEOC. The EEOC’s findings are not binding in court proceedings. Cases proceed anew under the relevant federal rules of procedure and evidence. Claimants must secure private counsel at this phase if they have not already done so. In certain instances, suits may be initiated by the EEOC. The U.S. Attorney General also has the authority to file enforcement actions. In such cases the federal government, rather than the individual who filed the original charge, is the plaintiff. These are not routine cases because they typically involve important legal issues with broad significance or particularly egregious violations of the law. In such cases, the charging party is obligated to formally intervene if he or she wants to participate as a party to the litigation. In suits brought by individuals, the remedies available for a prevailing plaintiff include reinstatement, lost pay, damages, attorney fees, and court orders requiring the employer cease its discriminatory actions.
Theories of Discrimination In the years following the enactment of Title VII, some theories of employment discrimination have emerged. These include, among others, disparate treatment, disparate impact, and sexual and racial harassment.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
Dispara ate e Tre eatment
Disparate treatment means that an employer treats some people less favorably than others because of their race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, or disability. An individual claiming disparate treatment must prove that the employer acted with a discriminatory motive. In the 1973 decision in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, the Supreme Court established the order of proof in such cases: The plaintiff must first establish a prima facie case. To satisfy this obligation, plaintiffs must prove that they applied for an available position for which they were qualified, that they were rejected, and that the job remained open or another applicant was selected. If plaintiffs establish a prima facie case, the defendant must state a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for its actions. If the defendant satisfies this obligation, plaintiffs can prevail if they can prove that the employer’s stated reasons were false and its motives were actually discriminatory. The McDonnell Douglas analysis assumes that direct evidence of discriminatory intent is not available. It anticipates that the proof at trial will consist of circumstantial evidence from which an inference of discrimination can be drawn. The prima facie case eliminates the most likely reasons for an individual’s rejection and creates a presumption that the employer engaged in discriminatory conduct. If the stated reason is proven false, a jury is allowed to infer that the employer’s actions had a discriminatory motive. Dispara ate e Impact
Title VII also prohibits employers from using facially neutral employment practices that have a discriminatory effect. The Supreme Court explained the disparate impact theory in 1971 in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. stating, Title VII “proscribes not only overt discrimination but also practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation. The touchstone is business necessity. . . . [G]ood intent or absence of discriminatory intent does not redeem employment procedures or testing mechanisms that operate as ‘built-in headwinds’ for minority groups and are unrelated to measuring job capability.” Plaintiffs in a disparate impact case do not have to prove discriminatory motive. To prevail, plaintiffs must prove, through statistical comparisons or otherwise, that the challenged practice excludes a
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disproportionate percentage of members of a “protected group” (e.g., minorities or women). If plaintiffs establish a disparate impact, the employer must prove that the challenged practice is job-related for the position in question and supported by a business necessity. If the employer proves business necessity, plaintiffs can still prevail by showing that the employer has refused to adopt an alternative employment practice that would satisfy the employer’s legitimate interests without having a disparate impact on a members of a protected class. Sex xual and Racia al Harasssmen nt
Under the EEOC’s guidelines, unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal and physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when (a) submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment, (b) submission or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual, or (c) such conduct has a purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment. Under the first category, an individual in a position of authority conditions an employment benefit on submission to sexual demands. The hostile environment category typically consists of unwelcome comments, jokes, actions, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature and submission to such conduct is implicitly or explicitly made a term or a condition of an individual’s employment. The conduct must be sufficiently severe and pervasive as to unreasonably interfere with the victim’s work performance. Racial harassment is similar to sexual harassment except that race, rather than gender, is the basis for the conduct. As with sexual harassment, the conduct must have the purpose or effect of interfering unreasonably with an employee’s work performance. Leland Ware See Appendix B See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; African American Women and Work; Americans with Disabilities Act; Discrimination; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Housing Audits
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Estonian Americans
Further Readings
Belton, Robert, Dianne Avery, Maria L. Ontiveros, and Roberto L. Corrada. 2004. Employment Discrimination Law: Cases and Materials on Equality in the Workplace. 7th ed. St. Paul, MN: Thomson/West. Donahue, John J. 2003. Foundations of Employment Discrimination Law. New York: Foundation Press. Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971). McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973). Player, Mack. 1988. Player’s Hornbook on Employment Discrimination Law. St. Paul, MN: West Law School.
Web Sites
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: http://www.eeoc.gov
ESTONIAN AMERICANS Estonian immigrants began arriving in the United States in significant numbers in the 1890s, but the largest influx arrived after World War II, fleeing the Soviet occupation of their homeland, among the first of many cold war–era refugees. This wave rejuvenated ethnic life, establishing vibrant, politically
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active communities. Estonia had an estimated population of 1.3 million people in 2007. This entry discusses the history of Estonians in the United States.
The First Diaspora: The Era of Mass Migration The first Estonian immigrants to what would become the United States may have arrived as early as 1627 in the Swedish colony along the Delaware River. However, Estonians did not begin emigrating in significant numbers until the middle of the 19th century. Although Russian Tsar Alexander I had abolished serfdom throughout Estonia by 1819, conditions for the Estonian peasantry barely improved. Emancipation occurred only gradually; peasants did not have considerable freedom of movement until more reforms occurred in the 1850s. The Baltic German aristocracy remained in control of the rural economy. Rents could be oppressive, land was difficult to obtain and famine a recurring danger. As industrialization spread and frontiers opened worldwide, the opportunity to own a bit of land or earn relatively higher wages in a factory lured more Estonians abroad. Many first settled across Russia, especially in and around St. Petersburg. Some of these, in turn, migrated to the United States, creating farming communities across the Midwest and West. Estonian immigrants from Russia established a community near Fort Pierre in South Dakota in 1894. Another group settled in Lincoln County, Wisconsin, in 1900, founding the town of Irma. This community built the first Estonian Lutheran Church in the United States in nearby Gleason in 1914. Other rural Estonian American communities included Dickinson, North Dakota; Rose Lodge, Oregon; Moorcroft, Wyoming; and Chester, Montana. Estonians also formed small urban communities in Boston, Detroit, Portland, Philadelphia, SeattleTacoma, San Francisco, and New York City. In New York City, the Reverend Hans Rebane, a pastor of the Lutheran Missouri Synod, began publishing the first Estonian-language newspaper in the United States in 1897, the Ameerika-Eesti Postimees (Estonian American Courier). The next year, the city also became home to the first Estonian American social organization, the Amerika Eesti Heategev Selts (American Estonian Beneficial Society). A wave of political refugees arrived following the failed 1905 Revolution in Russia. By this time, nationalism, spurred in part by an imperial policy of
Estonian Americans
Russification, and socialism had permeated all levels of Estonian society. This wave of immigrants thus tended to be more radical in their politics. In 1906, they formed an Estonian branch within the Socialist Party of America, which shortly thereafter became the independent Estonian Social-Democratic Association. They also founded the Estonian socialist newspaper Uus Ilm (New World) in 1909, which continued publication into the 1970s. It is difficult to determine the exact number of Estonian Americans in the United States before 1920. After Sweden’s defeat in the Great Northern War in 1721, Estonia became part of the Russian Empire, and Estonian immigrants were thus often misidentified as “Russians.” Estimates of the number of Estonian Americans vary wildly: The 1920 U.S. Census counted 69,200, but some contemporary scholars placed the number as high 200,000.
The Second Diaspora: World War II Estonia won its independence as Russia collapsed into revolution and civil war during World War I. Estonian Americans could say with pride that they came from a republic created under the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination, and their fellow Americans could find their country of origin on a map. However, the U.S. Congress passed the National Origins Act in 1924, which set highly restrictive national quotas intended to limit immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe. Estonia’s quota was 124 per year. By the 1930s, few immigrants, let alone those from Estonia, were coming to the United States. In 1939, the foreign ministers of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union concluded a non-aggression pact in which they carved up Eastern Europe into spheres of influence. This pact consigned Estonia—as well as Latvia and Lithuania—to the Soviet orbit. The Soviet Union subsequently pressured Estonia to allow Soviet bases and troops on its soil, culminating in occupation and annexation. The Soviets instituted a “Red Terror” to solidify their rule. In about a year, they deported or executed around 60,000 people, or approximately 6% of Estonia’s population. In the summer of 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and occupied Estonia. By the spring of 1944, the Nazis were in retreat, and the Soviets had advanced to the borders of Estonia. Fearing a resumption of the “Red Terror,” as many as 80,000 Estonians fled, many braving a risky voyage across the Baltic
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Sea to Sweden or Germany. These refugees tended to come from what remained of Estonia’s cultural, economic, and political elite, as well as those who lived near the sea—and thus could more easily escape. When the war ended in 1945, Estonia had lost about 17% of its prewar population to occupation, war, and flight to the West. About 32,000 Estonian refugees ended up in United Nations–run displaced persons camps in Germany. There, they tried to recreate the Estonia they had left behind. They published newsletters and organized schools and choirs and, along with Latvian and Lithuanian refugees, a university. Many hoped that their exile would be temporary, that the Western Allies would convince the Soviet Union to withdraw from Estonia. Instead, the Soviets remained and incorporated Estonia into the Soviet Union, a move that the United States never recognized as legitimate. Estonian refugees became the first “boat people” of the postwar era. The political situation remained uncertain as the “iron curtain” fell across Europe and the cold war began. The Soviet Union demanded the repatriation of all its “citizens”; Sweden actually began complying. As a result, between 1946 and 1949, fortysix so-called “Viking” boats filled with Estonian refugees left Sweden to avoid being returned to Estonia. Given its staunch anticommunism, the United States was a popular destination for those wishing to avoid returning to Soviet-controlled Estonia: 17 boats reached the United States, where, despite their illegality, they were welcomed. Others sailed to Argentina, Brazil, Britain, Canada, and South Africa. The saga of the “Viking” boat people helped contribute to a temporary change in U.S. immigration policy. The quota system established in 1924 prevented any mass immigration of postwar European refugees. However, in 1948, the U.S. Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act, special legislation that circumvented the quota system. The act stipulated that 40% of the available visas go to the “Baltic” peoples— Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. This act and its 1950 revision and extension allowed approximately 11,000 Estonians into the United States between 1948 and 1952.
Valis-E Eesti:“Estonia Abroad” The Displaced Persons Act included provisions that scattered these refugees with the intent of preventing the formation of the kind of urban, ethnic enclaves
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that had so alarmed American nativists a generation earlier. Nevertheless, Estonian Americans still managed to form cohesive communities, however small, across the country in cities such as Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, MinneapolisSt. Paul, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. The New York City area—including Connecticut and New Jersey—remained a center of Estonian American activity. Many of these cities had their own Eesti Maja (Estonian House), which served as a community center. These communities dedicated themselves to the preservation of Estonian culture, identity, and language abroad in defiance of what was feared to be a Soviet policy of Russification back in Estonia. To this end, Estonian Americans organized weekend schools, summer camps, choirs, churches, and scouting groups. They celebrated Estonian national holidays, such as Independence Day on February 24th. They participated in international festivals with Estonian émigré groups from other countries. In 1949, the refugee newspaper Vaba Eesti Sõna (Free Estonian Word) began publication in New York City. Perhaps most important of all, they engaged in all kinds of political activity, writing, lobbying, and protesting to ensure that Estonia’s plight was not forgotten. Estonian Americans also cooperated with other cold war refugees in organizations such as the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, the Baltic Appeal to the United Nations, and the Assembly of Captive European Nations. When the Soviet Union collapsed and Estonia’s independence was restored in 1991, about 27,000 Estonian Americans lived in the United States. (This compares with an estimated population of Estonia itself of 1.3 million in 2007.) They continued to advocate on Estonia’s behalf, such as pushing for Estonian membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Some also returned to help rebuild Estonia after decades of Soviet occupation. Aleksander Einseln, a Vietnam War veteran and former Green Beret, became the first post-Soviet chief of the Estonian military. Toomas Hendrik Ilves, raised in New Jersey and a graduate of Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, became president of Estonia in 2006. Bernard Maegi See Appendix A See also Diaspora; Latvian Americans; Lithuanian Americans; Refugees
Further Readings
Aun, Karl. 1985. The Political Refugees: A History of the Estonians in Canada. Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart. Miljan, Toivo. 2004. The Historical Dictionary of Estonia. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow. Pennar, Jaan, ed., with Tönu Parming and P. Peter Rebane. 1975. The Estonians in America, 1627–1975: A Chronology and Fact Book. Dobbs Ferry, NJ: Oceana. Raun, Toivo. 1991. Estonia and the Estonians. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
ETHNIC CONFLICT Ethnic conflict is a convenient classification of conflicts in which the parties are of different ethnic or national origin, and thus, references to it in the mass media are commonplace. The political importance of such conflicts in the 20th century was reflected in the great numbers killed: perhaps 800,000 Armenians in Turkey in 1916, and about 1 million persons in 1947, when India was partitioned to create the new state of Pakistan. In 1965, a communist uprising in Indonesia led to the killing of about half a million ethnic Chinese, and in 1994, a similar number of deaths resulted from the attempted genocide of Tutsi in the central African state of Rwanda. In all these, and many other cases, ethnic difference led to the identification of individuals for slaughter. How did the difference come to be so significant and what can be done to restrain violent conflict? This entry examines those questions.
Dimensions of Conflict Closer examination reveals that so-called ethnic conflicts all have a political character, and that other kinds of difference, like religion, can be as important, or more important, than any difference in ethnic origin. The major ethnic conflicts have occurred when minorities have been regarded as threatening the security of the state; some were attempting to secede from the state, as in Northern Ireland (from the United Kingdom after 1969), Biafra (from Nigeria in 1967), Bangladesh (from Pakistan in 1971), Northern Cyprus (from Cyprus in 1974), Tamil Nadu (from Sri Lanka in 1981), and Chechnya (from the Russian Federation in 1991). These were all armed conflicts.
Ethnic Conflict
In other, less-violent conflicts, the political issues have been associated with language difference, as with French Canada and the Fleming-Walloon division in Belgium. The conflict between Arabs and Jews over Palestine is political, but it has religious and ethnic dimensions as well. Comparisons demonstrate that although all conflicts are inherently political, some have ethnic, national, religious, or linguistic dimensions. When one group enjoys economic advantages envied by another group, this adds a class dimension. The more dimensions there are to a conflict, the more difficult it is to resolve. The history of the Balkans provides some striking examples. The Republic of Yugoslavia, as it existed from 1918 to 1990 (first as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes), was an outstanding example of a multiethnic state. There were six national republics (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia) and two autonomous provinces (Voivodina and Kosovo). During Marshal Tito’s presidency of Yugoslavia (1953–1980), people of different ethnic origin and religion lived together peaceably in many towns and villages. After his death, the different units competed for the distribution of state resources, and some politicians built careers upon appeals to nationalist sentiment. After Croatia and Slovenia seceded in 1991, a sequence of armed conflicts ensued. The killing, by Serbs, of 7,000 to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica was only one of a series of organized atrocities. By 2006, the federation had broken into six independent states with the possibility that Kosovo might become a seventh. The rise in ethnic hatred was an important element throughout this sequence of events.
Accounting for Conflict The multidimensional character of such conflicts proves that ethnic conflicts are not a separate class of conflicts, distinct from other kinds of conflict. Therefore, there can be no general explanation of ethnic conflict. Ethnic conflicts display similar characteristics, however, and it should be possible to account for the similarities within an explanation of why and how humans engage in collective action. How do humans come to be conscious of ethnic differences? People are not born with an ethnic identity, but during their socialization, they are taught whom they should obey, who are their allies, and who
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may be dangerous. Just as they learn that they have relatives, so they learn that they have a nationality. If their ancestors migrated from another country, they learn that they have a particular national origin, or that they have origins in more than one country. Though nationality can be decided by a person’s passport, ethnic origin is usually based on self-identification. Thus, when population statistics are compiled, people may be asked to nominate the ethnic origin that is important to them. It may be the same as their national origin, or it may indicate descent from a particular ethnic group within a country. Although individuals sometimes “pass” from one ethnic identification to another, there are limitations to this possibility; a person may not succeed in identifying himself or herself with a group if he or she manifestly has no connection with it. When circumstances change, ethnic boundaries may be redrawn, but the social significance of ethnic origin can vary from one place to another. Ethnic identification can be a vital concern in situations of ethnic tension and of little concern elsewhere. It may matter less to some individuals than to others. A major generator of ethnic consciousness is any sense of grievance for which another group is held responsible. Memories fade unless they are cultivated. Both Croats and Serbs remembered grievances from atrocities committed during World War II, but the most militant activists came from the localities in which these grievances were most actively nurtured. Memories can retain an emotional significance irrespective of material interests. An official report in 1991 found that the strongest ethnic violence in Australia was that between Croats and Serbs; they had taken their hostilities with them to the other side of the globe and to a setting where there was no rational reason for them to see each other as enemies any longer.
Identifying the Opponent The expression of hostility toward members of another group depends on an ability to distinguish friend from foe. Racial conflict differs from ethnic conflict only in the sense that what are popularly regarded as racial characteristics—color, hair, and body features—are visible and easily recognized. The characteristics that are popularly regarded as ethnic— costume, speech, and signs of religious belief—are less reliable indicators. Indeed, there may be no outward indication of ethnic origin. In Rwanda, the Hutu
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militants compiled lists of those who were known to be Tutsi. Likewise, during the fighting in Yugoslavia, when militia bands stopped motorists on certain roads and wanted to discover whether they were Serbs or Croats, they sometimes required the suspect to recite the Lord’s Prayer because, though speaking what was basically one language, Serbs and Croats used different words for bread. The Yugoslav case exemplifies a process that has been observed elsewhere. Individuals were persuaded to attach more importance to ethnic origin by political leaders who mobilized their co-ethnics to act together in pursuit of shared interests. The claim to own territory is one of the strongest interests. Research in Croatia has illustrated another feature of ethnic relations. When asked about interethnic relations in Yugoslavia, 43% of Croat respondents said that they were very bad. When asked to evaluate interethnic relations where they were living, only 2.7% evaluated them as very bad. Respondents were basing opinions on mass media messages that highlighted bad news. Politicians amplified these messages for their own purposes. Many Croats were little influenced by such messages until refugees from the conflict zone appeared among them. Then the local people started to apply to their neighbors and work colleagues the refugees’ views of the risks embodied in interethnic relations. This made locals ask if their neighbors and colleagues could be trusted. In this way, tensions in the public sphere were translated into neighborhood relations. Once people fear for their personal security, conflicts can escalate. The end in the process of increasing hatred is the belief that members of the opposed group are totally “other.” The extreme case was the Nazis’ allegation that Jews were subhuman. In other cases of violent conflict, the aggressors have believed that their victims were not entitled to be treated in the same way as fellow members of their own group. This has facilitated the commission of atrocities: It is difficult to believe that the Russian troops in Chechnya would have treated civilians as badly as they did, had Chechens not been perceived as quite different from Russians. Equally in the conflicts in Yugoslavia and Palestine, perceptions of the other party’s nature appear to have added an extra element of venom to interpersonal relations.
Solutions Conflict is not always bad. The pressure employees exert on employers to increase wages makes companies operate more efficiently. Industrial conflict can have
positive outcomes because the parties have their representatives, who engage in bargaining within recognized structures that impose a degree of discipline on them both. Some of that discipline derives from high levels of personal consumption. Those who have to pay off debts on their houses, their cars, and their children’s education are less inclined to risk any loss of income. Such motives are not absent from ethnic conflicts. Although these often appear to be driven by psychological imperatives unresponsive to reason, the parties may be seeking long-term solutions. In some countries, group leaders engage in bargaining within the political structures. In Lebanon, this has led to agreement that certain governmental posts shall be held by representatives of particular groups. Major ethnic conflicts arise when the members of a group insist that their ethnic distinctiveness justifies the creation of a new state (and therefore a new nationality). Minor ethnic conflicts occur when minorities are dissatisfied with prevailing conditions but not with their nationality. In the industrial cities of Europe and North America, the urban riots in recent times have been implied threats: “If you do not treat us fairly, we will make you pay.” Similarly, lynch mobs in the southern United States were responses to perceived challenges to local forms of inequality. In minor conflicts, an implicit element of ethnic bargaining can be a means by which tensions are reduced. The parties to an ethnic conflict often see themselves as engaged in a struggle in which one side can gain only at the expense of the other, that is, as involved in what, in the theory of games, counts as a zero-sum game (because the parties’ gains and losses sum to zero). They may be wrong; often both parties are losing and they are really engaged in a negativesum game (gains and losses sum to a negative total). The best hope of resolution may be for a third party to intervene and try to impose on the parties a solution promising rewards for them both; this would turn the conflict into a positive-sum game (gains and losses sum to a positive figure). Ethnic conflict depends on the readiness of individuals to identify themselves with persons of similar origin in collective action. It is restrained when individuals have other goals (either goals shared with their group or those of individual interest) that are more important to them. Such considerations help explain why fierce ethnic conflict is not associated with regions with high and improving living
Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of
standards and well-established political processes. It is more likely when there are sudden political changes touching upon nationality (as in Turkey in 1916, the drawing of new state boundaries in India in 1947, the dissolution of the Soviet bloc after 1989, or, more recently, in the struggle for Kurdish autonomy in Iraq). Ethnic conflict can also be restrained by the actions of others. After World War I, the victors redrew the map of Europe, creating states with resident minorities whose rights were to be protected by League of Nations treaties. These were not very successful. International law now promises better protections for minorities. Although the UN Security Council can impose sanctions on states that flout the law, its enforcement remains a difficult and expensive operation. As conflicts in Rwanda and in the Darfur region of Sudan have shown, governments are reluctant to intervene militarily when their own interests are not threatened. Michael Banton See also Balkans; Cross-Frontier Contacts; Crown Heights, Brooklyn; Ethnic Group; Ethnic Succession; Genocide; Kurdish Americans; Minority Rights; Robbers Cave Experiment; Urban Riots
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in places like Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York. This hyper concentration of immigrants has resulted in ethnically homogenous communities: Cubans in Miami, Chinese in New York and San Francisco, and Mexicans in Los Angeles and Houston. The importance of these enclaves to immigrants is perhaps best proven by the fact that attempts to relocate Cuban immigrants to other parts of the United States failed miserably: They simply returned to Miami. There are many important consequences for immigrants living and working in ethnic enclaves, but this entry focuses on the economic consequences of workers and business owners. Some scholars have portrayed ethnic enclaves as beneficial, both to those employed within enclaves and to entrepreneurs owning firms within enclaves. However, other scholars portray the enclave as harmful both to immigrant workers and to employers. These two opposite assessments make up the ethnic enclave debate. This entry reviews both sides of this debate and outlines the great theoretical importance of ethnic enclaves to the incorporation of immigrants into the United States.
What Is an Ethnic Enclave? Further Readings
Banton, Michael. 1997. Ethnic and Racial Consciousness. London: Addison-Wesley Longman. Banton, Michael. 2000. “Ethnic Conflict.” Sociology 34(3):481–498. Mann, Michael. 2005. The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. New York: Cambridge University Press. Minority Rights Group. 1997. World Directory of Minorities. London: Minority Rights Group International. Power, Samantha. 2002. “A Problem from Hell.” America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Basic Books. Sekulic~, Dus˘ ko, Garth Massey, and Randy Hodson. 2006. “Ethnic Intolerance and Ethnic Conflict in the Dissolution of Yugoslavia,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 29(5):797–827.
ETHNIC ENCLAVE, ECONOMIC IMPACT
OF
Immigrants coming to the United States have never been distributed randomly but, rather, are concentrated
Scholars have employed a variety of approaches to defining ethnic enclaves. Alejandro Portes and Leif Jensen proposed a definition widely used by other authors, labeling ethnic enclaves as spatially clustered businesses owned and operated by an ethnic minority group. Thus, some have labeled Miami, West Little River, and Hialeah (all located in south Florida) as Cuban ethnic enclaves and San Francisco and New York City as Chinese ethnic enclaves, presumably because of the high concentrations of each ethnic group in those communities. When there is a high concentration of people from an ethnic group living and working in a community, some scholars assume that the firms within that community are benefiting from ethnic solidarity and from vertical integration. Other scholars view this assumption as a major limitation of their approach, arguing that the ethnic concentration of a community is only a rough measure of ethnic solidarity and vertical integration. Other authors take a different approach by focusing on the ethnicity of a business’s owner and supervisor, but such studies do not address the clustering
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Benefitts to o Workers
Festival in Little Italy. Men and boys are shown on a sidewalk outside of store at a festival in Little Italy, New York City (1908). Little Italy is a general name for an ethnic enclave populated (or formerly populated) primarily by Italians or people of Italian ancestry. Ethnic enclaves can be viewed as beneficial by providing employment opportunities for members of the ethnic group, but some argue that wages are kept artificially low in such neighborhoods.
Studies show that immigrant workers in ethnic enclaves benefit from obtaining employment regardless of their legal status and despite their limited language ability and possession of fewer skills, which limit their employment options in other markets. Another benefit to workers who are employed within ethnic enclaves is the possibility of opening their own firms. Therefore, such workers are willing to work for low wages because they believe they will one day open their own firms. Alejandro Portes and Robert Bach call this pathway a “tour of duty.” Some argue that these co-ethnics are trained in self-employment, which leads them to self-employment. Ethnicc Enclaves and Success of Owners
The literature points toward several advantages derived from owning firms Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-114764. within ethnic enclaves. One major advantage is that there is a large supply of labor component that the other scholars stress. Such studies willing to work for low wages. Another advantage is fail to distinguish between ethnic businesses per se that owners can use ethnic solidarity to control workers. and ethnic businesses operating within ethnic One of the major benefits of owning a firm within enclaves. For example, some studies assume that if an ethnic enclave is the ability to capitalize on ethnic the owner and the worker share an ethnicity, the firm solidarity, which leads to an exchange of resources. is an enclave business; sometimes, only the ethnicity As a result of this felt obligation, co-ethnics may proof the supervisor of a firm is used to place it in this vide assistance to each other. It has been found that category. This is problematic because ethnic busiKorean owners reserve the higher paid positions for nesses can operate anywhere. The approach addresses Korean workers. Similarly, it has been shown that whether the firm is an ethnic firm but not whether an most workers within Cuban firms were also Cuban, ethnic concentration exists in the area where a firm is presumably because preference was shown for such located. Given that the ethnic enclave thesis is about workers. It has also been shown that immigrant firms the concentration of firms in an area, this concentradevelop this ethnic obligation to keep workers from tion must be considered to accurately measure an ethleaving the firm. Some point out that ethnic obligation nic enclave. helps owners fight unionization.
The Positive View Scholars who point out the benefits of ethnic enclaves argue that both workers and their employers draw advantages from working together, many of them linked to the idea of ethnic solidarity, or to a sense of community among people of the same ethnic background.
Verttical Integra atio on
It has been argued that a key benefit of owning a firm within an ethnic enclave is derived from vertical integration. In vertical integration, suppliers, owners of firms, clients, and workers all come from the same ethnic group. This is beneficial because immigrant
Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of
owners can speak their own language with suppliers and can capitalize on ethnic solidarity. It has been argued that Cuban firms were more vertically integrated relative to Black-owned firms and, thus, are able to deal with Cuban suppliers. Similarly, it has also been argued that Korean selfemployed immigrants also benefit from vertical integration because they primarily do business with other Koreans. Korean-owned companies have been compared with those owned by Mexican immigrants and found to be more vertically integrated. This vertical integration enables Korean entrepreneurs to gain better credit terms from Koreans lenders. Vertical integration affects firms by allowing them to obtain supplies and services at a lower price, which means that they can sell their goods and services for lower prices.
The Negative View Some studies argue that owning a firm within an ethnic enclave can be problematic. It has been argued that although the ethnic connection implies an obligation from which employers benefit, it also means that employers have obligations to their employees that can be quite costly. This was illustrated by In-Jin Yoon, who documented how Korean employers sometimes have trouble with Korean employees because they expect to be treated better by their fellow ethnics and often demand higher wages. Actually, some Korean employers prefer Latino workers to Korean workers, who are perceived to be too demanding. Michael Aguilera tested whether Puerto Rican employers provided higher wages to Puerto Rican workers and found no evidence of ethnic solidarity encouraging employers to pay higher wages to their co-ethnics. In a similar study focusing on Mexicans, Aguilera documents that ethnic solidarity does not lead Mexican employers to pay higher wages to Mexican workers. Some scholars argue that use of ethnic networks can be expensive to owners, who may feel compelled to make business decisions because of ethnic obligation rather than the best interests of the firm. This problem was discussed by Clifford Geertz, who documented how successful entrepreneurs were approached by people within their network for support, which sometimes hurt the firm. Similarly, Timothy Bates found that heavy reliance on social networks among immigrants is associated with less profitable firms. Bates compared
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Asian firms serving minority clients with those within the broader economy and found that those serving minorities were less profitable and more likely to fail. Having to fulfill obligations and operating in an environment with intense competition where the customer base is not affluent might provide a difficult environment in which to establish a successful firm. There is little agreement within the ethnic enclave literature, which suggests that more research needs to be done to address these important issues. Michael Bernabé Aguilera See also Barrio; Chinatowns; Colonias; Crown Heights, Brooklyn; Cuban Americans; East Harlem; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, Economic Impact of; Korean Americans; Mexican Americans; Puerto Rican Americans
Further Readings
Aguilera, Michael Bernabé. 2005. “The Impact of Social Capital on the Earnings of Puerto Rican Migrants.” Sociological Quarterly 46:569–592. Bailey, Thomas and Roger Waldinger. 1991. “Primary, Secondary, and Enclave Markets: A Training Systems Approach.” American Sociological Review 56:432–445. Bates, Timothy. 1994. “Social Resources Generated by Group Support Networks May Not Be Beneficial to Asian Immigrant-Owned Small Businesses.” Social Forces 72(March):671–689. Portes, Alejandro and Robert Bach. 1985. Latin Journey: Cuban and Mexican Immigrants in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press. Portes, Alejandro and Leif Jensen. 1989. “The Enclave and the Entrants: Patterns of Ethnic Enterprise in Miami Before and After Mariel.” American Sociological Review 54:929–949. Sanders, Jimy M. and Victor Nee. 1987. “Limits of Ethnic Solidarity in the Enclave Economy.” American Sociological Review 52:745–773. Wilson, Kenneth L. and Alejandro Portes. 1980. “Immigrant Enclaves: An Analysis of the Labor Market Experiences of Cubans in Miami,” American Journal of Sociology 86(2):295–319. Yoon, In-Jin. 1997. On My Own: Korean Businesses and Race Relations in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zhou, Min and John Logan. 1989. “Returns on Human Capital in Ethnic Enclaves: New York City’s Chinatown.” American Sociological Review 54:809–820.
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Ethnic Group
ETHNIC GROUP The ideas of ethnicity and ethnic group have a long history, often related to “otherness.” In the 20th century and beyond, the idea of what constitutes an ethnic group has changed; once associated with minority status and later with cultural characteristics, ethnicity is most recently viewed as the outcome of a social process. This entry discusses the history of the term, traces the evolution of thinking about ethnicity, and summarizes the current scholarly discussion.
A Historical Review Etymology and Eth hnicity y
The origin of the word ethnicity is Greek. In Homeric writing, it meant a swarm or flock of animals like bees or sheep, a biologically defined grouping. Eventually the term was applied to humans, and it meant the unity of persons of common blood or descent. The adjectival form, ethnikos (it entered Latin as ethnicus), referred to heathen, pagan, or those “others” who did not share the dominant faith. The same meaning of the word could be found in 15th-century England referring to someone who was neither Christian nor Jew— a pagan or heathen. By the 20th century, the meaning of the word changed again and became closer to the original Greek conception. Ethnic started to refer to “others,” to those who were not “us.” The term was not in wide circulation. The terms ethnic group and ethnicity did not appear in standard English dictionaries until 1961, when they could be found in Webster’s Third New International. In the 1972 Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first usage was attributed to David Riesman in 1953. Eth hniccitty and th he Other
The emergence of ethnic studies can be connected with the Chicago school of sociology and especially with Robert E. Park. He did not use the word ethnicity but, rather words such as race, nationality, or simply a group—for instance, in his famous formulation of the “race relations cycle.” By the time Park began his career at the University of Chicago in 1914, immigration from Europe had just peaked, the Mexican Revolution was forcing many to flee northward to the United States, Asian migrants had already arrived in
substantial numbers, the massive migration of southern Blacks to the northern cities had begun, and vast numbers of Whites from small towns and farms across America were moving to the cities. Park and his students did some of the first studies of the settlement patterns of racial (ethnic) groups in cities and looked at conditions in their crowded enclaves and ghettos. The return of the word ethnic to describe the special characteristics of the social life of these groups in big cities was impregnated by the “otherness” and minority status of these groups. Park’s use of the term was based on certain sets of assumptions and judgments about the nature of ethnicity and ethnic relations. His assimilationist model implied that in the long run, the “ethnic” would assimilate into the “non-ethnic” core. That meant that the “majority” was not perceived as “ethnic,” and “ethnicity” was the characteristic of a “minority.” A Broader Defin nittion
It took some time before ethnicity was used in terms of a “majority” group or, in a more general way, to describe “ourselves,” rather than just “minorities” or “others.” This evolution culminated in several publications edited by Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan. In 1975, they proclaimed that the importance of ethnic groups had extended beyond minorities to all the groups of a society characterized by a distinct sense of difference because of culture and descent. According to Glazer and Moynihan, the new meaning of the term ethnic group is based on the expansion of its scope from minority and marginal subgroups at the edges of society—groups expected to assimilate, to disappear, to continue as survivals, exotic or troublesome—to dominant elements of society. Through this evolution of the meaning of the word, ethnicity came closer to the European concept of nationality. Nation and nationality in the United States and much of Northern and Western Europe mean “state” and “citizenship,” and the terms nation and state are often used interchangeably. However, in large parts of Central and Eastern Europe, nation and nationality do not refer in the first instance to the state but invoke an ethnocultural state of reference independent of the state boundaries. For instance, all Hungarians are members of the ethnocultural nation, regardless of the state where they live, and Hungarians are equally Hungarian in Rumania, Serbia, the United States, or Australia as within the state of Hungary itself. In that sense, the word nation has the same
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meaning as ethnicity but is devoid of its connection to “minority status.” The initial U.S. concept of ethnic group meaning “minority” would be in the Central and Eastern European context simply “national minority.”
Max Weber’s Approach The groundwork for understanding ethnicity in its “nonminority” sense within European sociology was laid by Max Weber, who defines an ethnic group as based on the subjective belief of group members in their common descent. This belief is justified by similarities of physical type and customs and by memories of colonization and migration. There are several important elements in Weber’s understanding of ethnicity. First, he emphasizes that ethnicity is based on the perception of common descent. What counts is the existence of this perception rather than its historical accuracy. Second, the perception of common descent is universally present and is combined with culture (custom), but which cultural components are regarded as important varies from group to group. Third, by saying that the subjective belief in common descent can be based on a similarity of physical type and custom, Weber subsumes racial and ethnic groups into one category. He is explicit in emphasizing that similarity and contrast of physical type and custom, regardless of whether they are biologically inherited or culturally transmitted, are having identical potential for group formation. It follows from Weber’s definition that if ethnic groups are articulated around perceived ancestry, culture, and language, they are subject to change, redefinition, and contestation. Ethnic groups are not fixed and uncomplicated entities as suggested by often-used terms such as ethnic relations. Ethnic groups and ethnicity should be understood as being the result of a social process in which people, individually and collectively, draw boundaries around themselves in their social lives. Central to this process is the production and reproduction of culture, acknowledged ancestry and ideological interpretation of it, and the use of language as a marker of social difference and the emblem of a people. Central to the ethnic group is the systematic and enduring reproduction of these classificatory differences between categories of people who see themselves as different. In the traditional “static” approach to ethnic relations, the defining of ethnic groups involved attempts
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to find the most common elements of culture such as language or religion that can be used as universal characteristics of ethnicity. Careful reading of Weber can alert us to the uselessness of such an approach. He indicated that the ethnic group identity may be linked to the most superficial features of historically accidental habits and to inherited “racial” characteristics. He says that differences in the styles of beard and hairdo, clothes, food and eating habits, division of labor between the sexes, and all kinds of other visible differences can serve as a starting point for creating ethnic boundaries. There are no universal cultural traits characterizing ethnic groups because any of these different traits can play the role of the markers differentiating the group from its environment. Consequently, there cannot be a universal definition of ethnic groups except that all have the idea of common descent and some type of cultural or physical markers. The objective cultural or physical differences are relative because sometimes “objectively” great differences are ignored, but in other cases, small differences are used as subjectively important markers of differentiation. It is misleading to speak about ethnic groups as peoples “sharing” ancestry, culture, or language. Ethnicity should be conceptualized not as a substance, thing, entity, organism, or a collective individual but, rather, as relational, processual, or dynamic.
Culture and Ethnicity In traditional sociology (as in everyday discourse), the role of cultural differences was perceived in a static way. It was thought that social groups possess different cultural characteristics that make them distinct from other groups. Cultural differences were understood in terms of the group’s property. For example, Germans are different from French because they have different cultural characteristics—language, habits, and so on. The seminal work of Frederik Barth shed new dynamic light on the relationship between ethnicity and culture. Barth believed that it is not “possession” of cultural characteristics that makes social groups distinct but, rather, the social interaction with other groups that makes the differences visible and socially meaningful. Boundaries of some cultures are not coterminous with the boundaries of the ethnic groups (the same logic applies for the European “nations”). This detachment of the idea of ethnic group from culture signified a departure from the traditional sociological
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and anthropological idea of ethnic groups as marked by and defined by cultural difference. Although the ethnic group is formed on the ideas of common descent and culture, there is no one-to-one relationship between culture and ethnicity, and the causal arrow is much more likely to run from group consciousness toward culture than the other way around. As a consequence, the focus in the study of ethnic difference has shifted from the study of cultural contents (language, religion, and customs) to the study of the interaction processes in which cultural characteristics are “picked up” as markers of differences in the interaction process. Cultural differences per se do not create ethnic collectivities: The social contact with others leads to the definition and categorization of an “us” and “them.” On the same line of thinking, Roger Brubaker proposed that a basic analytical category is not an ethnic group as an entity but “groupness” as a contextually fluctuating conceptual variable. There is a tendency analytically to start with groups, which Brubaker calls “groupism”; this tendency imposes the existence of discrete, sharply differentiated, internally homogeneous, and externally bounded groups as the basic constituents of social life, where the reality is much more fluid and flexible, less sharply differentiated, and changeable.
The Process of Ethnicity In accordance with this conceptual shift, contemporary sociology concentrates more on the analysis of situations that create ethnic boundaries than on the group characteristics that allegedly “make” ethnic groups. T. H. Eriksen made a typology of the main contexts (ethnic-making situations) that created the ethnic map of the modern world. These comprise urban minorities composed of migrant workers in U.S. and European cities; newly industrializing societies and traditional trader minorities, such as the Chinese merchants in Asia or Jews, Greeks, and Armenians in earlier European history; nations and proto-nations; and groups claiming right to self-determination on the basis of common ancestry and cultural homogeneity. Nations are those who successfully created a nation-state, and protonations are the groups that are incorporated in other states (like Quebecois within Canada) or whose territory is divided among neighboring states (for example, Basques in France and Spain, Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran); ethnic groups in plural societies
composed of descendants of voluntary, semi-coerced, and coerced migrants to former colonies (like Chinese in Malaysia and Singapore or Indians in Singapore and in some African countries); and indigenous minorities dispossessed by colonization like Aborigines of Australia, Maori of New Zealand, or Native American peoples across the American continent. To this list, Fanton adds post-slavery minorities like the descendants of African slaves on the American continent. Summarizing from this typology, the main processes lying behind the creation of ethnic groups are the development of the nation-state as a political form and unequal valuation of different cultures; the European colonial domination over much of Africa, Asia, and the “New World”; enslavement of Africans and the postcolonial social order; migrations of workers and traders; and the creation of international diasporas and the dispossession of indigenous people. If ethnicity is understood as the result of social interaction, culture, and boundary maintenance, it follows that ethnicity and ethnic groups are not parochial leftovers from the past that will largely disappear with modernization. The paradigm that dominated post–World War II sociology could not explain the reemergence of ethnicity in the 1970s and 1980s in America or the important role that nationalism and national groups played in the dissolution of communism. Of course, in none of these cases was the ethnic revival reflecting some miraculous rediscovery of forgotten communities and identities. Events like decolonization or the establishment of competitive politics in the postcommunist societies created conditions where tacit identities became significant in a new way, playing a significant role in the political sphere. Ethnicity is and will be maintained, recreated, and created constantly, as long as there are social interactions and cultural markers to draw upon. As long as culturally and politically aware social groups can create a believable narrative of common descent in confrontation with some other group or groups, the ethnicity will be maintained, revived, or created. Sociologically speaking, despite its obvious diversity, ethnicity is in the last instance a politicized culture. From Latinos in the United States to Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) in Bosnia and Herzegovina or Palestinians, the struggles for recognition, political conflict, and territorial conquest are continuously creating new ethnic groups and nations. Classical sociology as well as everyday discourses understood the relationship of the ethnic (cultural) and the political in a different way from
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more recent, modern approaches. Ethnic groups are not constituted first outside of politics, subsequently entering the political arena to lobby for their collective interests or to stake out claims for autonomy. Although that path is possible, what often happens is that political groups are formed that then attribute an ethnic character to themselves. Dus˘ ko Sekulic´ See also Assimilation; Ethnic Conflict; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Ethnocentrism; Minority/Majority; National Origins System; Park, Robert E.; Peoplehood; Race; Racial Identity; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Barth, Frederic, ed. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. London: Allen & Unwin. Brubacker, Roger. 2004. Ethnicity Without Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Eriksen, T. H. 1993. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspective. London. Pluto Press. Fenton, Steve. 2003. Ethnicity. Cambridge, UK. Polity Press. Glazer, Nathan and Daniel P. Moynihan, eds. 1975. Ethnicity: Theory and Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Malesevic, Sinisa. 2004. The Sociology of Ethnicity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Park, E. Robert. 1914. “Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups.” American Journal of Sociology 19:606–623. Weber, Max. 1922/1978. Economy and Society, edited by G. Roth and C. Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press.
ETHNICITY, NEGOTIATING The concept of negotiating ethnicity is grounded in the scholarship on the social construction of ethnicity, transnationalism, racism, and gender. A focus on negotiation directs attention to multiple actors who are involved in constructing the content and boundaries of ethnicity. It also emphasizes the structural restrictions and opportunities that shape how individuals and groups negotiate ethnicity within local, national, and transnational contexts. What emerges is a picture of contemporary ethnicity that is dynamic
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and multilayered, fragmented yet coherent, with embedded boundaries that are shaped by global and local processes. This entry examines that picture.
Negotiation Strategies Focusing on negotiations means moving away from notions of ethnic culture as a fixed and absolute entity; instead, ethnic culture is seen as an outcome of what groups choose to emphasize and negotiate in different contexts. Scholars who focus on social construction of ethnicity have promoted the idea of culture as a tool-kit or a shopping cart, which is strategically filled with smaller or larger cultural building blocks such as art, religion, language, norms, beliefs, myths, customs, food, and dress. The shape and size of the cart are influenced by the existing structural restrictions and opportunities in that context; the content is chosen by ethnic groups to negotiate the space available to them in the cart. The panethnicity literature, which describes how groups join to form larger-scale ethnic identities, also documents the strategic creation and deployment of cultural tools for constructing and mobilizing new, situationally relevant, panethnic layers, such as an Asian American, Latino, or Native American identity layers. As individuals and groups contend with structural circumstances at multiple levels (local, national, global), they actively construct cultures to fit their circumstances. The idea of selection and deployment of cultural tools suggests ethnic cultures are dynamic: They arise within situated contexts, and they are multilayered. For instance, the panethnic layer is often a nationally relevant layer that is added to the ethnic identity layers built on the basis religious, linguistic, historical, national, regional, and other cultural affiliations that may be relevant locally or globally. An individual can be a Kolkata Bengali, Indian American, and Asian American simultaneously; some of these layers, like the Asian American layer, are only relevant in the United States, whereas the other layers have local or transnational salience. The recognition of multiple layers of ethnicity suggests that groups have to weave and reconcile many layers that may not always fit easily. For instance, being a Bengali American may not easily fit the boundaries of either an Indian or a Bangladeshi American layer (because Bengalis originate in both South Asian countries), but it would fit a panethnic South Asian American layer. Overall, ongoing negotiations to create each layer and attempts to reconcile
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multiple layers yield dynamic, fragmented yet coherent, multilayered ethnic identities. The notion of groups using cultural tools in specific contexts also suggests that the ethnic culture is rarely practiced by all members of an ethnic group in the same way. Instead, members of ethnic groups who are positioned differently because of their gender, class, religious background, national origin, citizenship status, generation, and other social characteristics have to negotiate power differences within the ethnic group as they attempt to assert versions of culture that are best suited to their social locations. A series of coexisting versions of culture, some more hegemonic than others, emerge, exist, and fade as ethnic group members negotiate the content of culture within nuclear and extended families and local and geographically dispersed ethnic communities. Competing versions are also created, practiced, mobilized, and strengthened through the concerted efforts of organized movements that promote sets of values, versions of histories, and attitudes to challenge existing internal and external boundaries. Thus, each ethnic layer, as well as the multiple coexisting layers, is marked by internal and external negotiations of culture.
Race and Ethnicity Any focus on negotiating ethnicity foregrounds ethnic boundaries. A long strand of scholarly work has documented how changes in ethnic group languages, occupation, residence, values, and norms lead to assimilation into the majority society, and other work documents the persistence of social processes that mark phenotypes, national origins, and religious affiliations in ways that harden hierarchical boundaries between racialized ethnic groups and the mainstream. Groups that are marked and marginalized as racial minorities adopt two forms of resistance to negotiate the boundaries imposed upon them. Many groups exhibit a process of racial ethnogenesis, where multiple racialized ethnocultural groups develop a common identity within nation-states that serves as a basis for contesting society’s racialized view of them. Conflicts and negotiation mark the process of creating this panethnic layer of identity. On the one hand, this layer has to be negotiated to challenge the deleterious classification schemes that dominant groups use—through policies, formal political classifications, ideological representations, and group interaction—to “lump” people together. On the other hand, groups that
are considered to be “the same” by outsiders have to negotiate commonality among themselves. Even if a common language or the experience of racialization is mobilized to produce the panethnic layer (for instance, in the case of Latino or Asian American ethnicity), a series of internal boundaries based on different histories (including histories of long-standing conflicts between nations of origin), religious affiliations, customs, practices, languages, and class locations have to be negotiated to create the new panethnic layer. Often mid-level layers such as “South Asian American” or “Caribbean American” emerge and gain salience in response to the characterizations of the mainstream and the efforts to create new common bonds. These mid-level panethnic layers can compete against the larger panethnic identities. Groups also challenge and negotiate their racialized positions by resisting being completely incorporated into stigmatized racial categories of the United States. Many groups reconstruct and assiduously sustain ethnonational identities as a way of negotiating ascribed racialized identities. They continue to assert their nation-of-origin roots through the development of “hyphenated” identities (so called because they are often spelled with hyphens). Such as Indian American, Vietnamese American, or Jamaican American. Adopting “hyphenated” identities allows them to create affirmative identities and resist internalizing the stereotypes that are used to stigmatize them in the United States; it also allows them to create their own social spaces because the mainstream typically does not allow them to claim they are only “American.” Yet, claiming such ethnonational identities requires negotiating with the people and government in the society-of-origin. People in the countries of origin may not always recognize the claims of people in the diasporas. For instance, Korean Americans may emphasize their Korean-ness, yet people in Korea may think of them as U.S. citizens. Such claims are most successful when ongoing networks weave people of the societies of origin and the diasporas together in dynamic relationships. Sometimes governments actively promote globalized ethnonational identities as a way of encouraging emigrants to send money to the home countries, as well as promoting transfers of ideas, technologies, and people across national boundaries. Not all diasporic groups are able to access such formal transnational options; the political clout of selected groups to negotiate with “home” governments mediates the nature of the relationship. Typically, first generation
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immigrants are positioned more favorably—politically and socially—than post–immigrant-generation groups to negotiate and sustain transnational connections; in addition, class, gender, and other social hierarchies shape these relationships between ethnic groups and “home” governments and “home” societies.
Expressing Ethnicity Apart from negotiating the boundaries that facilitate or impede their inclusion as members of nation-states, ethnic groups have to negotiate the boundaries that restrict cultural expression. The development of multiculturalism in European America, occurring since the 1960s, has raised the expectation of groups about their right to practice their ethnic cultures. Yet, in reality, a series of rules—on timing, organization of practices, event location, and availability of official holidays— govern what is acceptable in public places; these rules often reflect what is normal practice among White, middle-class, or Christian groups. As a result, ethnic groups often “perform” ethnicity by showcasing their music, fashions, dances, and foods in educational institutions, fairs, festivals, parades, and exhibitions instead of organizing them as religio-cultural events on appropriate holidays in public places. Ethnic groups also negotiate cultural boundaries by constructing ethnic consumer lifestyles to assert who they are, relying mostly on a postindustrial economy that sells cultures—acquires and sells music, fashions, books, art, and so on—for their consumption and use. Adoption of lifestyles on the basis on their consumption patterns helps groups create networks with others, often across language and religion divides, based on their affinity toward similar cultural lifestyles. Even though the adoption of cultural consumer lifestyles to “do” ethnicity means that corporations and businesses often dictate tastes and cultural preferences of ethnic groups, these groups are able to negotiate their positions as ethnic consumer citizens in postindustrial societies. They develop a set of practices like the majority society, but, responding to the marketing efforts of multinational culture industries, they negotiate an ethnic consumer space that is much like the consumer spaces of their mainstream peers. Like their mainstream peers, they might prefer designer clothes, but some of their designer clothes will be bought from ethnic designers. As ethnic consumers, they underscore their difference from the mainstream (a contemporary form of cultural nationalism) and they are seen as a
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different market segment, distinctive from the mainstream. Their exact status then is a reflection of how they negotiate these contradictions. Contemporary forms of ethnicity are constructed within a globalized world, and scholars have begun to examine ethnicity within multination contexts. Some of the transnational ethnicity literature focuses on first-generation immigrants and the ties, networks, and institutions they create between the home and host countries based on their ongoing ties to societies of origin. A focus on negotiating ethnicity underscores the need to examine the process of constructing transnational cultures and networks, to see how and which boundaries are challenged and breached, and to examine the actors and structural factors that shape such transnational forms of ethnicity. Not all groups are equally welcome in their old countries or the new ones. Groups that are considered minorities in multiple nations—including the country of origin—usually have to negotiate a series of extra boundaries. For instance, the growing global concern about national security means groups such as Muslim Americans are subject to extra scrutiny and surveillance in the new globalized security blocks that stretch across multiple nations. Such political and social positions affect all aspects of ethnic life, including how people might keep in touch with family members across countries, if they can easily travel for family gatherings such as weddings or funerals, or if they can send money across countries to support extended family needs or for charity without eliciting extra scrutiny.
Transnational Groups Recent work on transnational ethnicity among postimmigrant generations and diasporic groups has begun to document how cultural tools are selected within transnational contexts shaped by the social, economic, and political interests of multiple nations. These studies show that groups constantly negotiate the content and boundaries of terms such as Indian, Filipino, or American in different contexts. For instance, a study by Purkayastha on second-generation South Asian Americans found those who grew up in mostly White suburbs and are indistinguishable from their peers in linguistic ability and achievement were consistently racialized on the basis of phenotypes and cultural differences in their schools and neighborhoods. This led them to develop hyphenated ethnic identities
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and to develop cultures that reflect both sides of the hyphen, that is, their American-ness and their ethnic heritage. Interestingly, although they felt they could never claim to be “only American” because others never think of them in these terms in the United States, their visits to their parents’ home countries made them feel culturally American. They could not rely on any (ethnic) cultural similarities to create bonds with people outside their extended families in those countries. Even within their families, gender and age differences structured their experiences in ways that made them realize their cultural similarity had to be negotiated. Research on other ethnic groups—especially Latino, Asian American, and Black immigrant groups—show similar trajectories. The meanings and content of “American” are no longer constructed only with reference to the political, economic, and social realities that exist within the geopolitical boundaries of the United States. Individuals and groups negotiate both their ethnic-ness and American-ness across multiple countries, often relying on common cultural consumption or membership in movement organizations (including religious organizations), and other social and political networks to create and negotiate these cultural commonalties. Maintaining these hyphenated identities provides them with sources of solidarities as well as the bases to challenge social boundaries imposed upon them in multiple countries. The use of hyphenated identity labels has been seen as a step in the process through which groups claim their cultural heritages while assimilating as U.S. residents. Examining the negotiation of ethnicity indicates both sides of hyphenated labels have become unruly, spilling across multiple national boundaries. Both the U.S. side and the ethnic side contain multiple layers, some of which coalesce across the hyphen, but other layers do not fit easily and remain fragmented. These multiple layers coexist and clash, creating a series of bridges and chasms that have to be traversed. Through complex, ongoing processes of negotiation, ethnicity remains fluid and multilayered, attuned to local, national, and transnational contexts in the contemporary world. Bandana Purkayastha See also Asian Americans; Cosmopolitanism; Cross-Frontier Contacts; Cultural Capital; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Hispanics; Indian Americans; Intercultural Communication; Jamaican Americans; Muslim Americans; Transnational People; Vietnamese Americans
Further Readings
Barth, Frederick. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Boston, MA: Littlefield and Brown. Canclini, Nestor. 2001. Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Espiritu, Yen. 1992. Asian American Pan Ethnicity. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Ignacio, Emily. 2005. Building Diaspora: Filipino Cultural Community Formation on the Internet. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kibria, Nazli. 2002. Becoming Asian American: Second Generation Chinese and Korean Identities. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Levitt, Peggy and Mary Waters, eds. 2002. The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Nagel, Joanne. 1994. “Constructing Ethnicity: Creating and Recreating Ethnic Identity and Culture.” Social Problems 41:152–176. Nagel, Joanne. 1996. American Indian Ethnic Revival: Red Power and the Resurgence of Ethnicity and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Padilla, Felix. 1985. Latino Ethnic Consciousness: The Case of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Purkayastha, Bandana. 2005. Negotiating Ethnicity: Second Generation South Asian Americans Traverse a Transnational World. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
ETHNIC SUCCESSION Ethnic succession refers to the process by which one racial/ethnic group displaces another ethnic/racial group from an established residential, occupational, or political niche. This entry describes the model and offers examples of how it can be used to understand changes in neighborhoods, workplaces, and political power, as well as competition and conflict among different groups.
Development of the Model The concept of ethnic succession is an integral part of the ecological perspective on urban group relations first developed by a group of sociologists at the University of Chicago in the early to mid-1900s. This group of scholars, collectively known as the Chicago School and led by Robert Ezra Park, proposed that
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racial and ethnic groups were territorial entities, analogous to plant and animal species, who compete for the resources in the urban environment. Park and his colleagues proposed that much as plant and animal species contend for food, water, and space and dominate certain places with the natural environment, human groups seek to establish a secure place for themselves within the urban landscape, carving out residential niches where their group constitutes the majority of the population and where their dominance of local institutions (e.g., religious institutions and businesses) is established. Once established, these niches may become subject to “invasion” by other groups migrating from other places or seeking to expand their territory. Eventually, if these invasions are not repelled, the newcomers displace the former population, which relocates to other neighborhoods and workplaces and cedes control of the political apparatus to the newcomers. In the process, some groups are displaced into other neighborhoods and occupations with the arrival of another wave of newcomers who come to occupy that portion of the residential, occupational, or political spectrum. These newcomers may then compete with those groups directly above them in the status hierarchy, which can lead to conflict among groups. The ethnic succession model stands in stark contrast to the classic assimilation model described by Gordon, which proposes that individual members of ethnic/racial groups gradually blend in, integrate, and intermarry with the dominant population group—for example, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants—without experiencing much tension or conflict. Rather, as Waldinger noted, U.S. society features a collective mobility as one immigrant group after another arrives, ensuring an ongoing competition for resources.
Changing Neighborhoods From a residential standpoint, ethnic succession first takes place with the arrival of a few “pioneers”— members of a racial/ethnic group who decide to settle in the midst of another group’s established enclave. These newcomers at best may be tolerated, but they are often perceived as a potential threat, particularly if they practice a different religion or adhere to different set of cultural customs than does the group that is dominant in the area. From a historical perspective, the movement of Black people into formerly White urban communities provoked a particularly visceral reaction from the White population, who often
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employed intimidation and, in some cases, outright violence to prevent the “incursion” of Black people into “their” space. For example, in 1925, a Black physician named Ossian Sweet moved from an African American enclave in Detroit to a White neighborhood in that city and was met with an angry mob who threatened his family and sought to break into his home to do bodily harm to the Sweets. While defending his property, Dr. Sweet fired a gun from within the house, killing one of the members of the mob who had gathered outside. As a result, he was charged with murder but was later acquitted by reason of self-defense. In Chicago, near the beginning of the 20th century, African Americans who sought to move outside the segregated Black belt along State Street in Chicago met with stiff resistance from residents of the adjacent Irish and Polish communities, who beat up Black people passing through the neighborhoods and firebombed the homes of the newcomers. Such violence culminated in the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 in which thirty-eight people perished, twenty-three of whom were Black. In 1943, thirty-four people, twenty-six of whom were Black, lost their lives in pitched battles that began over access to a beach and spread to the borders of White and Black communities in the heart of Detroit. More recently, after a decade of movement by Latinos into formerly Black neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles, Compton, and Watts, tensions built up and violence flared between African Americans and Latinos in those areas. Such conflict culminated in the deaths of fifty-two people during the 1992 Los Angeles disturbances. Such conflicts persist in Los Angeles and other cities as Black population growth is surpassed locally by the influx of Latinos, leading to further tensions between these two groups. This suggests that the process of ethnic succession and backlash violence need not be limited to Black-White relations. Whether the newcomers are Black, Hispanic, or members of some other minority ethnic/racial group, the process of ethnic succession tends to promote a sense of competition, if not outright hostility among groups. Yet, not all residential transitions are accompanied by hostility and violence. Several scholars have argued that the intensity of competition and hostility among groups for space is contingent on the pace of change and the pent-up demand for housing by the newcomers. In cases where the transition from one residential population to another is gradual, there is the possibility of stable racial/ethnic integration
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without wholesale displacement. In such cases, natives and newcomers have sometimes found common ground as members of religious organizations. For example, in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, despite the transition from a largely Polish population to a majority Mexican population, there has been little outward hostility. This is perhaps because of the mediating effect of the Catholic Church, which has made an effort to include both Polish and Mexican parishioners. Furthermore, as scholars have argued—for example, Ashutosh Varshney with respect to demographic transition between Hindus and Muslims in India—the establishment of crosscutting “civic ties” through interethnic business associations, labor unions, and other kinds of voluntary organizations can help bring newcomers and natives together under a banner of mutual interdependence and thereby ameliorate the potential for violence. By contrast, Massey argues that despite such efforts, the pace of ethnic succession and the degree of resistance are still largely functions of the skin color of the in-migrant group. In several Southwestern U.S. cities, Massey has shown the movement of Black people into White residential neighborhoods led to greater out-migration of Whites than did the movement of Hispanics into formerly White neighborhoods. This suggests that color of skin, rather than just perceptions of cultural difference, remains a salient variable underscoring the greater degree of Black-White versus White-Hispanic segregation in the United States.
Economic and Political Transitions Ethnic succession and the competitive ethnic relations that are often engendered by it need not be limited to residential population dynamics. Another manifestation of ethnic succession involves access to jobs, rather than residential space. Some scholars have written extensively about competition in labor markets, where members of one racial/ethnic group may seek to inhabit an occupational niche established by members of another group. Waldinger posits that ethnic groups succeed economically by establishing quasimonopolistic control of certain occupations and industries. For example, Jewish immigrants to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s established an occupational niche in the “needle trades” or garment industry, using extended ethnic networks to establish a sense of control over the manufacture of clothing, which allowed them to generate the financial capital for succeeding generations to become better educated
and experience socioeconomic mobility. As the children and grandchildren of Jewish immigrants experienced social and economic mobility, the garment industry increasingly became populated by African Americans, and later, by Latinos. Tracing the labor market composition of industries such as garment manufacturing, fruit and vegetable distribution, and even “white-collar” jobs such as primary and secondary education, one can see a succession of ethnic groups who have inhabited these fields. In a similar vein, one can document ethnic succession in the political realm, where members of one ethnic group have replaced members of another group as the dominant group holding political offices. Such is the political history of many older U.S. cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago, where political power first rested in the hands of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), who were then challenged and succeeded by the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, and eventually, in some cities, by African American officials. These political developments often corresponded with shifts in the demographic composition of the cities themselves but in some notable cases lagged behind such change. During the 1960s, conflict erupted in several cities such as Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit, Michigan, where Black people had recently become the residential majority but held relatively few positions of power in municipal government. As some scholars have noted, the riots of the late 1960s in those two cities and other cities throughout America were largely the result of residential ethnic succession that occurred without corresponding political succession. In other cases, residential succession has been accompanied by both economic and political succession. In Los Angeles, for example, Hispanics have come to occupy neighborhoods that were once home to mostly African American families, have taken control of industries that were formerly the workplaces of primarily Black workers, and have successfully run for citywide offices. Indeed, the recently elected mayor of Los Angeles is a Latino. As was the case in earlier instances of ethnic succession in other cities, the corresponding decline of Black political power and out-migration of African Americans from traditionally Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles has not always been peaceful. In that city, Black and Latino gangs have been involved in an ongoing struggle to establish new boundaries with innocent bystanders of both races caught in the crossfire.
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One can only speculate about who will represent the next wave of newcomers and which groups will feel most threatened by their presence. Nonetheless, the ethnic succession process will likely continue in many U.S. cities with the arrival of new immigrant/ ethnic groups and the out-migration of older established groups. The extent to which these transitions are peaceful will depend both on the pace of change and the cultural identities of the groups involved. Yet in the absence of structural mechanisms that allow for the residential, economic, and political inclusion of both newcomers and natives, the melting pot is likely to periodically “boil over.” Max Herman See also Assimilation; Chicago School of Race Relations; Cross-Frontier Contacts; Discrimination in Housing; Lynching; Park, Robert E.; Restrictive Covenants; Sundown Towns; Urban Riots Further Readings
Aldrich, Howard and A. J. Reiss, Jr. 1976. “Continuities in the Study of Ecological Succession: Changes in the Race Composition of Neighborhoods.” American Journal of Sociology 81(4):846–866. Bergesen, Albert and Max Herman. 1998. “Race, Riot and Rebellion: The 1992 Los Angeles Uprising.” American Sociological Review 63(1):39–54. Duncan, Otis Dudley. 1968. The Negro Population of Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gordon, Milton. 1964. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins. New York: Oxford University Press. Grimshaw, Allen D. 1969. Racial Violence in the United States. Chicago, IL: Aldine. Herman, Max Arthur. 2005. Fighting in the Streets: Ethnic Succession and Urban Unrest in 20th Century America. New York: Peter Lang. Massey, Douglas. 1983. “A Research Note on Residential Succession: The Hispanic Case.” Social Forces 61(3, March):825–833. Olzak, Susan. 1992. The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Conflict. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Park, Robert Ezra and Ernest W. Burgess, eds. 1967. The City. Chicago: IL: University of Chicago Press. Varshney, Ashutosh. 2002. Ethnic Conflict and Civil Life: Hindus and Muslims in India. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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Waldinger, Roger. 1995. “When the Melting Pot Boils Over: The Irish, Jews, Black and Koreans of New York. In The Bubbling Cauldron: The New Political Economy of Race and Ethnicity, edited by J. Feagin and M. P. Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
ETHNOCENTRISM Ethnocentrism is a tendency to see one’s own group as the center of the world and to rate all other groups according to the norms, values, and characteristics of the observer’s group. William Sumner is often credited with the first classical definition of ethnocentrism as the point of view where each group considers itself superior while treating all outsiders with contempt. When 19th-century European colonizers described the Africans they encountered as “savages,” they were practicing ethnocentrism. But the practice existed long before the 1800s, probably from the first time one tribe of people encountered another, and it can be observed universally. Ethnocentrism discourages interaction between cultures and, at its most extreme, results in discrimination against and conflict with out-groups. Ethnocentrism is most often manifested as racism and nationalism. Social scientists can and have been guilty of ethnocentrism when studying other races and cultures. In contrast with ethnocentrism, cultural relativism assumes that each culture’s norms have their own intrinsic value and cannot be judged or compared with another. This entry looks at the concept of ethnocentrism, its history in the United States, and its expression in the social sciences.
Ethnocentrism Theory Scholars like Sumner initially argued that the tendency toward ethnocentrism developed in an environment of scarce resources. Individuals formed groups—tribes, races, nations—whose members cooperated to find these limited resources and competed with other groups for survival. Thus, simple physical need motivated trust of in-group and distrust of out-group members. Social identity theory revised this structuralist and functionalist explanation, arguing that the mere act of individuals classifying themselves as members of the same group automatically results in a display of in-group favoritism. The very ordinary desire for
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self-esteem prompts individuals to positively differentiate their in-group in comparison with an out-group on the basis of the particular parameter they select, such as race, language, or religion. Other scholars have argued that ethnocentrism, as an extension of kinship sentiments, is a genetically selected propensity because it is biologically advantageous. Research has also shown that ethnocentrism is a general affective-cognitive system. Thus, people who hold prejudices against one disadvantaged group tend to hold prejudices against other disadvantaged groups as well, even though these out-groups have nothing in common except their disadvantaged status.
Ethnocentrism in the United States Ethnocentrism has played a part in U.S. history since the country’s founding. The success of the U.S. Revolution reinforced the idea—originating with the Puritan settlers—that Providence had selected America to be an example to the rest of the world. The leaders of the U.S. Revolution saw themselves as creating a morally superior nation—one that would end Old World systems of monarchy and feudalism, and introduce universal freedom and civilization around the world. Internally, the presence of so many African Americans in positions of abject slavery encouraged 19th-century White U.S. residents to be receptive to so-called scientific theories of polygenesis and innate racial hierarchies. Even those who favored emancipation rejected the notion of incorporating Blacks into mainstream White society. By the 1850s, the myth of the superior Anglo-Saxon American race was firmly entrenched. Native Americans provided another test of this idea. The initial national policy toward Native Americans was to attempt to “civilize” them, encouraging them to take up farming and private property. But as westward expansion across the continent under the popular idea of Manifest Destiny resulted in increasingly brutal wars with the Native Americans who were being displaced from their traditional lands, the Enlightenment notions of the equality of man fell by the wayside. By 1830, it was generally accepted that American Indians were racially inferior to the Anglo-Saxon Americans and therefore did not need to be treated as equals. In the build-up to the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War, similar theories were advanced about
Mexicans, who were portrayed as lazy, inept, of mixed American Indian and Black blood, and unable to make use of the fertile land in their northern provinces. It was argued that only a superior race such as the industrious Anglo-Saxon Americans could bring the land to its full potential and introduce civilization to the Mexicans. Even critics of the annexation of Mexico argued on ethnocentric grounds, worried that the inclusion of 8 million Mexicans would threaten the character of Anglo-America. In the 1880s, as an increasing number of Southern and Eastern Europeans, rather than the earlier Northern and Western European immigrants, started arriving in the United States, nativist fears that the Anglo-Saxon nature of America was under threat by inferior breeds flourished. Soon, there were calls to control immigration into the country. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act stopped the immigration of Chinese laborers; the Naturalization Act of 1870 had already barred Asians from U.S. citizenship. In 1907, the Gentlemen’s Agreement with Japan banned the immigration of Japanese laborers. After World War I, the Immigration and Nationality Act restricted immigration on the basis of national origins, curtailing immigration from the Southern and Eastern European countries, whereas the Oriental Exclusion Act banned all Asians. It took 40 years for these laws to be overturned. Also from the 1880s, large-scale movements to Americanize the newly arrived European immigrants were initiated: The English language and U.S. customs were taught, and immigrants were pushed to forget their origins and former culture. By the early 20th century, intellectuals were criticizing this ethnocentric assimilationist approach, arguing that the United States should be a democracy of nationalities where immigrants’ varied heritage should be esteemed, not attacked. After World War II, a strategy of cultural pluralism gained more ground though it was still referring solely to European immigrants. Since the 1970s, this approach has broadened to encompass all races and ethnicities in the United States.
Ethnocentrism in the Social Sciences By the beginning of the 19th century, there were increasing calls to recognize the ethnocentrism inherent in most social science research. Ethnographers and historians from Europe and America had been studying other cultures and races from a position of
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Western superiority, all the while assuming that they were being objective. The notion of Orientalism, developed by Edward Said to critique how Europeans exoticized and stereotyped the East while retaining a position of superiority over it, is perhaps the bestknown example of ethnocentrism. Critics argued that sociological positivism was inherently flawed because the social sciences could never be value-free. The social scientist always makes assumptions about observations based on his or her sociocultural background. There were calls for greater self-reflexivity among social scientists to recognize their prejudices. Standpoint theory argues that all viewpoints are partial and that a strong objectivity can be achieved only by considering different perspectives, especially those of marginalized groups. One reaction to earlier Western ethnocentric constructions of the East has been the flourishing of postcolonial studies, broadly dealing with power relations between and within European nations and the countries they had colonized in the modern period; this research is often conducted by scholars from these former colonies. The potential danger with postcolonial theory is that it too can come to rely on a form of ethnocentrism, by being simply anti-Western and by totalizing and essentializing the disparate cultures of former colonies into a single label. Anju Mary Paul See also Assimilation; Authoritarian Personality; Colonialism; Cultural Relativism; Dillingham Flaw; Discrimination; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Immigration, U.S.; Orientalism; Prejudice; Xenophobia
Further Readings
Gouldner, Alvin W. 1962. “Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of a Value-Free Sociology.” Social Problems 9:199–213. Horsman, Reginald. 1981. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Meister, Richard J. 1974. Race and Ethnicity in Modern America. Lexington, MA: Heath. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Sumner, William G. and Albert G. Keller. 1906. Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals. New York: Ginn. Tajfel, Henri. 1982. Social Identity and Intergroup Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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ETHNONATIONAL MINORITIES Ethnonational minorities are politicized groups within a society, where membership in a particular ethnic group(s) forms the basis for their members’ mobilization in making collective claims on members of other groups that include a nation’s political decision makers. All nations have populations of ethnic minorities— because groups of people from different cultural backgrounds, at different concentration levels, and at different historical periods have migrated the world over and been labeled ethnic by the host societies— but not all ethnic minorities are ethnonational minorities. Ethnonational minorities are present in society when and where claims made by ethnic minority groups become considered and, in many instances, incorporated in how a nation is governed. Three key points are important for understanding ethnonational minorities and governance: (1) social geography, (2) claim-making, and (3) social rights practice. Social geography refers to the intersection of population size and geographic place, the implication being that the larger the population of the ethnic minority group, the more likely its eventual influence on government (because of potential voting power and demands for resources). Claim-making refers to the intersection of identity politics and contentious politics, through which members of ethnonational minority groups draw from a repertoire of strategies to get their grievances heard and sometimes resolved by governing officials. Finally, social rights practice refers to the process at the intersection of claim-making and citizenship rights in which claims made by ethnonational minorities become generalized to reflect the “public good” of a nation. This entry reviews these elements in describing ethnonational minorities.
Social Geography Because ethnic groups are not randomly distributed across a nation but are rather concentrated in particular geographic regions or places, the location of ethnonational minorities in a nation tends to be concentrated, as well. For example, the New York metropolitan area has high concentrations of Jewish American, African American, and Hispanic American (especially Dominican) ethnonational minorities; the Los Angeles metro area has a high concentration of
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Hispanic American (especially Mexican) ethnonational minorities, and the Miami metropolitan area has a high concentration of Hispanic American (especially Cuban) ethnonational minorities. Comparatively, parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey have high concentrations of Kurdish ethnonational minorities; and the Darfur region of the Sudan has high concentrations of Fur African, Masaalit African, and Zaghawa African ethnonational minorities. Regions of a nation that have high concentrations of ethnonational minorities often become the sites of conflict and, often, violence along ethnic lines. The political significance of social geography and ethnonational minorities is that the greater the density of ethnonational minorities, the more negotiations, cooperation, or competition between groups could potentially occur within a nation’s stratified system of power. Thus, how much power ethnonational minorities are perceived to have, relative to the power of ethnonational majorities, becomes important in how legitimate the ethnonational minorities’ claims are.
Claim-Making If politics is “who gets what, when, how,” as Harold Lasswell aptly stated more than 70 years ago, then central to the claim-making of ethnonational minorities is the intersection of identity politics and contentious politics. Identity politics, in the context of ethnonational minorities, is a process of ethnic identification and differentiation in which an individual’s or group’s shared immigrant, ethnic, or racial identities are considered “natural” characteristics around which co-ethnics collectivize within a stratified system of power (e.g., which ethnic group has what and how, relative to which ethnic group does not have what and how). Moreover, contentious politics is a process of claim-making between different identity groups and their counterparts at the national level, those who hold conventional positions of power, such as elected officials, legislators, cabinet members, ministers, national committee members, and the like. How identity politics and contentious politics interact is difficult to pinpoint since scholars debate cause and effect over claim-making; that is, do contentious claims create identity groups or do identity groups create contentious claims? Overlaying this debate is the challenge of how groups are determined to have “legitimate” claims relative to other groups and for what ends.
Nearly a century ago, sociologist and political economist Max Weber asked how societies confer legitimacy on their leaders. His answer then, which remains relevant today, is that legitimacy is achieved through various levels of authority: traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational (or bureaucratic). According to Weber, these three ideal types of authority do not exist in pure form. Nevertheless, they offer ideal measures against which empirical evidence vis-à-vis lived experiences can be compared. Tra aditio onal Authority y
Traditional authority refers to groups in power that are considered leaders by society because of established legacies through time. That is, their legitimate authority to govern is based on a history of “inherited” leadership, whether through royalty, family tradition, convention, or coercion. Traditional authority in contemporary America is a continuation of such inheritable legacies. The prime example in the United States is the office of the president. An unwritten rule for winning the office is, and traditionally has been, to be an affluent, White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant man who has an elite Ivy League education and whose ethnic roots stem from northwestern Europe. Throughout U.S. history, there have been few exceptions to this general and traditional rule. One notable ethnoreligious exception was John F. Kennedy, elected in 1960 as the first Roman Catholic president of Irish American ancestry. Charism matiic Authority y
Charismatic authority refers to individuals who achieve power because their unique personalities capture the imagination of a wider audience and they articulate an audience’s concerns, ideas, or grievances. Charismatic leaders—Mohandas Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, and Martin Luther King, Jr., for example—are adept at funneling meaningful issues into the public sphere, thereby becoming legitimate spokespersons and leaders for the concerns of an audience. Charismatic leaders thus gain legitimate authority from society by framing problems at a local level, attracting a large following, and transforming the local problems into social issues at a national and, in some cases, global level. In 1959, C. Wright Mills coined the term sociological imagination to describe the embeddedness of
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seemingly disparate individual troubles within broader, interconnected social issues. Of course, in the context of charismatic authority, who the claim-maker is matters because it is his or her charisma that presumably attracts a following of like-minded people, given opportunities such as media attention to disseminate a particular claim(s) to a broader audience. Legal-R Ratiional (or Bure eaucrattic)) Auth hority y
Finally, the third type of authority is the legalrational or bureaucratic type. According to Weber, bureaucratic authority became the dominant form of authority of advanced Western societies as industrialization and urbanization became the dominant arrangement of social organization. Bureaucratic authority garners legitimacy from an audience because of the position(s) or office(s) an individual or group holds. That is, the office rather than the individual or group, per se, carries authority and power because individuals are ultimately replaceable. Consequently, in the legal-rational type, individuals primarily rely on networks to fill an open position, which often leads into traditional authority. For example, sons and daughters of elected officials often become the elected officials themselves when the parent(s) leave(s) office. Social issues also become part of the procedural work of bureaucratic authority. For example, one issue especially relevant to Hispanic American ethnonational minorities is that of amnesty for illegal immigrant Americans. Of course, immigration policy in the United States is set only at the federal level, even though particular states such as New York, California, Illinois, and Florida—and furthermore, particular cities within those states, such as New York City, Los Angeles–Long Beach, Chicago, and Miami—tend to have most of the nation’s immigrant populations. Nevertheless, federal agencies that handle immigration policy are bound by formal procedures and current laws that express the interests of particular groups. Appeals for amnesty are thus made by ethnonational minorities to decision makers who are deemed influential in deciding immigration policy. However, it is often difficult to know to whom to appeal because the individual decision makers in offices change relatively frequently whereas the issue persists over time. Hence, issues important to ethnonational minorities often get lost in the bureaucratic “red tape” of legal-rational authority. Nevertheless, struggles by ethnonational minorities continue over the boundaries of citizenship,
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especially about social justice and rights, through the process of social rights practice.
Social Rights Practice Claims made by ethnonational minorities in the United States can be credited for highlighting, challenging, and expanding the social rights of all U.S. residents, whether linked to citizenship or not. This claim-making process involves efforts made by politicized ethnonational minority groups to tie particular issues with general appeals to the “public good” such that governing agents take notice. Organizing politically over social justice issues such as equality in education, housing, and health care are examples of social rights practice. Ethnonational minority groups employ social rights practice through a number of steps. First, they start with a basic premise, for example, education and health care. More affluent communities have better educational facilities for their school-age children than do less affluent communities. The same can be said about health care, aptly encapsulated in the general truism “health follows wealth.” Second, minority groups organize collectively around the issue(s) by publicly proclaiming that poor neighborhoods, whose residents are primarily ethnic and racial minorities, have poor educational and health care resources relative to more affluent neighborhoods. Third, these groups politicize the issue(s) by building coalitions across groups and by contacting governing agents whose decisions affect education and health policy. The primary implication of social rights practice is that ethnonational minorities draw attention to the nation’s failures to care for its own citizens and residents. In this way, claims made by ethnonational minorities magnify common democratic values of equality. Thus, through the process of social rights practice, ethnonational minorities articulate a social injustice, organize around it, and then politicize it by tying the particular issue with broader constituencies and governing agents whose common concerns involve the “public good.”
Ethnonational Minorities and U.S. Society Scholars agree that the rise of ethnonational minorities in the United States is part of the history of immigrant America. During the 16th and 17th centuries,
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Spanish, Dutch, and English colonists were considered the first ethnonational minorities in America. Yet, because of high rates of British immigration, conflict between ethnic groups increased as well. Eventually, warfare succeeded in making the U.S. citizens of British descent the primary ethnonational majority; they dominated early—and as many scholars argue, continue to dominate current—U.S. politics. Although the power holders in U.S. society or in any other society may not change significantly over time, ethnonational minorities will increasingly influence how a nation is governed. The influence of ethnonational minorities on U.S. society will continue to increase as birth rates of “White” (read: European) Americans continue to decrease, immigration from European nations ceases, birth rates of “non-White” Americans (read: Hispanic and Asian) continue to increase, immigration from non-European nations continues to increase, and legitimate claims are increasingly made by ethnonational minorities. Barring any major changes in U.S. immigration policy, the claims made by Hispanic and Asian ethnonational minorities are increasingly affecting how the United States is governed, particularly in the arena of foreign policy. Ethnonational minorities in U.S. society today are the historical successors of ethnonational minorities in U.S. society of the past. Though not all ethnic groups in the United States become ethnonational minority groups, Hispanic and Asian American ethnic groups (putting aside the cultural diversity within those broad categories) are and will increasingly become the dominant ethnonational minorities in U.S. society. Evidence of this can already be seen across many U.S. states; some allow Spanish and Mandarin to be used in the public business of government whereas other states prohibit foreign languages in public business and, as a result, have passed English-only laws, even though no official language exists in the United States. Andrew G. Kourvetaris See also Citizenship; Cross-Frontier Contacts; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Ethnic Group; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Ethnoviolence; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Minority/Majority; Racialization; Sami
Further Readings
Marshall, Thomas Humphrey. 1950. Citizenship and Social Class. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Mills, C. Wright. [1959] 2000. The Sociological Imagination. The Fortieth Anniversary Edition. New afterword by T. Gitlin. New York: Oxford University Press. Mollenkopf, John Hull. 1994. A Phoenix in the Ashes: The Rise and Fall of the Koch Coalition in New York City Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Portes, Alejandro and Rubén G. Rumbaut. 2006. Immigrant America: A Portrait. 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Steinmetz, George, ed. 1999. State/Culture: State-Formation After the Cultural Turn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Tilly, Charles and Sidney Tarrow. 2006. Contentious Politics. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Weber, Max. [1913–1922] 1947. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated by A. Henderson and T. Parsons. New York: Free Press. Wiener, Antje. 1998. “European” Citizenship Practice: Building Institutions of a Non-State. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Zweigenhaft, Richard L. and G. William Domhoff. 1998. Diversity and the Power Elite: Have Women and Minorities Reached the Top? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
ETHNOVIOLENCE The term ethnoviolence was first used in a report for the National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence in 1986 to describe an act or attempted act that is motivated by group prejudice and intended to cause physical or psychological injury. These violent acts may include intimidation, harassment, group insults, property defacement or destruction, and physical attacks. The targets of these acts are persons identified because of their race or skin color, gender, nationality or national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or other physical or social characteristic of groups defined to be socially significant. Later, hate crimes became widely used to describe such activities. This entry discusses the two terms, argues the case for using ethnoviolence, and offers some data on incidence.
Alternative Perspectives The term hate crime was developed for legislative and political reasons. It refers to statutorily delimited acts
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that are conventionally recognized as serious crimes such as murder, manslaughter, rape, assault, robbery, burglary, arson, some forms of property damage, and some acts of intimidation. Hate crimes became part of the public and sociological lexicon with agitation for the passage of a federal hate crimes statute. In 1985 and 1986, as the lobbying began, the national media database, Nexis, recorded only 11 and 14 mentions. By the end of the 1990s, however, the term had achieved widespread acceptance by the media and by many social scientists. The two concepts make different claims about the nature of group conflict and about social policy. Each claims that a pathological condition exists, that it is socially significant and widespread, and that policymakers can and should intervene. For those who see this as a criminological issue—and prefer to use “hate crimes”—the issues are crime and law and social control. For those who link the problem to race and ethnic relations—the ethnoviolence group—the issues are prejudice, discrimination, and the reduction of group tensions. Given the control function of the mass media, through which such claims are legitimated, and the more conservative orientation of criminology, hate crimes is more prevalent in the popular media, but ethnoviolence continues to be used in professional and scholarly discourse. One of the standard phrases of today’s White supremacists is that they are not motivated by hate for others but, rather, by their “love” for their own race (or sometimes put, “their own kind”). The calculated act of intimidation designed to achieve the specific ends of a perpetrator may well reflect psychopathology but not necessarily hate. Hate as a strong, intense, negative emotional response is not necessarily involved in socalled hate crimes or in all actions characterized by discrimination. Many ethnoviolent incidents are committed impulsively or as acts of peer group conformity. Later, the terms bias crime and bias incidents were sometimes used instead of hate crimes. Social scientists continue to prefer ethnoviolence, asserting that the subject is intergroup relations rather than merely illegal or illicit behavior. Also, the concept of ethnoviolence is delimited by an underlying social psychology rather than by the articulation of law.
Incidence of Ethnoviolence Counting ethnoviolent acts is not as difficult as might be expected. To begin with, perpetrators usually
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announce their motives verbally or by the use of easily recognized symbols of group prejudice. Identifying marks include (a) using recognized symbols, slogans, or words of group insult; (b) posting or circulating leaflets, including the literature of right-wing extremist groups, that contain insulting and intimidating statements; (c) defacing or destroying property that is publicly associated with a particular group; (d) acting on or around holidays or special events associated with a particular group. Acts of ethnoviolence may fit a pattern of past attacks on the target group; often, the general consensus of the community is that this act was motivated by prejudice. One category of identification is problematic: how the victim views the situation and whether or not it was motivated by prejudice. From the standpoint of the sincere beliefs and genuine trauma inflicted on the victim, violence has been done, but the victim may never know whether the cause was personal or political. Estimates by the Prejudice Institute (and its predecessor, the National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence) derive from rigorous case studies of cities, workplaces, and college campuses, all involving sample surveys using, at different times, self-administering questionnaires, telephone interviews, and direct, face-to-face interviews. The preponderance of evidence indicates a frequency of between 20% and 25%: One of every four or five minority adult U.S. residents is harassed, intimidated, insulted, or assaulted for reasons of prejudice during the course of a year. There are variations by target group (Black, White, Jewish, Gay, etc.), by the locale of an incident (city, county, neighborhood), and by the specific site (school, residence, workplace). Most attacks are based on skin color or race. Verbal aggression is the most frequent form of ethnoviolence. This includes acts of intimidation; face-to-face encounters involving threats, insults, and name calling; and graffiti, leaflets, mail, e-mail, and telephone harassment. Most ethnoviolent acts are not reported. Although there are variations across case studies, the range is quite small. The lowest estimate is that three-quarters of all incidents are not reported to any relevant authorities. The two most frequent reasons given for not reporting are that officials would not have done anything and that there was nothing that officials could have done. Other major reasons include denying the significance of the incident, rationalizing that the perpetrators didn’t understand what they were doing, or
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assuming that this sort of thing happens all the time, so it would be useless to report it. Howard J. Ehrlich See also Anti-Semitism; Chin, Vincent; Cross-Frontier Contacts; Discrimination; Hate Crimes; Hate Crimes in Canada; Prejudice; Urban Riots; White Supremacy Movement; Alamo, The
Further Readings
Barbara Perry, ed. 2003. Hate and Bias Crime: A Reader. Oxford, UK: Routledge.
Web Sites
FBI Uniform Crime Reports, Hate Crime Statistics: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#hate The Prejudice Institute: http://www.prejudiceinstitute.org
EUGENICS
breeding of the poor and “feeble-minded” would lead to the gradual deterioration of human genetic stock. The science was racialized in its expressed prediction that the spread of Negro blood through miscegenation and the “swamping” of native stock by “unfit” immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe would speed this deterioration and lead to the gradual demise of the White race. Eugenicists believed that modern genetics held the promise of bettering the human race. At one time, orthodox genetics maintained that traits as varied as intelligence, criminality, epilepsy, and pauperism were governed by the existence of a single gene that could be traced, located, and bred up or out. Positive eugenics aimed to protect the “superior” race through the promotion of judicious breeding. Eugenicists warned the upper classes about the dangers of having too few children whereas poor people were having too many. It was deemed desirable to have people with higher intelligence breed with others of higher intelligence. By contrast, negative eugenics sought to mitigate the dangers posed by inherited defects and “inferior” races by limiting procreation by means of compulsory sterilization, enforcing strict immigration controls from countries
Eugenics refers to a scientific movement, at its height from the late 19th century through the 1930s, with the stated goal of improving the genetic constitution of humans. Eugenics enjoyed the support of a wide circle of social and intellectual elites and medical experts from across the political spectrum in many countries around the world. Viewed from today’s perspective, the racialized overtones of the movement, which equated good genes with Northern European heritage, are obvious. Although the Nazi excesses in the name of eugenics destroyed the movement, modern technology has raised new concerns about genetic manipulation. This entry reviews the rise and fall of eugenics and outlines some contemporary issues.
The Movement’s Origins The term eugenics was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. Its meaning borrows from the Greek meaning “well-born” or “of good stock.” Eugenics established itself in a context marked by a strong belief in the power of heredity. Early eugenicists warned that the continued unconstrained
Buchenwald concentration camp. Slave laborers are shown in the Buchenwald concentration camp near Jena, Germany (April 16, 1945). The ultimate culmination of eugenicist thinking occurred in Nazi Germany, with the sterilization and extermination programs carried out by the Third Reich. Most people attribute the decline of eugenics after World War II to the moral and ethical objections resulting from the horrifying uses that Nazis made of eugenicist arguments. Source: National Archives, 208-AA-206K-31.
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with “inferior stock,” and eliminating populations that pollute the gene pool via genocide.
particularly devastating consequences in the 1930s for European Jews attempting to escape the Holocaust.
U.S. Initiatives
The Nazi Agenda
The racial overtones of eugenics were more pronounced in the United States compared with Europe, where warnings of class, rather than race suicide, were more to the fore. Nevertheless, eugenics wielded major impact on both sides of the Atlantic. Support for eugenics reached its pinnacle of strength in the United States in the 1920s. One of its crowning achievements was a collection of state laws allowing involuntary sterilization. Beginning as early as 1897 and continuing in many states into the 1970s, many tens of thousands of people were forcibly sterilized. Authorities believed that if the poor and feeble-minded were allowed to reproduce unfettered, then their offspring would inherit the same debased conditions. Some of the victims of compulsory sterilization did not know what had been done to them until years later, if at all. Drawing directly on eugenicist propaganda, sterilization programs targeted loosely defined categories of people—hereditary paupers, criminals, the mentally insane and feeble-minded—that reflected the social prejudices of the time. Categories were so imprecise as to include many recent immigrants and others who either knew little English or were functionally illiterate and therefore did poorly on intelligence tests. Another major achievement of eugenicists was the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act, the content of which revealed the impact of their lobbying in restricting immigration from nations of “inferior stock.” Eugenicists viewed the shift in immigrant flows from countries of Northern Europe to those of Southern and Eastern Europe (whose populations at that time were racialized as non-White) as presenting a dangerous threat to the biological quality of the nation. Barriers to immigration were erected, with immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe especially hard hit. Quotas were set at 2% of the U.S. population of that nationality recorded in the 1890 census. Heavy immigration waves from Southern and Eastern Europe occurred after 1890, so setting the date back more than 30 years helped achieve the act’s intended purpose; that is, to help tilt the balance of population in favor of residents of British and Northern European descent. Immigration slowed to a trickle as a result, with
The ultimate culmination of eugenicist thinking occurred in Nazi Germany, with the sterilization and extermination programs carried out by the Third Reich. Initially, these programs of “racial hygiene” were directed against the same groups of people eugenicists targeted in the United States and Britain. Echoing ongoing eugenic fears of biological deterioration of the national body, and aiming to create an Aryan master race, German laws were passed and mass sterilization programs promoted as early as 1933, which aimed at controlling the marriage and reproduction of people labeled as having physical or mental deficiencies. By 1935, the Nazis’ brand of eugenics became more politically extreme and anti-Semitic in nature, with new “Blood Protection” laws that criminalized marriage or sexual relations between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. Groups targeted by the Nazis also expanded to include other racially foreign ethnic minorities, homosexuals, Gypsies, and other “inferior” types. The Final Solution (1933–1945) signaled a shift from seeking to limit the reproduction of people the Nazis designated to eliminating them as biological threats. The result was the death of 6 million people and the near annihilation of European Jewry in the Holocaust. Many more were brutalized in eugenic sterilization experiments and genetic research conducted by scientists in the concentration camps. Eugenic doctors such as Josef Mengele conducted research that owed its origin to the earlier work of U.S. eugenicists funded by respectable institutions such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institute. Eugenics lost support after World War II. Its decline can be attributed largely to moral and ethical objections resulting from the horrifying uses that Nazis made of eugenicist arguments. The Nuremberg Trials declared compulsory sterilization and other eugenic programs a crime against humanity. Advances in scientific understanding also played a role (especially the distinction between recessive and dominant inherited conditions) in casting mortal doubt on eugenicist hopes of meaningfully altering the biological constitution of populations. The new social movements of the 1960s battled successfully to swing the pendulum away from natural or fixed explanations of social
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problems to environmental or social ones that could be remedied.
Contemporary Issues The pendulum arguably has swung back in the other direction since the 1980s, with renewed attention to the genetic basis of conditions such as mental illness, crime, intelligence, and even social position. Moreover, scientific revolutions in biotechnology have again raised the question of whether breakthroughs in genetics present a promise to treat disease and prevent genetic disorders or, rather, a slippery slope down to a new, more liberal, free-market, even consumer-driven eugenics. Geneticists, sociologists, and anthropologists involved in the Human Genome Project have debated the merits and risks of genetic breakthroughs such as genetic screening and therapies. The promise is evident in the hope for new cures and life-enhancing therapeutic interventions for genetic-based diseases such as sickle-cell anemia, Tay-Sachs, and cystic fibrosis. More challenging are a host of moral and ethical issues surrounding fast-paced biotechnological innovations, especially those linked to reproductive technologies such as prenatal genetic screening to detect “defective” babies, cloning, and in vitro fertilization, which in essence allows parents to “order up” preferred genes. At issue is the question of the appropriate line between medical and scientific advance, on the one hand, and eugenic outcome on the other. Some fear that the new genetics may unwittingly lend new legitimacy to essentialist and racialized stereotypes because genetic populations correspond rather closely to lay racial and ethnic ones. Although the return of the old eugenics seems unthinkable, there is concern that along with the promises of betterment linked with the new genetics are risks associated with the reappearance of a new, more subtle and liberal form of eugenics of outcome if not intent. Amy E. Ansell See also Genocide; Holocaust; Intelligence Tests; Medical Experimentation; Nativism; Prejudice; Race; Racism; Social Darwinism Further Readings
Black, Edwin. 2003. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows.
Duster, Troy. 2003. Backdoor to Eugenics. New York: Routledge. Gould, Stephen J. 1996. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton. Graves, Joseph L., Jr. 2003. The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race and the Millennium. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kevles, Daniel. 1998. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Proctor, Robert N. 1988. Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reilly, Philip R. 1991. The Surgical Solution: A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Tucker, William. 1996. The Science and Politics of Racial Research. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
EUROPE The continent of Europe comprises races of many ancient peoples as they evolved within the realms of forming nation-states and, more recently, the European Union (EU), together with Europeans and non-Europeans of various origins who have migrated to and within the EU. This entry describes the historical perspective and contemporary patterns.
Historical Perspective The history of Europe is one of migration and settlement. The first inhabitants came to Europe from Africa thousands of years ago, and intergroup struggles have characterized the continents. For example, invading migratory movements of groups (e.g., Germans, Celts) relocated between 800 BC and 400 BC, and new Steppe-tribes moved in from Asia. The Greek colonization (2000 BC to 400 BC) led to emigration to Italy, Sicily, and the Balkans. The Roman expansion (400 BC to 500 AD) caused population shifts throughout Europe, Northern Africa, and the Near East. The period of transition from Late Antiquity to Early Middle Ages (ca 300–700 AD, or according to other historians, 400 AD–1000 AD) is known as the period of great migrations, characterized by invasions and movements of tribes from within and without the continent, leading to the building of Europe. Most tribes finally settled, becoming roots of the future European states. Migratory movements, both temporary and
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permanent, continued during the Crusades period (1000–1500) and the Viking expeditions (700–1000). Another period of migration (1450–1750) was related to the religious wars in Europe, and from 1650 to 1900, the industrial revolution set off migratory movements from rural to urban areas. From 1500 to 1950, European nations were involved in successive colonization of overseas territories (North and South America, Asia, Africa), leading to both emigration and immigration. After 1750, improved living conditions and technical development resulted in a demographic revolution, while political revolutions brought about liberal trends and changes leading to the consolidation of modern nation-states. This complex process increased social and ethnic tensions between minorities and majorities, beyond the application of the principle of selfdetermination and increasing cultural imperialism of dominant powers. Profound social changes and nationalist-political tensions led to World War I and the break-up of empires (Ottoman, Austria-Hungary, and the Tsarist Empire, which became the first socialist experiment, the USSR), whereas the extensive British Empire still survives, though not completely unaffected. The period between the world wars was extremely volatile, troubled by both internal conflict and external threats throughout Europe, but economic crisis, stagnation, and unemployment increased tensions and ethnosocial animosities. A major reaction involved imposing strict border controls and immigration laws, which replaced the earlier, virtually free possibilities of circulation between countries. This did not necessarily impede refugees from seeking asylum in safer areas—for example, the Jews trying to flee the Holocaust or leaving occupied Finland for safer relocation in neutral Sweden. The end of World War II brought about new migration patterns, with an intense immigration to help reconstruct Western Europe from 1945 to 1973, involving people from the European periphery, returnees from former colonies to former colonial powers, intra-European refugees, and asylum-seekers from Asia and the Middle East. In 1951, the Convention for Refugees was adopted. The creation of the state of Israel started an emigration of ethnic Jews from Europe. The 1973 oil crisis also created major structural changes. Labor immigration virtually ceased, but family reunions and asylum-seekers increased. The immigrant population consolidated, despite socioeconomic exclusion and xenophobic
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manifestations. New waves of refugees followed events in South America and other places. By the mid-1990s, immigrant populations had stabilized, despite extensive ethnic conflicts in several parts of the world, and immigration legislation was increasingly restrictive. The new millennium started amid global unrest and unprecedented levels of longand short-term migration. The post–September 11th period was marked by increasing suspicion toward potential immigrants (especially from Arab countries), even in Europe. Given an aging population, the immigration discussion has included arguments about the potential of acquiring skilled labor through migration and the possibility of integrating earlier migrants more successfully.
Contemporary Patterns Geopolitically, Europe has assumed a leading role because of its social and economic development, and several powerful countries have spread their influence over many countries located on other continents through warfare, colonization, and cultural dominance. Europeans and their descendants have continuously migrated in rather large numbers, which resulted in their being spread all over the world. The main issues that old and new migrants still face are integration, identity, and ethnic conflict. Immigrants coming to Europe include settlers, contract workers, professionals, unauthorized workers, asylum seekers, and refugees. Within the European continent, there is an assumption of a basic ethnic homogeneity and close cultural kinship—what is often referred to as a European identity, which is considered much more convergent than the facts suggest. Even though many Europeans share common or similar features, there is both an inherent and an increasing diversity within its borders, resulting from intensive immigration and from the ethnic and cultural heritage having preserved traits not necessarily common to the entire group. There are thus historical minorities, characterized by a common cultural and linguistic heritage with deep historical roots, such as the Sami or Roma population. Most migratory movement into Europe has created diverse pockets within the national borders of states, with distinct ethnic, cultural-linguistic, or religious features. These are either indigenous populations that survived the initial occupation of a new in-migrated group, which became a majority in time (e.g., the Sami in Northern Europe, Alsatians or Corsicans in France,
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Catholic Irish in Great Britain, Basques in Spain) or groups settled on territories after earlier migration (Hungarians in Central and Eastern Europe, Albanians in former Yugoslavia, Russians in Balticum). Old historical minorities with distinct features have long existed in large areas of Europe (Jews, Roma), whereas others moved in just some hundreds of years ago (some German groups in Romania, Hungary). Switzerland, Spain, Great Britain, and Cyprus are characterized by an acknowledged historic and multilinguistic diversity. Some minorities were created as the programmatic result of political action, sometimes forcibly moved from their original territory (e.g., former Soviet Union, former Yugoslavia). There were also historically favored and positively discriminated minorities (e.g., the formerly dominant Swedish minority in Finland). Other minorities are still hardly recognized, even in their original territories (Kurds, Palestinians). Newer postwar migrant groups (e.g., Turks /Muslims, Asians, or Africans of various origins now living in Western European countries) are not legally considered minorities. Language boundaries often define ethnic borders in a diverse society. Within the EU alone, there are twenty-three official languages and thirty to forty major languages (definitions differ; e.g., Maltese is the smallest and most different), along with about sixty indigenous and numerous non-indigenous languages spoken by migrant communities; moreover, not all European countries are EU-members (e.g., Norway, Switzerland, Iceland). Most languages belong to the Indo-European group, some to the Uralic/Finno-Ugric, but Basque is completely different. Because of migration, an increasing part of the population speaks a different language and has ethnic origin other than the majority population of their country of residence. English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish remain the most frequently spoken languages, either as native or foreign languages. Should the EU further expand, Turkish as a native language and Russian as a foreign language may become contenders as new major languages in Europe. Several minor languages are threatened by extinction. Anatolian and Tocharian are branches already considered extinct, as are other languages listed in the UNESCO Red Book, for example, Gothic, Old Prussian, and Cornish. Other nearly extinct or seriously endangered
languages include Frisian, Breton, several Sami languages (dialects), and regional Jewish languages. The languages of historical minorities are protected as basic human rights and enjoy special protection under the 1992 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the 1995 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. Article 22 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights states, “The Union respects cultural, religious and linguistic diversity.” The European Commission adopted the “Action Plan for the promotion of language learning and linguistic diversity” in 2003 and the New Framework Strategy for Multilingualism in 2005. The Commission’s Eurobarometer Survey at the end of 2005 showed that bilingualism is common in some European countries. Ethnic diversity and education increase multilingualism in Europe, implicitly forming multiple identities. Elena Dingu-Kyrklund See also Britain’s Irish; Colonialism; Cosmopolitanism; Cross-Frontier Contacts; France; Globalization; Holocaust; Ireland; Islamophobia; Northern Ireland, Racism in; Race, Comparative Perspectives; Race, UNESCO Statements on; Refugees; Return Migration; Roma; Sami; Transnational People; United Kingdom; White Racism Further Readings
Alcock, Antony. 2000. A History of the Protection of Regional Cultural Minorities in Europe. London: Macmillan. Castles, Steven and Mark J. Miller. 2003. The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. 3rd ed. New York: Guilford Press. Collinson, Sarah 1993. Europe and International Migration. London: Pinter. Commission of the European Communities. 2005. Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: A New Framework Strategy for Multilingualism, Brussels Commission of the European Communities. Retrieved November 27, 2007, from http://ec.europa.eu/education/ policies/lang/doc/com596_en.pdf Sassen, Saskia. 1999. Guests and Aliens. New York: New Press.
F families but is evident in many cultures and racial/ ethnic groups. Familial relationships have changed over time, and they now vary across racial/ethnic groups in the United States.
FAMILISM Familism consists of three major components. First is the sense of commitment and obligation family members have toward each other. Second, familism places family relationships and activities at the top of each family member’s priorities. Third, familism emphasizes inclusiveness and obligations of extended family members as well as close friends. Some scholars describe such relationships as thick networks— networks that are multifaceted and complex. These relationships often include living in close proximity, providing help, and offering mutual and reciprocal social and emotional support. Familism has been both praised and criticized. Positive aspects include that family members can draw strength from the rich array of relationships that often promote cultural values, retention of language, and a sense of peoplehood. Familism includes bringing resources into the family, even at the expense of one’s own opportunities. Thus, familism may limit educational and vocational opportunities, with some youth forgoing educational and other opportunities to provide more immediate help to families. As a result, some authors express concerns about familism holding back individuals. Others believe that traditional cultures are incompatible with the knowledge-based economy and that modern economies destroy the positive cooperative aspects of more traditional societies. Still others point with great pride to the familism in their cultures. The concept of familism in the United States has been associated most closely with Mexican American
Immigrant Ties The close connectedness of families existed during earlier times in the United States both in immigrant families and in the larger society. Historically, immigrants from many groups exhibited a strong sense of familism. This sometimes included chain migration where one family paved the way for subsequent members of the extended family and community to emigrate. The process of immigration and the social and economic interdependency often guarantee the survival of such family connections for some time. Relationships outside the family are sometimes limited to members of the person’s own ethnic or religious community. Thus, individuals rely on the extended family or the larger ethnic community for occupational and educational opportunities as well as for social activities and emotional support. For older immigrant groups, familism diminished as a result of industrialization and the attendant urbanization of many residents. As individuals gained university degrees and became economically successful, they gradually adopted more middle- and upper-class lifestyles along with a nuclear family lifestyle of just parents and children living in the same household. Such families were also less likely to live adjacent to extended family members and to help with common projects. Frequent contacts with grandparents and other extended family members were more difficult to 477
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maintain, although most family members today maintain some contact with related family members. The changes in the family were further amplified by World Wars I and II. Familism today is exemplified most by Latino families, although a number of groups also have elements of it, including African American, Italian, Greek, Korean, Philippine, Vietnamese, and Cambodian families. Although this interconnectedness has diminished for earlier assimilated immigrant groups, it remains strong for many groups, particularly Hispanic or Latino groups, and for both recent and older generations.
Latino Families Two polar and contradictory views of the Latino family have emerged from social science writings about the family. Early writings, especially by non-Latino authors, viewed the Latino family as being male dominated and authoritarian with strict gender roles. Scholars viewed these factors as holding back the economic advancement and acculturation of Latinos both collectively and individually. They argued that familism failed to engender an orientation supporting individual achievement, independence, wealth accumulation, and self-reliance. However, more recent scholars, particularly Latino scholars, have tended to see the family as a warm, supportive, and nurturing institution. Under this alternative view, both fathers and mothers are seen as having strong ties to the family, with both possessing valued strengths and responsibilities. The women are expected to be nurturing and supportive and devoted to the family. For this, they are revered and respected. Fathers must show responsibility, affection, and selflessness. Qualities such as fame and wealth are much less important. From this standpoint, the worst or “lowest” thing a man can do is to be irresponsible, to put his interests and welfare above those of his family, or to not take care of his family. Although machismo is important in Latino families, Latino scholars define it more in terms of family pride and respect than in terms of dominance. They also emphasize the stability of the family structure. The Latino family structure often includes godparents and other relatives as well as long-term friends. Richard Schaefer argued that familism includes four important components: (a) compadrazgo (the relationship between godparents and godchildren, (b) the financial dependency of kin, (c) the availability of relatives as a source of advice, and (d) the involvement
of the elderly within the family. Thus, family members provide emotional and social support as well as opportunities for networking for jobs and other opportunities. However, this family structure varies by group, culture, region, recency of migration to the United States, and social class. The notion of godparents and godchildren is prevalent in many religious traditions, although it has been especially strong in Catholic traditions. Historically, godparents had responsibility to ensure that a child’s religious education was carried out. They were sometimes expected to provide more care if the child happened to be orphaned. Today, the notion of godparents has fewer religious and practical overtones, although godparents still take a strong interest in the child. Although prevalent in many immigrant groups, the relationship of godparents to a child remains stronger among Hispanics than among other groups that immigrated to the United States in earlier generations. Beginning in the 1950s and continuing today, social scientists have developed a number of measures of familism to examine its correlates. Although many of the studies are based on relatively small samples, those families that score high on familism tend to be characterized by positive interpersonal relationships, high family unity, high social support, and interdependence in the completion of activities. Familism is linked to positive health outcomes and care for the aged. Familism and family attachment appear to help deter youth from deviance. Familism is also associated with an emphasis on bilingualism. The focus on the family is a source of pride, for many Latino families associated with speaking Spanish and being at least nominally Catholic, although the religious identity has become attenuated during recent decades, with many Latinos becoming affiliated with evangelical movements. Significant differences among Latino samples have been found in these and other studies, denoting the importance of specific cultural contexts.
Other Ethnic Groups Studies of African American families generally focus less on familism than do studies of Latino families. African American males are much less likely to be present in African American families compared with White males in White families and especially Latino males in Latino families. Nevertheless, African American families tend to rely on clusters of kin. Although they do not live together as extended families,
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they maintain strong networks of grandparents, friends, and other community members for mutual support and survival. This is especially true for poorer African American families and for adult females. In both instances, grandparents often take care of grandchildren when the parents are unable to do so. Asian societies and Asian communities in the United States have long emphasized family relationships, with these relationships being one of the most important social values in these communities. The persistence of these values helps to maintain the continuity and functions of the kinship groups in the United States, and they appear to positively affect academic and economic success. But the concept of familism has not been associated with the Asian communities as much as it has with Latino families. Cardell K. Jacobson, J. Lynn England, and Robyn J. Barrus See also Acculturation; Adoption; African American Women and Work; Asian Americans; Child Development; Family; Hispanic Versus Latino; Immigration, U.S.; Kinship; Latina/o Studies; Parenting; Peoplehood; Rites of Passage; Social Support
Further Readings
Billingsley, Andrew. 1992. Climbing Jacob’s Ladder. New York: Simon & Schuster. Blea, Irene Isabel. 1995. Researching Chicano Communities: Social–Historical, Physical, Psychological, and Spiritual Space. Westport, CT: Praeger. Mirande, Alfredo. 1985. The Chicano Experience: An Alternative Perspective. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Mirande, Alfredo. 1997. Hombres y Machos: Masculinity and Latino Culture. Boulder, CO: Westview. Schaefer, Richard T. Forthcoming. Racial and Ethnic Groups. 11th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Stack, Carol B. 1974. All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community. New York: Harper & Row. Taylor, Robert Joseph, James S. Jackson, and Linda M. Chatters. 1997. Family Life in Black America. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
FAMILY Over the past century, racial/ethnic minorities have grown as a proportion of the U.S. population. More
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attention has been given to their family experiences, and the lenses through which their families are viewed have been modified as scholars have recognized that U.S. family life is not and never has been monolithic or stagnant. The family is frequently a site of cultural and political controversy because it is often viewed as the guardian of societal values or the womb in which each generation is created and molded. A society’s sustainability is assumed to be dependent on the quality of its families. Consequently, governments generate incentives and disincentives, sometimes quite severe, privileging or disallowing certain family practices. Past policies have prohibited interracial marriage and used sterilization to prevent reproduction by poor or disabled people. Today, some states deprive women of public assistance if they have additional children, and other states constrict the grounds for divorce. Then and now, such policies disproportionately affect families of color because racial minority families historically experienced higher levels of divorce, nonmarital births, and single parenting than did White families. However, during recent decades, these trends have increased at a faster rate among White families, so that the gaps between the races are in many cases smaller than they were previously. For instance, nonmarital births have been increasing for all racial/ethnic groups. In 1980, 57% of African American births were nonmarital, whereas 9% of White births were nonmarital. In 2004, nonmarital births accounted for 69% of Black births and 25% of White births, indicating a 21% increase for Blacks but a 178% increase for Whites. In terms of teen births, in 1991 African Americans had the highest rate of teen births, but during the ensuing decade they experienced the steepest decline, so that by 2002 Hispanic American girls had the highest rate. These changing trends are reflected in the way in which scholars have approached the study of families of color.
From Culture to Structure Until recently, researchers analyzed these trends among families of color within a “deprivation” or “pathology” framework. Juxtaposed against an idealized model of White middle-class families, explanations for the differences centered on an analysis of cultural deficiencies that itself substituted for previous biological/genetic explanations. Illustrative of the cultural deprivation approach was Daniel Moynihan’s pivotal 1965 Department of Labor report on Black
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families in which he argued that pathologies within the Black family had caused high rates of crime, delinquency, and poverty. Moynihan built on the work of E. Franklin Frazier, who had written the first historical analysis of Black American families in 1932. Frazier had focused on the effects of slavery and economic exploitation, suggesting that African American cultural moorings had been destroyed, resulting in a predominance of “matriarchal” households. Although Moynihan’s conclusions were not unlike Frazier’s, Moynihan’s analysis shifted the focus from historical and structural factors and pointed instead to the Black family as the cause of social problems in the Black community. In truth, both scholars focused on poor Black families and overlooked the fact that two-parent families accounted for the majority of Black households until the 1980s. Around the same time, Oscar Lewis studied the Mexican community, concluding that generations of poverty had changed their cultural values and that now those values (e.g., fatalism, hypermasculinity, immediate gratification, low aspirations) were themselves the cause of problems the community faced. Instead of advocating societal reform, these conclusions suggested reforming families themselves, and many viewed this as “blaming the victim.” In response, scholars turned to macrostructural approaches highlighting the social forces under which families of color must operate. Rather than assuming that family forms and relations are merely artifacts of cultural preferences, recent scholarship gives priority to socioeconomic, demographic, and historical factors. This more ecological framework, which combines both individual agency and environmental forces, has changed the discourse on families of color to one of resiliency and adaptation. A number of family dynamics can be explained better within this structural framework. For instance, extended households may be culturally valued, but their use is more likely explained by socioeconomic and historical factors. Immigrants frequently participate in chain migration, where one family member migrates and is followed by others who temporarily coreside with the first migrant until they get settled. Using these laterally extended households facilitates the migration. Among Asian immigrants, the use of stem families (in which the eldest son and his wife, or all sons and their wives, live in the household of the son’s parents) declines on immigration. The two generations may still coreside, but in the new environment
the older generation more often resides in the child’s home, resulting in a decrease in the elder’s authority. Native-born racial minorities also practice household extension more frequently than do White U.S. residents, but that practice is more common among lower-income families and declines as socioeconomic status rises. The elderly represent a smaller proportion among racial/ethnic minorities than among the White population, obviously not because cultural norms accord elders less value but rather because life expectancy among racial minorities is lower and because the elderly immigrate less often. Racial/Ethnic minority families are more likely to care for ill elderly at home, but studies indicate that as income rises, nursing home use rises as well. Moreover, racial/minority elders are more likely to act as primary caregivers for their grandchildren when members of the middle generation are unable to do so. To accommodate this growing phenomenon, a number of states have instituted various forms of kin care policies that enable grandparents or other family members to receive state subsidies, as would a foster family, for caring for related children.
Historically Subjugated Groups Because of their generations of residence in the United States and their historically subjugated position, African and Native Americans exhibit similar socioeconomic characteristics. Although the majority of neither group is poor, and in fact both groups have made significant improvements in education and social class, both still display higher rates of poverty, unemployment, and related family trends than do White U.S. residents and other racial/ethnic minorities. Both groups are known for their resiliency under generations of discrimination, strong ties among extended and fictive kin, and use of fluid family roles and household borders to accommodate the contraction and expansion of kin and resources. Currently, research on African Americans remains focused on various forms of single parenting and their effects on children. In 2000, 22% of African American households were female or male headed with children (compared with 6.7% of White, 16% of Hispanic American, and 17% of American Indian households). Research conclusions have focused on poverty, low rates of employment among Black men, and low maleto-female gender ratios beginning at young ages to explain the postponement or absence of marriage. As a way of reincorporating fathers and reducing the public
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costs of poor and low-income single parenting, both scholarship and government programs have shifted their focus during the past decade to fatherhood identity and involvement in the Black community. Much less research is conducted on Native American families because of their relatively small population, diverse tribal arrangements, and high levels of biological assimilation due to intermarriage. Native Americans historically exhibited more nontraditional gender roles, such as matrilineality and transgenderism, and these have been highlighted in recent research. Also, persistent health issues and high rates of alcoholism have contributed to high rates of fosterage for Native American children. Recent research has aimed to embed these within a historical context. Along with economic development, resurgence of cultural traditions is frequently suggested as a means to address such problems.
Immigrant Families Both Hispanic and Asian American families have high proportions of foreign-born members, so immigrant family issues have predominated in research on these groups. In the aggregate, immigrants often exhibit several unusual family patterns. Because of selfselection, immigrant families frequently have better health than would be expected given their higher rates of poverty and often lack of health insurance. As mentioned earlier, they usually have larger proportions of both multigenerational and laterally extended households than do native populations. Transnational parenting, whereby parents immigrate to the United States to earn a livelihood but leave their children with extended family or, conversely, send their children to stay with relatives or friends in the United States to receive a U.S. education, is not an uncommon practice. Because young and middle-aged adults dominate the immigrant profile, immigrant groups usually have younger age distributions that give rise to higher marriage and fertility rates. In response to this large influx of non-European immigrants, who have not assimilated in the same way or to the same degree as previous European immigrants did, scholars revised the common theoretical framework that was driven by earlier presumptions of inevitable and linear assimilation. Instead, they now focus more on issues of acculturation and biculturation. In general, most scholars find that racial/minority families do acculturate to some degree
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over two to three generations, but it is not necessarily a linear process; rather, it can ebb and flow depending on, among other things, the presence of extended family, ongoing ethnic group in-migration, residential segregation, and discrimination. Acculturation is manifested in some common indicators. Fertility rates tend to decline with each generation. Even firstgeneration immigrants exhibit lower rates than do their counterparts in their home countries. Divorce rates rise over several generations, and surveys find that attitudes supportive of filial obligation decrease. Studies on Hispanic and Asian families indicate that the acculturation process can produce intergenerational conflict. The first generation may attempt to inhibit acculturation in the second generation through a process that Monisha Das Gupta referred to as museumization, whereby the first generation attempts to sustain “old country” traditions in the second generation, even though those traditions may actually be disappearing or modifying in the home country as well. However, on the whole, a strategy (conscious or not) of biculturalism (retaining some of both cultures) appears to be conducive to positive outcomes. Biculturalism mitigates the stress accompanying adaptations required by the demands of a new environment and in some cases has been shown to contribute to scholastic achievement and overall well-being of the younger generation. Despite some common immigrant experiences, Asian American and Hispanic American families differ in distinctive ways. Asian American families have frequently been referred to as a model minority because on average they exhibit higher levels of college education and family income and lower rates of divorce, single parenting, and nonmarital births than do White U.S. residents. This stereotype overlooks the fact that during recent years Asians who choose to immigrate to America are frequently those who already have higher education or who come ready to obtain one, whereas Hispanics who choose to immigrate on average come from lower socioeconomic strata in their home countries. Both racial labels—Hispanic and Asian—camouflage much within-group diversity. Nearly 67% of Hispanic Americans are Mexican Americans, nearly 9% are Puerto Ricans, and nearly 4% are Cubans. During the past few decades, “other Hispanic” has comprised a growing proportion of Central and South Americans, but little research has been conducted on these latter groups. Despite their cultural similarities in language
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and religion, Cuban Americans, with former refugee status, are measurably better off socioeconomically in terms of education, income, and poverty. Their family structure and dynamics reflect these resources: lower fertility, female-headed households, and nonmarital births. The racial label Asian American also lumps a diverse set of ethnicities together. For decades, the largest ethnic groups were Chinese and Japanese; today, Filipinos and Asian Indians have surpassed the Japanese, and at least 20 ethnic groups fall under the Asian label. Since the Vietnam War, Southeast Asians have been arriving in large waves. Southeast Asian families on average are poorer and less educated than their East Asian counterparts and exhibit more of the family trends associated with restricted resources.
Multiracial Issues Finally, coterminous with the continued racial/ethnic diversification of the U.S. population have come increased interracial relations of various sorts. Although still relatively uncommon, interracial marriages have increased and accounted for nearly 6% of all existing marriages in 2000. The majority of interracial marriages involve a White partner. The other spouse is most commonly Hispanic, followed by Asian, Native American and Black. Although most of those in interracial marriages are born in the United States, with the advent of the Internet, locating brides in other countries has become a pastime for some men in the United States as well. Korean women were popular during the 1980s; today, Russia and other former Soviet republics are popular sources (although the latter would not be considered interracial). Several factors contribute to the likelihood of interracial marriage. Each successive generation is more likely than the first generation to intermarry. In general, those with higher levels of education are more likely to intermarry than are those with lower levels of education (Asians are an exception to this). Racial minorities who attend colleges or reside in diverse settings, where they are less exposed to people of their own racial group, are more likely to intermarry. These more open interracial relations have given birth to a multiracial movement. In an attempt to measure this population, or at least the saliency of their identity, the 2000 census for the first time allowed respondents to check more than one racial category for their racial identity. Less than 2% of the population did so.
In addition, interracial or transracial adoption has become more common again. References to interracial adoption are generally to adoptions of minority children by White parents rather than to adoptions of White children by minority parents. Interracial adoptions had declined for a couple of decades due largely to the protests of Black social workers and American Indian tribes, who believed that the practice resulted in a loss of culture and identity for the children. However, the predominance of children of color languishing in the foster care system led to a legal reinstitutionalization of the practice during the mid-1990s. Moreover, adoption across borders has proliferated during recent decades, with the popularity of supply countries usually following war or political upheavals. Currently, Chinese girls and Russian children are the most commonly adopted. As racial/ethnic minorities become a larger proportion of the U.S. population, American family trends will reflect their presence and more research will shed light on the differential experiences of families of color. Roberta L. Coles See also Acculturation; Adoption; Aging; Assimilation; Census, U.S.; Child Development; Cultural Capital; Culture of Poverty; Domestic Violence; Familism; Frazier, E. Franklin; Immigrant Communities; Immigration and Gender; Intermarriage; Kinship; Parenting; Rites of Passage Further Readings
Benokraitis, Nijole V., ed. 2002. Contemporary Ethnic Families in the United States: Characteristics, Variations, and Dynamics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Coles, Roberta L. 2006. Race and Family: A Structural Approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Frazier, E. Franklin. 1932. The Free Negro Family. Nashville, TN: Fisk. Frazier, E. Franklin. 1932. The Negro Family in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kennedy, Randall. 2004. Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption. New York: Pantheon. Lareau, Annette. 2003. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Olson, Laura Katz. 2001. Age through Ethnic Lenses: Caring for Elderly in a Multicultural Society. Baltimore, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Trask, Bahira Sherif. 2007. Cultural Diversity and Families: Expanding Perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. U.S. Department of Labor. 1965. The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Fanon, Frantz (1925–1961)
FANON, FRANTZ (1925–1961) Frantz Fanon was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. He devoted his life to the liberation and decolonization of African colonies and the Third World, in particular Algeria. The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks are his most well-known writings. A psychoanalyst, social philosopher, and activist, Fanon has exercised tremendous impact through his writings on theories of colonization, decolonization, domination, resistance, nationalism, Black consciousness, and postcolonialism.
Early Years Fanon was born in 1925 on the island of Martinique, a French colony. Fanon was born to a well-to-do family. His father was a descendant of African slaves, and his mother was a descendant of mixed races. Fanon went to one of the most prestigious high schools in Martinique, Lycée Schoelcher. Aimé Cesairé was his teacher and influenced his thinking on colonialism and liberation. Fanon was affected by the abuse French soldiers imposed on people in Martinique. Witnessing how the French regime oppressed his people and its racist attitude toward the colonized, Fanon developed his consciousness as a defender of liberation and fought against racism his whole life. He left the Caribbean island at 18 years of age and joined the Free French Forces. In 1944, he received the Croix de Guerre medal for his participation in the military. In 1954, Fanon joined the Front de Libération Nationale. Devoting his efforts to the liberation and decolonization of the Third World, Fanon made various trips to Algeria to study the life of Algerians. He was expelled from Algeria in January 1957.
Scholarly Contributions In his well-known work, The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon developed the concept of Black consciousness. He maintained that colonizers viewed the colonized as not humans. He deconstructed the dichotomous system that represented blackness as evil and whiteness as good. He said that to be free from psychological oppression, total revolution, including the use of violence, may be required. Fanon argued that the revolution of African colonies would depend on the peasants. He did not believe that the
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bourgeoisie and elites could create the revolution needed by African colonies. He believed that the nationalism supported by the bourgeoisie was insufficient given that this class was invested in the system. Fanon argued that White colonialism imposed on African people created a degrading existence for Africans and demanded their conformity to the oppressive system. Fanon’s view of the colonized went beyond developing countries and was also relevant to major social change in industrial countries. For example, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) made extended references to Fanon in his espousal of Black Power. Ture saw a close relationship between Black Power and Fanon’s call for a new force in countries emerging from colonialism during the 20th century. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon continued to develop his theory on the Black consciousness. He explored the psychological relationship between the colonized and the colonizer as well as between the dominated and the dominator. Emphasizing his role as a Black intellectual in the White world, he discussed how he conceived himself as a Black man in relation to Whites. For Fanon, his speaking French signified being coerced into accepting the French consciousness, which supported the hierarchical construction between blackness and whiteness. Being colonized by a language represented the alienation of the Black man from himself. Fanon eventually renounced his French upbringing and education. As he argued, whiteness depended on the negation of blackness. This negation of blackness had an impact on the psychological state of Black people. Indeed, it was not until the colonized dispensed with their ruler’s culture and the racial logic embedded within it that they could overcome their self-hatred and strive for national liberation. Fanon died of leukemia in 1961. As an important thinker during the 20th century, Fanon had a tremendous impact on civil rights and anticolonial and Black consciousness movements around the world. His work, along with the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, can be seen as highlighting how contentious and contradictory views about race are, especially in colonial and postcolonial states. Shu-Ju Ada Cheng See also Black Nationalism; Black Power; Colonialism; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Marxism and Racism; Race, Social Construction of; Racism
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Father Divine Peace Mission Movement
Further Readings
Bulhan, Hussein Abdilahi. 2004. Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression. New York: Springer-Verlag. Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove. Fanon, Frantz. 1968. Black Skin, White Mask. New York: Grove. Fanon, Frantz. 1994. A Dying Colonialism. New York: Grove. Gibson, Nigel C. 1999. Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue. New York: Humanity Books.
FATHER DIVINE PEACE MISSION MOVEMENT Father Divine, an African American minister who rose to prominence during the 1930s, founded the International Peace Mission Movement. At its peak during the Great Depression, the Peace Mission Movement maintained churches throughout the United States and in various parts of the world. Regarded by many as a religious cult, the Peace Mission Movement was dedicated to promoting the teachings of Father Divine and his vision of an integrated America. This entry describes the man and his ministry.
Father Divine. Born George Baker, Father Divine (1874–1965) is here shown with his bride Edna Rose Ritchings (“Sweet Angel”) in August, 1946. Divine, a U.S. religious leader, founded the International Peace Movement in 1919. Source: Getty Images.
Background of Father Divine Although followers regard Father Divine as God and believe that he had no earthly origins, he was born George Baker in Rockville, Maryland, in 1879. He grew up in poverty during the Jim Crow era of segregation, lynching, and disenfranchisement. For Rockville’s Black population, as for other African American communities, the church provided a forum for both worship and activism. Baker was nurtured in this tradition while being raised in the Black Methodist church. In 1899, Baker left Rockville for Baltimore, where he worked as a gardener and taught Sunday school at a Baptist church. Baltimore’s urban environment was rich in various religious alternatives, and Baker was particularly drawn to “new thought” theology. Based on the notion that believers could magnify God’s internal presence and, through positive thinking, could overcome adversity to achieve spiritual and material success, new thought had rapidly become popular. Embracing its tenets, Baker left Baltimore preaching a syncretic blend of new thought and African American Christianity. For several years, Baker evangelized in the South, gaining a small and devoted group of African American followers. This group included a wife, Peninniah; he declared that the marriage was celibate and represented Christ’s union with his church. In 1917, known as Father Divine, he relocated with his flock to New York and, pooling his followers’ earnings, purchased a house in the predominantly White community of Sayville, Long Island. The congregation moved into the home together and held worship services there. Residents initially accepted the arrangement because Father Divine provided honest, reliable, and reasonably priced labor to area homeowners. However, by the late 1920s, as Father Divine’s following began to grow, so did the hostility of his neighbors. Word spread that he not only provided jobs for the unemployed but also healed the sick and fed the poor at extravagant banquet worship services. As word of his ministry spread, the congregation grew and included diverse members ranging from former followers of the Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey to White devotees of new thought theology.
The Ministry By 1931, services at Father Divine’s home attracted such large crowds that neighbors summoned authorities, who arrested the minister for maintaining a
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public nuisance. He was tried and found guilty. But after giving him the maximum sentence of one year in jail, the trial’s judge died of a sudden heart attack. Rumors circulated that on learning of the judge’s death, Father Divine remarked, “I hated to do it.” Although this story propelled him into the national media limelight, Father Divine repeatedly denied he had made the statement, insisting that the judge had killed himself with his negative racist thinking. Indeed, the judge’s misconduct at the trial led another court to overturn the ruling and free Father Divine. The minister relocated to Harlem, and the movement began to boom. Throughout the country, followers joined together to open Peace Mission churches, hotels, and businesses. Following Father Divine’s example, many fed and housed the poor. Peace Mission businesses gained a reputation for providing high-quality goods and services at reasonable prices. Indeed, Peace Mission restaurants became famous for charging very little for their delicious meals. In addition, Father Divine and his followers pursued a secular agenda, campaigning for desegregation, voting rights, and federal antilynching legislation. However, Father Divine and the Peace Mission Movement endured significant criticism. Opponents charged that the movement was dangerously insular. Devoted followers cut family ties, took new names, moved into Peace Mission hostels, and observed strict codes of conduct. Men and women lived separately, and celibacy was absolutely required. Drinking and smoking were prohibited, and disciples were required to dress modestly. In addition, Father Divine forbid the identification of individuals by race; he preached that racial designations were a negative construct that falsely divided U.S. residents and perpetuated racism. He argued that by banishing racial terminology from the language, racism could eventually be eradicated. Father Divine’s controversial teachings and his strident campaign for equality induced a tremendous backlash. The White press constantly attacked Father Divine and his followers as foolish oddities, and many in the African American community believed that his unconventional teachings were deeply threatening to the fight for equality. During the late 1930s, at the urging of disgruntled former disciplines and the movement foes, New York courts leveled a series of judgments against the minister. In 1942, Father Divine relocated his headquarters to Philadelphia, where he reorganized and incorporated the movement’s churches to protect them
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from further legal action. Although he was a pacifist, he stridently supported the U.S. effort in World War II, viewing Nazism as a greater threat than American racism. And Father Divine continued to challenge American racial attitudes. In 1946, he married a young White woman, Sweet Angel. As with his first marriage, he insisted that the relationship was symbolic, and she became known throughout the movement as Mother Divine. The union made headlines in the United States, where in many localities interracial marriages remained illegal. The following years were ones of decline for both Father Divine and the Peace Mission Movement. His very rigid and unique teachings made the movement seem strange and impractical. His leadership faded quickly as efforts to attack American racism gained momentum after World War II and his following dwindled. The aging Father Divine retreated to a stately mansion, purchased by a wealthy White follower on the outskirts of Philadelphia, where the minister continued to preach. Increasingly, he turned over leadership to Mother Divine, who carried on the movement after Father Divine’s death in 1965. Jill Watts See also African Americans; Black Nationalism; Religion, African Americans
Further Readings
Watts, J. 1992. God, Harlem U.S.A.: The Father Divine Story. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weisbrot, R. 1983. Father Divine and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
FEMINISM The definition of feminism has been actively debated in activist and academic circles. Although there is no one agreed-on definition of the term, in general, feminism is an analytical framework that focuses attention on the conditions of women; it is a way of viewing the political, social, and cultural realms that center on the experiences of women. As an ideology as well as a political movement that centers the discourse on gender, feminism seeks to eliminate multiple systems of
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domination and seeks a radical shift in what it views as a racist, classist, heterosexist, and patriarchal power structure. This entry introduces the various strains of feminism, with attention paid to the aims of each strain and their interconnectedness.
Seeking Equality Emancipatory feminism focused its efforts on a critique of Enlightenment thinking, which promoted a universal understanding of “human” defined by the ability to reason. Emancipatory feminism argued that the use of a gender-neutral notion of “Man” was entrenched in a gendered association of the term human with the definition of man, which did not include women. Enlightenment thinking placed a priority on the importance of the mind above the importance of the body. Rationality and the social world were generally considered to be the realm of men, whereas women were associated with the physicality of the body, irrationality, nature, and emotion. Later theorists also critiqued this form of thinking as being racialized as well as gendered, arguing that the positive attribute of rationality is afforded to Whites, whereas negative attributes of nature, emotionality, and physicality are associated with people of color. The aim of emancipatory and egalitarian feminists is equal rights with men. These political struggles began with demanding access to birth control and the right to vote, and they continue today with workplace equity issues and issues of equal political representation. One form of emancipatory feminism, Marxist feminism, uses the fundamentals of Marxist thinking— the centrality of the forces of production in a class-based social structure—to analyze women’s lives. Marxist feminists argue that the central problem in women’s lives is the division between productive and reproductive labor. They argue that productive labor is valued more highly than reproductive labor and that the division between productive and reproductive labor keeps women disenfranchised and oppressed. In this strain of feminist thought, domination and oppression occur due to structural factors within the material base of society; therefore, liberation is sought via social and economic means, with the goal being equality between men and women.
Other Views Radical feminists focus on power relations between women and men. This strain of feminist thinking
focuses on organizing around gender as a singular political identity. The radical feminist view of gender is less about characteristics that men and women possess and more about the symbolic nature of gender in the hierarchical power and oppression of a patriarchal society. Radical feminists argue that society is deeply rooted in patriarchal structures and that this entrenchment of patriarchy (oppressive power of men over women) is so pervasive that women cannot successfully realize their full potential by living within patriarchal structures such as the heterosexual family. Lesbianism is held to be the quintessential feminist identity, and women who were adherents of this view became “women-identified women” or political lesbians—women who identified politically but not sexually with other women. Psychoanalytic and cultural feminists also argue that men and women are different from each other. Psychoanalytic feminists place the essence of this difference in the psyche and argue that patriarchal structures are a result of placing more value on masculinity. They argue for a more androgynous society in which masculinity and femininity are valued equally. Cultural feminists include a biological component in their explanation of the differences between men and women. They argue that “feminine” traits such as compassion, empathy, and nurturance are morally virtuous and should be the goal of all individuals.
Inside the Academy Feminist academics have shifted from an essentialist view of gender, which posits that women and men are fundamentally different from each other based on biological differences, to a socially constructed view of gender, which argues that gender differences are constructed in the social world through the process of socialization. In this view, gender refers to the social and cultural patterns associated with being a woman or a man; it is historically and socially specific. Therefore, sex and gender do not carry universal meanings but instead must be understood within the social context where they are created. This marks a fundamental shift in the thinking about women and men and in feminist thinking in general. A serious criticism of what had been mainstream feminist thinking came from feminists of color, lesbian feminists, and non-Western or postcolonial feminists, who argue that the essentialist concept of woman historically meant White, middle class, heterosexual, and Western. These feminist theorists argue
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that race and ethnicity intersect with class position, gender, and sexuality to reveal the individual’s position in society and that, therefore, it is important to recognize that not all women carry the same privileges. This argument is related to the idea of social construction and standpoint theory. Standpoint theory, which grew out of a socialist feminist perspective, argues that an individual’s social knowledge is only a partial view based on the individual’s place in the race, class, gender, and sexuality divisions in society. Feminist standpoint epistemology argues that material life structures reality and sets limits on the understandings of social relations. It believes that by beginning with an understanding of women’s everyday lives as structured through the sexual division of labor, it is possible to gain an understanding of the lives of the oppressed and, therefore, a more complete view of the oppressiveness of social structures is produced. Feminist writings have moved toward a critique of dualistic theorizing in terms of race, class, gender, and sexualities as well as a debate of how, by whom, and for whom knowledge is produced. Other academic movements outside of feminism, such as postmodernist, poststructural, and queer theory, influence much of current feminism. Poststructuralist feminists question the categories used not only in society at large but also in feminist theory. This strain of feminism questions the category of “woman” and the link between sex and gender. Modernist feminists focus on the structures that create and maintain social inequality, whereas poststructuralist feminists question the categories used in discourse. Poststructuralist feminists argue that gender is continually constituted through language. Although they recognize that gender categories exist in society, they argue against the idea that these categories are inherent in and of themselves or are inherent to sex or sexuality. Poststructuralist feminists argue that sex and gender are produced through discourse. They posit that oppression occurs through language, so liberation is sought through a disruption in the meanings of categories to free those who are marginalized by binary thinking that sets one group against another group defined as “other.” They argue that if language and theorizing remain within the binary system, equality for all individuals will never be a possibility.
The Third Wave Current strains of feminism—sometimes called “third wave” feminism—offer a critique of essentialist
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notions of a universal “woman” in feminist theorizing. Heavily influenced by poststructuralist thinking, current feminisms question the dualisms present in Western thought—man/woman, heterosexual/ homosexual, nature/culture, rational/irrational, subject/ object. The aim is to question the foundations on which these dualisms are based in an effort to disrupt the meanings that have been attached to the binary categories. Central to this argument is that the Enlightenment model of oppositional hierarchical binaries will always privilege men over women, so an entirely new way of thinking about sexual difference is necessary to avoid repeating this central problem with binary logic. Today’s feminism reflects a blend of emancipatory, Marxist, radical, social constructionist, intersectional/ multicultural, postcolonial, and poststructural/postmodern feminist ideas. Projects that formed the central aim of emancipatory and Marxist feminist activism—workplace equity, women’s control over their own bodies, recognition of reproductive labor— continue to remain central to the political work of feminists. Ideas stemming from the social constructionist, multicultural, and postcolonial feminist critiques of the importance of differences within and among feminisms inform current political and theoretical feminist projects. The infusion of a critique of binary thinking offered by queer theory, as well as an interest in the constitutive nature of language with a recognition of the problematic nature of the attempt to create an overarching general theory of feminism, also serves to inform current strains of feminist theories. These continue to offer critiques of society and social structures. Briana M. Weadock See also Civil Rights Movement, Women and; Collins, Patricia Hill; Feminism, Black; Feminism, Latina; Gender and Race, Intersection of; hooks, bell; Marxism and Racism; Privilege
Further Readings
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge. Kolmar, Wendy K. and Frances Bartowski, eds. 2005. Feminist Theory: A Reader Second Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lam, Maivan Clech. 1994. “Feeling Foreign in Feminism.” Signs 19:865–891.
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Lorber, Judith. 2005. Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics. 3rd ed. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury. Phillips, Layli. 2006. The Womanist Reader. New York: Routledge. Purvis, Jennifer. 2004. “Grrrls and Women Together in the Third Wave: Embracing the Challenges of Intergenerational Feminism(s).” National Women’s Studies Association Journal 16(3):93–123.
FEMINISM, BLACK The tradition of Black feminism or Black feminist thought is an articulation of the activist and intellectual tradition of Africana women in the United States. It is a paradigm for understanding oppression, inequality, and resistance. The most important analytic tool of Black feminist thought is intersectionality—a paradigm for reconceptualizing oppression and resistance. Race, class, and gender intersectionality is a framework for analyzing ways in which various spheres of inequality work together to affect social life simultaneously. Intersectional analysis is not exclusive to other spheres of inequality. Racism, class exploitation, sexism, heterosexism, imperialism, ethnocentrism, religious chauvinism, elitism, ageism, and other hierarchical and oppressive concepts and practices configure people’s lives in many ways. Thus, the social world cannot be understood without considering the ways in which these axes mutually construct one another. To unveil the socially constructed nature of hierarchy and difference, intersectional work examines the taken-for-granted aspects of the social order, including those things people have been socialized to view as “natural.” Elements of Black feminist thought, including intersectionality, have been articulated by activists and scholars/activists within the humanities, the social sciences, and law. Patricia Hill Collins, however, deserves special mention because she has attempted to summarize the views of women from these various perspectives and has made strides in delineating this perspective to sociologists. There is a historical legacy for intersectionality within the thought and action of women of color in the United States and elsewhere, surviving and working to create better living conditions for themselves and those they care about. This is the premise of Black feminist thought—that Black women have always had a standpoint from which to theorize about oppression
and resistance. The problem for intellectuals and for the academic canon has been that the thought of Black women has not been acknowledged.
Simultaneity According to the intersectional framework, it is not enough to look at race, class, or gender in isolation, for example, to discuss gender and then point out that Black women and White women have different experiences. This is simply additive analysis because one is “adding on” race to a gender analysis. One must examine race, class, and gender simultaneously to get some sense of the ways in which these spheres of inequality support each other to maintain the status quo. The significance of simultaneity is expressed by the perspective emanating from Black feminist thought that there is no such thing as a singular experience representing all women. Women’s lived experience of sexism is conditioned by each woman’s social positioning. Black women’s experience is conditioned by class, sexuality, nation, and other social locations. For example, images associated with poor Black “crack moms” and White middle-class women seeking treatment for cocaine addiction are informed by racism, sexism, and elitism. These interlocking systems reinforce the notion that White women with high incomes are inherently good mothers who just need to get back on track and that poor Black women inherently cannot be rehabilitated. An additive analysis describes these two women’s experiences as simply different. But the two hypothetical women described by these images are not just different. Intersectional analysis tells us that all women are not the same gender in that their experiences of living as women are not the same. The simultaneity of racism and elitism means that their differences result from the same social system that, on the one hand, heaps privilege on women who are White and compounds it with the advantages of high social class standing and, on the other hand, withdraws resources from women who are Black and economically impoverished. Finally, the access to treatment, prenatal care, and other resources provided to middle-class White women and the lack of access for poor Black women are justified by these controlling images. White women are not stigmatized in the same ways as Black women for cocaine addiction. Many petit bourgeois women working in professional jobs are often protected by health coverage that includes drug
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treatment and employment policies stating that they cannot be fired for the disease of addiction if they are seeking treatment. Poor women have a more difficult time in gaining access to drug treatment because most low-income jobs do not provide medical coverage. Even if they could enter a treatment program, most women working for low wages would lose their jobs. For example, some temporary agencies have written policies stating that any evidence of drug use is grounds for immediate suspension. The fact that the same social system comprising U.S. health care and employment practices creates such different circumstances for women struggling with addiction demonstrates that the system is structured to implicitly value some women’s lives more than others.
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woman in an aggressively White elite female setting). By embracing and making visible subjects’ complexity, researchers can fully understand subjects’ political and social limits, influences, and impacts. So the term intersections of resistance finally deconstructs a very important goal personally and in movements to create alternatives—wholeness. An intersectional analysis of resistance and creating alternatives (e.g., building a new nonhierarchical social order) relates to the tapping of Black and other women’s cultural heritages, experiences as gendered persons in the societies where they live, and the creativity they have needed to draw on as underresourced people to survive, create social movements, and work toward an alternative vision of the preoccupations of their lives.
Importance of Context Points of view and understandings of the social world are conditioned by social location and experience therein. To achieve a Black feminist analysis, researchers must consider the influence of macro-level factors. Thus, social phenomena are examined by including contextual as well as individual factors. So studies of health indicators, such as infant and child mortality, must go beyond analyzing mothers’ characteristics (e.g., race, income, number of prenatal care visits) so that the social environment is revealed. Contextual variables in such a study would include, for example, services that are available to women and accessibility of health services. Exploring context places individual experiences within social, economic, historical, and geopolitical settings appropriately.
Analyzing Resistance Although intersectionality is most often used as a paradigm to analyze domination, it is dialectical in that it can also be used to analyze resistance and the creation of alternatives (i.e., intersections of resistance). It is important to use the intersectional framework to analyze women’s resistance strategies, successes, and failures. The Black feminist perspective does not view individuals as discrete categories; it promotes viewing individuals as whole beings. Black feminist analysts are called on to embrace their whole selves, even the elements of themselves that are considered “marginal” in a particular social context (whether the subject is a Black Christian woman in a decidedly agnostic Black male space or an immigrant working-class Black
Relationality Although it is normally applied to those with relatively few resources, the intersectional perspective as an analytic tool is applied to explicate the realities of people who are assumed to be in privileged positions. In examining the connections between various groups’ experiences, the investigator gets a fuller picture of the social world. Moving from an additive analysis to address the simultaneity of oppressions begins to reveal the relational differences between groups’ experiences. In looking, for example, at the relational difference between Black and White women, Black feminists assert that the lives of White middle-class women are enabled by poor and working-class immigrant women and other women of color. Examining how difference is relational helps the researcher to see that during the late 20th century, White middle-class women’s diminished role in the domestic sphere and entry into the labor force were facilitated by White, Black, and Latina working-class and immigrant women’s work in the formal and informal service sector as well as the exploitation of labor of women and men in the Third World. So their differences in access to power can influence their social locations. Black feminist thought theorizes social reality in the singular. It says that one social reality, described by an overarching system of oppression and privilege, creates divergent experiences for individuals based on their social location. Work that considers such relationality uses a powerful tool to uncover the interconnectedness of spheres of domination.
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An Alternative Epistemology An alternative epistemology informs Black feminist methodology. Positivist methodological approaches have been criticized for requiring a distance between the researcher and the object of study, absence of emotions, withdrawal of ethics and values from the research process, and use of adversarial debate for ascertaining truth. An alternative epistemology describes “committed objectivity” as a necessary approach to research. In Black feminist thought, researchers approach their examination of social phenomena with an ethic of caring, empathy, and personal accountability. This alternative epistemology further posits lived experience as a crucial criterion for meaning and emphasizes dialogue with other members of the community or “humanizing speech” to assess knowledge claims. Finally, Black feminist analysis is self-reflexive. Black feminists are called on to be self-critical. Intersectionality means that their position on the domination and resistance continuum is always shifting; they are always looking for the oppressor within. Assata Zerai See also Body Image; Collins, Patricia Hill; Critical Race Theory; Feminism; Feminism, Latina; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Hip-Hop and Rap, Women and hooks, bell; Marxism and Racism; Welfare Queen
Further Readings
Agozino, Biko. 1999. “Committed Objectivity in Race, Class, Gender Research.” Quantity and Quality: International Journal of Methodology 33:395–410. Andersen, Margaret and Patricia Hill Collins, eds. 1998. Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Brown, Elsa Barkley. 1995. “‘What Has Happened Here?’ The Politics of Difference in Women’s History and Feminist Politics.” In ‘We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible’: A Reader in Black Women’s History, edited by Darlene Clark Hine, Wilma King, and Linda Reed. Brooklyn, NY: Carlson. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman. Lorde, Audre. [1984] 1993. “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Defining Difference.” In Sister Outsider. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press. Zerai, Assata. 2000. “Agents of Knowledge and Action: Selected Africana Scholars and Their Contributions to the
Understanding of Race, Class, and Gender Intersectionality.” Cultural Dynamics 12:182–222. Zerai, Assata and Rae Banks. 2002. Dehumanizing Discourse, Law, and Policy in America: A Crack Mother’s Nightmare. London: Ashgate.
FEMINISM, LATINA Latina feminism was born out of a civil rights initiative that addressed structural inequalities and is a modified Latino version of the women’s liberation movement. The pioneer women’s movement failed Latinas because it did not address the many differences, compared with White middle-class women, that inform a panethnic Latina consciousness. Since the 1960s and 1970s, the feminist movement has infrequently recognized internal differences among women of color, including Latinas. Because Latinas can be of any race, it is no easy task to achieve an inclusive panethnic Latina consciousness that can thrive within a general feminist dialectic. Barriers that threaten a distinct Latina feminism include their exclusion from Eurocentric feminist frameworks and the pervasiveness of “Marianismo” in dominant Latino culture. These barriers were overcome through the emergence of a Chicano feminist consciousness, pan-Latina/o coalition building, and the conceptualization of a panethnic Latina feminism movement that includes the experiences of both Latinas based in the United States and women from Latin America, the Caribbean, and other Spanish-speaking territories and countries. This entry discusses both the barriers and the varieties of emerging Latina feminism.
Barriers to Latina Feminism Eurocen ntric Femin nist Fra amework ks
Eurocentric feminist frameworks ignore differences among women in terms of class backgrounds, religious traditions, sexual preferences, races, ages, cultural experiences, and regional variations and instead place the most focus on a middle-class White female reality. Part of the dilemma concerning a Eurocentric feminist framework stems from the White male system through which it appears to operate. Anne Wilson Schaef introduced the concept of the White male system. As she defined it, this system is
Feminism, Latina
managed by and for the advancement and domination of White male leadership, placing women and people of color into an inferior status without regard to their socioeconomic background. This system is maintained through embedded discriminatory practices such as institutionalized racism and modern sexism, she said. According to Schaef’s theory, the White male system controls nearly every aspect of Western culture. However, its grip is maintained with subtlety; by law, there are sanctions against outright discrimination on the basis of race, creed, national origin, and the like. Yet according to Schaef, male-dominated Eurocentric frameworks exist in every type of institutionalized setting where people traverse daily—places of employment; institutions of primary, secondary, and higher education; lending and banking organizations; places of religious worship; health care facilities; the military and governmental entities; and noninstitutional settings such as places of residence and community life. Getting into the White male system is what women and others in Western society have been taught they must do to survive, Schaef asserted; hence, a Latina feminist consciousness works against this system, and its development takes place within this resistance. Schaef proposed that the Latina feminist movement must acknowledge and address four fundamental myths of the White male system. Responding to the myth that the White male system is the only thing that exists, Latina feminists offer a discourse about including differences in ethnicity, race, phenotype, regional culture, religious affiliation, class, generation, political orientation, sexual orientation, and bilingual language acquisition. Latina feminists resist the second myth—that the White male system is innately superior—and contest their imposed inferiority, initiating a dialectic that centers on Latina empowerment and the ways in which they have surmounted obstacles placed before them and have met parity with the status quo. Latina feminists view the third myth—that the White male system knows and understands everything—as not only misleading but also creating an even deeper barrier to equity among all women, especially women of color and in particular Latinas. The fourth myth that Schaef proposed is that it is possible to be totally logical, rational, and objective. Latina feminists argue that people are simply not capable of being totally logical, rational, and objective; considering the various forms of oppression that
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Latinas and other people of color face, this model is viewed as particularly unrealistic and problematic. Marianissmo
One of the largest obstacles that the Latina feminist movement has targeted is the embedded Marianista model of gender relations within the Latino community. In the feminist view, this model centers on the acceptance of abusive male behavior, women’s subordination in the face of personal oppression, and the subsequent “martyrdom” syndrome that proceeds from this form of male domination against Latinas. Marianismo is cited as a universal model of the expected behavior of Latin American women, a model that Tracy Bachrach-Ehlers traced to the colonial period, when women were taught to emulate the virtues of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ in the Christian tradition. Because this view of women is incorporated deeply into a traditional pan-Latino ethnic consciousness, according to Latina feminists, resistance to Marianismo may be a risky undertaking. As Latinas rise above and resist oppression from within their own ethnic community, feminists point out, they are forming a new model that future generations of Latinas and all community members can emulate. Hence, critics of the Marianismo concept are concerned primarily with opposing the assertion that women should consciously place themselves as domestic servants ready to embrace a life wrought with negativity.
Feminism Among Latinas Chicana Femin nissmss
Chicanas, in collaboration with other Latinas, were among the first and most vocal groups to create a foundation for rethinking feminism. Sofia Villenas found that Latina/Chicana feminisms sought solidarity with Latin American women, Third World feminist movements, and political and economic struggles against exploitation and social injustice around the globe. Geographically, Chicana feminists were often found in the U.S. Southwest. As the largest group of Latinas, Chicanas have had a far-reaching impact and serve as the focal point for Latina feminisms. Chicana feminist writings helped to develop a discourse in opposition to the Eurocentric frameworks.
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One of the best-known Latina feminists is Gloria Anzaldua, author of numerous writings, including Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. As a lesbian Chicana writer, Anzaldua has produced work that shows the clear intersectionality of gender, sexuality, and the social construction of racial identity. Pan-LLatiina/o Coalitiion Buillding and Femin nisst Identity y
Chicanas and other Latinas established a Latina feminist framework based on their experiences as members of diverse individual nationalities. Out of the institutional oppression that Latina feminists encountered and their initial exclusion from a male-dominated ethnic studies movement and a White-dominated women’s movement, the movement developed “Latina” as a coalitional term to garner all of the resources that these women bring in as feminists. Geographically, coalition building presents a challenge in the United States because Mexicans, Chicanas, and Central Americans reside predominantly in the West and the Southwest, whereas Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, and South Americans reside predominantly in the North and Southeast, with an ethnic mix spread throughout the Midwest. One of the most successful initiatives to gather all of these regionally and ethnically distinct voices was the formation of the Latina Feminist Group in 1993. This coalition has developed a longstanding Latina Summer Institute sponsored by Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS, Women Active in Letters and Social Change), and it produced the landmark anthology Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios. The Latina Feminist Group found that coalition building stems from a space in opposition to masculine or White feminist frameworks and that all sources of oppression are crucial in structuring the subordinate social location of Latinas. Wom men From m Latin n Amerrica and th he Carib bbea an
Edna Acosta-Belen and Christine Bose proposed that Latin American and Caribbean women’s organized resistance is based on their needs for subsistence. These needs inform chief distinctions within the Latina feminist experience in the United States. In this way, the concerns of Third World feminists are different from the Latina feminist framework developed in the United States because the motivation behind their solidarity is based on their very survival
in a male-dominated patriarchal society; in the United States, Latinas have a decidedly more focused race-, class-, and sexual orientation-based movement. Yet all Latina feminists are placed under one umbrella movement. The problem with a panethnic Latina feminist movement is that this critical difference is often overlooked. Therefore, it is necessary to deconstruct the various components of a Latina feminist framework to understand the daily struggle of Latinas who reside outside of the United States, or those who emigrate as first-generation migrants to the United States, because their experiences evolve into a panethnic, multiclass, multigenerational Latina feminist consciousness.
Issues in Latina Feminisms The Latina feminist is a new type of intellectual, using her awareness of social injustices to challenge what she sees as a White male Eurocentric feminist framework embedded in the Latino community. Latina feminism attempts to incorporate all Latinas, including women of varied socioeconomic backgrounds, Englishdominant Latinas, and those whose families have been living in the United States for several generations in addition to Latinas who are recent immigrants. Latina feminism attributes its strength to the legacy of mothers and women kin who, through various methods such as testimonies, have chronicled their experiences of oppression and forged solidarity among women in their respective communities to combat social and political gender injustice. In addition to the external society, Latina feminists view the Latino family structure as maintaining the historical oppressions that are dictated by the tenets of Marianismo. Latina feminists routinely confront established and contested terms, identities, and frameworks that have emerged in particular historical contexts. Villenas proposed three critical perspectives in Latina/Chicana feminist thought: (a) the messy fault lines of intersecting oppressions and solidarities, (b) the breaking down of dualisms and the embracing of ambiguity, and (c) the (im)possible articulation of the performative and intangible spaces of decolonizing agency. As Latina feminism continues to evolve, its tenets are likely to change as well while still articulating the basic goal—a level playing field and equality for all women regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, regionality, linguistic heritage, immigration experience, and modes of societal incorporation. Judith Ann Perez
Filipino Americans
See also Borderlands; Chicano Movement; Feminism; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Huerta, Dolores; Latina/o Studies; Machismo; Whiteness and Masculinity
Further Readings
Acosta-Belen, Edna and Christine E. Bose. 2000. “U.S. Latina and Latin American Feminisms: Hemispheric Encounters.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 25:1113–1119. Bachrach-Ehlers, Tracy. 1997. “Debunking Marianismo: Economic Vulnerability and Survival Strategies among Guatemalan Wives.” Pp. 486–497 in Through the Prism of Difference: Readings on Sex and Gender, edited by Maxine Baca Zinn, Pierette Hondegneu-Sotelo, and Michael A. Messner. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Latina Feminist Group. 2001. Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Schaef, Anne Wilson. 1992. Women’s Reality: An Emerging Female System in a White Male Society. San Francisco, CA: Harper. Stevens, Evelyn. 1973. “Machismo and Marianismo.” Society 10:57–63. Stevens, Evelyn. 1973. “Marianismo: The Other Face of Machismo.” Pp. 90–101 in Female and Male in Latin America, edited by Ann Pescatello. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Villenas, Sofia. 2006. “Latina–Chicana Feminist Postcolonialities: Un/Tracking Educational Actors’ Interventions.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 19:659–672.
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diplomacy.” What he had in mind was to position the Philippines in the international division of labor as an exporter of human capital, a euphemism to exporting excess Filipino labor. As early as the mid-1970s, the Philippine government began the mass deployment of skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled overseas contract workers. Currently, the recruitment of Filipino doctors, nurses, physical therapists, and caregivers is especially strong in North American and European countries, whose populations are aging rapidly. What makes this foreign policy more significant is the steady reliance on the same approach to development by those who succeeded Marcos. Today, there is no end in sight to the exodus of Filipinos abroad. In the Philippines, overseas contract workers are lionized as the new national heroes and heroines. Such adulation is not unwarranted given that more than 8 million Filipinos, or 10% of the total population, work abroad in both land-based and sea-based occupations, remitting foreign currencies equivalent to nearly 10% of the gross national product. In 2005, Filipinos abroad sent $10.7 billion home, although actual remittances could be substantially higher given that approximately 30%, or $3 billion, of remittances are sent via nonbank channels. Indeed, Filipinos are a diasporic people. They can be found in various regions of the world, including Western Europe, Oceania, the Middle East, North
South Korea China Japan
FILIPINO AMERICANS The Filipino American experience is part of a largescale movement of the Filipino diaspora from a country with an estimated 2007 population of 88.7 million. As Filipinos scatter all over the world, they are opting to live as visitors, guest workers, expatriates, permanent residents, nationals, and citizens of host countries. In fact, Filipinos are encouraged by both familial and political institutions to try their luck abroad. This entry describes their background and their experience in the United States.
Taiwan
Myanmar Laos
Pacific Ocean
Thailand
Philippines
Cambodia
Vietnam
South China Sea Malaysia Malaysia Indonesia Indonesia Papua New Guinea
Indonesia
The Home Country During his tenure, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos launched a foreign policy dubbed as “development
East Timor
Indian Ocean Australia
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Africa, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Trust Territories. However, a significant number of Filipino migrants are found in cities of the United States and Canada. Filipinos now constitute the fastest-growing Asian group, as well as the largest Asian group, in the United States. They recently surpassed Chinese and Japanese Americans, and their numbers are substantially greater than the combined refugee population of Indochinese origin. Despite the problems encountered overseas, such as mental and physical abuse, marital and family problems, difficulty in adjusting to a new environment, professional accreditation, and racial discrimination, Filipinos are likely to continue their diaspora.
the Filipinos acquired the status of “nationals” under the tutelage of the U.S. government. As residents of a new territory, Filipinos were allowed to immigrate to the United States without any quota system. The first sizable influx of migrants consisted of government-sponsored pensionados (trainees in democracy who were supposed to return to the homeland as leaders), young and unskilled bachelors who had been recruited as farm-workers for the agricultural fields of Hawai‘i and California, and laborers for the salmon canneries of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. In 1910, Filipinos in the United States numbered only 2,767. By the end of the 1920s, their numbers had grown nearly tenfold to 26,634.
Early Filipino Immigration The history of Filipinos in the United States is bound to the Spanish and U.S. occupations of the Philippines. As early as 1587, many Filipinos who worked with the Spanish galleons that plied the Manila–Acapulco trade route jumped ship on reaching Acapulco or California rather than return to the Philippines. In 1763, descendants of the Spanish-speaking Filipinos who deserted ship, or “Manilamen” as they were commonly called then, were still living along the bayous and marshes of Louisiana. However, with the defeat of Spain in the Spanish– American War of 1898, Americans debated the morality of the conquest and possession of the Philippines. In the end, the American ideals of independence and self-determination succumbed to the imperial force of providential and historical circumstances embedded in the ideology of manifest destiny. This ideology saw the English and their descendants as destined to expand their control in the Pacific Ocean and beyond and to make their civilization and language predominant. On December 10, 1898, the Treaty of Paris was ratified and Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States for the payment of $20 million. On December 21, 1898, President McKinley announced his decision to keep the Philippines as a colonial possession. He described the mission of the new acquisition as one of “benevolent assimilation.” On January 4, 1899, General Elwell Otis was named the commander of American ground forces in the Philippines with a mandate to extend by force American sovereignty all over the archipelago. By virtue of the Treaty of Paris,
Filipino American couple. Filemon Mordeno, age 84 years, and his wife Mercedes, age 76 years, at their home in San Francisco on April 9, 2005. Mordeno, who fought alongside the Americans during World War II, is fighting for the full veterans’ benefits promised to the Filipino soldiers at the beginning of the war but later eliminated by the U.S. Congress with the Rescission Act of 1946. Efforts continue in Congress to correct this injustice, but even if enacted, there are dwindling numbers of surviving Filipino veterans to receive the benefits. Source: Getty Images.
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Legislative Changes The next sizable influx of Filipino migration intersected with the 1924 national origins quota system, which limited migration from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe. Because it also barred immigration of those “not eligible” for U.S. citizenship, it stopped the entry of Japanese and imposed a quota on Chinese immigration to only 100 persons per year. The law dealt a terrible blow to California farmers and to cannery operators in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, who depended on cheap labor primarily from the Japanese workers. American employers then turned to the Philippines and Mexico as new sources of cheap labor. Like their Japanese predecessors, Filipinos never earned wages much above the subsistence level. As a result, they lived in squalor and abject poverty, which the dominant society viewed as a Filipino way of life rather than as a product of employers’ neglect and exploitation. Anti-Filipino sentiments grew steadily and culminated during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Because Filipinos could not be excluded as aliens like the other so-called “Orientals,” they needed to be dealt with in a different way. U.S. officials had two options: (a) continued acceptance of Filipinos’ national status with its attendant entitlements to social services, public relief, and the right to immigrate and (b) reclassification of the legal status of Filipinos from “nationals” to “aliens.” Led by those who sought the expulsion of Filipinos from the United States, U.S. officials opted for the latter. In March 24, 1934, the U.S. Congress passed the Tydings–McDuffie Act, also known as the Philippine Independence Act. The bill authorized the drafting of a constitution by a popularly elected Constitutional Convention and the formation of a national government within a transitional period of 10 years. In the meantime, the bill redesignated the status of the Philippines from a colony to a commonwealth. The commonwealth status of the Philippines lasted from 1935 to 1946. The bill also established a naturalization quota of 100 Filipino immigrants per year. To hasten the expulsion of Filipinos from the United States, Congress passed the Filipino Repatriation Act of 1935. This act pressured Filipinos to leave by offering them free passage back to the Philippines. When the act expired in 1940, few had accepted the
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offer; only 2,190 Filipinos were sent back to the Philippines at an average cost of $116 per person. During the late 1930s, the Filipino population in the United States had already increased fourfold to approximately 108,424. By then, Filipinos could be found throughout the nation. With the invasion of the Philippines by the Japanese in 1941, Americans delayed Philippine independence until 1946. Because American attitudes toward Filipinos changed during the war years, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted the July 26, 1941, executive order calling more than 200,000 Filipinos to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East. Technically, during the transition years, Filipinos remained as nationals. In recognition of their contribution to the war efforts, Congress amended the Nationality Act of 1940 and granted Filipinos the privilege of becoming U.S. citizens. Congress also passed the War Brides Act of 1945, which enabled brides and children of Filipino servicemen to enter the United States as nonquota immigrants. After the war in the Pacific ended in 1945, American attitudes toward Filipinos changed once again. With the expiration of the president’s executive order, Congress enacted the Rescission Act of 1946. This bill was passed to exclude the service performed by Filipino veterans as “active service” for the purpose of any U.S. law conferring rights, privileges, or benefits. During the same year, Congress enacted the Second Supplemental Surplus Appropriations Rescission Act, which recapitulated the language of exclusion under the First Rescission Act. As a result, Filipino veterans were denied access to health care and disability and pension benefits that were available to all other veterans of the armed forces regardless of race, national origin, or citizenship status. More currently, U.S. Representatives Mike Honda and Bob Filner, both California Democrats, were sponsoring the Filipino Veterans Equity Act of 2007. If the bill passed, it would remove the rescission of 1946 and restore the promised equity to Filipino veterans. Because it would not be retroactive, families of veterans who died would receive no benefits; only 13,000 veterans are still alive in the Philippines, and approximately 7,000 surviving veterans are in the United States. The prospect of the bill passing was uncertain. Despite these legal restrictions, the Filipino population in the United States grew steadily and had reached 250,000 by 1965.
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The 1965 Turning Point October 3, 1965, stands as a critical turning point in the history of U.S. immigration and civil rights. The passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 changed the strategic direction of U.S. immigration policy by allowing citizens and permanent residents to petition and to sponsor the following types of immigrants in order of preference: (a) unmarried children (of U.S. citizens) under 21 years of age; (b) spouses and unmarried children of permanent residents; (c) professionals, scientists, and artists “of exceptional ability”; (d) married children (of U.S. citizens) who were over 21 years of age and their spouses and children; (e) siblings (of U.S. citizens) and their spouses and children; (f) workers in occupations with labor shortages; and (g) political refugees. Against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement, the 1965 act may be deemed as a corrective measure to rectify the consequences of discrimination, particularly against non-Whites. Specifically, the act eliminated the national origins quota systems created by the National Origins System of 1924 and the McCarran–Walter Act of 1952. Both acts granted residency on the basis of national origin and were particularly discriminatory against immigrants of Asian and African origins. For example, under the McCarran– Walter Act, the quota was set at 149,667 for Europeans, 2,990 for Asian immigrants, and 1,400 for Africans. But most important, the 1965 act laid the foundation of family reunification and employment preferences to current U.S. immigration laws. Take, for instance, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and the Immigration Act of 1990. The former offers lenient amnesty to all illegal aliens and their families who have lived continuously in the United States since before January 1982. The latter, on the other hand, expands the 1965 act by increasing to 700,000 the total number of migrants via family reunification and desired professionals. It also appends a provision that granted U.S. citizenship and limited benefits to certain Filipino veterans of World War II who missed the opportunity to migrate during the 1940s. Indeed, the seminal impact of the 1965 act to Asian immigration in general cannot be underestimated. Naturally, Filipino migration to the United States also increased greatly in number. Today, the number of immigrant visas granted annually to Filipinos exceeds 35,000. Currently, the total population of Filipinos in the United States is more than 2 million, of which
more than 1 million are living in California. However, the number may be higher due to a large rate of illegal Filipino migrants who overstay or carry expired visas.
Sense of Place One of the most striking features of Filipino migration to the United States is its sense of place, that is, the ability of migrants to construct viable communities in the New World. For example, Filipino American enclaves in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are not only spatial settings but also localities that remind residents of the tastes, smells, looks, and sounds of the “old world.” The social and physical space is rendered by remembering as well as forgetting. The former represents the ability to “look back” to recover the past and provides the framework for nostalgia, which brings familiar faces and places together. The latter, on the other hand, represents the ability to “look forward” and frames Filipino American life chances in the New World. One first-generation Filipino American student asked, “Why are we more concerned about issues in the Philippines than we are with issues here?” It is a difficult question to answer, and yet it is important to remember that forgetting is a difficult endeavor for many immigrants. Undeniably, the colonial history between the United States and the Philippines and its attendant contradictions and ironies still haunt the Filipino American imagination. Beneath this interest is the undisputed fact that Americanization has intruded into Filipino lives and imposed a way of life that Filipino Americans believe they must contend with continually, trying to shed their skins as colonials, so to speak. Still, Filipinos move forward. As their saying goes, “One cannot look back when plowing the field.” In this sense, forgetting is to press on ahead with one’s life in the New World in search of beginnings as well as endings. For Filipino Americans, the sense of place is a dynamic demonstration of their ethnogenesis— how immigrants uniquely reconstruct materials drawn from the past and relocate them in the present. In many ways, to know the Filipino American identity is to find the source from which flows the expression of sense of place. To explain the truest expression of sense of place is to reveal much of the evolving Filipino American consciousness. The title of a poem by the Filipino poet Jose Garcia Villa succinctly captures the Filipino American experience.
Film, Latino
Alluding to himself in the United States, he wrote, “Have Come, am Here.” Efren N. Padilla See Appendix A See also Acculturation; Asian Americans; Assimilation; Diaspora; Hawai`i, Race in; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; McCarran–Walter Act of 1952; National Origins System; Pan-Asian Identity
Further Readings
Ceniza Choy, Catherine. 2000. Empire of Care. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Espina, Marina. 1988. Filipinos in Louisiana. New Orleans, LA: A. F. Laborde. Fiske, John. 1885. “Manifest Destiny.” Harpers 70:578–590. Hill, R. C. 1994. “Liminal Identity: Clinical Observation.” Journal of the American Association for Philippine Psychology 1(1):69–74. Kim, Hyung-chan and Cynthia C. Mejia. 1976. The Filipinos in America: 1989–1974. New York: Oceania. Strobel, Leny Mendoza. 2001. Coming Full Circle: The Process of Decolonization among Post-1965 Filipino Americans. Quezon City, Philippines: Giraffe Books. Vergara, Benito M. 1996. “Betrayal, Class Fantasies, and the Filipino Nation in Daly City.” Philippine Sociological Review 44(1–4):79–100. Villa, Jose Garcia. 1941. Have Come, am Here. New York: Viking.
FILM, LATINO As one of the most rapidly growing multicultural groups in the United States, Latinos/as are a prominent feature on the American cultural landscape. However, like many minority groups—but seemingly more so than others—Latinas/Latinos are underrepresented in the U.S. film industry. This entry looks at the portrayal of Latinos in U.S. films as well as movies produced by Latinos.
Context To provide a context for a discussion of Latino film, it is necessary to define Latino. The term Latino is a blanket term that generally refers to U.S. residents who have Latin American roots—as distinct from Latin Americans
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who reside in the various countries of Central and South America, including Mexico and the Caribbean. The term Latino is sometimes used interchangeably with the term Hispanic, which refers to individuals with Spanish language backgrounds. However, some object to the term Hispanic because it obscures or ignores those with origins in Latin America but who speak indigenous languages other than Spanish. The terms Latino and Chicano are sometimes used interchangeably as well. Because the term Latinos refers generically to people who represent an array of Latin American cultures, there are various names applied to various Latino groups, for example, Chicanos/as in reference to Mexican Americans. These various self-designations reflect attempts by people of Latin American descent to identify their unique cultures. With respect to Latino film, it is worthwhile to differentiate between films about Latinos (the etic or outsider’s view sociologically) and films by Latinos (the emic or insider’s view). As an underrepresented minority group, Latinos do not have a notable presence among U.S. films. Historically, there have been relatively few Latino films/videos about Latinos. Of four specific populations (African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos) to be identified in a 1976 multicultural enumeration of U.S. films, 57 films about Latinos constituted slightly more than 11% of the number of multicultural films produced in the United States. A 1992 videographic compilation listed nearly twice that number, although the titles listed included Latin American peoples and cultures other than Latinos specifically. Given that the Latino group comprised approximately 10% of the entire U.S. population in 1994, Latinos are not well represented proportionally in the film industry.
Film Portrayals of Latinos Much is made in the cinematographic press of the putative negative image of Latinos in film. Latinos are stereotypically portrayed as villains, gangsters, bandidos, and “greasers.” Latinas are typically depicted as either the passive objects or the “dark ladies”—either positively as being sexy and powerful or negatively as being oversexed and rowdy or gullible and passive. Latinas tend to play the roles of sex objects, illegal immigrants, or maids in motion pictures, which promote stereotypes. Latino film critics and reviewers themselves are obviously concerned about the negative portrayal of
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Latinos on the screen, as evidenced by titles such as “Hollywood Views the Mexican-American: From The Greaser’s Revenge to The Milagro Beanfield War,” “Why the Dearth of Latino Directors?,” “Cinematic Orphans: Mexican Immigrants in the United States since the 1950s,” “Contemporary Hollywood’s Negative Hispanic Image: An Interpretive Filmography, 1956–1993,” “Internal ‘Others’: Hollywood Narratives ‘about’ Mexican-Americans,” “‘Yo Soy Chicano’: The Turbulent and Heroic Life of Chicanas/os in Cinema and Television,” “Ethnic Stereotypes: Hispanics and Mexican Americans,” “Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, and Resistance,” and “Stereotyping and Resistance: A Crash Course on Hollywood’s Latino Imagery.” Chicano stereotypes became entrenched in the silent films era, and they have persisted. The “greaser”—a common image in Anglo-America since the early 1800s—was a violent character who roamed the southwestern United States. His inevitable defeat or redemption reaffirmed U.S. strength and virtue while legitimizing the dispossession of the Mexican and later the Chicano in the Southwest. It seems that the greaser genre results more from internal U.S. conflict over economic and political control than from the Mexican Revolution, its putative source. This image of the Latino/Chicano as “other” stems from a Hollywood myth that Latin America constitutes a monolithic entity, with no ethnic differentiation between and among the various Hispanic cultural groups. Although negative representation of Latinos persists in film, stereotypes have been ameliorated by several factors, including the world wars, Latin American protests, and alternative film production. The world wars closed European markets to American films and provided new villains. The United States also wanted Latin America as an ally during World War II. Latin American protests caused Hollywood to turn to Latin America to maintain its profit margins. Protests by Latinos in the United States and by Mexico and other Latin American countries have successfully objected to Hollywood stereotypes of Latino actors, although the protests of Hispanics in the United States went unheard until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. In addition, the emergence of the “social problem” film in the post-Depression era brought about changes in how Latinos/Chicanos were portrayed in film. Whereas during that era Anglos would often play the lead Chicano roles, or racial oppression would be
solved by White good Samaritans, at least the roles depicted Latinos/Chicanos in a favorable light. Exemplary, although relatively inaccessible, among the social problem films were Joseph Losey’s The Lawless (1950) and Herbert Biberman’s Salt of the Earth (1954). Also, the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and early 1970s combined with other civil rights groups to pressure Hollywood studios to train and hire more members of minorities. Even though many of the accommodations to minorities were token gestures, the result was that Chicano cinema gained experience and access to resources that were not there previously.
Films Made by Latinos Films by Latinos began to emerge during the late 1970s as a direct response to their marginal position in the film industry. Between 1967 and 1980, nearly 50 Chicano films were produced in the United States. Although they were mostly in English, approximately a quarter of these were bilingual—an indication of the mixed audience anticipated. Nonetheless, of eleven feature-length films shot in either 16mm, super-16, or 35mm during the two decades prior to the release of La Bamba (1987), none except Zoot Suit (1981) was picked up by major Hollywood distributors. The rest, like Chicano/Latino films more generally, have been relegated to the barrio and arthouse theater circuits as well as film festivals and college campuses. American Me, directed by Edward James Olmos, and My Family, directed by Gregory Nava, are films that demonstrate the confluence of historical and traditional conceptions of Chicanos, Chicanas, and the “families” of which they are part. Consequently, both films reflect pluralistic and negotiative methods of characterization and identification. By emulating the myth of the macho-based Chicano family, however, American Me exemplifies how contemporary Chicano film stereotypes disable pluralistic discourse. In contrast, My Family portrays the Chicano family as a symbol of unity within diversity and promotes cultural identification throughout America. In incorporating divergent cultural codes to depict the diversity of the Chicano community, ultimately both films exemplify how films and other media convey Chicano culture and address mass audiences using multicultural aesthetics. Although Chicano films have a rich history, this history or context has been presented selectively in
Film, Latino
the mainstream press. Characteristically, the context has minimized Chicano agency so as to portray an Anglo drama for the sake of exploiting a passive market. Such use of Chicano focus in film has rarely emphasized Chicano filmmakers or their professional organizations. Latino films depicting the Chicano/Latino experience that have become well known and well received in the mainstream market include La Bamba (1987), Born in East L.A. (1987), The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), and Stand and Deliver (1988). These prototypical barrio films have Latino characters played by Latinos (with the exception of Lou Diamond Phillips), but perhaps more important, they were also produced, written, and directed by Latinos. It is notable that reviewers of these films defined barrio differently; Anglo reviewers confined Chicanos to the barrio as a slum, whereas Hispanic reviewers identified the barrio as a community. The producers of these films, through this American “success” genre, evidently have attempted to redefine stereotyped ethnic spaces. Luis Valdez’s La Bamba is a depiction of the life of 1950s rock-and-roll star Richie Valens (played by Phillips), who died in a plane crash at 17 years of age. The film follows Valens from his days in Pacoima, California, where he and his family made a meager living working at plantations, to his rise as a star. The film also focuses on Richie’s friendship and rivalry with his older brother Bob and his relationship with Donna, his girlfriend. It is the story of Chicano organizing and struggle in the barrio in the context of job discrimination, poor education, new immigration laws, and a perceived societal insistence on English only. Another film with a Mexican American theme, Born in East L.A., tells of Latino life from the viewpoints of the filmmaker and the academic critic. Cheech Marin plays the protagonist, Rudy Robles, a Chicano who is caught up in an immigration raid on a factory. Deported to Mexico as an illegal immigrant, he has no way of proving that he is in fact an American citizen and is forced to rely on his cunning to sneak his way back home to the United States. Rudy is a third-generation Chicano who does not speak Spanish. He does not sympathize with illegal aliens, nor does he understand that U.S. society views him as more Mexican than American. The film lampoons the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (the Simpson–Rodino Bill) and California’s English-Only Initiative while alluding to former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “repatriation”
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program of the 1930s and former President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback” of the 1950s. Combined, these programs were responsible for deporting more than 3 million purported Mexicans, most of whom either were born in the United States or were legal immigrants. The English-Only Initiative refers to a 1967 bill signed by California Governor Ronald Reagan authorizing bilingual education and ending a ninety-five-year-old state mandate that all schools be taught in the English language. Born in East L.A. ends with Robles and several hundred Mexicans storming the Mexican–U.S. border and overwhelming the Border Patrol to the sound of Neil Diamond’s America. The Milagro Beanfield War, based on John Nichol’s 1974 novel, is about Milagro, a small town in the U.S. Southwest. Developer Ladd Devine plans to build a major new resort. Although activist Ruby Archuleta and lawyer/newspaper editor Charlie Bloom realize that this will result in the eventual displacement of the local Hispanic farmers, they cannot arouse much opposition because of the short-term opportunities offered by construction jobs. But when unemployed Chicano Joe Mondragon illegally diverts water to irrigate his beanfield, the local people support him because of their resentment of water use laws that favor the rich such as Devine. When the governor sends in ruthless trouble-shooter Kyril Montana to settle things quickly before the lucrative development is cancelled, a small war threatens to erupt. Of the Latino films, Stand and Deliver is arguably the best known to moviegoers. Stand and Deliver is based on the story of Jaime Escalante, a mathematics teacher at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, who transforms his inner-city school from a so-called typical barrio school of social misfits, gang members, and potential dropouts into an educational institution that is accepted—even admired—by the rest of the educational community in Los Angeles. Peter Doell See also Barrio; Bilingual Education; East Harlem; Familism; Feminism, Latina; Harlem; Hispanic Versus Latino; Machismo; Repatriation of Mexican Americans; Stereotypes; “Wetbacks” Further Readings
De la Mora, Sergio. 2006. “Forging a National and Popular Art Cinema in Mexico: Maria Candelaria.” San Diego
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Latino Film Festival. Retrieved November 27, 2007, from http://www.sdlatinofilm.com/trends5.html Fregosa, Rosa Linda. 1993. The Bronze Screen: Chicano and Chicana Film Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Noriega, Chon. 1990. “Chicano Cinema and the Horizon of Expectations: A Discursive Analysis of Recent Film Reviews in the Mainstream, Alternative, and Hispanic Press.” Working Paper Series, No. 30, Stanford University.
FINNISH AMERICANS As early as 1,000 years ago, some Finns most likely joined expeditions to explore the New World with Leif Ericson or with other Norwegian Vikings, but Finnish emigration to North America was strongest between 1864 and 1914, as Finns sought fortunes in the new world and built communities along the U.S.–Canadian border. Finland is a Scandinavian nation with a 2007 estimated population of 5.3 million. This entry looks at the history of Finns in the United States and describes the current community.
Barents Sea
Norwegian Sea White Sea Gulf of Bothnia
Sweden” colony at the mouth of the Delaware River in March 1638. Finns were among the first four European nationalities to settle permanently in the current United States, along with the English, the Dutch, and the Swedes. It is estimated that more than half of the approximately 1,000 settlers in the New Sweden colony between 1638 and 1655 were ethnic Finns. The early Finns’ contributions included slash-and-burn land clearance, a new way to build log cabins, and skills of living peacefully with Indians. John Morton, one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, was a descendant of the early Finns. Sailors from Finland were the pioneers of Finnish emigration across the world, and they sometimes decided to stay ashore in New York and other American ports. In 1855, at the time of the Crimean War, a number of Finnish ships sought refuge in American harbors. The California Gold Rush was going on at that time, and a few hundred adventurous Finns joined the gold rush and founded Finnish settlements on the Pacific. Finns also settled in Alaska working for the Russian government. In Sitka during the 1840s, there were approximately 500 Europeans. A third of these were Lutheran, mostly from Finland. The most successful sealskin trader was Captain Gustave Niebaum. He had left Helsinki as a young sailor. After making a fortune in Alaska, he settled in Napa Valley, California, and founded the Inglenook Winery. (The winery is now owned by Francis Ford Coppola, and wine is produced under the label of Niebaum–Coppola.)
Main Period of Immigration Finland
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Early History The documented Finnish presence in what would become the United States starts with the “New
During the latter part of the 1800s, Finland was almost completely an agrarian society. The land, however, could not support large families. Rumors reaching Finland described the United States as a land with an abundance of fertile land for cultivation. It was also portrayed as a land with many raw materials. What the United States lacked was an adequate workforce. During the 1870s, “America fever” spread through the west coast of Finland, Southern Ostrobothnia, and became a mass movement during the following decade. The wave was strongest in 1902, when more than 23,000 Finns applied for passports to immigrate to America. The movement continued until the outbreak of World War I. When the U.S. government began to restrict the admission of immigrants during the 1920s, Finnish emigration shifted to Canada and Australia. Between 1864 and 1914, well over 300,000
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Finns settled in the United States, and approximately 20,000 settled across the border in Canada. World War I interrupted the stream of immigration, but during the 1920s another 60.000 immigrated overseas. Approximately 90% of the immigrants ended up in the United States and 10% ended up in Canada. When the United States set restrictions during the 1920s, more people immigrated to Canada and, from there, often moved south to “the real promised land.” Motiives for Immigra atiion
The roots of immigration were in the meeting of two distinct cultures: the old world with many social conflicts and the New World with great promises. Of course, the new continent had its own social conflicts, but the ideology of Manifest Destiny, a movement that powered U.S. life and U.S. culture, had been set in motion. The new technologies had created transportation systems with trains and steamships that changed the concept of distance. Distance was no more an unsurpassed obstacle. The rumors of the riches in the United States were spread during the 1850s by sailors, and also newspapers published letters. From the 1870s onward, steamship and mining companies actively recruited people to immigrate. The adventurous ones—those who had already immigrated—sent letters to family members and friends. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of families received these letters, adding to the lure of the United States. They praised the U.S. society and the North American nature while putting down, sometimes in very strong terms, the Finnish society. The United States was described as a free country, unlike bureaucratic Europe. The system of inheritance in western Finland also increased immigration. According to the system, the oldest son inherited the house and the fields, thereby leaving nothing for the younger ones. Many of the younger siblings eagerly immigrated. Thus, a percentage of immigration was clearly for economic reasons. There was a saying, “To go to America is to slice gold with a knife.” This started with the gold fever of the 1860s, but soon many equated leaving for America with getting rich. Even though the recruitment of workforces from Europe by U.S. companies was prohibited during the 1880s, hundreds of Finns had received their invitations. The recruitment leaflets were distributed secretly, with recruiters and the leaflets coming via northern Norway and Sweden. Also, newspapers
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often published parts of the leaflets. The recruiters promised better pay and guaranteed employment. Even food in America was advertised to be cheaper. The Atlantic steamship companies were fighting for customers; thus, they encouraged recruitment. Agents in Sweden hired Finnish-speaking aides. When it became clear that the officials who had been almost hysterically afraid of emigration did not in any manner stop people from buying tickets, thousands of advertisements appeared in local newspapers. From 1886 onward, one could buy a ticket in Finland, not just in Sweden. Finnish Ameriican Settllementss
At the entrance ports, the newcomers needed to go through a medical checkup, and the sick were sent back to the home country. Most Finns who passed the examination continued to live near the Canadian border, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The most important Finnish states were Michigan and Minnesota, which resembled Finland in many ways. The car industry enticed Finns to Detroit, and harbor work enticed them to Duluth. Places were named with the home country in mind, and one can still find Oulu in Wisconsin and Savo in North Dakota. In Brooklyn, New York, a Finntown was established with approximately 10,000 Finns at the beginning of the 1920s. The only southern state that interested Finns was Florida, but the immigration there started after World War II and was mostly sought out by retirees. In Canada, Finns settled in Ontario and British Columbia. The Upper Peninsula is the only part of the United States where a plurality of residents describes their ancestry as Finnish. Plans to Retu urn
Most immigrants had planned to return to Finland in a few years with riches. However, only approximately every fourth or fifth person settled back in Finland permanently. Reasons for returning included both success and failure. Often, a farmer spent a few years in the United States. saved money, and returned home to buy a bigger farm. In other cases, health was destroyed in mines, and the returnees were sick and poor. However, many returning immigrants brought with them new know-how of technology and business ideas. The most unusual returning immigrants were the ones moving to the Soviet Union instead of returning to Finland. Their move took place during the 1920s
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and 1930s, and the estimated number is 5,000 to 12,000. Their move was ideological and political. The political leadership in the Soviet Union supported this movement because most of the migrants were skilled workers. At the beginning of the 1930s, the term Karelia fever was born. Many were eager to move to the “motherland of workers.” Many of these migrants became victims of Stalin’s cruel politics at the end of 1930s. Uto opia an Comm munities
Some immigrants experimented with farming and settlements of Utopian communes. The farms were often communal socialistic cooperatives that were against the church. They were places where some disillusioned miners escaped the harsh reality of poor working conditions. However, Finns who were used to working as miners proved to be poor farmers. They often chose areas of poor soil and tried farming as well as keeping cattle while also working as lumberjacks. The utopian experiments took place at a time of recession during the early 1930s. Also, the socialistic wage system caused problems and tension between members of the communes. The utopian communities were founded based on hopes and dreams and were led by charismatic leaders. One of the most famous of these was Matti Kurikka, whose name has stayed in history.
Modern Finnish Americans It is estimated that there are 700,000 Finnish Americans living in different parts of the United States. The largest community is around Lake Worth, Florida, with approximately 30,000 Finns or Finnish background inhabitants. Also, the traditional areas of Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin host many people with Finnish roots. Northern California has Finnish communities, especially in Fort Bragg and Berkeley, as do Oregon and Washington. Newcomers in the 21st century are usually highly educated professionals who may spend some time in the United States. Many U.S. universities host Finnish graduate students and visiting scholars who arrive with excellent language skills. Since 2003, Finns have been able to keep their Finnish citizenship while applying for a citizenship in another country due to the new dual citizenship law. Many have applied for U.S. citizenship or regained the Finnish citizenship they had given up previously.
The best-known Finnish Americans of the 20th and 21st centuries include several conductors directing major orchestras—Esa-Pekka Salonen (L.A. Philharmonic), Osmo Vänskä (Minnesota Orchestra), and Jukka-Pekka Saraste (Toronto Symphony Orchestra). Also, composer Charles Wuorinen has Finnish roots, as does the founder and lead guitarist of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna, Jorma Kaukonen. The entertainment world acknowledges film director and producer Renny Harlin; actors Pamela Anderson, Matt Damon, Christine Lahti, and Jessica Lange; and Maila Nurmi, creator of the 1950s “Vampira” character, as Finnish Americans. The famed architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen were Finnish Americans. A current world-known artist, Osmo Rauhala, resides in New York City. Probably the best known Finnish American writer is Jean M. Untinen-Auel.
Cultural Roots Modern-day Finnish Americans are often searching for their roots, and Finnish language and culture courses are offered in many locations. Concordia University runs a popular Salolampi language camp in Minnesota, and annual Finn-Fest celebrations in the United States and Canada offer cultural experiences. Finlandia University in Michigan continues higher education in a Finnish heritage setting. In addition, several large North American universities offer Finnish studies programs. These include the University of Toronto, Columbia University in New York City, the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Indiana University in Bloomington, the University of Washington in Seattle, the University of Oregon in Eugene, and the University of California in Berkeley. The suomi-koulu, or children’s Saturday school movement, continues to grow to educate children in Finnish language and culture, as do many summer camps with an emphasis on language and culture. The Finlandia Foundation, the American–Scandinavian Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation support research and cultural exchange projects. All areas with a sizable Finnish population have active local Finnish American organizations. Also, several Finnish American newspapers are published. These include Amerikan Uutiset, The Finnish American Reporter, Raivaaja—The Pioneer, New World Finn, and Vapaa Sana in Toronto. There are also regional radio—and even television—programs. Many chat
Foreign Students
rooms are the newest addition to Finnish American forums. There are still many churches with services in the Finnish language, and some also offer services in English. There is a saying, drawing on Marcus Hansen’s “third generation principle,” that among Finnish Americans the third generation wants to remember what the second one forgot. Thus, there is continuing interest in “the old country,” and Finnish Americans and their organizations are continually finding new ways to serve the different generations of Finns in the United States. Sirpa Tuormainen See Appendix A See also Danish Americans; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Swedish Americans; Symbolic Ethnicity; Third-Generation Principle
Further Readings
Engle, Eloise. 1977. The Finns in America. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications. Hoglund, A. William. 1960. Finnish Immigrants in America 1880–1920. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Hoobler, Dorothy, ed. 1969. The Finns in North America: A Social Symposium. Hancock: Michigan State University Press for Suomi College. Hoobler, Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler. 1997. The Scandinavian American Family Album. New York: Oxford University Press. Karni, Michael G., ed. 1981. Finnish Diaspora II: United States. Toronto, ON: Multicultural History Society of Ontario. Karni, Michael G., Olavi Koivukangas, and Edward W. Laine, eds. 1988. Finns in North America: Proceedings of Finn Forum III. Turku, Finland: Institute of Migration. Karni, Michael and Douglas Ollila, eds. 1977. For the Common Good: Finnish Immigrants and the Radical Response to Industrial America. Superior, WI: Työmies Society. Kero, Reino. 1974. Migration from Finland to North America in the years between the United States Civil War and the First World War. Turku, Finland: Institute of Migration. Loukinen, Michael M. 1979. “The Maintenance of Ethnic Culture in Finnish-American Rural Communities.” Finnish Americana 2:8–27. Loukinen. Michael M. 1992. “Continuity and Change among Third Generation Finnish Americans from a Small Rural Community.” Presented at “The Making of Finnish America” conference, University of Minnesota. Niitemaa, Vilho. 1976. “The Finns in the Great Migratory Movement from Europe to America 1865–1914.” In Old
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Friends—Strong Ties, edited by Vilho Niitemaa et al. Turku, Finland: Institute of Migration. Ross, Carl and Mariane Wargelin Brown, eds. 1986. Women Who Dared: The History of Finnish American Women. St. Paul, MN: Immigration History Research Center.
FOREIGN STUDENTS The United States has been a preferred destination for education and research for generations of foreign students and scholars, and this remains true today. However, as the international competition for foreign professionals, information technology workers, doctors and nurses, and university students steps up, there is some debate over whether the United States will maintain its leadership in attracting “the best and the brightest” regardless of their place of birth or location. Recognizing the fact that today’s foreign students are possible contributors to the U.S. knowledge-based economy as well as ambassadors of public diplomacy abroad, this entry presents the trends in enrollment of foreign students in U.S. higher education and describes some of the challenges and opportunities associated with recruitment of foreign students.
Trends in Enrollment of Foreign Students Foreign nationals have been coming to the United States to pursue their graduate and undergraduate degrees in science and medicine since the mid-1950s. As time went on, these students were joined by those interested in studying, researching, and obtaining practical training in computer and telecommunication sciences, business, education, law, social sciences, and the humanities. According to a recent report by the Institute of International Education, the total number of international students increased from 34,000 in 1954–1955 to nearly 565,000 in 2005–2006. The share of foreign students as a percentage of the total student population rose as well, from 1.4% of total U.S. student enrollment in 1954–1955 to 3.9% in 2005–2006. The overall enrollment of foreign students has been rising steadily for the past five decades. However, a break in the trend occurred in the 2002–2003 academic year (the year after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001), when the annual growth in new foreign enrollments slowed; a 3-year decline
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began in 2003–2004. The most recent enrollment figures show signs of recovery: The number of new foreign students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities increased from 132,000 in 2004–2005 to 143,000 in 2005–2006 or by 8.3%. As in the past, current students come from all over the world to pursue their education dreams in the United States. Yet just ten countries—India, China, South Korea, Japan, Canada, Taiwan, Mexico, Turkey, Germany, and Thailand—accounted for 60% of all foreign students enrolled in 2005–2006. On the global education market, although the United States receives the largest absolute number of foreign students, its share dropped from 25.3% of all foreign students studying abroad in 2000 to 21.6% in 2004. At the same time, the share increased for other countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and France. For example, the share of foreign students in New Zealand rose from 0.4% in 2000 to 2.4% in 2004. This increase is significant given the size of New Zealand in comparison with the United States.
Foreign Students: Opportunities and Challenges Foreign students and scholars make a number of important contributions to American social and economic life. They enrich the cultural diversity and educational experience for U.S.-born students and enhance the reputation of American universities as world-class learning and research institutions. Foreign students make the United States one of the most profitable educational destinations. For example, according to NAFSA (Association of International Educators), foreign students and their dependents contributed more than $13 billion to the U.S. economy in 2005. High-level government officials recognize international students and exchange visitors for their role in public diplomacy and promotion of American values abroad. Foreign students who return and become key figures in their home countries are likely to become U.S. allies on foreign policy and national security issues. They are also recognized for their significant contributions to the innovation and economic competitiveness of U.S. business and research; many view them as desirable future U.S. workers and immigrants. Although successful recruitment of foreign students undoubtedly brings important educational, economic, and political advantages, the admission of foreign students has also been at the heart of two long-standing debates. One concerns competition between foreign
and U.S.-born students for limited educational resources as well as postgraduate opportunities. Some researchers warn that the increasing admission of science and engineering foreign graduate students has a negative impact on U.S.-born students, particularly African Americans and Hispanics, who are likely to face unfavorable competition when being considered for admission and for educational funding resources such as scholarships and grants. Others maintain that foreign graduates of U.S. doctoral programs have adverse impacts on the earnings of their native-born male counterparts in the labor market. However, other researchers argue that the exclusive focus on the correlation between increasing foreign student enrollments and a lack of opportunities for domestic students disregards many other factors. These include smaller birth cohorts of American men eligible to pursue graduate studies, alternative career opportunities, and perceptions of attractiveness of science and engineering careers in comparison with those in law, medicine, and business. Thus, a recent National Academies report recommended focusing closely on the “pull factors”—time required to obtain the degree, availability of fellowships and research or teaching assistantships, and prospects of attractive employment opportunities—in the increased efforts to promote the interest of domestic students in S&E fields. The other heated debate focuses on the negative short- and long-term impacts of increasing mobility of skilled foreigners (including foreign students) on the economic and social development of their countries of origin. Some researchers maintain that when foreign students choose not to return to their home countries after graduation, or when young and well-educated persons emigrate thanks to intensive recruitment by developed countries, it leads to a permanent “brain drain” or loss of human capital. Available estimates suggest that approximately 10% of adults with some university education born in the developing world currently live in the developed world. This share is even greater in some countries and regions. For example, a recent World Bank paper reported that skilled emigration seems to be especially high in Central America, the Pacific Region, and Western and Middle Africa. The risks of brain drain are real; poor and underdeveloped countries are at a particular disadvantage because the large-scale loss of highly educated persons is associated with lower economic growth rates, higher fiscal burdens on the remaining population, shortage of workers in key public sectors, and increasing international inequality. However, some countries, such as
Foreign Students
India, China, Taiwan, and Ireland, have adopted policies to maximize benefits from the experience and capital accumulated by their long-term emigrants by offering incentives for them to return. These include creating business and investment opportunities, allowing emigrants to possess dual citizenship, and providing tax incentives. At the same time, these countries’ governments have attempted to formalize their relationships with immigrant and diasporic networks to establish ties between scientific and business communities at home and abroad. There is evidence of the success of such policies in stimulating return migration and bolstering trade, business, and research networks in addition to the high flow of remittances sent home by migrant workers. This success led to a change in discourse on emigration of the highly skilled—from viewing brain drain as an always negative zero-sum game to viewing it as a complex multifaceted phenomenon that produces differential impacts.
Recent Issues Two recent developments that took place at the international level concerning foreign students are worthy of mention: (1) the intensified international competition for foreign students and scholars and (2) substantial efforts on the part of China and India to keep their students at home. The post-9/11 confusion in visa policies in the United States coincided with the aggressive recruitment efforts by Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, among others, seizing an opportunity to expand their share of the international education market. These countries use a combination of U.S.-style programs taught in English, free or subsidized tuitions for foreign students, and eased routes for permanent immigration after graduation in efforts to attract foreign students. Similarly, non-Western countries such as Singapore, Qatar, and Malaysia use creative recruiting programs to become important regional players in international education and to use foreign students as generators of income revenue. For example, Singapore offers incentives and subsidiaries for well-known universities such as MIT and Johns Hopkins to establish campuses in the country. These trends in the area of international education suggest that many countries not only learned from the success of the United States with its foreign student programs but also made substantial strides further, thereby moving the United States from a
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position of the only player to a position of one of many players. China and India, traditional sources of foreign students studying in the Western countries, currently commit significant resources to boost their own innovation and educational capacities. These investments are certainly timely efforts to meet the educational needs of these countries’ quickly growing populations and aid in their economic development. China increased its state funding for higher education from $4 billion in 1998 to more than $10 billion in 2003 and experienced nearly a fivefold increase in the number of undergraduate and graduate students. India has made substantial investments into its own higher education by pulling resources from public and private (domestic and international) sources. Attractive opportunities in the domestic educational system and the promise of well-paid jobs and high socioeconomic status in the countries’ emerging economies are great incentives for bright young Chinese and Indian nationals to stay home. Recognizing that today’s international students and scholars are the entrepreneurs and workers of tomorrow, U.S. universities, academics, and employers intend to keep the topic of foreign students fresh in the minds of the public and U.S. policymakers. The message is as follows: To maintain its leadership in technological and scientific innovation, the United States’s main goal should be to attract the best students and workers regardless of their national origin. Given the importance of skilled and talented workers for social and economic development of both developed and developing countries, the recruitment of foreign students is likely to stay on the policy agenda of many countries in years to come. Jeanne Batalova See also Brain Drain; Globalization; Higher Education; Immigration, Economic Impact of; Immigration, U.S.
Further Readings
Bean, Frank D. and Susan K. Brown. 2005. “A Canary in the Mineshaft? International Graduate Enrollments in Science and Engineering in the United States.” Presented at Leadership Forum on International Graduate Students in Science and Engineering and International Scientists and Engineers, Irvine, CA. Borjas, George J. 2005. The Labor Market Impact of High-Skill Immigration. National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved November 27, 2007, from http://www .nber.org/papers/w11217
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Institute of International Education. 2006. Open Doors 2006: Report on International Educational Exchange. Available from http://opendoors.iienetwork.org NAFSA. 2006. Restoring U.S. Competitiveness for International Students and Scholars. Retrieved November 27, 2007, from http://www.nafsa.org/_/ Document/_/restoring_u.s.pdf National Academies. 2005. Rising above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. Available from http://www.nap.edu/ catalog/11463.html Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2006. Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators 2006. Paris, France: OECD.
FRANCE The concepts of race and ethnicity as understood in the United States do not have exact equivalents in France. Whereas U.S. sociologists tend to view race as a social construction based on select biological features and tend to view ethnicity as a cultural identity connected to national origin, the very concept of race in France carries connotations linking it to colonialism, racial oppression, and genocide; therefore, it is treated with suspicion and avoided by journalists, scholars, and the
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state alike. Nevertheless, the experiences of successive waves of immigrants from other European countries, as well as from France’s colonies, and the discrimination and inequality they have suffered underscore the existence of racial/ethnic communities in France, a nation with a 2007 estimated population of 61.7 million people. This entry reviews the shifting social, legal, and cultural statuses of immigrant, ethnic, and racial groups in modern France.
Official Policy The structures and attitudes concerning contemporary racial/ethnic minorities in France were forged during the French Revolution of 1789. The Abbé Gregoire, a prominent revolutionary era parliamentary tribune, authored a bill passed into law by the national assembly that granted political equality to French Jews. Slavery in French colonies was abolished in 1794 (only to be reestablished under Napoleon before being definitively abolished in 1848). Yet at the same time, the affirmation and very existence of racial/ethnic communities and identities was viewed as incompatible with the revolution’s social and political ideology. The revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity for all citizens were seen as irreconcilable with any allegiances to social groupings such as ethnic, racial, and religious communities. This tradition, along with the use of racial categories as justification for colonization of non-Europeans, a history of racial/ethnic discrimination, and their nearly exclusive use by contemporary far right wing ideologues, has had a profound effect on government policy and antiracist thought and practice—a situation often referred to as “antiracism without races.” In 1972, a law was passed outlawing discrimination and racist acts in both the public and private domains. Heavy fines and jail sentences could be imposed to punish violators. The Gayssot Law of 1990 increased the number of acts that are considered racist crimes and stiffened the penalties established in the 1972 law. However, French antiracist legislation has not been designed to bring about racial equality or to compensate members of racial groups for past discrimination. This approach has had an effect on research on race and ethnicity. Government bodies do not gather statistics for racial/ethnic groups. Information on immigration is gathered, but people who immigrate are no longer counted separately once they or their children become citizens, thereby disappearing from official existence.
France
Public discourse in France on issues of cultural groupings centers on questions of integration, a term roughly equivalent to the notion of assimilation as understood in the United States. But whereas in the United States multiculturalism has arisen to challenge assimilation as the goal of public policy toward minorities, debate in France continues to center on how to integrate communities in the national fabric or, as the far right xenophobic National Front (FN) argues, whether some communities can be integrated at all.
Early Immigration In general, immigrants to France before 1945 have had experiences that are quite different from the experiences of those who came after 1945. Small numbers of East Asians from French colonies came to France during the 19th and 20th centuries, but the largest minorities were immigrants from elsewhere in Europe, including many East European Jews. Immigra ant Work kerss Fro om Euro ope
During the first few decades of the 20th century, successive waves of immigrant workers, mostly from European countries such as Poland, Spain, Italy, and Portugal, were rapidly assimilated into French society and culture. For these immigrants and their offspring, the phenomenon of the “third-generation interest principle”—by which the grandchildren of immigrants to the United States search to learn about, affirm, and identify with their ethnic origins—is largely absent. Last names associated with these European countries of emigration bear no negative stigma, and organizations found in the United States, such as the Sons of Italy and the Sons of Norway, have no more than an ephemeral existence in France. The Jewish Com mmu unity y
France’s Jewish population of 600,000 consists of both the Ashkenazi descendants of East and Central European Jews and Sephardic Jews from North Africa and elsewhere in the Arab world. French Jews enjoy religious freedom and, as elsewhere, are orthodox, conservative, and reform minded as well as nonreligious. Since the revolutionary era, French Jews have experienced both widespread anti-Semitism and successful integration into many areas of French cultural, social, and political life. The latter has been reflected
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in the large numbers of French people of Jewish origin who have attained public success in the arts and politics. French politicians of Jewish heritage have played leadership roles on both the left and right for more than 150 years, among them prime ministers such as Leon Blum in 1936, Pierre Mendes-France during the late 1940s, and Laurent Fabius during the 1980s. Artists and intellectuals of Jewish origin, such as Marcel Proust, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Serge Gainsbourg, made important contributions to their fields. On the other hand, French Jews have experienced prejudice and discrimination. Since the late 19th century, anti-Semitism has been part of the programs of most far right political groups in France. The prosecution of a Jewish artillery captain, Alfred Dreyfus, on fabricated charges of treason during the 1890s revealed and stimulated widespread anti-Semitism in French society. The Vichy government, established during the German occupation after June 1940, actively collaborated with the Nazi occupiers in rounding up French Jews for deportation to concentration camps. Inspired by the Nazi Nuremberg laws of 1933, Vichy stripped Jews of their French citizenship and militias associated with the government murdered French Jews and confiscated their property. During recent years, Jewish cemeteries—including some founded more than 1,000 years ago—have been desecrated. As elsewhere, revisionist historians in France have denied the Holocaust. After initially hesitating, France’s socialist parties vigorously defended Dreyfus. Since then, opposition to racism and anti-Semitism has been part of the programs of left wing political parties in France that mobilize their supporters against racist and anti-Semitic violence. Organizations such as the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA), the Movement for Friendship between Peoples (MRAP), and (more recently) SOS Racism have enjoyed mass support in their efforts to eradicate racial/ethnic hatred in France.
Postwar and Recent Immigration During the closing years of the 20th century, immigrants from India, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and other countries not colonized by France began to arrive. However, the largest group of minorities during the postwar period has been immigrants from former French colonies, especially Algeria, who came to France mostly after 1945. They have had very different
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experiences from those of the European immigrants who preceded them. Immigrants from these countries and their children face widespread discrimination in employment, housing, and the criminal justice system. Unemployment rates among French youth of North and sub-Saharan African descent are three to five times higher in some immigrant districts than the national norm. Riots by young men of North African and sub-Saharan African descent throughout France’s poor isolated suburbs in November 2005 highlighted the social problems faced by these communities such as unemployment, police brutality, and the de facto residential segregation they experience. During recent years, tensions have developed between France’s Jewish and North African Muslim communities. Young North Africans have been implicated in attacks against Jewish schools and synagogues. These are often explained in France as reflections of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. However, they also reflect deeper and more complicated cleavages connected to class differences and levels of integration within France. Although antiracist organizations defend immigrants and racial minorities from discrimination and violence, they tend not to campaign for the protection of their cultural heritage. Recent conflicts over the wearing of the veil by female Muslim students in public schools underscore this situation. Many who oppose discrimination against immigrant and minority communities have also opposed the wearing of the veil on the grounds that it is a question of separation of church and state, not a question of ethnic or cultural rights. Social scientists tend to view the discrimination and inequality faced by these communities as largely a reflection of patterns of domination and subordination between France and its former colonies. On the other hand, the FN blames social problems such as violent crime and unemployment on immigrants. Along with other conservative groups, the FN cites the religious and cultural differences of the Muslim communities as the main impediment to their integration into French culture, which is at once secular and Christian. The youth whose families have migrated from former colonies appear to be far less interested in assimilation than do their elders and have developed distinct cultural patterns. During the 1980s, mass antiracist groups such as SOS Racism organized national marches and demonstrations demanding equality for immigrants and their children. These
movements stimulated ethnic identities and cultural production such as a French language version of U.S. rap created by young North African musicians during recent years. Such developments recall the experience of the “negritude” movement of the 1920s launched by intellectuals from French colonies in Africa. Since the 1970s, members of various regions have begun to demand public recognition and support for their cultural identities. There have been attempts to revive and preserve linguistic heritages in Brittany in the west and in Occitania in the south. These developments suggest that at the beginning of the 21st century France may be witnessing the development of distinct racial/ethnic communities broadly similar to those present in the United States. As of 2006, however, there is little evidence that, outside of these communities themselves, the notion of a multicultural society has taken root in either the popular imagination, the programs of political parties, or official French policies. Nevertheless, some government policies began to indirectly recognize and address the social problems faced by these communities. These include special economic programs established to aid the poor suburban residential areas heavily populated by immigrant and minority groups. Keith Andrew Mann See Appendix A See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Colonialism; Haitian Americans; Holocaust; Islamophobia; Multicultural Social Movements; Muslims in Europe; Veil
Further Readings
Chapman, Herrick and Laura L. Frader, eds. 2004. Race in France: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Difference. New York: Berghahn. Peabody, Sue and Tyler Stovall, eds. 2003. Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
FRATERNITIES AND SORORITIES The terms fraternity and sorority stem from the Latin words frater and soror, meaning “brother” and “sister,” respectively. They may be used to describe any number of social and charitable organizations such as the Lions Club, Rotary International, and the
Fraternities and Sororities
Shriners. However, in common parlance, these words usually denote social organizations for college and university students. This entry looks at the history of such groups in the United States, most of them campus organizations, and how race and ethnicity play a role in their membership and activities.
Overview With few exceptions, the names of North American fraternities and sororities consist of two or three Greek letters. For this reason, fraternities and sororities are known collectively as the Greek system and its members are known as Greeks. There are various types of Greek organizations: general (sometimes called social), service, professional, and honorary. The most recognizable form is the college general or social Greek organization. Usually, such an organization’s chapter is mostly, if not entirely, White. The earliest of these fraternities were dedicated to the principles of sound learning, leadership qualities, and scholastic achievement, although since then many have become almost entirely socially based with only a marginal emphasis on community service and educational achievement. Fraternities have long been associated with the U.S. educational system, and many of their members have gone on to become successful in the various realms of U.S. society. Notably, Delta Kappa Epsilon, founded at Yale University in 1844, counts six members who went on to become president of the United States as well as numerous other prominent political and business figures among its members. College fraternities and sororities are often organized along racial lines. Although racial and religious restrictions have long since been abolished in all North American Interfraternity Conference (NIC) and National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) organizations, their memberships nationally remain predominantly White. The next largest Greek system, the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC), is predominantly African American. The most diverse among all Greek organizations are the NPHC fraternities, which are occasionally referred to as Black Greek letter organizations (BGLOs). Members include a wide array of African Americans from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds as well as a growing non-Black presence that is largely inclusive of Latino members as well as Asian and White members. There are also many other race-based forms of fraternities and sororities, not all of which are campus organizations, that
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have arisen to serve the interests of communities whose numbers in the traditional Greek system are historically small and dispersed.
Traditionally White Fraternities and Sororities The first U.S. fraternity was Phi Beta Kappa, founded on December 5, 1776, at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. It was founded as an academic honor society with the mission of “fostering and recognizing excellence” in the undergraduate liberal arts and sciences. The Chi Phi fraternity was founded in 1824 at Princeton University; however, this original group went inactive the following year and the modern organization of that name was not established until the 1850s. As a result, the first general fraternity is considered to be the Kappa Alpha Society, established on November 26, 1825, at Union College in Schenectady, New York. The word sorority was first used for Gamma Phi Beta, an international sorority founded in November 1874 at Syracuse University. However, Alpha Delta Pi was actually the first organization to fit the sorority model as a secret sisterhood founded in 1851 at Wesleyan College. Until the early 1900s, when BGLOs began to appear, U.S. colleges and universities had a rather homogeneous student population—White, (mostly) male, and Christian. Greek organizations simply mirrored the student body. But just before the end of the 19th century, racial and religious restriction issues were voiced as non-Whites began to gain access to formerly all-White institutions of higher learning. Therefore, some White Greek organizations incorporated specific racial exclusionary policies into their constitutions to retain both tradition and restrictive systems of social relations. Sociologist Alfred M. Lee wrote in Fraternities without Brotherhood that the chief defect in the Greek system was “Aryanism,” or the acceptance of White, U.S., Christian men and the rejection of persons for membership on grounds of race, religion, and/or national origin. As such, Lee believed that Aryanism with the Greek system represented a basic threat to democracy. Today, there are hundreds of predominantly White Greek organizations organized under two umbrella organizations. First, the NIC (formerly known as the National Interfraternity Conference) is an association of collegiate men’s fraternities that was formally
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organized in 1910, although it began on November 27, 1909. The power of the organization rests in a House of Delegates where each member fraternity is represented by a single delegate. However, the group’s executive and administrative powers are vested in an elected board of directors consisting of nine volunteers from various NIC fraternities. The NIC is based in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is composed of 64 men’s social fraternities, and as of 2006 the NIC had sixty-eight member organizations with 5,500 chapters located on 800 campuses in the United States and Canada with approximately 350,000 active undergraduate members. Second, the NPC, founded in 1902, is the umbrella organization for twenty-six (inter)national women’s sororities. Members are represented on more than 620 college and university campuses in the United States and Canada and in more than 4,600 alumni associations, making up more than 3.6 million sorority women in the world. Although some of these organizations have responded to changes in the racial milieu of the United States in a post–civil rights era, many of them still retain their original demographics as largely White, elite Christian organizations.
Black Greek Letter Organizations BGLOs arose out of a history of colonization, segregation, and subjugation, and such groups have generally been linked with civil rights activism and an agenda of fostering collective racial consciousness. Part of this consciousness was shaped by the crossmembership in civil rights organizations, secret societies, and benevolent organizations formed by people of African descent living in the United States. The first BGLO founded was Alpha Kappa Nu in 1903 at Indiana University in Bloomington. Alpha Kappa Nu is also recognized as being the first intercollegiate Black fraternity. Alpha Kappa Nu was formed to “strengthen the Negro voice” at the university and in the city. No one recalls who founded the organization or exactly when. Alpha Kappa Nu lasted several years before being disbanded due to lack of continued membership. Walter Kimbrough, the noted scholar and author of Black Greek 101: The Culture, Customs, and Challenges of Black Fraternities and Sororities, noted how Alpha Kappa Nu paved the way for similar organizations for years to come. Sigma Pi Phi, founded on May 15, 1904, in Philadelphia, makes the claim of being the oldest surviving Black fraternity. It was founded as a
Sorority members. Female students are shown singing at a meeting of the African American sorority Delta Sigma Theta on the University of Kansas campus (1939). Predominantly Black (as well as Asian and Latino) fraternities and sororities grew out of the limited or nonexistent opportunities that nonwhite college students had to join existing Greek letter organizations. Source: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.
professional noncollegiate organization that would provide a vehicle for men of standing and like tastes to come together to know the best of one another. The founders included two doctors, a dentist, and a physician: Henry McKee Minton, Algernon B. Jackson, Edwin C. Howard, and Richard J. Warrick. When Sigma Pi Phi was founded, no Black college fraternities existed and Black professionals were not offered participation in the professional and cultural associations organized by the White community. Sigma Pi Phi has more than 5,000 members and 112 chapters throughout the United States and the West Indies. Today, BGLOs are recognized as the nine member organizations of the NPHC, the umbrella governing body founded on May 10, 1930, at Howard University. The nine members of the NPHC are also known as the “Divine Nine.” Those member organizations are Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity (1906), Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority (1908), Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity (1911), Omega Psi Phi fraternity (1911), Delta Sigma Theta sorority (1913), Phi Beta Sigma fraternity (1914), Zeta Phi Beta sorority (1920), Sigma Gamma Rho sorority (1922), and Iota Phi Theta fraternity (1963). These Greek fraternities have played a significant role in fostering the integration of many African
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Americans into the larger society. BGLOs have an estimated 800,000 active members who promote scholarship and service throughout the world. According to C. W. McKee in “Understanding the Diversity of the Greek World,” the nine member organizations of the NPHC are among the oldest Black campus organizations on most predominantly White campuses and are possibly the strongest nationwide social institutions in all of Black America. Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. was established on December 4, 1904, on the campus of Cornell University in the midst of racial divide by seven founders: Henry Arthur Callis, Charles Henry Chapman, Eugene Kinckle Jones, George Biddle Kelley, Nathaniel Allison Murray, Robert Harold Ogle, and Vertner Woodson Tandy. Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc. was founded on January 5, 1911, by Elder Watson Diggs, John Milton Lee, Byron K. Armstrong, Guy Levis Grant, Ezra D. Alexander, Henry T. Asher, Marcus P. Blakemore, Paul W. Caine, Edward G. Irvin, and George Edmonds on the soil of Indiana University in Bloomington. Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc. was founded on November 9, 1911, at Howard University by Ernest E. Just, Edgar A. Love, Oscar J. Cooper, and Frank Coleman. Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc. was also founded at Howard University just a few short years later on January 14, 1914, by A. Langston Taylor, Leonard F. Morse, and Charles I. Brown. The newest fraternity to join the NPHC (in 1997) was Iota Phi Theta Fraternity Inc., founded on September 19, 1963, at Morgan State University by Alfred Hicks, Lonnie Spruill, Jr., Charles Briscoe, Frank Coakley, John Slade, Barron Willis, Webster Lewis, Charles Brown, Louis Hudnell, Charles Gregory, Elias Dorsey, Jr., and Michael Williams.
Other Minority Organizations Asia an Gre eek Organizatio ons
Asian Greek organizations came into existence during the time when many of the BGLOs were being founded. In 1916, Rho Psi, the first Asian fraternity, was founded at Cornell University by Chih Ping, L. N. Lau, Y. C. Yang, K. C. Lay, and C. K. Cheng. Rho Psi went national in 1925 with the establishment of the Beta chapter in New York City and went international in 1929 with a chapter in Shanghai, China. Rho Psi existed on the Cornell University campus until 1931. In 1976, the Rho Psi fraternity became the “Rho Psi society” with the inclusion of female members. In its current form, Rho Psi draws its membership
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primarily from professionals and is not currently represented on a collegiate level. The objectives of the society are to promote and perpetuate friendship among members, to develop congeniality and brotherhood in the fraternal life, and to cultivate the spirit of cooperation and self-sacrifice. Latiino Gree ek Org ganizatio ons
Established in 1998, the National Association of Latino Fraternity Organizations (NALFO) is composed of fifteen Latina sororities and ten Latino fraternities. The purpose of NALFO (and their member organizations) is to promote and foster positive interfraternal relations, communication, and development of all Latino Greek letter organizations through mutual respect, leadership, honesty, professionalism, and education on college and university campuses. Multiccultu ura al Gre eek Organizzatiions
Established in 1998, the National Multicultural Greek Council (NMGC) is a council of twelve multicultural Greek letter organizations. Based largely on religious, socioeconomic, and racial diversity, the member organizations of the NMGC are growing slowly. The purpose of the NMGC is to provide a forum for college and university students that allows the free exchange of ideas, programs, and services among its constituent fraternities and sororities; to promote the awareness of multicultural diversity within collegiate institutions, their surrounding communities, and the greater community-at-large; and to support and promote the works of its member organizations.
The Future of Fraternities and Sororities Although law prohibits de jure membership exclusion based on race in U.S. college fraternities and sororities, racial separation prevails de facto through custom, tradition, and preference in a Greek system composed of racially homogeneous groups. Yet there is also an increasing crossing of the color line as many Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians seek membership in organizations not of their own racial groups. Matthew W. Hughey See also Higher Education; Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue; Pipeline
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Further Readings
Hughey, Matthew W. Forthcoming. “‘I Did It for the Brotherhood’: Non-Black Members in Historically Black Greek Lettered Organizations.” In Our Fight Has Just Begun: The Relevance of Black Fraternities and Sororities in the 21st Century, edited by G. S. Parks. Hughey, Matthew W. Forthcoming. “Rushing the Wall, Crossing the Sands: Cross-Racial Membership in American College Fraternities and Sororities.” In Diversity within College Fraternities and Sororities, edited by C. Torbenson and G. S. Parks. McKee, C. W. 1987. “Understanding the Diversity of the Greek World.” Pp. 21–35 in Fraternities and Sororities on the Contemporary College Campus, edited by R. B. Winston, Jr., W. B. Nettles, III, and J. H. Opper, Jr. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. “1904–2004: The Boule at 100—Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity Holds Centennial Celebration.” 2004. Ebony, September. Sims, Charles. 2002. “Tribute: A Brief History of Black Collegiate Fraternities and Sororities.” The Spokesman, February 10. Available from http://www .msuspokesman.com Skocpol, Theda, Ariane Liazos, and Marshall Ganz. 2006. What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
FRAZIER, E. FRANKLIN (1894–1962)
academic career in predominantly African American institutions of higher learning. Frazier had a brief tenure as a professor of sociology at Fisk University (1931–1934) and then went on to head the Department of Sociology at Howard University between 1934 and his death in 1962. In 1948, Frazier became the thirty-eighth president of the American Sociological Society (now the American Sociological Association), marking the first time that a person of traceable African American descent was chosen as the head of a national professional association in the United States. From 1951 through 1953, Frazier served as chief of the Division of Applied Sciences of the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He and an international team of scholars helped to formulate the organization’s statement declaring that race was a “myth” and promulgating the “ethic of universal brotherhood.” A specialist on the African American family and race relations, Frazier was the author of eight books, several of which were critically acclaimed, and more than 100 book chapters and journal articles. His reputation rests primarily on his contributions to the study of the African American family, especially his classical work, The Negro Family in the United States, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1939.
The African American Family E. Franklin Frazier was one of the leading sociologists and cultural critics of his day as well as one of the most acclaimed. The first African American to receive a doctorate from the University of Chicago’s Department of Sociology, Frazier replaced mythology about African American families with a wealth of scholarship, particularly related to the impact of slavery and other social conditions. Indeed, he was one of the most distinguished authorities in sociology of any race or ethnicity. This entry summarizes his major accomplishments and describes his writings on the family in more detail.
Overview of Career Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in September 1894 at the beginning of the “Age of Segregation,” Frazier received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1931 and was the first person of discernible African American ancestry to do so. Nevertheless, Frazier spent the vast majority of his
By documenting the harsh and brutal conditions under which many African Americans lived, Frazier in essence discredited the pervasive myth among White Americans that African Americans were by nature morally inferior and replaced it with a historical and socioeconomic analysis that stressed the oppressiveness of those same conditions under which most African Americans lived. In his writings on the African American family, Frazier employed the liberal environmentalist argument not only to account for the deviation of many families from the normative type of behavior but also to account for the conformity of a small number of Black families. He called attention to three experiences—slavery, emancipation, and urbanization—that had a major impact on Black family behavior. By focusing on the experiences of Blacks in the United States, Frazier made a significant departure from older studies of the African American family. Authors of those older works had insisted that racial
Frazier, E. Franklin (1894–1962)
and/or cultural traits of the Black family had been acquired in Africa. Frazier, after surveying contemporary anthropological examinations of sexual behavior among so-called “primitive” peoples by Bronslaw Malinowski (in 1927) and Robert Briffault (in 1927) and an older study by Mary H. Kingsley (in 1897), found no scientific basis for the idea that the sexual behavior of such people was not subject to social control through customs and tradition. The argument that what were seen as the deviant sexual morals of Blacks were a product of their African heritage also rested on the assumption that African customs and traditions were brought by the slaves to the United States and were perpetuated over time. However, Frazier insisted that because varied and diverse African tribes were mixed together and their cultures were assimilated, most of them had lost their memories of Africa. The Impact of Slavery
For Frazier, any explanation of the current family behavior of Blacks in the United States necessarily began with a discussion of the impact of slavery on Black family life. In the earlier scholarship that dealt with the Black family, two diametrically opposed points of view had emerged in reference to the influence of slavery on the family morals of Blacks. One point of view, which had been articulated by Willis D. Weatherford as late as 1924, suggested that slavery had elevated the family morals of Blacks. The other point of view, expressed by W. E. B. Du Bois in 1908, suggested that the purported “low” moral standards of the Black family were a result of slavery. Frazier argued that both of those points of view implied that slavery was a monolithic institution and, hence, ignored the different types of treatment accorded to Blacks under the varying conditions of the slavery regime. Frazier conceded that the numerous cases of the separation of Black families and concubinage supported Du Bois’s position. He pointed out, however, that those practices were, for the most part, confined to a particular group of Whites and that they occurred in a peculiar environment. On largescale plantations, slaveowners tended to ignore slaves’ family ties and slaves’ sexual behavior was not subject to control. Where slavery was a social institution as well as an industrial institution, however, slaveowners tended to encourage their slaves to conform to conventional standards of family behavior. As a result, the patriarchal family organization emerged within the slave regime among a small number of
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Blacks composed mainly of house servants and town slaves. Although he took care to note the varying treatments accorded to slave families, Frazier nevertheless concluded that, in general, the slave family was in a precarious position because of the economic forces inherent in the institutions of slavery. Frazier argued in 1939 that economic forces most frequently undermined the ties between the father and his family. The ties between the mother and her children, however, were not as vulnerable. Frazier in short identified two types of family patterns that emerged within the slave regime. The family pattern that developed among the great majority of slaves in response to the unstable conditions inherent within the institution of slavery was matriarchal in organization. The family pattern that developed among the small group of slaves who lived under more favorable conditions was patriarchal. The Impact of Ema ancip patio on
In 1937, Frazier also gave attention to family patterns that developed among two groups of Blacks outside the institution of slavery. Of the persons who composed the free Black group before emancipation, many were of mixed blood, including people who had inherited wealth from their White ancestors, had social contracts with Whites, and had succeeded in gaining educations. In general, their families tended to be stable. A fourth type of family pattern developed among a group of Blacks of White and Indian ancestry who lived in communities that were isolated from the currents that affect the lives of the great majority of Blacks. Their families were “sternly patriarchal.” After the emancipation, the two types of Black families that had emerged under the slave regime exhibited two distinct tendencies. In those few families where the patriarchal tradition was established, that family organization survived the transition from slavery to freedom. The fathers in those families provided the bulk, if not all, of their families’ income and often obtained their own land. On the other hand, in those families where the father’s position was marginal during slavery, as was the case in the vast majority of Black families, the ties between men and women “broke easily.” Thus, by the end of the Reconstruction, the maternal family structure was the dominant family pattern for the great mass of Blacks who were sharecroppers and tenants of the plantations
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of the South. On those relatively isolated plantations, African American folk culture emerged. Thus, despite the fact that illegitimacy was widespread among those Blacks in which the family organization was matriarchal, Frazier believed that it was generally an innocuous affair. The Impact of Urban nizattion n
When a large portion of Black population began to migrate to urban areas after 1900, Frazier noted in 1937, the accommodations these migrants made to their new environment were determined largely by the family behavior that had developed as part of their culture. The vast majority of migrants were poor persons from the rural southern plantations, families that were held together solely by the ties of sympathy and habit between mother and child(ren) where the father’s interest was based only on affectional ties. On the basis of statistical data obtained from the census, social service agencies, and the police and courts, as well as case histories obtained from social workers, Frazier argued that the majority of those African American migrants became disorganized in the urban environment. Furthermore, children from those families often became delinquents, and illegitimacy, which had been a “harmless” affair in the rural areas, became a serious economic and social problem in the cities. Frazier thought the patterns of behavior that the rural folk culture modeled were not adequate to sustain Blacks when they moved to the severely competitive urban areas. On the other hand, those Black family patterns that approximated those of the White middle class generally succeeded in resisting the destructive forces of urban life. Their families tended to remain stable, and some of their children entered the middle class. In light of these findings, Frazier was committed to the argument that middle-class culture was a more valuable resource than rural folk culture for African Americans living in urban environments during times of economic plight. Many recent scholars generally view Frazier’s work as reactionary—due primarily to the rise of feminism and cultural relativism. Nevertheless, his views still carry weight in public policy discussions. Vernon J. Williams, Jr. See also African Americans; Black Bourgeoisie; Emancipation Proclamation; Familism; Race; Racism; Slavery
Further Readings
Blackwell, James E. and Morris Janowitz, eds. 1974. Black Sociologists. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Edwards, G. Franklin, ed. 1968. E. Franklin Frazier on Race Relations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Frazier, E. Franklin. 1932. The Free Negro Family. Nashville, TN: Fisk. Frazier, E. Franklin. 1932. The Negro Family in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Frazier, E. Franklin. 1939. The Negro Family in the United States. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Meier, August and Elliott Rudwick, eds. 1970. The Black Sociologists. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Williams, Vernon, Jr. 1989. From a Caste to a Minority. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
FRENCH AMERICANS French Americans include the 13 million U.S. citizens descended from French immigrants to North America from the 17th century to the present. This entry reviews the history of French immigration to the United States and the current status of French Americans.
A Variety of Immigration Streams U.S. citizens of French descent are descended from several streams of immigration to North America and display varying degrees of ethnic identity. Some are the descendants of colonists who arrived during the 16th and 17th centuries in what are today eastern Canada and the upper Midwest. Another stream consisted of highly skilled and prosperous Protestants called Huguenots, who left France to flee religious persecution. This stream of immigrants went directly to the British colonies that later became the United States and rapidly assimilated into the English-speaking White Protestant majority. Approximately a third of all U.S. presidents have had some French Huguenot ancestry. During the 16th century, French explorers and missionaries traveled to North America, in areas that later became part of Canada and the U.S. upper Midwest, seeking to participate in the fur trade and to convert natives to Christianity. Jacques Cartier claimed large territories around the St. Lawrence River for France, and subsequent explorers staked out areas in the Great Lakes region and the Mississippi valley. But unlike the British, who actively colonized North America with large numbers of British settlers, the French
French Americans
government limited efforts to build significant colonies in what they called “New France” to Quebec and Acadia (present-day New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island) in eastern Canada. During colonial times, a series of wars was fought in North America between England and France, with both sides enlisting natives as allies. These resulted in British victories and the marginalization of French influence. In 1755, British authorities expelled thousands of French speakers from Acadia in what the Acadians called “le grand Dérangement.” Many died along the route, but others established communities along the Atlantic Coast, particularly in Massachusetts and Maryland. Another 3,000 to 4,000 built communities in Louisiana, which at that time was controlled by France. The Francophone community in Louisiana was later augmented by White and mixed-race French speakers who emigrated from Santo Domingo (Haiti) following the revolution there in 1804. That same year, Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States. The Louisiana Frenchspeaking community became known as Cajun, a corruption of the word Acadian. Between 1840 and 1930, approximately 900,000 French Canadians migrated to the United States, mostly to New England but also to the upper Midwest. Many had been impoverished farmers working the small farms of rural Quebec. In New England, many found work in the region’s abundant textile factories. Only modest numbers of people left France during the great period of European migration of the 19th and 20th centuries. Many who did come to the United States during this period went to the West Coast. A group came to California around 1848 during the gold rush. More came after the defeat of France in the Franco–Prussian war of 1870, particularly from the two eastern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which were annexed by Germany. A third group of migrants from the Alps and the Basque region resembled other European immigrants of the period from 1881 to 1924 in that they were impoverished peasants looking for improved economic opportunities. Since World War I, French migration to the United States has been light but steady. Since the 1980s, approximately 2,500 French people have migrated annually to the United States, mostly to California.
The French Community The descendants of French immigrants, especially those of Protestant background, rapidly assimilated into the dominant White majority without suffering
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the discrimination that groups such as the Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Greek communities initially experienced. This rapid assimilation resulted in fewer cultural manifestations of ethnic identity from a linguistic and culinary standpoint than are found among other European and non-European ethnic groups. There are few French American equivalents to voluntary organizations such as the Sons of Norway, and there are no organizations fighting discrimination against French Americans such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Italian American Defamation League. Most U.S. citizens of French origin display little interest in or knowledge of their French ancestry. For those who do, the concept of ephemeral “symbolic ethnicity” seems to best describe any noticeable French ethnic identification. Exceptions to this pattern of rapid and early assimilation include the Cajuns of Louisiana and recent immigrants to the United States. The twentytwo south Louisiana parishes known as Acadiana (not including the city of New Orleans) have been the home of a vibrant Cajun culture made up of 500,000 to 700,000 people. During recent years, Cajun cuisine and music have become known both nationally and internationally. However, World War II and economic and cultural developments since then have had an assimilating effect on Cajun culture. On the eve of the war, 63% of Cajuns spoke Cajun French as their first language. That figure declined to 30% by 1990. During the 1960s, Cajun cultural activists began a campaign to revive and preserve Cajun culture. Federal programs such as the Bilingual Educational Act and French immersion schools provided public support for efforts to preserve the French language. Many recent migrants and their French- and U.S.born children live on the West Coast. The children of French immigrants who have come to the United States during recent decades have experienced high rates of out-marriage to non-French partners. Recent migrants from France tend to be middle class and professional. A recent study has found that nearly twothirds of French immigrants and first-generation French Americans living on the West Coast are college educated (as opposed to 29% of the total U.S. population and 31% of the U.S. White population). First-generation French immigrants to the United States do not seem to cling too tightly to French cuisine in the home. French holidays, especially Bastille Day, are celebrated alongside U.S. holidays such as Thanksgiving.
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French Americans participate less in civic organizations, both French and non-French, than do other groups. Likewise, recent French immigrants to the United States and their offspring have low patterns of coethnic ties in informal and friendship and acquaintance networks. Recent migrants from France to the West Coast and their children do, however, have high rates of visits to their homeland. There is a strong propensity among them to give French or bilingual names, as opposed to U.S. names, to their children. Recent West Coast migrants from France are eager to transmit the French language to their children, and 74% report speaking to them in French at home at least occasionally, but they also report difficulty in obtaining satisfactory long-term results in terms of fluency. Retention and transmission of the French language are, however, facilitated by its popularity in high school and college curricula and by the efforts of French cultural organizations such as the Alliance Française. Keith Andrew Mann See Appendix A See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Canadian Americans; Creole; Europe; France; Immigration, U.S.; Intermarriage
Further Readings
Bernard, Shane. 2003. The Cajuns: Americanization of a People. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Lindenfeld, Jacqueline. 2000. The French in the United States. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
FUBU COMPANY FUBU is an acronym that translates to “For Us, By Us.” The acronym has also been said to stand for “Five Urban Brothers United.” FUBU was one of the first lines of fashion wear geared toward the hip hop generation, and it was the first to market itself widely as a fashion brand designed for African Americans and by African Americans, hence the phrase “For Us, By Us.” This entry describes the creation and growth of the company. FUBU was created in 1992 in Queens, New York, by African American entrepreneur Daymond John. He initiated the enterprise when he began making hats to sell locally and at concerts and neighborhood festivals. John enlisted the help of childhood friends
J. Alexander Martin, Carl Brown, and Keith Perrin to produce “tie-top hats,” snug-fitting hats with two flaps at the top that were tied into a knot. The FUBU founders inserted their logo on the hats and sold them for $20. The end result was that they discovered that making the hats themselves and selling them below market price yielded a significant profit. The hats and the FUBU brand name became known nationally when the FUBU founders convinced another friend from Queens, rapper LL Cool J, to wear a FUBU shirt and hat that prominently displayed the FUBU logo—a logo that contained merely the letters of the brand. LL Cool J became the company’s official spokesperson, bringing national visibility to the FUBU brand name by wearing FUBU attire in commercials and videos. LL Cool J was a significant figure in bringing hip hop fashion to the attention of the larger public. He was one of many rap and hip hop musicians who helped to define an entire style of clothing marked by its loose oversized fit, prominent accessorizing, and brand name emphasis. LL Cool J’s promotion of the FUBU brand drew the attention of the Korean company Samsung. Samsung offered FUBU a distribution deal that helped the organization to grow into a $5 million-plus business in just one year. FUBU continued to increase its profits and popularity, becoming successful both nationally and internationally; the label is carried in more than 5,000 retail stores in 26 countries. The success of the company has reached beyond its initial target consumers, African American and urban youth, by becoming popular within the suburbs and with mainstream fashion conglomerates. In 1996, FUBU became the only Black-owned designer to have its own display window in Macy’s flagship store in New York City. In 2001, FUBU was ranked number two among New York’s largest minority-owned companies. FUBU has become a multimillion-dollar empire, expanding its clothing line into sportswear, formal wear, and entertainment. In addition to its financial success, FUBU also participates in the economic development of urban communities. The FUBU Foundation was established in 1999 to represent and facilitate FUBU’s desire to remain connected with urban communities and to provide economic support for the education of urban youth. FUBU has served local communities nationwide by hosting food drives and book scholarships in addition to making donations to a variety of local and national funds.
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The FUBU Foundation reflects the philosophy of the company’s founders and the larger philosophy of hip hop culture, which emphasizes interrelatedness and political and cultural progress. FUBU’s New York roots also connect the company explicitly with the hip hop culture’s tradition of resistance, which began with urban youth’s forceful and critical response to what they saw as their social, political, and economic marginalization and oppression. Their resistance is manifested by an insistence on defining their own distinctive style of music, dance, art, and fashion. Hip hop culture seeks to create alternative expressive modes by redefining the parameters of acceptability and by pushing the prescribed boundaries of mainstream Western culture. Alonzo Westbrook, in Hip Hop Dictionary: The Dictionary of Hip Hop Terminology, described hip hop as “a culture that thrives on creativity and nostalgia.” That description fits FUBU’s philosophy of designing fashion that is rooted in African American and urban culture’s creative and dynamic culture of resistance while also referring back to past legacies of urban fashion and culture. One example is FUBU’s “Fat Albert” line of clothing and accessories, which is a tribute to the popular cartoon character created by African American actor and comedian Bill Cosby. This kind of reflective nostalgia parallels the “sampling” practices common in the hip hop music tradition and has further assisted FUBU in gaining the support of the hip hop community. In turn, FUBU has contributed greatly to defining the style and culture of hip hop. FUBU’s ties to hip hop culture have also enabled the company to have a tremendous economic and cultural impact on the fashion industry.
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FUBU’s motto, “For Us, By Us,” is ultimately a statement of economic determination and cultural resistance. FUBU has defined its terms of existence by gaining access to dominant economic structures and appropriating those structures to make the desire for alternative creative and social visions and avenues of inclusion transparent. Consequently, FUBU has succeeded in its insistence that fashion, among other aspects of culture, can be “For Us, By Us.” Kim D. Hester-Williams See also African Americans; Black Bourgeoisie; Black Enterprise; Black Nationalism; Hip-Hop; Rap, the Genre
Further Readings
African-American.com. 2006. Hip-Hop Fashion Designer Daymond John, Founder and CEO of Clothing Label FUBU. Retrieved November 27, 2007, from http://www .african-american.com/black-history-month-john.html Chang, Jeff. 2005. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation. New York: St. Martin’s. CNN.com. 2006. FUBU: True to the Streets. Retrieved November 27, 2007, from http://money.cnn.com/1999/05/ 26/fortune/fortune_fubu FUBU. 2006. FUBU: Enter Our World. Retrieved from http://www.aboutus.org/Fubu.com Rose, Tricia. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover, MA: Wesleyan University Press. Westbrook, Alonzo. 2002. Hip Hop Dictionary: The Dictionary of Hip Hop Terminology. New York: Random House.
G independent nations preexisting the United States and its Constitution, is the primary legal and political foundation of federal Indian law and policy and, thus, Indian gaming. Native American tribes have a special status outside as well as within the American federal system, that is, under federal law defined and circumscribed by the historical development of the legal and political doctrine of tribal sovereignty. In essence, the modern legal doctrine means that the United States recognizes tribes as independent sovereign nations, and their location within the boundaries of a state does not subject them to the application of state law, yet they are subject to Congress’s asserted plenary power and bound by the trust relationship between the federal government and tribes. Tribes, therefore, have a unique semi-sovereign status under federal law and, accordingly, may be regulated by Congress. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a few tribes, notably in California and Florida, opened high-stakes bingo palaces as a means of raising revenue when faced with the Reagan administration’s policy of encouraging tribal self-sufficiency and economic development while cutting funding to Indian programs. The strategies available to tribes were limited: Reservation economies had been depressed for a century, in part because of the location and nature of the lands assigned to the tribes by the federal government. Bingo was an attractive option to tribal governments because startup costs were relatively low, bingo enterprises had a minimal impact on the environment, and the game had potential for high returns on the tribes’ investment. Bingo was legal in California and Florida, as it was in many states at the time, but state law stringently regulated the game through both civil and criminal penalties. Because federal Indian law generally
GAMING, NATIVE AMERICAN Gambling is a part of traditional culture for many North American tribes. Historically, tribes used games as a means of redistributing wealth and circulating possessions within a community. By the late 20th century, there was little wealth to redistribute because the nation’s reservations were places of extraordinary poverty. As a result of the federal government’s early Indian policies of removal and diminishment of tribal lands, as well as the subsequent development of federal Indian law, tribes had few means of economic development available to them on their reservations. Between one- and two-thirds of reservation Indians lived below the poverty level, and unemployment rates topped 80% in some areas. To survive, tribes have been forced, against the odds, to pursue some form of economic development. Indian gaming—that is, gaming conducted on tribal lands by federally recognized tribes—is the most successful reservation economic development strategy in more than a century and is perhaps the most controversial as well. This entry reviews the history of Indian gaming, the laws that attempt to regulate it, and related issues of business and politics.
Beginning With Bingo Indian gaming is fundamentally different from most forms of gambling, from church bingo nights to the commercial casinos lining the Las Vegas Strip, because it is conducted by tribal governments as an exercise of their sovereign rights. Tribal sovereignty, a historically rooted doctrine recognizing tribes’ inherent rights as 519
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precluded state regulation of tribes, tribal bingo operations frequently did not comply with state gambling laws. As their sole source of government revenue, two tribes—the Cabazon and Morongo Bands of Mission Indians—operated high-stakes bingo halls and a card club on their reservations in Riverside County, California. California law permitted charitable bingo games but restricted the amount of jackpots and the use of gaming profits. The tribes challenged the state’s enforcement of its regulations on the tribes’ reservations, and the case culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1987 decision in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians.
A Crucial Ruling The Cabazon court explained that if California’s gambling laws were criminal prohibitions against gambling, the state could enforce them against the tribes under Public Law 280, a federal law that gave California criminal jurisdiction over reservation lands. If, on the other hand, California’s gambling laws were civil regulatory laws, the state did not have authority to enforce them against the tribes.
Relying on this “criminal/prohibitory–civil/regulatory” distinction, the Supreme Court examined the state’s public policy concerning gambling, noting that California operated a state lottery and permitted pari-mutuel horse race betting, bingo, and card games. The Court concluded that California regulated, rather than prohibited, gambling in general and bingo in particular. Accordingly, because the games did not violate state public policy, Public Law 280 did not grant California authority to regulate the tribes’ gaming operations. As the Supreme Court considered Cabazon, states and tribes lobbied Congress to pass legislation governing Indian gaming. States wanted Congress to authorize state regulation of tribal gaming operations, citing the states’ interest in preventing the infiltration of organized crime into Indian gaming. Tribes opposed state regulation and lobbied for exclusive tribal regulation. The tribes’ position was grounded in preservation of tribal sovereignty generally as well as in protection of Indian gaming as an economic development strategy for tribal governments. In the end, Congress reached a compromise through the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), enacted on October 17, 1988.
Gamblers in Native American casino. This photo shows gamblers playing on some of the more than 6,000 slot machines at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut (November 20, 2002). American Indian gaming is subject to a unique and complex federal regulatory system involving layers of federal, state, and tribal regulations. The casino is owned and operated by the Mohegan tribe, which is a sovereign, federally recognized Indian nation. The Mohegan tribe was jointly ruled by the neighboring Pequot tribe until 1637 and was one of the last remaining tribes in southern New England during colonial times. Source: Getty Images.
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A New Regulatory System Indian gaming is subject to a unique and complex federal regulatory scheme involving layers of federal, state, and tribal regulations. Through IGRA, Congress established an independent federal regulatory agency, the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC); delegated regulatory power to the states; and set the terms for tribal regulation of gaming. One of IGRA’s key innovations was to categorize types of gambling and to assign regulatory authority accordingly. Traditional tribal games of chance, or “Class I” games, were left to exclusive tribal jurisdiction. With nearly a decade of tribal experience and relatively few problems, bingo and other “Class II” games would continue to be regulated by the tribes with some federal oversight. Casino-style gambling, however, was seen as potentially a greater regulatory problem than was bingo. To balance competing state and tribal interests in casino gambling, Congress conceived of “tribal–state compacts” in which a state and a tribe would negotiate the regulatory structure for casino-style, or “Class III,” gaming on the tribe’s reservation. During the nearly two decades since Congress enacted IGRA, states and tribes alike have challenged the statute’s constitutionality and have litigated its murkier provisions. The NIGC and the federal Secretary of the Interior have promulgated extensive and detailed regulations. Accordingly, the law of Indian gaming has grown only more complex since IGRA’s passage. Law is not the only force at play given that Indian gaming has been shaped as much by politics. IGRA necessitates and governs tribal, state, federal, and even local intergovernmental relations. As a practical matter, therefore, IGRA created the terms under which the politics of Indian gaming have played out. Indeed, following the Supreme Court’s 1996 invalidation of one of the IGRA’s enforcement mechanisms, Indian gaming policy has evolved through political compromise as much as through litigation and law reform. Throughout the United States, states and tribes have struggled to balance their respective interests in Indian gaming, sometimes working as partners pursuing shared policy goals and other times locking horns in political and legal battles. Tribal–state compact negotiations have expanded to include topics such as relinquishment of tribal treaty rights and revenuesharing agreements. Whether such provisions are included fairly under IGRA often is overshadowed by the necessity of political compromise. States have been successful in demanding concessions from tribes and, in some cases, in thwarting tribes’ efforts to start
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or expand gaming enterprises, whereas tribes have wielded increasing political clout through state and local elections and voter initiatives based largely on making the case for the economic benefits of Indian gaming to non-Native communities.
A Source of Revenue Indian gaming has become big business. Generating nearly $23 billion in revenue in 2005, tribal gaming accounts for approximately a quarter of the gambling industry nationwide, and it continues to grow. Across the United States, thirty states are home to more than 400 tribal gaming operations. Not all tribes conduct gaming, of course, and not all tribal casinos are successful financial ventures. Indian gaming encompasses a wide range of reservation casinos, from modest and marginally profitable rural bingo halls to hugely lucrative Las Vegas–style casino–resort complexes near major metropolitan areas. For every tribal gaming facility that earns more than $100 million annually, there are three that generate less than a tenth of that amount, often just enough revenue to keep the casino open and fund a handful of essential public services for tribal members. This diversity complicates the administration of tribal gaming. The growth of Indian gaming is only part of the ever-expanding legalized gambling industry. Today, Americans can place bets on dog and horse races in forty-three states, buy lottery tickets in forty states, gamble for charity in forty-seven states, and play at commercial casinos in eleven states. All but two states, Utah and Hawai‘i, permit some form of gaming. As states, tribes, and the federal government struggle with regulating a booming industry within the complicated context of tribal sovereignty, Indian gaming raises substantial questions of law and public policy that might not have easy, one-size-fits-all answers. As the industry grows and changes, one conclusion is clear: Indian gaming, perhaps more so than any other legal or political issue facing tribes in the past half-century, is a subject of ever-increasing public policy debate. Kathryn R. L. Rand See also Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988; Native Americans; Reservation System
Further Readings
California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, 480 U.S. 202 (1987).
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Light, Steven Andrew and Kathryn R. L. Rand. 2005. Indian Gaming and Tribal Sovereignty: The Casino Compromise. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Mason, W. Dale. 2000. Indian Gaming: Tribal Sovereignty and American Politics. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Pasquaretta, Paul. 2003. Gambling and Survival in Native North America. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Rand, Kathryn R. L. and Steven Andrew Light. 2006. Indian Gaming Law and Policy. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Wilkins, David E. 2006. American Indian Politics and the American Political System. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
preteens to the thirties. Members generally participate in gangs at four different levels varying from least to most involvement: behavioral emulation, apprenticeship, regular, and hard-core membership. Gangs participate in criminal acts such as the distribution of illegal drugs, home invasion, acts of physical violence, car theft, and extortion. Street gangs position members within territories in such a way as to maximize the distribution of illegal goods and services as well as to monitor authorities. Members communicate verbally as well as by use of hand signals about police and other authorities who might be present.
Gang Identification
GANGS A gang is a small group of individuals who bond together for a common purpose, primarily criminal activity. Gangs provide protection for members, a sense of identity, and (most typically) access to the informal illegal underground economy. This entry describes the types of gangs and the nature of gang identification, membership, and recruitment. It also examines structural and individual factors that lead to gang membership, including the impact of immigration and international conflict on gang activity within the United States.
Types of Gangs Popular culture currently represents gangs as a phenomenon particular to racial/ethnic minorities; however, gangs are not restricted to particular racial or ethnic groups. Gangs vary from outlaw criminal biker gangs, such as the Hell’s Angels, Pagans, and Bandidos, to skinhead, youth, prison, ethnic, neighborhood, street, and even occult gangs. Historically the term gang was used most frequently to describe a variety of small, loosely organized criminal groups. Currently, the term is frequently used to refer to street gangs who claim neighborhood territories in primarily low-income sections of large cities. Street gangs are different from organized crime because they usually lack strong ties to economic and political social institutions. A street gang’s primary asset is the territory it claims in the form of a series of neighborhood blocks known as its “hood.” Street gangs usually involve youth ranging in age from
Gangs identify themselves primarily through the use of colors, clothing styles, hand symbols, tattoos, and graffiti. All of these symbols are used to communicate to others about gang membership or affiliation, gang conflict, and territory. These identifiers can change over time as clothing styles and colors are adopted by mainstream society. Examples of gang symbols that have been absorbed into mainstream culture include the wearing of bandanas—primarily blue and red—as well as the flipping of hats in various directions. Hand symbols and graffiti are commonly used by gangs to communicate conflicts with rival gangs or specific members within those gangs and have not been absorbed by mainstream culture. For example, “wallbanging,” the use of graffiti by gang members to represent affiliation, involves marking over the names of members of rival gangs to communicate that those members are targets. Hand symbols originated from prison gang communications during the 1950s when incarcerated gang members used sign language to communicate between cells. Symbols are an intricate component of modern street gang communication and normally communicate both affiliation and members’ ranks.
Gang Membership Street gangs actively recruit members during school hours and along the main streets that students travel before and after school. In areas where a variety of gangs are operating, the pressure to join a gang is extreme because being nonaffiliated can put an individual in jeopardy. Gang activity pressures youth by creating a general environment of victimization such that individuals join to deter threats of extortion, robbery,
Gangs
and physical violence. Official membership usually occurs after what is known as a “jumping in” ritual that involves the violent beating of a new member. This act secures gang loyalty and provides evidence to the gang that the new member is “tough enough” to endure lifetime membership. The gang mentality facilitates violence and self-mutilation such as branding and cutting skin. Some gangs practice such rituals to show how tough they are, whereas others cite cultural values for mutilation. For example, Southeast Asian gangs believe that one must endure pain to properly repent for sins, and members mutilate themselves in search of atonement for criminal activity and as self-punishment for shaming their families. Members rise up in gang rank, which loosely mimics military hierarchy, by means of committing criminal acts and serving prison time. The more severe the acts or greater the length of incarceration, the more status an individual gains within the gang. Gangs engage in warfare with other gangs over territory and personal disputes. Violence escalates throughout large urban areas consisting of multiple neighborhoods. Gang warfare has the potential to terrorize local populations and result in the deaths of not only gang rivals and participants but also innocent bystanders. As the parents of gang members move to other neighborhoods in hopes of disassociating their children from violence and gang activity, this relocation actually contributes to an outgrowth of gang activity. Some nationally recognized gangs include the Crips and Bloods (primarily African American memberships), the Mexican Mafia and Latin Kings (primarily Mexican and Puerto Rican memberships, respectively), the Nazi Low Riders (a White power gang), and the Born to Kill and Tiny Rascal gangs (primarily Vietnamese and Cambodian memberships, respectively).
Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Identity The majority of gang members are African American or Latino. These groups constitute 79% of gang membership (35% and 44%, respectively). Whites and Asians constitute 20% of American gang membership (14% and 5%, respectively). However, the picture is more complex than it appears. Gangs are composed of members from the neighborhoods they represent and, as such, are similar in racial/ethnic makeup to those neighborhoods. This is not especially evident to outsiders, who tend to perceive
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gangs as homogeneous. Gangs not only represent the people of a neighborhood, they also shape and are shaped by individuals constructing racial/ethnic identities. As populations of racial/ethnic minorities grow and ethnic enclaves establish themselves as distinct from one another, gangs split and form separate identities. For example Southeast Asian gangs consisting of primarily Vietnamese members but also including Hmong, Laotian, and Cambodian members have separated into gangs that reflect their distinctly different identities, cultural heritages, and immigration experiences. This is especially true for Latinos who migrated from a host of South American countries and who bitterly oppose merging identities. Gangs bolster security for marginalized ethnic and racial groups struggling to deal with threats from rival groups, social inequalities, Americanization, and social institutions that fail to meet basic needs. Gangs provide a strong sense of racial/ethnic identity for members and insolate them from societal messages that minimize their status and seek to marginalize them on the basis of their heritage. Although gangs are overwhelmingly masculine in makeup, a new trend that has emerged over the past 20 years is the increase of independent female gangs that consist of members previously affiliated with male gangs. The largest growing female gangs are among Latinas but also include African Americans and, to a small extent, Whites and Asians.
Explanations for Gang Activity Gang activity occurs for a variety of reasons, including structural and individual factors such as social inequalities, financial opportunities, identity and status, peer pressure, family dysfunction, protection, personality traits, social disorganization, and acculturation stress. Scholars who focus on individual circumstances contend that a complex combination of personal attributes, including risk-taking behavior and lack of impulse control, are associated with or cause gang activity. It is believed that these personality traits make individuals prime candidates for gang initiation. Research focusing on agents of socialization such as families and peers reveals that new members’ immediate surroundings influence them heavily. According to some criminological theories, criminal acts are thought to be learned behaviors that are reinforced through social interactions. For example, children who associate with delinquent youth or who
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come from families whose members are in gangs are especially at risk for initiation. In addition, other perspectives assert that significant others who teach positive definitions of gang behavior, such as “killing is okay because it is either you or them,” influence the decision making of others by removing moral barriers. Structural inequalities create pockets in urban areas where residents are underserved with respect to employment opportunities, police protection, educational attainment, and residential mobility. Extreme disparities in the distribution of wealth and income result in unsanitary living conditions for primarily minority urban populations. Many new gang members perceive gangs as a means by which to gain access to financial opportunities not available through legitimate opportunity structures. The criminal justice system, particularly prison, influences gang formation because the hostile environment creates a need for protection. For example, the Mexican Mafia was founded in the California prison system during the 1960s as a response to racism and abuse by prison guards and threats from White gangs, such as the Blue Birds, whose members controlled illegal goods and services behind bars. In addition, the Bloods and Crips formed as a response to physical threats from Whites in close proximity to African American neighborhoods. Immigration to the United States from countries that are experiencing cultural, social, economic, and political upheavals creates additional stressors to the acculturation process. Policies regulating immigration and deportation have unintended consequences that result in increased gang activity. It is common that immigrants fleeing these circumstances have been traumatized and victimized before and during their journey to the United States. After the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished national origin quotas, immigration increased dramatically. Those fleeing unstable countries such as Vietnam and other groups from the Southeast Asian peninsula experienced increased acculturation stress as well as social disorganization and isolation. Groups fleeing extreme turmoil, such as those from war-torn countries, make up the most violent and criminally active street gangs. Usually suffering from the psychological trauma of war, as well as from victimization experienced during passage to the United States, recent immigrants are experienced in guerrilla warfare. Their ability to evade police and their success in fighting rival gangs enables them to grow quickly. For example, the Vietnamese Born to Kill (BTK) and El
Salvadorian Mara Salvatrucha (MS 13) gangs are considered among the most dangerous street gangs in the United States. In the case of MS 13, deportation has actually spread the gang to El Salvador, where recruitment begins in immigration detention centers and prisons and carries over to the United States on reentry. Immigration policies that regulated the Vietnamese after the Vietnam War, such as the Vietnamese Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987, created assimilation camps that resulted in the breakdown of cultural and familial relationships, placing youth at high risk for joining street gangs. Scott Mathers See also Crime and Race; Deviance and Crime; Drug Use; Ethnic Group; Immigrant Communities; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Informal Economy; Pachucos/Pachucas; Social Inequality; Underclass; Victimization
Further Readings
Chin, Ko-Lin. 1996. Chinatown Gangs: Extortion, Enterprise, and Ethnicity. New York: Oxford University Press. Grenan, Sean, Margie T. Britz, Jeffery Rush, and Thomas Barker. 2000. Gangs: An International Approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hagedorn, John M. 1994. “Neighborhoods, Markets, and Gang Drug Organization.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 31:264–294. Long, Patrick Du Phuoc. 1996. The Dream Shattered: Vietnamese Gangs in America. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Montero, Darrell. 1979. “Vietnamese Refugees in America: Toward a Theory of Spontaneous International Migration.” International Migration Review 13:624–648. Thrasher, F. M. 1927. The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Whyte, William Foote. 1943. Street Corner Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
GAUTREAUX DECISION The Gautreaux decision was a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court consent decree that followed a judicial finding of illegal racial discrimination and segregation in public housing in the city of Chicago. This court order was the result of a suit filed in 1966 by Dorothy Gautreaux
Gautrreau ux Decision
against the Chicago Housing Authority and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) claiming that they had intentionally selected locations for public housing in poor, racially segregated neighborhoods—the first suit alleging racial discrimination in public housing. In Hills v. Gautreaux, the Supreme Court ruled that a remedy extending beyond the city limits of Chicago was permissible because HUD had violated the Constitution and federal laws. This case is important sociologically because, in effect, it resulted in a quasi-social experiment that demonstrated the benefits of moving from an innercity environment marked by racial segregation and concentrated poverty to suburban locations where employment opportunities and educational quality are significantly better. The court order required that African Americans in Chicago public housing be offered opportunities to live in private apartments with housing subsidies. Between 1976 and 1998, approximately 7,000 households relocated as a result of the Gautreaux decision. Some of the beneficiaries of this court order moved to private apartments in the city of Chicago, whereas others moved to private apartments in the suburbs. The opportunity to move to the suburbs was part of a desegregation remedy that provided rent subsidies to African American families moving to areas within the six-county Chicago metropolitan area that were less than 30% African American. The experiences of these households were studied by James E. Rosenbaum and his colleagues at Northwestern University. These researchers found that, in general, those who moved to the suburban locations fared better in terms of both employment and education. Because the households who relocated elsewhere in the city and those who relocated to the suburbs were otherwise similar in most regards—both groups were public housing residents with similarly low levels of income and education— the differences in outcomes between those who relocated elsewhere in the city and those who moved to the suburbs can be attributed primarily to where they moved. Thus, the study showed that location matters in terms of employment and education outcomes. With regard to employment, the Gautreaux research provides important support for the spatial mismatch hypothesis, which holds that an important reason for high African American unemployment is the disproportionate concentration of African Americans in central cities given that most new job opportunities over the past several decades have been in the suburbs. The
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Gautreaux results show that how close African Americans are to job opportunities geographically affects their employment rates, as predicted by the mismatch hypothesis. Overall, nearly two-thirds of those who relocated to the suburbs were employed after their moves, compared with just half of those who relocated within the city. The effects were most dramatic among the hard-core unemployed—those who had never been employed. Nearly half of those in this group (46%) were employed after moving to the suburbs, compared with just 30% of those who relocated within the city. These findings suggest that increased opportunities for African Americans to live in suburban areas where job growth is occurring will, in and of itself, lead to reductions in African American unemployment rates. One reason is that African American households are significantly less likely than White households to have access to motor vehicles, so distance from employment is often a more important issue for African Americans than it is for Whites. When Rosenbaum asked the suburban movers how their moves helped them to get jobs, each one mentioned that there were more jobs available in the suburbs. Many also said that they felt freer to leave home to work because they would be less worried about the safety of their children at home compared with when they lived in the city. The Gautreaux experience also suggests that relocation from central cities to affluent, predominantly White suburbs may have significant educational benefits for African American children. In general, Rosenbaum found that the children in African American families that relocated to the suburbs fared better educationally than did the children in those families that remained in the city. Their attitudes toward school were more positive, and just 5% of them dropped out of high school, compared with 20% of those in the city. The grades of students who relocated to the suburbs were the same as those of students who remained in the city, but this likely reflected a higher level of achievement due to higher expectations. A national study of high school sophomores, for example, shows that at a given level of achievement, suburban students are graded roughly a half-point lower than central city students; thus, the grades of the students who relocated to the suburbs probably reflected a higher level of achievement. Perhaps most important, the students who relocated to the suburbs were more likely than those who remained in the city to take a college preparatory curriculum and were
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more than twice as likely (54% vs. 21%) to attend college after graduation. The benefits to African American households who relocated to the suburbs as a result of the Gautreaux decision also provide support for the argument that the effects of geographically concentrated poverty are greater than the effects of poverty itself. Various researchers have noted that poverty is more geographically concentrated among African Americans than it is among Whites. This occurs for a variety of reasons, and there is debate among researchers about the relative importance of different causes. However, the end result is that African Americans who are poor have significantly more neighbors who are also poor and fewer neighbors who enjoy steady quality employment and financial security. Because of this, social problems become more widespread and the institutions that provide stability in people’s lives and provide for day-today needs are undermined. If an individual is poor in an area where most others are also poor, it is likely that basic services and the ability to purchase needed goods and services within the neighborhood will be reduced. Role models for regular stable employment will be fewer, and crime and social disruption will be more likely. On the other hand, if an individual is poor in a neighborhood where most others are not poor, things may be quite different. Services, shopping, and job opportunities will be available in the neighborhood, and role models for employment and for seeing the benefits of educational advancement will abound. In other words, location matters. The better outcomes among the Gautreaux decision beneficiaries who moved to low-poverty suburban neighborhoods support this conclusion. They began just as poor as those who remained in city neighborhoods with higher poverty rates, but in the end their educational and employment outcomes were better. Over the years, considerable additional research has been conducted on (a) the longer term outcomes of the Gautreaux decision and (b) similar experiments and initiatives elsewhere. Longer term research on families who relocated to the suburbs as a result of the Gautreaux decision shows that as long as two decades after they initially relocated to the suburbs, most of the Gautreaux families and their children continued to live in suburban areas where crime rates are lower and incomes and educational levels are higher than in the central city neighborhoods they left behind. The program seems to have contributed to racial integration of housing over the long term given that only a minority
of those who relocated to the suburbs returned to predominantly African American neighborhoods. However, most do now live in areas with a more even racial mix than the predominantly White areas to which they initially relocated. Although the children in the families who relocated to the suburbs did encounter some racial discrimination and harassment at school in their new neighborhoods, their attitudes toward education improved, their grades remained stable over time, and they interacted with their new middle-class neighbors and classmates as much as those who remained in the city interacted with theirs. Attempts have been made, with varying success, to apply the findings from the Gautreaux case elsewhere. Several cities have undertaken similar programs, and at the national level a relatively small-scale initiative called Move to Opportunity (MTO) was undertaken. MTO sought to provide opportunities for poor households to move from neighborhoods of concentrated poverty to more affluent neighborhoods in five large urban areas. However, unlike Gautreaux, MTO did not specifically seek to bring about racial integration, and for the most part it failed to do so, although it did succeed in moving poor families to more socioeconomically diverse areas. In addition, MTO was less successful than Gautreaux in getting children into higher achieving schools. Perhaps for these reasons, the effects of MTO on educational achievement appear to have been small, although MTO did succeed in getting people to move to neighborhoods of higher socioeconomic status. These findings suggest that programs seeking to apply the principles of the Gautreaux program would be well advised to seek to bring about racial as well as socioeconomic integration and to provide access to areas with highachieving schools. John E. Farley See also American Apartheid; Discrimination in Housing; Educational Performance and Attainment; Housing Audits; Public Housing; Resegregation; Segregation; Social Mobility; Underclass; White Flight
Further Readings
Hills v. Gautreaux, 425 U.S. 284 (1976). Keels, Micere, Greg J. Duncan, Stephanie DeLuca, Ruby Mendenhall, and James Rosenbaum. 2005. “Fifteen Years Later: Can Residential Mobility Programs Provide a
Gender and Race, Intersection of
Long-Term Escape from Neighborhood Segregation, Crime, and Poverty?” Demography 42:51–73. Rosenbaum, James E. 1994. Housing Mobility Strategies for Changing the Geography of Opportunity. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, Institute for Policy Research. Available from http://www .northwestern.edu/ipr/ publications/papers/gat96.pdf Rosenbaum, James E. and Susan J. Popkin. 1991. “Employment and Earnings of Low-Income Blacks Who Move to Middle-Class Suburbs.” Pp. 342–356 in The Urban Underclass, edited by Christopher Jencks and Paul E. Peterson. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
GENDER AND RACE, INTERSECTION
OF
As forms of oppression and privilege, race, class, and gender “intersect” in people’s individual lives, in the cultures and communities of which they are a part, and in the institutions that give structure to their life chances. The notion of intersection highlights the way in which these forms of oppression are bound together, making it impossible to truly understand a race dynamic, for instance, without also considering the influence of gender and class. Focusing on the relationships among race, class, and gender, feminists have developed the empirically grounded theoretical premises that (a) race, class, and gender are social structural locations; (b) structural location shapes perspective; (c) no individual is all-oppressed or alloppressing; (d) the meanings of race, class, and gender are localized; and (e) race, class, and gender depend on each other; and (f) race, class, and gender mutually constitute each other. These premises are synthesized in this entry.
Structural Locations Rather Than Physical Characteristics In 1892, classical sociological theorist Anna Julia Cooper wondered which train station restroom would be most appropriate for her to enter—the one “for ladies” or the one “for colored people.” Black women’s invisibility, still apparent more than 100 years later in the common use of phrases such as “women and minorities,” has been the catalyst for the deliberate study of the intersections of race, class, and gender. One of the most fundamental principles race–class–gender scholars have demonstrated is that
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this invisibility is structural and systematic rather than a result of happenstance. With ideological mortar, race, class, and gender are built as social locations to which individuals are relegated. Much as a dwelling that can be rented in one part of town comes with a garbage disposal, hot water, and air-conditioning, whereas a dwelling across town lacks these amenities, social locations “come with” a variety of (continually varying) advantages and disadvantages that give structure to inhabitants’ opportunities to meet their material and emotional needs. Race, class, and gender, then, are not simply ways of describing people’s bodies. Rather, they are organizing principles that maintain differences and separation between groups—between Black men and Latinos, between Asian American women and White men, between working-class and middle-class Arab American women. Focusing on social locations rather than on biology shows that what happens in people’s lives is not simply a manifestation of any innate characteristics they may have. Rather, their lives get shaped by the amenities available to people in their social locations. The Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, and the Labor Movement are examples of people working to expand access to those amenities (e.g., voting rights, fair pay) to people who had previously been restricted from them. According to intersection theorists, those who occupy social locations that provide them with opportunities to express political, economic, and social power may systematically ignore or deliberately deemphasize the conditions attached to the social locations of disadvantaged groups such as the consequences of racism for mothers in the labor market and the disproportionate care work expected of women of color. The lack of attention to issues like these results in laws, policies, literature, history, science, patterns of production, media representation, and other living arrangements structured around the life situations of those in advantageous social locations. This structural invisibility is alternately structural hypervisibility when it meets the interests of those in more powerful social locations such as when Latinas are portrayed as “illegal aliens” or Black men are portrayed as dangerous criminals. These coin sides make up one set of advantages and disadvantages that come with the social locations shaped by the intersections of race, class, and gender.
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Locations Shape Perspectives In her assessment of a society rife with racism and sexism, Cooper argued that Black women, restricted from directly participating in many facets of political, economic, and social life, have a unique perspective that, if heard, would benefit not just Black women but all of society. As caretakers, educators, nurturers, actors, and observers, Black women have been able to see what others have not seen, she argued. Because their structural location has shaped their perspective, Black women’s “voices,” according to Cooper, are vital for progress in the United States. Feminist standpoint theorists such as Nancy Hartsock, working from Karl Marx’s assertion that the proletariat is positioned to construct a distinctive critical perspective of capitalism, have taken pains to point out that this perspective is not “natural” but rather something that those in oppressive structural locations must struggle to develop. Similarly, some race–class–gender theorists, such as Patricia Hill Collins, have argued against the assertion that Black women’s perspective is more accurate than others’ because it seems to suggest in an essentialist way that oppression is additive; the more kinds of oppression, the clearer the vision. While we acknowledge the unique vantage point women of color may adopt, we must also recognize that those living at severely disadvantaged structural locations do not necessarily have all-knowing perspectives and may, in fact, be restricted from some forms of knowledge and information. As a theoretical premise, whether disadvantaged structural locations confer blinders on inhabitants or what W. E. B. Du Bois called the “gift of second sight” (or, more likely, both), the way in which people are located structurally affects their experiences and, therefore, shapes the way in which they understand the world. What is needed, according to race–class–gender theorists, is dialogue among those who understand things so differently so that the perspectives of those who have been harmed by the dominant worldview may be heard.
Intertwined Oppressions Unlike theorists of class who argue that capitalists exploit workers, unlike theorists of race who argue that Whites oppress people of color, and unlike feminists who argue that men dominate women, studies of the intersections of race, class, and gender have demonstrated that relationships among these dimensions do
not fall along simple “either/or” hierarchical lines. Being structurally situated in social locations that have been built by the ideologies and material realities of race, class, and gender is sufficiently complex that it would be impossible for any individual in any social location to be either all-oppressed or all-oppressing, scholars of intersection theory assert. Studies of race, class, and gender reveal tangled situations. For example, people who are economically disadvantaged because they face employment discrimination (possibly on the basis of race and gender) may shop at huge discount stores where they can get the best price on shampoo—even though those stores may be exploiting their employees. Thus, they may indirectly become complicit in the exploitation of men and women workers in those stores and around the world. Collins uses the imagery of a “matrix of domination” to untangle situations like this, charting race– class–gender advantage and disadvantage along the dimensions of personal experience and cultural and institutional contexts. Consistent with the first premise, which focuses us on structural locations rather than on physical or identity categories, this third premise rejects race, class, and gender as dimensions of “who people are” and instead highlights actions and opportunities through which oppression is perpetuated.
Localized Meanings These situational dynamics reveal a fourth theoretical premise of race–class–gender studies, namely, that meanings and expressions of race, class, and gender are localized. Although many theorists originally focused on the conditions faced by entire “classes” of people—“women,” “the proletariat,” “Asian Americans”— scholars have more recently problematized these allencompassing categories as misleadingly homogeneous and divorced from the dynamics of people’s everyday lives. They instead encourage investigation of the specific local circumstances under which race, class, and gender are “done” and the particular forms of these dimensions of oppression that are salient within those circumstances. In studying the localized dimensions of race, class, and gender, scholars have also needed to grapple with people’s complicity in their own oppression. Structures may be arranged so that individuals can get local benefits from perpetuating race, class, and gender’s “global” logics. Disadvantaged groups may face
Gender and Race, Intersection of
formidable pressures to accept dominant conceptualizations; indeed, hegemonic forms of power require the cooperation of those who will be most disadvantaged by its exercise, even as this can depend on and result in their internalization of oppressive ideas about themselves. A Black man striving to attain the markers of the middle class, for example, may choose to exclude professional Black women from his pool of potential marriage partners because his image of success includes a wife who subserviently caters to his needs at home. Although this may help to secure his “success” in a local realm (even while it diminishes his household income potential), it serves to maintain ideologies of what is expected of and attractive about women as well as what is deficient about Black men whose wives work for pay. Whether the result of pressure, internalization, choice, or (more likely) a combination of all of these, actions on the local level— actions that make sense or serve individuals’ interests within a particular set of conditions—are part of what maintains the larger, dominant, globalized structures of race, class, and gender.
A Relation of Dependence Is any one of these structures, in any social circumstance, more important than the others? Noteworthy scholars have weighed in on this question. Du Bois argued that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line” (p. 12), Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued that “the whole history of mankind . . . has been a history of class struggles” (p. 5), and for Charlotte Perkins Gilman the primary form of inequality is “excessive sex distinction” (p. 52). It is not uncommon to hear scholars talk about how one dimension “trumps” the others as a more salient feature of a particular dynamic. Among those who find one of these dimensions more important in the organization of social life than the others, most—following the preoccupation of late 20th-century sociology with class analysts such as Marx—begin and end with the assumption that class is primary. However, the fifth premise of race–class– gender theory is that these structures cannot be ranked. Rather, the relationship among race, class, and gender is one of dependence. Karen Hossfeld’s research on immigrant women working in Silicon Valley, for example, found that employers make hiring decisions based on racism, chauvinism, and sexism, allowing them to divide, conquer, and control their labor supply. Here,
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capitalists are able to increase profits because they can oppress people by gender and race; that is, capitalism depends on gender and race. Trying to rank dimensions of oppression reifies them; instead, social analysts must recognize how structures such as race, class, and gender create, shape, depend on, and influence each other.
Mutual Constitution Structures of oppression do not come together fully formed and engage in sword fights for dominance. Rather, they form within the context of the others. A structure such as race changes and mutates based on the gender and class contexts that surround it, and the task of social scientists is to determine how that happens and what the resulting (constantly shifting) relationships among them are. The language of “mutual constitution” indicates movement, development, change, and time, reminding scholars that the structures of race, class, and gender are processes. How people are categorized according to race, for example, has changed over time based on the relative place of different groups in the economic order. These structures are continually changing (in localized settings), responding to being changed and “constituted,” and constituting other forms. So far, efforts at understanding how this occurs have been guided by the notion of structures of oppression such as race, class, and gender as “intersecting.” Ivy Ken See also Body Image; Civil Rights Movement, Women and; Collins, Patricia Hill; Domestic Violence; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Feminism, Black; Feminism, Latina; Glass Ceiling; hooks, bell; Hull House School of Race Relations; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender; Marxism and Racism; Sexuality; Social Inequality; WellsBarnett, Ida B.; Whiteness and Masculinity
Further Readings
Andersen, Margaret. 2005. “Thinking about Women: A Quarter Century’s View.” Gender & Society 19:437–455. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. De Beauvoir, Simone. [1952] 1989. The Second Sex, translated and edited by H. M. Parshley. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] 1994. The Souls of Black Folk. Avenel, NJ: Gramercy Books.
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Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. 1898. Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution. Boston, MA: Small, Maynard. Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 1999. “The Social Construction and Institutionalization of Gender and Race: An Integrative Framework.” Pp. 3–43 in Revisioning Gender, edited by Myra Marx Ferree, Judith Lorber, and Beth B. Hess. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Hartsock, Nancy C. M. 1998. “The Feminist Standpoint Revisited.” Pp. 227–248 in The Feminist Standpoint Revisited and other Essays, edited by Nancy C. M. Hartsock. Boulder, CO: Westview. hooks, bell. 1984. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston, MA: South End. Hossfeld, Karen. 2007. “Still Small, Foreign, and Female after All These Years: An Update on Immigrant Women Workers in Silicon Valley.” Presented at annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association, Oakland, CA. Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. [1848] 1955. The Communist Manifesto, edited by Samuel H. Beer. Arlington Heights, IL: Harland Davidson. Moraga, Cherríe and Gloria Anzaldúa. 1981. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table. West, Candace and Don Zimmerman. 1987. “Doing Gender.” Gender & Society 1:125–151.
GENDER IDENTITY See LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER; SEXUALITY
GENOCIDE Article 2 of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide reads, In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
This entry addresses the origins of this definition, criticisms and alternative definitions, examples of genocide, and legal and social responses to genocide.
Origins of Genocide Polish jurist Raphaël Lemkin is credited as the originator of the term genocide. As early as 1933, he showed a prescient understanding of Nazi intentions when he drafted a proposal for penalizing destructive actions taken against minority populations that was presented to the International Conference for the Unification of Penal law in Madrid. Later, as a witness to Nazi aggression against the nations of Europe and specific peoples (e.g., Jews, Roma, Poles, Slavs), Lemkin argued that it was necessary to find a word that could inspire moral condemnation and political action for the world to take seriously this crime that was, at that time, “without a name.” After he escaped Nazi-occupied Europe, Lemkin wrote his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, in which he coined the term genocide, a combination of genos (race, tribe) and cide (to kill), for this purpose. With this new word in hand, he directed his efforts toward legal codification so that a clear standard would be in place rather than a hodgepodge of international treaties and agreements that did not speak to the scope or scale of genocidal crimes. The first formal recognition of Lemkin’s new term can be found in the indictment of the major German war criminals by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg in 1945. However, the IMT did not make significant use of this term in its judgment, and the further codification of genocide as a matter of international law was left to the United Nations. On December 11, 1946, the UN General Assembly passed its first resolution on genocide that compared the crime of genocide, as a denial of group existence, to that of murder, or the denial of individual life. Based on this resolution, the UN’s Economic and Social Council was charged with the task of developing a convention on the prevention and punishment of genocide. Debates among UN member nations ensued. Contentious issues included the groups to be included under the convention, the status of cultural genocide, the meaning of intent, and the challenge of prevention. For example, the Russian representative argued that political groups were too impermanent and unstable to be included under the convention. Likewise, many Western nations opposed the inclusion of
Genocide
cultural genocide, or “ethnocide,” under the convention, suggesting that these crimes were of a different order from mass killing. The end product of these debates was the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. After its passage, attention was turned toward getting nations to sign on to the convention, but otherwise there was little sustained discussion of the subject of genocide during subsequent years.
Criticisms and Alternative Definitions It was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s that an upsurge in interest in genocide occurred. This was partially the result of increased awareness of the Holocaust; however, it was also sparked by scholarly efforts to conduct comparative research on genocide. Many genocide scholars found the UN convention lacking in several respects. For some, the convention was too exclusive, leaving out political and classbased groups. For others, the convention was too inclusive because it referenced practices deemed to be qualitatively different from mass killing such as the transfer of children from one group to another. Still others found the convention too restrictive in its notion of “intent,” which suggests a purposeful formulation of genocidal strategy that, in many cases, is difficult to discern. These and other issues led to attempts to redefine genocide in a manner that would provide both conceptual clarity and comparative flexibility. For example, Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, in their 1990 book The History and Sociology of Genocide, proposed, “Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator” (p. 23). This definition focuses on instances of mass killing where the target group is unable or unwilling to muster organized military resistance to the genocidal onslaught (so the killing is “one-sided”), thereby excluding wartime cases such as the World War II aerial bombardment of Dresden, Tokyo, Hamburg, and other cities. It also defers the question of what groups might be considered victims of genocide by basing its assessment entirely on the perpetrator’s definition of its intended target. These components of Chalk and Jonassohn’s definition have been criticized by other genocide scholars, including Helen Fein, who maintained that the specification of “one-sided mass killings” ignores other forms of attempted biological destruction, such as
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forced abortions and sterilization, and presents arbitrary grounds for excluding cases (e.g., how much resistance does it take to make a case no longer “onesided”?). Fein proposed the following definition in a 1990 article: Genocide is sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to physically destroy a collectivity, directly or indirectly, through interdiction of the biological and social reproduction of group members, sustained regardless of the surrender or lack of threat offered by the victim. (p. 24)
In this definition, Fein sought to build on and clarify the UN definition. She did not limit the groups to be considered under the definition to the ascriptive categories of race, ethnicity, and nationhood. Instead, she used the term collectivity to refer to all identities that might be constructed or inherited but that nonetheless endure and serve as a source of meaning for group members. She also clarified that genocide is sustained and purposeful action, by which she meant that it consists of multiple acts carried out over a period of time that show, at a minimum, a knowing disregard for the destruction of a collectivity. Definitional debates continue among sociologists, political scientists, historians, and other genocide studies scholars. Nonetheless, the UN convention has survived as a foundation for all of these subsequent definitions, even if it has seldom seen juridical application.
Examples of Genocide Genocide is an ancient crime. Events such as the destruction of Melos by Athens in the Peloponnesian War (5th century BC), Rome’s assault on Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War (149–46 BC), and the rampages of Genghis Khan’s Mongol horsemen during the 13th century are often cited as early examples. The period of colonial expansion and imperialism is also rife with genocidal moments such as in the conquest and colonization of the New World and the subjugation and forced assimilation of Aboriginal peoples—a process that, in many parts off the world, continued into the 20th century. Indeed, the 20th century has come to be known as the “century of genocide.” This deadly era began in 1904 when the Herero people of what is now Namibia rose up against their German colonizers, surprising the Germans in a battle that lasted six months until the German government sent in General Luther von Trotha to quell it. Trotha
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issued an extermination order and, after sealing off all escape routes except those leading to the desert, launched massive artillery attacks against the Herero. Water holes were poisoned so that those fleeing to the desert would perish, and refugees were deprived of sustenance. The Herero population of 80,000 in 1904 was reduced to 15,000 by 1908. The Armenian genocide is the next widely cited instance of genocide. In April 1915, under the cover of war, the Ottoman government ordered that in all areas outside of the war zones, the Armenians were to be deported from their homes under so-called resettlement programs. Next, approximately 250,000 Armenian soldiers were eliminated to render the Armenian population defenseless. The government then proceeded to round up and kill hundreds of Armenian political, religious, intellectual, and cultural leaders. The rest of the population, composed mainly of the elderly, women, and children, was deported. Along the deportation route, they were attacked by bands of killers and a sizable number of deportees were slaughtered indiscriminately. Others were killed through deliberate starvation, dehydration, and brutalization. The Nazi extermination campaign against European Jews is often regarded as the paradigmatic case of genocide. Soon after Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933, they began to erode the rights of Jewish citizens. But it became clear that denationalization would not be sufficient to appease Hitler’s hatred of the Jews and his desire to increase German territory. Gradually, anti-Jewish policies were intensified, moving from pogroms to ghettoization to expulsion. By 1941, mass killings were under way, and it is believed that during the second half of that year Hitler fully committed to the “Final Solution”—the extermination of all Jews. Several concentration camps were transformed into extermination camps with gas chambers and ovens operating to kill and dispose of Jewish lives. The Nazis also subjected other groups to a loss of rights and genocidal action during this period, including Roma and Sinti (“gypsies”), Slavs, Poles, communists, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Several other cases of genocide have emerged since the Holocaust, and only a sampling can be listed here. In 1971, as a Bengali nationalist movement sought to secede East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) from West Pakistan, and approximately 1.2 million Bengals were killed by West Pakistani forces. In 1972, the Tutsi rulers in Burundi launched a genocidal assault on the
majority Hutu population, resulting in nearly 200,000 Hutu deaths. In April 1975, Khmer Rouge forces led by Pol Pot defeated the Lon Nol army and took control of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. Subsequently, they implemented a program of murder, forced labor, and forced relocation against Vietnamese, Cham Muslim and Chinese minorities, religious groups such as the Buddhist monks, the Khmer urban classes, and the Khmer population from the provinces near Vietnam, eventually killing 1.5 million of Cambodia’s then population of 8 million. In 1994, in just 100 days, Hutu extremists slaughtered 800,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates in Rwanda while the rest of the world stood by and did nothing to stop the slaughter. Genocide has continued to trouble the world into the 21st century, as the Darfur region of Sudan has seen murderous attacks on non-Arab inhabitants by the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia and government forces.
Responses to Genocide In the aftermath of World War II, the Allies confronted the problem of how to deal with National Socialist military aggression and war crimes. It was decided that trials, following the model of Western justice, would be implemented to prosecute the major war criminals. Thus, the IMT at Nuremberg came into existence in 1945. However, this decision was not uncontested at the time; never before had victorious nations sat in judgment on the vanquished, and for some this carried the taint of victor’s justice. It is also the case that the twenty-one defendants at Nuremberg were tried for crimes for which there were no wellestablished legal precedents, resulting in the charge of retroactivity. Finally, the tribunal was viewed to be selective and politicized because it addressed the misdeeds of only defeated nations. The lead prosecutor, Justice Robert H. Jackson, challenged these criticisms in his opening statement, suggesting that whatever the flaws of the tribunal, the crimes of the Nazis were of such a scale that the world could not afford to ignore them, and that the tribunal was a much more rational response to these crimes than the reprisal killings and punitive reparations carried out after previous wars. Sadly, genocides continued, undeterred by the threat of legal reprisals. Moreover, it would be more than 40 years before the world community would manage another trial of those alleged to have engaged in
Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908)
genocide. In the meantime, the previously mentioned mass atrocities in Burundi, Uganda, Bangladesh, and Cambodia were left unaddressed. It was not until the outbreak of war and “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia and the genocide in Rwanda that international tribunals were once again established to deal with genocidal crimes. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia came into being through UN Security Council Resolution 827 in 1993 and is located in The Hague, Netherlands. Through its various rulings, it has helped to clarify the UN genocide convention, in particular with respect to specifying the “targets” of genocide. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was established by the United Nations in 1994 in Arusha, Tanzania, and in the Akayesu case it was the first international tribunal to offer an interpretation of the UN genocide convention. The ICTR also contributed the notion that widespread rape and sexual violence may constitute genocide if they are committed with the objective of destroying a targeted group. Finally, the International Criminal Court was established as a permanent judicial body for contending with major intra- and interstate crimes, such as genocide, through the 1998 Rome Statute. Other less formal justice options are available to societies dealing with pasts marked by genocide and mass violence. Truth commissions have been used in many Latin America countries, as well as in South Africa, and have more recently been established to work in conjunction with courts in places such as Sierra Leone. There are also a variety of commemorative and reparative techniques employed by countries seeking to deal with unsavory pasts, including apologies, monetary compensation, memorials, museums, and days of remembrance. Andrew Woolford See also Armenian Americans; Anti-Semitism; Colonialism; Diaspora; Ethnic Conflict; Ethnoviolence; Global Perspective; Holocaust Holocaust: Deniers and Revisionists; Jewish Americans; Peoplehood; Racism; Roma
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Fein, Helen. 1990. “Defining Genocide as a Sociological Concept.” Current Sociology 38:8–31. Jones, Adam. 2006. Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. London: Routledge. Kuper, Leo. 1981. Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Minow, Martha. 1998. Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing Genocide and Mass Violence. Boston, MA: Beacon. Power, Samantha. 2002. “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Basic Books. United Nations. 1948. United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Adopted by Resolution 260(III)A of the UN General Assembly on December 9, 1948. Entry into force: January 12, 1951. New York: United Nations.
GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENT (1907–1908) The Gentlemen’s Agreement represented a set of six diplomatic notes communicated between the United States and Japan to curtail labor emigration from Japan to the United States. Led by President Theodore Roosevelt, these initiatives were intended to ease increasing tensions between the two countries and to offer a national response to the rising anti-Japanese movement centered in California. On the heels of the Russo–Japanese War and after a wave of antiJapanese “yellow peril” ordinances in California, the Gentlemen’s Agreement arose out of mutual diplomatic needs between the United States and Japan. Consequently, they were informal and shrouded agreements, not entirely revealed to the public until years later, in which Japan voluntarily agreed to restrict its nationals from entering the continental United States. This entry looks at the agreement and its background in both participating countries.
A Series of Notes Further Readings
Alvarez, Alex. 2001. Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approach. Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press. Chalk, Frank and Kurt Jonassohn, eds. 1990. The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
On February 24, 1907, the first agreement ended in a Japanese note agreeing to deny passports to laborers planning on entering the United States. Japan also acknowledged the right of the United States to exclude Japanese immigrants holding passports issued for other countries; this would effectively prevent the re-migration to the United States of Japanese
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laborers from Mexico, Canada, or Hawai‘i. Executive Order 589 was signed by Roosevelt on March 14, 1907, excluding from the mainland United States “Japanese or Korean laborers, skilled or unskilled, who had received passports to go to Mexico, Canada, or Hawai‘i, and come therefrom.” By February 18, 1908, a final Japanese note was signed, making the Gentlemen’s Agreement fully effective. Although this marked the end of new Japanese male labor immigration, the Gentlemen’s Agreement launched a new era for Japanese American family formation and unleashed variant forms of antiJapanese prejudice.
U.S. Background Understanding the rationale for the Gentlemen’s Agreement requires a review of U.S. domestic conditions and of U.S.–Japan relations during the turn of the 20th century. In 1890, there were 2,039 Japanese in the continental United States (0.003% of the population), in contrast to 107,488 Chinese (0.2%). Following the annexation of Hawai‘i, according to the 1900 U.S. Census, Japanese Americans represented 0.1% (85,716) of the U.S. population and Chinese Americans represented 0.2%. Moreover, there were thousands of Japanese sojourners who returned to Japan, resulting in low levels of population growth. As one small group struggling like many other immigrants in the U.S. West—Swedes, Italians, Armenians, Punjabis—why were Japanese targeted so intensively, particularly by Whites? Decades of anti-Chinese fervor had culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which similarly suspended labor immigration for 10 years; it was renewed and restricted labor entry until after World War II. The labor-organized movement to renew antiChinese legislation served to racialize the immigration issue as an “Asiatic” problem. Protests called for the expulsion of all Asians. With the declining Chinese population, the yellow peril—depicted in Hearst publications as hordes of locusts descending on the shores of the Pacific—focused on the Japanese. The Asiatic Exclusion League, started in San Francisco in 1905 by European immigrant labor leaders, focused on the exclusion of Japanese and Koreans. Its formation marks the start of the anti-Japanese movement. Pressured by the league, the San Francisco School Board decided to segregate Japanese school children in the Oriental School where Chinese children were already confined. Using the San
Francisco earthquake’s destruction of numerous school buildings as an excuse to reassign the ninetythree Japanese children—25% of them being native born—the board rescinded the segregation order after Roosevelt invited the board to the White House in February 1907 and promised to ask Japan for “voluntary” restriction of new labor immigration. This would be part of the informal negotiations underlying the Gentlemen’s Agreement.
Japanese Background Japanese government officials were alarmed by the rapidly escalating hostilities against their nationals in the United States because for decades they had observed the heightening of anti-Chinese hysteria. Particularly after victory in the Russo–Japanese War, Japan was eager to be viewed as a world power and to be accorded equal status with the European colonizing nations. By the late 19th century, Japan had already attempted to control those who could emigrate and to monitor their experiences in the United States. Determined not to repeat China’s ineffective experience with its overseas population, Japan wanted to enhance its international position by elevating the image and status of its overseas Japanese. Images of Japanese as the “problem” or “peril,” leading to anti-Japanese protests, local ordinances, and/or discriminatory immigration policies, were to be avoided at all costs. Japan’s quest for international accolades and national pride contributed to the government’s conciliatory and self-controlling posture that paved the way for the Gentlemen’s Agreement. The voluntary nature of the agreement signified that it was not meant to restrict the sovereign right of the United States to regulate immigration. For volunteering to limit labor migration to the United States, Japan negotiated that the U.S. would “self-impose not to enact any discriminatory legislation against the Japanese.” For American municipal ordinances or national policies to uphold discriminatory treatment of Japanese nationals would be counter to the government’s agenda or selfidentity as a rising superpower. Consequently, when the Immigration or National Origins Act of 1924 was passed—effectively ending the Gentlemen’s Agreement and barring most East Asians from immigration—the Japanese government felt betrayed. The government had upheld its end of the agreement and completely restricted Japanese labor immigration. Immigration statistics from 1909 to 1923 show that, except for the war period, more
Gentrification
Japanese nationals left the United States than arrived there. For those 15 years, reports from the U.S. commissioner-general of immigration demonstrated that the net increase was 8,681 (578 per year). This pool would include those who were legally allowed to enter through the Gentlemen’s Agreement and those exempt groups, including students, merchants, tourists, and government officials. Although “Japanese” were not named in the 1924 act, it was seen as a Japanese exclusion act because Japan was the only country to be denied even the minimum quota of 100 per year. If the Japanese had been placed on a quota as the Europeans were, fewer than 200 would have been admitted each year given the Japanese population in the United States in 1890. The 1924 act disproportionately affected Asian immigration because all of those “ineligible for American citizenship” would be denied admittance. Any doubts about the status of Japanese were swept away by the 1922 U.S. Supreme Court case of Ozawa v. U.S., which declared that the Japanese were not eligible for naturalized citizenship. Superseding the Gentlemen’s Agreement, the National Origins Act provoked a new low for U.S.–Japan relations, resulting in “hate America” meetings held on “Humiliation Day” (July 1, 1924). Yvonne M. Lau See also Chinese Exclusion Acts; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Race; Japanese Americans; National Origins System
Further Readings
Inui, Kiyo. 1925. “The Gentlemen’s Agreement: How It Has Functioned.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 122:188–198. O’Brien, David and Stephen Fugita. 1991. The Japanese American Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Spickard, Paul. 1996. Japanese Americans. New York: Twayne.
GENTRIFICATION The movement of the middle and upper classes into previously lower- and working-class neighborhoods is termed gentrification. This movement involves the restoration of derelict housing, revitalization of
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commercial areas, and a geographic displacement of poorer residents. Although the term gentrification is used to describe changes within urban neighborhoods since the 1970s, it has also been applied to the revitalization of small town main streets and older inner-ring suburbs. Research on gentrification has focused on the role of real estate markets, restructuring of the economy, local politics, and characteristics of the gentrifiers themselves in shaping how, when, and where gentrification occurs. Earlier debates focused on consumption-side versus production-side explanations for gentrification. The consumption-side arguments are that lifestyle, small family size, changing gender roles, high education levels, changes in the workplace, and consumer preferences made city living attractive to a previously suburban middle class. Production-side arguments look to the roles played by changing markets, large institutions, and politics that make it possible for the middle class to live in what were once blighted areas of the city. It is argued that capital investment and revitalization of central business districts (CBDs) and urban waterfront areas could not have succeeded without a significant private subsidy and public government support. The results of revitalized downtowns are areas dedicated to consumption and tourism, a revived business and financial district, and the growth of downtown housing for white-collar workers. Gentrification was such a transformative phenomenon to cities (especially in the United States and Western Europe) during the late 20th century—literally changing the landscape and urban populations—that it is clear that large-scale social processes have helped to shape small-scale residential decisions and neighborhood-level change. Gentrification is frequently conceptualized as a process. The first wave of gentrifiers to enter a loweror working-class neighborhood are of the creative class—artists, students, and musicians who are looking for cheap housing and workspace and whose consumer tastes tolerate the grittiness of the area. Urban “pioneers” or “homesteaders” (two popular terms for gentrifiers during the 1970s and 1980s) make investments (sometimes assisted by city subsidies) in older historic areas with the intention of restoring Victorian homes to their original grandeur. After the first wave of in-movers, the city may begin to reinvest in the neighborhood by updating parks, roads, and commercial strips. The real estate market becomes more active, and investors buy property to either rehabilitate or tear down and build again for prospective in-movers.
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spurs gentrification in neighborhoods. With real estate investments, rental apartment buildings and abandoned squats are redeveloped into luxury condominiums and sold to mostly White and bourgeois consumers. The influx of the new upwardly mobile residents is conceptualized as the “taming of the frontier.” In the case of the Lower East Side, the original residents were evicted from their homes but were not given options for relocation. Homelessness and general displacement of poor minority and White residents is the downside of gentrification. Very few studies have been Construction in Harlem. A new apartment building was under construction on able to document what happens to August 16, 2001, in Harlem, New York City. A small but vocal community in those who are displaced by neighborHarlem was upset at the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ), claimhood change. Temporary housing for ing that the historically Black community’s recent gentrification programs had drithe displaced, such as tent cities, have ven out some local businesses and raised real estate prices on many properties. become a common sight in highly Gentrification refers to the process of the middle and upper classes moving into gentrified cities such as Seattle and previously lower- and working-class neighborhoods. San Francisco. Source: Getty Images. Beyond marketplace forces, the struggle between local politics and As more housing becomes available and commercial community groups is evident in neighborhoods underareas are revitalized, more middle-class gentrifiers going gentrification. Cities benefit from gentrified move into the area. Over time, the physical and social neighborhoods in terms of controlling street crime, landscape changes significantly and a new population raising the tax base, and attracting more middle-class moves in to replace an older one. residents to invest in city property. The urban political Whereas earlier research on gentrification processes machine rewards redevelopers with building permits, focused on the gentrifiers themselves, subsequent zoning changes, and historic tax credits. Neighborwork has investigated the struggle between newcomhood change can be highly contested by community ers and the original residents of a gentrifying neighborgroups whose members understand that displacement hood over housing and neighborhood resources. The is the inevitable result of redevelopment. In most large original residents of a gentrifying neighborhood are cities, the major players in gentrification are White more likely to be members of a racial or ethnic minorand middle or upper class (politicians, landlords, redeity group, members of a lower class, and older than velopers, and in-movers) and the original residents are those of the gentrifying class. This results in a clash of a minority. This is evident in the case of West Town in interests because property taxes and rents tend to go up Chicago. Puerto Rican residents organized around the as gentrifiers purchase and improve existing housing theme of Puerto Rican nationalism and worked in stock and private reinvestment is made in neighborcommunity groups to fight against displacement crehood commercial districts. Geographer Neil Smith’s ated by the largely Polish political machine. Studies of study of gentrification in New York City’s Lower East local politics and community groups question whether Side exemplifies the struggle of working-class and market forces are enough to gentrify a neighborhood poor residents to defend their neighborhood from and whether gentrification is a one-way process withchange. Smith argued that larger forces such as out a struggle from below. Ethnographic evidence changes in the political economy—and specifically the shows that the original residents of a neighborhood local and international real estate market—is what undergoing gentrification do not simply disappear but
Georgian Americans
rather actively contest neighborhood change. However, what is not clear is whether gentrifiers and original residents can coexist in a neighborhood, side by side, as each block of the city becomes the next frontier to conquer. Future study should focus on the outcome of gentrification and whether racial and class integration of neighborhoods undergoing change is possible. Meghan Ashlin Rich See also American Apartheid; Code of the Street; Community Cohesion; Community Empowerment; Discrimination in Housing; Gautreaux Decision; Housing Audits; Public Housing; Resegregation; Segregation; Underclass; White Flight
Further Readings
Betancur, John J. 2002. “The Politics of Gentrification: The Case of West Town in Chicago.” Urban Affairs Review 37:780–814. Smith, Neil. 1996. The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. London: Routledge. Smith, Neil and Peter Williams, eds. 1986. Gentrification of the City. London: Allen & Unwin. Zukin, Sharon. 1987. “Gentrification: Culture and Capital in the Urban Core.” Annual Review of Sociology 13:129–147.
Georgia Background The people known as Georgians call themselves kartvelebi and call their country Sakartvelo. The word Georgia probably mutated from the Turkish term for Georgian, Gurji, although there are other theories pointing to a Greek or Farsi origin of the word. Georgians speak a language that is part of the southwest (non-Indo-European) Caucasian group of languages. Most Georgians belong to the Georgian Orthodox Church, although there are also a small number of Catholics and Baptists and significant numbers of Georgian Muslims in Achara. Georgia occupies 27,657 square miles (approximately twice the size of Belgium). On its northern border lies the Russian Federation, to the south are Turkey and the Republic of Armenia, and to the west and east are the Black Sea and the Republic of Azerbaijan, respectively. Most Georgian emigrants during the 20th century settled in Russia (the majority), Poland, France, or Germany. Munich and Paris were traditional havens for Georgian political émigrés. Before the 1930s, the vast majority of Georgian political émigrés belonged to the Georgian social democratic movement, which had strong links with European socialist parties in Germany, Belgium, and France. After the invasion of Georgia by the Red Army in February 1921, General Josef Pilsudski, a former socialist and Polish dictator
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The first Georgians arrived in the United States during the 1890s to join Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Congress of Rough Riders of the World. However, the four primary waves of immigration from Georgia occurred (a) after Georgia lost its independence in 1921 following a Red Army invasion, (b) after World War II when many captured Georgians serving in the Soviet Army refused to return to the Soviet Union, (c) during the 1980s when Georgian Jews were permitted to leave the Soviet Union, and finally (d) during the 1990s after Georgia regained its independence once more. Although the total population of the Georgian American community is relatively small, some members have made important contributions to U.S. business and culture. This entry describes their country of origin, their immigration history, and the current community.
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from 1926 to 1935, invited many Georgian emigrants to settle in Poland and train as officers in Polish military academies. Of all Soviet peoples, the Georgians were the most likely to remain within the boundaries of their republic, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Georgia experienced a catastrophic economic decline and secessionist wars that led to intensified emigration. Between 1989 and January 2002, the Georgian population declined from 5,456,100 to 4,452,100—a decrease of 16%. The decline was a result of falling birth rates, increased mortality levels, the loss of population in Abkhazia and South Osetia, the out-migration of non-Georgians, and (most significant) the emigration of Georgians in search of work. The official unemployment rate was 13.8% in 2005, and unofficially it was between 30% and 40%. Approximately 40% of Georgia’s emigrants during the 1990s ended up in Russia, and 14% ended up in the United States. More of Georgia’s national minorities (50.5% vs. 31.0% of Georgians) left for Russia, and more Georgians (19.5% vs. 9.0% of national minorities) left for the United States.
History of Immigration The first Georgians who came to the United States were a group of fifteen horse riders invited to join Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Congress of Rough Riders of the World during the 1890s. The Ringling Brothers Circus signed up approximately thirty more Georgians after 1900, although they were described as Cossacks. A small number of Georgians seeking to escape military service or attracted by railway construction jobs in California trickled into the United States during the decade before World War I. During the period of Georgian independence (1918–1921), diplomatic links were established with the United States, and Georgia was recognized de jure by the U.S. government. After the Red Army invasion of Georgia in February 1921, many Georgians fled to Europe, Turkey, and China. During the 1920s, approximately 150 of these exiles, mostly former officers, government officials, and aristocrats, came to the United States. Many were members of Georgian princely families such as the Eristavis and Chavchavadzes. Prince Paul Chavchavadze was married to the niece of Tsar Nicolas II, and Prince Archil Gourielli-Tchkonia was married to Helena Rubenstein, a famous Polishborn perfumier living in the United States.
The next wave of Georgians came after World War II and settled under the terms of the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 and the Refugee Relief Act of 1953. Most of them were former prisoners of war or displaced European citizens. A number of them had been members of the National Committee for the Liberation of Georgia or had been in the Georgian Legion that fought on the German side in the war, hoping to liberate Georgia from Soviet occupation. Many new arrivals had a hard time during these early postwar years. The Tolstoy Foundation and the Church World Service tried to help Georgians find employment. Georgian immigrants from this second wave were, on the whole, less educated than those from the first wave and occupied less prestigious jobs. The first ten families of Georgian Jews arrived in the United States in 1973 and 1974. Two more larger waves, many from Israel, followed from 1978 to 1980 and during the mid-1980s. They were helped to settle by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the New York Association for New Americans. Approximately 90% of the 5,000 to 6,000 Georgian Jews in the United States live in the Queens district of New York City. They have built their own synagogue and publish a community newsletter in Georgian, Hebrew, and English. Many of them work in the jewelry trade and have stores on New York’s 47th Street. Besides the post-Soviet immigrants, the Georgian community since 1991 has received a new infusion of students and scholars on exchange programs (there were 1,750 Georgians in U.S. high schools and higher education in 2000) and through the presence of Georgian diplomats and their families in both Washington, D.C., and New York City. Georgians have become geographically scattered during the past decade, but according to figures from the Immigration and Naturalization Service for 1992 through 1995, the vast majority still prefer to settle in either California or New York. In 1995, 27% of legal immigrants from Georgia settled in California and 33% settled in New York.
Today’s Community It is hard to estimate how many Georgians are currently living in the United States. During the preSoviet period, Georgian immigrants were classified mostly as Russians, categorized according to their “country of origin.” The same pattern continued during the Soviet period. It is only since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the creation of an independent Georgian state that Georgians have been
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recognized by the U.S. government as a separate national category. Adding to the confusion, Georgians made up only 70% of their country’s population in 1990. Legalized aliens in the United States since 1991 have been categorized by country of birth, so some immigrants officially classified as Georgian might not consider themselves as such. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there were 10,530 Georgians in the United States in 2000. This does not include the vast illegal community of Georgians who have crossed the Canadian and Mexican borders to find work and the large Georgian Jewish community in Queens. Although Georgian Jews classify themselves as Jewish, they are culturally and linguistically Georgian. Still, the U.S. government figures for the 1990s of 8,000 to 9,000 new Georgian residents represents the largest wave of Georgian legal immigrants in U.S. history. In 2000, Georgian legal residents in the United States had a median age of 36.1 years. In 1999, they had a median household income of $30,640. Approximately 52% had an undergraduate degree or higher, but 23% of families were still below the poverty line. The number of legal Georgian immigrants in the United States is small because, as subjects of the Russian Empire or citizens of the Soviet Union, emigration was extremely difficult. The rare opportunities for emigration were between 1918 and 1921, a period of Georgian independence; during World War II when some Soviet Georgian prisoners of war made their way to the United States; and during the 1970s when Jews, many of them Georgian, were permitted to emigrate from the Soviet Union as part of the Helsinki agreements. The largest wave came after 1991 when Georgia regained its independence. Famous Georgians
There have been some great Georgian successes in American cultural and political history. Prince Georges Matchabelli, founder of the Matchabelli perfume group, arrived in New York in 1924, and Alexander Kartveli, designer of the American fighter plane Republic P-47, arrived in 1927. Kartveli helped to establish Republic Aviation, an airplane design company that created the F-84 Thunderjet and many other U.S. fighter planes after World War II. George Papashvily, an illiterate peasant and sculptor, arrived in the United States in 1920. He described his experiences as a new Georgian immigrant in the book Anything Can Happen, published in 1945 and
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translated into fifteen languages. In 1952, the book was made into a film starring Jose Ferrer and Kim Hunt. The great ballerina and film star Tamara Tumanishvili (Toumanova) made her home in the United States, as did the choreographer George Balanchine (Balanchivadze). General John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993 to 1997, was born in Warsaw in 1936 and was the child of a Georgian contract officer in the Polish army. Community y Life e
Georgians in the United States, unlike Armenians, Latvians, and Ukrainians, have never had the numbers or resources to organize a strong political lobby. Georgian immigrants are fiercely loyal to their language, but their children find it hard to retain knowledge of Georgian without community support and Georgian language schools. There are Georgian language programs at a number of universities (e.g., Indiana University, Columbia University, University of Chicago), but these courses serve the academic community. The absence of financial resources is a serious problem: Most Georgians still consider themselves Orthodox Christians but need to use the facilities of the Orthodox Church in North America for their parishes in New York and Washington, D.C., although they have their own priests. The first Georgian organization in the United States was the Georgian Society founded in San Francisco in 1924. In 1930, the Caucasian Society Alaverdi was formed to unite different Caucasian groups. In 1932, the Georgian Association in the United States was founded. During the 1950s, many of the new emigrants became enthusiastic supporters of U.S. anticommunist policies and formed a number of leagues and parties, including the Georgian–American League, the Georgian National Union, and the American Council for Independent Georgia. The Georgian–American League published a newspaper, the Voice of Free Georgia, from 1953 to 1958, and the American Council for Independent Georgia published Our Path in 1953. Between 1955 and 1975, the broader and less politicized community was served by the newspaper Georgian Opinion (kartuli azri). In 1951, Georgians were awarded their own radio section on Voice of America, which still functions today. The Georgian Association in the U.S. which until the 1970s ran a cultural center known as the Georgian House, is the longest serving Georgian organization in the United States. It organizes annual celebrations on St. Nino’s Day (January 26) and independence day
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(May 26, which marks the Declaration of Independence of the first Georgian Republic in 1918). Two other charitable Georgian associations have been founded since 1991: the American Friends of Georgia (1994) and the Georgian Foundation in California. Both concentrate on humanitarian aid to fight tuberculosis, support orphanages, and distribute food packages for the poor and books for libraries. The Georgian community in the United States is gradually being linguistically assimilated. Exogamous marriage is common. There is no discrimination or “ghettoization” of Georgians. The strong sense of Georgian kinship and solidarity brings the scattered community together during Georgian national holidays. Georgian Americans are firm supporters of tradition and the family, which has helped the community to survive in the United States. The community has been rejuvenated by its country’s independence, the arrival of Georgian diplomats and students, the activity of new associations, and (for younger members) electronic forums.
went to the United States and 2% went to Canada. Since this immigration proceeded on a high level over the whole period, the history of German Americans and the history of the United States are closely interrelated. Major events and developments, such as the settling of the West and the rise of a multiethnic urban culture, are mirrored in their respective histories. This entry looks at that interaction.
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Further Readings
Papashvily, George and Helen Waite Papashvily. 1945. Anything Can Happen. New York: Harper. U.S. Census Bureau. 2000. Table FBP-1 [Foreign Born Population]: Profile of Selected Demographic and Social Characteristics. Available from http://www.census.gov/ population/www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html Wertsman, Vladimir. 1995. “Georgians in America.” Multicultural Review 4(4):28–53.
GERMAN AMERICANS Over the course of three and a half centuries, approximately 7 million Germans left their homes to seek better fortunes elsewhere, and although some of them went east into the Russian Empire and some journeyed to Australia, South Africa, and Latin America, the vast majority (more than 90%) aimed for North America; prior to World War I, approximately 90%
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The Colonial Period The period prior to and around the American Revolution, labeled by historians of German America as “before the Great Flood,” saw a number of religious dissenters following William Penn’s attractive offer of religious freedom and free land for resettlement. The group of “Krefelders,” with their leader Franz Daniel Pastorius, arrived in October 1683 to found what came to be known as Germantown. This group nicely provided historians with the material for a foundational myth of German America. In addition to these religiously motivated settlers, a number of Germans made use of the redemptioner or indentured servant system to have their passage paid for, to work it off over the subsequent couple of years, and then to seek opportunities for settlement. Protective legislation in favor of the redemptioners in
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push of deteriorating economic and social conditions, at first in southern and southwestern Germany. During the 1840s and 1850s, the migration fever had reached the middle regions of the country, including the eastern provinces of Mecklenburg. By the 1890s, people living in the northeastern agrarian lands voted with their feet against oppressive political conditions and for an opportunity to carve out a better life for their families. The demographic transition—that is, a higher birth rate and a lower infant death rate—in conjunction with crop failures, stifled industrial development, declining market value of proto-industrial (textile) German emigrants. This engraving in Harper’s Weekly from November 7, production, a resulting lack of employ1874, shows German emigrants embarking on a Hamburg steamer headed ment opportunities, the desire to preserve for New York. Upon arrival in the United States, these immigrants likely some independent secure economic status, moved to where land was available—first in Pennsylvania and New York and then west into Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and some good old Abendteuerlust—all of Missouri, and Kansas, and southwest to Texas and California. these contributed to the culture of emigration that spread in 19th-century Germany. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-2054. People who left Germany during the middle decades of the century had a some states, and (more so) the entrenchment of strong desire to own land, even if it meant working African American servitude in America, put an end to some time as a laborer in the city to earn the money this immigration strategy during the 1830s. Regarding needed to buy land. Thus, settlement occurred where the number of people of German-speaking origin (this land was available—first in Pennsylvania and New would include Swiss immigrants) who lived in the York and then moving west into Ohio, Michigan, colonies around the time of the American Revolution, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and new research and more refined calculating methods Kansas, and southwest to Texas and California. estimate that in 1776 the United States was home to Chain migration—motivated by the desire to live in 228.600 people of Swiss and German origin, approxhomogeneous communities based on religion and/or imately 11.5% of the White population. regional origin—influenced the settlement patterns of During the American Revolution, young German Germans in the Midwest. The wish to keep the land in men were pressed into military service to support the the family and to supply every son (and daughter) with British troops so their ruler could pay off some debt to a piece of land, as well as the tendency to marry within the British king. Some deserted to join the revolutionarthe ethnic (and religious) group, helped to maintain ies, some stayed and settled, and some returned home. ethnic identities. Having a critical number of people to All of them, however, helped to spread the word about support churches and parochial schools and to demand land and opportunities in the New World. It is through education in German added to the ethnic cohesion, lanthese troops that information about the New World disguage retention, and continuity of ethnic communities, seminated, it has been argued in German historiography. on the one hand. Adjusting to new farming forms and methods, producing what the market demanded, participating in local politics, and responding to the lure The Quest for Land of popular culture for the younger generations conFrom the 1830s onward, when Germans began to tributed to the “Americanization” process, on the other leave Europe in greater numbers, the pull of informahand. Both trends taken together influenced the culture tion about the United States was compounded by the of the Midwest.
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The Urban Experience Despite the explicit desire to own land—as a status symbol, as a guarantor of social and economic security, as an indicator of continuity and tradition—many Germans settled in cities, thereby participating in the creation of a vibrant ethnically diverse urban culture. New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland, Ann Arbor, Austin, New Orleans, and even San Francisco all housed sizable German ethnic communities. They imposed their distinctive ethnocultural understanding unto the urban landscape and negotiated for a multicultural recognition of their existence and contribution long before multiculturalism became the politically correct paradigm for analyzing immigrant incorporation. These urban German American communities, however, were never as homogeneous as their agrarian counterparts. Rather, they were divided by religion, regional origin, class, and gender. Looking at an ethnic community in transition in early 20thcentury Philadelphia, the categories of Catholic, Lutheran, working-class socialist, and middle-class secular are used to structure the analysis of German Americans and their conversion to “old stock.” This concept of religious diversity among Germans may be extended to include Jews as well as any variation of the Anabaptist faiths (Mennonites, Hutterites, and Amish). Early Jewish immigrants have long been subsumed under the umbrella of German-speaking immigrants, and this may often have been justified due to much interaction and cooperation. However, an independent development toward Jewish community life, in light of religious and spiritual discussion and growing demands for spiritual guidance and charity with incoming Eastern European Jewish immigrants, warrants in-depth and separate analysis. Germans from many different regional backgrounds, religious denominations, and class affiliations participated in the creation of Chicago’s city and cultural landscape. The pioneers arriving in the city, together with the Irish, built the Illinois Michigan Canal during the 1840s. They were soon to be followed by many other immigrants, equipped with a variety of useful skills in the building trades, as bakers and brewers; as cobblers, furniture makers, house movers, printers, and typesetters; as store owners, sales clerks, box makers, and domestic servants. The Germans established churches and parochial schools and spent their leisure time in any
number of associations, clubs, and lodges singing, exercising, or celebrating along with the festive German calendar—a carnival in February, picnics and excursions to an out-of-town beer garden in the spring and summer, exercise competitions in the fall, Christmas bazaars, and fancy charity balls in the winter. They also came together to organize local politics, sometimes along socialist party lines, or they voiced their grievances in the workplace and formed unions. From the 1860s to the 1890s, social, economic, and cultural conditions were able to support class-based and class-divided associational life. Working-class people with socialist leanings organized their leisure time mostly among themselves, competing for attention and public space with “bourgeois” Germans. The latter paraded the streets of Chicago to celebrate the founding of the German Reich, and the former mourned the defeat of the Paris Commune, with both events being interrelated and taking place in 1871. Although in the beer gardens they came together to enjoy beer and coffee or tea on a pleasant Sunday afternoon, the socialists most likely were listening to some uplifting and militant speeches naming and blaming the class enemy. The Haymarket Riot of 1886 in Chicago, with its confrontation between striking workers and police and its aftermath, is the most obvious and best example of the vibrancy of the two German cultures and their interaction with Chicago society. Seven of the eight imprisoned and accused anarchists were immigrants from Germany and active members of the Chicago labor movement. Four were hanged in 1887, and two were pardoned by Governor John P. Altgeld in 1893. Gender was another diversifier of culture. From the 1880s, a vibrant female public sphere emerged within the German American communities. Women began to organize in auxiliaries in support of the successful male choir or gymnastic group, but eventually they founded their own women’s groups to enjoy singing and exercising for girls. In addition, women initiated and funded any number of charity groups and activities, often in support of the community at large such as the old people’s home in Harlem near Chicago. Activities in support of these charity efforts brought together many elements of the German community and helped to sustain a sense of ethnic identity. Sometimes women would also meet in promotion of German culture in America and by doing so would venture into some modest feminist activities. German American women rarely supported suffrage
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endeavors, not necessarily because they opposed women voting but rather because the woman’s vote was too closely associated with temperance activities. In their rejection of prohibition, most German Americans united beyond class and gender. During the 1890s, things began to change. Although up until then most German Americans were securely ensconced in their “German” neighborhoods, reading their newspapers in German (there were 750 publications to choose from in 1900) and attending their respective church services, the sons and daughters became more interested in participating in the emerging consumer and popular culture and the older generation demanded more recognition for their cultural and political contribution to the urban scene. They began to become more active in preserving “Germandom” and started to organize on a national scale.
National Claims In 1901, the National German–American Alliance, originating in Philadelphia, was formed. At its height in 1907, it attracted a membership of 1.5 million. Although its aim was to speak for all Germans, it was clearly biased toward the urban Protestant middle class. Its goal was to promote the memory of the German American contribution to the development of the United States, to fight prohibition, and (from 1914 onward) to argue for U.S. neutrality. After some national moments of recognition by Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft (e.g., dedication of a Wilhelm von Steuben statue in 1910), the organization disbanded quickly in 1917 after the United States declared war on Germany. There is a general sense that German American culture finished being a relevant factor in the U.S. urban environment during the 1920s. German Americans, however, continued to have a sizable presence in urban consumer and popular culture, participating in the creation of an “old stock” identity, partly directed against the newcomers and partly in memory of old alliances. Charity efforts in support of the suffering Germany during the mid-1920s gave many German Americans a new respectable opportunity to take up public space and receive public attention. Thus, the paradigm—that World War I put an end to a noticeable German American presence—needs to be reconsidered in light of new scholarship.
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The Nazi Period, the War, and the Postwar Years The Nazi era and the war years of the 1930s and 1940s were marked by a significant migration of refugees from Germany combined with rather restrictive immigration policies that allowed only a select and lucky few to seek asylum in the United States. Whereas Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Hanns Eisler, and Bertolt Brecht enjoyed safe havens in Princeton, New Jersey, and in Hollywood, California, others were not admitted. For example, the Jewish passengers aboard the SS St. Louis were refused landing permits in 1939 and were required to return to Europe, with many of them ending up in concentration camps. With the end of World War II in May 1945, many people in Germany wanted nothing more than to emigrate as fast as possible. For those forced laborers, prisoners of war, and concentration camp survivors, a vast resettlement program was put into place and brought approximately 400,000 potential laborers and their families to the United States for resettlement. In addition, some immigrants were invited by the U.S. government, which thought that they might be helpful in facilitating its rocket program. Wernher von Braun and his team were “invited” to come in 1946, first to work in El Paso, Texas, and later to work and live with their families in Huntsville, Alabama. Next to those “distinguished” immigrants were approximately 779,000 “undistinguished” Germans who aimed for a new life in the United States and who received visas during the years 1946 to 1961. The social, cultural, and economic impact of German immigration during the postwar period, although numerically not insignificant, may be negligible in other respects. In 2005, approximately 9,200 people from Germany, a country estimated to have 82.3 million people in 2007, obtained legal residence in the United States. A shared cold war experience, the impact of U.S. culture on postwar Germany, and the long-standing historical and cultural ties between the two countries make transitions between them fairly easy. This can also be seen in the large number of ongoing academic transnational and transcultural exchanges and migrations between the two countries currently. The traffic almost goes unnoticed. Christiane Harzig See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Acculturation; Amish; Assimilation; Belize; Foreign Students; Holocaust; Hutterites; Immigration, U.S.; Jewish Americans; Mennonites
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Further Readings
Adam, Thomas, ed. 2005. Germany and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History. 3 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC–CLIO. Brinkmann, Tobias. 2002. Von der Gemeinde zur “Community”: Jüdische Einwanderer in Chicago, 1840–1900. Osnabrück, Germany: Universitätsverlag Rasch. Conzen, Kathleen N. 2003. Germans in Minnesota. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press. Freund, Alexander. 2004. Aufbrüche nach dem Zusammenbruch: Die deutsche NordamerikaAuswanderung nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Göttingen, Germany: V&R Unipress. Grabbe, Hans-Jürgen. 2001. Vor der großen Flut: Die europäische Migration in die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, 1783–1820. Stuttgart, Germany: Steiner. Harzig, Christiane. 1991. Familie, Arbeit, und weibliche Öffentlichkeit in einer Einwanderungsstadt: Deutschamerikanerinnen in Chicago um die Jahrhundertwende. St. Katharinen, Germany: Scripta Mercaturae. Holleuffer, Henriette von. 2001. Zwischen Fremde und Fremde: Displaced Persons in Australien, denn USA, und Kanada, 1946–1952. Göttingen, Germany: Rasch-Verlag. Kamphoefner, Walter D. 2006. Westfalen in der Neuen Welt: Eine Sozialgeschichte der Auswanderung im 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen, Germany: V&R Unipress. Kazal, Russell A. 2003. Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German-American Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Marschalck, Peter. 1973. Deutsche Überseewanderung in 19. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart, Germany: Klett. Pohlmann, Cornelia. 2002. Die Auswanderung aus dem Herzogtum Braunschweig im Kräftespiel staatlicher Einflußnahme und öffentlicher Resonanz 1720–1897. Stuttgart, Germany: Steiner.
GERRYMANDERING Gerrymandering is the drawing of electoral districts, many of which have a highly irregular shape, with the goal of achieving political purposes. At various times, gerrymandering has been used both to exclude and include racial minorities in the electoral processes. The term originates from districts drawn by Governor E. Gerry of Massachusetts early in U.S. history. Their shape was derisively seen as mimicking a salamander and, hence, was called a gerrymander. Gerry was successful in hurting the opposition. In the following
election in 1812, the Federalists won only eleven of forty seats in the legislature despite winning a majority of the votes in the state. This entry describes the practice of gerrymandering and its political impact.
How It Works Gerrymandering is made possible because elections are often held by district, and it is more likely to exist in electoral systems with single-member districts. The U.S. Constitution requires a census every 10 years for the purpose of apportioning seats in the House of Representatives but specifies only that they be elected “as directed by law.” During the 1800s, rules were made to elect members of the House of Representatives from districts. Following a disputed election in New Jersey in 1842, an act of Congress stated that districts must determine congressional seats, but Congress was vague on the specifics of how the rule would be enforced. To get an idea of how the drawing of lines might influence the outcome of elections, consider a square state. Party A is the majority party statewide, and most of its members are concentrated in the northern two-thirds of the state. Party B is the minority party statewide but holds a majority in the southern onethird of the state. If the districts are drawn from north to south, each district will be controlled by Party A. However, drawing the lines east to west will give Party A control of the southern districts. Three types of gerrymander generally are recognized, and each can affect minorities. In cracking, a significant minority population is spread over several districts to dilute its voting strength in any one district. In stacking, a large concentration of minority voters are combined with the White population to create districts with a White majority, effectively wasting the minority votes. The final type, packing, results in a minority seat, as a large number of minority voters are put in a district that already has many minorities. However, the result is that minority influence in neighboring districts is reduced or eliminated.
Gerrymandering and Race Before the Civil War, slaves could not vote and freed Blacks were often denied that right. Immediately after the war, African Americans won congressional seats in the South. Following the end of Reconstruction in 1876, however, African American representation diminished as a result of gerrymandering and other tactics such as
Gerrymandering
poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and intimidation. In North Carolina, the congressional lines were drawn to create a district that was overwhelmingly African American, thereby limiting the influence of Blacks in neighboring districts. George H. White, who represented this district, was the last African American of the post-Reconstruction era to hold a congressional seat; his last reelection was in 1898. Major racial gerrymandering cases have often reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In Colegrove v. Green (1946), the Court refused to intervene in a redistricting case in Iowa, arguing that redistricting was a “political thicket” that the courts should avoid. Courts eventually entered the political thicket. In Gomillon v. Lightfoot (1960), the Court looked at a redrawing of the city boundaries in Tuskegee, Alabama, that virtually took all of the power away from African Americans voters. The old rectangular boundaries were changed to a twenty-eight-sided figure so that no district had more than 5 of the state’s 400 African American voters. The Supreme Court struck down the new irregular city boundaries. In other cases, the lack of redistricting had an impact on minority voters. During the early 1900s, for example, some states that neither gained nor lost seats did not redraw district lines. With the increase in urbanization over time, some due to the migration of African Americans into cities, old district lines resulted in urban districts having more people than rural districts. The 1920 census was the first one showing more people living in urban areas than in rural areas. If lines were not redrawn by state legislatures, the effect was to give urban areas less influence than they would have had if the district lines were redrawn so that every district in the state had roughly the same population. By the early 1960s, Tennessee, one of those states with an increasing urban population, had not redrawn its congressional district lines since 1901. Although the state’s districts initially had roughly equal population, by the 1960s the urban population was underrepresented. In Baker v. Carr (1963), the Supreme Court ruled against the Tennessee district boundaries by interpreting the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment as saying that there should be “one man, one vote” for congressional elections. Congress had left the states to decide issues related to state and local elections, and the Supreme Court had a history of not making decisions on districts drawn for elections at the state and local levels. In Reynolds v. Sims (1964), however, the Court extended
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the “one man, one vote” principle to state elections. It interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to also apply to elections below the national level.
Race and Rules for Redistricting Additional principles for constructing congressional districts were generated in Wesberry v. Sanders (1964). The Supreme Court required “contiguity” and required districts to be “compact.” The first principle is that the district should be in one piece so as to avoid the situation where one part of the district is not connected with some other part. The notion of compactness is that all parts of the district should be close together. The ideal case, never seen in practice, is that districts are circles. There is no agreed-on measure for compactness, let alone a minimum standard for compactness, so it can be difficult to show whether or not this preferred characteristic has been satisfied. An additional principle is “continuity.” The idea is that districts should be similar over time so that constituents will be in the same district and will maintain familiarity with the community and their representative. A final criterion is that the district should be drawn consistent with maintaining communities of interest. With court decisions interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as stipulating “one person, one vote,” district lines drawn during the 1970s and after the 1980 census resulted in a substantial increase in the number of African Americans entering Congress as well as state and local offices. In the next change, the Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) decision, as well as the 1983 Voting Rights Act amendment, introduced rules for drawing lines to create majority–minority districts. Gingles required an affirmative answer to the following three questions for a majority–minority district to be created by state legislative action. Is the minority sufficiently large and geographically compact for a district? Is the minority politically cohesive? Does the White majority vote overwhelmingly as a bloc to enable it to usually defeat the minority’s preferred candidate at the polls? An interpretation of the Gingles test was the notion that if it were possible to create a majority–minority district under the Gingles test, it was proper to do so. The 19 990 Census
Another round of redistricting followed the 1990 census. Some of the resulting African American majority districts were clearly compact, most obviously
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in large urban regions. Three proposed majority– minority districts for congressional seats drew national attention, however, because it was difficult to say they were compact. The three districts were in Georgia, Louisiana, and North Carolina. The North Carolina district had the additional nuance that it could be considered contiguous only because part of it ran along an overpass that connected two pieces of the district. In Shaw v. Reno, the Supreme Court sent the North Carolina districting plan back to the state, ruling that drawing district lines solely for the purpose of creating a majority–minority seat, in absence of other considerations, was not constitutional. Therefore, district lines were redrawn. Republican strategists had hoped that the creation of majority–minority districts would result in the remaining districts in the state becoming more Republican. With the large 1994 Republican victory in the House of Representatives, there was concern that the Republican strategists were correct. Also, by the middle 1990s, areas that could easily be made into majority–minority districts were identified. This, along with the Mobile v. Bolen (1980) case in Alabama stating that it was necessary to show not only racial discrimination but also the intent to discriminate, set a much higher standard for successful challenges. There were few celebrated redistricting cases during the latter half of the decade. The 2000 Census
The reapportionment of congressional seats following the 2000 census continued a trend shifting seats from northern Frostbelt states to those in the southern Sunbelt. One case was of national interest. In Texas, the congressional lines drawn for the 2002 election resulted in seventeen Democrats and fifteen Republicans being sent to the House of Representatives. Lines were redrawn by a Republican state house for the 2004 elections, this time favoring Republicans and resulting in the election of eleven Democrats and twenty-one Republicans to the House of Representatives, an increase of six Republicans. In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional to redraw lines a second time after a decennial census but that the lines drawn in Texas were not constitutional because a Hispanic population had been absorbed into another district, thereby reducing Hispanic influence. Walter W. Hill
See also Discrimination; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Pluralism; Voting Rights
Further Readings
Grofman, Bernard. 1990. Political Gerrymandering and the Courts. New York: Agathon. Guinier, Lani. 1994. The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy. New York: Free Press.
GHETTO At one time or another, most underprivileged racial/ ethnic or religious communities in the United States have been described as a “ghetto.” These povertystricken communities, in which minorities are typically overrepresented, are deemed “bad neighborhoods” because they suffer disproportionately from social problems such as crime, family disruption, and reliance on government assistance. The use of this loaded term is contextually specific, describing the poorest-of-thepoor Little Italys, shtetls, and Chinatowns at particular periods across the U.S. social landscape. This is mainly because a minority group’s association with the ghetto shifts as it collectively experiences upward mobility. In other words, as time passes, what was once a predominantly poor Irish neighborhood slowly becomes a poor Dominican barrio. The term ghetto was originally intended as an antiSemitic slur describing segregated Jewish communities across Europe during the Middle Ages. The subordination and expulsion of Jews from mainstream society was initially fueled by the spread of Christianity. During the 20th century, the Nazi party reinvigorated anti-Semitism, and many Jews fleeing the Nazi Holocaust were able to escape to the United States. Although the word ghetto failed to take root there as a derogatory statement describing Jewish American communities, it has come to denote segregated subordinate communities inhabited by poor Blacks and Hispanics in the United States. Across time periods and nations, the establishment of ghettos has been driven largely by discrimination and intolerance. Although these factors influenced the emergence of the U.S. ghetto, they were compounded by the rise of the industrial economy, the arrival of millions of minorities and immigrants to
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U.S. cities, and metropolitan expansion. Accordingly, these dynamics further complicate our understanding of the U.S. ghetto. This entry looks at the contemporary debate over the creation and sustenance of the U.S. ghetto. It generally addresses (a) the cultural/ attitudinal adaptation to inequality, (b) the debate over race versus social class, and (c) policy prescriptions for alleviating social problems in these distressed communities.
The Cultural/Attitudinal Adaptation to Inequality Ghetto communities have many social problems. However, scholars continue to debate the source—or key cause—of these problems. Is the individual solely to blame for his or her predicament? Or should society accept at least some responsibility for the downtrodden? Survey research has shown that most U.S. residents “blame the individual” for his or her social circumstances. In this regard, they tend to emphasize the choices people make, as well as people’s moral character, in explaining why some people achieve their goals while others fall short. This dominant ideology of American individualism clearly explains why the culture of poverty thesis has remained influential. The culture of poverty theory, first developed by Oscar Lewis, contends that the prolonged experience of poverty has deficits beyond a lack of disposable income. Rather, protracted poverty itself becomes a cultural obstacle to socioeconomic success. This is because destitution gives rise to a pathological set of attitudes and values that block an individual’s path to upward mobility. This cultural adaptation to inequality is subsequently instilled in future generations who, like those before them, are likely to grow up in singleparent households, to experience sex at an early age, to lack impulse control, and to be unable to delay gratification or secure long-term employment. In short, this theory asserts that the ghetto was created and sustained by a cycle of intergenerational poverty rooted in defective pathology and culture. During recent years, even the most liberal social scientists have been forced to confront these oppositional dimensions of ghetto life. For example, an important recent ethnographic study elucidates the “code of the street.” This research suggests that alienated young males in the inner city have developed an alternative status system revolving around “violence and respect.” Young people residing in these
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neighborhoods describe kids who are seeking to obtain rewards in mainstream society (e.g., good grades, a college education, a good job) as being raised in “decent families.” Conversely, those youth with an oppositional identity, who see themselves as being on the fringes of society, describe themselves as being from “street families.” It is important to note that although many researchers take issue with the implications of pathologically based theory and research, scholars generally no longer challenge the existence of ghetto problems. Meaningfully, however, rather than place the locus solely on ghetto inhabitants, most researchers emphasize the structural roots of ghetto pathology and culture such as residential segregation and unemployment. Although sociologists in particular are not necessarily in agreement about how people adapt to inequality, they nonetheless can be sorted into two competing camps: those who accentuate factors relating to race versus those who emphasize economic factors.
The Debate Over Race Versus Social Class The contemporary debate over race versus social class addresses the sources and persistence of the U.S. ghetto. In particular, one group of scholars asserts that White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), the dominant racial group in U.S. society, purposely use racist tactics to maintain their hegemony. Accordingly, an important means of accomplishing this goal is to residentially segregate Blacks and Hispanics into declining urban areas. On the other hand, another set of thinkers contends that Blacks and Hispanics remain in the ghetto due to structural changes in the U.S. economy. More specifically, these researchers argue that the decline of the manufacturing sector has left many inner-city minorities with few viable prospects for upward social mobility. Race-based theorists assert that the U.S. ghetto was constructed through a series of intentional decisions by Whites aimed at relegating minorities, Blacks in particular, to debilitating residential areas. Historical studies have shown that Whites have used racial violence, binding legal documents, and other strategic means of preventing Blacks from moving into predominantly White communities. More contemporary research has shown that Whites have undertaken a range of methods to preserve race-based residential
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inequities, including uneven development (e.g., the improvement of a particular urban area at the expense of another), redlining (e.g., discrimination in mortgage and business lending and in insurance), and the inaccessibility of available funds for community reinvestment. For many scholars, the results of these studies (as well as many others) underscore that the U.S. ghetto was deliberately constructed and conserved for distinctly racial reasons. Class-based theorists, on the other hand, assert that deindustrialization and shifting opportunity structures explain the creation and sustenance of the ghetto. In this vein, the dynamics of joblessness—not racial antagonisms—take precedence in clarifying why Blacks and Hispanics reside disproportionately in declining urban areas. According to these thinkers, during previous stages of the manufacturing sector, minorities were able to access gainful employment in at least semiskilled and low-level managerial occupations. Since the mid-1960s, however, the shift toward the postindustrial economy required that the vast majority of these factory jobs either be phased out or replaced with low-wage service sector employment or high-status white-collar occupations. As with middleclass Whites, those minorities with a college education and/or specialized knowledge were insulated from the macroeconomic shift. Conversely, those who were unable to keep pace with societal changes experienced downward mobility. For many scholars, the results of these studies confirm that class has become more important than race in structuring opportunity for minorities. In particular, the growing socioeconomic polarization between poor and middle-class members of racial/ethnic groups, as well as the intergenerational transmission of middleclass status onto succeeding generations of minority families, underscores the importance of class position—not racism—as the source of the U.S. ghetto.
Policy Prescriptions for the Ghetto Social scientists and policymakers alike are concerned with improving living conditions and opportunities for ghetto residents. Nevertheless, liberal, moderate, and conservative pundits remain in disagreement about how to go about dismantling the U.S. ghetto. Some of the more popular policy prescriptions include the enforcement of federal fair housing legislation and the prosecution of discriminatory practices in housing markets such as redlining and unfair lending practices.
Some less popular strategies include community reinvestment through inner-city “enterprise zones” and gentrification of ghetto areas with special provisions for neighborhood residents to return following area restoration. Jason Eugene Shelton See also African Americans; American Apartheid; Barrio; Black Metropolis; Code of the Street; Community Empowerment; Culture of Poverty; Declining Significance of Race, The; East Harlem; Harlem; Homelessness; Immigrant Communities; Segregation
Further Readings
Anderson, Elijah. 1999. Code of the Street. New York: Norton. Chávez, Linda. 1991. Out of the Barrio. New York: Basic Books. Lewis, Oscar. 1965. La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York. New York: Random House. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underlass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
GLASS CEILING The concept of the glass ceiling originated during the middle 1980s to describe the invisible and artificial barriers that have kept women from promotion to upper management and other higher leadership positions in the business world. Most who support the idea that a glass ceiling exists contend that the disadvantages worsen the higher on the corporate ladder women ascend. The barriers are hierarchical in nature and are seemingly impenetrable. This definition originally addressed the difficulties of women to advance but soon evolved to include both male and female racial/ethnic minorities. Women and minorities are significantly represented within the workforce as a whole and even at middle levels of management, but their numbers in senior executive positions remain quite small. Although the 20th century saw many improvements for women and minorities in the business world, advocates for equal rights claim that despite increasing numbers of women and minorities
Glass Ceiling
Latina executive. Although the 20th century saw many improvements for women and minorities in the business world, advocates for equal rights claim that there is still a long way to go. Many upwardly mobile women and men of color face unseen and unspoken barriers as they advance to the upper reaches of management. Source: iStockphoto.
in top leadership roles in business, there is still a long way to go. There is a belief that both women and minorities continue to face barriers in advancement to positions of leadership in corporations in spite of their much higher overall representation in certain fields and industries. This entry looks at the concept and its social manifestations.
History of a Concept The phrase glass ceiling was first used in 1984 in an Adweek profile of Gay Bryant, who at the time was the editor of Working Woman magazine. In that profile, she was quoted as saying, “Women have reached a certain point—I call it the glass ceiling . . . in the top of middle management and they’re stopping and getting stuck.” In 1985, the national chairwoman of the National Organization for Women (NOW) used the phrase in an interview with United Press International, stating that without the women’s movement, women would have no chance of moving beyond the glass ceiling. The very next year, in the March 24, 1986, edition of the Wall Street Journal, the term was used by both Carol Hymowitz and Timothy Schellhardt (who are frequently credited with first using the term
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in the media) in their article about the challenges faced by women in the business world. In a discussion of ascending the corporate ladder, the word ceiling implies that there is a limit to how far someone can climb before he or she bumps up against a barrier of some kind. To say that the ceiling is glass suggests that, although it is very real, it is transparent and not obvious to the casual observer. It also implies that what is on the other side is both visible yet inaccessible to those facing it. The term glass ceiling is most often applied in business situations where women or minorities believe, either accurately or not, that White men are deeply entrenched in the upper echelons of power and that it is nearly impossible for the women or minorities to break through to that level. The Department of Labor took the concept seriously in 1991 when it addressed the problem formally, stating that a glass ceiling is made up of “artificial barriers based on attitudinal or organizational bias that prevent qualified individuals from advancing upward in their organization into management-level positions.” Senator Robert Dole introduced the Glass Ceiling Act as part of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1991. President George H. W. Bush signed the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and established a bipartisan Glass Ceiling Commission composed of twenty-one members. The commission was tasked with forming recommendations on the issue for the president and leaders in the corporate world. In 1991, Secretary of Labor Lynn Martin completed the Glass Ceiling Initiative Report, which confirmed the existence of the invisible artificial barriers that blocked women and minorities from advancing up the corporate ladder to management- and executivelevel positions. Robert Reich, chairperson of the Glass Ceiling Commission, stated that this “ceiling” was a refutation of social justice for a large portion of the population. He also saw it as a problem that has negatively affected American business by hindering some of the most qualified applicants from important positions of power simply because of their race or gender. The report revealed that although women made up nearly 46% of the total workforce at the time and earned more than half of all master’s degrees, 95% of senior-level managers were men and the earnings of female managers accounted for less than 70% of their male manager counterparts. During the decade since the commission’s report, things have improved somewhat in that women managers now earn an average of 72% of their male colleagues’ salaries.
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Male and female minorities were less well represented in management. After the Civil Rights Act of 1954 and the introduction of affirmative action during the mid-1960s, legal barriers to their hiring and promotion were removed, yet their representation in the higher echelons of business was a fraction of their overall presence in the labor force. Some see this as proof of the existence of a split labor market in which racial/ethnic minorities receive lower remuneration than do Whites and are unable to get even entry-level positions in industries that have been long dominated by Whites, White males in particular. In 1990, the proportion of minorities in top management positions was less than 1%, and their earnings lagged far behind even those of their White female colleagues. Although most scholars of inequality agree that the concept of the glass ceiling refers to the lack of access to the most highly paid corporate positions, many others use this term to describe gender or race discrimination at all levels of the business world. This concept has been adapted to address barriers to women in specific industries such as the stained glass ceiling to describe the difficulty women have had in ascending to the highest levels of the ministry, the grass ceiling when examining the dearth of women in agriculture-related industries, and the political glass ceiling that bemoans the slow pace of women’s advances in the political realm. In the world of academia, the combined effects of a glass ceiling and a maternal wall are thought to interact to hinder women’s advancement in the ivory tower because of choices made in relation to child-bearing and childrearing responsibilities. Another variation is the glass cliff, which refers to a woman in a position that may put her in the precarious position of professional disaster if she fails. Whereas the aforementioned concepts refer to the difficulties that women and minorities face in making inroads into the higher echelons of male-dominated industries, another concept, the glass elevator or escalator, refers to the relative ease and rapid advancement that men have in achieving promotions to management in female-dominated industries such as nursing and teaching.
Cracking the Glass Ceiling Although many continue to insist that the glass ceiling is a real barrier for women and minorities in accessing male-dominated positions in business, others challenge that assertion. They say that the glass ceiling
continues to exist primarily because of choices made by women regarding the time they spend on their families that, in the end, limits the time they need to advance in their careers. The cumulative effect of time off for child bearing and child rearing is blamed for women facing lower wages and delayed advancement to the highest positions. Contrary to claims of continuing inequality or discrimination, critics of the glass ceiling concept place the blame for the underrepresentation of women in particular, and of minorities by association, on the individuals themselves and on considerations other than structural or institutional inequality. Nevertheless, industries such as the investment world have suffered criticism about past sexism, with legal judgments levied against Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch for practices deemed to be discriminatory. Recently, the investment industry has made inroads into the recruitment and training of women for top positions in their firms to address their past misdeeds. Changes are slow, however; although women currently represent 33% of the best in the bank analyst classes of business schools, only 25% of newly hired associates in this same industry are women. Only 14% of the top executives in the banking industry are women, and in 2005 one report showed that women make 77 cents for every dollar men make. However, many say that improvement, no matter how small, shows that there are cracks developing in the glass ceiling.
Landmarks in Cracking the Glass Ceiling In 2004, it was estimated that in the United States, women earned 77 cents for every dollar men earn. Although this is a slight increase from 74 cents during the mid-1990s and is up from 68 cents during the late 1980s, these numbers remain troubling to many proponents of equal rights and equal opportunities. Women and minorities are making inroads into higher echelons of the business world, but their salaries still lag behind those of their male counterparts. Although the overall picture remains discouraging, there are clear examples of individuals who have beaten the odds and made the glass ceiling seem permeable. In 1962, Harvey C. Russell became the first Black vice president of a Fortune 500 company, PepsiCo. During this very volatile time in U.S. history, the promotion of an African American was very controversial, prompting the Ku Klux Klan to attempt to
Globalization
organize a boycott using handbills informing customers that buying Pepsi products would make Black people rich. PepsiCo has continued to be instrumental in lowering the barriers throughout its history by featuring minorities in their advertising and by not hindering their advancement up the corporate ladder. A recent example was the hiring of Indra Nooyi, the eleventh woman to ascend to the top leadership position in a Fortune 500 company. Although women in upper management are becoming more visible, they still account for less than 17% of all corporate officer jobs, with women of color accounting for less than 2% of that number. Some notable examples of those pioneers are Carleton Fiorina, who in 1999 became the first female chief executive officer (CEO) of a Fortune 500 company, Hewlett–Packard. Her tenure ended amid controversy in 2006, but her appointment seemed to widen the crack in the glass ceiling that had kept women from the top jobs. Just during the past couple of years, Irene Rosenfeld took over the helm of Kraft Foods and Patricia Woertz became CEO of Archer–Daniels– Midland. Consistently at the top of the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans are those who have moved beyond the barriers whether they be in place due to gender or race. Oprah Winfrey is a self-made success story who not only has moved beyond the glass ceiling of gender and race but also has taken countless others with her. Although women and minorities are still struggling for parity among their primarily White male counterparts, there are definitely examples that challenge the idea that these discriminatory practices are enmeshed in corporate culture. Karen S. Boyd See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; African Americans; Biomedicine, African Americans and; Black Enterprise; Feminism, Black; Feminism, Latina; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Labor Market Segmentation; Science Faculties, Women of Color on; Social Inequality; Social Mobility; Split Labor Market
Further Readings
Blau, Francine D., Mary C. Brinton, and David Grusky, eds. 2006. The Declining Significance of Gender. New York: Russell Sage. Federal Glass Ceiling Commission. 1995. Good for Business: Making Full Use of the Nation’s Resources. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
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Hymowitz, Carol and Timothy D. Schellhardt. 1986. “The Glass Ceiling: Why Women Can’t Seem to Break the Invisible Barrier That Blocks Them from the Top Jobs.” The Wall Street Journal., March 24, 1. Maume, David J. 2004. “Is the Glass Ceiling a Unique Form of Inequality? Evidence from a Random-Effects Model of Managerial Attainment.” Work and Occupations 31:250–274.
GLOBALIZATION Defining globalization is difficult. The term has been used both to characterize the development of a globally integrated network of business, trade, science, technology, politics, culture, and everyday life and to describe the results of these processes—a universal awareness and understanding of global relations. Globalization is multidimensional, developing both at the interpersonal level and among nation-states and multinational associations. It builds on existing crossborder ethnic ties and has facilitated the creation of new ties on the basis of ethnic or national bonds. Increasingly, globalization has led to a “compression” of the world. As political boundaries become less relevant, information, goods, services, capital, ideologies, media, and even individuals move more freely across them. Globalization is a historical process that began with trade and migration in the distant past but has recently accelerated as a result of the international spread of capitalism, rationalism, industrial production, and economic liberalism. In this entry, then, the term globalization is used to refer to the ongoing growth of interconnections and interdependencies in economics, politics, and culture in which social ties across boundaries have become more regularized and routine.
History of Globalization Many historians argue that globalization processes have been part of human history since early bands became nomadic. International trade and commerce, migrations, and infusion of cultures from other lands have occurred throughout this history. However, social change in Europe during the 1600s led to the rise of capitalism and, in turn, to the global dominance of European empires by the mid-1800s. During the late 1900s, rapid advances in communication and transportation increased the pace of globalization.
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Early Tra ade and Empires
Trade between city-states and ancient empires was commonplace, albeit geographically limited. During the Early Bronze Age (ca. 3500–2000 BC), the Akkadian Empire dominated Mesopotamia (parts of modern Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran) and engaged in regional trade with nations around the Persian Gulf. Much later, the Mongolian Empire (1206–1405) became the largest contiguous empire in human history. Beginning under Timuchin, or Genghis Khan, and then under later Khans (rulers), the Mongolians unified China and much of Central Asia, extending their empire westward to Europe and southward to the Middle East. They established intercontinental trade routes, which spread cultural influences, goods, and technologies and developed new ties among conquered nations. Legacie es of th he Age of Enlighte enment
Most scholars of modern globalization, however, see its roots in the expansion of European power through colonization during the 16th century and in ideological revolutions during the Ages of Reason and Enlightenment (17th and 18th centuries). European colonization of the Americas, Africa, and Asia generated global ties among economic markets and helped European cities rise to be capitals of global empires. A period of increased international migration and exchange ensued. Economic, political, and religious conflicts among European power centers eventually led to a series of wars and later to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which established the fundamental ideologies of the modern nation-state—sovereignty and the right of political self-determination, equality between states, and nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states. These principles became the building blocks of modern nations and international relations and remain integral elements of today’s political globalization. Another important element in the development of globalization stemmed from the Enlightenment—the idea of rationality. Enlightenment philosophers contended that empirical observation and systematic thinking could be applied to social, political, and economic activities to guide optimal decision making. It was proposed that complex systems, such as societies, could be reduced to their fundamental elements and, thus, be better understood. Reductionism and rationality influenced the development of capitalism and scientific
positivism and are central aspects of modern economic globalization. Glob bal Empires
International commerce and trade increased slowly but steadily between 1600 and the late 1800s, due largely to the expansion of merchant capitalism and the establishment of the European global empires. These empires led to the development of interconnected and interdependent systems of trade in goods and peoples. Indentured servants from Europe and Africa were transported to the New World, helping to establish the diverse populace found there today. The African slave trade was an early example of the emerging complex global economy. Slaves, bought from West Africa with Indian textiles, were exchanged for Caribbean sugar and North American cotton and tobacco. These products were then transported to consumers in Europe. Although clearly no longer a part of the global economy, this global trade circuit required complex system of exchange and finance. During the 1800s, the British Empire became the largest of the European empires, holding more than a quarter of the world’s population and land mass. The success of the British Empire may be attributed, in part, to improved transportation technologies, continued economic dominance of former colonies through the Commonwealth, industrialization, and the development of a global marketplace. In particular, the principles of laissez-faire economics, which argued for free market conditions and opposed government intervention, tariffs, and taxation, favored economic globalization. Countries specialized in the production of particular goods, raw materials, or labor skills. The removal of barriers to global trade, increased international migration, reduced tariffs, and reduced transportation costs, attributable to improved technologies such as steamships, resulted in the rapid growth of the interconnection among countries. The 20th h Centu ury y
The early 20th century saw a decline in the global ties of the previous century. Protectionist trade practices, international economic recession, and two world wars temporarily slowed globalization. It was not until after World War II that economic relations and technological developments in communications and transportation regained momentum. Much of the postwar increase in economic and political connections
Globalization
has been attributed to the UN Monetary and Financial Conference meeting at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. The meeting established several international economic organizations to encourage rebuilding Europe’s infrastructure (e.g., the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development [part of the World Bank]), regularized trade through fixed exchange rates (i.e., the International Monetary Fund), and reduced tariffs and other trade barriers (i.e., the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [which became the World Trade Organization in 1995]). These organizations have arguably been successful in expanding capitalism and the laissez-faire economic principles of the 1800s to most of the world. The Postiindustria al Perio od
The past 40 years have been characterized by ever accelerating growth in international travel, communications, commerce, global governance, and the like. This period, referred to as the Postindustrial Period, has also seen exponential increases in communications, computing, and related technologies as well as a rise of global governance. The increasing number of nation-states, the growing role of the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations, the growing dominance of transnational corporations, the development of buyer-driven commodity chains, and the influence of international nongovernmental organizations all have played important parts in political and economic globalization. Cultural globalization has been accelerated by consolidation of media outlets into an international oligopoly centered in Europe and the United States. The arrival of a global communications network based on the telephone, the Internet, satellites, and other technologies makes possible close interpersonal ties regardless of geographic location. However, there has also been a significant cultural backlash against “Westernization” in many countries. Globalization, while tangibly raising living standards and improving health and education for many, has also generated extreme economic and social imbalances and increased disparities of wealth and power. The following sections describe today’s economic, political, and cultural globalization and summarize the major issues that evoke antiglobalization movements.
Economic Globalization Neoliberal laissez-faire economic ideologies favoring free trade, free circulation of capital, and freedom to
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invest anywhere have encouraged the growth of a complex international system of economic interdependence that transcends national borders. Linkages between producer nations and consumer nations have created a single division of labor within a world market with more than 2.5 billion workers. Production is divided between countries with higher skill/higher cost labor and those with lower skill/lower cost labor markets. These labor characteristics are closely associated with global stratification in which northern countries use their relative market advantage and advanced technologies to maximize profit through low-cost production and natural resource extraction in the global South. As countries are pitted against each other in the global division of labor, they have increasingly relied on the importation of foreign workers to fill the positions that are the most “dangerous, dirty, and difficult.” For example, guest workers are imported from the Philippines to work in Japanese and German electronics factories in Taiwan, they come from Sri Lanka to be employed as housemaids and servants for Saudi Arabian families, and they come from Croatia to work in Italian shipyards. • Transnational Corporations. Transnational corporations (TNCs), firms or conglomerates that operate in more than one country, play an influential role in economic globalization. They have benefited greatly from the wage gap between high-income consumer nations and low-income producing nations by relocating production to the latter. Their enormous wealth lets them influence global relations, generate public support, liberalize trade and tariff agreements, limit costly labor and environmental standards, and influence local politicians in many countries. Profits for TNCs have risen at a rate above the increase in the world’s gross product. Gross sales of the largest TNCs rival the gross domestic profit of many countries. • Global Commodity Chains. Production in the global economy has changed dramatically from the early days of international trade when finished products, agricultural goods, and natural resources such as iron, timber, and oil dominated international trade. During the industrial period of the mid-20th century, most trade was keyed to manufacturing needs. Natural resources were shipped from low-income countries in the global South to the industrialized North. This “producer-driven” model is less characteristic of today’s postindustrial global division of labor. In today’s world economy, production begins with research and
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development of products for the consumer market, which is carried out largely in the North. Manufacturing is then contracted to factories and producers in lowcost labor markets, primarily in developing countries, which may subcontract particularly labor-intensive tasks to even less developed nations. This “buyerdriven” commodity chain maximizes profits by reducing production costs to a minimum. Companies in high-income countries not only save on the cost of labor but also do not need to invest capital in construction or retooling of factories. • Export Processing Zones. To encourage participation in global commodity chains, many countries have created export processing zones (EPZs), where factories may import raw materials and produce export goods without tariffs. This further reduces costs and increases profits. According to the UN International Labour Organization (ILO), in 2006 there were 5,174 EPZs in 116 countries employing nearly 42 million people—roughly a fifth of the global workforce. The majority of those employed in the EPZs are in China, Bangladesh, and maquiladoras (export assembly plants) along the U.S.–Mexican border. Recent technological advances in satellites and international telecommunications are now allowing EPZs to treat information as an exportable commodity, supplying labor to staff call centers and “help desk” computer technical support, tax preparation and accounting, medical transcription, and the like. • Development and Structural Adjustment Policies. Stimulating development in low-income countries has been a major issue in economic globalization. Loans to improve infrastructure and encourage economic growth have been provided by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. However, due to mounting debt and default on loans during the 1970s and 1980s, structural adjustment policies (SAPs) have been imposed on debtor nations. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are dominated by wealthy nations because votes are allotted on the basis of the funds a country provides. Hence, a few highincome countries are able to dictate lending conditions for the developing countries. The latter must agree to incorporate liberal economic principles of reduced governmental spending, privatization of state-owned industries, reduction in tariffs, and encouragement of foreign investment. Other adjustment policies have included currency devaluation, elimination of government subsidies to local industry,
and abolition of minimum wages. The impact of these “austerity measures” has been felt disproportionately by women and the poor. Although resulting in increased profits for TNCs, little if any additional net gain has been generated for low-income countries as new government revenues have gone to pay debts.
Political Globalization Political globalization has resulted in a complex system of world governance. Nation-states, the primary actors in this system, engage in diplomatic relations partly in the context of regional and global intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Nation-states and IGOs consult with and are lobbied by TNCs and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). NGOs in particular have distinct interactions with IGOs, such as the United Nations, where they play an advisory role and also take on activities such as relief, environmental protection, and protection of human rights. • Nation-States and Intergovernmental Organizations. Nation-states engage in international relations to establish trade, maintain boundaries, enforce rules, settle disputes, manage migration, and the like. Most of these tasks were historically accomplished through negotiations among representatives of two or more states. During the past two centuries, however, nationstates have formed large IGOs that are now responsible for many of these tasks. To maintain the sovereignty of nation-states, IGOs operate on principles of intergovernmentalism requiring unanimity among their members before agreements can be finalized. Some IGOs do, however, incorporate elements of supranationalism in which majority rule may force memberstates to implement IGO decisions or leave the organization. IGOs may be regional (e.g., European Union) or global (e.g., World Trade Organization). As the number of IGOs has grown and their membership has expanded to include many new nation-states, the structure and organizational characteristics of nationstates have become more similar. This growing isomorphism implies that a normative process, affecting new nation-states, is occurring on a global scale. • Nongovernmental Organizations. NGOs are also important actors in the global political system. These nonprofit, voluntary associations often promote universal norms such as human rights. They lack direct influence over policymaking because they have
Globalization
no vote in IGO decisions, but they have significant influence via lobbying. According to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), 2,719 organizations have obtained “consultative” status. Nearly 2,000 of these were formed between 1995 and 2005. Like more recently formed nation-states, there is a great deal of isomorphism in the structure of NGOs. To become eligible for consultative status with the United Nations, for example, an NGO must have a constitution, mechanisms of accountability, and democratic and transparent decision-making processes. In addition to lobbying and playing advisory roles, NGOs conduct research, monitor TNCs and nationstates, and undertake humanitarian relief, emergency services, environmental cleanup, reconstruction, and development. • The End of the Nation-State. Arguably, the power of the nation-state is waning. Although still the major actors in international relations and sovereign within their own territories, countries are increasingly divesting themselves of responsibility for their citizens’ welfare. TNCs are taking on former state responsibilities through privatization and corporatization by profiting from providing public goods such as water, health care, agricultural products, and education. At the same time, the dominant corporations in the global economy are using their wealth to gain power by influencing political and social institutions. NGOs, in the roles of both international monitors and providers of relief services, have likewise taken over former state responsibilities, and some claim that IGOs aspire to become supranational regional or global governments with authority over states in a federalist political system.
Cultural Globalization The ubiquity of chains such as McDonald’s and Starbucks, the worldwide recognition of Mickey Mouse and Pokémon, and the fact that Baywatch has been broadcast in 148 countries in 32 languages all speak to the concept of globalization of popular culture. This worldwide cultural homogenization is often seen as evidence of cultural imperialism and a result of hegemonic control of media and communication technologies by high-income countries of the North. Increased cultural contact during the past few decades has promoted the conspicuous consumption of fashionable products in the developing world and the
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fetishism of imported goods in countries of the global North. On the other hand, a counterargument can be made for increasing heterogeneity with the emergence of new hybrid forms of culture that combine elements from the traditions and customs of multiple peoples and, thus, produce new forms of cultural expression. Cultu ura al Imperialism m and Gre eaterr Homogeneity y
Cultural imperialism occurs when the traditions and way of life of a group of people, whether an ethnic minority or an entire nation, are displaced by those of another. This may be a conscious process in which a dominant group intentionally suppresses another culture by suppressing its language, music, religion, symbols, or other practices. More often, however, it results from global market capitalism’s drive to increase profits through rationality, homogeneity, and parsimony. • Linguae Francae and Loss of Languages. The loss of more than 10,000 languages since the beginning of the 17th century is one example of ongoing standardization and homogenization. As global commerce increased and the influence of European empires rose, Spanish, French, German, and English displaced local languages and became the linguae francae of diplomacy and trade. Other common international languages have included Mandarin Chinese in Asia, Russian in Central and Eastern Europe, Portuguese and Swahili in parts of Africa, and Arabic in the Middle East and North Africa. By the early 1900s, French was the official language of 41 countries and numerous intergovernmental organizations. Recently, English has become the de facto language of global trade, diplomacy, law, medicine, and technology, although the United Nations recognizes Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish as official languages. • Media Influence and Media Oligopolies. The predominance of northern media products—films, television shows, music, news, and advertising— throughout the world, together with the ownership of many of the communication networks, satellites, production companies, news organizations, and telecommunications providers, has ensured a proliferation of Western views and cultural values. Many see global communications as an oligopoly—a market dominated by a few. During the 1980s and 1990s, international
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media production and distribution became consolidated into a few major media groups based in Europe, the United States, and Japan. These media groups have the ability to socialize, distract, politicize, inform, and mislead individuals around the world. Indeed, in 1980 pressure from developing countries, which felt that their local media were being overrun by Western powers, led the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to commission a study of how to make global media less hegemonic. The report found that media concentration created unequal access to information and the tools of communication. It recommended strategies for more balanced access to media and defense of local sources of information. In late 2005, the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions became the first international treaty to protect movies, music, and “other cultural treasures.” The United States and Israel were the only two dissenters. At the time of this writing, fifteen states had ratified the agreement. “G Glocalizatio on” and Hybrid dism m
Whereas many view cultural globalization as a process of obliterating traditional cultures, others question the idea of cultural authenticity altogether. Globalization has been under way for centuries, so all existing cultures are products of appropriation and borrowing from one another. The term glocalization, originally a marketing concept of adapting goods to a local culture, has been used to describe the phenomenon of the selection of some cultural influences and rejection of others when disparate societies encounter one another. New forms of art, music, theater, food, and other cultural products have resulted.
Antiglobalization Movements Globalization has been blamed for many social problems of the modern world, and many have criticized standardization, corporatization, and Westernization that accompany economic, political, and cultural globalization. Antiglobalization is the term applied to a “movement of movements” that can include traditionalists, nationalists, protectionists, and isolationists as well as environmentalists, internationalists, supranationalists, and social anarchists. In general, antiglobalization movements may be broken down into two categories: particularists and universalists. Universalists are concerned most with concepts and issues that are
said to be universal in appeal. These issues transcend societies and include universal human rights, environmental protection, equality for women, eradication of poverty, and reduction of disparities in per capita incomes. Particularism emphasizes protection of one’s own group. It calls for greater autonomy, maintenance of traditional values and languages, and the rejection of “foreignness.” Stephen J. Sills See also Colonialism; Cosmopolitanism; Domestic Work; Environmental Justice; Global Perspective; Immigration and Race; Maquiladoras; Marginalization; Slavery; Zapatista Rebellion Further Readings
Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Public Culture 2(2):1–24. Barber, Benjamin. 1996. Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World. New York: Ballantine Books. Eitzen, D. Stanley and Maxine Baca Zinn. 2006. Globalization: The Transformation of Social Worlds. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. Filmer, Deon. 1995. “Estimating the World at Work.” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 1488. Harms, Robert. 2002. The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade. New York: Basic Books. Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. New York: Touchstone Books. Lechner, Frank and John Boli, eds. 2004. The Globalization Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. 2003. Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Parenti, Michael. 1995. Against Empire. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books. Sassen, Saskia. 1999. Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money. New York: New Press. Steger, Manfred B. 2003. Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE Historically, the concepts of race and ethnicity have been used in different ways by various societies to establish boundaries between groups. The major significance of both race and ethnicity has been economic, political, and social. Recently, the accelerated
Global Perspective
pace of globalization has been the catalyst for increases in racial/ethnic mobility, diversity, and heterogeneity in many nations; consequently, the importance of both race and ethnicity has increased worldwide. Yet there remains a lack of consensus— within nations as well as across nations—on the definitions of race and ethnicity. Using a sociohistorical perspective, this entry examines the different ways in which race and ethnicity have been conceptualized and the significance of those differences.
A Sociohistorical Overview Race and ethnicity function as markers distinguishing one group from another. Language, religion, and skin color can be among the markers of distinction between groups only in societies where these traits are significant. For example, skin color cannot be a marker in societies that have no visible differences in skin color among their subpopulations. In its earliest uses, the word race was used loosely to describe people from different nation-states, for example, the French race. However, during the late 18th century, the English began to use the concept to convey presumed “qualities and degrees of human difference.” The concept of race connotes visible physical differences such as skin color, hair texture, and cranium size among groups, differences that are then linked to nonvisible differences such as intelligence, motivation, and morality. These differences not only are passed from one generation to the next but also are believed to be immutable. Starting in the 18th century and continuing to the current time, some scientists have used one or more criteria (e.g., skin color, hair texture, size of cranium) to establish a scientific basis for race; however, these attempts have been unsuccessful. If race were a bona fide scientific category, it would be possible to classify each and every human in one and only one category of a set of categories based on specific criteria. Because this is not the case, there is a consensus among scientists that the biological variation within groups called races is often greater than the variation between races. The word ethnicity connotes group boundaries based on factors such as geographic origin, language, religion, and identification. Self-identification is necessary but not sufficient to establish membership in an ethnic group; the group must also recognize an individual as being part of it. Although ethnicity is shaped to some extent by original heritage in terms of factors such as language and religion, ethnicity is also shaped
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by the economic, political, and social relations between and among groups. Ethnic groups can be created by the process of panethnogenesis—the formation of a panethnic identity to cope with economic, political, and cultural changes experienced by politically dominated ethnic groups within the confines of a given nation-state. Examples of this phenomenon include American Indians in the United States and the Montagnard (a population of mountaineers) in the Vietnam highlands. Panethnic unity can stem from the creation of a panethnic identity, which in turn results from being treated as one monolithic entity by the dominant group in a given society. Race and ethnicity are social constructs—that is, products of human perception and classification. The major significance of both race and ethnicity has been economic, political, and social. Historically, the concepts of race and ethnicity have been used in different ways by various societies to establish boundaries between groups. Race and ethnicity incorporate hierarchies in which one group is used as a baseline against which other groups are compared. Moreover, these hierarchies constitute the structure in which differential treatment of groups occurs. As social constructs, race and ethnicity are not static but rather are changing over time as a result of changes in the human interactions that created them. Meanings of race and ethnicity are dynamic in terms of their significance for a given society and for their socioeconomic and political consequences. Race and ethnicity are also sociohistorical concepts insofar as their meanings are shaped by the social relations and historical context in which they are embedded. For example, in a given nation-state, the social context determines whether or not color is relevant; color is not essential to any theory of what makes a group of people an ethnic group but is specific to social context. From a global perspective, three phenomena have significantly affected how race and ethnicity are conceptualized: colonization, decolonization, and globalization. • Colonization. Both race and ethnicity have been the fundamental principles around which most colonized societies were organized; for example, race served as the organizing principle for the United States and South Africa, whereas ethnicity was the organizing principle for Canada and Belgium. Under
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colonial rule, many European colonies imported labor from outside of the colonies. • Decolonization. World War II heightened sensitivity and concern about race and ethnicity on a global level. Global racism is reinforced by old and new colonialism. Increasing racial/ethnic mobility, diversity, and heterogeneity in many nations heightens the importance of both race and ethnicity. Decolonization, which began at the end of World War II, had a significant impact on the reformulation of ethnic groups insofar as it was the catalyst for the formation of independent states. By 1984, 85 former colonies had become independent states, and in 1990, Micronesia and Namibia gained independence. The boundaries of the new independent states were based on those of the former colonial powers and, consequently, included diverse groups that are regionally based. Moreover, subgroups within these new states included the descendants of the migrant laborers brought to the colonies to work on plantations and in mines; for example, Chinese and Indians were migrant laborers in Asia and the Pacific. • Globalization. The concept of globalization refers to the “connectedness” among nation-states such that events and developments in one nation-state can have profound consequences for one or more of the others. Globalization is characterized by the increased mobility of goods, services, labor, technology, and capital worldwide. Indeed, this unprecedented increase in the mobility of labor worldwide, beginning in the 1980s, had a significant impact on the ethnic composition of many contemporary societies. For example, there has been increasing migration of laborers in Asian nations in the process of industrializing such as Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. Similarly, the Middle East imports large numbers of workers from both Asia and North Africa. New technologies— especially telecommunications—have increased the pace of globalization.
Social Science Perspectives From the inception of sociology as an academic discipline in Great Britain as well as in the United States, race and ethnicity have been major concerns. The conceptualization of race as a social construct was formulated among sociologists during the 1950s and has been elaborated by both empirical and theoretical research.
In both the United States and Great Britain, the theoretical and empirical sociology of race resulted in a bifurcation of the population into Black and White. This is due to important similarities in the sociohistories of the United States and Great Britain, especially the major significance of color as one primary marker distinguishing the former colonizers from the formerly colonized. Some scholars contend that the sociological study of both race and ethnicity has reflected, and in some cases has reinforced, large-scale sociopolitical changes. One major lesson from World War II concerned the horrific social, political, psychological, and psychic consequences of racism and genocide. After the war, disagreements worldwide concerning the significance— and even the very meanings—of race and ethnicity were heightened by the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement in the United States and the Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa. Major demographic shifts in populations within and between nation-states have been catalysts for sociologists to reexamine the concepts of race and ethnicity and for some nations to reexamine categories for classifying their populations. Other catalysts for reexamining race and ethnicity include major ethnic conflicts such as those between the Rwandan Hutus and the Rwandan Tutsis in Africa and between the Serbians and ethnic Albanians. The impact and ramifications of these conflicts are not limited to national boundaries but rather are global in their consequences. Since the founding of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1945, race and ethnicity have been major concerns of the organization, as indicated by the fact that over the past 40 years UNESCO has issued several declarations focusing on race and racial prejudice, principles of tolerance, and the importance of international cultural heritage, cultural cooperation, and cultural diversity. Although the definitions, meanings, and import of race and ethnicity may differ from one nation to another, color, race, and ethnicity remain global concerns. W. E. B. Du Bois’s prophecy that the problem of the 20th century was the “color line”—that is, race—can be expanded in terms of both time and scope. In the 21st century, race, ethnicity, and color will continue to be problematic in societies worldwide and, consequently, will be major issues for social science research. Cheryl B. Leggon
Greek Americans
See also Borderlands; Civil Rights Movement; Colonialism; Color Line; Cosmopolitanism; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Ethnic Conflict; Ethnic Group; Ethnoviolence; Globalization; Guest Workers; Hong Kong; Immigration and Race; Panethnic Identity; Race; Race, UNESCO Statements on; Singapore; Social Darwinism; Transnational People Further Readings
Giordan, Henri. 1994. “Multicultural and Multi-Ethnic Societies.” UNESCO, Management of Social Transformations (MOST), Discussion Paper Series No. 1. Gossett, Thomas. 1997. Race: The History of an Idea in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Inglis, Christine. 1994. “Multiculturalism: New Policy Responses to Diversity.” UNESCO, Management of Social Transformations (MOST), Policy Paper No. 4. Leggon, Cheryl B. 1999. “Race and Ethnicity: A Global Perspective.” Sociological Spectrum 19:381–385. Wilson, William Julius. 1973. Power, Racism, and Privilege. New York: Free Press.
GREEK AMERICANS Greek Americans are an ethnic group whose history embraces ancient Hellas (Greece), Byzantine Orthodox Mo
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Christianity, and the creation of the modern nation of Greece, a country estimated to have a population of 11.2 million people in 2007, during the early part of the 19th century. Since ancient times, Greeks have migrated to foreign lands and established communities, but their nostalgia for their homeland can even be found in Homer’s Odyssey. Their immigration to the United States began during the late 19th century and peaked again after World War II, providing more than a million members for a community often centered around the Greek Orthodox Church. This entry looks at their history and current situation.
Historical Background Greece has a glorious history, a span of 4,000 years of continuous presence in Southeastern Europe. Greece is a peninsula in the Mediterranean Sea and the Balkan region. It is the bridge of three continents: Asia to the east, Africa to the south, and Western Europe to the west. The contributions of ancient Greece are part of the foundation of Western society, from the idea of democracy to the Olympic Games. Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle continue to be widely studied, and the architecture of the period is still admired and copied. Plays by Greek dramatists are often produced on modern stages, and they have also become models for later writers. Ancient Greeks also influenced Western civilization, and indeed world civilization, with their etymology of scientific and medical terms, including the humanities and the social sciences, and thousands of Greek concepts are found in most fields of knowledge. Ancient Greek contributions have a universal and diachronic character. Above all, the Greeks taught us rational thinking and established schools of thought. They were the first to formulate the principles of science and to make an effort to explain the cosmos (universe). Following the sack of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, a number of Byzantine scholars, known as logioi, fled to the West and contributed to the Renaissance. While Western Europe had its renaissance, reformation, enlightenment, and political and industrial revolutions, Greece as a nation vanished while occupied for 400 years by the Ottoman Empire. The Orthodox Christian faith, the memory of the Ancient Greek legacy, and modern Greek literature kept the Greek identity alive during the long and oppressive
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Turkish rule. Southern Greece gained its independence from Ottoman–Turkish rule in 1827, but it took nearly another century for Greece to liberate the rest of its northern territories still occupied by the Ottoman Turkish Empire.
Greek Immigration to the United States Greek immigration to the United States is, by and large, a 20th-century phenomenon. Although a few Greeks came to the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries, the overwhelming majority of Greek immigrants came to the United States more recently. Two major waves of Greek immigration can be identified. The early Greek immigration coincided with the second phase of industrial capitalism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Greek immigrants joined a tide from Southern and Eastern Europe to the United States. Most early Greek immigrants were single men who did not intend to stay in the United States. In fact, many returned to Greece eventually, and more than 30,000 Greek immigrants volunteered to fight in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 against the Turks. A number of them remained in Greece. Most early Greek immigrants were poor, had a few skills, and came from the southern agricultural communities and regions of Greece, especially Arcadia and Laconia. The early Greek immigrants and their children helped their relatives in Greece, especially in the aftermath of World War II. Greece suffered greatly from the ravages of the war and gave the first victory to the Allies on October 28, 1940, by defeating the Italians in the Albanian front. Indeed, it was the Greek victory and resistance to German occupation of Greece that brought respectability to the early Greek immigrants and their children in America. The late Greek immigration included post–World War II refugees and later immigration under the Immigraton and Nationality Act of 1965. Both families and individuals arrived, many of them with relatives among the early Greek immigrants, who helped them to resettle. A large number of the late Greek immigrants came as international students under the first quota system of 1965. Many of them became professionals, and the majority remained in the United States. The continued Greek emigration after World War II gave the larger Greek American community a cultural transfusion. Since the mid-1970s, Greek immigration to the United States has almost stopped. Only a few
hundred arrive each year as students or relatives of Greek American families. Although the exact number of Greek Americans is not known, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and U.S. Census estimate that between 1.25 million and 3 million identify as Greek Americans or report some Greek and Greek Orthodox ancestry. The majority are second-, third-, or fourth-generation Greek Americans. Although the overwhelming majority of the early Greek immigrants were members of the working class, most Greek Americans today are found in the middle and upper middle classes.
Greek American Community The most important ethnic institutions that have sustained the Greeks of the diaspora and their children are the church, the Greek school, and the family. Greek Orthodox parishes have been established along with Greek schools and various benevolent societies and organizations. Thus, every Greek American ethnic community is also a spiritual religious community. The church is more than a place of worship; it is the hub around which religious and cultural/secular activities, including Greek language instruction, take place. What the family is for the individual, the church is for the Greek American community. Merrging Secular and Spiritual
For the first two generations, both early- and latearriving Greek Americans and their children, the secular and spiritual identities were inseparable. For one to be a Greek American, it also meant to be a Greek Orthodox American. However, for the past several years, these identities have been challenged. Some, mostly second- and third-generation descendants of the early Greek Americans, advocate a separation of the Greek secular identity from the Orthodox spiritual/ religious identity. An organization known as Orthodox Clergy Laity (OCL), founded in Chicago by a number of second-generation Greek Americans during the 1980s, seeks to establish the American Orthodox Church devoid of its ethnic secular identity. The Greek Archdiocese lists 543 Greek Orthodox parishes, chapels, and missions; 640 priests; 186 retired priests; and 35 priests with lay vocations. In addition, 20 Orthodox monastic communities are dispersed in different parts of the United States. Most of these parishes have Greek afternoon schools that
Greek Americans
teach the rudiments of Greek language, religion, history, and culture. In addition, there are 22 full-time parochial schools and six preschools in different Greek American Orthodox communities. There are also a number of private Greek American schools, which are not under the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, Department of Greek Orthodox Education. (Private schools include the Athena Schools founded by Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, the Plato Academy, and the Melegos–Peiraikon School, all three of which are in the Chicago area.) The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese is the administrative and spiritual organization for the parishes and other religious institutions, including the Hellenic College/Holy Cross School of Theology, the Philoptochos Organization, the Standing Canonical of Orthodox Bishops of America (SCOBA), and religious agencies such as the International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC), the Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC), and various other departments of the Archdiocese. Cultu ura al Grou ups
Greeks of the diaspora established a plethora of ethnic organizations, federations, associations, benevolent societies, cultural and professional groups, and ethnic media as well as (more recently) a number of foundations, museums, and cultural centers; examples include the Onassis Foundation of New York and the Chicago Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center. The most important ethnic association is the American Hellenic Progressive Association (AHEPA), founded by a group of early Greek immigrants in Atlanta in 1922. Around the same time, the administrative organization of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese was established in the United States. AHEPA’s original purpose was a policy of Americanization; it urged its members to become American citizens. The American Hellenic Institute Public Affairs Committee is located in Washington, D.C., and was established in the aftermath of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. Its main objectives are to work with Congress to monitor legislation affecting Greece and Cyprus. By far, the most important academic professional association is the Modern Greek Studies Association (MGSA), founded by a group of academic professionals in 1968. Its main purpose is to promote modern Greek studies at U.S. universities and colleges. As of 2006, there were thirty-seven modern
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Greek, Byzantine, and Classics programs at U.S. colleges and universities. In addition, there are a dozen chairs of modern Greek literature or Greek civilization and ten foundations/cultural societies/museums. Besides these major ethnic Greek American associations and groups, there are a proliferation of federations, organizations, media (print, radio, television, and Internet), and fraternal societies—more than 100 media of all kinds and 30 national and regional federations and organizations. The most important of the Greek American federations are those of PanArcadian, Pan-Cretan, Pan-Macedonian, Pan-Pontian, Pan-Messenian, and Pan-Laconian federations. These federations do not include hundreds of smaller Greek American fraternal and urban village-type societies that were established by the first generation of early and late Greek immigrants. Another major Greek American organization is the United Hellenic American Congress (UHAC) founded by Greek American industrialist Andrew Athens during the 1980s and located in Chicago. Its main goal is to promote prominent Greek American personalities and those who seek political offices. The major problem of all these ethnic organizations, federations, and fraternal societies is the replenishment of new members. As the first generations die out, the continuity of these ethnic groups and organizations is problematic. Educattio onal Projjeccts
More recently, a number of cultural and educational organizations that are regional and national in scope have been established in the Chicago area. One of them is the Paideia Projects, a not-for-profit educational and cultural organization whose main mission is the production and distribution of videos on the multiple contributions to world civilization of ancient Greece, with emphasis on the Golden Age of Pericles of the 5th century BC. Paideia means education and learning. Each video deals with a particular theme and topic. This organization was founded by the author of this entry at Northern Illinois University in 2003. At the time of this writing, the Paideia program had produced four videos on the structure of the Athenian city-state and the birth of the first democracy in the West, the origin of freedom, the Greek influence on the U.S. Founding Fathers, and the ancient Greek music. A dozen more videos on different topics and themes are planned. These videos are used as
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educational aids for classes in the humanities and social sciences. Three additional educational and cultural initiatives have appeared during the past couple of years in the Chicago area. One is the Pan-Hellenic Scholarship Foundation founded by Chris Tomaras, a firstgeneration Greek American businessman and benefactor. Another is the Hellenic Academy, an educational institution founded by Demetrios Logothetis, a first-generation Greek American, and the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church and Daily Socrates Greek Orthodox School. The Hellenic Academy is located in Deerfield, Illinois, and is open to all students of Greek Americans. In the third project, the sister cities of Athens, Greece, and Chicago have agreed to build a classical statue of runners inspired and executed by Theodore Papayannis, the world-famous sculptor of the Athens Polytechnic University. The runners symbolize the diachronic cultural significance of friendship and cooperation between the people of Chicago and the world. The five runners represent the five continents and will be seen by millions of passengers going through O’Hare Airport. Another recent project linking the Old World and the New World is a Greek American trade and business organization known as the Hermes Expo, which serves as the link between Greek American businesses, products, and services and those of Greece. This trade organization, founded by Paul Kotrotsios, holds an annual international trade show. George Andrew Kourvetaris See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Balkans; Cypriot Americans; Diaspora; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Europe; Immigration, U.S.
Further Readings
Georgakas, Dan and Charles Moskos, eds. 1989. “The Greek American Experience” [special issue]. Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 16(1–4). Georgakas, Dan and Charles Moskos, eds. 1991. New Directions in Greek American Studies. New York: Pella. Karanikas, Alexander. 1981. Hellenes and Hellions: Modern Greek Characters in American Literature. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kourvetaris, George A. 1997. Studies on Greek Americans. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs. (Distributed by Columbia University)
Moskos, Charles. 1989. Greek Americans: Struggle and Success. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Orfanos, Spyros, ed. 2003. Reading Greek America: Studies in the Experience of Greeks in the United States. New York: Pella. Saloutos, Theodore. 1964. The Greeks in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
GRUTTER V. BOLLINGER The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger addressed affirmative action in higher education, a practice that has long been the subject of intense controversy. Grutter and a companion case, Gratz v. Bollinger, involved challenges to the affirmative action admissions policies at the University of Michigan’s law school and its undergraduate college, respectively. The Court ruled that the law school’s policy was constitutional, whereas the undergraduate college’s policy was not, thereby clarifying the conditions under which higher education institutions may implement affirmative action policies. This entry discusses both decisions and their context.
er Case The Grutte The plaintiff in Grutter was a White female who was denied admission to the University of Michigan’s law school. She argued that the admissions policy discriminated against White applicants. At Michigan, applications were evaluated on the basis of factors that included a personal statement, letters of recommendation, the applicant’s undergraduate grade point average, and a Law School Admission Test score. Students with the highest grades and test scores were not automatically admitted. A variety of factors were considered, including the race of minority applicants. This was done to promote racial, ethnic, and other forms of diversity so as to ensure that the entering class included students who were members of minority groups that historically had been the victims of discrimination. The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees all persons “equal protection of the laws.” Cases alleging violations of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment may be analyzed under three separate standards of review: rational basis, intermediate scrutiny, and strict scrutiny. Laws or policies that classify on the basis of
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race are subjected to strict scrutiny, the most exacting of the three standards. Under this standard, classifications based on race must have a “compelling justification,” and the means that the government employs must be “narrowly tailored” to achieving the policy’s goals. The 1978 decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke held that affirmative action was constitutional, but the Supreme Court justices did not agree then on the applicable analytical standard. It took 10 years and a dozen Court cases before a majority agreed that strict scrutiny applied to affirmative action programs. The critical question in Grutter was whether diversity was a “compelling” justification. In an opinion authored by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the majority held that “the Equal Protection Clause does not prohibit the Law School’s narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further [its] compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.” The majority found that classroom diversity “promotes cross-racial understanding, helps to break down racial stereotypes, and enables [students] to better understand persons of different races.” Strict scrutiny’s second prong involves the “narrow tailoring” requirement. Previous affirmative action cases suggested several difficult-to-satisfy requirements. First, neutral selection criteria should be explored before resorting to a race-conscious approach. Second, if a university decides that a racial remedy is justified, it must be temporary and flexible. Third, there must be a relationship between any numerical goals for minority representation and the college-bound minority populations in the geographic regions from which students are drawn. Finally, consideration should be given to the impact of the program on nonminority students. A friend of the court brief submitted by the federal government argued that race-conscious admissions policies could not be implemented without first exploring race-neutral criteria to promote student body diversity. Pointing to minority admissions programs in Texas, California, and Florida, where race-based affirmative action programs were not allowed, the government argued that there were ample race-neutral alternatives to race-based policies that made Michigan’s program unnecessary and unconstitutional. The majority rejected this argument. It found that a “serious, good faith consideration of workable . . . alternatives” must be undertaken but that “narrow
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tailoring does not require exhaustion of every conceivable . . . alternative.” Michigan had considered race-neutral alternatives and determined that they would not have produced the critical mass of minority students that the school desired without sacrificing the institution’s academic selectivity. The majority in Grutter considered the effect of Michigan’s admissions policy on nonminority students and held that the law school’s admissions policy satisfied this requirement. The institution’s goal of admitting a “critical mass” of minority students was based on an individualized review of the qualifications of all applicants. A minority candidate’s race was merely a “plus” factor among several in the selection process. Nonminority students were not foreclosed from consideration, and a minority applicant’s race was not the deciding factor.
The Gratz Case In Gratz v. Bollinger, a companion case involving the University of Michigan’s undergraduate college, the Supreme Court struck down a different affirmative action program. Applications to the university’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts were evaluated using a “selection index” on which an applicant could score a maximum of 150 points. Under this system, applicants received points based on their high school grade point averages, standardized test scores, the strength of their high schools, in-state residency, alumni relationships, personal essays, personal achievements, and leadership qualities. Under a miscellaneous category, applicants received 20 points based on their membership in an underrepresented racial or ethnic minority group. The university contended that the large number of applications at the undergraduate level made it impractical to implement the type of individualized consideration that was used in the law school. Rejecting this justification, the majority struck down the policy based on its finding that the policy did not satisfy strict scrutiny’s narrow tailoring requirement. It found that the university’s policy, which automatically distributed 20 points to minority applicants based solely on race, was not narrowly tailored to achieving the university’s legitimate interest in promoting a diverse student body. Affirmative action policies were designed to increase the representation of minorities in areas of employment, education, and business from which
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they historically were excluded by generations of racially discriminatory laws and practices. Critics of affirmative action consider it as “reverse discrimination” that is unfair to Whites. The decision in Grutter means that colleges and universities can legitimately consider the race of minorities during the admissions process so long as the procedure provides for an individualized consideration of the qualifications of each applicant. The decision in Gratz, which struck down the admissions program at Michigan’s undergraduate college, represents an example of a process that courts will not approve. The decisions in the Michigan cases confirmed the legitimacy of the affirmative action programs, but the underlying debate will continue. Leland Ware See also Affirmative Action in Education; Educational Performance and Attainment; Higher Education; Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue; Pipeline
Further Readings
Bowen, William G. and Derek Bok. 1998. The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Crenshaw, Kimberle, Neil Gotanda, Garry Peller, and Kendall Thomas. 1996. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. New York: New Press. Edley, Christopher. 1998. Not All Black and White: Affirmative Action and American Values. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. Katznelson, Ira. 2005. When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in TwentiethCentury America. New York: Norton. Lawrence, Charles R., III and Mari J. Matsuda. 1997. We Won’t Go Back: Making the Case for Affirmative Action. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
kinship and social networks enabling them to advance economically in the United States and provide support for family members and communities in Guatemala. This entry discusses their immigration and current situation. Guatemalans have migrated to the United States through being “pushed” by a combination of negative economic and political conditions in their country of origin and being “pulled” by economic opportunities in the United States. Through the early 1970s, a small number of largely middle-class professional Guatemalans migrated to the United States seeking to improve their economic status. The influx of Guatemalans arriving in the United States increased sharply during the mid-1970s, however, in response to deteriorating economic conditions and deepening political violence in Guatemala. Much of Guatemala’s postindependence economic activity centered on the production of coffee and foreign-controlled banana enclaves. This led to a highly unequal wealth distribution and patterns of landholding in Guatemala. Poverty and social and political exclusion in Guatemala have also been exacerbated by deeply embedded patterns of discrimination against the indigenous Mayans, who make up approximately 40% of Guatemala’s population, which was estimated in 2007 to be 13.4 million people. An attempt by President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán to implement moderate land reform that included the
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More than 535,000 people of Guatemalan origin now call the United States home. In adapting to a new life in the United States, they have faced unique obstacles— lingering impacts of intense political repression and poverty, obstacles to obtaining political asylum; and continued gender, racial, and ethnic discrimination even within Latino communities. To overcome these challenges, Guatemalans have formed transnational
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expropriation of United Fruit Company’s banana lands led the United States to support a 1954 military coup against Arbenz. Several decades of military rule and armed conflict between government forces and leftist guerrillas followed. Guatemala’s civil war further intensified during the late 1970s, leading to the displacement of an estimated 1 million rural residents. During this period, military forces and death squads linked to the landowning oligarchy targeted Mayan peoples in Guatemala’s highlands and political activists with violence. An estimated 200,000 civilians were killed in Guatemala’s civil war, which officially ended with the 1996 peace accords. More than 90% of related deaths were attributed to the government and its allies. During this period, more than 200,000 Guatemalans fled to the United States to escape violence and poverty, becoming the second-largest Central American group in the United States after the Salvadorans. Guatemalans settled in the urban centers of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston as well as in rural areas in Florida and the Farm Belt. Although political repression pushed thousands of Guatemalans to flee north, the U.S. government granted political asylum to less than 5% of Guatemalans during the 1980s, classifying them as economic immigrants rather than as political refugees. Through later court settlements and the 1997 Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NACARA), however, a number of these initially undocumented Guatemalans have been able to remain legally in the United States. Many Guatemalans in the United States have needed to cope with the psychological impacts of past political violence—posttraumatic stress, anxiety, and depression—with only limited access to the support available to recognized political refugee populations. In addition, although Guatemalans have a very high rate of participation in the labor force, they are employed largely in the low-paying service sector. Migrants who arrive illegally also often face the burden of paying off debts accumulated in their journey to the United States. Despite these limitations, Guatemalans sent $584 million in remittances to their families in Guatemala during the early 2000s. Overall, Guatemalan women have migrated to the United States in greater numbers than have their male counterparts. For some women, migration is a means to escape problems linked to patriarchal family structures such as male infidelity, alcoholism, and domestic violence. Female migrants are often de facto or de jure heads of household and have assumed nontraditional
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roles as family economic providers in the United States. In the Los Angeles area, gender norms and discrimination have also shaped women’s employment options. Most of these women work in garment and electronics factories and as domestic workers. Mayan Guatemalans face additional barriers in work and social life and may be disparaged and hindered within Latino communities because of embedded racial prejudices and Mayan Guatemalans’ lack of fluency in Spanish. One important strategy of Guatemalans to cope with the challenges of life in the United States and to advance economically has been the re-creation of kinship ties and the formation of support networks. Such networks have served dual functions. They address the needs of Guatemalans in the United States and provide economic support for sending communities in Guatemala. In Chicago, Guatemalans formed the Anastasio Tzul Network to provide material support for new arrivals, offer counseling those who suffered torture and violence, and advocate for civil and labor rights. In addition, this group supports health clinics, schools, and infrastructure projects in sending communities in Guatemala. Influenced by Pan-Mayan movements in Guatemala, these kinship and social networks also serve as a space of cultural expression and pride in indigenous values and ways of life. Kanjobal-speaking Mayans, for example, have organized to assert distinct collective identities and practice the indigenous religious customs. These Guatemalans have overcome the legacies of intense political violence, discrimination, and inequality to successfully manage complex transnational identities in the United States. Lynn Horton See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Central Americans in the United States; Cross-Frontier Contacts; Immigration, U.S.; Latin America, Indigenous People; Nicaraguan Americans; Salvadoran Americans Further Readings
Hamilton, Nora and Norma Stoltz Chinchilla. 2001. Seeking Community in a Global City: Guatemalans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Hernandez, Romel. 2004. Immigration from Central America. Philadelphia, PA: Mason Crest. Kohpahl, Gabriele. 1998. Voices of Guatemalan Women in Los Angeles: Understanding Their Immigration. New York: Garland.
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Suro, Roberto. 1999. Strangers among Us: Latinos’ Lives in a Changing America. New York: Vintage Books. Zentgraf, Kristine M. 2005. “Why Women Migrate: Salvadoran and Guatemalan Women in Los Angeles.” In Latina/o Los Angeles: Transformations, Communities, and Activism, edited by Enrique C. Ochoa and Gilda L. Ochoa. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
GUEST WORKERS Guest workers are laborers who migrate to other countries for work based on labor importation policies. The durations of their stays are usually limited and temporary. They are usually confined to certain occupations. Whether they are allowed to apply for citizenship depends on the labor and immigration policies of the labor-receiving countries. In contrast, immigrants are people who migrate to other countries for permanent stays. They can immigrate for marriage, employment, or family reunification. Immigrant laborers are workers who migrate to other countries for work and are able to secure permanent residency and eventually citizenship. Whereas guest workers have been a contentious issue for Western Europe for decades, such as African workers in France and Turkish workers in Germany, the debates concerning guest worker programs have gained increasing momentum in the United States during recent years. This entry examines the current U.S. debate before reviewing the larger history of guest workers. Terms such as guest workers, contract workers, migrant workers, and immigrant workers are used interchangeably.
Immigration Conflict On February 25, 2006, tens of thousands of proimmigration rights advocates and immigrant workers, both documented and undocumented, marched in Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Phoenix. On May 1, 2006, demonstrations took place again in major cities in the United States, drawing millions of immigrant workers and activists demanding the legalization of undocumented workers and the eventual granting of citizenship status. These protests were in response to a bill passed by the House of Representatives that called for restrictive enforcement of immigration regulations. Based on this bill, it would be a felony to work illegally in the United States. The bill also called for more severe punishment
of employers of illegal immigrant workers, and it proposed to erect 700 miles of fences along the U.S.–Mexican border. Lawmakers were at odds with the Bush administration’s proposal to create a guest worker program for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Opponents of this proposal called this an amnesty program that rewarded illegal entry of U.S. borders and weakened the control of borders required for national security. They argued that it had the effect of encouraging illegal immigration. Although this immigration debate was tied largely to the 2006 midterm election, the issue of whether the United States needs guest workers has been a standing hot topic in the political landscape in the states. The debate is particularly intense this time around because of concern about national security in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The concern about illegal immigration is not confined to the United States. It has been a concern for European countries as well, including France and Germany. Increasingly, countries in the Middle East, as well as many newly developed countries such as Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, also are facing the dilemma of the control of guest workers. There are several reasons to oppose the importation of guest workers and the legalization of illegal immigrants. Opponents argue that guest workers take away jobs from Americans, lower average wages, drain social services, inundate public school systems, exploit health care services, engender racial/ethnic conflicts, create a marginalized population in society, and threaten national security. In particular, opponents are concerned about how the legalization of undocumented immigrants will change the demographic landscape of U.S. society. Supporters for legalizing immigrants’ status argue that immigrants take jobs that no (or too few) Americans want, contribute to the national economy by their consumption and paid taxes, and enrich cultural diversity. American society cannot function without the labor of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, they say. In addition, they argue that the United States is a nation of immigrants and that the criminalization of undocumented workers contradicts this tradition.
Labor Migration and Globalization Labor migration has been an integral part of the globalization process. As the world becomes compressed
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in terms of time and space, the movement of people across national borders is an inevitable phenomenon. The term guest workers has a longer history, however, having become popular after Word War II with the reconstruction of European countries. In different countries, guest workers’ entry is usually tied to a contract that delineates terms of employment, job responsibility, working conditions, and government regulations. Depending on the specific regulations of host governments, the contract can be renewable or nonrenewable. The duration of the employment can also lead to the acquisition of permanent status depending on respective governmental regulations. As a result, guest workers sometimes end up becoming permanent residents in some host countries. Due to the restrictive nature of the regulations, guest workers can also, and often do, become illegal immigrants. Why Workerss Migra ate
People migrate for work for different reasons. Using a micro-level explanation, it is argued that people migrate overseas for employment because they can earn more money working abroad. Their incentive is a better future. In addition, labor migration is often a family strategy, where members of the family migrate for work to support other family members. In this globalized world, the penetration of mass communication to the developing countries shortens the distance between countries and enables people to imagine possibilities and desire the life enjoyed by people in developed countries. There are also structural perspectives to explain the movement of people. One theory is based on the neoliberal economic theory of push and pull factors. Push factors include the underdevelopment, unemployment, and underemployment in labor-sending countries, the prevalence of poverty, the lack of social and public services, and the effect of structural adjustment programs. Pull factors include the abundance of job opportunities in host countries, the shortage of labor, the better wages, and the high standards of living. Another theory contests this neoliberal perspective and focuses on the historical development of colonialism and imperialism. It is argued that migration is driven by the unequal development between laborsending and labor-receiving nations engendered by colonialism. In a way similar to their extraction of raw materials from the peripheral nations to the metropolis in the world system, the developed nations extract cheap labor from developing nations. Therefore, the
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preexisting ties between colonial powers and colonies dictate the process of migration. From this perspective, the importation of guest workers is seen as a continual exploitation by the First World over the Third World. It is another form of division of labor in the global system. In addition to the micro and macro levels of analysis, there is also the meso level of analysis. Scholars have argued that networking accounts for the continual migration of people. This theory argues that networking allows people to gain information and knowledge about migration from return migrants. New guest workers also depend on old migrants to navigate the complexity of the migration process. It is not surprising that people from the same villages and regions often migrate to the same destination of employment. Other factors account for the massive migration of people across national borders. One is the commercialization of recruitment agencies, which have played an important role in assisting labor migration since the 1970s. Recruitment agencies help to mediate the complexity of migration and deal with state bureaucracy for migrants. Unfortunately, illegal recruitment agencies have also mushroomed to exploit migrants. Another important factor that drives the massive migration of laborers is state policy. Many countries have adopted policies for labor exportation. To gain revenue from remittances, states have encouraged people to migrate to other countries for work. Some countries, such as the Philippines, dictate a particular percentage for remittance. In fact, labor has become a major export product for many countries. Conte empora ary y Chara acte erisstics
There have been several distinctive phenomena concerning guest workers during recent decades. Contrary to the conventional view of guest workers as uneducated and uncivilized, the educational level among recent guest workers may be high. It is particularly true in terms of Filipino workers. Many Filipino workers come from middle-class backgrounds and work as professionals in the Philippines. It is important to note that it is often those with resources, not the poorest, who can migrate overseas. The second characteristic of contemporary labor migration is the increase of women in the migration process. By the 1980s, migrant women workers constituted the major proportion of the migration population in many countries. The third phenomenon is that
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women are usually concentrated in certain occupations such as domestic service, entertainment, sex work, and manufacturing. The first three are considered dangerous occupations. Domestic service in particular is the major occupation for women guest workers. This constitutes the gender division of labor. Currently, there are millions of women working as domestic workers all over the world. The departure of guest workers has had much impact on labor-sending countries. Guest workers’ remittances have become the major source of income for many sending countries. As mentioned, labor becomes their main product of export. However, although the remittance from abroad is important, whether it contributes to the development of laborsending countries is debatable. Most often, the money sent home is used to buy daily necessities, build houses, and establish small businesses rather than being channeled into development projects that have long-term effects. The departure of guest workers, particularly middle-class professionals, also results in the problem of “brain drain.” In that sense, labor-sending countries subsidize labor-receiving countries in terms of education, training of skills, and social reproduction. What is the impact on labor-receiving countries? One of the major advantages for labor-receiving countries is that they are able to exploit the cheap labor for their labor shortage situations. Guest workers are often the most vulnerable group in host societies. Employers do not need to provide guest workers with benefits and/or health insurance. Guest workers are often deprived of civil, political, and socioeconomic rights. They cannot form unions. Although they are often subject to abuse, they often cannot unionize and voice their concerns collectively. For example, women domestics work in isolated households. It is particularly difficult for them to network with one another, not to mention organizing collectively to demand better working conditions. The entry of guest workers also contributes to racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious conflicts. Guest workers are often deemed as undesirably different and incapable of assimilation. They often face discrimination
in the host countries. They often face racism, xenophobia, and prejudice. They do work that no (or too few) natives want to do. However, they become the scapegoats for the unemployment situations in host countries. They contribute to the economies of the host societies, but they are often deemed as lazy and lacking a work ethic. They are said to come to host countries to exploit welfare services. The rhetoric against Mexican workers in the United States is a good example of this prejudice. Futu ure Outllook
Labor migration will continue to be an important phenomenon in the future. To protect the rights of guest workers, the United Nations has adopted conventions, such as the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, to protect the rights of guest workers. Unfortunately, not enough countries support the convention for it to actually take effect. The protection of guest workers constitutes one major concern for labor migration in the future. Shu-Ju Ada Cheng See also Bracero Program; Colonialism; Discrimination; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Globalization; Immigration and Race; Racism; Remittance; Return Migration; Xenophobia Further Readings
Bartram, David. 2005. International Labor Migration: Foreign Workers and Public Policy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Cheng, Shu-Ju Ada. 2006. Serving the Household and the Nation: Filipina Domestics and the Politics of Identity in Taiwan. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Gonzalez, Gilbert. 2007. Guest Workers or Colonized Labor: Mexican Labor Migration to the United States. New York: Paradigm. Stalker, Peter. 1999. Workers without Frontiers: The Impact of Globalization on International Migration. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
H discourse in which there are unquestionably Japanese people, on the one hand, and everyone else, on the other. Some scholars believe that times are changing in Japan and that conceptions of Japaneseness are becoming more flexible. In this view, the rise in social awareness and social position of hafu is a reflection of, or a harbinger of, that change. In everyday language, hafu often refers to phenotype traits; however, depending on the context, it may also mark people based on language abilities, cultural knowledge, and international experience. Although the dominant image does not refer to people who by phenotype blend into mainstream Japanese society (e.g., mixed Chinese, Korean, Thai, Filipino/a), a discussion of national or cultural background often elicits recognition that hafu can also be of Asian descent. The terminology used in Japan to refer to people of mixed racial backgrounds has changed over the years. Opinions differ on the nuances and connotations of each expression; terms clearly change with social and political context and depending on the person. Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu outlined the history of three terms used in Japan/Japanese since the postwar period. Ainoko was used during the postwar period to refer to mixed-race children and is the most blatantly derogatory term, used not only in describing humans but also in describing the mixing of animal species. Konketsuji literally means “mixed-blood child.” This term arose during the postoccupation era as war animosities began to subside and was used as a more politically correct alternative to ainoko. Over time, however, the connotations of this word became questioned, and now it is largely interpreted as politically incorrect and offensive. From the 1960s, another
HAFU Hafu, alternately spelled Haafu, means “half” in Japanese, and the word is borrowed from the English. In Japan, hafu commonly refers to the child of a Japanese parent and a foreign parent. In this social classification schema, the categories of “Japanese” and “foreign” are dichotomous and conflate citizenship with race, culture, and language. Although foreign refers to anyone not Japanese, the dominant racial image of hafu is currently people of Japanese and White backgrounds; however, during the postwar period, it also conjured up images of both White and Black mixed-race Japanese. Terminology used to refer to mixed-race Japanese and the mainstream connotation attached to being mixed race in Japan have changed drastically since the postwar period. New terms are beginning to emerge as more politically correct substitutes for hafu, although none has yet to be used widely.
Mixed-Race Terminology In Japanese, hafu is used as a noun; this makes sense only in the context of two mutually exclusive social categories (otherwise, it would need to be used as a modifier, e.g., half Japanese, half White). Japanese national identity has been racialized such that most people in Japanese society are seen not only as possessing Japanese citizenship but also as being of “pure Japanese blood” and speaking and acting Japanese. These assumptions, combined with the persistent myth of Japanese homogeneity, have led to a mainstream 569
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image of mixed-race Japanese that was more popular and exotic began to emerge in the media. Hafu is currently the most commonly used term, although its connotations are also debatable. The expression is said to have originated with a singing group called the Golden Haafu that was popular during the 1970s. Several other terms have recently emerged. “Double” (daburu) is a new expression that implies a paradigm shift for understanding people of multiple backgrounds. Although not yet heard very often and used more by the parents of mixed-race children than by the individuals themselves, the implication of empowerment through re-articulation is clear; people are not halves of two groups and less than whole, but rather double and twice as much. This may refer not only to having two kinds of racial identities but also to being bilingual and bicultural. In addition, “quarter” (quotah) can be heard from time to time and seems to imply that a person is one-fourth Japanese. In some circles in Japan, people use the word “mixed” (mikkusu) as well.
Social Implications The connotations of being mixed race in Japan continue to change. The postwar era provided a particular context for reading race in terms of class and national interests. Mixed-race Japanese during the postwar period were predominantly the children of U.S. military men and lower-class Japanese women. In addition to viewing these children as lower class, most Japanese felt a residual animosity toward the U.S. military, ostensibly influencing how mixed-race children were perceived by mainstream “monoracial” Japanese. Many of these mixed-race children were abandoned and raised as orphans. In contemporary Japanese society, hafu conjures up glamorous images of models and celebrities who are usually White European/American and Japanese. In this way, many young people see mixed-race people as “cool” and “trendy.” But these stylish mixed-race Japanese models and celebrities tend to be of Japanese/ White backgrounds, and this differs from the postwar period when Japanese/Black mixed-race people were also included; the current use promotes a narrow racial image of mixed-race Japanese people in Japan. The mainstream popularity of hafu in the contemporary era, although certainly superficial, is regarded by many as being correlated with Japan’s emphasis on international relations and globalization. In addition,
more of the younger generation of mixed-race Japanese have parents who are businesspeople, diplomats, and other upper-class global elites. In this way, the class image of this group has changed. Thus, a group that was previously negatively marginal because of connections to “foreigners” and other countries is now becoming more positively marginal for the same reasons—but still marginal nonetheless. No matter what term one uses to describe mixedrace Japanese in Japan, there seems to be a shift in their portrayal in the popular media. On television, mixed-race celebrities are becoming more widely noticeable, and many of them were born and raised exclusively in Japan and speak only Japanese. This public portrayal of mixed-race Japanese as not always bilingual or bicultural, with their phenotypes (and family histories) as the only salient markers of their foreignness, leads one to wonder about how this will affect future conceptions of Japaneseness and the boundaries around it. Although the term is widely used in everyday discourse, there is limited scholarship on hafu either empirically or theoretically. Murphy-Shigematsu has defined the academic discourse, having written numerous articles in English on what he calls “multiethnic people” in Japan. With increasing numbers of international and interracial marriages in Japan, the population of hafu is also on the rise. It will be interesting to see how the growth of this population might open up possibilities for a third social category in Japan. Jane H. Yamashiro See also Asian Americans; Asian American Studies; Hapa; Identity Politics; Intermarriage; Japan; Multiracial Identity; Nikkeijin
Further Readings
Burkhardt, William R. 1983. “Institutional Barriers, Marginality, and Adaptation among the American–Japanese Mixed Bloods in Japan.” Journal of Asian Studies 42:519–544. Life, Regge. 1995. Doubles: Japan and America’s Intercultural Children [video]. Produced and directed by Regge Life. Murphy-Shigematsu, Stephen. 2000. “Identities of Multiethnic People in Japan.” Pp. 196–216 in Japan and Global Migration: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society, edited by M. Douglass and G. S. Roberts. London: Routledge.
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Murphy-Shigematsu, Stephen. 2001. “Multiethnic Lives and Monoethnic Myths: American–Japanese Amerasians in Japan.” Pp. 207–216 in The Sum of Our Parts: Mixed Heritage Asian Americans, edited by T. Williams-Leon and C. L. Nakashima. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
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racial tension, and the majority population is dominated by an antiquated system based on skin color. Looking historically at this phenomenon—the goal of this entry—is helpful to understand the complex dynamics that rule many aspects of Haitian life.
Historical Background
HAITI Situated on the island of Hispaniola, Haiti is one of the Caribbean countries visited by Christopher Columbus during the days of early exploration. The island of Hispaniola sits in the North Caribbean Sea and has Cuba, the Bahamas, and Puerto Rico as its neighbors. On the island itself, Haiti shares its eastern border with the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic. Haitian inhabitants, however, speak Haitian Creole French as an official language. Haiti’s major cities are Port-de-Paix, Cap-Haitien, and Gonaives, with Portau-Prince as the country’s capital. Haiti has roughly 8.3 million citizens and had an estimated population of 9 million people in 2007. Haiti has a majority AfroCaribbean population with 95%. The remaining 5% are mulattos, with less than 1% being Europeans. Haitians currently suffer from a history laden with
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Like the Dominican Republic, Haiti was not a desolate and barren area free of human activity at the time of arrival by Columbus. The Taíno Indians were a Native American group of nomads from the northern areas of the South American continent who eventually settled many of the Caribbean Islands. The Taíno were a relatively peaceful group of natives, unlike the more aggressive Carib Indians, who were known for their thirst for war and territory. The Taíno were experts at fishing and gathering, and although they were numerous during precolonial days, more than 250,000 Taíno had died due to infectious disease and slave labor by the time the explorers had been on the island for two years.
Colonial Times Exploration and claim to other islands were of a pressing concern to the Europeans, and the Spanish used Hispaniola as a base of operations to execute further Caribbean exploration. During the early and middle parts of the 17th century, French pirates settled the western portion of Hispaniola primarily to serve as a base for looting British and Spanish ships. In an attempt to control pirating in the Caribbean, Spain was forced to recognize the French claim on the western portion of the island. French settlers, assured by new antibuccaneering laws, continued to settle western Hispaniola. Fueled by agricultural profits in coffee and sugar, the French colony of Saint Domingue became one of the richest colonies possessed by the French. By the mid-18th century, Saint Domingue produced 60% of the coffee and 40% of the sugar imported by Britain and France. Sugar production would push the need for labor and the importation of massive numbers of slaves from Africa and Jamaica, and as was customary with colonies in the Caribbean, the slaves vastly outnumbered the owners. By the dawning of the French Revolution, there were an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 African slaves located on the French portion of Hispaniola alone. The French slave system was particularly cruel and discriminatory, with a variety of
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restrictive laws passed in Saint Domingue. Most male slaves did not live to childbearing age. At the same time in Europe, France began to undergo revolutionary transformation that recognized people’s unalienable rights, particularly those rights of the poor that were suppressed by the upper classes. As word reached the Caribbean colonies, similarities were drawn between France and Saint Domingue, namely, that a fairly large poor population was controlled by a relatively smaller elite.
The Slave Revolt Racial tension and politics boiled over in 1791, and a slave revolt began. Although the majority of Black Haitians are Christian, customs prior to their arrival in the New World were well entrenched and subsequently interwoven with new religions. Voodoo was a common religion in sub-Saharan Africa, and in Haiti voodoo was used and viewed as a common thread that united African slaves from different countries and languages. With tensions rising among the races, the Haitian leaders, primarily François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, Georges Biassou, Jeannot, and Boukman (a voodoo priest), used the religion to fanatically rally and engage the impoverished and runaway slaves alike to the cause of rebellion. The rebellion swept into town after town and visited on the White citizens of Haiti horrific carnage and massacre. On another front, the mulattos, considered as middle class by means of skin color, revolted against the harsh caste system imposed by the ruling French elite. The French quashed the mulatto revolt through the effective recruitment of Black slaves into the French army lured by the promise of freedom. Mulatto involvement signified unrest on a much larger scale. The Black insurgents seized most of northern Haiti, while outside forces such as the British tried to take advantage of France’s weakness. Disease would greatly thin the British army; in addition, the United States, which had an interest in the Louisiana Territory, agreed to help Toussaint and the rebellion provided that Haiti deny the French control of any ports or bases of operation in the future. Under the lead of Toussaint, the English were crushed.
Independence Despite the victories by insurgents, Hispaniola was not at peace. Napoleon Bonaparte had other plans for the colony. Aided by White colonists and mulattos, the
French army recaptured Hispaniola and imprisoned Toussaint. These efforts, however, were not enough to halt forces already in motion. To finance his war, Napoleon was forced to sell the Louisiana Territory, ending true French interest in the area. Cut off from funding and supplies, the remaining French troops on the island were outmaneuvered. By the early 1800s, the last French general had fled Hispaniola. Due to the fact that Haiti was the first Black republic in history and the only slave colony able to free itself, outside opposition ran high. Trade embargoes were established, and many countries refused to recognize Haiti’s independence. On January 1, 1804, Haiti claimed autonomy from the French government, yet the cultural damage had been done. War would permanently instill racial stereotypes and mistrust between the races, and history would show the effects of colonialism to have long-lasting implications for the quality of life of the Haitian people. C. Centae Richards See Appendix A See also Caribbean; Colonialism; Creole; Dominican Americans; Dominican Republic; Haitian Americans; Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison
Further Readings
Catanese, Anthony V. 1999. Haiti: Migrations and Diaspora. Boulder, CO: Westview. Martínez, Samuel. 1999. “From Hidden Hand to Heavy Hand: Sugar, the State, and Migrant Labor in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.” Latin America Research Review 34:54–83. McAlister, Elizabeth. 1999. Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora. Berkeley: University of California Press.
HAITIAN AMERICANS Haitians’ presence in the United States is not a new phenomenon. As early as 1779, when the United States was consolidating its independence from Great Britain, Haiti—then known as Saint Domingue, the most prosperous of all French colonies—delegated a contingent of slaves under the command of a French military leader named Comte d’Estaing to fight on the side of the U.S. revolutionary forces at Savannah, Georgia. Once the United States became an independent country, migration from Haiti began in earnest.
Haitian Americans
The first immigrants from Haiti arrived at the end of the 18th century, and since then there has been a continuous, if not always large, stream of arrivals from the island. However, the greatest influx of immigrants, and the one that has drawn the greatest attention, began during the 1960s and 1970s as Haitians fled the dictatorial regime of “Papa Doc” Duvalier. In the United States, the Haitian community has had difficulty in amassing social, economic, and political capital. This entry records the history of Haitian immigration and describes the current community.
Immigration History The Haitian slaves who fought on the side of the U.S. revolutionary armies did not set roots in the United States. Soon after the end of the hostilities, they were returned to their masters in Saint Domingue. In 1791, at the onset of the Haitian Revolution, thousands of slaves from Saint Domingue were brought to Louisiana, New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia by their French masters to weather the impact of the uprisings and await Napoleon’s victory over the insurrectionists. When the Haitian Revolution triumphed in 1804, and as the French colonists finally realized that they would not be returning to Saint Domingue, these immigrant slaves were retained in the United States, still attached to their French masters. Subsequent to the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, and on being freed at the end of the U.S. Civil War, the Haitian slaves and their progeny became part of the U.S. Black community, adopting an African American identity. Later, as Haiti was occupied by the United States between 1915 and 1934, small numbers of Haitian intellectuals, artists, poets, and professionals settled in Harlem and, together with their African American counterparts, played significant roles in the Harlem Renaissance movement. A decade or so later, during the economic boom years that followed the end of World War II, Haitian workers (mostly females) were recruited by the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince to work in the garment manufacturing industry and in the service sector in cities and communities throughout the United States. However, it was during the later years of the 1960s, as Haiti was reeling under Duvalier’s iron rule, that Haitian migration to the United States began to surge at a very feverish pace to reach its all-time high levels. Duvalier, who ruled Haiti with U.S. consent and support between 1957 and 1971, indiscriminately imprisoned, murdered, and forced into exile many professionals,
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business people, students, and entrepreneurs—whether or not they were guilty of plotting against his autocratic regime. Other cadre professionals, fearing for their safety and that of their families, left on their own and went abroad in search of political security and improved economic opportunities. In addition, during the late 1960s, international organizations such as the United Nations and the Organization of American States, along with countries such as Canada and France, recruited the remaining Haitian professionals and skilled workers and encouraged them to leave Haiti as well. The majority of these exiles eventually settled in the United States as refugees and not as immigrants. From their outposts in New York and Miami, they labored assiduously to bring down the regime. In 1971, subsequent to Duvalier’s death, Jean-Claude, Duvalier’s 19-year-old son, succeeded him as life president. Disheartened by the turn of events in Haiti, the 1960s refugees lost all hopes of returning to their country and began considering themselves as settlers. Taking advantage of the family reunion provision of the 1965 Hart–Celler immigration bill, they proceeded to sponsor their relatives who reunited with them in the United States as immigrants. By the mid-1970s, the departure of the best educated and qualified cadres began to produce a migratory domino effect that resulted in an urgency to leave. Those Haitians who did not have relatives living in the United States who would sponsor their applications as legal residents came as visitors or students and overstayed their visas. Others who did not have the contacts, resources, and credentials of the preceding groups took to the sea in frail vessels, risking their lives in a difficult and perilous 700-mile journey to reach the United States or the Bahamas. Known as “boat people,” during the 1970s and 1980s an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 of these clandestine migrants landed on Florida’s beaches alone. By the time the Duvalier regime fell in 1986, Haitians had become one of the largest groups of immigrants from the Caribbean Basin in the United States.
Haitians in the United States Demogra aphics
Prior to the 1970s, Haitian migration was selective in terms of geographical and class origin. After that, however, the Haitian immigrants came from all of Haiti’s regions and social strata. Although at the inception of the Haitian migratory waves of the 1960s
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most immigrants settled in New York, Miami, or Boston, today sizable Haitian settlements exist throughout the United States. However, the dearth of precise statistical figures makes it difficult to accurately measure the size of the Haitian population in the United States. The 2000 U.S. Census, the most reliable source of U.S. demographic statistics, reported that 429,848 people living in the United States were born in Haiti and that the combined total of persons who selfdescribed as being of Haitian ancestry was 632,680. These figures are unreliable for many reasons. First and foremost, the numbers do not include most of the undocumented Haitian immigrants who, understandably, have been reticent in volunteering their personal information to the census takers. Also, being proud of their heritage as citizens of the world’s first Black independent country born out of the only successful slave revolt in modern times, Haitian immigrants are frustrated by the political and economic morass that stigmatizes their country’s image in the U.S. imagination as one of the world’s poorest nations. As a result, many conceal their true identity to avoid the ridicule and derision of those with whom they interact. Because of these and many other obstacles, it is impossible to accurately assess the size of the U.S. Haitian population. Economic Life
Although the U.S. Haitian immigrant population includes a significant number of professionals with high-status positions within its ranks, the number of Haitian immigrants who had completed high school before migrating is low, and lower still is the number who migrated with a college or professional degree. This lack of skills causes many Haitian immigrants to face a difficult economic life in the United States. Whereas in the past unskilled European immigrants found well-paid manufacturing jobs that helped to propel them up the socioeconomic ladder, the situation is completely different today. Nowadays, to maximize their profits, U.S. corporations are outsourcing these jobs to developing economies where salaries are much lower and working conditions are less regulated than they are in the United States. Also, as late as in the 1960s, government-funded social programs helped immigrants to adapt to their new country. Since the advent of the “Reagan revolution” (referring to Ronald Reagan’s presidency during
the 1980s), however, these social programs have been dismantled, and today they are being eliminated completely. Consequently, many Haitian immigrants have found it difficult to acquire and develop the necessary skills they need to become socially mobile in the United States. As a result of the combination of these factors, the 2000 census reported that the Haitian unemployment rate and the number of Haitians living below the poverty line were much higher than those of other similar immigrant groups. Correspondingly, the Haitian median income is lower than that of other foreign-born groups. Politiical Life
Despite their relatively large numbers, the Haitian immigrants have no significant representation within the U.S. political system. Although a few Haitian politicians have been elected to municipal and state legislative positions in Florida, Massachusetts, and Illinois, the Haitian immigrant populations rely on elected officials from other constituencies to articulate their grievances, represent their needs, speak on their behalf, and protect their interests. This situation is due to the Haitian immigrants’ lack of spatial concentration, their cultural singularity, their inability to make alliances with their other ethnic groups, the negative stereotypes that have been associated with them, and their transnationalism. Socia al Adapta atio on
Haitian immigrants are both visible and invisible in the United States. Being of African descent, they are seen as part of the visible minority groups and, therefore, are lumped together with the other Black populations, although Haitians have had historical experiences different from those of the U.S.-native Blacks and share very few cultural traits with them. At the same time, Haitian immigrants are invisible as a distinct Black population with its idiosyncratic and particular historical and cultural characteristics. For example, Haitians’ primary language is Haitian Creole, a language that is not well understood and appreciated in the United States. At the same time, it is estimated that 10% of Haitians have a good command of French. These two languages are not very useful to those who speak them in the United States because the few social programs that are still operating are more likely to use Spanish and English, the most widely spoken
Haitian Americans
languages by the majority of new immigrant groups. That linguistic dichotomy further alienates Haitian immigrants from the U.S. mainstream population. Second, the overwhelming majority of Haitian immigrants are accustomed to rural life and not urban life. Third, in addition to being devout Catholics or Protestants, most practice Vodoun, a religion that is branded and stigmatized in the United States. To further hinder the Haitian immigrants’ social conditions in the United States, during the early 1980s the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) accused Haitians, together with hemophiliacs, heroin addicts, and homosexuals, of being responsible for spreading AIDS in the United States and barred them from giving blood. Although the CDC was later forced to retract its accusation and finally removed Haitians from that list, many U.S. medical organizations and academic journals continue to link Haitian culture with the spread of AIDS in the United States. The persistence of this linkage between Haiti and AIDS has maligned the Haitians’ identity, alienating them even further from U.S. mainstream society. Even Haitian professionals who have migrated with some credentials and resources might not be in a favorable situation to assimilate to U.S. society. Many experience downward social mobility after migrating because U.S. companies often do not accept their Haitian credentials. In addition, they often lack English fluency, are unfamiliar with U.S. cultural norms, and lack proper guidance on how to navigate the U.S. bureaucracy. However, the second and third generations, along with those who migrated at a very young age, adapt rather well and assimilate more quickly and completely to the normative practices of U.S. society. This often creates serious generational tensions within the Haitian immigrant family. These tensions are exacerbated when these youngsters reject their parents’ “Haitian ways,” preferring to speak English rather than Creole and/or French and—to the chagrin of many Haitian parents—choosing an African American identity instead of a Haitian identity. However, research has also shown that when these youngsters reach the high school or college level, many reconnect with Haiti as they seek to reclaim their Haitian heritage.
Links With Haiti Because of these social barriers and prejudices, Haitian immigrants living in the United States have been unsuccessful at entering into cross-ethnic alliances
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and have not been able to organize ethnic communities of their own in the United States except for Little Haiti in Miami. Instead, most Haitian immigrants, even those who have taken up U.S. nationality, have remained connected with Haiti and continue to consider themselves as part of Haiti while they seek to adapt to their new milieu in their own terms. In the same vein, in 1995 Haiti reached out to its immigrant populations (also known as the Haitian diaspora)—even those who had acquired foreign citizenship—and officially reincorporated them into the fold of the Haitian population, albeit with very limited rights, as the “Tenth Department” to complement Haiti’s nine geographical departments at that time. Together with this designation, a cabinet post was created to institute strong linkages between Haiti and its diaspora. The Haitian diaspora’s longing to reconnect with its homeland population is not hinged solely on nostalgia and sentimental affections, nor is it derived entirely from the immigrants’ remembrance of their homeland as an emotional lieu de memoire. Rather, the strategy of living in two societies simultaneously, or transnationalism, is also utilitarian because it provides concrete and tangible benefits for Haiti, the sedentary populations, and the immigrant populations. Because of the many ways in which it affects the minds and dispositions of those Haitian immigrants who live transnational lives, the strategy of living simultaneously in two societies can be problematic. By remaining connected with Haiti, the transnational Haitians have established their homeland as a place where they go to find solace for their personal and social problems. Those who are documented visit Haiti regularly, and this serves to reduce the impacts of racial discrimination, whether perceived or real, that afflict them in the United States. As for the Haitian state, it pins its hopes on the Haitian immigrants to shoulder some of its responsibilities. Being the sector of the “Haitian community” writ large that comparatively possesses significant social, intellectual, and financial capital, the Haitian immigrants make substantial contributions to their homeland called remittances. It is estimated that Haitians living abroad remit more than $1.5 billion per year to their relatives and acquaintances in Haiti. This sum represents five times the money Haiti receives from foreign aid, up to three times the country’s budget, and at least 20% of its gross domestic product. In addition to these transfers of cash, Haitian immigrants send ample supplies of provisions and consumer goods
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of all kinds to their kin, relatives, and friends in Haiti. The multiplier effects of these remittances and transfers of commodities literally keep the Haitian economy afloat. Moreover, most communities in Haiti are represented abroad by regional organizations or hometown associations created by the immigrants to address the homeland populations’ basic survival and infrastructural needs. Through important linkages that these hometown associations establish in Haiti, the immigrants attempt to introduce their native land to modernity, create platforms on which they rely to influence local politics, and help to raise funds for various projects in Haiti. Yet, however well intentioned these initiatives may be, they tend to encourage both the sedentary and immigrant Haitian populations to seek solutions for their problems outside of their residential communities. Georges Fouron See Appendix A See also Birth of a Nation, The; Creole; France; Haiti; Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison; Immigration, U.S.; Remittances; Slavery
Further Readings
Branson, Susan and Leslie Patrick. 2001. “Étranger dans un Pays Étrange” [Foreigners in a foreign land]. Pp. 193–208 in The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, edited by David P. Geggus. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Clark, George P. 1980. “The Role of the Haitian Volunteers at Savannah in 1779: An Attempt at an Objective View.” Phylon 41:356–366. Farmer, Paul. 1992. Aids and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fouron, Georges E. and Nina Glick Schiller. 2001. “The Generation of Identity: Redefining the Second Generation within a Transnational Identity.” Pp. 58–86 in Migration, Transnationalization, and Race in a Changing New York, edited by Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán, Robert C. Smith, and Ramón Grosfoguel. Philadelphi, PA: Temple University Press. Glick Schiller, Nina and Georges E. Fouron. 1990. “‘Everywhere We Go, We Are in Danger’: Ti Manno and the Emergence of a Haitian Transnational Identity.” American Ethnologist 172:329–347. Glick Schiller, Nina and Georges E. Fouron. 2001. Georges Woke up Laughing: Long Distance Nationalism and
the Search for Home. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Heinl, Robert Debs and Nancy Gordon Heinl. 1996. Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People. rev. ed. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Konczal, Lisa and Alex Stepick. 2007. “Haiti.” Pp. 445–457 in The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration since 1965, edited by Mary C. Waters and Reed Ueda. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pierre-Louis, François, Jr. 2004. Haitians in New York City: Transnationalism and Hometown Associations. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Zephir, Flore. 2001. Trends in Ethnic Identification among Second-Generation Haitian Immigrants in New York City. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.
HAITIAN AND CUBAN IMMIGRATION: A COMPARISON Cuban and Haitian refugees have been both the beneficiaries and the neglected people of U.S. immigration reform. The close proximity of the Caribbean Basin to Florida’s shores makes the journey worth the trip for Cubans and Haitians desperate to escape political upheaval and poverty. Miami-Dade County, Florida, is the primary point of entry for Cuba and Haitian exiles, and the reception they have received there has varied from neutral to hostile. Florida’s politicians continue to look to the federal government for financial aid and immigration policies to ameliorate these issues. The focus of this entry is the different U.S. responses to the two migration streams. It examines the sociopolitical ramifications of U.S.–Cuban and U.S.–Haitian policies for the immigrants and how the language of immigration reform and the perception of immigration have affected both communities.
A Contrast in Reception When Cubans first began to flee Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, the reception in the United States was positive, perhaps related to the fact that helping Cuban refugees could be seen as an anti-communist policy. Later, U.S. administrations set policies that were not always welcoming. However, Cubans arriving in Miami-Dade County have continued to benefit from the perceived cohesive nature of their communities. President George W. Bush, for example, has funded anti-Castro programs such as Radio and
Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison
TV Marti and has limited travel and remittances to the island. Haitian immigrants fleeing the dictatorship of “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his successors have been met with detention in federal holding centers and repatriation. Moreover, the U.S. government intervention into Haitian political instability included sending peacekeepers and military civil affairs units to facilitate the democratization of the small nation-state. The military consultants were there for a limited time and left Haiti in what many Haitian social activists charged was an unstable state. The Bush administration failed to prepare the up-and-coming political leaders for the work of democratizing the island. Those who had been in power with one regime simply changed allegiances and took power within the new regime. Haiti was not seen in the same light as Cuba because Haiti was not considered a communist regime; rather, it was considered an authoritarian government that strategically was of no threat to the United States save for the effects of continued migration. Haitian and Haitian American social activists have charged the Bush administration with racializing immigration reform to keep Blacks out of the United States. The claims, as stated by the Haitian Coalition in Miami-Dade County, assert that Cubans are fleeing Cuba for the same reasons that Haitians are risking their lives to leave Haiti. Political unrest and the hope of pursuing a better life are the motivators.
The Haitian American Experience The Haitian community of Miami-Dade County has a population of more than 71,054, according to the 2000 census. The majority speaks French Creole and has been absorbed into the formal economy, accepting low wages and poor work conditions. Those who are here illegally are often actively employed in the informal economy. They work to achieve financial success for themselves and their families and look to contribute to the U.S. economy. Most have made the 600mile journey through treacherous waters to reach the United States and find employment to provide for their families. Leaving Haiti was an act of desperation; the National Coalition of Haitian Rights asserts that so long as assassinations of dissenters continue in Haiti, emigration will continue to be problematic for the United States. With the fall of the Duvalier regime and the implementation of democratic elections, participation in the
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political process of Haiti was expected to reduce the migration stream. However, the mechanisms that kept Duvalier in power—tactics such as torture, murder, and imprisonment—did not end with the new political process. The election of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide with the intervention of the United States did little to stem the tide of migration. More than 70,000 Haitians fled Haiti for the United States in September 1991 when a coup upset the balance of power. The military coup continued the use of force to keep corruption and extortion profitable for those in power. In 2004, more than 500 Haitian immigrants reached U.S. soil. They were held aboard Coast Guard cutters with minimal opportunity to apply for asylum. Bush responded by announcing that the Haitians would be repatriated and that the international community should work together to facilitate peace in Haiti. The Haitian Refugee Center of Miami-Dade County reports that repatriated Haitians have experienced humiliation, torture, and shunning by their community as a result of their attempts to leave Haiti. In addition, smugglers take advantage of would-be emigrants, demanding thousands of dollars for transport to the Florida coast. Repatriation has left Haitians with little opportunity to obtain employment, and they are dependent on family members for support. Agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) take Haitians in the United States illegally to the Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade County. They may apply for political asylum and are allowed to plead their cases before INS officials. Most, however, are repatriated to Port-au-Prince. Immigration from Haiti is not likely to slow. The current population of Haiti is 832,600. More than 38% of the population is under 15 years of age. Young Haitians experience a variety of social strains associated with poverty, presenting the conditions that are the push factors for Haitians to leave the island. Youth are also willing to accept the risk associated with such a dangerous crossing. It is unknown how many Haitians have died in the attempt to make it to the United States. The United Nations estimates that more than 62% of Haitians are undernourished. It is also projected that the infant mortality rate is 63%. Life expectancy is projected at 52 years. Approximately 34% of Haitians are not expected to reach 40 years of age, and 46% do not have access to improved water sources. These conditions of poverty have created the desperation that is the catalyst for young Haitians to leave the
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island in search of a better life. Smugglers have used this desperation as an enticement, promising employment and material wealth if they pay the cost to get them to Florida.
Cubans found in international waters are repatriated. Interdiction at sea has become a priority due to the increased number of drug and alien smugglers.
Conclusion The Cuban American Experience The Cuban and Cuban American community has encountered a different reception from the U.S. government. The first wave of migration from 1959 to 1964 was viewed as a fight for freedom. Castro’s regime was vilified as communist, and his alliance with the former Soviet Union strengthened the resolve of U.S. residents that communism was an enemy that should be fought swiftly. The second major migration from Cuba occurred during 1979 and 1980. The Cuban émigrés were referred to as “Marielitos” based on the port from which they left Cuba. Castro was quick to portray these émigrés as criminals, the mentally ill, and outcasts of society. Through the interviewing of the asylum seekers in the United States, it was discovered that a small percentage were criminals and that many were elderly, ill, or political dissenters. This migration included 100,000 refugees. The federal government, under the administration of President Jimmy Carter, sent in the Coast Guard to stem the wave of émigrés and warned Castro against further action. Although originally detained in Miami’s Orange Bowl stadium, many were eventually released into the custody of family members and were absorbed into the Cuban enclave. The most recent migration wave of Cuban refugees came in 1995, although many still trickle in occasionally. Known as the Balseros, the Spanish translation for rafters, Cubans once again took to the seas in hopes of reaching American soil. Those arriving were detained briefly for INS processing. Under the administration of President Bill Clinton, new immigration reform known as the “wet feet/dry feet” policy was enacted. If Cubans or Haitians reached U.S. soil, they would be allowed to apply for asylum. In an agreement with Cuba, the United States would allow applications for 20,000 visas per year. Cuba has limited who can apply for visas, leaving many applicants unable to take advantage of the program. The wet feet/dry feet policy constructed by the Clinton administration stated that those able to reach U.S. shores would be allowed the opportunity to apply for refugee status. However, with the Coast Guard patrolling the Florida Straits with boats and helicopters, it is a challenge to reach U.S. shores. All Haitians and
The Cuban American community of Miami-Dade County has a population of more than 552,000. Absorption of new arrivals into the community is easier because of the number of Cuban-owned and -operated businesses. The informal economy of the Cuban enclave also facilitates absorption. The Haitian community is much smaller, and social activists contend that the racism and ethnic bias Haitians encounter makes absorption more difficult. It is unknown how many Haitians and Cubans die in attempting to reach U.S. soil; however, what is clear is that those attempting to leave know the risks they are taking and are willing to risk their lives for better ones. Current immigration reform has not stemmed the tide of those attempting to reach selfexile. Interdiction at sea has only given smugglers the opportunity to take advantage of the desperate. The Haitian and Cuban refugee centers refer to the international water between the United States, Cuba, and Haiti as an international graveyard. Sandy Alvarez See Appendix A See also Asylum; “Boat People”; Cuba; Cuba: Migration and Demography; Cuban Americans; Diaspora; Haiti; Haitian Americans; Immigration, U.S.; Informal Economy Further Readings
Central Intelligence Agency. 2007. World Factbook. Available from https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ index.html Gaines, Jena. 2004. Haitian Immigration (changing face of North America). Broomall, PA: Mason Crest. LaGuerre, Michel S. 2006. Diasporic Citizenship: Haitian Americans in Transnational America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. McCoy, Terry, William Kennedy, and Arthur Miller. 2003. Cuba on the Verge of Transition. New York: Bulfinch Press. Perez-Hernandez, Julio Cesar and Angelika Taschen. 2006. Inside Cuba. Los Angeles, CA: Taschen Press. Stepick, Alex. 1997. Pride against Prejudice: Haitians in the United States. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Zephir, Flore. 1996. Haitian Immigrants in Black America: A Sociological and Sociolinguistic Portrait. South Hadley, MA: Bergen & Garvey.
Haole
HAOLE Haole refers to a largely racialized ethnic group in Hawai‘i that has significantly shaped the society and – direction of the islands. ‘Olelo Hawai‘i, the Hawaiian language, defines haole as either a general foreigner or a White person specifically. It is an often-heard term in Hawai‘i, referring to people and things that are not indigenous to the islands. Depending on the context, it can be used as a neutral or pejorative term. Owing to a unique and tangled history, the term provokes strong racial, class, and political associations among Hawai‘i residents. Enduring experiences with missionaries, plantation owners, military personnel, and tourists primarily contribute to current notions of haole. This entry looks at the origins of the term, its application to different groups, and its influence today.
Origin of the Term There is some debate regarding the original meaning of the word haole. One popular belief is that the term was first applied to U.S. missionaries who did not exchange breath in the customary fashion when greeting others. Native Hawaiians practice the honi, a light pressing of the nose while inhaling each other’s ha(breath). Ha- is a symbol of life in Hawaiian culture, and ‘ole means to be without something. The inability of the missionaries to act appropriately caused Hawaiians to say that they were without breath (ha‘ole). However, linguists criticize this interpretation, arguing that the pronunciations of ha-‘ole and haole are markedly different and would not be easily confused. Still, many people, Native Hawaiians and others, continue to embrace this localized etymology. On the other hand, ancient mo‘olelo (native histories) demonstrate that the concept of haole most likely originated prior to the arrival of Westerners to Hawai‘i. S. M. Kamakau, an 18th-century Native Hawaiian historian, recorded the oral history of distinguished kupuna (elders of his time). One account, told for generations before the coming of Westerners, mentions the travels of the young chief Paumakuaalonoho‘onewa to Kahiki, the land beyond the horizon. When returning from these distant lands, the chief brought back with him foreigners described as haole—white-skinned persons with reddish eyes that stare like the a-hole fish. The fact that the term is linked not only to strange newcomers but also to white-skinned persons in this example may or may not be coincidental.
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Haole is routinely used in the Hawaiian kingdom and early censuses to distinguish Native Hawaiians from non-Native Hawaiians. Remarkably, this practice applied to other Pacific Islanders as well, where the categories of “male foreign Polynesians” and “women foreign Polynesians” are listed as Na- haole ka-ne Polynesia and Na- haole wa-hine Polynesia, respectively. Despite subsequent importation of U.S. ideology and culture, which emphasizes color and race, Native Hawaiians remain interested in connections to ancestors, land, and place. From an indigenous Hawaiian perspective, people are closely identified with the places and ancestors they come from. The ‘a-ina (land) is a key component of one’s identity and background. When foreigners initially arrived in Hawai‘i, whether they were Europeans or other Pacific Islanders, they were most likely treated as malihini (newcomers). In contrast, to be kama‘a-ina means to be intimately familiar with a place, that is, knowledgeable in both the big and little currents. Mo‘oku-‘auhau (genealogy) is equally important in determining one’s identity, status, and role in Hawaiian society. In some ways, haole are seen as perpetual malihini. The term infers that someone is without ancestral connection to the ‘a-ina and has no ‘ohana (extended family) on which to rely. These sentiments persist today and are consciously woven into the rich fabric of contemporary Native Hawaiian culture.
White People in the Islands Early Inflluences
Historically speaking, sustained contact with European and U.S. sailors, tradesmen, and missionaries during the late 18th century drastically changed the composition of Hawaiian society. Massive native depopulation brought about by foreign diseases caused tremendous social upheaval, as did the importation of new religions and the haole concept of private land ownership. During these tumultuous times, haole quickly rose to prominence in the islands through industriousness and intermarriage with native elites or through duplicitous means. From their earliest days in Hawai‘i, a handful of White foreigners became members of royal courts and served as advisers to ruling ali‘i (chiefs). John Young, an Englishman who served Kamehameha I, was given the name Keoni Ana after marrying a high-ranking Hawaiian woman. Through the high status of his English father and Hawaiian
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mother, his son was later appointed governor of O‘ahu by Kamehameha III. Haole gained a foothold in Hawaiian society through missionary churches and schools established throughout the islands. The missionaries brought Christianity, but perhaps more compelling to the native populace was their means of reading, writing, and printing. Not long after their arrival in 1820, a large-scale plantation economy emerged that was linked closely to U.S. business and politics. Between 1852 and 1946, thousands of Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and other immigrant laborers were contracted to harvest sugar cane, pineapple, and other export crops. Workers lived in ethnically segregated plantation camps and learned to communicate with each other through Pidgin, a localized Creole language. Nearly all of the plantation owners were haole, many of whom were descendants of well-known missionary families. They became especially wealthy landowners and entrepreneurs capable of influencing the Hawai‘i kingdom government and the greater public with their vast resources and control of the press. In stark contrast to the haole owners and managers, the laborers and field-hands were predominantly disenfranchised non-Whites. Politiicall Con ntrrol
Whereas the missionary and plantation eras saw haole accumulate vast wealth and influence, the overthrow of Queen Lili‘uokalani in 1893 and the illegal annexation of Hawai‘i in 1898 wrested all remaining political power from the native government. A small contingent of haole businessmen led by Sanford B. Dole were intent on Hawai‘i becoming a U.S. state and orchestrated the overthrow of the queen with the aid of U.S. military forces. From 1898 to 1959, Whites consolidated their power in what is commonly referred to as the “territorial era” of Hawai‘i. During this new age, Hawaiian language, tradition, and culture were besieged by an influx of haole ideas, commodities, and practices. The newly dominant U.S. culture promised island residents modernity and enterprise at the wholesale cost of assimilation. The presence of the U.S. military in Hawai‘i and cultural clashes between service people and local residents further organize perceptions of haole. From a military standpoint, Hawai‘i is a strategically positioned staging ground in the heart of the Pacific, roughly midway between North America and Asia.
U.S. officers recognized the importance of establishing a Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor as early as the mid1800s. Today, the U.S. military controls a great deal of land throughout the islands, and this at times engenders hostility on the part of island residents, Native Hawaiians in particular. In some ways, military personnel are distinctly haole because they often arrive from U.S. states with limited familiarity of island life and culture. Scholars describe the strangeness that haole servicemen and servicewomen experienced during World War II when they were made aware of their position as a White “minority” in Hawai‘i. More important, beyond the racial differences of most military personnel and island folks are major disparities of cultural values and normative behavior between the groups. Tou urissm and Locall Residentss
The pervasiveness of mass tourism is a profound component of Hawaiian society. Each year, millions of tourists vacation in the islands, and their highly structured encounters with local residents contribute to common perceptions of haole. Anthropologists suggest that the Hawai‘i visitor industry is a contact zone where haole and locals perform ritualized behavior and form attitudes about one another. Again, from an indigenous Hawaiian perspective, tourists epitomize “haoleness” because they typically stay for short periods of time; they enjoy the benefits of Hawai‘i without “giving back” in a cultural sense before returning home. A familiar ‘o-lelo no‘eau (Native Hawaiian proverb) finds similar behavior in the Ko-lea bird (golden plovers). These birds seasonally migrate to the islands from Alaska to consume resources and escape a harsh winter, but they never establish lifelong nests. Given this sociopolitical history, haole as a group are most often contrasted with “locals,” composed of any non-White persons raised in Hawai‘i. Recently, Native Hawaiian and local scholars have written about the formation and implication of local culture and identity. In Marxist terms, haole represent the capitalist and managerial class, whereas locals, as descendants of contract laborers, constitute the proletariat. This sentiment persists today where grassroots efforts against exploitative development often mobilize around a shared pride in localness. Interestingly enough, times have changed such that Whites nowadays trail local Japanese and local Chinese in terms of socioeconomic status and political representation. Critics warn that “local” displaces
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Native Hawaiian voice because it reduces indigenous Hawaiians to be simply one of many other ethnic groups in Hawai‘i.
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See also Colonialism; Hapa; Hawai‘i, Race in; Hawaiians; Native Americans; Pacific Islanders; White Privilege Further Readings
Haole Today Haole, like the label of any ethnic group, masks the diversity of its membership. It is far too easy to stereotype all haole according to a prescriptive set of markers and behavior. The more complicated reality is that haole is a socially constructed category based largely on idealized and homogenized views of White foreigners. At the same time, framed by a particular chain of events, these perspectives remain in people’s minds as a collective public history and discourse. Precisely because of this, haole are perceived as White wealthy individuals who are set apart from Native Hawaiians and locals due to their shallow roots in the islands and perceived negative behaviors. The arrival and ascendancy of haole, as a group, is comparatively small when measured against the duration of indigenous Hawaiian occupation and stewardship of the land. Although a highly racialized ethnic group, haole are also culturally conspicuous. The Hawaiian word, ho‘ohaole means to act like a haole and is applied to individuals who are perceived to be strange, uppity, ignorant, arrogant, or even condescending. Some scholars suggest that there are different types of haole. In particular, it is argued that there is a difference between mainland haole and kama‘a-ina haole (sometimes referred to as local haole). The latter category refers to Whites who have lived on the islands for generations, share a love for the land, and act in culturally appropriate ways. Still, the term haole recalls the painful history of Hawai‘i and the role many prominent haole played in the forced transformation of Hawaiian society and culture. Modern-day implications of haole provoke overlapping notions of race, class, and politics for island residents. Because haole were the primary agents of past missionary activity and a race/ class-organized plantation economy, as well as expansive militarism and tourism, attitudes toward them run deep and continue to manifest in everyday life in Hawai‘i. Given this historical framework, there is often little attention paid to the positive value of haole in today’s politically charged climate where indigenous Hawaiians’ claim to the land is foregrounded. Brandon C. Ledward
Fujikane, Candace and John Okamura, eds. 2000. “Asian Settler Colonialism in Hawaii.” Amerasia Journal 26(2). Kame‘eleihiwa, Lilikala-. 1992. Native Land and Foreign Desire. Honolulu, HI: Bishop Museum Press. Ohnuma, Keiko. 2002. “Local Haole—A Contradiction in Terms? The Dilemma of Being White, Born, and Raised in Hawai‘i.” Cultural Values 6:273–285. McElrath, Ah Quon. 1999. “Race Relations and the Political Economy in Hawaii.” Social Process in Hawaii 39:74–84. Osorio, Jonathan. 2002. Dismembering Lahui. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Rohrer, Judy. 1997. “Haole Girl: Identity and White Privilege in Hawaii.” Social Process in Hawaii 38:140–161. Rohrer, Judy. 2006. “‘Got Race?’ The Production of Haole and the Distortion of Indigeneity in the Rice Decision.” Contemporary Pacific 18:1–3. Silva, Noenoe K. 2004. Aloha Betrayed. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Whittaker, Elvi. 1986. The Mainland Haole. New York: Columbia University Press.
HAPA The term hapa is a Hawaiian word literally translating to portion, mixed, or fragment with no racial inference. However, on the inclusion of Hawai‘i as a U.S. territory and the introduction of racial classification during the late 1800s, the term quickly took on racial overtones as a way to identify people of mixed race. Early references to the term hapa referred to Hawaiians of mixed Japanese European heritage, but its contemporary use extends to a variety of mixedrace people in Hawai‘i and even beyond the island to include Afro-Asians, Latin Asians, Native Asians, and transracial adoptees. This entry describes the evolution of the term and the conflict related to its adoption by mixed-race people outside of Hawai‘i.
Definition and Background Originally a pejorative term, hapa referred to the children of mixed Hawaiian Caucasian descent. Its pejorative use dates to the surge in White immigration to Hawai‘i that occurred during the 1880s and resulted
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in intermarriage between the native and Caucasian populations. The Native Hawaiian population’s disapproval of these mixed marriages (and, by extension, of the offspring of these unions) stemmed from the White population’s role in exploiting and colonizing Hawai‘i. The term hapa was later expanded to include all children of mixed Asian heritage after a surge in Asian immigration to the island that occurred during the mid-1880s through 1910 with the recruitment of Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Koreans, Puerto Ricans, and Filipinos to work as laborers and the mixed racial/ ethnic marriages that arose following this large-scale immigration. Because of the long history of intermarriage in Hawai‘i, the negative aspects associated with biracial or multiracial identification (and the designation of hapa) has largely disappeared. Once an adjective used by group insiders to describe an outsider, it is now a noun or subject (describing an insider); the designation is a source of pride and a link to others in the same insider category. Furthermore, use of the term is no longer limited to those who are part Hawaiian but rather has expanded to include all multiracial/ multiethnic Asians as well. Other terms such as Eurasian, biracial, multiracial, Amerasian, mixed Asian, blasian, hafu, and half Asian are also used to describe those of mixed Asian descent; however, the term hapa seems to have resonated most among multiethnic Asians and has been widely adopted. Although it is used by multiethnic/multiracial Asians both in Hawai‘i and on the U.S. mainland, the term has different connotations in each place. Of all the states, Hawai‘i has both the highest percentage of Asian and Pacific Islanders (41.6%) and the highest percentage of people who identify themselves in categories of two or more races (21.4% vs. 2.4% in the United States). The long history of racial/ethnic intermixing in Hawai‘i has allowed its multiracial populations to inhabit multiple racial/ ethnic categories simultaneously. In Hawai‘i, the term hapa has been normalized to the extent that to be hapa is to be local because so many of the children are of mixed ancestry. The ambiguous hapa identity distinguishes Hawaiian locals from more recent foreign immigrants (nonlocals) to Hawai‘i. This is in marked contrast to the mainland United States, where race has historically been socially constructed along a single dimension, thereby forcing those of multiracial heritage to elevate a single racial category at the expense
of the other, and where considerable ink has been devoted to the problematic results and consequences of this practice for the multiracial population.
Contested Terrain Multiracial Hawaiians resent the adoption of the term hapa by multiracial Asians on the U.S. mainland who have little knowledge of the historical struggles of the peoples of Hawai‘i. From their perspective, the term’s use by multiracial Asians is a form of symbolic ethnicity—trendy and ephemeral with only a superficial connection to, and little understanding of, the term’s meaning. Part of the controversy is rooted in the history of Hawai‘i and stems from lingering resentment of Hawaiian people over the forced and unlawful overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893—an event that was aided and abetted in large part by the United States (and an act that President Bill Clinton formally apologized for in 1993). As a result, Western laws and customs were imposed, including the legal categorization of people by “blood” or heritage in 1900. Hawaiians were “colorized” and quantified along a range from indigenous to (non-White) others, to Whites. This strategy served to limit the number of “native” Hawaiians; the designation was restricted to those who could legally prove their indigenous heritage—something extremely difficult to do in a nation steeped in oral tradition as Hawai‘i was. Consequently, indigenous Hawaiians were marginalized socioeconomically, and a decrease in their numbers was nearly ensured given the narrow racial definition that was imposed. This paved the way for land and asset appropriation by the Western colonizers. Indigenous Hawaiians, or Kanaka Maoli, became minorities in their own homeland, taking on the characteristics of other racial/ethnic minorities in the United States, including high morbidity and mortality rates, poor educational outcomes, and marginalized socioeconomic positions. The question of who has a valid claim to identity in Hawai‘i continues to be a highly contentious and politicized issue, as indicated by the Rice v. Cayetano decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000. This decision invalidated the state’s limitation to Native Hawaiians (defined as descendants of those inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands in 1778) the eligibility to vote in elections for the Board of Trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.
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With these tensions serving as the backdrop, the widespread adoption of the term hapa by multiethnic Asians with little knowledge of the tumultuous history of Hawai‘i or of the continuing struggles for identity by indigenous Hawaiians is viewed as reflecting the continuing marginalization and colonization of Hawai‘i and its history, people, and culture by groups with more power.
Contemporary Use The proliferation of the term hapa among mainland multiracial Asians and its use in the mass media reflect the term’s enduring application and continuing viability, albeit slightly different from its origins. In fact, in many instances, the original Hawaiian roots of the term are not recognized. For example, in her article titled “Mixed-Race Asians Find Pride as Hapas,” Los Angeles Times staff writer Teresa Watanabe defined hapas as all mixed-race Asians. In this article, Watanabe detailed some of the struggles of mixedrace Asians, including the constant questioning of racial/ethnic identification and issues of inclusion and exclusion by the dominant society. Thus, while Hawaiian hapas see the term as a source of pride, acceptance, inclusion, and desirability, mainland hapas must continuously contend with the mainland’s adherence to monoracial categorizations of people such that a multiracial designation remains both suspect and subject to constant question. Karen Manges Douglas See also Asian Americans; Asian American Studies; Hafu; Hawaiians; Identity Politics; Intermarriage; Multiracial Identity
Further Readings
Halpin, Marianne Maruyama. 2003. Naming Ourselves: A Participatory Research with Hapa Authors of Japanese Ancestry Writing for Children and Young Adults about Identity. PhD dissertation, University of San Francisco. Kan‘iaupuni, Shawn Malia and Carolyn A. Liebler. 2005. “Pondering Poi Dog: Place and Racial Identification of Multiracial Native Hawaiians.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28:687–721. Reed, Gay Garland. 2001. “Fastening and Unfastening Identities: Negotiating Identity in Hawaii.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 22:327–339.
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Rohrer, Judy. 2006. “‘Got Race?’ The Production of Haole and the Distortion of Indigeneity in the Rice Decision.” Contemporary Pacific 18(1):1–31. Watanabe, Teresa. 2006. “Mixed-Race Asians Find Pride as Hapas.” Los Angeles Times, June 11, B3. Yoshimi, Jeff. 1997. “Hapas at a Los Angeles High School: Context and Phenomenology.” Amerasia Journal 23:131–147.
HARLEM Harlem, a neighborhood in the Manhattan borough of New York City, has long been associated with Black culture. It stretches from the East River to the Hudson River; its northern border is 155th Street, and its southern border is roughly 96th Street. Although Harlem has been home to a multitude of immigrant communities, since the beginning of the 20th century it has been a decidedly Black space. Harlem has been host to jazz, the Harlem Renaissance, poverty, riots, strikes, crime, and influential leaders in the Black community. It is also home to famous landmarks such as the Apollo Theater and Hotel Theresa. Throughout time, Harlem has been one of New York City’s most recognized neighborhoods worldwide.
Immigration in Harlem Harlem, originally a farmland settlement in New Amsterdam known as Nieuw Haarlem, was purchased from the Manhattes tribe during the mid-1600s and settled by Dutch immigrants. In 1626, the first Blacks were brought to Harlem as slaves to labor on Dutch farms. In 1664, the English attacked and seized the property from the Dutch and turned greater New Amsterdam into New York, officially incorporating the village of Harlem. The slave trade grew rapidly under the English, and by 1708 there were thousands of Black slaves living and working in Harlem. By 1820, there were still only ninety-one White families living in Harlem, and in 1840, after the land was devastated by constant use, many wealthy homeowners sold their land to the city. This led to poor Irish immigrants squatting on the deserted land and establishing shantytowns of living quarters. Throughout the 19th century, community improvements included the construction of fashionable brownstones and apartment houses and the installation
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of better sanitation, communications, and lighting. These changes, along with the extension of elevated railroads from New York, encouraged older, White, uppermiddle-class immigrant families to move north to Harlem. At that time, the construction of the subway to Harlem was under way; however, due to a delay in completing the project, many houses remained uninhabited, causing real estate prices to fall. Jewish immigrants were attracted to the area and began purchasing properties despite the efforts of landowners to keep them out. Nonetheless, the Jewish population in Harlem reached a peak of 150,000 in 1917. This dominance was short-lived, and by 1930 Jews in the area numbered only approximately 5,000. Many early Black residents of Harlem were domestic laborers for wealthy White families; however, by 1900 Blacks began migrating to Harlem in record numbers. Landowners were unable to fill properties with White families, so some turned to Black families moving into the area. There was strong resistance from Whites, and organizations bent on denying Blacks residence in Harlem sprang up. One example is the Property Owners Protective Association, which was organized in 1913 and charged that Blacks were destructive and poor tenants who caused real estate values to drop. The movement of Blacks into Harlem continued, however, and as White families deserted the area, landlords surrendered to the inevitable and rented to Black families.
The Harlem Renaissance Many Blacks from the South, looking for work and community, also joined in the mass migration to Harlem. Black churches in New York were greatly influential in this movement in that they encouraged buying Harlem properties, a possibility for many Blacks because of the World War I boom in wages. Eventually, however, this influx of Blacks faced work shortages as well as exorbitant rents and landlord negligence. These factors contributed to deterioration in living conditions and a death rate of Harlem Blacks that was twice the death rate of Whites. By the 1920s, Harlem was quickly becoming a neighborhood of slums. The new Harlem community was composed of working-class Blacks who formed a new urban generation. This poverty-stricken community spawned a cultural renaissance of writers and poets such as Claude McKay and Countee Cullen. Others, such as Langston Hughes, provided a historical picture of the
Black community. Marcus Garvey also had a great impact in Harlem, preaching racial pride and independence. In addition, the 1920s were considered the Harlem Jazz Age. Although Blacks were producing this new music, many clubs were restricted to White customers only; hence, Harlem was a working community by day but a playground for Whites in the boisterous jazz clubs and bars at night.
Harlem Strikes and Riots By the late 1930s, the Harlem Renaissance had run its course and Whites were no longer as prevalent a force in the community’s nightlife. At the same time, the advent of the Great Depression meant that living conditions in Harlem continued to worsen. In addition, the lack of work in Harlem was exacerbated by largescale discrimination by White employers who still owned most of the Harlem businesses. During this time, the ceilings and walls of tenements often collapsed. Apartment houses were overcrowded, vermin ridden, and filthy, and most buildings had unsafe stairs, rotted window frames, and severe sanitation problems. Furthermore, most homes had no running water, and many were without electricity. These problems were amplified due to the massive increase in the Black population of Harlem, which rose by more than 600% between 1905 and 1930. In addition, by 1930 approximately 45,000 Puerto Rican immigrants had moved into the area known as East Harlem. These conditions helped to spark the racially charged Harlem Riot of 1935, which resulted in the arrests of more than seventy Black individuals, injuries to numerous civilians and policemen, and more than 600 broken windows in Harlem. The riot did little to improve the conditions in Harlem; although a few more shopkeepers hired Black workers, they still hired them at the lowest positions and rates of pay. The residents of Harlem participated in political action, but living and work conditions in Harlem failed to improve despite these efforts. During the 1940s, Harlem was divided into three neighborhoods: Italian Harlem, Spanish Harlem, and Black Harlem. This division mirrored the racial, ethnic, and religious separation present in every borough of New York and contributed to another race-related riot in 1943. This riot was even more costly than the 1935 riot, with at least six Black persons being killed and more than 185 persons being injured. Relative deprivation, blocked opportunity structures, and
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increased political awareness contributed to both of the early Harlem riots. By the 1950s, urban renewal projects were under way. These projects ultimately resulted in the forced relocation of Blacks when old buildings were torn down. Because of severe overcrowding, for most the housing situation only became worse. Eventually, there were roughly ten housing developments in Central Harlem housing more than 40,000 of Harlem’s 300,000 residents. The rest of those in Harlem lived in older tenement apartment houses built before 1900 or slightly newer brownstone or multidwelling buildings. Few of these housing options were in good repair, and most continued to decline with unabated overcrowding. Harlem living conditions further deteriorated during the 1960s. Due to the publicity of subpar housing conditions, city and state authorities began to pay attention to the issue but continually failed to follow through on promises. These contradictions led to a series of rent strikes—organized efforts at holding landlords responsible for housing conditions. After years of concerted efforts, including picketing, demonstrations, petitions, and attempts at legal action against landlords as well as countless families being thrown out of their homes for failure to pay rent, Harlem residents gained some ground with legislative measures in support of modifying the conditions of the Harlem ghetto. Residents of Harlem continued to engage politically, protesting against segregated schools by participating in the great school boycott of 1964, fighting to dismantle discrimination in employment, and protesting for equal rights for Blacks nationwide. After another Harlem riot based on racial issues during the mid-1960s, Malcolm X gained great influence for his nationalist arguments. In addition, by 1966 the Black Panthers were organized in Harlem and agitated for violence in pursuit of change. In 1968, another Harlem riot occurred in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Additional riots in 1995, organized by Black activists against Jewish shop owners on 125th Street, were significantly different from previous riots, with fewer being injured or killed.
Harlem Today Religious institutions have maintained their importance in Harlem. Today, there are more than 400 churches in the neighborhood, including representation
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from a variety of religious denominations. Historically, drug use in Harlem has produced high rates of abuse and collateral crime. Heroin was the drug of choice during the 1950s and 1960s, and crack cocaine was the drug of choice during the 1980s; however, after aggressive policing measures initiated during the late 1980s, crime rates in all categories have fallen dramatically. Furthermore, after more than a decade of gentrification, property values in Harlem have skyrocketed and countless new housing units have been developed—improvements that have outpaced the rest of New York since the early 1990s. For these reasons, Harlem today attracts many middle-class Blacks and Whites alike. Christie A. Sennott See also African Americans; Discrimination; East Harlem; Ghetto; Harlem Renaissance; Irish Americans; Urban Riots
Further Readings
Anderson, Jervis. 1982. This Was Harlem: A Cultural Portrait, 1900–1950. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. Brandt, Nat. 1996. Harlem at War: The Black Experience in WWII. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Capeci, Dominic J., Jr. 1977. The Harlem Riot of 1943. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Halliburton, Warren J. and Ernest Kaiser. 1974. Harlem: A History of Broken Dreams. Garden City, NY: Zenith Books. Halstead, Fred. 1966. Harlem Stirs. New York: Marzani & Munsell.
HARLEM RENAISSANCE The Harlem Renaissance (1917–1934), originally called the “Negro Renaissance,” was a golden age of African American arts. Its mission was to bring about racial renewal through cultural diplomacy. The Renaissance was not just “art for art’s sake.” That “Negro art” could redraw the public image of “colored” people in the United States was its animating purpose, with the goal of achieving what David Levering Lewis called “civil rights by copyright.” Enjoying a “double audience” of Black and White, the Harlem Renaissance was a spectacular success during its heyday. As a public exhibition of African American
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poetry, prose, drama, art, and music, this valiant effort to remove the masks of racial stereotypes so as to put a new social face on African Americans improved race relations somewhat—a nearly impossible task given the entrenched racial prejudices of the day under the legalized segregation of Jim Crow laws. Not only did the Harlem Renaissance attract a White patronage and market, the movement instilled a racial pride and nobility among African Americans whose lives it touched. Thus the Harlem Renaissance created a place in the national literary tradition, officially recognized in the “White House Salute to America’s Authors” event on March 13, 2002, which paid tribute to “writers of the Harlem Renaissance” who “shaped a rich literary history and became agents of change.” Its cultural diplomacy became a cultural legacy. This entry summarizes that era.
The Rise of the Harlem Renaissance Beginning with the end of World War I in 1917 and concurrent with the Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance was made possible in part by powerful social forces effecting sweeping changes across the United States. A mass exodus of an estimated 5 million African Americans from the rural South to the urban North, “The Great Migration” (1915–1960) was described by Harlem Renaissance spokesman Alain Locke (1885–1954) as “a deliberate flight not only from countryside to city, but from mediaeval America to modern.” These “shifting crystallizations” in U.S. demography resulted in the rise of a Black middle class in major U.S. cities, particularly in the Northeast. In the midst of this status revolution, one place stood out in particular: Harlem. Harlem is a large sector of upper Manhattan in New York City—“little more than a note of sharper color in the kaleidoscope of New York,” according to Locke. Harlem catalyzed the formation of a distinct racial consciousness that had previously been “a race more in name than in fact” or “more in sentiment than in experience,” reflecting a “common condition rather than a common consciousness.” The Harlem Renaissance offered African Americans their “first chances for group expression and self-determination.” The Harlem Renaissance succeeded in the first objective but failed in the latter one. Parties played a major role both in Harlem nightlife and in the Renaissance itself, and its official inaugural
was a formal banquet. On March 21, 1924, Opportunity editor and sociologist Charles S. Johnson invited a group of young writers and artists to a dinner party of the Writers Guild held in the Civic Club, a restaurant on West Twelfth Street near Fifth Avenue in Harlem. The Civic Club was the only “upper-crust” New York nightclub free of color or sex restrictions. The party was called to celebrate Jessie Redmon Fauset’s first novel, There Is Confusion, and to recognize “a newer school of writers” that included Eric Walrond, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Gwendolyn Bennett. After dinner, Paul Kellog, editor of Survey Graphic (the premier journal of social work in the United States at the time), approached Johnson with an extraordinary offer, inviting him to assemble and edit literary work from these emergent authors for a special Harlem issue. Wishing to work behind the scenes, however, Johnson passed that invitation on to Locke—who had won national acclaim as the first African American Rhodes Scholar in 1907—asking him to guest edit that special issue of Survey Graphic. A week later, the New York Herald Tribune proclaimed that Harlem was “on the edge of, if not already in the midst of, what might properly be called a Negro renaissance.” Published in March 1925, the special issue titled “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro” was an instant success. It sold an estimated 42,000 copies in two printings.
The New Negro: African Americans’ “First National Book” Capitalizing on this success, Locke expanded the “Harlem” special issue and in November 1925 recast it as an anthology, The New Negro: An Interpretation— the inaugural epochal centerpiece of the New Negro movement and its manifesto and acclaimed as the “first national book” of African Americans. The New Negro featured thirty-four contributors, four of whom were White. The volume showcased most of the stellar figures of the Harlem Renaissance who went on to pursue independent literary and artistic careers in their own right. The great W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) crowned the anthology by contributing the final essay. Locke proclaimed The New Negro to be “our spiritual Declaration of Independence.” Locke figured prominently in the Harlem Renaissance as its principal art critic, promoter, and power broker.
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The Artists and Their Legacy The prime movers of the Harlem Renaissance believed that art held more promise than politics in bringing about a sea of change in U.S. race relations. A more realistic goal was the cultivation of wholesome race pride. The advent of a self-conscious “Negro poetry” by “Negro poets” helped to foster the group consciousness that Locke found to be singularly lacking among African Americans historically yet developing rather suddenly in his generation. Locke helped to launch the career of Langston Hughes (1902–1967)—widely regarded as the poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance—whose poems “Let America Be America Again” and “Theme for English B” are frequently anthologized in American literature textbooks. Disinclined to identify himself as a Negro poet, Countee Cullen (1903–1946) published his first volume of poems, Colors, in 1925. This volume won the first Harmon Foundation Award in Literature in 1926. A West Indian and British citizen, Claude McKay (1889–1948), contributed the poem “White House” to The New Negro anthology. Because of its politically sensitive nature, Locke changed the title of the poem to “White Houses.” In his social protest poem, “To America,” McKay personified the United States as a tiger (striped in black and white), racially terrible yet magnificent in its awesome power. Considered to be the “inaugural address” of the Harlem Renaissance and McKay’s greatest claim to fame was his military sonnet, “If We Must Die,” which appeared in the July issue of Liberator during the “Red Summer” of 1919, when race riots swept across twenty-five of the nation’s inner cities like a firestorm. The poem took on the power of an anthem; it was reprinted by virtually every leading African American magazine and newspaper. McKay’s sonnet surpassed his race when Winston Churchill used “If We Must Die” to rally British soldiers in battles against the Nazis in World War II. As Locke had predicted, Harlem Renaissance poets entered into the canon of mainstream American literature and enriched British culture as well. The Harlem Renaissance was, to a limited degree, an interracial movement. For instance, in the 1925 “Harlem” issue of Survey Graphic, Locke published seven portraits of Harlem folk sketched by Germanborn Winold Reiss (1886–1953). Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964) was probably the pivotal White promoter
Langston Hughes. Hughes (1902–1967) is widely regarded as the poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance. His poems are frequently anthologized in American literature textbooks and have become accepted as central to the nation’s literature tradition. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-43605.
of the Harlem Renaissance. Patron of Locke, Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960), and others, Charlotte Osgood Mason (1854–1946) was a secret benefactor of major Harlem Renaissance artists and writers. Other influential White patrons included Paul Kellog (1879–1958) and Albert C. Barnes (1872–1951), among others. Writer Jean Toomer (1894–1967) was a mulatto who could pass for White and ultimately did. In 1923, he published Cane, a novel set in Georgia, which Hughes praised as “the finest prose written by a Negro in America” and which Locke hailed as “a brilliant performance.” Toomer was a one-book author whose career was abortive for personal reasons. Born of a Danish mother and a West Indian father, Nella Larsen (1893–1963) in 1929 won the Harmon Foundation’s Bronze Medal for Literature for her 1928 novel Quicksand, which Du Bois praised as “the best piece of fiction that Negro America has produced since the heyday of [Charles] Chesnutt.” Although legally Black, Larsen had loyalties to both Blacks and Whites, a theme of racial fusion and confusion explored in Quicksand, where the main character, Helga Crane, is a full projection of Larsen herself. In 1930, Larsen became the first Black woman to win a Guggenheim Fellowship.
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There are more than 130 published plays by thirtyseven Harlem Renaissance authors. On May 22, 1921, Shuffle Along opened at Broadway’s David Belasco Theater and became the first musical revue scored and performed by African Americans. In 1929, the Negro Experimental Theatre was founded in February, the Negro Art Theatre was formed in June, and the National Colored Players was established in September. Acknowledged by some as “the father of Black American art,” Aaron Douglas (1899–1979) was recognized by Locke as “the pioneer of the African style among the American Negro artists.” In addition to being an illustrator whose work first appeared in the “Harlem” issue of Survey Graphic and then in The New Negro, Douglas drew on Egyptian and African art and was influenced by cubism, art deco, and art nouveau as well. These are among the outstanding writers, artists, and performers of the Harlem Renaissance.
The Fall of the Harlem Renaissance With a mission but without a unifying ideology, the Harlem Renaissance crashed along with the stock market during the early years of the Great Depression, and its failure to effect any real social change was underscored dramatically by the Harlem Riot of 1935. In 1936, Locke wrote an obituary of the Harlem Renaissance: “Eleven brief years ago, Harlem was full of the thrill and ferment of sudden progress and is prosperity; and Survey Graphic sounded the tocsin of the emergence of a ‘new Negro’ and the onset of a ‘Negro renaissance.’ Today, . . . that same Harlem is prostrate in the grip of the depression and throes of social unrest.” Locke had a more sober view on the power of the arts to effect social change: “For there is no cure or saving magic in poetry and art, an emerging generation of talent, or in international prestige and interracial recognition, for unemployment or precarious marginal employment, for high rents, high mortality rates, civic neglect, [and] capitalistic exploitation, on the one hand, and radical exploitation, on the other.” The Harlem Renaissance arose during the period of U.S. progressivism, with its faith in the reform of democracy. It was not so much that the Harlem Renaissance failed as it was that the United States failed the Harlem Renaissance. Christopher George Buck
See also African Americans; American Dilemma, An; Discrimination; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Jim Crow; Johnson, Charles S.; Minority Rights; People of Color; Prejudice; Racism; Segregation
Further Readings
Brown, Sterling A. 1996. “The New Negro in Literature (1925–1955).” Pp. 203–218 in Remembering the Harlem Renaissance, edited by Cary D. Wintz. New York: Garland. Buck, Christopher. 2005. “Alain Locke: Race Leader, Social Philosopher, Bahá’í Pluralist.” World Order 36(3):7–36. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 1988. “The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the Black.” Representations 24:129–155. Holmes, Eugene C. 1968. “Alain Locke and the New Negro Movement.” Negro American Literature Forum 2(3):60–68. Krasner, David. 2002. A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910–1927. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lewis, David Levering. 1998. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Penguin. Locke, Alain, ed. [1925] 1969. The New Negro: An Interpretation. New York: Albert and Charles Boni. (Reprinted with a new preface by Robert Hayden) Long, Richard A. 1976. “The Genesis of Locke’s The New Negro.” Black World 25(4):14–20. Nadell, Martha Jane. 2004. Enter the New Negroes: Images of Race in American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Spencer, Jon Michael. 1997. The New Negroes and Their Music: The Success of the Harlem Renaissance. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Watts, Eric King. 2002. “African American Ethos and Hermeneutical Rhetoric: An Exploration of Alain Locke’s The New Negro.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 88(1):19–32. Wintz, Cary D. and Paul Finkelman, eds. 2004. Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. London: Routledge.
HATE CRIMES Hate crimes or bias crimes are incidents in which the offenders have selected their victims because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or other innate characteristics.
Hate Crimes
These incidents are unlike other crime categories because the offenders target victims largely because of who they are (e.g., African Americans) or because of a group they choose to belong to (e.g., Catholics) rather than because of what has occurred, for example, a protracted incident between neighbors or family members. Like terrorists more generally, these offenders often randomly choose their victims and do not care who they assault or harass so long as they connect the victims to a particular group. Their mission is often to convey a message to an entire group, such as “Leave—your kind isn’t wanted in our neighborhood,” or to let the group know that they will not tolerate “your behavior.” This entry reviews government attempts to address hate crimes, especially in the United States.
U.S. Response Although crimes motivated by hatred have existed for centuries, there was no push in the United States to distinguish them as a special type of criminal offense until the early 1980s. Advocates from several special interest groups argued, using three general reasons, that hate crimes needed special attention from law enforcement agencies. First, because hate crime offenders target innate characteristics of a group, victims may have greater difficulty in coming to terms with their victimization. Second, some hate crimes appear to have contagious effects on the victim’s community that could lead to a backlash against the offender’s community. Third, although racially motivated crimes occasionally receive national media attention, most hate crimes are not serious in terms of the penal law and, therefore, will receive only modest police attention. Accordingly, many have argued that, without special law enforcement programs and laws, these incidents will not receive the resources necessary to sanction offenders proportional to the harm they caused to their victims, nor will they significantly deter future perpetrators or satisfactorily address community fears and victim needs. To address concerns raised by advocates and others, nearly every U.S. state and the federal government have, over the past 30 years, formally addressed hate crimes in one way or another. Yet despite these widespread legislative activities, there is neither a consistent definition for what constitutes a hate crime nor a standard policy for how law enforcement should
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respond effectively. States legislatures and the federal government do not agree on which groups to include, what activities represent incidents, or what incident attributes are necessary to label a crime as hate motivated. Fed deral Actiivity
For these latter two issues, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recommends that police officers consider several factors when suspecting a hate crime, including whether (a) the victim perceived the offender’s actions to have been motivated by bias; (b) there is no other motivation for the incident; (c) the offender has made remarks directed at a protected group; (d) the crime involves the use of offensive symbols, words, or acts that represent a hate group or suggest bias against the victim’s group; (e) the incident occurred on a holiday or other day of significance to the victim’s or offender’s group; and (f) the area’s demographic characteristics suggest bias. As for defining hate crimes, after debating for several years, the U.S. Congress codified, in the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990, the first national definition of a hate crime. Although this act did not criminalize any behaviors or expand sanctions for current offenses, Congress required the attorney general to use the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program to collect from local and state law enforcement agencies (but not from federal agencies) data about crimes showing evidence of “prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, including where appropriate the crimes of murder and non-negligent manslaughter; forcible rape; aggravated assault, simple assault, [or] intimidation; arson; and destruction, damage or vandalism of property.” By 2005, 12,417 state and local agencies from forty-nine states and the District of Columbia voluntarily sent information about their hate crimes to the FBI. During the first 10 years of data collection (1992–2001), these agencies collectively reported 78,390 hate crime incidents. In 1994, Congress again responded to concerns about hate crimes by using the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to amend the definition, adding disabilities to the list of factors to consider when deciding whether a crime is a hate crime. Within the same act, Congress also added gender as a protected group when it directed the U.S. Sentencing Commission to enhance sentencing for hate crimes. Yet the FBI states that limitations in federal statutes
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Hate Crimes
prevent the bureau from investigating crimes motivated by gender, disability, or sexual orientation. Nevertheless, in 1995 the Sentencing Commission established a sentencing enhancement of a three-level increase for offenses when the court determines, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the offender selected a victim or a victim’s property because of the victim’s actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation. Thus, at the federal level, hate crimes do not represent separate or distinct crimes but rather are traditional offenses that deserve harsher sanctions when the offenders are motivated, in whole or in part, by their hatred of a protected group. Differin ng Definittion ns
Besides these varied codified definitions, various federal agencies and their sponsored research also define hate crimes somewhat differently. For example, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service defines these incidents as “violence of intolerance and bigotry, intended to hurt and intimidate someone because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability,” whereas the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) states that an “ordinary crime becomes a hate crime when offenders choose a victim because of some characteristic—for example, race, ethnicity, or religion—and provide evidence that hate prompted them to commit the crime.” In 2003, the BJS began collecting data to capture the occurrence of hate crime victimization across the United States. Using its annual National Crime Victimization Survey, the BJS asked respondents whether they suspected that the offenders targeted them because of their race, religion, ethnicity, disability, gender, sexuality, or association with people of certain characteristics or religious beliefs or because of the offenders’ perception of their characteristics or religious beliefs. Between July 2000 and December 2003, the BJS reported finding 210,000 hate crime victimizations per year. Although the decision to include these categories is nearly universal, there was nevertheless some dispute about who should be included, even among those supporting the adoption of hate crime legislation more generally. Some scholars argued that victims belonging to the racial majority should not be considered victims of hate crimes given that legislatures originally conceived hate crime bills to protect minority
communities. Thus, some questioned whether laws primarily intended to protect historically victimized groups should also be used to prosecute them for criminal offenses believed to be motivated by hate. Although the inclusion of racial, ethnic, and religious groups led to some scholarly debates, the movement to include additional groups, such as gays, women, the disabled, and the aged, created widespread substantial and material controversies. Of these categories, the drive toward including sexual orientation probably generated the greatest controversy at all levels of government. For instance, during the late 1980s, for several years Congress could not pass the Hate Crime Statistics Act, largely because of the desire of its sponsors to include sexual orientation. Although the bill eventually passed, the opposition inserted language that explicitly limited the act’s authority requiring data collection. After nearly 20 years, the same issue continues to arise when Congress debates additional hate crime legislation. Some legislatures and advocacy groups argue that inclusion of sexual orientation will only further legitimize an immoral act. Lawmakers also raised these concerns at the state and local levels. For example, a concern that the legislation may also protect child molesters stopped Texas from enhancing penalties for hate crimes. Similarly, a city council repealed its hate crime ordinance after the African American community protested against the inclusion of gays and lesbians in its hate crime legislation. They argued that the inclusion of gays would equate the gay minority status with the struggles of the African American community. Nevertheless, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that thirty-two states, and in some areas the federal government, specifically included sexual orientation in their legislation by 2006. Sta ate an nd Loca al Activ vitiies
Besides steps taken at the federal level, nearly every state legislature and many municipalities across the United States have also passed hate crime legislation. The ADL reported that since the states of Washington and Oregon passed their hate crime statutes in 1981, forty-five states and the District of Columbia have enacted some form of legislation codifying bias motivation and intimidation. Forty-four of these states specifically protect race, religion, and ethnicity. Utah, the only state that does not explicitly state any categories, does permit its sentencing judges and Board of Pardons and Parole to consider the
Hate Crimes in Canada
“degree to which the offense is likely to incite community unrest or cause members of the community to reasonably fear for their physical safety or to freely exercise or enjoy any right secured by the Constitution or laws of the state or by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” Besides legislative changes, many law enforcement agencies have placed greater importance on attaching hate as a motivation for criminal acts. The Police Executive Research Forum, the Police Foundation, the National Black Police Association, and the National Association of Blacks in Criminal Justice have supported legislation mandating the collection of information on hate crimes. For example, during the 1980s several large U.S. police departments, including those in Boston and New York City, established hate crime investigative units. By 2003, an estimated 8% of the nation’s law enforcement agencies reported having a bias crime unit, and only 6% reported having no capacity to address this problem. Police departments assign these units with the responsibility for investigating incidents that the responding officers believed were motivated by hate, and these units are often given the responsibility for showing that their agencies give priority to these crimes by maintaining links with populations at risk for hate crimes through community meetings and activities. Some prosecutors’ offices have likewise established bias crime units consisting of trained investigators who help police or conduct their own investigations.
International Response Outside of the United States, definitions of and responses to hate crimes also vary geographically. For instance, the United Kingdom’s Crime and Disorder Act of 1998, pertaining to England and Wales, states that a racially motivated crime occurs when an offender demonstrates hostility toward the victim based on the victim’s membership in a racial group (defined by reference to race, color, nationality, or ethnic or national origin) or when the offense is motivated by hostility toward members of a racial group based on their membership in that group. However, the British Home Office defines a hate crime more broadly as any criminal offense where the victim or any other person perceives that the incident was motivated by prejudice or hate. Besides Great Britain, many other European countries have some type of hate crime legislation, including Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, France, Germany,
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Italy, Spain, and Sweden. However, besides Europe, North America, and Australia, there is no similarly concerted effort among countries across Africa, Asia, South America, and the Middle East to codify and formally respond to hate-motivated crimes. Christopher D. Maxwell See Appendix B See also Anti-Defamation League; Discrimination; Ethnoviolence; Hate Crimes in Canada; Holocaust; Ku Klux Klan; Lynching; Prejudice; Victim Discounting; White Supremacy Movement; Xenophobia
Further Readings
Jacobs, James B. and Kimberly Potter. 1998. Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics (Studies in Crime and Public Policy, edited by Michael Tonry and Norval Morris). New York: Oxford University Press. Jenness, Valerie and Ryken Grattet. 2001. Making Hate a Crime: From Social Movement to Law Enforcement. New York: Russell Sage. Levin, Jack and Jack McDevitt. 1993. Hate Crimes: The Rising Tide of Bigotry and Bloodshed. New York: Plenum. Maxwell, Christopher and Sheila Royo Maxwell. 1995. Youth Participation in Hate-Motivated Crimes: Implications for Research and Policy. Boulder: University of Colorado, Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence. Shively, Michael. 2005. Study of Literature and Legislation on Hate Crime in America [final report submitted to the National Institute of Justice]. Cambridge, MA: Abt Associates. Wessler, Stephen. 2000. Addressing Hate Crimes: Six Initiatives That Are Enhancing the Efforts of the Criminal Justice Practitioners [Bureau of Justice Assistance monograph]. Portland: University of Southern Maine.
HATE CRIMES
IN
CANADA
Like most other Western nations, Canada has had its share of bias-motivated violence—what is often called crime—throughout history. From the periodic assaults on First Nations communities, to the riotous attacks on Chinese laborers during the 1880s, to the recent spate of anti-Semitic violence in Montreal and Toronto, Canada may be less welcoming than its international image would suggest. This entry considers the racial/ethnic distribution of racially motivated hate crimes and summarizes hate crime legislation in Canada.
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Hate Crimes in Canada
Violence and Race/Ethnicity As seems to be the case in the United States and the United Kingdom, race and/or ethnicity are the most common motivations for hate crimes in Canada, accounting for more than half of all bias-motivated crimes. Moreover, within these broad designations, anti-Semitic violence appears to be most common (typically 25%), followed by anti-Black violence (20%) and violence against those perceived to be Muslim (10%). The latter has become a particular matter of concern in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. Black Canadia ans
Black Canadians make up one of the largest visible minority groups in Canada, and Blacks are the most vulnerable to racially motivated hate crimes, as shown in survey data, federal Uniform Crime Reports data, and victimization data. However, there is virtually no research on their specific experiences as victims of hate crime. Indeed, a report filed following a 2005 symposium on hate and racism in Canada noted the experiences of the Jewish community, Aboriginal peoples, and Muslims, but no specific mention was made of the Black Canadian experience. The depth of systemic violence against Black Canadians is perhaps best epitomized by the demolition of Africville in Nova Scotia in 1970. Africville was the oldest predominantly Black community in Canada, founded by former Black slaves fleeing the United States in the midst of the American Revolutionary War. Long characterized by extreme poverty and dire living conditions, Africville was nonetheless “home” for hundreds of residents. It represented a safe haven removed from the potential racist attacks that its members confronted outside the community’s boundaries. Yet the city of Halifax perceived the community to be a threat, and it was razed by bulldozer with little or no compensation to those who had made their lives there. Firrst Natio ons
The preceding extreme case of the razing of Africville is indicative of the disregard that often frames racist actions—including violence—against Black Canadians. Similarly, First Nations people suffer as a result of the devalued status of their humanity. In the infamous “starlight tours,” for example, First
Nations men have allegedly been picked up by police in the cold of winter and deposited in remote areas to die of exposure. Aboriginal people become especially vulnerable to victimization when they challenge the mainstream. Specifically, rights claims have triggered hostile and frequently violent reprisals from what might loosely be called an anti-Indian movement. This has been readily apparent in contexts such as the conflict over lobster fishing in the Burnt Church area. Here, Mik’Maq efforts to practice lobster fishing—a right ceded to them by the federal government—were met with violence from lobster fishers and other community members. First Nations women seem to be at particular risk. A recent Amnesty International report on violence against Canadian First Nations women revealed extensive deaths and disappearances—as many as 500 during the past two decades—of Aboriginal women in Western Canada, and many of these have gone unsolved. The report included another disturbing statistic, namely that Indigenous women between 25 and 44 years of age are thought to be five times more likely to die a violent death as compared with all other women in that age group. Asia an Canadia ans
As is the case with any broadly defined population, the diverse and uneven patterns of migration associated with Asian Canadians have resulted in a dramatically heterogeneous Asian “community,” embracing dozens of Asian identities, including Chinese, Filipino, Laotian, and Taiwanese. Nonetheless, many of these otherwise disparate ethnic groups have shared the common experience of anti-Asian hostility and violence. It is especially important to understand the historical continuity of violence against Asian Canadians because this history has shaped both how Asians perceive themselves and how they are perceived by others. Successive waves of Asian immigration tended to create corresponding waves of anti-Asian sentiment. Labor leaders, temperance activists, and agricultural interests pressed the government to react to the perceived threats that Asians were thought to represent to employment (e.g., wage deflation), morality (e.g., opium use), and hygiene (e.g., prostitution). Thus, Asians were subject to extreme forms of violence, including whole-scale assaults on Chinese labor camps. Such violence seemed to be at least tacitly
Hate Crimes in Canada
condoned by exclusionary immigration restrictions, which suggested that Asians “did not belong here.” The legacy of such violence remains today; however, contemporary trends are often difficult to document. There is no national audit of anti-Asian violence. The only information comes from the badly flawed Uniform Crime Reports or in sporadic media coverage of individual cases. However, there has recently been increased attention to, and documentation of, violence against one community often associated with South and Southeast Asians in particular—the Muslim community.
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In addition, the opening years of the 21st century have been marked by apparent increases in both the quantity and intensity of anti-Semitic violence, largely as a consequence of ongoing hostilities in the Middle East, as well as an apparent resurgence of far right extremist group activity in Canada. Another disturbing trend is the growth in campus incidents of anti-Semitism. Institutions of higher learning, in particular, have seen an alarming growth in the amount of anti-Semitic violence, vandalism, and leaflet distribution.
Canadian Laws on Hate Crime Muslim m Canadia ans
Since the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., ethnic minorities associated with Islam have experienced increased negative attention from the media, police and security forces, and agitated citizenry in most Western countries. In all such countries, there has been a concomitant increase in the extent of anti-Muslim (or “Islamophobic”) hate crimes, racial vilification, and discrimination. The Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) reported a 1600% increase in the annual incidence of anti-Muslim hate crimes reported, albeit from a low base of only 11 cases in the year prior to 2001 to 173 in the subsequent year. A survey of Canadian Muslims in 2002 by the Council on American–Islamic Relations—Canada (CAIR–CAN) found that 56% of respondents had experienced at least one anti-Muslim incident during the 12 months following September 11, 2001. The same percentage perceived increased media bias against Muslims and Islam. According to the survey, 33% had experienced verbal abuse, 18% had experienced racial profiling, and 16% had experienced workplace discrimination. Clearly, this group has seen a disproportionate increase in victimization. The CIC feared the possibility of more backlash violence following the arrests of seventeen young men related to a planned terrorist attack in Toronto in June 2006. Indeed, within a day of the arrests, a major Toronto mosque was targeted by vandals. Jewish h Canadia ans
The Jewish community in Canada has also been victimized by crimes against property such as synagogue or cemetery desecrations. During recent years, however, much more interpersonal violence is apparent.
Canadian legal provisions revolving around hate crime and related acts are intriguing for their diversity and range. The nation has followed the lead of other Western nations in explicitly legislating against crime motivated by bias. Section 718.2 of the Criminal Code of Canada allows for penalty enhancement where there is “evidence that the offence was motivated by bias, prejudice, or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, color, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or any other similar factor.” Sexual orientation was added to the legislation in 2003, largely as a result of aggressive lobbying by gay rights organizations. In addition to this legislation, the Criminal Code of Canada also makes reference to the “promotion of genocide” and “incitement to hatred.” A unique feature of this legislation is that it explicitly identifies a list of defenses that the accused may attempt to use. These include establishing that the statements were true and expressing or attempting to establish an argument based on a religious opinion. Furthermore, Section 320 of the Criminal Code provides for the seizure and forfeiture of hate propaganda material kept on any premises for distribution or sale. Moreover, in an effort to contain the spread of Internet hate, Section 320.1 (added under the antiterrorism bill in 2001) permits court orders requiring the deletion of hate propaganda from public domain Web sites. Aside from the standard criminal legislation, Canada also has human rights legislation. People may file a human rights complaint if they believe that their rights, as set out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, have been contravened on account of bias. In addition, Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act adds a layer of protection against the online dissemination of hate speech in particular.
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Hawai‘i, Race in
Although racial/ethnic animosity in Canada has not reached the proportions it has in regions such as the Balkans and Rwanda, Canada has yet to fully realize its promises to the diverse communities that call it home. Hate crimes are a direct threat to the basic principles of Canadian multiculturalism. They represent significant obstacles to the ability or willingness of affected communities to engage in civic culture. However, more systematic research and scholarship in this area is needed to document more concretely both the distribution and dynamics of hate crime. Learning more about the issue enhances the possibility of effective intervention. Barbara Perry See also Canada; Canada, Aboriginal Women; Canada, First Nations; Crime and Race; Discrimination; Ethnoviolence; Hate Crimes; Muslims in Canada; Prejudice; Xenophobia
Further Readings
B’nai Brith. 2005. 2004 Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents. Toronto, Canada: B’nai Brith. Council on American–Islamic Relations—Canada. 2002. Canadian Muslims One Year after 9/11. Ottawa, Canada: CAIR–CAN. Janhevich, Derek. 2001. Hate Crime in Canada: Overview of Issues and Data Sources. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. National Secretariat against Hate and Racism Canada. 2006. Hate Crimes, the Criminal Code, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: Report on the October 23, 2005, Symposium. Prepared by Charles C. Smith Consulting. Roberts, Julian. 1995. Disproportionate Harm: Hate Crime in Canada—An Analysis of Recent Statistics. Working document of the Research, Statistics, and Evaluation Directorate, Canadian Department of Justice. Silver, Warren, Karen Mihorean, and Andrea Taylor-Butts. 2004. Hate Crime in Canada. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Faculty of Criminology, Justice and Policy Studies. n.d. Reading Hate: A Clearinghouse of Scholarship on Hate Crime in Canada. Retrieved from http://criminologyandjustice .uoit.ca/hatecrime
Web Sites
Canadian Islamic Congress: http://www.canadianislamic congress.com
HAWAI‘I, RACE
IN
Race both as a concept and in its operationalization are relatively recent introductions in Hawaiian history. Ideas of race did not exist in Hawai‘i prior to the arrival of Europeans during the later 18th century. Indeed, it was not really until after Hawai‘i was annexed by the United States in 1898 that the first racial categories appeared in an attempt to racially quantify the Hawaiian population. This racialization has had serious consequences as part of the larger experience of colonization, leaving Hawaiians—even those of mixed race—in a disadvantageous position in the land that is their home.
The Introduction of Race Once European explorers, European and U.S. traders and opportunists, and Protestant, Catholic, and Mormon missionaries “discovered” Hawai‘i, they quickly staked their territory. The results were devastating to the Native population on several levels. First, these foreigners, along with their Christianity and capitalism, brought with them a host of diseases— including syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, smallpox, measles, and leprosy—that killed multitudes of Hawaiians. Censuses conducted by foreign missionaries document the dramatic decline in the local population from 142,050 in 1823 to 39,504 in 1896. Second, although alien to Hawaiians, racial categorization introduced by Westerners soon became a part of the foreign lexicon in Hawai‘i. Indeed, Hawaiians themselves were becoming familiar with Western notions of race and its connection to slavery as early as the 1850s, as documented in missionary-controlled Hawaiian language newspapers. In fact, by the_late 1800s, the last reigning king of Hawai‘i, King Kalakaua, had requested a racial taxonomy of Hawaiians from E. Arning, a Swedish physician who had been brought in by the Hawaiian government to improve public health. However, although Hawai‘i remained under what Andrew Lind referred to as the “trappings of native control,” racial categorizations of the Hawaiian population remained outside of the cultural norms and were unpracticed. Instead, Hawaiians classified the foreign population according to the cultural groups to which they belonged—U.S., British, French, Chinese, Japanese, and so on—but not along racial or color lines.
Hawai‘i, Race in
Even the term haole, which has become nearly synonymous with Whites or Caucasians, was not a reference to skin color in its early use. This term stems from the Hawaiian words ha (meaning “breath”) and ole (meaning “without”) in reference to people who could not speak the Hawaiian language. Haole was applied equally to the foreign population—White and Black alike. The term translates to “stranger” and references all non-Hawaiians in Hawai‘i regardless of skin color. Moreover, because most of the early visitors to Hawai‘i were light-skinned persons with power, haole increasingly came to denote exclusively influential and wealthy persons of Northern European and U.S. ancestry. During the early part of the 20th century, U.S. military personnel further introduced to Hawai‘i an element of racial tension once relegated to the U.S. mainland. U.S. servicemen during the World War II period brought their racist attitudes with them to Hawai‘i. Derogatory terms applied to racial groups that were minorities on the mainland initiated the new territory into the mainland’s brand of racism. Hawaiian contact with Westerners had lasting impacts on the Native population. For example, tension between the Native Hawaiian population and the military personnel remains today. There continues to be tension between Hawaiians, who face high costs of living, and military personnel, who enjoy many perks (e.g., beach access) not extended to the local population. Another legacy of Western contact with Hawaiians is the near loss of the Native Hawaiian language, which was banned from use in public schools in 1896 by the government of the newly formed Republic of Hawai‘i.
The Plantation Economy Western contact with Hawai‘i also led to the establishment of a non-Native economy (plantation based with sugar cane and pineapples as the primary crops) that would supplant and dominate the local subsistence economy based on fish and poi. Although early racial stratification was not manifest in the local population, a racial stratification system separating Whites from non-Whites soon emerged on the large plantations that had been established by foreign agriculturalists and businessmen. Not unlike the plantation economy of the antibellum South in the United States, the plantation economy of Hawai‘i relied on a substantial and reliable
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labor supply. With the local population declining significantly and reluctant to do plantation work, planters turned to foreign sources—first to China and then elsewhere—to fill their labor needs. By 1884, the Chinese population in Hawai‘i (18,254) exceeded the Caucasian population (16,579) and was second only to Hawaiians (40,014). However, as a form of labor control, planters who did not want to rely on a single race of workers (Chinese) sought alternate labor groups. In this respect, the Portuguese served to diversify the labor pool. Unlike the Chinese, who were largely male and planned to return to China, the Portuguese brought with them a larger proportion of women, thereby inclining them to become permanent settlers. Japanese labor was also recruited to plantations to replenish the Native population. Japanese labor appealed to planters for a variety of reasons, including cheap passage, their apparent readiness to learn English, the quality of their work, and their thrifty ways. The number of Japanese immigrants increased significantly from 12,610 in 1890 to more than 100,000 (43% of the Hawaiian population) by 1920. However, fears of “yellow peril” incorporating both the Chinese and Japanese sent planters in search of an additional labor supply, and they turned next to the Philippines. Nonexistent in the Hawaiian population in 1900, Filipinos grew to 63,052 (17% of the total Hawaiian population) by 1930. During a span of 50 years, the demographic composition of Hawai‘i had transformed radically. From the emergence of the first significant Chinese population in Hawai‘i in 1884 through 1930, the Native Hawaiian population saw itself diminished (from 40,014 in 1884 to 22,636 in 1930) and replaced by “part Hawaiians” (28,224), Caucasians (73,702), Chinese (27,179), Japanese (139,631), and Filipinos (63,052).
The First Census The demographic transformation of Hawai‘i due to the importation of foreign labor by foreign planters had been under way for 20 years when Hawai‘i was annexed by the United States in 1898. The racialization of the population of Hawai‘i was almost immediate. The 1900 census classified the population by “color,” with categories such as “Total White,” “Native White,” and “Foreign White” appearing for the first time to sort the newly incorporated Hawaiian population. At this time, the term Negro was first
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Hawai‘i, Race in
introduced to document the Black population in Hawai‘i. Analysis of the first U.S. Census conducted in Hawai‘i confirms the use of skin color to demarcate racial categories. Europeans such as the Portuguese and Spaniards, along with light-skinned mixed-race Hawaiians, were condensed into the broader Caucasian category. The detailed instructions provided to census enumerators on how to color code the population correctly reveal a dogmatic insistence on separating Whites from non-Whites. These social practices created two new categories of part Hawaiians: “Caucasian Hawaiians” and “Asiatic Hawaiians.” Nevertheless, even those who were part Caucasian were to be designated according to the race of the non-Caucasian parent. Equally revealing, delineations from the Hawaiian monarchy period, which distinguished among Caucasians by national origin, largely disappeared—assuming, as Lind noted, a “racial purity” of the Caucasians. This attention to what might seem minuscule details was neither accidental nor inconsequential. Well before the United States annexed Hawai‘i in 1898, Westerners were already dominating much of Hawaiian policy. By 1852, Westerners controlled thousands of acres of prime Hawaiian land and had imposed a Western property rights system on the use of this land. Furthermore, by the early 1800s, Westerners had assumed important political positions on the islands. Indeed, two seats of the five-member Land Commission formed in 1845 were held by Westerners. In addition, strong-armed tactics by leaders in the Missionary party (Western business interests) forced _ King Kalakaua to relinquish most of the power of the throne in what came to be known as the Bayonet Constitution of 1887. Indeed, his successor, Queen Lili‘uokalani, was deposed as a result of her efforts to restore power to the monarchy, and U.S. interests took over in Hawai‘i.
Loss of Public Lands Still at issue today are the million-plus acres of crown lands—public lands that had been set aside for the benefit of the Hawaiian chiefs and people in 1848 but that were ceded (some argue illegally) to the U.S. government on the annexation of Hawai‘i in 1898. One of the stated purposes of this land is the betterment of the social conditions of the Native Hawaiians,
as called for by the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920. The act provided for the transfer of approximately 200,000 acres of land to Native Hawaiians, who were defined as descendants with at least onehalf blood quantum of individuals inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778. Lessees of this land— those who could prove 50% blood quantum—are entitled to one-fifth of the revenues generated from this land. In 1992, Hawai‘i amended this statute so that lessees could designate their spouses or children as successors provided that they could prove at least 25% blood quantum. At the crux of the arguments over public lands and the revenues generated from them is the issue of entitlement and ownership. Did these lands belong to Native Hawaiians, or are they (and the attendant revenues) simply to help rehabilitate a dying population? Sidestepping the legality of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, the subsequent annexation of Hawai‘i, and the acquisition of the disputed lands, the U.S. government in 1920 decided that the Hawaiian people never had any right or title to these lands. The land served the purpose only of rehabilitating a race of people who the government concluded were in danger of extermination. This is very similar to the position that the British government took with respect to the Aborigines of Australia. Consequently, in Hawai‘i, once land and revenues were defined as an entitlement, the setting of boundaries became increasingly important in identifying beneficiaries. In particular, blood quantum definitions prevailed in the proving of one’s Hawaiianness. Although the 1920 act delineated restrictions on the documentation of blood quantum to gain land and benefits for Hawaiians, it extended access of the land to large plantations. Sugar producers won provisions that allowed the leasing of public lands for indefinite periods of time and allowed the removal of other restrictions that had adverse impacts on their operations. At the same time, stronger restrictions—in the form of proving blood quantum—were placed on Hawaiians, making claim to the land and accompanying revenues more difficult. These disparate actions—providing greater access to corporations while limiting access to Hawaiians—served the corporate and plantation interests rather than help to “rehabilitate” Hawaiians, and indeed it deepened the racial divide between Native Hawaiians and others. Thus, the social construction of Hawaiianness as a race was formed in relation to the
Hawai‘i, Race in
shift away from their entitlement to the privileging of White property interests. Entitlement is controlled by placing the burden of proving identity on the Native Hawaiians, whose culture was steeped in an oral tradition. Furthermore, even when the written tradition was introduced, the record keeping was often haphazard, fraught with mistakes, or (in the cases of flood and fire) lost altogether—with the effect being to intensify the actual and continuing violence of the colonization process for the Indigenous population of Hawai‘i. The racialized nature of this requirement is brought into focus more sharply when one recognizes that in Hawai‘i White people, unlike the Native Hawaiians themselves, have never needed to prove their lineage so as to claim space. The cumulative effects of these racial politics have been largely negative for the Native Hawaiian population. Native Hawaiians share similar characteristics to other colonized populations, including high unemployment, negative health outcomes, low levels of educational attainment, and high imprisonment rates.
Contemporary Environment Data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2005 (ACS) are used to obtain a portrait of the demography and racial stratification in Hawai‘i today. The figures for this part of the analysis are based on the use of statistical weights to obtain population estimates from the ACS sample. The population of Hawai‘i numbered 1,258,528 in 2005. Table 1 shows the ten most common detailed racial/ethnic categories in Hawai‘i. At the time of the survey, 54% of the state’s population was nonHispanic White, Japanese, or Filipino. The 68,090 members of the non-Hispanic Hawaiian population constituted approximately 1 of every 19 residents of the state. An additional 32,385 persons were multiracial individuals identifying as non-Hispanic Hawaiian, or White. The other groups comprising the top ten racial/ethnic categories included non-Hispanic Chinese, Korean, and Blacks along with two Hispanic groups (Puerto Ricans and Mexicans). Hawai‘i, however, is the most racially/ethnically diverse state in the United States. Indeed, more than one-fifth (21.3%) of the population of Hawai‘i identified with more than one race in 2005. In the nation as a whole, only 1.9% of the population categorized itself as multiracial.
Table 1
Most Common Racial/Ethnic Groups in Hawai‘i, 2005
Racial/Ethnic Category
Total
Top ten groups Non-Hispanic White Non-Hispanic Japanese Non-Hispanic Filipino Non-Hispanic Hawaiian Non-Hispanic Chinese Puerto Rican Mexican Non-Hispanic White and Native Hawaiian Non-Hispanic Korean Non-Hispanic Black
Percentage of Population
282,802 201,461 188,643 68,090 55,037 37,325 33,406
22.5 16.0 15.0 5.4 4.4 3.0 2.6
32,385 25,643 21,614
2.6 2.0 1.7
279,089 33,033
22.2 2.6
1,258,528
100.0
Balance Non-Hispanic Hispanic Total
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Source: Based on data from U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.
Socio oeconomicc Indiccatorss
Racial/ethnic groups, especially non-Hispanic Hawaiian single- and multiple-race individuals, are stratified socioeconomically in Hawai‘i along three dimensions of socioeconomic status: education (percentage of persons age 25 years or older who are college graduates), occupation (average Duncan Socioeconomic Index for occupations), and poverty (percentage of population with incomes below the poverty threshold). Included in this analysis are eight non-Hispanic groups: Hawaiian, Hawaiian + White, Hawaiian + Other Asian, Hawaiian + White + Other Asian, White (the largest single racial/ethnic category in the state), Japanese, Filipino, and Chinese (the last three are the three largest Asian groups in the state). Across the three socioeconomic indicators, singlerace and multiracial Hawaiians occupy the lower rungs in the socioeconomic hierarchy (see Table 2). For example, only approximately one-sixth to oneeighth of Hawaiians age 25 years or older from these
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Hawai‘i, Race in
groups have a college diploma. In contrast, more than one-third of Whites, Chinese, and Japanese have this credential. In addition, single-race and multiracial Hawaiians are employed in occupations that have relatively low levels of prestige, although Filipinos work in even less prestigious occupations. In contrast, Japanese, White, and Chinese are employed in the most prestigious jobs. Finally, single-race and multiracial Hawaiians have relatively high levels of poverty along with Chinese. These groups are two to three times more likely to be living in poverty as compared with Japanese, Filipinos, and Whites.
Resid den ntia al Patterrns
Next, the residential patterns of various groups are examined to assess the degree to which they share similar areas where they live. Sociologists commonly use the index of dissimilarity to measure the similarities in geographic residences across racial/ethnic groups. Data from the 2000 Summary File 1 (SF1) are used to assess the residential similarities among three non-Hispanic single-race groups (Hawaiians/Other Pacific Islanders, Whites, and Asians) across the 217 census tracts that comprise the Honolulu Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), the largest MSA in Hawai‘i. The index of dissimilarity (D) assesses the degree to which members of the three groups of interest share Table 2
residential space. The D varies from 0 (no segregation— two groups live in the same locations) to 100 (complete segregation—two groups live in completely different areas). The D can be interpreted as the percentage of members of one group that would need to move to achieve the same geographic distribution as the other group. The results of the analysis show a moderate level of residential segregation between Hawaiians/Other Pacific Islanders and Asians (D = 39.4) but a higher level relative to Whites (D = 48.6). In sum, the analysis reported here using U.S. census data for 2000 and 2005 indicates that Hawaiians continue to be a relatively small part of the population of the state of Hawai‘i despite their Native roots in this land. In addition, Hawaiians continue to fare worse than other major racial groups in the state, including Whites, Japanese, Filipinos, and Chinese. Furthermore, the data show that even Hawaiians who identify with another racial identity do not fare any better than their single-race Hawaiian counterparts. Last, the Hawaiian population remains moderately segregated from Whites and Asian populations. The contemporary racial taxonomy and stratification observed in Hawai‘i reflects the historical forces that established the colonization and racialization of Hawai‘i and its people. Karen Manges Douglas and Rogelio Saenz
Summary Statistics Based on Selected Socioeconomic Indicators by Group, 2005. Percentage of Persons Age 25 Years or Older With a College Degree
Average Duncan Socioeconomic Index for Occupations
Percentage of Persons in Poverty
Hawaiian Hawaiian + White Hawaiian + Asian Hawaiian + White + Asian
13.4 16.0 12.7 14.8
37.8 38.7 40.6 39.4
15.4 15.6 13.0 16.2
White Japanese Filipino Chinese
40.7 33.6 16.9 37.5
48.9 51.5 32.4 46.6
7.5 5.5 5.9 16.6
Group
Source: Based on data from U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. Note: The Duncan Socioeconomic Index assigns a weighted value to the education and income of an occupation ranging from a low of 0 to a high of 97.
Hawaiians
See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Australia, Indigenous People; Colonialism; Filipino Americans; Haole; Hapa; Hawaiians; Internment Camps; Japanese Americans; Pacific Islanders; Race, Social Construction of; Racial Formation
Further Readings
Dominguez, Virginia R. 1998. “Exporting U.S. Concepts of Race: Are There Limits to the U.S. Model?” Social Research 65:369–399. Kauanui, J. Ke– haulani. 1999. “‘For Get’ Hawaiian Entitlement: Configuration of Land, ‘Blood,’ and Americanization in the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1921.” Social Text 59:123–144. Levy, Neil M. 1975. “Native Hawaiian Land Rights.” California Law Review 63:848–885. Lind, Andrew. 1955. Hawaii’s People. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Rohrer, Judy. 2006. “‘Got Race?’ The Production of Haole and the Distortion of Indigeneity in the Rice Decision.” Contemporary Pacific 18(1):1–31. Ruggles, Steven, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander. 2004. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3.0 [machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota (producer and distributor). Trask, Haunani-Kay. 1991. “Coalition-Building between Natives and Non-Natives.” Stanford Law Review 43:1197–1213. U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www Warner, Sam L. No‘eau. 1999. “Kuleana: The Right, Responsibility, and Authority of Indigenous Peoples to Speak and Make Decisions for Themselves in Language and Cultural Revitalization.” Anthropology of Education Quarterly 30(1):68–93.
evolving a complex system of resource management and developing sophisticated knowledge bases and skills to survive on these remote islands with limited resources. Their situation underwent an enormous change after the arrival of Europeans, leaving them a minority in their own homeland, as this entry discusses. Cosmogonic and religious beliefs of Hawaiians tie _ the Hawaiian Islands to kanaka maoli beginning with _ creation or po (darkness or obscurity). The islands were born from Papaha- naumoku (earth mother) and _ Wa kea (sky father), who also gave birth to kalo, the taro plant and main staple crop of traditional Hawaiians, and ultimately to people. As such, the histories of the land, the gods, the chiefs, and the people are all intertwined with one another and with all other aspects of the universe. In these beginnings, the archipelago is intimately connected to Hawaiians through genealogy, culture, history, and spirituality. The natural elements (land, wind, and rain) and creatures of the islands are considered as primordial ancestors; they are the older relatives of living Hawaiians. Both share an interdependent familial relationship that _ requires malama (care) and kia‘i (guardianship) for the older siblings, who in turn provide for the wellbeing of the younger siblings. Significant cultural values of the Hawaiian people center on the importance of ‘ohana (family), aloha ‘a-ina (love for the land), and mo‘oku-‘auhau (genealogy). United States Canada
Pacific Ocean
United States
HAWAIIANS Hawaiian refers to an indigenous group of people, ka-naka maoli, Aboriginal to the Hawaiian archipelago. The first discoverers of the 1,500-mile-long Hawaiian archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, these Polynesians migrated to Hawai‘i by sea, using advanced navigation skills long before the Western world discovered the concept of longitude. There, they survived and flourished for hundreds of years prior to Western contact,
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Mexico
Kauai Oahu Molokai Maui
Hawaiian Islands Hawai‘i
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Hawaiians
Hawaiians are known for having a deep sense of spirituality and for the special compassion, or aloha, that they bring to the world around them, including both animate and inanimate forms of life.
Social Context of Colonization Historically, the Hawaiian Islands were divided into four chiefdoms until the late 18th century, when King Kamehameha I consolidated them through conquest. United under single rule, the archipelago then modernized rapidly through economic commerce in sugar, pineapple, shipping, and related industries. By the late 19th century, Hawai‘i was a fully recognized nation-state with multiple international treaties, including one with the United States. During the same century, however, several transformations occurred that changed Hawaiian ways and lifestyles drastically. First, Native Hawaiians progressively became a minority in their own homeland. Estimates suggest that the Native population, afflicted by Western disease and (to a much lesser extent) warfare, dropped by at least 90% during the 100 years following Captain Cook’s arrival. Figure 1 shows a conservative estimate, whereas other population
estimates range as high as 800,000 Hawaiians prior to Western contact. By the end of the century, only approximately 40,000 Aboriginal Hawaiians remained alive. Meanwhile, the immigrant population gained steadily in number, including Whites, who outnumbered Hawaiians by the early 1900s. Today, Native Hawaiians comprise approximately one-fifth of the state population. Second was the gradual and systematic erosion of indigenous control over the land, primarily through the insertion of Western legal tactics, government, and religion. Gradually, foreigners took more and more control, fully exploiting Hawaiian cultural beliefs in land as collective property. The eventual privatization of land played an important role in the displacement of Hawaiians. From a Hawaiian perspective, it was unfathomable that someone else could deny their rights to place, a precious ancestor, the same land that a family had worked and lived on for generations and generations. As Hawaiians saw it, they belonged to the land, so they had difficulty in understanding how one could ever own a place, much less sell it like some commodity. Hawaiians regarded the land’s true value as the sum of the lives, memories, achievements, and mana (spiritual power) of all the generations who had ever
300 Native Hawaiian Population (in Thousands)
100% 250
Before Western Contact
After Western Contact 75%
200
50%
150
100 25%
20%
50
Pre-1778 Estimates
Figure 1
1778 1823 1831 1835 1850 1853 1860 1866 1872 1878 1884 1890 1896 1900 1910 1920 1930 1840 1850 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700
0
Post-1778 Counts
Percentage of Hawai’i Total Population
Native Hawaiian Populations Before and After Western Contact
Source: Kana‘iaupuni, Shawn Malia, Nolan Malone, and Koren Ishibashi. 2005. Ka Huaka‘i: Native Hawaiian Educational Assessment. Honolulu, HI: Kamehameha Schools, Pauahi Publications.
Hawaiians
dwelled on it. Because most Aboriginals failed to recognize that they needed to formally claim the private ownership of their land under the new system, White foreigners, mostly missionaries and businessmen, rapidly bought up the property where Hawaiians lived and worked, forcing them to move elsewhere in most cases. These displacing events culminated in 1893, when a small oligopoly of U.S. businessmen and missionary descendants staged a coup d’état, capturing the Hawaiian Queen Lili‘uokalani and imprisoning her in the royal palace for eight months with the help of U.S. Marines. The overthrow violated existing treaties and established procedures for annexation. Hawai‘i was proclaimed a U.S. territory by Congress via the Newlands Resolution in 1898. What many do not know is that annexation occurred despite a petition signed by nearly every living Hawaiian at the time (an estimated 38,000 of 40,000) in protest of losing their sovereign nation. In recognition and formal apology by the U.S. government for these actions, U.S. Public Law 103-150, signed in 1993, cites that Indigenous Hawaiians never relinquished claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people or over their lands to the United States. Hawai‘i became a state in 1959. Since statehood, historically high rates of intermarriage and small numbers of full-blooded Hawaiians mean that today’s Hawaiians are an almost entirely multiracial population by demographic standards. Nevertheless, more than 400,000 individuals identified themselves as Hawaiian in the 2000 census. The U.S. Census mixes the social issues of racial construction, ethnicity, and culture, and this makes the accurate determination of Indigenous Hawaiians challenging. For example, nearly one-third reported only one race (Hawaiian) despite recent estimates that only 1,000 to 3,000 full-blooded Hawaiians remain alive today. These data indicate the powerful importance of being Hawaiian to the lives of many mixed-race individuals. Like other indigenous groups, however, Aboriginal Hawaiians face grim prospects in their health, economic, and social well-being. Although assimilation theory would predict that intermarriage brings conformity and improved well-being, analysis of the health and social outcomes for Native Hawaiians tells a different story. For example, by 1990 Native Hawaiian life expectancy at birth continued to be the shortest of all major ethnic groups in the state, where 60% of Native Hawaiians reside today. Life expectancy actually
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decreased from the average age documented in 1980, whereas other ethnic groups have experienced longer lives and continued increases in life expectancy rates since 1930.
Contested Terrain A critical area of past and present controversy focuses on the place of Hawaiians in Hawai‘i, which is now a U.S. state. Although all other residents of Hawai‘i can claim another homeland, this archipelago is the only home of Hawaiians. It is the place that nourishes, replenishes, and sustains the cultural, ancestral, physical, and spiritual existence of the Hawaiian people. Outside of Hawai‘i, a fair amount of confusion also exists on the question of what it means to be Hawaiian. In both the New Oxford American Dictionary and Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition, the term Hawaiian is defined as “a native or inhabitant/resident of Hawaii” (italics added). Both sources list the second definition as “the Polynesian language of the Hawaiians”; this is interesting given that Hawaiians themselves are not necessarily Polynesian according to these definitions. The influential Associated Press Stylebook, which is the “journalists’ bible,” states that all residents of Hawai‘i are Hawaiians and only “technically” those who are “natives of Polynesian descent.” Although seemingly innocent enough, the technical issue of Aboriginal Native versus resident has spurred considerable debate in the state of Hawai‘i as well as in the continental U.S. Locally, descendants of early European and U.S. missionary families argue that they are just as Hawaiian as the original Polynesian inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands because their ancestors were part of the Hawaiian kingdom at one point. The confusion is exacerbated by the state’s long-standing political rhetoric, which portrays a melting pot paradise composed of racial/ethnic hybrids—with all coexisting harmoniously. This concept traces back to a eugenicist scientific theory prevalent during the 1930s that imagined a “super race” in Hawai‘i created by racial fusion. Whether by design or not, treating all residents of Hawai‘i as Hawaiian effectively masks the significant marginalization, history, and struggles— not to mention the unique cultural qualities—of Native Hawaiians both yesterday and today. It also signifies a dispossession not only of the physical land of Hawai‘i but also of its people and their culture.
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Head Start and Immigrants
Naturally, many Hawaiians reject these notions as blatantly colonialist, a negation of the Indigenous Hawaiian culture in favor of a mixed-race assimilated (and cooperative) citizenry. Hawaiians also are keenly aware of the political and economic commoditization of their values and culture by the global tourist industry. One reaction is commemorated by a popular bumper sticker that reads “No Hawaiians, No Aloha.” In essence, it protests the co-optation of a venerated cultural value of an existing people while dismissing the existence of the people themselves. Moreover, to avoid being sidestepped as a technicality, Indigenous Hawaiians have needed to adopt the term Native Hawaiian (many now use Ka-naka Hawai‘i [the people of Hawai‘i]), although the language remains uncontested, Hawaiian (‘o-lelo Hawai‘i [in Hawaiian language]).
What Does the Future Hold? For more than a century, scholars have written about the end of the Hawaiian people. The plight of this so-called dying race also was depicted in Elizabeth Lindsey’s 1995 documentary titled Then There Were None. On the one hand, diversity and the threat of cultural assimilation raise questions about the survival of Hawaiians as a distinctive people. Yet today there may be more Hawaiians than at any single point in history. As more and more Hawaiian scholars enter the discussion about what it means to be Hawaiian, it is quite clear that the answer has little to do with the amount of Hawaiian blood in any individual and has much more to do with genealogy and culture. Native Hawaiians are, therefore, best considered an ethnic group comprising the descendants of the people who had settled the Hawaiian Islands before the first Europeans arrived. Thus, Hawaiians are defined by ancestry, which is an important place of origin in any discussion of Hawaiian identity. The answer, clearly, is that although phenotype (or physical appearance) and lifestyles may adapt to new surroundings and mixes, Native Hawaiian identity continues to thrive uniquely and strongly. It is the continuity of belonging to an ancestral place and people. Shawn Malia Kana‘iaupuni See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Colonialism; Haole; Hapa; Hawai‘i, Race in; Identity Politics; Pacific Islanders; Race, Social Construction of
Further Readings
Blaisdell, R. Kekuni. 1993. “The Health Status of Kanaka Maoli (indigenous Hawaiians).” Asian American Pacific Islander Journal of Health 1(2):116–160. Halualani, Rona T. 2002. In the Name of Hawaiians: Native Identities and Cultural Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kame‘eleihiwa, Lilikala-. 1992. Native Land and Foreign Desires. Honolulu, HI: Bishop Museum. Kanahele, George. (1986). Ku- kanaka Stand Tall: A Search for Hawaiian Values. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Kana‘iaupuni, Shawn Malia, Nolan Malone, and Koren Ishibashi. 2005. Ka Huaka’i: 2005 Native Hawaiian Educational Assessment. Honolulu, HI: Kamehameha Schools, Pauahi Publications. Kauanui, J. Ke-haulani. 2002. “The Politics of Blood and Sovereignty in Rice v. Cayetano.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 25(1):110–128. Meyer, Manulani. 2003. Ho‘oulu Our Time of Becoming: Hawaiian Epistemology and Early Writings. Honolulu, HI: Native Books. Osorio, Jon Kamakawiwoole. 2001. “What Kine Hawaiian Are You? A Mo‘olelo about Nationhood, Race, History, and the Contemporary Sovereignty Movement in Hawai‘i. Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Island Affairs 13:359–379. Osorio, Jon Kamakawiwoole. 2002. Dismembering La-hui: A History of the Hawaiian Nation to 1887. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Pukui, Mary K., E. W. Haertig, and Catharine A. Lee. 1972. Na-na- I ke Kumu (Look to the source). Vols. 1–2. Honolulu, HI: Queen Liliu‘okalani Children’s Center. Silva, Noenoe K. 2004. Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Trask, Haunani-Kay. 1993. From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai‘i. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press.
HEAD START AND IMMIGRANTS Head Start is a program that focuses on assisting children from low-income families and was created in 1965, making it the longest running school readiness program. Besides traditional educational skills, it focuses on health, parenting skills, and nutrition. Although it is often considered for its impact on African American and Latino households, the focus here is on its relationship with immigrant households.
Head Start and Immigrants
Legislative Background Antipoverty programs were initiated in 1965 as a vehicle to provide the foundation on which the poor could alleviate their suffering and gain a foothold toward achieving self-sufficiency. Federal programs under the umbrella of the Economic Opportunity Initiative (EOPI) included programs such as Head Start, the Community Action Agency, and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). Head Start targeted women and children in low-income communities. Its mission was to provide early childhood intervention to facilitate the transition of poor children to public schools. Open to immigrants and citizens alike, the use of this public service program by women has been pivotal in providing mechanisms for women to escape poverty and access the resources of the larger society. The prevailing message conveyed to parents urged them to take a prominent role in their children’s education and to change their attitude about themselves so that they could present a more positive role model to their children. Parents are strongly encouraged to volunteer in the classroom as a means to reinforce the positive message of learning. Learning is seen to be a lifelong process that does not end when the school day ends. When immigrant parents volunteer, they are active participants in their children’s learning process and can continue to stress the importance of education. This message, as conveyed by Head Start staff members, is not only for the children but also for the parents. Public services such as Head Start, which target poor women and children, attempt to create a means for them to overcome the encumbrance of poverty. In trying to redress poverty, public services have often had the effect of changing family forms. As a part of participating in Head Start programs, parents are required to become involved in program services and policy decisions. This challenge becomes more profound when parents are migrant farmworkers.
Migrant Head Start Programs Migrant Head Start programs must comply with the same performance standards as do all Head Start programs, and they have the additional challenge of trying to keep migrant parents involved despite the long hours and other challenges consistent with agriculturally based seasonal employment. To address their needs, methods of communication must include multiple
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options such as visits to migrant camps, personal rather than impersonal written invitations, and interactions with bus drivers and aides. With increased interactions between parents and Head Start workers, several themes became clear to the Head Start researchers. First, parents have a deep respect for education, and the educators and are hesitant to make any changes. Second, parents who become increasingly involved in the program were demonstrated to be more active in their children’s education and encouraged other parents to do so by offering rides to meetings and motivating them. Third, as advocates for their children, parents gain the experience to serve as trainers and advocates for other families. Finally, all of these themes serve to empower the parents toward self-advocacy in other parts of their lives. Experience in the Head Start program has been illustrated to have beneficial effects for the children and parents alike. The Head Start Bureau asserts that participating in Head Start has an effect long after the involvement has ended. This research includes several longitudinal studies one, three, and five years following children’s completion of their Head Start educational experiences. Immigrant parents reported greater attendance in afterschool programs and contact with teachers an average of three times per month. Moreover, parents were more likely to assist their children with different aspects of homework such as asking whether help was needed with reading and arithmetic skills. The Head Start Bureau further contends that this is an indication of parents’ self-efficacy increasing with their greater involvement in their children’s education through the Head Start program. Head Start social workers and teaching staff members attempt to accomplish these goals by first encouraging parent participation in the policy changes of their Head Start center through monthly parent meetings and volunteerism in the classroom. Head Start staff members facilitate parents’ participation through a variety of workshops and training in the basic skills of participating in meetings; they learn how to use Robert’s Rules of Order, how to contact and engage public officials, and what their rights are when dealing with their local public school. Moreover, Head Start parents foster a working relationship within the community through activism and communication with their neighborhood community developers in target areas. These objectives are considered particularly important for immigrant women, who are just beginning to learn how to navigate
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their new environment. Moreover, mothers are more likely to attend parent meetings, complete the needs assessment, and take part in parent trainings. These objectives can be instrumental in assisting with the assimilation processes for immigrant women. In addition, Head Start makes a concerted effort to promote cultural sensitivity and to facilitate the transition process for immigrant families. Contacts with the parents of Head Start children are typically done in the language of the parents, using bilingual teachers or interpreters whether the language is Arabic or Spanish. Bilingualism is a critical component of Head Start nationally. Classrooms themselves have bilingual and sometimes multilingual labels, materials, and books. For example, one might see plastic (play) food of rice and beans rather than a hamburger and fries. Head Start as a public service program assists women in developing and increasing their social network. By concentrating efforts on young mothers, Head Start initiates the creation of social networks that will assist in developing contacts with other mothers for common goals such as fund raising for their children’s centers, promoting safety campaigns for their children’s general welfare, and engaging in community activism for their family’s well-being to enhance the quality of life in their neighborhood. Due to the limited resources that many immigrant families have available, public services such as Head Start are often vital for their economic survival. Head Start is a federally funded program that provides early preschool as a means of preparing 3- to 5-year-olds for the rigors of elementary school. Through an intensive interview and needs assessment process, social workers are able to work with Head Start families to target goals to better the lives of their children as well as the lives of other family members. The services may include English as a second language classes for immigrant families, self-advocacy training, computer training, GED classes, and parenting classes. The focus of Head Start is to involve families in self-advocacy. An important objective is for parents not only to become more actively involved in their children’s education but also to increase the level of participation in their community. Training workshops are also available in multiple languages to better serve immigrant parents. The education and training received by mothers of children in the Head Start program can be interpreted as
enhancements of their self-esteem, whereas the workshops designed to increase their self-confidence aim to foster their building of social networks. Immigrant parents who are involved in Head Start are more likely to advocate for their children when they leave Head Start and enter the larger public school system. The increasing numbers of Head Start parents furthering their own educational attainment levels as well as finding employment within the Head Start system that their children attended can demonstrate the lasting effects of Head Start on immigrant families. Sandy Alvarez See also Assimilation; Bilingual Education; Child Development; Cuban Americans; Educational Performance and Attainment; Educational Stratification; Immigrant Communities; Pipeline
Further Readings
Head Start Bureau. 2005. Head Start Program Performance Standards and Other Regulations. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Peters, Barbara. 1998. The Head Start Mother: Low-Income Mothers’ Empowerment through Participation. New York: Routledge. Schorr, Lisbeth B., Edward Zigler, and Sally J. Styfco, eds. 2004. The Head Start Debates. Baltimore, MD: Brookes. Vinovskis, Maris A. 2005. The Birth of Head Start: Preschool Education Policies in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Zigler, Edward and Susan Muenchow. 1994. Head Start: The Inside Story of America’s Most Successful Educational Experiment. New York: Basic Books.
HEALTH, IMMIGRANT The foreign-born population of the United States has continued to grow at a fast rate, increasing from 4.7% of the total population in 1970 to 11.7% in 2003. During a similar peak period of immigration during the early 1900s, the majority of immigrants were from Southern and Eastern European countries. Today, the sources of immigration are more diverse, with the greatest percentage being from Latin America (53.3%) and Asia (25.0%) and only 13.7% now coming from Europe. Breaking down the Latin American group, 10.1% of all U.S. immigrants are from the Caribbean,
Health, Immigrant
36.9% are from Central America, and 6.3% are from South America. As the immigrant population grows, it is becoming increasingly important for health care workers and policymakers to know about the health outcomes and status of this changing racial/ethnic demographics. Unfortunately, there have been some major impediments to learning about the needs and conditions of health among the foreign-born U.S. population. First of all, there have been inconsistencies with the very definition of immigrant used in various research methodologies. More specifically, some research has maintained that once an individual enters the United States as an immigrant, he or she maintains that status indefinitely. Other research has limited the definition of immigrant to include only those who immigrated during the past five years. Some research makes no distinction between immigrant and refugee status, further conflating the definitional issues. Second, some immigrant subgroups are difficult to study. For example, undocumented immigrants have their own health status concerns, but this can be a group whose members are reluctant to speak with researchers. Others have serious language limitations, meaning that they may be excluded from certain studies; thus, the health needs and concerns of an extremely vulnerable population may be ignored. Third, much of the research done on various racial/ethnic groups often does not make a distinction between native-born and foreignborn status. This has been the case particularly for Latinos and Asians. Finally, research instruments have often been created and then used for different groups, making the assumption that what is acceptable in one immigrant community will work in another. Nevertheless, there are several useful resources for information on the health status and outcome of various immigrant groups. Two in particular are the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health and “advance data” papers from Vital and Health Statistics, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics. These two resources are responsible for filling the gap in existing immigrant health knowledge. Much of this research centers on a comparison of health statistics for the native-born population with those for the foreign-born population. This entry focuses on a general discussion of immigrant health status as compared with that of the native-born population and examines three immigrant subgroups more specifically.
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General Immigrant Health Status Overall, most research indicates that the foreign-born population has significant advantages in terms of various health measures. Although the foreign-born population is poorer, less likely to have a high school diploma, and less likely to have access to health care than is the native-born population, they still appear to maintain a better overall health status than the U.S.born population. In particular, nearly all immigrant groups are less likely to be obese, experience fewer symptoms of physical distress, are underrepresented in all major disease groups (e.g., HIV/AIDS, cancer, heart disease), and have lower levels of smoking and hypertension. More specifically, native-born adults are 50% more likely to be obese than are the foreignborn adults and are three times more likely to be smokers. Overall, most recent foreign-born persons are healthier than native-born persons, and even immigrants who have lived in the United States for 10 years are healthier overall than native-born U.S. residents. However, the longer immigrants remain in the United States, the closer their health status becomes to that of the native-born population. For example, in terms of obesity, although recent immigrants are on average 2% to 5% lower on the body mass index (BMI) than are native-born U.S. residents, this gap closes within 10 to 15 years. Several factors may explain the more positive health outcomes of the immigrant population. First of all, in general, the foreign-born adult population is younger than the native-born adult population, The only group this does not hold true for are White immigrant adults, who have a higher proportion of elderly persons (over 65 years) than do U.S.-born White adults. Second, the phenomenon known as the “healthy immigrant” effect tells us that selectivity among those who migrate means that those who leave their country tend to be healthier than those who stay behind. Finally, certain behavioral, cultural, and lifestyle differences may help to account for the more positive health outcomes among the foreign-born population. Several issues, however, may have a negative effect on the health status of the foreign-born population. First of all, the foreign-born population is much more likely to be uninsured than is the native-born population, resulting in an overuse and need of emergency and walk-in health services. In addition, often because of the lack of health insurance, immigrants are much more likely to lack a usual source of care, with frequency
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of visits to a doctor’s office being much higher among the native-born population than among the foreignborn population. Consistent with this, the longer immigrants remain in the United States, the more likely they are to adopt a regular source of care rather than use emergency or walk-in services. Related to the concerns of lack of health insurance and regular care is the fact that immigrants, because of the Welfare Act of 1996, are unable to receive any benefits under federal means-tested programs, including medical benefits programs, for the first five years they are in the United States. This greatly reduces their ability to seek medical assistance on a more regular basis. Finally, some studies have looked at injury rates among immigrant groups and found that some immigrant groups, particularly Hispanics, are overrepresented among homicide deaths.
Immigrant Subgroup Populations Hispanic Immig grantss
Studies have shown that there are differences not only between the foreign-born Hispanic population and the native-born Hispanic population but also between different segments of the Hispanic immigrant population. For example, Cuban immigrants and Mexican immigrants are significantly different in terms of sociodemographic characteristics. In particular, Cuban immigrants have tended to be more highly educated and less likely to live in poverty than have Mexican immigrants. Overall, however, the Hispanic immigrant population has larger families than does the native-born U.S. population, a third of Hispanic immigrants live in poverty, they are more likely to be undocumented than any other immigrant subgroup, and they have lower levels of education and English proficiency. For all immigrant groups, Hispanic immigrants are also least likely to have access to health insurance or a usual source of health care. Hispanics immigrants have higher morbidity for infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, meningitis, and AIDS, than do native-born White U.S. residents, but consistent with other immigrant groups, Hispanics have lower levels of heart disease and cancer. Nonetheless, Hispanic immigrants still have better health than do U.S.-born Hispanics. In terms of recognizing the long-term effects of living in the United States on the health status of immigrant populations, among the foreign born, Hispanics are more likely to become obese the longer they live
in the United States. In addition, their rates of hypertension and cardiovascular disease increase significantly the longer they remain in the United States. As a group, a significant portion of the Hispanic population lives in lower socioeconomic conditions, and this can foster inadequate living conditions and lack of adequate hygiene. In particular, seasonal migrant workers suffer a high rate of work-related injuries and ailments, especially hazardous work conditions, poor nutrition, and lack of health care access. Black Immigra antss
Overall, native-born U.S. residents rate their own health slightly more positively than do foreign-born immigrants. However, Black immigrants are the one exception to this. Among Black immigrant adults, those who have been in the United States longer than five years rate their health less positively than do those who are more recent immigrants. Even more important, Black immigrants have much higher rates of positive health status than do native-born Black U.S. residents. In particular, they are less likely to be smokers or to be obese, and they are much less likely to have symptoms of psychological distress. In essence, the longer Black immigrants live in the United States, the less likely they are to be in excellent or good health. Several demographic factors are likely to account for the differences between foreign-born Blacks and native-born Blacks. First of all, Black immigrants have a smaller percentage of children and elderly (over 65 years) than do native-born Blacks. Second, Black immigrants have higher levels of educational attainment, are more likely to be employed, and are less likely to be living in poverty. Finally, it is likely that the “healthy immigrant” effect is in place for Black immigrants, with those with health problems being least likely to migrate. Asia an Immigra ants
More than any other immigrant group population, the Asian foreign-born immigrants differ with regard to their subpopulations. Vietnamese and Korean foreign-born immigrants have lower rates of positive health self-assessment than do Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino foreign-born immigrants. In addition, a higher percentage of Korean immigrant adults are smokers as compared with Chinese and Asian Indian immigrant adults. However, Asian immigrants are
Health Disparities
more likely than Hispanic and Black immigrants to have access to health insurance, although among Asian subgroups Koreans are least likely to have health insurance. For all immigrant groups (Hispanic, Black, White, and Asian), Asians are the least likely to report serious psychological distress. Overall, Asian immigrants are healthier than native-born Asian Americans. They are less likely to be obese and have lower levels of hypertension, lower rates of most cancers, and fewer risk factors for chronic diseases. Again, highlighting differences among Asian immigrant subgroup populations, Asian Indian immigrants are at greater risk for morbidity and mortality from heart disease and diabetes than are other immigrant groups and native-born populations. One possible reason for this has to do with lower levels of physical activity as well as higher fat and lower fiber diets among many Asian Indian groups. These factors have contributed to the higher risks for obesity and non-insulin-dependent diabetes among Asian Indian immigrants the longer they reside in the United States. Some of the reasons for the differences in health status and health outcome among Asian foreign-born immigrants are related to migration history and circumstances under which individuals migrated. In particular, the sociodemographic differences among the Asian subpopulations affect their English language proficiency, poverty levels, and educational attainment. In turn, these factors affect their health behaviors, access to care, and knowledge of health-supportive services. Japanese immigrants are much more likely to have graduated from high school and to have higher income rates than are Vietnamese and Hmong immigrant adults. This is often reflected in the fact that Southeast Asians have higher levels of smoking, parasitic infections, and tuberculosis rates than do Japanese, Korean, and Chinese immigrants.
Conclusion A medical exam is required for all documented immigrants and refugees who enter the United States. Grounds for exclusion are based on communicable diseases, which would certainly affect the numbers of unhealthy immigrants living in the United States. Immigrants tend to be in better overall health than their native-born U.S. counterparts. Unfortunately, the more acculturated immigrants become, the more their health deteriorates. Beth Merenstein
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See also Biomedicine, African Americans and; Cambodian Americans; Health Disparities; HIV/AIDS; Medical Experimentation Further Readings
Dey, Achintya N. and Jacqueline Wilson Lucas. 2006. Physical and Mental Health Characteristics of U.S.- and Foreign-Born Adults: United States, 1998–2003 (Advance Data from Vital and Health Statistics, No. 369). Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. Hamilton, Hayley. 2005. Health and Behavior among Immigrant Youth. New York: LFB Scholarly Publications. Kramer, Elizabeth, Susan Ivey, and Yu-Wen Ying, eds. 1999. Immigrant Women’s Health: Problems and Solutions. San Francisco, CA: Jossey–Bass. Loue, Sana, ed. 1998. Handbook of Immigrant Health. New York: Plenum. Mahoney, Annette. 2004. The Health and Well-Being of Caribbean Immigrants in the U.S. Binghamton, NY: Haworth.
HEALTH DISPARITIES Disparities in health related to various demographic factors have been documented since data have been collected in the United States. Recently, interest in a working definition for health disparity has sparked attention among researchers and policymakers. Most dictionaries agree that the term disparities can be defined as inequality, difference, or something markedly distinct in quality or characteristics. In the United States, disparities may be associated with characteristics such as race/ethnicity, socioeconomic position (SEP), gender, access to health care, and geographic region or area of residence. The main health disparities are associated with race/ethnicity, characteristics that confer advantages and disadvantages to members of one racial/ethnic group over others. This entry discusses the history behind the definitions of health disparities in the United States, the health disparities of interest, the potential causes of health disparities, and the importance of reducing or eliminating health disparities for society as a whole.
Developing Definitions Definitions of health disparities in the United States can be traced as far back as 1985, when the Secretary’s Task Force on Black and Minority Health
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of the Department of Health and Human Services raised awareness of the health differences between minority groups and the White majority population in the country. The task force was a group of experts formed by the U.S. government to examine minority health problems comprehensively. It uses excess deaths as the primary indicator of a disparity and defines excess deaths as “the difference between the number of deaths actually observed in a minority group and the number of deaths that would have occurred in that group if the minority group experienced the same death rates for each age and sex as the White population.” The task force report was motivated by the release of the Department of Health and Human Services report, Health, United States 1983, in 1984. Although this report was the eighth of its kind on the health status of the nation, it was the first report to go beyond the Black/White dichotomy by presenting health status information according to ethnicity, namely for Hispanics and non-Hispanics. Moreover, information on Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans was included whenever the data were available. This report underscored that although the health of the overall population had improved significantly, Blacks and other minority groups were experiencing a disproportionate burden of disease and death. This differential between minority and majority in disease and death continued into the next decade, as underscored by Healthy People 2000: National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives in September 1990 and by Healthy People 2010 in January 2000—nearly 10 years later. These reports suggest that the health status of U.S. residents has been improving over time but that this improvement has been unequal across groups. In fact, because of this unequal improvement among groups of the population, the differences between racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups have increased over time. These differences led to one of the two overarching goals of Healthy People 2010, namely, “to eliminate health disparities among segments of the population, including differences that occur by gender, race/ ethnicity, education or income, disability, geographic location, or sexual orientation.” The National Institutes of Health (NIH) included a definition of health disparities in its draft for the Strategic Research Plan to Reduce and Ultimately Eliminate Health Disparities. The 2005 plan, which started in 2000, defined health disparities as “differences
in the incidence, prevalence, mortality, and burden of diseases and other adverse health conditions that exist among specific groups in the United States. Research on health disparities related to socioeconomic status also is encompassed in this definition.” Each institute within the NIH has adopted this definition with a focus on its disease orientation. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) also proposed a definition for health disparities with a focus on health care in 2002. Specifically, the IOM defined health disparities as “racial or ethnic differences in the quality of health care that are not due to access-related factors or clinical needs, preferences, and appropriateness of intervention.” In summary, these definitions, taken together, underscore the differences in disease occurrence and death between and among groups associated with race/ethnicity, socioeconomic position, access to health care, geographic region or area of residence, gender, and age. These differences between and among groups is usually associated with a disproportionate burden of disease and death for one group over another. Finally, despite these definitions of health disparities and the importance of their monitoring over time, the use of a standardized definition of health disparities that fits all possible differences between and among groups in the U.S. population is still to come.
The Record on Disparities The best-documented health disparities in the United States are those across racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, minority groups exhibit a higher burden of morbidity and mortality (with a few exceptions) than does the White majority. For example, in 2002, African Americans exhibited higher age-adjusted mortality rates for seven of the ten leading causes of death. These disparities have existed in the United States since data have been collected, and in fact the gap has remained the same. For example, in the case of infant mortality, although the absolute difference between African Americans and Whites has decreased during the past 50 years from 43.9% for Blacks and 26.8% for Whites (in 1950) to 13.5% for Blacks and 5.7% for Whites (in 2000–2002), the Black/White ratio has increased over time (1.6 in 1950 vs. 2.4 in 2000–2002). Thus, race was and remains a strong predictor of health disparities in the United States. Because race/ethnicity channel people into opportunities (or lack thereof) that can either promote or
Health Disparities
deteriorate health, other disparities related directly or indirectly to racial/ethnic health disparities have been documented, including SEP, gender, geographic region or area of residence, access to quality health care, and age. Evidence suggests that individuals with low SEP and without access to quality health care exhibit worse health outcomes than do those with high SEP and access to quality health care regardless of their insurance status. The evidence on gender, area of residence, and age is more condition specific. For example, all-cause mortality rates and the prevalence of diabetes and hypertension are higher among men than among women. Moreover, some health-related behaviors are more common in urban settings (e.g., illicit drugs such as opiates and cocaine), whereas others are more common in rural settings (e.g., cigarette smoking among adolescents and adults). These existing disparities due to a particular characteristic (e.g., SEP, racial/ethnic group, area of residence) could cluster additively and/or synergistically across different groups. For example, lowincome African American adults without health insurance living in an urban setting will exhibit worse health status than will high-income African American adults with access to health care. Moreover, evidence suggests that people without health insurance are more likely to receive emergency care as their health service and, thus, lack continuity of health care. In summary, the understanding and elimination of health disparities represents a multidimensional process intertwined across different characteristics of individuals and the environment in which they live and interact.
Causes of Health Disparities The major contributors to racial/ethnic health disparities are racial discrimination, residential segregation, socioeconomic position, and access to quality health care. Racial discrimination has recently emerged as an important risk factor for health—one that is differentially distributed across racial/ethnic groups and may contribute to elevated health risks for African Americans. For example, recent research reveals that a substantial proportion of African Americans experience racial discrimination, and there is evidence that racial discrimination is adversely related to multiple indicators of health status, including self-rated physical and mental health, blood pressure, and other cardiovascular outcomes.
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Although the extant evidence on racial discrimination and health focuses on African Americans, research suggests that the health of other racial/ethnic groups (e.g., Hispanics) also could be affected by racial discrimination. For instance, although research on racial discrimination and health outcomes among Hispanics is scant, the evidence suggests that Hispanics’ mental health may be associated with racial discrimination. Specifically, as with African Americans, several studies suggest an association between self-reported perceived discrimination (based on skin color or race) and mental health among Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans. These studies found that selfreported perceived discrimination was associated with worse mental health (as measured by depressive symptoms). Racial discrimination manifests itself not only at the personal level but also at the institutional level. Residential segregation is an example of the latter. Residential segregation was recently described as a fundamental cause of racial disparities in health. Residential segregation creates disparate physical and social environments between minority groups and Whites. Although residential segregation has been higher for African Americans, other ethnic subgroups also are experiencing residential segregation. The differential in the social environment associated with residential segregation leads to restricted access to education and employment opportunities. This restricted access to economic resources has implications for socioeconomic mobility among African Americans and other minority groups. This constraint in social mobility could further translate into conditions detrimental to health. Moreover, the physical environment also could be affected by residential segregation. Specifically, segregated areas are more likely to have elevated exposure to noxious pollutants and allergens that may adversely affect the health of the residents of the area. Resid dentia al Segregatiion
The social characteristics of segregated areas can lead to the adoption of healthy or unhealthy behaviors. Evidence suggests that segregated areas tend to lack recreational facilities and to be less safe than more racially/ethnically diverse communities, and these are characteristics associated with physical inactivity. Moreover, these areas are heavily targeted by
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the tobacco and alcohol industries. These products act as buffers for the stress generated by living in disadvantaged and deprived environments. Thus, people in disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol so as to relieve stress. Finally, research shows that segregated areas are less likely to have stores and supermarkets stocked with fresh fruits and vegetables than are less segregated or racially/ethnically mixed areas, and this also may contribute to health disparities. Health care also is affected by residential segregation. In fact, one of the stronger predictors of hospital closures during the 1980s was the percentage of African Americans in the census tracts where hospitals were located. Research has shown that pharmacies in minority neighborhoods are less likely to carry adequate medication for severe pain than are those in more racially/ethnically diverse neighborhoods. Although evidence for the association between residential segregation and health in other racial/ethnic groups is in its infancy, evidence suggests that Hispanics, specifically Puerto Ricans, experience high levels of segregation. Interestingly, segregation tends to affect the health of all their residents independent of their race/ethnicity. For example, Whites living in segregated areas have been found to exhibit higher mortality rates than those of their counterparts in low-segregated areas. Thus, the deleterious effects of residential segregation on health, although not well understood, deserve attention. In summary, racial discrimination at the individual and institutional levels, as manifested by residential segregation, has implications for most of the disparities of interest in the United States such as racial/ ethnic, SEP, and geographic region or area of residence.
Reducing or Eliminating Disparities Whereas in the United Kingdom and other countries the terms inequality and inequity are commonly used when referring to differences in health, the United States has adopted the term health disparities for the same purpose. When making the distinction in the use of these terms, it is important to underscore the intrinsic sense of fairness and equity embedded in inequality and/or inequity on health. However, this same sense might not be found when using health disparity. For example, disparities across racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups have been documented with regard to obesity, the prevalence of which has been
increasing gradually throughout the past century and sharply during the past two decades. This pattern has been consistent across all age groups. However, minority and low-income children and adolescents represent the highest proportion of the prevalence. The extent to which people are obese is a shared responsibility of individual choice and the food environment in which they live. Thus, the following questions need to be asked. What proportion of obese people freely choose to be obese? What is the excess of obesity in the population attributable to living in a particular environment? Who is responsible for the latter? Such questions highlight the debate between personal choice and societal responsibility. This debate raises the issues of fairness and equity, leading to how unacceptable health disparities are and how disparities in the environment may affect everyone sharing the same social milieu. Thus, the fabric of society determines and shapes disparities in health for disadvantaged groups, namely racial/ethnic or socioeconomic groups, and may have “spillover” to other groups sharing the same environment independent of their racial/ethnic or socioeconomic group memberships. Thus, if the causes of health disparities are social, reducing and eventually eliminating them requires raising awareness of the social determinants of health disparities among the people with power to change the health policy agenda from an individual model to a population health approach. This approach will lead to improving the health of the entire population and, eventually, to eliminating health disparities. Luisa N. Borrell See also Biomedicine, African Americans and; Discrimination; Discrimination, Environmental Hazards; Educational Performance and Attainment; Ethnic Group; Health, Immigrant; HIV/AIDS; Medical Experimentation; Native American Health Care; Race; Racism; Segregation; Social Inequality; “Us and Them” Further Readings
Braveman, Paula. 2006. “Health Disparities and Health Equity: Concepts and Measurement.” Annual Review of Public Health 27:167–194. Carter-Pokras, Olivia and Claudia Baquet. 2002. “What Is a ‘Health Disparity’?” Public Health Reports 117:426–434. National Institutes of Health. 2005. NIH Strategic Research to Reduce and Ultimately Eliminate Health Disparities. Available from http://www.nih.gov/about/hd/ strategicplan.pdf
Hernand dezz v. Texas
Smedley, Brian D., Adrienne Y. Stith, and Alan R. Nelson, eds. 2002. Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 1985. Report of the Secretary’s Task Force on Black and Minority Health, vol. 1: Executive Summary. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 1991. Healthy People 2000: National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for the Nation. Washington, DC: Public Health Service. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2000. Healthy People 2010: Understanding and Improving Health. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Williams, David R. and Chiquita Collins. 2001. “Racial Residential Segregation: A Fundamental Cause of Racial Disparities in Health.” Public Health Reports 116:404–416.
HERNANDEZ V. TEXAS The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Hernandez v. Texas in 1954 grew from the most pedestrian roots— a drunken barroom brawl and a club-footed murder suspect. At the time, the courts were so hostile that Mexicans were not called for juries, and rural towns in Texas were often so inhospitable that the lawyers trying a murder case could not safely find housing in the county seat. The state of Texas had fewer than two dozen Mexican American lawyers in active practice when the crime was committed and had no true legal services network to assist in trying such complex cases. Into this milieu came four lawyers determined to test the idea that Mexican American defendants tried on criminal charges should be entitled to a “jury of their peers,” including other Mexican Americans. This entry describes the case, the Supreme Court decision, and its impact.
The Murder Trial On August 4, 1951, 24-year-old service station attendant Pedro (Pete) Hernandez shot and killed tenant farmer Joe Espinosa during a fight at Chinco Sanchez’s Tavern, Sprung’s Grocery, Edna, Jackson County, Texas. Within 24 hours, Hernandez was indicted by an all-White grand jury and petit jury panel
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for murder. On August 8, he was denied bail. During this period of time, John Herrera and James deAnda of Houston were retained as counsel for Hernandez, although Jackson County was well over an hour’s trip by highway from their offices. In September, San Antonio attorneys Gustavo Garcia and Carlos Cadena joined the defense team. On October 4, 1951, the district court refused to quash the Hernandez indictment, not unexpectedly, and deAnda sent his research materials on jury composition to Cadena, who drafted the brief, edited for Jackson County demographics. Between October 8 and 11, Hernandez was tried by an all-White jury, and at the end of the trial he was convicted of murder. On October 11, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. On June 18, 1952, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the judgment, and on October 22, that court refused a rehearing on the jury selection issue. A variety of factors came together and persuaded the attorneys that they should take the case to the next level, the U.S. Supreme Court, although no Mexican American lawyer had ever pleaded a case before the Supreme Court. They had taken notice of the bathroom signage in the Jackson County Courthouse—the bathroom door read, “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aqui”—and knew that the government attorneys had noticed, and they vowed to include those facts at trial and in their briefs.
Supreme Court Appeal By the end of the year 1952, the attorneys had made the collective decision to appeal the case beyond the state, and their patience and preparation were rewarded when on October 12, 1953, certiorari was granted for the case to be heard. At approximately the same time, the Supreme Court also granted cert on the well-known school desegregation cases, which had been consolidated and styled Brown v. Board of Education and which were being reargued after the death of Chief Justice Fred Vinson. Attention was focused on that set of cases, which had been carefully selected and prepared for the final assault on segregation. To an extent, the Hernandez case flew under the radar, not attracting the massive attention accorded Brown and the Legal Defense Fund’s long-standing and meticulous agenda. On January 11, 1954, Garcia and Cadena argued the Hernandez case. In what was unprecedented at the time, Garcia was given 12 minutes more than was usually allowed for oral arguments
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because of considerable questioning by the justices. Two weeks later, Brown was argued before the same Court by Thurgood Marshall with a much larger audience and international attention devoted to his efforts. On May 3, 1954, Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court, overturning the trial result and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decision on the jury issue. As a result, Texas juries needed to be reconstituted to select Mexican American jurors along with other Texas jurors, although this was met with considerable foot dragging in many jurisdictions. On November 15, the second trial was held, with Garcia arguing the case. With a jury that included two Mexican American women, Hernandez was again found guilty and was sentenced to 20 years.
Aftermath Five years later, all of the parties had moved on to other matters. Cadena became the first Mexican American law professor, joining the St. Mary’s University law faculty in San Antonio, and then became city attorney. Herrera and deAnda returned to their practice in Houston, and deAnda was appointed to the federal bench in 1959. Garcia fell on hard times but maintained his practice in San Antonio and other cities, including Houston, for a short time as he partnered with Herrera during the late 1950s. Apparently concerned about his former client, in 1960 Garcia tracked down the whereabouts of Hernandez, who was still serving his term. He lobbied the state parole authorities and organized efforts to write letters on behalf of Hernandez. He succeeded on June 7, 1960, when Hernandez was recommended for parole by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. The next day, he was paroled and released by order of Governor Price Daniel. On June 3, 1964, Garcia was found dead of natural causes on a San Antonio market bench, where he had been unnoticed for several hours. Hernandez’s fate is even more obscure, and if he has died, he did so without public notice of his passing. Before the Hernandez v. Texas case, there had been efforts to diversify juries, reaching back at least to the trial of Gregorio Cortez in 1901. In addition, there would be later efforts to strike down unrepresentative juries, including efforts by the legendary Oscar Zeta Acosta in Los Angeles during the 1960s. By 2005, there was still clear evidence that Latino participation in the Texas jury system was substantially unrepresentative of the growing population. But in a brief and
shining moment in 1954, Mexican American lawyers prevailed in a system that accorded their community no legal status and no respect. Through sheer tenacity, brilliance, and some luck, they showed that it is possible to tilt against windmills and to slay the dragon. Michael A. Olivas See also Brown Berets; Brown v. Board of Education; Crime and Race; Criminal Processing; Mexican Americans
Further Readings
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 1954. Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U.S. 475, 1954. Olivas, Michael A., ed. 2006. “Colored Men” and “Hombres Aqui”: Hernandez v. Texas and the Emergence of Mexican American Lawyering. Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press.
HIGHER EDUCATION Higher education is a central variable that affects people’s ability to gain upward social mobility in U.S. society. Hence, exploring past and present cultural beliefs, policies and laws are important for understanding experiences of minorities in higher education. It is also crucial to understand the changes within higher education that have increased minority enrollment, diversified curriculum, and altered campus climates.
Early Steps Inequities in minority access to higher education have existed throughout the history of U.S. society. Education of Blacks was barred at all levels during the years of slavery. Yet in the northern states, abolitionist groups created colleges for the education of Blacks who were free or runaway slaves. The first of these was Cheney University, founded in 1837. Cheney and the other colleges founded during this era are recognized as the first historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). After the abolition of slavery, the United States embraced policies to segregate Black and White students in the school system. In the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court set a precedent for separate but equal education. Although the institutions
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Affirmative action for college admissions is a contentious issue for many reasons, and the courts continue to debate its use. The application of obvious quota systems in college admissions, ensuring that a given number of applicants will be of a specific race, is one area of debate. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978 was one of the most notable cases debating quotas. Allan Bakke, a White applicant, had twice applied to the medical school program at the University of California, Davis, and had twice been denied entrance. The medical school used different evaluation procedures for White and minority candidates. In addition, the school reserved a specific number of seats for minority students. In its decision, the U.S. Supreme Fisk University students. The junior normal class of Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, is shown seated on steps outside of building in the Court ruled that the use of race in college early 1900s. Since its conception in 1866, Fisk University has a long history admissions is acceptable, but the Court also as an educational institution and has trained a large number of important prohibited strict quotas intended to ensure leaders in the Civil Rights Movement. minority enrollment. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Two decades later, in 1997, two crucial LC-USZ62-112357. cases were filed against the University of Michigan. In Gratz v. Bollinger, Jennifer for Black students were theoretically supposed to be Gratz alleged that unlawful preference was given to of equivalent quality, the small number of existing minorities in the University of Michigan’s undergradBlack colleges severely lacked critical educational uate admissions. The university used a 150-point sysresources. tem to evaluate student qualifications. Of 150 points, Nearly 60 years later, the legal segregation of 20 were given specifically for minority status. The schools was officially ended in 1954 when the Supreme Court determined that the university’s use of Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education points designed for race in its freshman admissions that the segregation of schools based on race had led policy was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause to unequal opportunities for Black students at all and violated the intent of affirmative action. levels of education. Also, during this era, the U.S. But the outcome was different in the second lawgovernment instituted the G.I. Bill, which provided suit against the university. Grutter v. Bollinger alleged college financial assistance for veterans of all races. that the university gave unlawful preference to Although the G.I. Bill did not fully address issues of minorities in University of Michigan Law School Black college student enrollment, this educational admissions. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled in funding was an important tool for Black veterans to favor of the university. The Court asserted that the access higher education. University of Michigan’s law school admissions policy is designed to ensure that applicants are evaluated based on individual criteria and that race is not a Affirmative Action defining component of this evaluation. Brown v. Board of Education eradicated blatant segregation, and the G.I. Bill provided financial assistance, Racial Inequities in Higher Education but inequities in minority college enrollment continued. During the 1960s, affirmative action was instiU.S. policies of minority inclusion have increased the tuted as a tool to increase the numbers of minorities numbers of minority students in colleges across the on college campuses. country. During the 1960s, only approximately 8% of
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Whites and 3% of Blacks were graduates of four-year colleges. Since then, college completion rates have increased for all races in the United States. Yet the 2000 U.S. Census reported that Whites and Asian Americans had higher rates of college completion in comparison with Black and Hispanic Americans. Only 18% of Black Americans age 25 years or older had a bachelor’s, master’s, doctorate, or other professional degree. The proportion of Hispanic Americans with postsecondary degrees was even lower at 12%. In comparison, 28% of White Americans and 49% of Asian Americans in this same age group held college credentials. Although college completion for minorities is increasing, there are some disparities along the lines of institution type, area of study, level of degree, and sex. Many minority students are concentrated at community colleges. The American Association of Community Colleges reports that community colleges enroll 45% of all Black undergraduates and 55% of all Hispanic undergraduates. These figures are strongly related to the lower cost of tuition at two-year colleges, making these institutions more accessible to minorities. The higher percentage of minority attendance at community colleges is a concern, however, because an associate’s degree does not provide credentials or earning power equivalent to that of a bachelor’s degree. In addition, the percentages of racial minorities remain low in critical areas of education such as math and science. The importance of including minorities in these areas of study has been recognized, and efforts are being made by agencies such as the National Science Foundation to increase enrollment of racial minorities in science programs. Race is also an issue when exploring levels of degrees earned. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that for all bachelor’s degrees earned in 2002–2003, African Americans accounted for approximately 9% and Hispanic Americans accounted for approximately 6%. The percentages of minority graduates decreases with advanced degrees. At the doctoral level, only approximately 5% of PhDs are awarded to African Americans and approximately 5% are awarded to Hispanic Americans. College attendance rates also vary by sex category. This is most notable among African Americans. There is a significantly larger percentage of African American women enrolled in college as compared with African American men. The 2000 U.S. Census reported that approximately 44% of all 18- and 19year-old Black females attended college, whereas
only 28% of all 18- and 19-year-old Black males were enrolled in higher education. Increased numbers of minorities in higher education is important because graduation from college continues to be a crucial tool for enhancing economic and social standing. Black Americans with a bachelor’s degree earn approximately $36,000 per year, which is roughly $10,000 more than the earnings of Black Americans with only a high school diploma. Although college graduation is enhancing the economic status of minorities, their bachelor’s degree does not ensure the same earnings as does a bachelor’s degree earned by White graduates. On average, Whites with a four-year college degree earn $45,000 per year. In comparison, Blacks and Hispanics with a bachelor’s degree earn $9,000 and $10,000 less, respectively. Accessibility of higher education for the economically challenged is becoming more difficult. Most college funding comes from the state level, and the amount of available state funds for higher education has decreased. To offset this, colleges and universities are placing the burden on students by raising tuition. On average, college tuition is rising by 5% to 8% annually. The tuition hikes are moving at a rate faster than the growth in family income, so college tuition requires a greater share of household earnings. This shift is a significant burden for minority students and their families, who on average have lower incomes. To assist with tuition increases, the federal government has expanded its student loan programs. Student loans open more opportunities for minority students, yet these graduates will need to shoulder the burden of debt after their graduation. It is important to note that the experiences of minorities in higher education vary by race. Although considered a minority group, Asian Americans have much better success in higher education even compared with White Americans. One factor is that average median income is higher for Asian Americans, helping their families to pay college tuition. In comparison, because of lower than average incomes, African Americans and Hispanic Americans suffer more severely as a result of tuition increases. Also, cultural differences may enhance the significance of postsecondary degrees for Asian Americans. Asian American families are often more supportive of educational attainment for their younger generations. All areas of higher education are affected by racial inequities. According to the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, minorities currently constitute less than 15% of total
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college and university faculty members. Many minority faculty members are concentrated at the community college level, with fewer working at the university level. But efforts are being made to increase minority faculty members because they are important for creating a diverse college environment, and many minority faculty members have made significant contributions to restructuring college curricula and creating new pedagogies.
Cultural Pluralism and Multiculturalism in Higher Education Within higher education, historically Black colleges and tribal colleges were designed specifically to address the postsecondary educational needs of minorities. Cheney University, founded in 1837, is recognized as the first HBCU. The first tribal college, Navajo Community College (currently called Diné College), was started in 1968. In the United States, there are currently 32 federally recognized tribal colleges and universities and 106 HBCUs. Rather than isolating the minority experience, many people are contending that the racial landscape of the entire system of higher education must become more multicultural. During the 1960s and 1970s, minority scholars and students began to highlight how postsecondary institutions and college curricula created Anglocentric campuses that were biased in defining what constitutes history and knowledge. As a result, multiculturalism was infused throughout higher education curricula. Many postsecondary institutions are now embracing majors, minors, certificates, and individual courses that focus on groups such as African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latin Americans. These programs and courses move the curriculum away from Anglocentric perspectives and provide students with different lenses for exploring college course material and wider social life. Outside of the classroom, minority students face many other challenges in their experiences in higher education. Racially diverse and inclusive campus climates continue to be a concern. Institutional use of minorities for sports mascots remains a source of racial tension. Some believe that the use of humans as mascots creates discriminatory campus climates, whereas others believe that these mascots are simply images used to increase school spirit. To improve retention of minority students, many campuses are instituting measures to enhance diversity. Many schools have developed requirements that
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students of all races take diversity courses for graduation. Also, colleges have created offices of minority student affairs to assist students in their transition to and success in college. Recently, the National Campus Diversity Project researched minority inclusion in higher education and identified the most successful tools for achieving diverse and inclusive college campuses. To support and retain minority students, the report recommended funding for diversity programs, transformation of curriculum, academic support programs for minority students, and continual assessment of campus climate. Laura Chambers See also Affirmative Action in Education; African American Studies; Asian American Studies; Biomedicine, African Americans and; Educational Performance and Attainment; Educational Stratification; Fraternities and Sororities; Grutter v. Bollinger; Latina/o Studies; Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue; Model Minority; Native American Education; Pipeline; Pluralism; United States v. Fordice
Further Readings
Freire, Paulo. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum International. Giroux, Henry A. and Susan Searls Giroux. 2004. Take Back Higher Education: Race, Youth, and the Crisis of Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress. New York: Routledge. Howell, Annie and Frank Tuitt. 2003. Race and Higher Education: Rethinking Pedagogy in Diverse College Classrooms. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education. Williams, John B. 1997. Race Discrimination in Public Higher Education: Interpreting Federal Civil Rights Enforcement, 1964–1996. Westport, CT.: Praeger Paperback. Yamane, David. 2001. Student Movements for Multiculturalism: Challenging the Curricular Color Line in Higher Education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
HIGHER EDUCATION: RACIAL BATTLE FATIGUE Contemporary multiracial and multiethnic institutions of higher education are indeed microcosms of the broader U.S. society, which is still undergoing profound
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sociopolitical and demographic restructuring from predominantly and historically White to unprecedented levels of racial/ethnic diversity within its institutions, schools, and communities. The system of legal segregation in the United States that was institutionalized in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case ensured that most colleges and universities remained essentially all-White until the 1960s. During the latter half of the 1960s, unprecedented numbers of African American students gained admittance to historically White campuses under the impetus of both nonviolent protests in the South and more violent urban unrest in the North. Equally important in the demographic change from all-White to increasing numbers of racially/ethnically underrepresented students was the U.S. Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Social scientists often refer to the Brown case for its impact on racial/ethnic “integration” and “inclusion,” but it also represents a theoretical paradox. Although Brown had a significant impact in breaking down racial segregation, it did not always have an impact on negative racial ideologies and reactions among White students and faculty members about the presence of Blacks and other people of color. As a result, today’s historically White campus racial culture may nevertheless include an ideology of reactionary racism toward people of color that promotes Plessy-like environments on post-Brown campuses. Among students of color, the ongoing impact of subtle and overt discrimination may create a kind of racial battle fatigue. This entry describes campus race relations in this context.
Understanding Student Perceptions Student perceptions of the institutional environment are influenced by interconnected factors—an institution’s historical legacy of exclusion, its numerical representation of underrepresented racial/ethnic groups within the institution, and the racist behaviors and psychological climate observed inside and outside of the classroom. The historical legacy of inclusion/exclusion involves resistance to desegregation, the mission of the institution, the policies that are in place, and the rituals and traditions that have benefited White students prior to and since the arrival of students of color. Despite the increasing numbers of students of color in historically White colleges and universities, the administration, faculty, and student body remain
predominantly White. The numerical representation of students of color is one factor that continues to fuel stereotypes and racist ideologies among some White students and faculty members, creating the psychological and behavioral dimensions of the institutional environment. The psychological dimension considers the individual views of group relations, the college’s overall responses to diversity, the perceptions of discrimination or racial conflict, and the attitudes toward different racial/ethnic backgrounds. In contrast, the behavioral dimension of the institutional climate considers (a) the actual ways in which social interaction occurs, (b) the interaction between and among students from various racial/ethnic backgrounds, and (c) the temperament of intergroup relations on campus. Both these psychological and behavioral dimensions are of primary importance. On today’s college campuses, the complex racial ideologies that students from diverse ethnic groups bring with them and the crossethnic conflicts associated with such ideologies can erode campus race relations and a sense of community. Although many believe that race and ethnicity are no longer relevant—the color-blind viewpoint—campuses are nevertheless witnessing a growth of reactionary racism among some White students. Reactionary racism is a negative reactionary sentiment that social changes demanded by people of color have “gone too far.” This racial ideology shapes the campus racial environment along with the various racial microaggressions and discrimination that students of color may face inside and outside of the classroom. Racial microaggressions include racial slights, recurrent indignities and irritations, unfair treatment, stigmatization, hypersurveillance, contentious classrooms, and personal threats or attacks on a student’s well-being. As a result of chronic racial microaggressions, many people of color perceive the campus environment as extremely stressful, exhausting, and diminishing to their sense of control, comfort, and meaning while eliciting feelings of loss, ambiguity, strain, frustration, and injustice. When racially oppressed groups are in situations where they experience environmental stressors as mundane events, the ramifications are as much psychological and emotional as they are physiological. Therefore, the most common aspect of campus race relations for students of color, according to Chester Pierce, is one of mundane, extreme environmental stress, which creates the conditions that lead to racial battle fatigue.
Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue
Understanding Racial Battle Fatigue Racial battle fatigue addresses the physiological, psychological, and behavioral strain exacted on racially marginalized and stigmatized groups and the amount of energy they expend coping with and fighting against racism. To be sure, the historically White campus is just one of the many lingering environmental conditions that produce racial battle fatigue for far too many people of color. Racial battle fatigue has three major stress responses: (a) psychosocial, (b) physiological, and (c) behavioral. These responses are not separate but rather intertwined; it is now widely recognized that personalities, emotions, and thoughts both reflect and influence physical condition. Among many interesting manifestations of this recognition is understanding the adverse effects of extreme emotional disturbances. Put in the vernacular, stress can
make people sick, and a critical shift in medicine has been the recognition that many of the damaging diseases of slow accumulation can be either caused or made far worse by race-related stress. This kind of stress response may be linked to the mundane, extreme racial microaggressions found in the campus racial climate. The conditions that cause psychological racial battle fatigue can range from frustration to fear, and the body may respond to racial insults as if it were under a physical attack. Therefore, racial microaggressions found in the campus racial climate may be physiologically coded as violent attacks or acts of aggression. Very few clinicians or campus counselors are trained to appropriately recognize the sources that lead many students of color to display a range of physiological conditions such as constant headaches and frequent illness.
Psychological Stress Responses
Physiological Stress Responses
Examples
Examples
Frustration, defensiveness, apathy, irritability, sudden changes in mood, shock, anger, disappointment, resentment, anxiety, worry, disbelief, disappointment, helplessness, hopelessness, and fear.
Headaches, grinding teeth, clenched jaws, chest pain, shortness of breath, pounding heart, high blood pressure, muscle aches, indigestion, gastric distress, constipation or diarrhea, increased perspiration, intestinal problems, hives, rashes, sleep disturbance, fatigue, insomnia, and frequent illness.
Racial Microaggressions
Behavioral Stress Responses Examples Stereotype threat, “John Henryism” or prolonged, high-effort coping with difficult psychological stressors, increased commitment to spirituality, overeating or loss of appetite, impatience, quickness to argue, procrastination, increased use of alcohol or drugs, increased smoking, withdrawal or isolation from others, neglect of responsibility, poor school or job performance, and changes in close family relationships.
Figure 1
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Causes and Stress Reactions to Racial Battle Fatigue
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Microaggressive insults can diminish selfconfidence, drain personal and family coping resources, suppress the body’s immune system, and deflect important time and energy away from what students of color are really in higher education to do—to achieve academically and professionally. How postsecondary institutions, and the United States in general, choose to address this racial dilemma during the 21st century will determine how the current racial crisis in higher education, and in the society at large, will be handled. William A. Smith See also Brown v. Board of Education; Color Blindness; Discrimination; Educational Performance and Attainment; Educational Stratification; Fraternities and Sororities; Higher Education; Institutional Discrimination; Model Minority; Native American Education; Pipeline; Plessy v. Ferguson; Prejudice
Further Readings
Anderson, James D. 1998. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Anderson, James D. 2002. “Race in American Higher Education: Historical Perspectives on Current Conditions.” Pp. 3–22 in The Racial Crisis in American Higher Education: Continuing Challenges to the TwentyFirst Century, edited by W. A. Smith, P. G. Altbach, and K. Lomotey. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bobo, Lawrence and James R. Kluegel. 1993. “Opposition to Race-Targeting: Self-Interest, Stratification Ideology, or Prejudice?” American Sociological Review 58:443–464. Bowman, Phillip J. and William A. Smith. 2002. “Racial Ideology in the Campus Community: Emerging CrossEthnic Differences and Challenges.” Pp. 103–120 in The Racial Crisis in American Higher Education: Continuing Challenges to the Twenty-First Century, edited by W. A. Smith, P. G. Altbach, and K. Lomotey. Albany: State University of New York Press. Hurtado, Sylvia. 2002. “Creating a Climate of Inclusion: Understanding Latina/o College Students. Pp. 121–136 in The Racial Crisis in American Higher Education: Continuing Challenges to the Twenty-First Century, edited by W. A. Smith, P. G. Altbach, and K. Lomotey. Albany: State University of New York Press. Pierce, Chester. 1975. “The Mundane Extreme Environment and Its Effect on Learning.” In Learning Disabilities: Issues and Recommendations for Research, edited by S. G. Brainard. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, National Institute of Education. Pierce, Chester M. 1995. “Stress Analogs of Racism and Sexism: Terrorism, Torture, and Disaster.” Pp. 277–293 in
Mental Health, Racism, and Sexism, edited by C. V. Willie, P. P. Rieker, B. M. Kramer, and B. S. Brown. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Smith, William A. 1998. “Gender and Racial/Ethnic Differences in the Affirmative Action Attitudes of U.S. College Students.” Journal of Negro Education 67(1):1–22. Smith, William A. 2004. “Black Faculty Coping with Racial Battle Fatigue: The Campus Racial Climate in a PostCivil Rights Era. Pp. 171–190 in A Long Way to Go: Conversations about Race by African American Faculty and Graduate Students, edited by D. Cleveland. New York: Peter Lang. Smith, William A. Forthcoming. “Campus Wide Climate: Implications for African American Students.” In A Handbook of African American Education, edited by L. Tillman. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Smith, William A. Forthcoming. “Racial Ideology and Affirmative Action Support in a Diverse College Student Population.” Journal of Negro Education. Smith, William A. Forthcoming. “Toward an Understanding of Black Misandric Microaggressions and Racial Battle Fatigue in Historically White Institutions. In The State of the African American Male in Michigan: A Courageous Conversation, edited by V. C. Polite. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
HIP-HOP Hip-hop started in the Bronx, New York, as a genre of music based on “DJ-ing,” “B-boying,” graffiti writing, and “MC-ing.” Over time, hip-hop artists addressed concerns pertinent to inner-city inhabitants such as urban poverty and racism in the form of police brutality and racial profiling. Despite its potential for empowerment and emancipation, there are several criticisms leveled against the genre, with the main ones being that it glorifies violence and is sexist and misogynistic. Although these are legitimate critiques, in general hip-hop music and culture offer marginalized and oppressed individuals the space to tell their sometimes horrific stories about urban life, often demonized or unrecognized by mainstream society. This entry looks at the history of the genre.
The Bronx Hip-hop originated in the South Bronx during the 1970s. At this time, in the Bronx as well as in major cities across the nation, deindustrialization and urban
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renewal were having a negative impact. Manufacturing jobs during the 1950s and 1960s were low skilled and did not require a postsecondary degree; in addition, they paid well and afforded residents a working- and middle-class lifestyle. However, with deindustrialization, companies were taking factories out of urban areas and moving them to other countries, such as Mexico and India, where cheaper labor could be hired. This produced high rates of joblessness; in the South Bronx alone, 600,000 manufacturing jobs were lost, with unemployment reaching 40% overall and youth unemployment ranging between 60% and 80%. At the same time, various urban renewal and slum clearance programs that harmed inner-city individuals were implemented. Robert Moses, an urban developer, led the charge for reenvisioning the Bronx. He created the Cross-Bronx Expressway, which allowed travelers to drive from the suburbs of New Jersey through the Bronx and Manhattan to the suburbs of Queens. However, the building of this road displaced 60,000 Bronx residents. Without any say, their homes were torn down and residents were forced to move into public housing developments in the South Bronx. Many of these apartment buildings were run by slumlords who profited from the residents by withholding heat and water as well as other services. Some scholars note that multiple landlords engaged in chicanery by hiring thugs to destroy buildings so that they could collect on the insurance. Due to the destruction of property, state and federal authorities took the view that the residents in these areas did not want to maintain their neighborhoods. Subsequently, a decrease in social services occurred. This, in turn, exacerbated the marginalization felt by inner-city inhabitants. The alienation and growing lack of trust for authorities further pushed some individuals, especially young males, to join gangs. Although violent and prone to engage in illegal activities such as theft, robbery, and drug selling, gangs appealed to disenfranchised youth because they offered them a sanctuary. Ostensibly, gangs were “families” that accepted the downtrodden and poverty stricken and understood their plight. Those who did not have the strength to fight for themselves could become gang affiliated and instantly have ten or twelve other individuals who protected them and came to their aid when necessary. Moreover, in many cases gangs provided food, shelter, and income for displaced urban residents. These are the conditions in which hip-hop formed as a music and a culture.
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Characteristics and Topics Two Bronx natives and hip-hop pioneers, Afrika Bambaataa and Kool Herc, were credited with coining the term hip-hop. Bambaataa is a former gang member who transitioned into music as an alternative to the violence propagated by gangs. Kool Herc took an intense interest in music when he was a young teen, eventually becoming a disc jockey. Both artists fused various genres of music, such as disco, rhythm and blues, and soul, to create a new eclectic sound that became hip-hop. Influenced by these two individuals, hip-hop was created based on DJ-ing, B-boying, graffiti writing, and MC-ing. Rather than engage in illegal or gang-related activities, some urban youth turned to hip-hop activities as outlets, although involvement was viewed as deviant, oppositional, or illegal by those in the mainstream. During its early years, DJ-ing involved the scratching, mixing, and sampling of different kinds of music on a turntable with the intent of generating a fun atmosphere and exciting a crowd at a house or block party. There were often metaphorical battles or contests between DJs where each one would demonstrate his or her innovative turntable skills. Usually at parties, many youth engaged in highly competitive and aggressive stylized dancing known as B-boying, also called breakdancing. This type of dance consisted of elaborate footwork, head spins, bouncing around, and the pivoting, twisting, and contorting of one’s body. There were also contests between B-boys, some of whom were gang affiliated, to see who could breakdance the best. Winners often obtained money and also garnered respect from their opponents and peers. Youth were often able to resolve their tensions through breakdancing rather than violence. Another way of gaining attention and respect from peers was through graffiti writing. Graffiti is an ornate, often flamboyant, and ostentatious kind of spray painting where individuals simply write their names or create elaborate murals on buildings, trains, or the pavement. Often, graffiti was used to mark territory, challenge another graffiti artist, or pay respect to someone who died. However, local and city police did not see breakdancing and graffiti as forms of dance or art. Rather, in the case of breakdancing, police officers often thought that youth were engaging in violent gang-related battles. Graffiti was viewed as a costly nuisance that further stained communities that were already an eyesore. Thus, ordinances were passed against large numbers of teenagers congregating on
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the streets, and other laws made graffiti writing illegal. Breakdancing and graffiti were punishable by fines or imprisonment at the extreme. The most prominent and well-known aspect of hiphop is MC-ing, also called rapping. Rappers can be thought of as griots, or storytellers, who discuss a multitude of themes, ideas, beliefs, or happenings via rhyme. Since hip-hop’s inception, rappers rhymed about the poor conditions in their communities. Early hip-hop groups, such as Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, articulated their disgust with their rundown environments and poverty-stricken conditions in the Bronx. Grand Master Flash’s song, “The Message,” epitomizes urban alienation and marginalization and voices the concerns of an ignored population. The group discussed how ill equipped school systems, burned-down and abandoned buildings, rampant crime, and nonexistent social services pushed them “to the edge.” This song opened the floodgates for other rappers who discussed living in the ghetto; rappers became the voices and role models for the young, poor, and oppressed minority populations residing in inner cities across the nation. Along with poverty, many rappers also discussed racism in the form of police brutality in their communities. According to many artists, common urban residents, along with graffiti artists and B-boys, were viewed as potential gang members or criminals who were treated with disrespect, beaten, or killed for merely being Latinos or Blacks. A plethora of artists wrote songs that accused police officers of behaviors worse than those of gangs, including unprovoked beatings and shootings. They argued that officers exercised indiscriminate mistreatment of minority populations without making an effort to discern decent upstanding individuals from criminals. Indeed, according to some hip-hop artists, racial profiling— the targeting of a certain group based strictly on the color of their skin—originated with poor police–civilian interactions in inner cities. Highly controversial songs, such as “F*** the Police” by the rap group N.W.A., exposed the realities of the tumultuous relationship between minorities and law enforcement.
Criticisms of the Genre Although hip-hop artists are the mouthpieces for disaffected urban residents, they are not above criticism. Some proponents and many opponents of hip-hop argue that these artists, in painting the grim and dark realities of inner-city life, glorify the violence that
takes place in these areas. Multiple artists detail in their songs how they shoot, maim, or kill other individuals. Often, these putative actions are not in selfdefense; rather, the violence occurs because an individual is disrespected. Indeed, the top-selling rappers over the past several years—DMX, Eminem, and 50 Cent—all have songs that graphically and explicitly discuss killing other men who have “dissed” them. In promotional ads for his compact discs (CDs), 50 Cent wears a bulletproof Kevlar vest, signaling that he is protected if competitors attempt to shoot him. Violence does exist in urban areas but tends to be exaggerated in rap music. Yet to young listeners, or individuals not familiar with inner cities, the messages that these songs convey may be taken as reality— precisely the criticism of hip-hop. Many rappers create a facade of brutality and violent behavior. Instead of speaking against violent activity, some artists promote it for record sales. Another criticism of hip-hop is that rap lyrics tend to be sexist, in some cases verging on misogyny. Although there were undertones of sexism in rap lyrics during its infancy, it took a potent, more explicitly antifemale slant during the late 1980s and early 1990s with the inception of “gangsta rap” and groups such as Too Short, N.W.A., and Snoop Doggy Dogg. These artists’ lyrics objectified, demeaned, belittled, and expressed utter contempt for women. Rappers frequently used derogatory words such as bitch and ho to describe women. Several female rappers provided rebuttals to these types of characterizations of women, but arguably their voices were lost when compared with the sea of male artists who wrote these kinds of songs. By the mid-1990s, depictions of women took a turn for the worse in the lyrics of artists such as Eminem. On several of his CDs, Eminem presents skits where he kills the mother of his child. He also has several songs where he raps about this act—dumping her dead body in the backseat of his car—and other foul misdeeds directed toward other women. Although Eminem never performed this behavior, this song and others like it are misogynistic; there is a clear unadulterated fear of women that manifests itself as assaults against them. Chuck D of the group Public Enemy called hip-hop/ rap the CNN of the Black community (referring to the Cable News Network). It emerged in the Bronx during a time when there were high rates of unemployment due to a loss of manufacturing jobs, increasing crime manifested via gang activity, and growing substandard housing. These structural factors created communities on the brink of destruction. However,
Hip-Hop and Rap, Women and
many urban residents turned to the aforementioned elements of hip-hop culture to escape their dire conditions and express their concerns. Several aspects of the music are indeed negative, although in many instances they are exaggerations. With hip-hop being one of the top-selling musical forms over the past three decades, becoming a billion-dollar cottage industry, it is clear that violence, rebelliousness, and irreverence for authority and mainstream norms sell. Hip-hop has allowed those who do not live in urban areas to become voyeurs by hearing about hard times but not experiencing them. Simultaneously, it allows inner-city individuals to tell their stories—sometimes true to life, sometimes hyperbole. Currently, hip-hop has become a global pop cultural form, allowing oppressed and marginalized individuals from across the world, such as France and South Africa, to tell their own stories. And it all started in the Bronx. Matthew Oware See also Crime and Race; FUBU Company; Ghetto; Hip-Hop and Rap, Women and; Jamaican Americans; Parks, Rosa; Racial Profiling; Rap: The Genre; Rap: The Movement
Further Readings
Chang, Jeff. 2005. Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. New York: St. Martin’s. hooks, bell. 1994. “Gangsta Culture–Sexism and Misogyny: Who Will Take the Rap?” Pp. 115–124 in Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, edited by bell hooks. NewYork: Routledge. Kelley, Robin. 1996. “Kickin’ Reality, Kickin’ Ballistics: Gangsta Rap and Postindustrial Los Angeles.” Pp. 117–158 in Dropping Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture, edited by W. E. Perkins. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Kitwana, Bakari. 2002. The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture. New York: Basic Books. Rose, Tricia. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.
HIP-HOP AND RAP, WOMEN AND Hip-hop is defined as a culture and lifestyle that originally emerged out of Black, Latino, and Caribbean working-class youth cultures of the postindustrial
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urban milieu of the South Bronx, New York, during the mid-1970s. This entry looks at the involvement of women as hip-hop and rap artists and discusses charges of misogyny and women’s responses.
The Basics of Hip-Hop The original elements of the culture are the DJ, the emcee, breakdancing, graffiti art, and beatboxing. These elements emerged as a means of vocalizing what S. Craig Watkins calls the “ghettocentric” reality of the urban space. Early influences on hip-hop culture included spoken word poetry, which comes out of the Black Power and Black Pride social movements; reggae music, which was brought to New York by Jamaican immigrant youth; and the rhythm and blues (R&B), jazz, soul, and funk music of the baby-boomer generation. Hip-hop culture is distinct in that, from its origins, it has encompassed a cross-section of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, nation origin, and age subjectivities. For example, Kool DJ Herc, one of the founding fathers of hip-hop, noted that without the presence of Puerto Rican and Dominican youth, breakdancing (or “B-boying”/“B-girling”) would have been a dying urban-cultural art form. Hip-hop scholars point out that although the bridging of the original elements into a self-defined culture called hip-hop emerged in the South Bronx, it is important to recognize the diverse origin stories of hip-hop cultures as they surfaced throughout urban centers across the United States. Yet these original elements are constant across space and time. KRSOne, one of the pioneering emcees who perfected the art of political rap, extended the elements to include street knowledge, street entrepreneurship, street fashion, and street language. By virtue of commercialization and mass popularity, in particular “rap music” (the delivery of lyrics or poetry by the emcee over a mixed track by the DJ), hip-hop culture has expanded into the broader culture industry that includes television, film, literature, fashion, and advertising. The culture has been criticized for its presumed glorification of violence, sex, and drugs and for promoting a heightened sense of homophobia and misogyny. The adoration of deviant lifestyles is not limited to hiphop but rather is part of a larger cultural discourse on U.S. society that emerges across musical genres. In particular, gendered norms of masculinity promote violence and the denigration of conflicting genders and sexual orientations (e.g., women, gays) as a means of reifying what it means to be a man in U.S. culture.
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Hip-Hop and Rap, Women and
In an analysis of more than 400 rap songs defined as “gangsta rap” (the subgenre of rap music with the presumed overrepresentation of violence and misogyny), sociologist Charis E. Kubrin found that misogyny is not as prevalent within this subgenre as is alleged and that the violence presented is often contextualized within gang culture or as a means of denigrating other men for the purpose of uplifting one’s manhood.
Women as Contributors Within the scope of gender representation in hip-hop, women have been contributors to the culture from its inception. The emergence of strong female (primarily Black) voices in hip-hop coincides with the rap music surfacing in mainstream popular music. The first female emcees, DJs, and rapping crews emerged during the late 1970s and included the Mercedes Ladies and the Zulu Queens. The first females to record an album were Dimples D. and Sha-Rock and the Funky Four Plus One More. Although Sha-Rock was one of the architects of the beatbox sound, it was Roxanne Shante who became the first queen of rap, as noted by historian Tricia Rose. The lyrical style of female emcees is captured in what were known as “answer records” (songs that responded to male-initiated attacks or beefs). Answer records became a battle of the sexes over lyrical form, mirroring a quasi-heterosexual courtship between male and female emcees. In 1985, Shante’s “Roxanne’s Revenge” was recorded as a response to UTFO’s classic rap song “Roxanne Roxanne”. In her answer to UTFO’s elusive censure of a young woman’s negative reaction to male sexual advances, Shante exuded a level of confidence and braggadocio in lyrical style and security in maintaining a young girl’s (she was 13 years old when she recorded the track) ability to resist the negative banter of young men. The mass appeal of Shante laid the foundation for the reception of rappers such as Salt-N-Pepa, M. C. Lyte, Queen Latifah, and Monie Love as well as female DJs and producers such as DJ Mocha, Spinderella, Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott, DJ Jazzy J, DJ Icey Ice, and Lauryn Hill. Female hip-hop artists face exclusionary contests, including the battle for representation, positive imagery, and access to the hip-hop game and the process through which artists negotiate the music industry (including obtaining management, recording contracts, and getting album promotions and distribution), while maintaining credibility among the hip-hop
connoisseurs who purchase their albums. The increased number of Black female voices in rap music allows a legion of representations of Black female experiences, particularly within independent or underground rap music and other aspects of hip-hop culture. Female emcees and DJs are overrepresented in the underground. Women have a strong presence in all aspects of hip-hop culture, from the production of music, graffiti art, and breakdancing to what many refer to as hip-hop activism or the use of hip-hop culture to promote social justice and educational reforms in urban communities.
Depiction of Women In its conception, hip-hop music spoke to and for young urban males and was, as noted by rapper, author, and hip-hop journalist Chuck D., the CNN of the ghetto (referring to the Cable News Network). As the music industry increased its interest in signing rap artists during the 1980s, female emcees were often forced to conform to a B-boy persona, which represented a lyrical style, dress, vernacular, and hard attitude adopted by male emcees. Nelson George argued that young male consumers, irrespective of race, do not validate female rappers. This illustrates the grave paradox between the hypersexualized imagery of women by male rappers and what is expected of female emcees to gain legitimacy. The primary method of gatekeeping that limits access for female rappers is the construction of a hiphop lexicon that negatively categorizes women as hoes, skeezers, chickenheads, hoochies, bitches, and pigeons—with each term laced with stereotypes of female economic self-interest, lack of self-worth, and sexual availability. These contemporary urban depictions of Black women are reminiscent of the sapphire and jezebel imagery that defined Black women on the basis of ignorance and sexual prowess, respectively, adversely affecting the avenues for women to get into the hip-hop game. The other aspect of rap music that aids in the representation of women is the music video. Music videos have the potential to construct narratives based on the persona of the artist and the fabricated visualization of symbols. This visual medium provides the possibility of mass appeal for an artist. Particularly with the command of an eminent video director and the increased popularity of music video programming on cable television, a video has the ability to create instant, but temporary, stardom.
Hip-Hop and Rap, Women and
The competition among women for visibility is blatant, particularly on videos of male rappers who are surrounded by scantily clad women—hence the terms video hoe and video girl. Critics argue that these videos promote negative depictions of Black women, sustaining traditional definitions of Black female sexual availability to men. Sexually explicit lyrics and video imagery sustain negative archetypes and glorify materialism at the expense of Black female sexuality.
Hip-Hop Feminism Cultural critics such as Joan Morgan caution against attacks that do not take into account the personal responsibility of Black women for their individual agency and complacency. Commentary on Black female rappers often falls short of understanding the complexities of Black male and female relations. Morgan calls for the creation of a hip-hop feminism that articulates the intersections of race and gender to locate the particular spaces within hip-hop occupied by Black women. The complexities of sexism produce an environment in which women are torn between battling male rappers over their misogynist lyrics and tackling outside forces of domination that threaten the existence of hip-hop. Rose inferred two positions that typify the connection of Black female emcees to this discourse. The first position considers female rappers as feminists who publicly combat sexism in hip-hop and speak out against the misogynist overtones of certain male rappers. The second position regards the lyrics of female rappers as counternarratives on women’s experience in hip-hop that serve to indirectly dispute the mischaracterization of women’s role in hip-hop. These positions create a polar effect that places both Black male and Black female rappers at conflicting ends of a dichotomous debate, creating hostile relations within the hip-hop community. Gendered power relations, coupled with attempts by dominant media sources to co-opt the critiques of female emcees as a means of censuring Black male rappers, further silence the voices of Black female rappers by consistently judging them based on the standards for male rappers. Female emcees speak to the larger institutional systems of racial and gender oppression that affect young Black women. Their lyrical discourse is not restricted to the sexist exclusions of the hip-hop community but rather encompasses more complex societal forces that manifest in the
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music. Rose referred to this as the “hidden politics” of hip-hop music that encapsulates concerns over public access to community resources and the construction of Black expression. For Black female rappers, this translates into a discourse on the production of sexism within hip-hop as a manifestation of the larger society and not a vacuous examination of the sexism in the industry exclusively. Rap emcee, activist, and author Sister Souljah argued that women need to overcome their competitive nature first before a feminist collective can be established. She urged women to come together to discuss sexism in the industry and come up with a plan of action to improve the representation of women in hip-hop. The foremothers of sexually explicit rap, including Oaktown 357, B.W.P., and H.W.A., discussed the power of sex and sexual expression; however, these female rappers and their progeny, including Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown, Solé, and Eve, do not suggest the use of sex as a means of advancing one’s career; rather, they suggest the use of sex as a mode of personal fulfillment and self-awareness. The existence of a strong female presence in hip-hop that displays diverse images of self-defined Black female sexuality is part of a larger social discourse on breaking down institutional and psychological systems of oppression and eliminating barriers to Black female visibility and collectivity. Mako Fitts See also Feminism, Black; Hip-Hop; Rap: The Genre; Rap: The Movement
Further Readings
Chang, Jeff. 2005. Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. New York: St. Martin’s. Forman, Murray and Mark Anthony Neal, eds. 2004. That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. George, Nelson. 1996. Hip Hop America. New York: Penguin. Kitwana, Bakari. 2003. The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis of African American Culture. New York: Basic Civitas Books. Kubrin, Charis E. 2005. “Gangstas, Thugs, and Hustlas: Identity and the Code of the Street in Rap Music.” Social Problems 52:360–378. Morgan, Joan. 1999. When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down. New York: Touchstone.
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Hispanics
Pough, Gwendolyn D. 2004. Check It while You Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Rose, Tricia. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press. Watkins, S. Craig. 2006. Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement. Boston, MA: Beacon.
HISPANICS During the early 20th century, the U.S. government adopted the panethnic term Hispanic to describe descendants from Latin America, the Caribbean, and other Spanish-speaking countries, territories, and colonies. Hispanics, or Latinos, represent the largest ethnic minority group in the United States, making up approximately 12.5% of the current population. Since its incorporation into the U.S. Census, Hispanic has become a highly debated, problematic, and politicized term. The main arguments against the term stress its panethnic emphasis, which oversimplifies the variety of differences among people who represent a multitude of Spanish-speaking nationalities and which also ignores ethnically distinct residential settlement patterns of different national groups in the four main regions of the United States. Others point out that the term emphasizes the Iberian Spanish heritage and excludes the Amerindian, African, and Asian roots of a panethnic group whose members can be of any race. It represents the largest multiracial contingency of any group worldwide.
Government Definition Hispanic is a panethnic minority group identifier and category; the term is derived primarily from Spain, whereas the group includes the intermixing of African, Indigenous, Asian, and other European peoples. In general, a person of Latin American descent whose country of origin was a former colony of Spain is identified as Hispanic by the U.S. government. The federal government traditionally uses the term as an ethnic category rather than a racial category for statistical purposes because members of this group may come from any racial background. Sociologist Alejandro Portes noted that the term reflects a denationalized identification with racial/ethnic minorities in the
United States and self-conscious differences in relation to the White Anglo population. The term Hispanic has been employed by the U.S. government at least since the 1920s. Sociologist Clara Rodriguez found that between 1940 and 1970, the classification of Hispanic has fluctuated in the U.S. Census because of racial classifications and, more important, because of cultural criteria such as language (1940), surname (1950 and 1960), and origin (1970). During the 1970s, the U.S. Census institutionalized it as a category for all populations from any Spanishspeaking country of the Caribbean, Central or South America, or Spain, and a common category became standardized and widespread on a national basis. The 1980s appeared to be the defining decade for U.S. Census and its use of the term Hispanic. For the 1980 census, people were finally able to identify themselves either as of Spanish-speaking origin or descent or as one of the specific Latin American nationalities. With these new categorical options, the number of people who categorized themselves as Hispanic increased by more than 50%. During the 1990s, the term came to represent the highlighted commonalities of a panethnic consciousness. The arbitrary nature of the label, however, started to become problematic for census use. In particular, many persons of Latin American or Spanish origin continued to select “some other race” to best describe themselves. Nationality was the defining category for many people of Latin American or Spanish descent, where more people chose to identify specifically as El Salvadoran or Dominican, for example, rather than merely as Hispanic. In 1993, a proposal was issued to the U.S. government to include “Hispanic” specifically as a racial category. If approved, all persons identified as Hispanics would become one race. In previous attempts, the proposal was strongly denied. However, the 1993 proposal was seriously considered due to the shifting demographic and social changes taking place nationwide as more people emigrated to the United States from Latin America, particularly from Mexico. Making “Hispanic” a racial category on the census would help to reduce the number of persons choosing the “other race” category. One of the key findings from the government studies was that people who are identified as Hispanic will still choose more than one category even when instructed not to do so. Eventually, the proposal was dismissed and “Hispanic” was not incorporated as a racial category. Changes were instituted, however. The term Latino appeared on the census form for the first time in 2000.
Hispanics
The option to select more than one race on the census form was also introduced in 2000, and this allowed those who were designated as Hispanic to identify their ethnicity and their racially mixed backgrounds without needing to delineate their race(s) for their ethnicity and vice versa. In 2003, the U.S. Census issued a statement, “Guidance on the Presentation and Comparison of Race and Hispanic Origin Data.” Recognizing that some researchers and government agencies use the term Hispanic to describe a separate racial category, the census bureau issued the explanation for how the term is used in government census data. Principally, the issued statement confirmed that race and Hispanic origin are two separate concepts in the federal statistical system. Furthermore, Hispanic can be used to describe people of any race, people in each race group may be either Hispanic or not Hispanic, and people have two attributes for the purposes of the census: their race(s) and whether or not they are Hispanic. The issued statement emphasized the concern for “overlapping” and subsequent reporting errors. The statement specified that the overlap of race and Hispanic origin is the main comparability issue, the “more than one race” option increases possible numbers and overlapping groups, the complete cross-tabulation of race and Hispanic origin data is problematic, and comparability of data on race and Hispanic origin is affected by several other factors. The term Hispanic not only is a government-issued panethnic term in its own right but also is a highly loaded social label that conjures debates, invokes political awareness, serves as a divisive internal tool pitting one nationality against or in comparison with another, and confirms the assertion that race, as operationalized in the United States, is indeed a social construction that is ever changing to meet the perceptions of societal needs.
Population Hispanics comprise the fastest growing ethnic minority group in the United States, making up approximately 12.5% of the current population broken down as follows: 7.5% of Mexican origin, 1.2% Puerto Ricans, and 0.4% Cubans, with “other Hispanics” comprising the remainder. The median age of all Hispanics is 27 years. Comparatively high Hispanic fertility rates and substantially increased rates of immigration from Latin America, especially from Mexico, are likely to sustain Hispanic population growth.
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By 2015, the Hispanic population in the United States is expected to reach 44 million, and some demographers calculate that the Hispanic population is already at 40 million. This estimate does not include or account for approximately 12 million legally undocumented persons predominantly of Mexican or Central American origin who currently work and reside in the United States. By 2050, there are expected to be 81 million Hispanics, of either legal or undocumented status, living in the United States. With this projected estimate, Hispanics will account for more than one-quarter of the total U.S. population— the largest panethnic group. Paneth hnicity y
Himilce Novas proposed that as a label, Hispanic combines second-generation natives and their offspring, foreigners, and political refugees under one ethnic umbrella. Yet the Hispanic category includes representatives from more than 20 nations. Hispanic is a panethnic term and includes people whose ancestors hail from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, or Venezuela. The U.S. Census Bureau also includes Spanish Americans whose ancestry is directly from Spain, although this group is also referred to as European, or White, by other governmental agencies and research organizations. The term Hispanic has helped the panethnic group to obtain political clout and encourages government representatives to see Hispanics as a viable voting bloc. Differe entia al Ressid den ntia al Settllement Pa atte ern ns
To refer to Spanish-speaking people as a single ethnic category is misleading because it obscures the diversity of historical, cultural, and geographic backgrounds among them. The various ethnic groups also differ substantially in their socioeconomic status and their regional distribution in the United States. The diverse settlement patterns and immigration experiences of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and other Hispanic groups have created distinct subpopulations with discernible demographic and economic characteristics across the United States. Many subpopulations of Hispanics develop and transform residential communities into barrios or ethnic neighborhoods.
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Estimated Percent of Latinos/Hispanics in the United States in 2003.
Source: Developed by Egan Urban Center, DePaul University, Chicago, from U.S. Census data, County Population Estimates by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin, July 1, 2005; used by permission.
Figure 1
Hisp panicc Versus Latino o
Regionally, more than three-quarters of Hispanics live in the western or southern sections of the United States. Half of all Hispanics live in just two states: California and Texas. Sorted by national background, Mexicans reside predominantly in the West, whereas the majority of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans reside in the Northeast and the majority of Cubans reside in the South, particularly in South Florida. Central and South Americans reside predominantly on the West Coast, particularly in California, or in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic region, particularly in Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia. Hispanic ethnic enclaves and the Spanish language thrive in different regions of the country, and the different nationalities bring a different kind of Hispanic “experience” to each of the respective areas. Placing all Latin American and Spanish-speaking groups under one ethnic label masks the distinct residential distributions and subsequent life opportunities presented to various national groups, and this in turn will affect the socioeconomic status of these particular groups.
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assertion of U.S. domination and control over Latin America as well as Latin Americans in the United States. Some believe that it places a premium on White over Black. Others see it as offensive to conglomerate people into one group without taking the specific racial, ethnic, and political dimensions into account. Hispanics come to represent a multiracial ethnic group where the label appears to require modification. However, the historical and bureaucratized roots of the term run deep. Judith A. Perez See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Aztlán; Barrio; Borderlands; Brazilian Americans; Central Americans in the United States; Cuban Americans; Dominican Americans; Feminism, Latina; Film, Latino; Hispanic Versus Latino; Honduran Americans; La Raza; Mexican Americans; Panamanian Americans; Panethnic Identity; Peruvian Americans; Puerto Rican Americans; Salvadoran Americans; South Americans in the United States; Spanglish
Further Readings
The Hispanic Problem In Latin America, people do not refer to themselves as Hispanic. National identity takes precedence. Many Americans prefer the term Latino when describing those of Latin American, Amerindian, African, or Asian descent. Many persons are colonial minorities, such as Black Hispanics and others from the Spanishspeaking Caribbean Islands, whereas some have direct European lineage, such as Argentines and other South American nationalities. Some believe that placing various nationalities into one generic group, whether in the United States or in Latin America, blurs the colonial model. They argue that the systematic oppression and racist experiences many members of these colonized groups routinely encounter are ignored through the panethnic use. Various modes of incorporation and the assimilation patterns of different groups into mainstream U.S. society are consolidated by the term Hispanic. All of the nuances of citizenship, refugees and asylum seekers, and pigmentocracy within Spanish-speaking nations are lost. Some see the term Hispanic as translating to “His PANIC,” and they argue that this is an overt racial epithet. Suzanne Oboler called Hispanic a historical term that draws attention to the European colonial past while diverting attention away from the long-standing historical
Bean, Frank D. and Marta Tienda. 1987. The “Hispanic” Population of the United States. New York: Russell Sage. Davila, Arlene. 2001. Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People. Berkeley: University of California Press. Morin, Jose-Luis. 2005. Latino/a Rights and Justice in the United States: Perspectives and Approaches. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Novas, Himilce. 1998. Everything You Need to Know about Latino History. rev. ed. New York: Plume/Penguin Books. Oboler, Suzanne. 1995. Ethnic Labels, Latinos Lives: Identity and the Politics of Representation in the United States. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Portes, Alejandro and Ruben G. Rumbaut. 2001. Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rodriguez, Clara E. 2000. Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History of Ethnicity in the United States. New York: New York University Press. Yetman, Norman R. 1999. Majority and Minority: The Dynamics of Race and Ethnicity in American Life. 6th ed. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
HISPANIC VERSUS LATINO Contemporary literature in the social and behavioral sciences generally uses one of two labels to refer to
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Hisspanic Versus Latin no
individuals who trace their ethnic background to one of the Spanish- or Portuguese-speaking countries of the Americas: Hispanics or Latinos. Nevertheless, there is controversy regarding not only the appropriateness of each label but also the denotative accuracy and overall usefulness of the labels. Overall, there is consensus on the fact that some individuals, particularly those who have recently migrated and even those who belong to the second generation, often use a label related to their national origin (e.g., Mexican, Salvadoran) or a compound label (e.g., Cuban American, Mexican American) rather than a more general label, be it Hispanic or Latino. This entry looks at the discussion of these labels.
A third criticism, and one that is relevant to all ethnic/racial labels, refers to the fact that Hispanic blurs intragroup differences that respond to heritage or national origin, generational history, and reasons for migration. As such, the label Hispanic includes those individuals who trace at least part of their heritage to Spain or Portugal (e.g., immigrants from Latin America, Puerto Ricans, immigrants from Spain) as well as individuals who have lived in the United States for many generations (e.g., those whose ancestors lived in the Southwest before the land was ceded by Mexico to the United States). Another criticism leveled against the label Hispanic is that it stigmatizes the population by ignoring social class and national origin variables.
About the Term Hispanic The English word Hispanic has a confusing etymological history. On the one hand, it is assumed to be a derivation of the Latin word Hispanicus, which was used to identify residents of ancient Hispania or today’s Iberian peninsula (Spain, Portugal, and Andorra). On the other hand, its Spanish equivalent (Hispanoamericanos or Hispanic Americans) is a word used in Spain to identify those individuals born in the Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas, although this same word is seldom used in Latin America. Probably the first generalized use of the term Hispanic occurred in 1977 when the U.S. Office of Management and Budget printed a directive indicating that the term should be used to denote individuals who trace their cultural origin to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Central or South America, or “other Spanish culture or origin,” regardless of the person’s race. In practice, this label replaced older and inaccurate labels frequently used in the literature such as Spanish, Spanish speaking, and Spanish surnamed. In general, Hispanic is considered to be a comprehensive label covering persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, or Central or South American background. Criticisms of the label have been numerous. First is the fact that the label was imposed by an agency of the U.S. government rather than freely chosen by members of the group. Second is the argument that the label overemphasizes the contributions of Spain to Latin American cultures, ignoring the important role played by Indigenous cultures as well as the African traditions brought to the Americas by slaves.
no About the Term Latin The label Latino has been proposed as a way to correct the problems inherent in the use of Hispanic and to more accurately reflect the political, geographical, and historical links between U.S. Hispanics and Latin American countries. Latino also is perceived to be a culturally and racially neutral label. Unfortunately, as an ethnic label, it is also fraught with problems. First, Latino has at times been defined using geographical markers rather than sociocultural characteristics. As such, the label Latino has been used to denote individuals who trace their background to any of the nations south of the Rio Grande regardless of their cultural heritage. This approach encompasses Spanishspeaking countries (e.g., Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Argentina) as well as Brazil (a Portuguesespeaking nation) and sometimes English-speaking countries such as Belize, Jamaica, and the Virgin Islands. Another limitation of this label is the fact that etymologically, it could include individuals who trace their cultural heritage to any of the cultures heavily influenced by European Roman/Latin influences, that is, Latin American countries as well as France, Italy, Romania, Spain, and Portugal. Limiting the use of the label Latino is the fact that despite grammatical rules in Spanish that render masculine adjectives nongendered when referring to more than one person, it could be perceived to be a sexist term. The use of Latino/a is cumbersome, particularly when using plural forms (Latinos/as), and slashed terms have become less frequent in contemporary writing in English. The more recent use of the “at” symbol to
HIV/AIDS
denote gender inclusiveness (Latin@s) seems contrived and is difficult to pronounce. The label also lends itself to further confusion when some publications and dictionaries use Latino to denote a resident of Latin America. Finally, the use of this term in the social and biobehavioral sciences could become a problem when establishing the comparability of samples defined as Latino and national statistics that have been collected by government agencies using Hispanic as the label of choice. Other labels have been used to denote Hispanics or Latinos as a group, including Chicano and Raza. Often, these labels have been used as political statements or before Hispanic and Latino gained wide acceptance. The label Chicano has sometimes been used in the social science literature to refer to Hispanics inappropriately when its etymology limits it to individuals of Mexican background. The label Raza may trace its roots to Mexico’s early 1900s when José Vasconcelos, a leading scholar of the time, proclaimed Indians and mestizos as members of La Raza Cósmica (the cosmic race) as a way to recognize and highlight the achievements of early Mexican civilizations. Although Raza has been used and supported by a number of individuals, it has gained little acceptance in the literature because it shares with Chicano the same limitation of not properly addressing all Latinos. As with many ethnic labels, it is possible that during the next few years either Latino or Hispanic will fall into disuse or that an alternative label may emerge. What seems certain is that in practice, both labels are often used interchangeably, although it is recognized that they are labels of convenience that mask much intragroup variability and that either word might not be the label of choice of members of the ethnic group. Gerardo Marin See also Ethnic Group; Hispanics; La Raza; Race; Racial Formation; Racial Identity
Further Readings
Marin, Gerardo and Barbara VanOss Marin. 1991. Research with Hispanic Populations. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Treviño, Fernando M. 1987. “Standardized Terminology for Hispanic Populations.” American Journal of Public Health 77:69–72.
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HIV/AIDS HIV/AIDS is a viral disease of the autoimmune system that was first identified during the 1980s and has since led to more than 25 million deaths worldwide. In the United States, HIV/AIDS has been most prevalent among men who are homosexually active. In addition, the class composition of racial/ethnic communities, associated with reduced access to heath care and prevention information, may be responsible for the larger prevalence of HIV/AIDS there. This entry briefly reviews information about the disease before taking a closer look at how the disease affects various racial/ethnic communities in the United States.
About the Disease On June 5, 1981, Michael Gottlieb and his colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, published an article titled “Pneumocystis Pneumonia— Los Angeles” in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), chronicling the experiences of five homosexually active men treated for Pneumocystis carinii at three different hospitals in the greater Los Angeles area. This article, now believed to be the first article documenting acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the United States, noted that Pneumocystis pneumonia is almost exclusively limited to severely immunosuppressed patients and hinted at the possibility of a virus acquired through homosexual contact that might negatively affect the immune system. By August of the same year, the CDC reported 108 cases of the new disease in the United States. Because all of the early reported cases were found among homosexually active men, it was originally given the name gay-related immune deficiency (GRID). However, as early as 1982, the CDC began receiving reports of GRID in people who were not homosexually active, particularly injection drug users and people who had undergone blood transfusions for various reasons, most noticeably hemophilia. In addition, reported cases of AIDS began surfacing in other nations, many among largely heterosexually active populations. Shortly thereafter, the condition started to be referred to as AIDS to reflect the reality that it was not limited to homosexual transmission.
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HIV/AIDS
Today, it is understood that AIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus that attacks the cells of the immune system and is transmitted through direct contact at the mucus membrane or the bloodstream with HIV-infected body fluids such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid, and breast milk. The three major modes of transmission for HIV are sexual contact with an HIV-positive individual, exposure to infected bodily fluids such as through injection drug use or blood transfusions, and motherto-child transmissions. Although saliva does contain trace amounts of HIV, it is now understood that infection from saliva is virtually impossible.
eliminate the risk of transmission. Although HIV transmission from blood transfusions is extremely low in the developed world, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that much of the world does not have access to a safe, uncontaminated blood supply. As such, HIV transmission from blood transfusions accounts for up to 10% of new HIV infections worldwide each year. For injection drug users, not sharing needles and other drug paraphernalia can lead to decreased risk of HIV transmission. The risk of transmission during pregnancy, labor, and delivery can be reduced from 25% to less than 1% by antiretroviral therapy and caesarean childbirth.
Course of th he Disease
The Pandemic
In many cases, initial HIV infection is followed immediately by a short period of high HIV viremia with flu-like symptoms. However, during this period, a diagnosis of acute infection is missed due to the absence of HIV antibodies. Following this brief period, HIV infection is marked by a latent period characterized by an absence of symptoms, a period that lasts 9 to 10 years. Following the latent period, the infection progresses to early HIV infection and then AIDS. Without antiretroviral therapy, the median survival time following progression to AIDS is slightly more than 9 months. However, multiple other factors also influence disease progression; some individuals never progress beyond the latent period, even without antiretroviral therapy. Although current treatments have lengthened the progression time from HIV infection to AIDS and the time from AIDS to death, currently there is no cure. By damaging and/or destroying the cells of the immune system, HIV interferes with the functioning of the immune system, and this makes HIV-infected individuals more susceptible to opportunistic infections and hinders the immune system’s natural ability to fight various tumors that can lead to cancer and infections by various viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites that can lead to illnesses such as pneumonia. Many factors also contribute to HIV transmission, including the type of sexual activity, the presence of other sexually transmitted diseases, and the progression of the disease in the HIV-positive partner. Currently, proper use of male latex condoms has been demonstrated to be the single most effective strategy for preventing HIV transmission during sexual contact. If used correctly, latex condoms can virtually
During the 25 years since the first reported cases of AIDS, it has grown to become a global pandemic. Currently, it is estimated that more than 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS around the world, with the largest numbers in sub-Saharan Africa, where it is believed to have originated. In 2005, the WHO estimated that there were more than 4 million new cases of HIV/AIDS around the globe. To date, more than 25 million people around the world have died from AIDS-related complications. The CDC also estimates that more than half of the people infected with HIV are unaware of their status due to limited testing. By the end of 2003, an estimated 1,039,000 to 1,185,000 people in the United States were living with AIDS, and the CDC estimates that more than 40,000 people in the country are diagnosed with HIV/AIDS each year. Trea atm ment
Although there is currently no cure for HIV/AIDS, many advances in treatment have been made within the past 25 years. The most widely used treatment is highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), which consists of a combination of at least three drugs from at least two types of antiretroviral agents, normally referred to as a “cocktail.” HAART and treatments intended to limit opportunistic infections have prolonged the lives of those living with HIV/AIDS in much of the industrialized world. Although international efforts are slowly making progress, most people living with HIV/AIDS around the globe have little access to such treatments.
HIV/AIDS
HIV/AIDS and Race The Asia an American Communitty
Although reported cases of HIV/AIDS among Asian Pacific Islander (API) Americans is comparatively low, with APIs making up less than 1% of the estimated cases of people living with AIDS in the United States, there is concern regarding gay API men. Recent studies with gay API men show rates of unsafe sex that parallel or surpass those of even the most “at risk” group, signaling the potential for a large future outbreak of HIV/AIDS within this subgroup of APIs. In addition, there is reason to believe that the overall number of API people with HIV/AIDS may be larger than reported due to both underreporting and misclassification of APIs. Among API men, 65% of the diagnosed cases of HIV/AIDS between 2001 and 2004 involved men who had sex with men; this is a larger percentage of men who have sex with men than in any other ethnic group. Among API men who were diagnosed with HIV between 2001 and 2004, 18% contracted the disease through heterosexual contact, 65% through homosexual contact, 13% through injection drug use, and 3% through combined homosexual contact and injection drug use. In 2004, women accounted for 22% of HIV diagnoses. Among API women, heterosexual contact accounted for 79% of diagnosed HIV cases and injection drug use accounted for 16% of cases during the 2001–2004 interval. The heterogeneity of the API community in the United States has made prevention efforts with this group difficult. Among those who are categorized as API by the U.S. Census, there are more than three dozen different ethnic groups who speak more than 100 different languages and dialects. Because immigrants with multiple cultural and linguistic characteristics still make up the majority of APIs, tailoring prevention messages to this group has been difficult. More important, many API communities in the United States have been conservative about issues of sexual behavior, further hindering prevention efforts. Adding to the problem is that language and cultural barriers also prevent many APIs from using health care and prevention services. For example, a smaller percentage of HIV-positive APIs use HIV case management services and other related HIV services than do Whites.
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HIV/AIDS in n the Nativ ve Americcan and Alaska Native Communitty
Native Americans and Alaska Natives accounted for 0.5% of all HIV/AIDS diagnoses in 2004 while making up slightly less than 2% of the total U.S. population. Although the absolute number of Native Americans and Alaska Natives who were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS is relatively small, Native Americans and Alaska Natives were ranked third in rates of AIDS diagnoses, behind only African Americans and Hispanics. Among Native Americans and Alaska Native men diagnosed with HIV between 2001 and 2004, 61% contracted the disease through male-to-male sexual contact, 14% through injection drug use, 12% through heterosexual contact, and 11% through combined male-to-male sexual contact and injection drug use. In 2004, women accounted for 29% of the HIV diagnoses among Native Americans and Alaska Natives. Among Native American and Alaska Native women, heterosexual contact accounted for 69% of the diagnosed HIV cases and injection drug use accounted for 29% of cases between 2001 and 2004. Scholar Irene Vernon addressed the specific problem of HIV/AIDS within Native American populations, most notably by pointing out that given the relative isolation of Native American groups on reservations and the small population size, HIV/AIDS has the potential of devastating Native groups if the risk is not adequately addressed. As such, it is not surprising that many Native American HIV/AIDS activists equate AIDS with smallpox, which wiped out much of the Native population centuries ago. Because there are 562 federally recognized Native American and Alaska Native tribes whose members have different cultural views and beliefs, tailoring intervention programs with Native Americans and Alaska Natives has been difficult. Also problematic has been the fact that the poverty rate for Native Americans and Alaska Natives is nearly twice the national average, with nearly one in four Native Americans and Alaska Natives living below the federal poverty line. More important, their socioeconomic status also hinders access to adequate health care, including healthpromoting information, and this may increase their risk of contracting HIV. HIV/AIDS in n th he Hisspanic Community y
Although Hispanics make up roughly 14% of the U.S. population, they accounted for slightly more
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than 20% of AIDS cases diagnosed in 2004. Like APIs, the group categorized as Hispanic by the U.S. Census includes people with vastly different cultural backgrounds. As such, it is difficult to speak of a Hispanic culture outside of the common shared language of Spanish. In fact, studies of HIV/AIDS risk behaviors differ by country of origin. For example, according to the CDC, the highest risk factor for those of Puerto Rican origin is injection drug use, whereas the highest risk factor for those of Mexican origin is sex between men. Among Hispanic men who were diagnosed with HIV between 2001 and 2004, 59% contracted the disease through male-to-male sexual contact, 19% through injection drug use, 17% through heterosexual contact, and 4% through combined male-to-male sexual contact and injection drug use. Hispanic women accounted for 23% of HIV diagnoses between 2001 and 2004. Among them, 73% contracted HIV through heterosexual contact and 23% contracted the disease through injection drug use. Prevention efforts in Hispanic communities are also hindered by the low socioeconomic status of those most likely to be at risk among this group. According to recent research, a large number of Hispanic men who have sex with men had annual incomes far below the federal poverty line. Low socioeconomic status hinders access to adequate health care, as it does among Native Americans and Alaska Natives. The Africa an Ame erican Commu unity y
Although African Americans make up slightly more than 12% of the U.S. population, they accounted for nearly half of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in the country in 2004, making HIV/AIDS a serious health crisis for this group. According to the CDC, HIV/AIDS was among the top three causes of death for African American men between 25 and 54 years of age and among the top four causes of death for African American women in the same age group. In addition, in 2005, 73% of infants perinatally infected with HIV were African Americans. The epidemic seems to be particularly dire for younger African Americans given that 61% of those under 25 years of age who were diagnosed with HIV between 2001 and 2004 were African Americans. In fact, in 2004, the CDC estimated that the rate of AIDS diagnoses for African Americans was ten times the rate for Whites and nearly three times the rate for Hispanics, the next highest group. For African American women in
particular, the rate of diagnosis was twenty-three times the rate for White women. Among African American men diagnosed with HIV between 2001 and 2004, 49% contracted the virus through male-to-male sexual contact, 25% through heterosexual contact, 19% through injection drug use, and 5% through male-to-male sexual contact and injection drug use. For African Americans, women accounted for 38% of the diagnosed HIV cases between 2001 and 2004; this is the largest percentage of women with diagnosed cases in any racial/ethnic group. Among women, 78% contracted HIV through heterosexual sexual contact and 19% contracted the disease through injection drug use. In addition, recent attention has been paid to the problem of former prison inmates who engaged in homosexual activity while in prison and then engage in heterosexual activity once they are released. The problem of HIV/AIDS in the African American community is further compounded by high rates of other sexually transmitted diseases. According to the CDC, African Americans were approximately nineteen times more likely than Whites to have gonorrhea and six times more likely to have syphilis. The presence of other sexually transmitted diseases can increase the chance of contracting HIV by as much as 500%. Likewise, those who are HIV positive and also have other sexually transmitted diseases are much more likely to infect others. Like Hispanics and Native Americans, the class composition of African Americans also contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS within this community. Currently, nearly a quarter of African Americans live below the federal poverty line. Given these socioeconomic constraints, a much smaller percentage of African Americans have access to quality health care and prevention education than do Whites. Genera al Chara acteristiccs
Despite the differences among racial/ethnic groups, the primary mode of infection continues to be between men who have sex with men. In addition, the percentage of transmissions attributed to male-tomale sexual contact may actually be higher given the cultural and societal norms regarding male homosexual behavior for all ethnic groups. As such, men who contract HIV through male-to-male sexual contact may be underreporting or may be attributing the transmission to other causes. Within communities of color, there may be strong social pressures for gay men to remain
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in the closet. In fact, at least among African American men, recent research suggests that a significantly larger percentage of men who have sex with men also engage in heterosexual contact with women than is the case among White men. Among Hispanic men, the cultural concept of machismo may lead to more risky behavior among men who have sex with men. Among women, it is clear that the primary mode of infection is through sexual contact with men who are HIV positive. Nonetheless, the class composition of most minority communities hinders access to quality health care as well as prevention education for both men and women. Although it has long been suspected that homophobia within ethnic communities may affect sexual behavior indirectly, leading to higher rates of HIV infection among men of color who have sex with men, recent studies have indicated that racism found within the larger gay community may also contribute to the rising rates of HIV infection among men of color who have sex with men. According to this view, racial marginalization in the gay community works in similar ways to stigmatize men of color as gay men are stigmatized in ethnic communities, thereby increasing the practice of unsafe sex among men of color who have sex with men. Chong-suk Han and Scott E. Rutledge See also African Americans; Asian Americans; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Health, Immigrant; Health Disparities; Hispanics; Medical Experimentation; National Urban League; Native Americans; Scapegoating
Further Readings
Diaz, Rafael. 1997. Latino Gay Men and HIV. New York: Routledge. Hogan, Katie. 2001. Women Take Care: Gender, Race, and the Culture of AIDS. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Levenson, Jacob. 2004. The Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS and Black America. New York: Pantheon. Vernon, Irene. 2001. Killing Us Quietly: Native Americans and HIV/AIDS. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
HMONG AMERICANS Hmong Americans constitute one of the most sizable Asian ethnic communities in the Upper Midwest and in some regions of the South and the West. This entry
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briefly discusses the history of Hmong Americans in the United States while also providing information about demographics of the community, sources of internal community diversity, and Hmong American socioeconomic and political advancement over time.
Immigration Patterns The Hmong people are a stateless ethnic group whose origins go back at least 3,000 years in China. In Asia, Hmong live in southwestern China, Thailand, Burma, Laos, and northern Vietnam, where they moved during the 19th century following persecution in China. The first Hmong migration of notable size to the United States began with the fall of Saigon and Laos to communist forces in 1975. Many Hmong had worked with pro-American, anti-communist forces during the conflicts in Vietnam and Laos. As a result, they were subject to violence and retribution in Laos. Many Hmong escaped Laos to Thailand, where they were incarcerated in refugee camps. From the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, large numbers of Hmong refugees were resettled in the United States. The peak was 1980, when 27,000 Hmong refugees were admitted. From 1981 to 1986, the number of Hmong refugees slowed to a few thousand per year, but admissions picked up again between 1987 and 1994, when approximately 56,000 Hmong refugees were accepted. After 1994, Hmong refugee admissions slowed to a trickle as most of the Thai camps were by now empty, with the remaining Hmong repatriated to Laos or moving to Wat Tham Krabok in Thailand, where thousands of Hmong were given shelter by Thai Buddhist monks beginning in the early to mid-1990s, prior to an official resettlement program of more than 15,000 Hmong from the Wat to the United States during the 2004–2006 period. Hmong immigration based on family reunification has remained low over the years, especially compared with that of other Southeast Asian ethnic groups. Where did the Hmong settle? With the first wave that arrived during the late 1970s and early 1980s, voluntary resettlement agencies consciously tried to disperse the Hmong around the country in a number of locales. At that time, sizable Hmong populations could also be found in eastern cities such as Providence (Rhode Island) and Philadelphia; in midwestern cities such as Chicago, Des Moines (Iowa), and Kansas City; and in western cities such as Denver, Missoula (Montana), Tulsa (Oklahoma), and Salt Lake City (Utah).
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This strategy, however, proved to be unsuccessful in many instances. For example, during the early 1980s, several thousand Hmong were settled in a poor, predominantly African American neighborhood in west Philadelphia, where they encountered considerable hostility and violence. Most of the Hmong moved out within a few years. Also, many wished to be reunited with family and clan members and to be near cultural ritualists (shamans and marriage and funeral ceremony facilitators) from the traditional Hmong religion. These factors led to a massive shift of the Hmong population during the mid- to late 1980s to central California cities such as Fresno, Stockton, and Merced and, to a lesser extent, to Minnesota and Wisconsin. By 1990, Fresno and Central Valley cities such as Sacramento, Stockton, and Merced were the center of Hmong American community life. Census figures show that by far the largest Hmong population at this time was found in California, followed by Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Colorado. The 1990 census counted 94,439 Hmong Americans across the United States. During the 1990s, the Hmong moved again, away from the West and toward the Midwest and the South. This shift was epitomized by the emergence of St. Paul (Minnesota) as the unofficial Hmong American capital, taking over from Fresno. According to estimates of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2005 (ACS), 52% of Hmong Americans now live in the Midwest—mostly in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan—compared with 41% in 1990. Meanwhile, the proportion of Hmong in the western states fell to 40% from 55% in 1990, according to the 2005 estimates. In 2005, just under nine of every ten Hmong living in the West lived in California, with much smaller communities found in Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. In 2005, the Hmong population estimated by the ACS to reside in the northeastern states remained very small at less than 1%. In 2005, approximately 7% of the Hmong were estimated to live in the South, an impressive increase from just 1.3% in 1990. This movement was focused within a few states such as North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. The midsection of the United States—Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma—has seen an impressive increase in Hmong population since 2000 as a secondary migration of Hmong from other states to get into the chicken farming industry, and to return to a more rural and agrarian lifestyle, has occurred. Some
Hmong have done well in this new field of work, but numerous newspaper articles in 2006 documented the bankruptcies and very difficult economic circumstances experienced by some Hmong families from other parts of the country who were sold chicken farming properties in this region during the past several years. By 2000, there were 169,428 Hmong in the United States, representing a nearly 90% increase in the population since 1990. In 2005, the ACS estimated the U.S. Hmong population at 183,265. Many agree, however, that these figures probably represent significant undercounts, and the numbers do not reflect the more than 15,000 Laotian–Hmong refugees resettled in the United States from Wat Tham Krabok in Thailand during the 2004–2006 period. Most of these Hmong refugee newcomers were resettled in California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. According to the 2000 census data, the “Twin Cities” of Minneapolis–St. Paul claimed 40,707 Hmong residents. Second was Fresno with 22,456. After Fresno, the largest Hmong populations in the United States were found in the Sacramento–Yolo (California), Milwaukee–Racine (Wisconsin), and Merced (California) areas. Why did Minneapolis–St. Paul emerge as the new Hmong American capital? The opportunity to make a better life seems to be at the heart of things, with the perception of lower-cost housing, educational opportunities, and the existence of a large institutionally complete ethnic enclave being prime motivating factors for migration from California and other parts of the country. In the Twin Cities area, most Hmong live in St. Paul, which also hosts an annual New Year’s celebration and a summer sports tournament that attracts thousands of Hmong to visit from around the United States.
Contemporary Social Patterns A recent community directory provides listings of thirteen Hmong community organizations and thirty-nine Hmong religious congregations in the Minneapolis– St. Paul area. Whereas many Hmong in California’s Central Valley have taken up their old occupations of farming, many of those in Minnesota have found jobs working in factories. But there is a substantial emerging class of Hmong small business owners—many of them congregated near St. Paul’s University Avenue, also known for its Vietnamese businesses—and college-educated Hmong professionals going into
Hmong Americans
fields such as law, medicine, and nonprofit management. In the Twin Cities, Hmong are opening restaurants serving Lao or Thai cuisine, although traditional Hmong dishes are available on request. The Hmong came to the United States less prepared for the modern capitalistic society of their new home than did most other immigrant groups. Most had been farmers in their native country and did not graduate from high school or the equivalent. Nearly all Hmong also first came to the United States as refugees. As a result, many Hmong families, when they first arrived, were forced to go on public assistance. In 1999, the median household income of Hmong Americans was $31,934 compared with $41,994 among all U.S. households. This, however, represented a significant advance from 1989, when the median Hmong household income was approximately $11,000. Just over one-third (34.9%) of Hmong families lived below the poverty line in 1999, according to census data. However, the poverty level among Hmong American families was nearly cut in half over the 1990s given that 67.1% of Hmong lived below the poverty line in 1989. In 1990, only 15% of Hmong owned their homes. Similar to the income-related statistics, housing data from the 2000 census show considerable upward socioeconomic movement as many Hmong had settled into stable or more lucrative jobs over the 1990s. In 2000, 40% of all Hmong Americans owned their homes; however, the national figures were brought down by the very large Hmong population residing in California. The 2000 census data show that whereas Hmong home ownership was still low in California at approximately 18%, it was well above 50% in states such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. In terms of job distribution, the largest proportion of Hmong American adults worked in manufacturing jobs (38.6%), according to 2000 census data; this compared with 14.0% of all U.S. adults who were employed in manufacturing. In 2000, Hmong American adults in the workforce exhibited smaller concentrations in the broad industrial classifications of education, health, and social services (14.5%); arts, entertainment, recreation, and accommodations (10.8%); and retail (10.0%). In a few states such as Michigan (restaurant ownership) and Washington (the flower industry), Hmong Americans have formed occupational niches similar to those well documented over time among other U.S. ethnic groups in the social science literature.
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Traditionally, the Hmong have favored large families with many children. Some of this can be explained by the Hmong’s traditional farming roots and the high infant mortality rate in Laos and Southeast Asia. As a result, 2000 census figures show that Hmong households averaged more than 6.0 persons per house or apartment in Minnesota and Wisconsin, as compared with approximately 2.5 persons among the entire U.S. population. This helps to explain the huge U.S. population growth between 1990 and 2000 despite the decline in refugee admissions after 1994. The large number of Hmong children also makes the population very youthful. At least half of the Hmong in California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Michigan were under 18 years of age in 2000, as compared with roughly a quarter among the general population. The Hmong are a fairly tight-knit group; many community leaders are old clan leaders or politicians from Laos or are their descendants and relatives. For instance, the Hmong general Vang Pao, who commanded the Hmong forces fighting against the communist North Vietnamese, remains a political leader for many Hmong in the United States. After escaping Laos, Vang Pao moved to Orange County, California, and helped to found a Hmong organization, Lao Family Community, which has branches nationwide, many of them run by people close to Vang Pao or his relatives. Still, there is a new generation of Hmong leaders emerging. They are young, well educated, and not necessarily willing to be as beholden to old loyalties based on clan affiliation. Cleaved along this generational divide, the younger leaders support the reform of aspects of Hmong culture that may clash with U.S. norms. For instance, Hmong women’s groups have campaigned against polygamy and domestic violence. Other leaders are trying to tackle the increasing number of Hmong youth being lured into gangs—an unfortunate side effect of assimilation into the U.S. youth culture. Indeed, it is very important to realize that there is considerable diversity in the Hmong American community. Sources of diversity include, but are not limited to, clan affiliation (there are 18 Hmong clans in the United States), religion, dialect (Green Hmong vs. White Hmong), age and time of arrival in the United States, veteran versus nonveteran status, gender, and socioeconomic status along with social class. Different social groups in the Hmong community have held
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contrasting views related to important community issues over the years, including the perceived importance of maintaining Hmong cultural traditions such as the traditional Hmong marriage and funeral ceremonies. Another issue of debate that has divided the Hmong American community is the question of whether the United States should establish a closer economic relationship with the government of Laos. The majority of Hmong in the United States still practice the traditional Hmong religion, a form of animism that involves the worship of numerous spirits, including those of ancestors, and incorporates shamanism. A growing number of Hmong Americans have become Christians. The largest Hmong American Christian denomination is the evangelical Christian Missionary Alliance church, which has been sending missions to work with Hmong in China and Southeast Asia since the early 20th century. In cities with sizable Hmong populations, Hmong churches from a variety of Protestant denominations can also be found. In St. Paul and a few of the largest Hmong communities, there are also Hmong Catholic churches. The United States’ first Hmong public official elected to serve in state government, a young female lawyer named Mee Moua, was elected to the Minnesota State Senate in 2002 and was quickly followed by Cy Thao, an artist, who was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives the same year and was subsequently reelected in 2004. Hmong Americans have also been elected to the school boards in St. Paul, Fresno, and several Wisconsin cities. In Eau Claire (Wisconsin) and Omaha (Nebraska), Hmong Americans have been elected to the city councils. Hmong Americans certainly have faced a number of challenges as a historically stateless minority community, most of whom arrived in the United States as refugees. On occasion, they have also faced prejudice and discrimination as a cultural minority in the United States. Through education, socioeconomic gains, community cohesion, and political empowerment, they are moving toward a brighter future. Mark Pfeifer See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Acculturation; Asian Americans; Assimilation; Laotian Americans Further Readings
Hein, Jeremy. 2006. Ethnic Origins: The Adaptation of Cambodian and Hmong Refugees in Four American Cities. New York: Russell Sage.
Moua, Mai Neng, ed. 2002. Bamboo among the Oaks: Contemporary Writing by Hmong Americans. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society. Omoto, Susan. 2002. Hmong Milestones in America: Citizens in a New World. Evanston, IL: John Gordon Burke. Tapp, Nicholas, Jean Michaud, Christian Culas, and Gary Yia Lee, eds. 2004. Hmong/Miao in Asia. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Yang, Kou. 2001. “The Hmong in America: Twenty Five Years after the U.S. Secret War in Laos.” Journal of Asian American Studies 4:165–174.
Web Sites
Hmong Studies Resource Center: http://www.hmongstudies.org
HOLOCAUST Although the word has a more generalized meaning, the term Holocaust is commonly used today to denote the systematic persecution and mass murder that Nazi Germany perpetrated against European Jewry during World War II. Based on an ideology of racial superiority, the Nazi leadership under Adolf Hitler launched a program of mass killings aimed at a variety of people considered to be undesirable but focused on the extermination of European Jews. This entry summarizes the facts of the Holocaust and briefly examines issues related to the events, including the ensuing debates and lasting moral and political influence.
Political and Ideological Background Nazi ideology rejected the values of egalitarianism and the Enlightenment, replacing them with a hierarchy based on “racial value.” The Nazis saw the world populated by various races with greater or lesser value. At the top was the “Nordic” or “Aryan” race (blond hair and blue eyes), embodied in the German people, which was alleged to have been the most creative and politically and militarily capable throughout history. Individual people also possessed higher or lower racial value measurable by their bodily features. Consequently, the Nazis sought to increase procreation of those of the “highest value.” A mix of the “races” through intermarriage was considered to be detrimental, leading to a nation’s decadence and decline.
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The pronounced Nazi belief in the inequality among people led to the justification of suppressing “lower races” and forcing them into perpetual servitude. According to the Nazis, eternal struggle between races and peoples, resulting in a “survival of the fittest,” was a law of nature. Non-nation-state-based groups, such as Jews and so-called “Gypsies,” were considered to be particularly pernicious. Indeed, the Jewish people were seen as the antipode and eternal enemy of the Aryans. Heinrich Himmler, chief of Nazi Germany’s police, the Nazi Party vanguard SS, and one of the major perpetrators of the Holocaust, described “world Jewry” as intrinsically opposed to a racial hierarchy and, thus, having inspired Christianity, Freemasonry, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, liberal capitalism, and Bolshevism—all based on some concept of equality among people. Within the state, the Nazis said that individual rights had no importance; only the overall interest of the “people” was important. What this consisted of was decided by a nation’s leader, Hitler in the case of Nazi Germany. Linked to the concept of an overarching common good was the notion of the “health” of a nation, which was considered to be endangered by people with hereditary diseases or with disabilities and “nonproductive elements” such as criminals, prostitutes, and people refusing to work. Politically, Nazi ideology was antidemocratic, authoritarian, and violently opposed to the political working-class movement. Industrialization was considered to be dangerous because of the attendant social problems; in its stead, a return to a romanticized agrarian life was proposed. Because Germany did not possess the amount of land needed for a return to agrarianism, Hitler proposed the conquest of land in Eastern Europe (the quest for Lebensraum), which implied an attack on neighboring countries. Both the racist and political convictions of the Nazis were based on views discussed since the late 19th century in Europe and even outside of it. During the period between the two world wars, fascist movements and regimes sprang up all over Europe and a number of countries turned from democracies to authoritarian systems. Thus, the Nazis were part of a larger political trend within Europe. In Germany, resentment over the sanctions imposed by the Versailles Treaty at the end of World War I, along with mass unemployment and massive economic problems, increased the antagonism toward the democratic system of the interwar Weimar Republic that was already prevalent among right-wing circles. The right
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wing was pitted against a strong left-wing movement (socialist and communist), which led to increasing political violence and further instability. The Nazi political platform appealed to Germans by its promises of stability, strong rule by a strong leader, and economic recovery, whereas the extent of the appeal of anti-Semitism is debatable.
History of the Holocaust: 1933 to 1939 After Hitler was appointed German chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg on January 30, 1933 (contrary to an often-held belief, the Nazi Party never won a majority in an open election), his government started to implement the Nazis’ political and ideological aims. One of the most important legal tools allowed police to arrest and incarcerate anybody without legal recourse (so-called “protective custody”). Using this power, the Nazis filled newly created concentration camps, initially mainly with members of the Communist and Social Democrat parties. A boycott of Jewish businesses in Berlin in 1933 gave a first signal to the German Jewish community that the Nazis were determined to put their racist ideology into practice. Acts of anti-Jewish violence were committed throughout Germany during the following years. The population of Germany was systematically segregated. Germans needed to provide proof of Aryan descent (interestingly, this shows that it was not selfevident to which race a person belonged). Two laws passed in 1935—called “Nuremberg Laws” because they were issued at the Nuremberg Nazi Party rally— further cemented the segregation of Germans from Jewish Germans. Marriage and sexual relationships were banned, and Jews and members of other “alien races,” such as Gypsies, lost their citizenship. An avalanche of laws and decrees (roughly 2,000) forced Jewish Germans out of most jobs and severely limited their ability to earn a living and live a normal life. Nazi policy during this period aimed at forcing Jewish Germans out of Germany. However, those willing to emigrate had great difficulty in finding countries that would admit them. The government also stripped them of their assets before they could leave. But the majority of German Jews, and Austrian Jews after the annexation of Austria in 1938, managed to flee. A pogrom in November 1938 (often referred to as Reichskristallnacht) showed the imminent danger to those who had been reluctant to emigrate. Exploiting the murder of a German diplomat by a young Jewish man in Paris, the Nazis organized the
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burning of synagogues as well as attacks on Jewish businesses and homes, and they sent a large number of Jewish Germans into concentration camps.
History of the Holocaust: World War II Period Germany’s attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, triggered the outbreak of World War II. The war marked a new stage. During the war, and especially in Eastern Europe, Nazi Germany implemented the full range of its radical ideological aims. The first scene of atrocities was Poland. Mass executions decimated Polish elites, large-scale ethnic cleansing occurred, and population transfers took place between the western part of Poland, annexed to Germany, and the eastern part under German administration. Discriminatory laws against Poles and Jews were issued; here, for the first time, Jews needed to wear the “Yellow Star” of David. In Germany proper, wearing a star became mandatory two years later in 1941. In Poland, the first ghettos were established and the Jewish population was forced into them. In Germany, the Nazis also moved to mass murder. The targeted victim group was disabled inmates of mental institutions (mainly not Jewish), who were “without value,” according to Nazi ideology. From 1939 to 1941, at six mental institutions in Germany and Austria, patients were killed with gas. This is the first example of mass gassing; many of the perpetrators of this crime later staffed the death camps in Poland. The attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 marked the pinnacle of Hitler’s ideological aims—a total war against “Judeo-Bolshevism” that he hoped would lead to the destruction of this main ideological opponent and to the conquest of land for future German settlement. The Slavic population was considered to be expendable or consigned to a life of serfdom. The Jewish population was targeted for mass murder. On the heels of the German army, mobile task forces consisting of members of the “Security Police and SD” advanced. At first, they conducted large-scale executions of the Communist leadership and the male Jewish population. This soon escalated into the mass murder of the Jewish population in total. No direct order exists, but according to the majority of scholars, this shift to full-blown genocide took place during the summer or fall of 1941. The lack of a final order cannot be interpreted as proof that Hitler was not aware of what was happening or that the genocide
itself did not happen, as revisionists sometimes suggest. There is ample indication in contemporary documents that Hitler was at the center of Holocaust decision making, even as local power holders showed considerable initiative in implementing the mass murder as speedily and efficiently as they could. Mass murder was first committed by shooting. Later, the Security Police developed mobile gas vans as a more efficient way. As in Germany before, the mentally ill were included in the murder actions. In the occupied territories, the Nazis implemented the full range of measures to create a “racially and socially cleansed” country; apart from Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and Communists, so-called “asocials” (e.g., common criminals, prostitutes, “work-shy elements”), who in Germany had been sent to camps, were simply killed in the East.The Holocaust in the Soviet Union was perpetrated by killing actions on-site, although much of the Jewish population was forced into ghettos until several waves of murder actions had been completed. How the war radicalized matters became apparent in 1941 in Serbia, where the German army command murdered the male Jewish population as an act of retaliation against partisan activities. In most countries occupied by Germany or allied with it, the genocide unfolded in a set manner: The Jewish population was segregated from others, marked, forced into ghettos of constantly diminishing size, robbed of their valuables, subjected to forced labor, and finally deported into death camps. The protocol of the so-called Wannsee Konferenz (taking place on January 20, 1942, and aimed at organizing cooperation among various German government departments participating in the genocide) shows that the Jewish population of all European countries was the final target of the genocide. The success of the genocidal plan depended on the local political situation, the extent of local collaboration with the Germans, the strength of resistance movements, and the possibility that persecuted Jews could hide. Around 1942, labor shortages led to a shift in German policies; additional laborers were required for the German war effort. Whereas in 1941–1942 the majority of an estimated 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) were starved to death in POW camps, during the following years roughly 7.5 million people (mainly Poles, Ukrainians, and Russians, including POWs) were deported to Germany to perform forced labor. Concentration camp inmates, including Jews, were slave laborers at production sites. However, this
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did not mean that the goal of the destruction of European Jewry had been abandoned; it only meant that their work capacity should be exploited before their death. For this purpose, deportees into camps were subjected to “selections”; stronger people were selected for work, whereas the weak, the old, and children went straight to the gas chambers. Of the six death camps, four (Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka) were just killing facilities, whereas Auschwitz and Majdanek served the dual purposes of incarcerating and killing victims. Auschwitz, for instance, contained three complexes: Auschwitz–Stammlager, where opponents from all ethnic backgrounds were imprisoned; Auschwitz– Birkenau, where Jewish victims and a large number of Gypsies were routinely killed in gas chambers; and Auschwitz–Buna, which was a slave labor site for the chemical industry. The headquarters of the Security Police (RSHA) played a leading role in the overall organization of the genocide, including the deportations into death camps. In addition, the police, other German government departments, the civil occupation administration, and the German army participated in the Holocaust; indeed, all parts of German government and society were involved. The priority that the Nazi leadership gave to the destruction of European Jewry is illustrated by the fact that, in 1944, resources that would have been crucial for the war effort were instead used to deport Jews from Greece and Hungary to their deaths in Auschwitz. At the same time, the Security Police attempted to cover their tracks by disinterring corpses from mass graves and burning them. The surviving Jewish camp inmates were forced to retreat with the German forces. The horrendous conditions during these “death marches” took another high toll in Jewish lives—just as liberation seemed to be close.
Historical Debates The total number of victims of the Holocaust is estimated to range between 5 million and 6 million. Scholars have estimated that 100,000 to 300,000 Jews survived camps and ghettos. However, in the recent discussions about compensation for slave labor, much higher numbers of survivors have been suggested. A scholarly assessment of these figures has not yet taken place. An ongoing debate concerns the extent of involvement and culpability of Germans in the Holocaust.
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Over the past two decades, detailed studies have shown the participation of a widening range of German organizations in the mass murder. However, no consensus has been reached about the degree of involvement, ideological commitment, and overall contribution of, for instance, the German army. Also under discussion is how to evaluate the culpability of participation—collaborators in the Holocaust can range from police officers with command responsibilities to engine drivers of deportation trains—and to what extent the German population, or the nonGerman population in occupied countries, supported the mass murder or simply knew about it. Although the Holocaust was declared “top secret,” a lot of information was publicly available. Another hotly debated issue concerns whether the Holocaust should be considered a “unique” event. One side argues that this was an unprecedented event in world history and that Jewish suffering was unique. On the other side, it is said that “uniqueness” is not a useful category because all historical events are unique by themselves but also comparable to others. In addition, it is said that the assumption of uniqueness all too often leads to the denigration of the suffering of other victims of Nazi Germany. The Holocaust had an enormous moral and political impact on the second half of the 20th century, leading to the establishment of legal principles and standards in the protection of human rights. To begin, the International Tribunal in Nuremberg sat in judgment of the Nazi leadership and developed notions of “crimes against humanity” and war crimes. This led to the 1948 “Genocide Convention,” which introduced the term genocide and its definition, and (most recently) to the 1998 “Rome Statute,” which established an international criminal court. The Holocaust and Nazi history have also been used to justify political crimes. Communist leaders, for instance, used the struggle against Nazi Germany to legitimize Soviet rule and expansionism. In the Western world, where references to the Nazis and the Holocaust abound, Holocaust imagery has been pressed into the service of nearly any imaginable concern, from abortion to animal rights. Nazism and the Holocaust are also used to support power politics that is not in agreement with international and humanitarian law, as has been noticeable, for instance, in the United States during recent years. Ruth Bettina Birn
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Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists
See also African Americans; Anti-Semitism; Eugenics; Genocide; Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists; Jewish Americans; Roma; Social Darwinism
Further Readings
Browning, Christopher. 1992. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins. Enzyklopädie des Holocaust. 1993. Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden. Munich, Germany: Piper. Friedlander, Henry. 1995. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Friedländer, Saul. 1997. Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939. New York: HarperCollins. Hilberg, Raul. 1961. The Destruction of the European Jews. New York: Quadrangle Books. Krausnick, Helmut, Hans Buchheim, Martin Brozat, and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen. 1968. Anatomy of the SS-State. New York: Walker.
HOLOCAUST DENIERS AND REVISIONISTS The Holocaust, the extermination of Europe’s Jews and other stigmatized groups during World War II, is one of the most thoroughly documented events of the 20th century, but this does not prevent some from either significantly downplaying the event or even denying it occurred, as this entry summarizes.
Revisionism Versus Denial Ordinarily, revisionism means a reinterpretation of history. This goes on all the time. Interpreting history is an acceptable form of research. However, when such revisionism means the denial or the obvious skewing of a historical fact, this passes beyond the category of commonly accepted social scientific research and becomes outright lies and distortions. The European death camps were still smoldering when some people began to argue that they did not exist or that, if they did exist, only a small number of people died in them; some said that the ovens were used to bake bread or that most Jews died from disease and not from genocidal intent.
Actual denial of the Holocaust has become a growing problem in Holocaust historiography, and takes many forms. The most egregious form took place in the fall of 2006 when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted an international conference on Holocaust denial in Tehran that welcomed hundreds of foreigners, including Orthodox Jews from New York and Israel, Ukrainians, Americans, Europeans, and others from around the world.
Claims of Holocaust Denials “T There Were No Gas Cha amberss”
This allegation can often be traced to the writings of Arthur Butz, a Northwestern University engineering professor. His work, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, is based largely on the fact that Butz could not find the name of one prisoner on the list of Auschwitz prisoners—that of Vrba Rosenberg, who wrote an eyewitness account called I Cannot Forgive that was published in 1946. As it turns out, Vrba was an adopted name and the author was listed in the Auschwitz rolls under his original name, Walter Rosenberg. “T The Concentrratio on Camps Were e Not so Bad”
Ernst Zundel, a denier in Toronto, Canada, has testified at trials that many camps had all “the luxuries of a country club,” with dance halls, orchestras, recreational facilities, sauna baths, and other amenities. True, there were showers for inmates, and there was an orchestra that played in the morning when prisoners went to work and again in the afternoon when they returned. But these were simply ruses to help camouflage the fact that the “work” in these camps was meant to lead eventually to the deaths of the prisoners. “H Hitller Was a ‘M Man of Peace’”
According to proponents of this view, the Allied air raids on Dresden and the German postwar population transfer from territory ceded to Poland to the West were more brutal than the punishment that was “allegedly” imposed on the Jews in the gas chambers. Harry Elmer Barnes, a prominent historian during the 1930s and 1940s, and people such as Austin App, Robert Faurisson, and David Irving share this opinion. Irving, in fact, devoted an entire book to the bombing
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of Dresden. These deniers typically overlook the massive German bombing of Rotterdam, Warsaw, Coventry, and London.
“A Anne Fran nk’ss Diary Was a Hoax”
Even the memoirs of young children are targets of deniers. There are many versions of this denial—that the memoirs were forgeries; that Anne Frank’s father, Otto, had plenty of time to forge a diary and make a fast buck; and that the diary was not even written by a young girl. Rather, the book was supposedly written by a Jewish author, Meyer Levin, and Anne’s father after the war. First, Otto Frank had neither the time nor the talent to create a teenager’s diary and had no idea that his daughter’s private thoughts might be publishable. In fact, he was reluctant to publish the book and several publishing houses rejected the manuscript, thinking that it would not sell very well. The Meyer Levin scandal is complex and fascinating. The principal source of this claim was David Irving of Great Britain. Levin, a successful novelist, praised the diary and tried to interest producers in his own adaptations of the diary for stage and film. He failed, and the diary was adapted for the stage by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich with the title The Diary of Anne Frank. It enjoyed a long Broadway run, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956 for the best play of the year, and was later adapted as a successful film. Levin, meanwhile, sued the playwrights as well as the Broadway producers for breach of contract and plagiarism. They brought Otto Frank into the case, and he eventually settled out of court, paying Levin $15,000 in return for dropping all further claims. Levin’s own theatrical version of the diary was staged in Tel Aviv in 1966 and has been attempted in smaller venues during the past 40 years.
Why Denial? The major question that goes begging is . . . why? Why do people deny the Holocaust and its participants? There is not enough space in this entry to go into the psychological factors that explain deniers. Many are failed academics or writers who are attempting to make a mark with radical ideas and some are Nazi ideologues. They truly believe in Hitler’s ideas and want a world like his to be brought to fruition. Other deniers are anti-Zionists. Still others, even if not politically inclined about the State of Israel, publish
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writings that feed into general anti-Semitic thought. For example, contemporary Web sites of Ku Klux Klan organizations either directly reference or repeat without citation material from Holocaust deniers and revisionists. The idea seems to be that if revisionists and deniers can weaken the case for the Holocaust, they can weaken Israel’s position in the world and eventually destroy the country. Jack Nusan Porter See also Anti-Semitism; Genocide; Holocaust; Jewish Americans; Ku Klux Klan; Victim Discounting
Further Readings
Evans, Richard J. 2001. Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial. New York: Basic Books. Irving, David. 1977. Hitler’s War. New York: Viking. Julius, Anthony. 2007. “Irving v. Lipstadt.” Pp. 30–32 in Encyclopedia Judaica. 2nd ed., vol. 10. New York: Macmillan. Kuttner, Paul. 1996. The Holocaust: Hoax or History? The Book of Answers to Those Who Deny the Holocaust. New York: Dawnwood. Lipstadt, Deborah E. 1993. Denying the Holocaust. New York: Free Press. Lipstadt, Deborah E. 2005. History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier. New York: Harper Perennial. Stern, Kenneth S. 1993. Holocaust Denial. New York: American Jewish Committee.
HOMELESSNESS Homelessness is a national and global problem driven by poverty and the cost of housing. As housing costs increase and wages remain flat, the working and nonworking poor have become either homeless or at risk for homelessness. Although there are many explanations of why people are homeless—mental illness, declines in public assistance, domestic violence, and addiction—it is commonly agreed that homelessness and poverty are inextricably linked. When people are poor, they must make difficult choices because limited resources cover only some of their basic necessities. Often housing, which absorbs a high proportion of income, must be dropped. Two factors account for increasing poverty: eroding employment opportunities for large segments of the
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Homelessness
workforce and the declining value and availability of public assistance. This interpretation of homelessness as poverty frames the issue as one of race, class, and ethnicity based on examination of the demographics of homelessness. Homelessness also appears to be increasingly related to ruptures in relationships between social institutions and the society of citizens as well as between the society of citizens and the poor. Glenn Drover and Patrick Kerans noted the failure of institutions to face extreme poverty in a situation where poor and homeless persons were rapidly marginalized from the society of citizens.
Who Is Homeless? Demographic groups that are more likely to experience poverty are also more likely to experience homelessness. They are also more likely to be minority groups. In 2003, 12.7% of the U.S. population, or 37 million people, lived in poverty. This overall poverty rate more than doubles for racial/ethnic minorities. Latinos/as have had poverty rates at or exceeding 20% for many years, and the poverty rate for African Americans is 22.2%. The most recent homeless demographic data on age, race, gender, and ethnicity are summarized here.
National Coalition for the Homeless and the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that families with children comprise 33% of the homeless population. On either count, it is apparent that the number of homeless families with children is large. Notably, it has increased significantly over the past decade. Ethnicity y
Like the total U.S. population, the ethnic makeup of homeless populations varies according to geographic location. In any area, however, minority groups comprise the largest number of homeless people. The U.S. Conference of Mayors found that the majority of the homeless population in twenty cities involved minorities of color. People experiencing homelessness in rural areas were more likely to be White, and homelessness among Native Americans and migrant workers was more generally a rural phenomenon.
Age
In 2001, children under 18 years of age accounted for 39% of the population, with 43% of those were under 5 years of age. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty reported that 25% of homeless were 25 to 34 years of age and that 6% were 55 to 64. Gender
Most studies have found that single homeless adults are more likely to be male than female. In 2005, a survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that single men comprised 43% of the homeless population, whereas single women comprised 17%. Famillies
The number of families experiencing homelessness is rising. The National Alliance to End Homelessness found that one-half of the homeless population is composed of families (mothers with children). The
Homeless person. Homelessness and poverty are inextricably linked. As housing costs increase and wages remain flat, the working and nonworking poor have become either homeless or at-risk for homelessness. Although African Americans constitute about 12% of the U.S. population, they make up nearly 40% of the homeless population. Source: Morguefile.
The demographic data offer a partial understanding of the relationship among race, class, gender, ethnicity, and homelessness. It is possible to view homeless people as a subclass among the poor. In many respects, the characteristics of homeless people resemble those of housed poor people. There are, however, some significant differences. Homeless people have incomes that are far less than half of the official poverty level. Only one-half of homeless
Homelessness
people have a high school degree. Just as they are marginally attached to the labor force, they also have thinner support networks. They are slightly younger and tend to be from racial/ethnic minority groups. Their rate of experience with foster care is greater, and they are more likely to have had a mother with drug problems than are housed poor people. Poverty and homelessness are far more concentrated in cities, especially the mega-cities where the poorest and richest classes compete for space. Roughly half of the world’s population lives in cities, and it is anticipated that this number will grow to 75% by 2050. In the United States, the National League of Cities reported that increasing numbers of poor people live in neighborhoods where at least 40% of the residents are below the official poverty level. In most important respects, homeless people are not appreciably different from poor housed families living in urban environments. They are a subclass of poor people who, for one reason or another, have lost housing and cannot get back into the housing market.
Social Citizenship and Homelessness Social policy analysts consistently explain that the number of claimants to social insurance and public assistance has grown beyond the public capacity to serve all of them. The restricted access to the labor force, housing, and public assistance that drives marginal people to homelessness suggests that the society of citizens has grown to such an extent that institutions have difficulty in responding adequately to the many claimants. Globally, homelessness has been transformed from a problem that affects mostly individuals to one that involves a kaleidoscope of economically marginal people among whom there are ethnic and cultural differences. The combination of events leading to homelessness varies with each life story up to the extreme limit when the homeless person renounces his or her citizenship rights and begins to perceive himself or herself as out of the society of citizens with diminished or nonexistent rights to claims making. Linking homelessness with poverty poses several important issues of social relationships among the homeless, citizens, and institutions. Even the most advanced welfare nations favor workers, whose claims to social rights hold the greatest legitimacy based on their past and present attachment to the workforce. As more homeless people fall out of the workforce, their social and civil claims diminish
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despite their citizenship. They then need to compete in a large and growing arena of claims makers who have established moral justification for their claims against institutions. Among these are the retired, the disabled, those uprooted by political forces and natural disasters, and other groups of marginalized people. The exponential growth of claims making has rendered homeless people, or those at risk for homelessness, as a less important class than other priority populations that capture public sentiment such as displaced refugees from the former Soviet Union and victims of Hurricane Katrina. In one perspective, homeless single adults—largely minority group members—have become the new “undeserving poor” among competing claims makers. The structural dynamics in postmodern society have fundamentally altered the social contract between governing institutions and citizens and between citizens and marginalized poor people. Homelessness can be seen as a major consequence of these changes. The ultimate question facing global urban societies is as follows: What is the nature of the social contract among institutions, the society of citizens, and the poor? Due to declining resources and altered public sentiment, post–World War II social contracts have been rejected to various degrees. This has occurred in the midst of dramatic social and economic changes in which the polarization of wealth, class, poverty, and opportunity is framed against the backdrop of increasing claims making and entitlement. Because the poorest members of society have lost credibility among the constellation of claimants, some social thinkers see the need to create new paradigms for meting out social justice. The growing debate about the morality, ethics, and institutional arrangements for addressing inequality is central to the 21st century. On one side are those who have serious concerns that the inequality explosion is undermining global politics and the quality of life. They see the globalization of homelessness in urban centers as a reminder of the social polarization that characterizes the society of citizens. One potential direction for change lies in making the claims of nonworkers more legitimized in the claims-making process. Other social thinkers believe that the changing socioeconomic demographics require a redesigned housing supply and built environment to accommodate housing needs and respond to social isolation. Another concern is that the human
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environment requires more formal social supports to augment the numerous formal and informal systems of support currently operating. Others suggest that self-help, mutual aid, and microdevelopment strategies are essential strategies for change. At the level of the relationship between institutions and the society of citizens, some social thinkers call for increased recognition of the equality of claimants. At the level of the relationship between the society of citizens and the poor, they see the need to remedy the lack of interventions that address homeless people. The postindustrial economies have shaped new normative social systems that feature conflicting and competing cultures. The challenge is to create a social and built environment that supports the coexistence of mainstream and marginal citizens at global and local levels. Madeleine R. Stoner See also Social Inequality; Underclass; Wealth Distribution; “Welfare Queen”; Welfare Reform
Further Readings
De Bernart, M. 1994. “The Reality and Culture of Homelessness in the Post-modern City.” Presented at the 13th World Congress of Sociology, Bielefeld, Germany. Drover, Glenn and Patrick Kerans, eds. 1998. New Approaches to Welfare Theory. Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar. Fantasia, Rick and Maurice Isserman. 2004. Homelessness: A Sourcebook. New York: Facts on File. National Coalition for the Homeless. 2006. Who Is Homeless? Washington, DC: Author. Stoner, Madeleine R. 2002. “The Globalization of Urban Homelessness.” In From Chicago to LA: Making Sense of Urban Theory, edited by M. J. Dear. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural and Community Development. 1996. Rural Homelessness: Focusing on the Needs of the Rural Homeless. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Web Sites
National Alliance to End Homelessness: http://www.naeh.org National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty: http://www.nlchp.org U.S. Conference of Mayors: http://www.usmayors.org
HOMICIDE Homicide rates in the United States differ substantially by race and ethnicity. According to data for the year 2004, which provide a snapshot of the prevalence of homicide during an era of relatively low homicide rates, the national homicide offending rate for Blacks was 24.1 per 100,000 Blacks, as compared with a rate for Whites of 3.65 per 100,000 Whites. This nearly sevenfold difference has been fairly characteristic of the discrepancy between Whites and Blacks for several decades. Until the mid- to late 1980s, social science research on race-specific homicide rates was sparse. Some have attributed this to, among other things, a fear among social scientists of being labeled racist. However, during the 1990s, a virtual explosion of race-specific homicide research occurred, considerably advancing scientific understanding of the significant underlying social problems suggested by this massive chasm between racial groups.
African American Communities At its core, the discrepancy may be attributable to the fact that substantial segments of the Black population live in socioeconomic contexts that are considerably more disadvantaged than those for even the poorest Whites. The problems of social dislocation experienced by many urban Black populations have been well documented by social scientists for several decades now, and the alarmingly high rates of poverty, family distress and breakdown, unemployment, and violence are well known. The literature on urban Black violence has revealed, with a high degree of consistency, that the overlap of these social problems, coupled with the residential segregation of Blacks from Whites, more advantaged groups, and mainstream institutions of social mobility, has a robust association with the urban Black homicide rate. Much of this empirical research relies conceptually on William Julius Wilson’s research on the most disadvantaged segments of the urban Black population and two important concepts he coined: social isolation and concentration effects. The disadvantaged urban Black population in the United States emerged from the throes of industrial restructuring during the 1960s and 1970s, which also enhanced the movement of more prosperous middle-class Blacks out of centralcity neighborhoods and into peripheral areas of urban
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ghettos and into suburban enclaves. The evaporation of high-quality, low-skilled jobs and the growth of service sectors of the economy ravaged the employment prospects of significant segments of the urban Black population. This created a “spatial mismatch” between the supply of low-skilled workers and the demand for high-paying, low-skilled factory work, ultimately elevating poverty and unemployment. In addition, much of the stable Black middle class moved out of central cities. Credited with sustaining local businesses, providing a network connection for displaced workers, and serving as the leaders of civic affairs, this out-migration initiated a decline in local noneconomic civic and social institutions. Those left behind constituted the socially isolated casualties of industrial restructuring who lacked contact with both members of middle-class society and the institutions of social mobility that make middle-class attainment a reality. Over time, the high rates of poverty, unemployment, family breakdown, welfare dependence, and the like led to concentration effects—subtle adaptations to an extremely alienating existence that involve the partial inversion of mainstream middleclass norms and values to more realistically reflect the day-to-day existence of the socially isolated. The intensive concentration of structural disadvantage may also compromise the level of collective efficacy within social units or their ability to activate social networks to address social problems collectively. One pernicious by-product of this whole process is high levels of violence. Elijah Anderson, in his influential book Code of the Street, documented one important way in which cultural adaptations to extreme structural deprivation manifest themselves. The “code of the street” refers primarily to a set of behavioral regulations governing interpersonal interaction and communication among those living in the crumbling urban cores of many U.S. cities. The code essentially prescribes the use of violence or the threat of violence for many minor and trivial breaches of others’ personal space, reputation, or public status. Violence in this context is not only a means to resolve disputes but also a way to shore up reputations and gain status in a milieu where conventional routes to status are severely circumscribed. While widely adhering to the main foundations of the “American dream,” material wealth, and status, the severely disadvantaged live in communities where the conventional institutional routes to such forms of success are substantially inoperative. Participation in
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the drug culture or just spending unstructured time on the streets elevates the likelihood of subscribing to the code to secure at least a small grasp of the widely sought-after status and respect. Many public arenas, especially those catering to young people and teenagers, become staging areas where the dramaturgy of street life and the code play themselves out.
Other Minority Communities Although the large bulk of race- and ethnicity-specific crime-related research has focused on the Black–White difference, it is useful to contrast these groups with what little is known about Latino, American Indian, and Asian homicide. For these groups, directly comparable yearly estimations for homicide rates are difficult to come by due to the nature of reporting practices. However, using several different data sources helps to round out the picture. Latinos are the largest ethnic minority group in the United States and are the subject of much public concern over a potential link between immigration and violence. One study, using homicide victimization data for Latinos (treating them as a homogeneous group), reported Latino homicide rates per 100,000 of 16.0 in 1985, 18.6 in 1991, and 12.4 in 1996. Thus, these figures place Latinos’ ranking as higher than that of Whites but lower than that of Blacks. Available research indicates that, despite compelling conceptual arguments and much public attention to the matter, there is little evidence that immigration is associated with higher rates of homicide for this group; if anything it may be associated with lower rates of homicide among Latinos. Research also finds that Latino homicide is driven by relative deprivation and structural conditions but that Latino homicide rates are not as high as those for Blacks because of the higher levels of labor market involvement, and thus social capital, that Latino communities maintain. Although reliable empirical data are more difficult to come by for American Indians, the available evidence from the past 25 years or so indicates that on average American Indian homicide rates are higher than White homicide rates but significantly lower than Black homicide rates. One study from 1980 to 1984 provided a national-level American Indian homicide rate of 9.6 per 100,000, whereas another reported that the Native American homicide arrest rate from 1987 to 1992 was between 5 and 7 per 100,000. A later government report estimated the homicide rate from 1992
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Honduran Americans
to 1996 to average approximately 7 per 100,000. A 2004 Uniform Crime Report estimate enumerated 102 American Indian/Alaska Native arrests for murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, accounting for 1.1% of the total number of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter arrests. As these numbers reveal, the statistically rare nature of homicide for this group makes it difficult to infer much about the nature and extent of homicide among this group. One prominent study describes a set of social circumstances and processes for American Indians that closely parallel descriptions of Black social life in the United States. Thus, social disorganization and economic deprivation, a cultural tolerance for violence, and a generalized sense of culture conflict and powerlessness associated with minority status all are integral to a comprehensive understanding of American Indian homicide. The only notable feature that seems to be more important for the American Indian experience than for other groups is the very high rate at which alcohol is involved in American Indian violence. Involvement in homicide among the Asian population is a vastly understudied topic in the United States. The Asian population, much like the Latino and American Indian populations, is unevenly distributed geographically and so national violence figures are not particularly helpful. For example, in 2004 the Uniform Crime Reports data indicated that Asian Pacific Islanders accounted for 117 homicide arrests or 1.2% of the total number of national arrests. Analyzing data from cities where Asians constitute a significant proportion of the population is helpful. One study using this strategy compared the Asian homicide victimization rate in San Diego with the rates for all cities with at least 1 million people and with the total rate for San Diego. The study found that Asian homicide rates were well below both of these contrast categories but that the temporal trends were nearly identical in terms of the high and low periods, suggesting that the basic social and cultural causes of homicide for Asians are similar to those described for the other racial/ethnic groups discussed in this entry. Matthew R. Lee See also African Americans; Asian Americans; Code of the Street; Community Cohesion; Crime and Race; Death Penalty; Victim Discounting; Victimization; Wilson, William Julius
Further Readings
Anderson, Elijah. 1999. Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York: Norton. Bachman, Ronet. 1992. Death and Violence on the Reservation: Homicide, Family Violence, and Suicide in American Indian Populations. New York: Auburn House. Greenfeld, Lawrence A. and Steven K. Smith. 1999. American Indians and Crime. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. Martinez, Ramiro, Jr. 2002. Latino Homicide: Immigration, Violence, and Community. New York: Routledge. Martinez, Ramiro, Jr. and Matthew R. Lee. 2000. “On Immigration and Crime.” Pp. 485–524 in Criminal Justice 2000: The Changing Nature of Crime, edited by Gary LaFree. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice. Sampson, Robert J., Stephen Raudenbush, and Felton Earls. 1997. “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy.” Science 277:918–924. Silverman, Robert A. 1996. “Patterns of Native American Crime.” Pp. 58–74 in Native Americans, Crime, and Justice, edited by Marianne O. Nielsen and Robert A. Silverman. Boulder, CO: Westview. Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
HONDURAN AMERICANS In response to poverty and natural disaster in their country of origin, an estimated 315,000 Honduran migrants have arrived in the United States seeking to build a new life. Hondurans form the third-largest group of Central Americans in the United States. They have employed a variety of strategies to improve their economic status and maintain community and family ties. Honduras, a nation estimated in 2007 to have 7.1 million people, avoided the civil warfare that devastated its Central American neighbors during the 1970s and 1980s. Structural inequalities and deep poverty, however, have been persistent facets of Honduran nationhood. The Honduran economy has historically centered on the export of coffee and bananas and has been highly dependent on U.S. capital. During the early 20th century, U.S. banana companies owned most of the land in northern Honduras and were powerful political and economic actors. Links to the United States further deepened during the 1980s when Honduras became a staging
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ground for U.S. counterinsurgency operations in the region. Such cultural and economic penetration of the United States was an important factor that primed migration to the United States. In addition, although civilian rule was restored to Honduras in 1982, human rights abuses persisted and contributed to out-migration. Most scholars believe, however, that the great majority of Hondurans have migrated to the United States for economic reasons, forming important communities in the Bronx, New York, Houston, Texas, and elsewhere. Estimates rank Honduras as the fifth-largest sending country of undocumented migrants with 138,000 in the United States. Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, and more than half of Hondurans live below the poverty line. The poor of Honduras received a further blow in 1998 when Hurricane Mitch struck. More than 7,000 people were killed and 1 million were left homeless. Economic damage totaled $3 billion, and numerous jobs were lost. Following Hurricane Mitch, the U.S. government extended temporary protected status to many of the Hondurans who had entered the United States illegally but could not easily return to their country of origin because of the devastating impact of the hurricane. Arriving in the United States, Hondurans have sought employment in factories, agriculture, the hospitality and care industries, and commercial cleaning. Upward
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economic mobility of Hondurans in the United States is closely linked to their means of incorporation into the economy, legal status, caretaking responsibilities, and levels of formal education and English. In addition, structural inequalities often trap migrants in lowskilled, low-wage jobs. Employment of Hondurans is also characterized by unstable work hours, migrationrelated debt, job insecurity, and conflicts with family obligations. Patriarchal household norms further limit women’s job opportunities. Despite these obstacles, Hondurans continue to strive and are able to send approximately $1 billion as remittances back to their country of origin, providing 15% of Honduras’s gross domestic product. Honduran family and social structures have been strained by separation of parents and children and by competition for scarce resources. However, women in particular have formed networks for economic, domestic, and emotional support. Hondurans remain hopeful that they will be able to build a better life for themselves and their children in the United States. Lynn Horton See Appendix A See also Central Americans in the United States; Hispanics; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Remittances Further Readings
Hernandez, Romel. 2004. Immigration from Central America. Philadelphia, PA: Mason Crest. Miyares, Inés M. 2006. “Central Americans: Legal Status and Settledness.” In Contemporary Ethnic Geographies in America, edited by Inés M. Miyares and Christopher A. Airriess. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield. Schmalzbauer, Leah. 2005. Striving and Surviving: A Daily Analysis of Honduran Transnational Families. New York: Routledge. Suro, Roberto. 1999. Strangers among Us: Latinos’ Lives in a Changing America. New York: Vintage Books.
HONG KONG Hong Kong is located on the south China coast near the Pearl River Delta, a region of China with a long history of foreign trade. Hong Kong was a British colony from 1842 until 1997 and is now a special administrative region (HKSAR) of the People’s
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Cantonese-speaking residents from Guangdong Province have always formed the vast majority of Hong Kong’s population. Chinese minority ethnic groups include the Fujianese, the Hakka, the Shanghainese, and the Teochew. Cantonese is widely spoken among all groups of Chinese residents in Hong Kong who also adopted, to various extents, other elements from Cantonese culture. Siu-lun Wong, in Emigrant Entrepreneurs: Shanghai Industrialists in Hong Kong, observed that many Shanghainese who migrated to Hong Kong during the second half of the 20th century were highly skilled and established themselves as prosperous and influential individuals. Members of other Chinese minorities, however, often held less prominent positions.
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Republic of China (PRC) with an estimated 2007 population of 6.9 million people. The legal framework of the HKSAR grants Hong Kong a degree of independence from the legislation of the PRC as the “one country, two systems” formula implies. Given its colonial and trading history, Hong Kong has long been a place of exchange between people of various races and ethnicities. This entry examines the history of Hong Kong from the perspective of issues related to the situation of various racial/ethnic groups over time.
A Colonial Past Disagreement over the exchange of silver and opium between China and Britain led to the First Opium War in China that lasted from 1839 to 1842. One of the conditions imposed by Britain on China was that Hong Kong became a British colony in 1842. The trade that Hong Kong attracted as a British port encouraged immigration, mostly of individuals from neighboring Guangdong Province in China but also from other parts of China, Asia, and the West. From the early 1950s, Hong Kong’s population increased rapidly, supporting its development into one of East Asia’s prime manufacturing, financial, and service centers. After the introduction of economic reforms in the PRC in 1978, many of Hong Kong’s industries moved to Guangdong Province.
A Change of Sovereignty Except for its final years, the British colonial administration in Hong Kong provided Chinese residents with few political rights and social benefits. Benjamin K. P. Leung, in Perspectives on Hong Kong Society, suggested that a “national identity” of Chinese residents in Hong Kong—that is, an identity that sees its interests as being different from the aims of the colonial government—only became widespread among Chinese residents during the 1970s when the colonial administration increased its accountability for the provision of housing, transport, and education. The preceding anti-imperialist movements in China, Leung observed, did not result in a widespread politicization of Chinese residents in Hong Kong. Significant identity changes in Hong Kong’s Chinese population stem from the fact that in 1984 Britain ceded to the request of the PRC to make Hong Kong part of China in 1997. This decision raised the question among the Chinese population of Hong Kong as to what it meant to be Chinese and gave rise to discussion on the relations among ethnicity, nationality, and governance. Britain’s determination to increase the level of democracy during the final years of its rule had a strong impact on this discussion, namely by defining Hong Kong’s way of life as democratic. The prospect of unification with the PRC, on the other hand, led to requests for more patriotic education in Hong Kong, especially for the younger Hong Kong–born Chinese residents. Siu-kai Lau and Hsin-chi Kuan, in The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese, suggested that the Chinese population in Hong Kong during the late 1980s could be
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distinguished according to whether people saw themselves as rooted in “Hong Kong” or in “China.” Individuals who identified themselves as “Hongkongese” (being mostly younger, well educated, professional, and/or wealthier residents), rather than as “Chinese,” thought that Hong Kong was significantly different from the PRC. Unlike individuals with a Chinese identity, those with a Hong Kong identity were likely to consider migrating to other countries in view of the unification with the PRC. The authors did not correlate Hongkongese and Chinese with other Chinese ethnic characteristics.
Transnational Migration The suppression of student protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 increased fears in Hong Kong about possible restrictions on civil liberties after 1997. An unknown but significant number of Hong Kong Chinese residents began investigating the likelihood of obtaining the right of abode in another nation as an “insurance policy.” Britain did not welcome the immigration of Hong Kong residents. Since the 1960s, Britain’s concern over potentially large numbers of immigrants from its various dependent territories has led to restrictions on who could obtain the right of abode in Britain. Of Hong Kong’s population, only 50,000 heads of households (both Chinese and nonChinese) were granted British citizenship in 1990. Reportedly, these individuals were selected on the basis of their business and professional qualifications. Meanwhile, large numbers of mostly middle-class Chinese residents (approximately a half-million) have started to migrate to Australia, Canada, Singapore, and other places. However, Hong Kong’s economic opportunities, problems with integration in other nations, and the relatively smooth establishment of the HKSAR motivated a very high percentage of those who had migrated abroad to return to the SAR. The question that researchers are now investigating is whether these returnees are inclined to remain in Hong Kong. David Ley and Audrey Kobayashi’s article, “Back to Hong Kong: Return Migration or Transnational Sojourn,” suggested that Hong Kong Chinese residents with the right of abode in Canada are likely to plan future residence in either of the two places according to different stages in their life circle. Return migrants in Hong Kong often value the education their children acquired while residing abroad, yet they also report difficulties with
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readjustment, and some express regrets that the time they spent abroad had made them miss out on opportunities in Hong Kong. When it comes to the ease with which residents in Hong Kong can gain citizenship in different nations, Barry Sautman, in a chapter in Re-making Citizenship in Hong Kong, stressed that Chinese residents have advantages when compared with non-Chinese residents. Chinese residents who became citizens of the PRC in 1997 are entitled to retain citizenship in other nations and to obtain HKSAR passports. Non-Chinese individuals, even if they were born in the HKSAR, are entitled to apply only for permanent residency but not for HKSAR passports (although there have been exceptions).
“Ethnic Minorities” Today Approximately 5% of Hong Kong’s population, counted as 6,994,500 residents in the provisional census for 2006, is non-Chinese. The 2001 census refers to non-Chinese residents as “ethnic minorities” and includes among the largest groups 142,556 Filipinos, 50,494 Indonesians, 19,441 individuals of mixed races (of whom 16,587 are partially Chinese), 18,909 British, 18,543 Indians, 14,342 Thais, 14,180 Japanese, 12,564 Nepalese, and 11,017 Pakistanis. The majority of the residents from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand are female domestic helpers working on temporary contracts. Many Indians work in import and export businesses, whereas a number of the Pakistanis are laborers. Most Westerners work in white-collar occupations or have their own businesses. Most families of non-Chinese residents have not stayed in Hong Kong over several generations. Yet some of Hong Kong’s most prosperous families, such as the Hotungs, are of Eurasian origin. Being familiar with several cultures helped Eurasians, including the Hotungs, to work as compradors that mediated between the colonial firms, which they represented, and the Chinese merchants. The “local boy” identity is another example of the hybrid ethnicity of an interracial group. Local boys (and girls) are the descendants of male Muslim immigrants from South Asia who married Chinese women. They have retained elements of their Islamic culture and have strongly assimilated into Cantonese culture. During colonial times, the British administration favored individuals from South Asia to work in certain occupations in Hong Kong. The Royal Hong
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Kong Police recruited Sikhs and Muslims in north India to serve as constables. Parsis were given liquor licenses to trade in the British possessions in the East, and Sindhis owned chains of provision stores that catered to the British garrisons in several Asian port cities. Using ties with coethnics was common among most ethnic groups in Hong Kong to establish businesses and engage in trade, and this solidified their shared ethnicity. This characteristic is still prevalent among some ethnic groups in Hong Kong. For example, Jain diamond traders rely on coethnic networks to buy diamonds, and insider positions in these networks require shared family links and participation in shared religious activities. However, for poor non-Chinese ethnic groups, a high degree of adaptation to Cantonese culture was often necessary to earn a living. For example, since 1997 a high degree of assimilation to Cantonese culture is expected from ethnic minority children whose parents cannot afford the high fees of the international schools. They need to succeed in public primary and secondary schools, which teach them in the Cantonese language, but often the children are unable to compete.
Action on Inequality Since the establishment of the HKSAR, members of non-Chinese minorities, civil society organizations, and international chambers of commerce have voiced more demands for anti-racial discrimination legislation. Hong Kong signed the International Convention on All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1969, but the colonial framework hindered legislation. Recent surveys of Hong Kong residents of South Asian origin show that the large majority reports discrimination, notably vilification and unequal access to employment. Reports of violent attacks, however, are rare. Chinese public opinion during the initial years of the HKSAR included a strong element that was against anti-racial discrimination legislation. Such voices considered Hong Kong to be a “Chinese city” and were not concerned about non-Chinese residents. Reports of tragedies that allegedly resulted from discrimination against non-Chinese individuals in hospitals, along with the plight of ethnic minority children in Hong Kong public schools, have worked toward wider support for the legislation. After 10 years of debate, the draft of Hong Kong’s anti-racial discrimination law was unveiled in November 2006, addressing discrimination in employment, education, club membership, and the provision of goods and services.
The proposed law was criticized for its exemptions, especially in the language policies in Hong Kong’s public schools, which are not obliged to help non-Cantonese-speaking pupils to learn Cantonese. This exemption prevents many ethnic minority children from competing on an equal basis with Cantonese-speaking children. Moreover, insisting on Cantonese proficiency is also a hidden means of allowing schools to exclude pupils with a darker skin color on the grounds that this would supposedly diminish the schools’ reputations. The question of whether discrimination against newer immigrants from mainland China should or should not be covered by the law was debated extensively during the years preceding the drafting of the law. Kuah Khun Eng, in a chapter in Hong Kong in China: The Challenges of Transition, examined the unfavorable treatment of new immigrants from mainland China in Hong Kong, including the plight of children who live in the PRC and who have a Chinese parent who is a permanent resident in the HKSAR. These children have the right to live in Hong Kong. An estimated 66,000 children were expected to immigrate after July 1, 1997, and Hong Kong established a quota system for daily immigration from mainland China in response. Introducing this quota meant that many of these children were expected to wait for up to two years in mainland China before being united with family members in Hong Kong. Children of non-Chinese residents usually receive permission to immigrate within a few weeks. However, given that the Hong Kong government considers Chinese residents in Hong Kong and in mainland China to share the same (Han) ethnicity, the proposed anti-racial discrimination legislation cannot cover new immigrants from mainland China. Caroline Plüss See Appendix A See also Australia; China; Chinatowns; Chinese Americans; Colonialism; Diaspora; Globalization; Singapore
Further Readings
Das, Rup Narayan. 1990. “A Nationality Issue: Ethnic Indians in Hong Kong.” Pp. 147–157 in The Other Hong Kong Report 1990, edited by Richard Y. C. Wong and Joseph Y. S. Cheng. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Guldin, Gergory Elliot. 1980. Overseas at Home: The Fujianese of Hong Kong. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International.
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Hamilton, Gary, ed. 1999. Cosmopolitan Capitalists: Hong Kong and the Chinese Diaspora at the End of the Twentieth Century. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Ku, Agnes and Ngai Pun, eds. 2004. Re-making Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation, and the Global City. London: Routledge. Ku, Hok Bun, Chan Kam Wah, Chan Wai Ling, and Lee Wai Yee. 2003. A Research Report for the Life Experiences of Pakistanis in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Centre for Social Policy Studies. Lau, Siu-kai and Hsin-chi Kuan. 1988. The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Leung, Benjamin K. P. 1996. Perspectives on Hong Kong Society. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Ley, David and Audrey Kobayashi. 2005. “Back to Hong Kong: Return Migration or Transnational Sojourn.” Global Networks 5(2):111–127. Loper, Kelley. 2004. Race and Equality: A Study of Ethnic Minorities in Hong Kong’s Education System—Project Report and Analysis. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, Centre for Comparative and Public Law. Plüss, Caroline. 2005. “Constructing Globalised Ethnicity: Migrants from India in Hong Kong.” International Sociology 20:203–226. Richburg, Keith B. 2003. “Hong Kong Crusaders against Racism Gain Little Support, Even from Victims.” Pp. 350–352 in Racism: A Global Reader, edited by Kevil Reilly, Stephen Kaufman, and Angela Bodino. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Wang, Gungwu and John Wong, eds. 1999. Hong Kong in China: The Challenges of Transition. Singapore: Times Academic Press. Wong, Siu-lun. 1988. Emigrant Entrepreneurs: Shanghai Industrialists in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.
HOOKS, BELL
(1952– )
bell hooks is a scholar, a writer, and an activist who has made various contributions to both feminist and antiracist scholarship and theorizing. A self-identified feminist, she has used her work to engage topics such as feminist theory, White supremacy, capitalism, and postmodernism. She has been especially instrumental in challenging the classist and racist assumptions of mainstream second-wave feminism as well as the sexist biases in the Black Civil Rights Movement. hooks’s work has illustrated the ways in which both the mainstream feminist movement and the Black civil
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rights movement marginalized the interests of Black women. Her first book, Ain’t I a Woman (1981), focused in particular on the assumptions of these social movements in regard to Black women. In this work, which she first began writing at 19 years of age, she explored how Black women were placed in particularly precarious positions during slavery because of the intersecting oppressions of racism and sexism that affected their lives. She also articulated specific manifestations of racism in the women’s movement and Black women’s relationship to feminism. hooks’s body of work as a whole has influenced the ideologies and directions of feminist movements, urging a broadly defined feminist agenda with the task of leading movements of resistance against sexism, racism, and classism. Her later piece, Feminist Theory, Margin to Center, continued to urge feminists to rethink issues of race, class, violence, work, and families under the guise of a more inclusive feminist ideology.
About Her Life bell hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins in Kentucky in 1952. She was one of seven children, with five sisters and one brother. She later adopted the name bell hooks as a writing pseudonym and then began using it for lectures as well. The name is a family name and belonged to her great-grandmother on her mother’s side. In her essay, “To Gloria, Who She Is: On Using a Pseudonym,” she explained how taking on this name was a strategy of empowerment that enabled her to find her own voice. hooks received a bachelor’s degree in English from Stanford University in 1973, and three years later she received her master’s in English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She later obtained her doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she wrote her dissertation on the work of Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Toni Morrison. hooks has taught at various institutions of higher education, including the University of California, Santa Cruz; San Francisco State University; Yale University; Oberlin College; and the City College of New York, where she held the position of distinguished professor of English. She currently holds a position as distinguished writer-in-residence at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. hooks’s pedagogical work has received a significant amount of attention, and she has written extensively on feminist and antiracist pedagogy and overall how education can be a holistic and liberating experience
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for students and teachers alike. She has cited Paulo Freire and Thich Nhat Hanh as two major influences on her pedagogical work.
Her Writings hooks has published more than thirty books throughout her career, including Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics; Black Looks: Race and Representation; Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and SelfRecovery; Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom; Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood; Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies; Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life; The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love; and Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. These works address topics such as feminism, love, self-esteem, masculinity, racism, film, and the writing process. hooks has also participated in various collaborations, with perhaps the most famous of these being Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life, which is composed of a series of dialogues, interviews, and essays written by her and Cornel West, another prominent African American intellectual. Other collaborations include Daughters of the Dust (written with Julie Dash and Toni Cade Bambara) and Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism (written with Amalia Mesa-Bains). She is also the author of four children’s books: Skin Again, Happy to Be Nappy, Be Boy Buzz, and Homemade Love. She has also published two works of poetry: an early chapbook titled And There We Wept and a later book titled A Women’s Mourning Song. hooks has also produced various works of cultural criticism focusing on films such as Mad Max, Crooklyn, and Do the Right Thing. Her pieces of cultural criticism interrogate the politics of gendered and raced representation and issues of commodification. The body and breadth of hooks’s work reflect a lifetime commitment to feminist and antiracist scholarly production and activism. Her work is widely read in various humanities and social science courses, among others. Amanda Moras See also African American Studies; African American Women and Work; Black Intellectuals; Body Image; Civil Rights Movement, Women and; Feminism; Feminism, Black; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Internal Colonialism; White Racism
Further Readings
Florence, Namulundah. 1998. bell hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy: A Transgressive Education for Critical Consciousness (Critical Studies in Education and Culture Series). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. hooks, bell. 1984. Feminist Theory from Margin to Center. Boston, MA: South End Press. hooks, bell. 1989. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston, MA: South End Press.
HOPI The Hopi people, with a population of 10,000 to 12,000, though not a large tribal group, have lived in the area they now occupy for more than 1,000 years. One of their villages, Oraibi, is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, continuously occupied communities in the United States. The Hopi people are considered the westernmost branch of the Pueblos. The Hopi’s separation from the other Pueblos as well as their being completely surrounded for centuries by the Navajos has led the Hopi to often be considered apart from the other Pueblos while recognizing their cultural ties. One significant exception to similarities in lifestyle is that the Hopi are the only Pueblo people to speak a language in the Uto-Aztecan language family. This entry will include an overview of Hopi history and the contemporary life focusing on the Hopi reservation. The ancestors of the Hopi, the name said to mean virtuous or peaceful people, are referred to as the Anasazi (although Hopi prefer to call them HisatSinom). The Hopi have been and continue to be dryfarming agricultural people, since early 500 AD in their current area in northeast Arizona. Living in conditions challenging to most agricultural practices, the Hopi, like the Anasazi people before them, became proficient in the farming of corn and other vegetables. Basketry emerged as another staple of Hopi culture and has progressed to be a source of revenue as the artistry of this craft has become recognized. In the early 1900s, collectors also became interest in titu (pl. tithu), the dolls with Hopi spiritual representations given to their girls. This craft evolved into the carving of cottonwood root katsinas (or kachinas) that came to be sold in roadside stands along what was then Highway 66 as a means of economic support during the Great Depression. Contemporary katsinas take many forms and often depart radically from the titu
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tradition. Silversmithing with the pattern of overlaying, distinctive from the Navajo and Zuni styles, with inlaid stones, began in earnest in 1949, when returning veterans used the G.I. Bill to become trained in this craft. The settlement of the last thousand years is viewed by the Hopi as actually the fourth creation of life, which began deep below the surface of today’s earth, with the first three preceding lives or worlds ending in destruction. These earlier times are regarded as times when the people denied the plan of the Creator and thus are not truly part of the Hopi Way. The faithful during these earlier times were protected underground with the Ant People. According to Hopi legend, the Ant People resided underground and deprived themselves of food, which explains why today’s ants are so small around the waist. The kivas of today, squarewalled private rooms used for religious rituals by all Pueblo people, are considered representations of these anthills. The Hopi’s first contact with Europeans came with Spaniards dispatched by Francisco Coronado in 1540. Some villages had violent encounters whereas others had more peaceful relationships. Compared with other Pueblos, the Hopi have had by far the least Spanish influence, which again contributes to the Hopi’s somewhat distinctive character. Franciscan missionaries began settling in 1629 and erecting churches. These encounters were particularly brutal, with attacks on both sides. Despite violent periods, the relative isolation of the homeland compared with other Southwest Indians allowed the Hopi to largely preserve their culture and traditions. The Hopi have always been a matrilineal, matrilocal society in which women form the basis of family social organization. The women are the backbone of everyday Hopi society, overseeing the household and owning property. The husband’s real home is said to be with his mother’s family because his responsibilities to her continue, yet while married, he lives with his wife, her sisters, her mother, and, if living, her grandmother, along with their respective husbands. Despite the matrilineal family traditions, men serve as the ritual leaders of each village and are expected to provide role models through hard work, humility, and good spiritual thoughts. The traditional Hopi way of life was threatened in more modern times when the Navajo moved into the area settled by the Hopi from New Mexico in the early 1800s. Though the Navajo tended to occupy the area
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only in the winter, their movement of large herds of sheep, goats, and cattle led to overgrazing on the mesa. The rough boundaries of the Hopi reservation as outlined in 1882 included only a small fraction of the land they regarded as theirs and that of their ancestors. Further complicating the Hopi–Navajo dispute was the federal government’s wish to distance itself from this contentious situation. The Bureau of Indian Affairs further complicated the friction by creating a “joint use area” between the two official reservations of the Hopi and Navajo. The assimilationist stance of the Bureau of Indian Affairs became evident as Hopi village autonomy was ignored and government schools were built that met during Hopi ceremonial occasions but were closed for Sundays and other Christian holidays. Resistant to this refusal to recognize their traditions, some Hopi kept their children from school, only to have troops in 1890 forcibly round up 104 children and take them to the school. Contributing to the push to assimilation was the arrival of Mormon and Mennonite missionaries. As was often true of religious outreach activities, the tolerance for tribal people’s spirituality varied tremendously by historical period and the individual approach taken by mission leaders. By the 1920s, permanent homes were constructed by the Navajo in the northern Black Mesa, land viewed by the Hopi as theirs. Further complicating the situation was the presence of the Peabody Coal Company that began stripmining operations on land leased to both the Navajo and Hopi beginning in 1968. This economic development expanded into the largest coal strip-mining operation in the world. The Hopi people, reflecting the development-ecology divisions in larger U.S. society, have often been divided over the opportunities and challenges such as economic development poses. These tensions regarding land and economics and, in the view of many traditional people, alleged violations of mining on sacred lands have led to continuing disputes with the Navajo and the Bureau of Indian Affairs that were still being resolved in the 21st century. Today, the Hopi largely live on the Hopi Reservation on the Black Mesa. The mesa rises 1,000 feet or more above the grasslands and is regarded by the Hopi as the center of the universe. Hopi off the reservation live primarily in Arizona or California. The Hopi are a traditional people who still recognize the individual autonomy of each village, although the Hopi Tribal Council is recognized as the official
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governing body. The Hopi people take residency in one of their twelve villages on the reservation seriously, and such residency forms a membership requirement in addition to blood quantum. Disputes arise about the authenticity of being Hopi if one works off the reservation and, at times, lives outside their village. Although the Hopi continue to be somewhat more isolated than many tribal people or other Pueblos, they are increasingly influenced by and interact with other cultures, either by choice or through economic pressure. Younger Hopi people today listen to the message of the katsina without any thought of outsiders but also adjust by interacting in varying degrees with larger society as they seek to support themselves economically. In a real sense, this is what they have been doing for 5 centuries. Richard T. Schaefer See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Blood Quantum; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Environmental Justice; Native American Education: Native American Health Care; Native Americans; Native Americans, Environment and; Navajo; Pueblos Further Readings
Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1972. Indians of Arizona. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Griffin-Pierce, Trady. 2000. Native Peoples of the Southwest. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Havens, Bill. 2007. “Every Hopi Comes Home Again.” Indian Country Today (April 16):A3. Kelly, Shannon. 2007. “Black Mesa, Arizona.” Retrieved September 29, 2007, from http://cpluhna.nau.edu/Places/ black_mesa.htm National Park Service. 2997. “Old Oraibi.” Retrieved September 30, 2007, from http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail .cfm?ResourceId=100&ResourceType=District Northern Arizona University. 2007. “Hopi.” Retrieved September 27, 2007, from http://cpluhna.nau.edu/ People/hopi.htm Rohn, Arthur H. and William M. Ferguson. 2006. Puebloan Ruins of the Southwest. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
HOURGLASS ECONOMY An economic paradox has been at play and growing in the United States for more than a third of a
century—a race to the top of the economy by the rich and the powerful, a slide to the bottom of the economy by low-wage workers and the poor, and a gradual shrinkage of the middle class. The low-wage class is populated primarily by members of racial/ethnic minorities as well as by many of the new immigrants. The net result is that the United States is experiencing its greatest economic inequality since the era of the robber barons some hundred years ago. This, in turn, fuels another economic paradox. The United States, unchallenged as the richest country in the world, has the greatest relative economic inequality of any developed country in the world, as described in this entry.
How It Happened The hourglass economy is a metaphor suggesting the economic shape of the U.S. labor force resulting from the extreme economic equality that began during the early 1970s in the country and continues to the present day. The hallmark of this economic change is a bifurcated labor force taking the shape of an hourglass, where a large number of workers at the top of the hourglass have well-paying jobs, another large number of workers at the bottom have poor-paying jobs, and a small number of workers at the neck of the hourglass constitute what’s left of the middle class. Three distinctions need to be made to locate the conception of hourglass within the context of economic inequality. Gro owing Inequality y
An analysis of the rise, fall, and rise again in economic inequality in the United States for the past 100 years shows that for a quarter-century before World War II, the income share of total national wages for the top 10% of wage earners (the top decile) ranged between 40% and 47%. Come the “Great Compression”—the period between the late 1930s and the early 1970s—that share shrunk to a low of 30%. A major shift in the allocation of economic gains during the early 1970s resulted in the raising of the ceiling and a lowering of the floor for the U.S. labor force, with the few getting a great deal more and the many getting a great deal less. At that point, inequality accelerated markedly, and by the late 1990s it had reached pre–World War II robber baron levels.
Hourglass Economy
Bifu urccation of Wealth
David Ellwood, a Harvard University economist, added another dimension to the analysis of economic inequality—the bifurcation of income and wealth. He examined the percentage change in the earnings of different percentile groups of full-year, full-time male workers from 1961 to 2000, using 1961 as the base year. There were three key statistical groups in the crosshairs of his analysis: (a) rich wage earners at the 90th and 75th percentiles of the income hierarchy, (b) poor wage earners at the 25th and 10th percentiles, and (c) “the middle” wage earners at the 50th percentile. All three groups had relatively equal income growth from 1961 to the early 1970s. Then income divergence began, somewhat slowly at first and then accelerating markedly from 1975 onward. The character of the divergence is just as dramatic as its magnitude. The poor had the same percentage growth as the rich until the early 1970s. Then their real wage earning actually began to decline until around 1995. The rich saw their percentage of income start growing in 1961 and experienced few declines up to the present time. The net result was the rise of economic bifurcation—an extreme difference in the percentage of income growth between the “haves” and the “have lesses” and also the rise of an extreme absolute dollar difference. So, as the gap between middle-income America and high-income America (the top 1%) grows, that same gap for racial/ethnic minority groups has exploded. The Birrth of th he Hourglass
Job growth prior to the 1990s was either “golden” as in the 1960s—when high-paying jobs grew most and low-paying jobs grew least—or relatively equal for all. The decade of the 1990s, however, represented a significant departure from this trend. New jobs took the shape of an asymmetric, top-heavy hourglass that exhibited strong growth at the top tier of the employment structure, moderately strong growth at the bottom tier, and especially weak growth in the middle. Analysis of the changing occupational wage structure—and the morphing of the economy into the shape of an hourglass—indicated that the experience of workers generally conforms to the hourglass metaphor. New jobs generated during the middle and late 1990s (1994–2000) took the shape of an asymmetric, top-heavy hourglass that exhibited strong
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growth at the top tier of the employment structure, moderately strong growth at the bottom tier, and especially weak growth in the middle. The good news is that a larger number of above middle-income jobs than below middle-income jobs were added to the labor force (55.9% vs. 38.2%). The bad news is that these data represent the first evidence of two trends: the economic bifurcation of the labor force and the dramatic shrinking of middle-income jobs. The projected occupational growth in the labor force for the period between 2000 and 2014 also takes a bottom-heavy hourglass shape, with a continued shrinking of middle-income jobs; thus, a continued economic bifurcation of the labor force is consistent with the known hourglass growth trend of the 1990s and reflects a 20-year trend of the labor force morphing into an hourglass economy.
Why It Happened One source of economic inequality is sociopolitical in origin. These factors include exceptionally generous tax breaks for the wealthy, runaway executive and chief executive officer salaries and stock options, significant increases in worker productivity and corporate and business profits with little or no commensurate raises in the wages of workers, the declining economic and political power of labor unions, the stagnation of the minimum wage, and increases in the “premium” for a college degree. A second source of economic inequality is the rise of structural factors in a postindustrial, high-technology information society that resulted in an hourglass economy. Three characteristics of the new economy have implications for the changing structure of economic rewards for the labor force: (a) the assignment of investment and development resources to information technology and service industries, (b) a shift— radical in some instances—in the number and kind of occupations considered as core to the new economy, and (c) a reallocation of the economic rewards provided for occupations in the new economy. The compact in U.S. society has always been hard work in return for achieving the “American dream.” The rise of an hourglass economy, however, results in a system where no amount of hard work facilitates social mobility and economic parity and low-wage workers are in danger of becoming a permanent underclass. Therefore, as the new high-technology
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service economy replaces an industrial economy, the United States faces the possible rise of a permanently bifurcated labor force characterized by extreme economic inequality with a shrunken middle class. If this new structure replaces the classic U.S. ideal of an egalitarian middle-class society, there will be not only economic consequences but also political and social consequences. John Koval See also Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Immigration, U.S.; Informal Economy; Underclass; Wealth Distribution
Further Readings
Bean, Frank D. and B. Lindsay Lowell. 2003. “Immigrant Employment and Mobility Opportunities in California.” State of California Labor 3:87–117. Ellwood, David. 2002. Grow Faster Together or Grow Slowly Apart. Washington, DC: Aspen Institute. Hecker, Daniel E. 2005. “Occupational Employment Projections to 2014.” Monthly Labor Review, November. Massey, Douglas H. and Deborah S. Hirst. 1998. “From Escalator to Hourglass: Changes in the U.S. Occupational Wage Structure 1949–1989.” Social Science Research 27:51–71. Milkman, Ruth and Rachel E. Dwyer. 2002. “Growing Apart: The ‘New Economy’ and Job Polarization in California, 1992–2000.” State of California Labor 2:3–31. Piketty, Thomas and Emannuel Saez. 2001. Income Inequality in the United States. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Wright, Erik Olin and Rachel Dwyer. 2003. “The Patterns of Job Expansion in the USA: A Comparison of the 1960s and 1990s.” Socio-Economic Review 1:289–325.
HOUSING AUDITS During the past decade, nationally representative surveys of the general public reveal that the majority of U.S. residents endorse principles of equal access to housing, believing that people should be able to live where they want, based on what they can afford, regardless of their race/ethnicity. Indeed, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibits discrimination in the U.S. housing rental and sales markets based on one’s race or color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, or disability. Unfortunately, past and recent
housing audits, which are experimental tests of housing discrimination, reveal that discrimination and lack of equal access to all sales and rental markets persist as a reality in U.S. society, especially for minorities. This is important because many race scholars argue that housing discrimination plays a pivotal role in the maintenance and perpetuation of residential segregation in U.S. society. Historically, housing audits have been used by fair housing groups as a systematic experimental method of testing for and uncovering discrimination in rental and sales markets based on sex, familial status, and race/ethnicity and national origin. During the past 30 years or so, the U.S. federal government has also used large-scale national housing audits to detect levels of racial/ethnic discrimination and to analyze trends across time. To provide a comprehensive overview of housing audits, this entry explains the housing audit methodology, summarizes findings from major national housing audits in the United States, and discusses limitations of the housing audit methodology. Fair housing groups, scholars, and government agencies rely most heavily on the housing audit methodology to uncover racial/ethnic discrimination; thus, that is the explicit focus of this entry.
Methods and History Racial housing audits are experimental in design, characterized by the quantitative comparison of matched testers’ (or auditors’) experiences in the housing market. Most often, multiple teams of two racially distinct, but similarly situated, individuals (one minority and one White) are sent into the housing market in an attempt to acquire housing from a random sample of ads placed online and in newspapers. The testers, aside from their racial/ethnic status, are assigned similar identities and characteristics (e.g., same credit score, same income, same education). Testers complete detailed questionnaires following their experiences, and the data are then compiled and analyzed to determine whether minority and White testers were treated differently. Hence, with efforts to control for social and human capital characteristics, such tests have served as an effective way to uncover discrimination. Beginning in 1977, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) launched the Housing Market Practices Survey (HMPS), which conducted 3,264 tests in forty metropolitan areas. The study provided evidence of significant discrimination against
Housing Audits
Blacks in sales and rental markets. The results of the HMPS played a role in the passage of the 1988 amendment to the Fair Housing Act and demonstrated the need for a second national study, The Housing Discrimination Study, which was launched in 1989 and covered twenty-five metropolitan areas. A comparison of the two nationwide studies demonstrated that discrimination had not decreased between 1977 and 1989. In 2000, HUD launched a third national housing audit, with initial analyses revealing that African Americans and Hispanics continue to face significant discriminatory barriers when searching for a home to rent or buy. However, rates of overall discrimination may have decreased somewhat between 1989 and 2000, with the exception of “racial steering”—a realtor suggesting more or less desirable alternatives based on the race of the client—of African Americans and limitations in the financing opportunities and access to rental units for Hispanics. Some scholars argue that declines in housing discrimination revealed in the 2000 HUD audit may be the result of a shift in the prevailing forms of housing discrimination used by landlords, realtors, and others in the housing market. In other words, actors in U.S. housing markets may have become more privy to the illegal forms and consequences of exclusion according to fair housing laws and, thus, have turned to more covert and subtle forms of discrimination not revealed through the audit methodology. Since the original study, numerous other housing market audit studies have also been conducted in individual cities. These local-level audits, like national studies, reveal that most Blacks and Hispanics encounter discrimination revolving around housing availability and access to the housing sales and rental markets. Audit research suggests that discrimination may be more intense in integrated neighborhoods than in segregated neighborhoods and that racial steering is a common mechanism. Black and Hispanic home buyers can expect to encounter approximately one act of discrimination every time they interact with a real estate broker. Furthermore, there appears to be widespread discrimination by landlords, including making fewer offers of rental assistance and showing fewer units to minority auditors. Similar evidence is reported from recent scholarly analyses of rental inquiries by phone and interactions with mortgage lenders and homeowners insurance agents.
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Limitations of Housing Audits Clearly, the audit methodology is a useful method for assessing levels of discrimination faced by potential residents. There are, however, obvious disadvantages. Some argue that testers are predisposed to find discrimination and that testers’ characteristics (e.g., work experience, education) may influence the test itself. Audit studies are also constrained by the sampling frame (e.g., units advertised in major metropolitan newspapers or on the Internet) and might not be as useful for studying complex transactions, transactions involving interaction at later stages of the housing acquisition process, and cases involving adverse impact rather than disparate treatment. Finally, audit studies seldom consider discriminatory processes, behaviors, and practices that minorities may experience once actually housed, including differential treatment, coercion, harassment, and intimidation. It is important to note that all of these are illegal forms of discrimination as defined by the Fair Housing Act. Although the audit methodology clearly remains a useful tool in uncovering and measuring current levels of discrimination in U.S. housing markets, a sole reliance on this method provides only a limited understanding of housing discrimination given that this methodology, by design, cannot capture all forms of illegal housing discrimination. Diana Leilani Karafin See also Discrimination; Discrimination in Housing; Gautreaux Decision; Public Housing; Segregation Further Readings
Galster, George C. 1990. “Racial Steering by Real Estate Agents: Mechanisms and Motives.” Review of Black Political Economy 19(Summer):39–63. Massey, Douglas. 2005. “Racial Discrimination in Housing: A Moving Target.” Social Problems 52:148–151. Massey, Douglas and Garvey Lundy. 2001. “Use of Black English and Racial Discrimination in Urban Housing Markets: New Methods and Findings.” Urban Affairs Review 36:452–469. Ondrich, Jan, Alex Stricker, and John Yinger. 1999. “Do Landlords Discriminate? The Incidence and Causes of Racial Discrimination in Rental Housing Markets.” Journal of Housing Economics 8:185–204. Ross, Stephen L. and Margery A. Turner. 2005. “Housing Discrimination in Metropolitan America: Explaining
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Changes between 1989 and 2000.” Social Problems 52:152–180. Yinger, John Milton. 1995. Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost: The Continuing Costs of Housing Discrimination. New York: Russell Sage.
HUERTA, DOLORES C. (1930– ) Dolores C. Huerta was raised in a family of activists, followed the family tradition throughout her long and active life, and continues to act on issues important to Mexican Americans. Known as an important advocate for La Raza, probably her best-known activism was her work with farmworkers and cofounding the United Farm Workers (UFW) union with César Chávez. Her activism began before the UFW and has continued since with other causes that benefit the rights of farm laborers as well as women and immigrants. The establishment and protection of the rights of those Huerta perceives to be without a voice in the United States continues to be her mission in life. This entry describes her life and work.
Her Early History Huerta was born to Juan Fernandez and Alicia Chávez Fernandez on April 10, 1930, during the Great Depression, in Dawson, a small mining town in the northern part of New Mexico. She met challenges early in life. When she was three years old, her parents divorced and she moved with her mother and two brothers to Stockton, California. Huerta’s mother, after remarrying and having two more daughters, eventually pulled herself out of her own personal financial depression and was able to buy both a restaurant and a small twenty-room hotel, which Huerta and her two brothers helped her to run. Although physically separated from her father, Huerta maintained contact with him and was inspired by his rise from coal miner and farm laborer to labor organizer as well as by his acquisition of a college degree. He went on to hold office as a state legislator in New Mexico, where he worked to enact laws that protect laborers. Huerta drew inspiration from the success of both her parents, and after graduating from high school she went on to attend Delta College of the University of the Pacific. Although there is some debate over whether she actually graduated, she went on to teach grammar school for a short time. Many of the students
she taught were from families of farmworkers, and she expressed her frustration in seeing children come into her classroom without decent shoes or enough to eat. Huerta believed that she could do more by working with the farm workers to organize than by teaching their children. Leaving teaching, she became a founding member of the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO), a grassroots organization that was founded to battle segregation, lead voter registration drives, and fight to enact new legislation that affected Mexican Americans. Through this organization, Huerta saw firsthand the problems that the migrant farmworkers faced, and this inspired her to organize and found the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) in 1960. Through her work with the CSO, she lobbied in Sacramento for both voting and driver’s license examinations in Spanish and in Washington, D.C., for an end to the Bracero program, a temporary contract labor program between the United States and Mexico. Through her work with the CSO, she met César Chávez. Both recognized the need to organize farmworkers, and when they were unable to convince others in the CSO to take on this task, they both resigned in 1962. Huerta moved with her seven children to Delano, California, to be near Chávez and his family, and together they formed the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). This organization was formed in response to the lack of support from the union leadership to the idea of organizing farmworkers comprised primarily of Filipinos and Latinos. Working with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), they organized a grape strike that, over the course of five years, had more than 5,000 grape workers who walked out on their jobs and worked successfully toward the first contract between a wine company and its workers in U.S. history. This event garnered national attention and heralded the merger of the AWOC and the NFWA into the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), which officially became UFW, AFL–CIO after the success of the strike.
UFW and Beyond Huerta negotiated the contract between the farmworkers and the Schenley Wine Company, the first time that farmworkers made up the negotiating committee for a collective bargaining agreement with an agricultural corporation. This was only the first of many successes for Huerta and the organizing committees.
Hull House School of Race Relations
She worked with laborers not only in the grape industry but also in the vegetable industry, and she organized a second boycott in reaction to violence that resulted in the deaths of several farmworkers. This East Coast boycott of grapes, lettuce, and Gallo wines brought together community workers, student protesters, peace groups, religious groups, Hispanic associations, and feminists to fight for the rights of farmworkers. In 1975, then California Governor Jerry Brown signed the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which legally allowed farmworkers to form a union that could negotiate with farm owners for better wages and working conditions. Huerta worked for more than three decades with her friend Chávez, and together they achieved many notable milestones for the rights of farmworkers and programs that helped to make their working and living conditions more humane. They founded the Robert F. Kennedy Medical Plan, the Farm Workers Credit Union, and the National Farm Workers Service Center to provide affordable housing and a Spanish language radio communications network. Huerta has lobbied for unemployment insurance for farm laborers and against guest worker programs, including the recent effort by President George W. Bush. She equates the program with indentured servitude, allowing people to work at subsistence wages yet denying them the opportunity for citizenship.
Other Notable Accomplishments In addition to her efforts for farmworkers, Huerta has used her voice and influence with other issues that are important to her. She has fought for the rights of women as well and has served on the boards of the Feminist Majority Foundation, Democratic Socialists of America, Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR), the Center for Voting and Democracy, and Latinas for Choice. She has received many honors through the years, including the Outstanding Labor Leader Award (by the California State Senate), the Ellis Island Medal of Freedom Award, the Consumers’ Union Trumpeter’s Award, and the Robert Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award (by the American Civil Liberties Union), as well as several honorary doctoral degrees. Karen S. Boyd See also Chávez, César; Guest Workers; La Raza; Mexican Americans; Minority Rights
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Further Readings
Ferris, Susan, Ricardo Sandoval, and Diana Hembree, eds. 1998. The Fight in the Fields: César Chávez and the Farmworkers Movement. Orlando, FL: Harvest/HBJ Book. Garcia, Richard A. 1993. “Woman, Organizer, Symbol.” California History 72:56–71.
HULL HOUSE SCHOOL OF RACE RELATIONS The Hull House School of Race Relations was a vital exciting world of scholarship and political activism that brought together Black and White Chicago residents from 1892 to 1935. Anchored at Hull House and the University of Chicago, the school embraced men and women of several racial/ethnic groups and various disciplines, many of them articulate and powerful. Together, they developed and espoused a U.S. theory uniting liberal values and a belief in a rational public with a cooperative, nurturing, and liberating model of the self, the other, and the community. The perspective was based on the historical ideas and commitments of abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln. Its proponents believed that education and democracy were significant mechanisms to organize and improve society, especially the relations between Black and White Americans. Among accomplishments of the Hull House School was the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League, along with their notable Chicago branches. The school’s influence, however, extended to other institutions as well, including social settlements, churches, newspapers, journals, and voluntary associations in Chicago. This entry describes the theoretical foundation of the Hull House School and briefly summarizes its key members and main accomplishments.
Epistemology Looking at social behavior and conduct, proponents of the Hull House School argued that race relations could be changed because human behavior was flexible, learned, and capable of social reconstruction. Although they believed in cultural pluralism, they also believed that the individual develops a mind, intelligence, and the ability to take the role of the
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other—abilities that generate a self that learns organized attitudes of the community toward social situations. These attitudes form perspectives emerging from the group and the “generalized other.” People sharing the same neighborhood and community develop shared experience, which proponents saw as the greatest of human goods. The self emerges from others and is not in conflict with others unless it is taught to be in conflict, in this view. According to the Hull House School, the self emerges in a society that is “racialized” or fundamentally divided into ethnic and racial/ethnic groups. As a result, the natural unity of the world is sundered. Proponents held that the modern world was White dominated and defined; thus, Whites controlled public life (especially the legal system and business), the definition of rationality, and the community. The state should provide a good education for children and youth along with minimum housing, health care, and food, proponents said. In their view, Fabian socialism was an ideal format for developing a responsive public and eradicating the color line from all public policy. The Hull House School saw women and African Americans as the primary sources for social change. These groups would become a fulcrum for redefining the larger social situation of the White world, proponents believed. The Hull House School felt that the ability to change society was based on a reflexive understanding of the unity of society. People can act to change public life by using their political commitment to law and the state, combined with their cooperative worldview, to implement the goals of democracy. In other words, people—especially women and African Americans—can take the role of the other as well as the role of the oppressed other, proponents said. Women and African Americans can understand being limited in public rights because they exist behind the “veil” of racial and gender discrimination and are limited both structurally and systematically, albeit in distinct historical and cultural ways. Women and African Americans could be leaders in a “new social consciousness” based on a commitment to end the legacy of slavery, according to the Hull House School. Proponents saw signs of this awakening consciousness in the integration of the objective with the subjective and in the cooperative relations between Whites and Blacks. They saw this new consciousness as being organized through activities involving civil rights, vocational education, pacifism, labor, social science, and women.
According to this perspective, women learn folk wisdom and share a culture based in the myths of African and other oral cultural traditions, and they are responsible for passing along this folk knowledge. Women and African Americans learn to cherish the good in others and in life. Because they do not see the world the same way as White men do, they are well suited to change existing institutions. In the Hull House view, women have the special role of helping to create and distribute food, a consumer role that can be used to change industry. By extending the model of home and family to the larger racial situation, women engage in what the Hull House School called “civic housekeeping.” The Hull House School assigned to African American women a special role arising from their unique cultural heritage reflecting African values, myths, and culture. Seeing their children suffer from racial discrimination, African American women were obliged to speak out against lynching, to organize through women’s clubs, and to preserve a historical legacy. It was thought that African American women had more egalitarian marriages than did women from European ethnic groups. Through being more productive economically and making better choices in the marketplace and the community, women and African Americans could be empowered to reunite the White and Black communities, proponents of the Hull House School believed. New perspectives on race relations, prejudice, and segregation could be developed through the use of rational facts, alternate attitudes, new legislation, new social situations, and changed economics. Proponents saw this happening through the development of working hypotheses that could enter social situations and change them. Some of the specific working hypotheses adopted by the Hull House School were the elimination of lynching, opposition to corruption in the criminal justice system, the demand for equal and qualified education at all levels, and statistical documentation of Jim Crow inequalities. As Hull House School proponents saw it, social inequality for women followed the patterns found in inequalities of class and race. Democracy emerges from equality in politics, economics, and interaction, whereas inequality emerges from a distinct perspective, history, community, and structure of the self. Therefore, social change must articulate and respond to cultural differences. The Hull House School espoused a return to the abolitionist model to generate
Hull House School of Race Relations
a new conscience opposing racial hatred, linking its members to a wider social movement called the “new abolitionism.” Although many people and writings about race relations took sides in the debate between Booker T. Washington, who supported vocational education and acceptance of Jim Crow inequality, and W. E. B. Du Bois, who supported Black colleges and fighting for political and civil rights, supporters of the Hull House School included both of these men and their worldviews. Thus, this third perspective developed by the school—a new conscience against an ancient evil— combined interracial cooperation, refused to choose between Washington and Du Bois, and enacted radical opposition against racism. It has remained largely unknown, misinterpreted, and/or misunderstood in the study of race relations in Chicago or in the nation generally. The Hull House School model of nonviolence emerged from the ideas of William Lloyd Garrison, Leo Tolstoy, and Mahatma Gandhi. It was the intellectual and practical forerunner of many ideas and practices underlying the modern Civil Rights Movement, especially as developed and led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
neglected but important component in U.S. race relations. The founding of the National Urban League and its Chicago branch is recognized as an important step in U.S. race relations, but the work of the Hull House School in this organization has been neglected. The earliest years of both organizations—roughly between 1909 and 1925—are connected directly to the Hull House School.
Members of the Hull House School The roots of the Hull House School can be found in the works of Jane Addams, John Dewey, W. E. B. Du Bois, George Herbert Mead, W. I. Thomas, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jessie Taft, Fannie Barrier Williams, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Other important members were Hull House residents or visitors and/or faculty or students at the University of Chicago between 1892 and 1920. They included Edith Abbott, Emily Greene Balch, Sophonisba Breckinridge, Katherine Bement Davis, Loraine Richardson Green, Elizabeth Ross Haynes, George E. Haynes, Florence Kelley, Frances Kellor, Julia Lathrop, Mary E. MacDowell, Annie Marion MacLean, Anna Garlin Spencer, Marion Talbot, William English Walling, Richard Wright, Jr., and Ella Flagg Young.
The School in Action Members of the Hull House School became founders of the NAACP and its Chicago branch as well as of the Urban League and its Chicago branch. These groups worked for African American rights and opportunities because of their belief in democratic law and basic human rights regarding housing, employment, food, education, and free speech. These two organizations employed many of the concepts developed in the Hull House School. In addition, members organized and promoted voluntary associations that worked to implement these and other working hypotheses also founded by Hull House sociologists such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. They worked in biracial social settlements and African American social settlements as well. Disagreements on working hypotheses were anticipated within the model, and these debates and differences were viewed as signs of its responsiveness, strength, and flexibility. The role of the Hull House School in the founding of the NAACP and its Chicago branch is a seriously
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Mary Jo Deegan See also Chicago School of Race Relations; Civil Rights Movement; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Williams, Fannie Barrier
Further Readings
Addams, Jane. 1910. Twenty Years at Hull-House. New York: Macmillan. Addams, Jane. 1912. A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil. New York: Macmillan. Deegan, Mary Jo. 2002. Race, Hull-House, and the University of Chicago: A New Conscience against Ancient Evil. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Dewey, John. 1899. School and Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903. Souls of Black Folk. Chicago, IL: A. C. McClurg. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1920. Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil. New York: Harcourt Brace. Mead, George H. 1899. “Working Hypotheses for Social Reform.” American Journal of Sociology 5:369–371.
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Mead, George H. 1934. Mind, Self, and Society, introduced and edited by Charles Morris. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Reed, Christopher Robert. 1997. The Chicago NAACP and the Rise of Black Professional Leadership, 1910–1966. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Strickland, Arrarh E. 1966. History of the Chicago Urban League. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Wells-Barnett, Ida B. 1970. Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, edited by Alfreda M. Duster. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Williams, Fannie Barrier. 2002. The New Woman of Color: The Collected Writings of Fannie Barrier Williams, introduced and edited by Mary Jo Deegan. DeKalb: University of Northern Illinois Press.
HUNGARIAN AMERICANS Although never one of the largest ethnic groups in the United States, by the early 20th century, only Budapest could claim to have a larger population of Hungarians than the city of Cleveland, Ohio. Even so, Hungarian Americans did not constitute the largest ethnic majority in the city. While the mines and steel mills of West Virginia and Pennsylvania recruited and attracted the agricultural workers from Hungary who
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An Immigration History Tidal Wave, 1870–1 1920
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made up the largest wave of emigrants, between 1870 and 1920, the industries in Cleveland drew workers to the heart of America. Migrations to other cities from Cleveland occurred by the turn of the 20th century. Hungarians from the mines and mills wandered the United States, continually searching for better pay. The “Hunkies,” as U.S. residents and fellow workers derogatorily knew them, were the most mobile ethnic cohort in the country. Although thousands of Hungarians wandered back and forth across the Atlantic and within the United States, Cleveland remained the existential Hungarian American city; it serves as a model for the Hungarian American experience, according to Julianna Puskás. Other locales, such as the Delray enclave of Detroit, Michigan, and the Birmingham neighborhood in Toledo, Ohio, offer their own local manifestations of Hungarian American ethnicity, having drawn their early settlers from Cleveland. Today, Hungarian American ethnicity combines the remnants of the old ethnic enclaves with an awareness of identity that has reemerged since the 1970s. New and often younger leaders of ethnic associations have emerged to guide and challenge the Hungarian Americans of the 21st century. Hungary was estimated in 2007 to have a population of 10.1 million people. This entry describes their history in the United States and their current situation.
More than 3.5 million immigrants arrived in the United States from Hungary during this period. Mostly economically distressed agricultural workers, they sought work in the mines and factories of an increasingly industrialized United States. The coal mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, as well as the steel mills, claimed the lives of many Hungarians, but they continued to come. Relatives and friends from various villages in Hungary would arrive together, or would follow others, forming links in the chains of migration. Those who arrived during this 50-year period hoped to make enough money, as quickly as possible, so that they could return to Hungary, buy some land, and return to farming. Hungarians tended to migrate back and forth across the Atlantic more than did other immigrants. Single men, or married men who had left their
Hungarian Americans
families behind, lived together in boarding houses (burdos gazda or burdosházak) run by Hungarian women, usually wives or widows of fellow countrymen. The Hungarian immigrants, however, tended to move more readily than others; seeing themselves as temporary workers in the United States, they continually sought better opportunities despite the discrimination they faced nearly everywhere they went. The industries in Cleveland, and by the 1910s the automobile industry in Detroit, drew the Hungarians from the mines and mills of the East. However, Hungarians continued to find employment in New Jersey factories (e.g., textile, rubber, wire, cigar, chemical, paper), and the textile industries especially attracted female workers. Bridgeport, Connecticut, claimed the third-largest Hungarian population in the pre–World War I United States. With its active Hungarian American community, this city played a significant role in laying the foundation for several national organizations. Cleveland claimed more Hungarian Americans than did any other city in the United States by the early 20th century. Two settlements, or ethnic enclaves, developed: the west side, or Lorain Road community, made up of skilled craftsmen from Hungary who lived among German and Czechoslovakian immigrants in the neighborhood; and (b) the more homogeneous ethnic neighborhood on the east side, the Buckeye Road community, composed of former agricultural workers, the Magyars. The National Malleable Casting Company proved to be the biggest draw for the Magyar workers. Once this company expanded to Toledo and Detroit during the late 1800s, it transferred workers to these locales, resulting in the establishment of Hungarian American communities there. In all locales, Hungarian (Magyar) language newspapers, fraternal associations, and churches (Catholic and Protestant) represented the ethnic makeup of the communities despite members’ transient nature. The Treaty of Tria anon (1920) and Itss Effe ects
World War I cut off contact with Hungary. Furthermore, the Treaty of Trianon, resulting in the partition of the homeland, forever changed the future of Hungarian migrants. The country to which they had hoped to return no longer existed. Hungarian minorities now found themselves in newly created nations— Yugoslavia, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Faced with
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postwar inflation, unemployment, and discrimination in Europe, more Hungarians decided to emigrate; those caught in the United States during World War I decided to remain in the country. After 1920, an unprecedented number of Hungarian Americans began to buy homes and settle down in one location. With their Hungarian language newspapers (Szabadság and Amerikai Magyar Népszava) and their associations, they turned to becoming Americans; however, in their neighborhoods, in their religion, and in their cultural outlook, they maintained their Hungarianness through Magyar language maintenance, folkways, and food. Post–W World War II: The Dissplaced Persons and ’5 56-ers
Not only were the second and third generations seeking an identity of their own, often refuting the Hungarianness of their parents and grandparents, but with the arrival of refugees from postwar Europe, an identity crisis of sorts developed for many Hungarian Americans. One Hungarian language newspaper began production of a bilingual version, titled Young Hungarian American, to provide a broader ethnic perspective, at least for the U.S.-born generations. The “displaced persons” who arrived during the post–World War II years did not fit comfortably into the Hungarian American neighborhoods. Coming from a different socioeconomic class from those who had established the ethnic neighborhoods, the “DPs,” as they would be called, tended to avoid the ethnic enclaves. Never quite comfortable in the Hungarian American communities, and never quite welcomed elsewhere, they established their own Hungarian America modeled on a Hungary that had been extinguished in postwar Europe but in a U.S. setting. Hungarian heritage became all important to them, and the Hungarian Scouts in Exile, centered in Garfield, New Jersey, during the 1950s, offered the means by which their remembered Hungarian ways could be passed on to the next generation. The Hungarians who fled after the Revolution of 1956 against the communist regime, the ’56-ers or Freedom Fighters as they would be known, presented a new wrinkle for a coherent Hungarian American identity. Although these refugees would find the established Hungarian American communities to be extremely helpful in offering aid, especially in the form of housing and employment opportunities, the paternalistic
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attitude of such communities and the U.S. government, as well as the youth of most ’56-ers and their familiarity with U.S. culture, caused many of this group of immigrants to merge more easily into the host culture as they often shunned their ethnic heritage. There would, however, be exceptions to the pattern. Perhaps the distinct differences of the welcoming Hungarian American community played a factor. By the 1960s, the decline in Hungarian language newspapers, urban flight, distancing DPs, and disinterested ’56-ers contributed to the decline and dissolution of the Hungarian American neighborhoods. Although a reemergence of interest in ethnic identities appeared during the 1970s, contemporary ethnicity took place outside of the old neighborhoods.
Contemporary Communities Hungarian Americans seemed to never stay in one place. Extremely migratory, particularly when compared with other ethnic groups, their pattern of mobility has changed during recent decades. According to a sampling by Sandor Vegh of records from the centuryold fraternal insurance society, the Hungarian Reformed Federation of America, contemporary Hungarian Americans move at a rate lower than the national average. Although still heavily concentrated in the states of Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, and Michigan, all but the latter two states have lost more Hungarian Americans than they have gained since the 1960s. Florida tends to be a recipient of the largest numbers as retirees move to that state. California continues to attract those in the professional ranks as they move away from the old industrial communities of the East and Midwest. As more and more move out of the old neighborhoods, the traditional ethnic communities are quickly dissolving. There are some neighborhoods that have attempted to maintain a semblance of Hungarian American ethnicity through churches, organizations, and culture clubs, although many of the older generations (pre-’56ers) maintain that locale (the old neighborhood) is the key to being a “real” Hungarian. Manifestations of Hungarianness take on various forms—festivals such as the Betlehemes játék Christmas plays, folkways such as dances and handcrafts, and particularly foodways such as the ritual of sutni saluna (backyard bacon roasting) and kolbaza stuffing in a church basement in Toledo and the making of csiga (rolled) noodles in Detroit. These manifestations, however, are not Hungarian so much as
they are products of Hungarian ways and remembrances shaped by U.S. experiences. Less than 1% of the total population claimed a Hungarian identifier on a recent U.S. Census. However, the establishment of new national organizations and ethnic religious institutions suggests a new and vital interest in ethnic identity. Examples include the Washington, D.C.-based Kossuth House Social Club (in 1997) and Hungarian American Foundation (in 2003); the regionally based Hungarian American Cultural Center (HACC) in Taylor, Michigan, and the Hungarian Reformed Church in Allen Park, Michigan; the local Birmingham (Toledo) Center Cultural Center and Calvin United Church of Christ, where at least one service a week is held in Hungarian, embroidery classes meet, Magyar dancers practice, and kolbaza is handmade once a year. The success of self-proclaimed Hungarian Americans is evident. According to the 2000 U.S. Census records, more Hungarian Americans owned their homes than rented. In addition, their median household and family incomes were, on average, $10,000 to $13,000 higher than those of the general population. Unlike those who came before them, they have moved beyond the discrimination and prejudices that, more often than not, held them to a socioeconomic status barely above that of African Americans during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kay J. Blalock See Appendix A See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Immigration, U.S.; Nativism; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Barden, Thomas E. and John Ahern, eds. 2002. Hungarian American Toledo: Life and Times in Toledo’s Birmingham Neighborhood. Toledo, OH: University of Toledo, Urban Affairs Center. Huseby-Darvas, Éva V. 2002. Hungarians in Michigan. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Papp, Susan M. 1981. Hungarian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland State University Press. Puskás, Julianna. 2000. Ties That Bind, Ties That Divide: 100 Years of Hungarian Experience in the United States, translated by Zora Ludwig. New York: Holmes & Meier. Vardy, Steven Béla. 1985. The Hungarian-Americans. Boston, MA: Twayne.
Hurricane Katrina
Web Sites
Hungarian America Foundation: http://www.hungarianamerica.com
HURRICANE KATRINA Hurricane Katrina, a Category 3 hurricane, made landfall south of Buras in Plaquemides Parish, Louisiana, during the early hours of August 29, 2005. Four days earlier, it had made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane north of Miami, Florida. It affected an area of 108,456 square miles in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. In New Orleans, the levees at the 17th Street Canal, the London Avenue Canal, and the Industrial Canal breached, flooding the city. The social impacts associated with the storm surge and flooding caused by Katrina were truly catastrophic— more than 1,800 dead, thousands injured and missing, close to 700,000 left homeless, approximately
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800,000 displaced throughout the United States, with total damages estimated at $34.4 billion. Particularly noteworthy, and not lost on the international audience watching the media, was the particularly devastating impact this disaster had on the poor and people of color. On August 28, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin ordered the forced evacuation of the city, and more than 1 million people left. However, approximately 150,000 people, most of them poor, minorities, and the elderly, could not leave the city and were the main category of victims caused by the flooding in the city. The general poverty rate in all storm-damaged areas was 20.7% (and approximately 30.0% for children)—much higher than the national average of 12.4%. In affected areas of Louisiana, the poverty rate was 21.4%. The labor force participation for men 25 to 64 years of age was 77% as compared with 82% nationwide; for male youth, it was 55% as compared with 65% nationwide. Particularly vulnerable were disabled elderly minority populations; approximately 48% of all persons age 65
Hurricane Katrina victims. More than 140 evacuees from New Orleans, victims of flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina, fly to Austin, Texas, in a cargo plane (August 2005). There, they were given food, fresh water, and a place to sleep. Hurricane Katrina’s impact on minority populations in many respects coincides with literature established in the social sciences regarding disasters, which suggests several ways that racial, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status shape the experiences of at-risk populations and disaster victims. Source: U.S. Air Force photo by Neil Senkowski.
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years or older living in Katrina-affected areas reported having disabilities. In sum, the population victimized by Katrina had much vulnerability that rendered them less capable of responding to and recovering from the effects of the storm. The challenge produced by Katrina is a matter of national interest not only because of the sheer catastrophic scale of its immediate and short-range effects but also because, like no other previous disaster, it illustrated the failure of the current public administration to manage emergencies and the lingering effect and power of social stratification and cultural practices in increasing the risks of disasters. It also mocked the often-repeated mantra heard after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that the newly created U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had improved the security of the country. Katrina and its aftermath generated a great deal of soul searching. Most of it reflected a technical, tactical approach to the enormous problems that Katrina uncovered rather than a strategic assessment of what needs to change in the society and culture of the United States to mitigate the effects of hazards and to increase the resilience of the institutions of the society.
Post-Katrina Reports and Commissions Four after-action government reports have been published, each with its own set of recommendations and emphases. The White House Report examined how future events of this kind will be handled. It concluded that the current system of homeland security failed to handle catastrophic events appropriately, the unified management of the national response was inadequate, command-and-control in the federal government was defective, there is a need to train organizations in the incident command system, and there was widespread ignorance of the plans and insufficient regional planning and coordination. The House of Representatives Report offered criticisms of the response to Hurricane Katrina, identifying ten major failures in the response. The Senate Report analyzed the response in New Orleans and the problems that need to be corrected in the future. It identified factors that contributed to the failure of the response effort, including that long-term recurrent warnings about New Orleans’s vulnerability to floods were ignored and government officials were unable to act decisively and wisely during the crisis, failing to
provide effective leadership. The Senate report also included a set of basic recommendations, among them to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and replace it with the National Preparedness and Response Authority, to give enhanced powers to the new agency, to enhance regional operations to improve coordination and supervise regional assets, to build a super-operations government center to enhance awareness and management of interagency coordination in disasters, and to encourage renewed commitment to the principles of the emergency management system. The General Accounting Office report, a brief precursor to a longer report still being written in 2007, discussed the future of FEMA, the federal involvement in rebuilding the Gulf Coast region, and the appropriateness of using a risk-management scheme to determine investment allocation in disaster mitigation efforts. Independent agencies, including the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), Oxfam America, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, have also issued reports, focusing on the fate of minorities and the poor in the aftermath of the storm. The NCLR examined the special needs of Latino populations in the Gulf Coast region and the lack of planning for them by FEMA and other governmental organizations involved in response. According to the NCLR, eligibility criteria for FEMA-administered benefits lacked clarity, access to FEMA shelters was not made available to all immigrants, warnings often did not reach many people who did not know the English language, and undocumented immigrants were not given assurances that they would not be apprehended if they asked for help, thereby increasing their suffering and privations. The NCLR report offered cogent criticisms of the way in which the American Red Cross and other voluntary organizations served the Latino populations affected by Katrina. Oxfam America examined the housing reconstruction and recovery of the Gulf Coast and found that poor households were being left out of the disaster recovery efforts. It urged officials to make sure that the tax dollars for reconstruction will reach all people in need, particularly the poorest segments of the communities. It encouraged them to target for special attention low-income homeowners and renters to receive federal funds recently approved by the U.S. Congress for the reconstruction of the region to rebuild, repair, and rehabilitate their homes. It also
Hurricane Katrina
urged officials to facilitate home ownership of poor people victimized by Katrina and to finance mitigation efforts in their building projects. A similar concern with housing discrimination of low-income people was reflected in the report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which focused on the need to provide rental assistance to disaster victims and to help owners repair their properties. It urged restoration of the pre-hurricane supply of federally subsidized housing and suggested that a share of the rebuilt private housing should be made available to poor people.
Impact on Minorities Hurricane Katrina’s impact on minority populations in many respects coincides with knowledge established in the social sciences about disasters. The literature on disasters suggests a number of ways in which race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status shape the experiences of at-risk populations and disaster victims. Ethnic groups within the U.S. population differ from the White majority in their levels of disaster awareness and preparedness as well as in the sources they access to obtain disaster information and what information sources they consider to be credible, this research concludes. Ethnicity has been shown to influence a wide range of behavior in actual disaster situations, including the receipt of disaster warnings, decision making with respect to warning response, emergency evacuation, and postdisaster sheltering patterns. Poverty and ethnicity are typically associated with living in substandard housing and in the types of dwellings that are vulnerable to disaster damage, often resulting in greater rates of disaster-induced homelessness among minority populations than among the White majority. Even though minority communities may well be at greater risk in disaster situations, with some notable exceptions, community-based organizations that serve and represent minority communities are not well linked with community-wide disaster loss reduction and preparedness efforts. Studies also indicate that when disasters strike, minority status can affect both awareness of available services and the ability to receive disaster assistance. There is evidence to suggest that residents of minority communities receive less in the way of disaster assistance and insurance reimbursements following disasters, even for comparable levels of loss and disruption, compared with residents of predominantly White communities.
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Rules associated with formal disaster assistance programs tend to penalize lower income minority group households with extended families as well as families who are forced to “double up” so as to make housing more affordable. Immigration-related concerns may also affect the manner in which minority group members respond following disasters; for example, they may avoid using disaster services due to fear of possible deportation. Examples abound of problems that have developed following disasters because official agencies have failed to take into account patterns of cultural adaptation to disasters such as the tendency for immigrants from Mexico and Central America to prefer to shelter outdoors, rather than in officially designated indoor shelters, following earthquakes. Official shelters set up for disaster victims often provide food that is culturally inappropriate for members of minority communities, and printed information on disaster services might not be available in languages people can understand. Some states, such as California, have moved to make noncitizens ineligible for all but emergency postdisaster aid. Many members of non-English-speaking minorities find it difficult to complete applications for some disaster aid such as the forms required for Small Business Administration disaster loans. Dealing with bureaucratic requirements is even more daunting for those whose first language is not English or who have limited English language skills. In a more general sense, those who are not fully acculturated into U.S. society and who lack various kinds of social and cultural capital often have difficulty in navigating the bureaucratic requirements associated with the receipt of disaster aid, just as they have problems in other areas of service delivery. Despite the aforementioned findings that examine the relationship between race/ethnicity and disaster preparedness and response, it is still the case that the impact of disasters on racial/ethnic minority groups in the United States has been insufficiently examined and that much more needs to be done to establish a more reliable knowledge base and extend it to other questions that have not been studied so far.
Long-Term Strategies Most of what has been written about Hurricane Katrina fails to address strategic long-term questions centered on the structural features of society and how changing them might mitigate the disastrous effects of
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future hazards. The emphasis seems to be on the centralization of power—what government officials and government systems do or fail to do—and not on the efforts of civil society and regional, more localized approaches, and the emphasis seems to be on commandand-control and not on the loosely coordinated and yet very effective efforts of private organizations, volunteers, citizens, and philanthropists who have always been present in response, reconstruction, and recovery in the aftermath of disasters and who are very effective actors in these processes. This is particularly ironic in the case of Katrina, for it has been the loose network of churches and religious communities that have acted quietly, shown effective charity, and brought about worthwhile assistance to the people of the Gulf Coast. Few reports ask what the proper responsibilities of government should be when faced with and are at risk for a catastrophe. Rather, the prevailing weight of culture is to expect the government to solve all problems—a faulty hope in need of correction, as Katrina and other disasters have shown. An area of useful exploration might be how the federal, state, and local governments might assist in the formation of—and help to energize, train, and integrate into the formal emergency management systems of the society— networks of volunteer organizations that would adopt the mitigation and resilience perspective and could help to bring about cultural change to maximize sustainability and the resilience of institutions. Particularly appropriate in light of Katrina is to ask what needs to happen so that African American communities faced with catastrophic risk can self-organize for mutual help, protection, and development. Benigno E. Aguirre See also African Americans; Discrimination; Discrimination in Housing; Health Disparities; Medical Experimentation; Sundown Towns; “Welfare Queen”
Further Readings
Aguirre, Benigno E., Walter A. Anderson, Sam Balandran, Brian E. Peters, and H. Max White. 1991. Saragosa, Texas Tornado May 22, 1987: An Evaluation of the Warning System. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. 2006. Housing Needs of Many Low-Income Hurricane Evacuees Are Not Being
Adequately Addressed. Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Gabe, Thomas, Gene Falk, Maggie McCarty, and Virginia W. Mason. 2005. Hurricane Katrina: Social Demographic Characteristics of the Impacted Areas. Washington, DC: Library of Congress Congressional Research Service. Kent, Joshua. 2006. 2005 Louisiana Hurricane Impact Atlas. Baton Rouge: Louisiana Geographic Information Center. Retrieved from http://lagic.lsu.edu/hurricanes.htm Muniz, Brenda. 2006. In the Eyes of the Storm: How the Government and Private Response to Hurricane Katrina Failed Latinos. Washington, DC: National Council of La Raza. Oxfam America. 2006. Recovering States? The Gulf Coast Six Months after the Storms. Washington, DC: Oxfam America. Peacock, Walter Gillis, Betty Hearn Morrow, and Hugh Gladwin, eds. 1997. Hurricane Andrew: Ethnicity, Gender, and the Sociology of Disasters. London: Routledge. Phillips, Brenda D., Lisa Garza, and David M. Neal. 1994. “Intergroup Relations in Disasters: Service Delivery Barriers after Hurricane Andrew.” Journal of Intergroup Relations 21:18–27. U.S. Department of Transportation. 2006. Report to Congress on Catastrophic Hurricane Evacuation Plan Evaluation. Retrieved from http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/ hurricanevacuation
HUTTERITES The Hutterites of North America are the oldest successful communal group on the continent. Started in 1528 in Europe, the community continues to thrive today, with a distinctive language, dress, and social practices, including a rejection of private property. This entry describes the history and current situation of one of the more colorful ethnic groups in the United States and Canada.
European Roots The Hutterite story began in 1525 in Switzerland during the Protestant Reformation when a group of radical reformers called for a cleaner break from Catholic traditions. They refused to baptize their babies, raised questions about the mass, scorned the use of images, and criticized the morality of church officials. Known as
Hutterites
Anabaptists (meaning rebaptizers), these radical reformers argued that only adults who had made a voluntary decision to become Christians should be baptized. Convinced that “true” Christians must reject private property, the Hutterites formed in 1528 as a distinct Anabaptist group. Faced with bitter persecution, torture, and execution, they fled to safe havens in Moravia in present-day Austria. Jacob Hutter, an Anabaptist pastor from whom the Hutterites took their name, advocated sharing material goods as described in the Bible. The early years of Hutterite history were filled with frequent migration and persecution. Many members faced cruel means of torture—beheading, burning, branding, drowning, and starvation in dungeons. Against incredible odds, the Hutterites survived. In 1770 they moved to Russia, and during the 1870s they immigrated to the United States.
New World Communities The Hutterites have enjoyed remarkable growth since they arrived in the United States during the 1870s. The original immigrants have multiplied to more than 460 colonies. Persecuted for being conscientious objectors during World War I, many Hutterites moved to Canada. Currently, approximately three-fourths of the colonies are found in several Canadian provinces; the others live primarily in South Dakota and Montana. Hutterite adults and children in both countries number more than 45,000. They are organized into four subgroups: Dariusleut, Lehrerleut, and two groups of Schmiedeleut. The four branches share many common beliefs, but they have separate leaders and function as independent groups. Members of the three leuts rarely intermarry. Although there is much diversity within each group, the Lehrerleut tend to be the most traditional. The Schmiedeleut, on the other hand, are the most progressive in their use of technology and interaction with the outside world. Hutterites live in large agricultural colonies segregated from the larger society. Colony buildings, clustered like a small village on several thousand acres of land, are often hidden from major highways. A typical colony will have approximately ninety adults and children. Rural settings insulate colonists somewhat from the outside world, leading one Hutterite to conclude, “We have our own little country.” Although
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outside salespeople and suppliers visit colonies regularly, they are physically cloistered from the outside world. Their agricultural and business operations are linked to the economy of the region, but residential segregation insulates colonists from daily interaction with outsiders. Nearby colonies often help each other with special projects that require extra labor, and they join together for weddings and funerals, but the world of the local colony is the world of the typical Hutterite. Without access to television and other mass media, life revolves around the cares of fewer than a hundred kindred souls. The colony lives as an extended family—eating meals together in a common dining hall and sharing laundry facilities. Each family has an apartment with a coffee area, living room, bathroom, and bedrooms. Long barrack-like houses with several apartments, the common dining hall, and the church building provide the main living facilities. The average family has five or six children. Hutterites speak an Austrian dialect called Hutterisch. They use an archaic form of High German in sermons and other religious writings; however, young people learn English in schools in the colony that are typically operated by local public school districts. Their dialect is peppered with many words from the countries of their European sojourn. The dialect enables them to converse directly, as it were, with their religious ancestors, who are much closer to them in spirit than are their English neighbors. Language, a key component of their ethnicity, marks the boundaries between sacred and secular and between pious and profane.
Life in the Colony Hutterite culture emphasizes three core values: sharing material goods, surrendering self-will for communal well-being, and maintaining social separation from the outside world. Communal property, the hallmark of Hutterite culture, distinguishes Hutterites from other Anabaptist groups such as the Mennonites and the Amish. For the Hutterites, private property symbolizes selfishness and greed, which they believe breed many other evils. Communal Pro operty y
Sharing material goods, in Hutterite eyes, is the highest form of Christian love. They seek to follow
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the example of the early church described in the Book of Acts, where members of the church reportedly had all things in common. At baptism, members relinquish any claim to colony property. Those who abandon colony life may take only the clothes they are wearing and a few personal items as they embark into the larger world. Apart from a few personal items—clothes, knickknacks, dishes, books, and the like—individual Hutterites do not own private property. Everyone works without pay. Some colonies provide a monthly allowance of $5 to $10 for personal effects, but others do not. In some colonies, parents receive $20 for each child to buy Christmas gifts. Individuals receive an allotment of clothing from the colony manager roughly once per year. A family may have a few personal belongings as well as some furniture, but the larger household items are owned by the colony. The colony is a legal corporation that buys and sells products, often in large quantities, on the public market and with other colonies. The corporation pays taxes and owns the title to land and equipment. Colonies are somewhat self-sufficient with their own gardens, orchards, poultry, and cattle as well as their own shoemakers, tailors, and electricians. Nevertheless, many supplies and equipment are purchased from outside distributors. Bartering of furniture, toys, vegetables, clothing, and antiques sometimes occurs within colonies, between colonies, and between colonists and outsiders. Mod dern n Ways
Although they reject many worldly values, Hutterites have no scruples about tapping worldly technology to boost farm productivity. Colony-owned trucks and vans haul supplies, products, and people. Huge tractors pull a full array of modern equipment across the vast stretches of colony land. Colonies vary in their mix of agricultural enterprises, but a typical colony might have 1,000 hogs and 50,000 turkeys and might farm some 5,000 to 10,000 acres of land. A growing number of colonies operate flourishing businesses as well. During recent years, some colonies have established sizable industries related to wood, metal, stainless steel, feed, and other manufacturing operations that sell products outside of the colony. Computers track management records and control equipment for farming and business operations. Each
colony also has large shops that specialize in woodworking, plumbing, electrical, and mechanical expertise to support the colony operations. New buildings are constructed, equipped, and repaired by colony members. Most colony kitchens are fully automated with electric ovens, mixers, and freezers. Although tradition dictates many religious and social norms, modern technology is widely embraced for farming and household operations. Rema aining Apart
Hutterite conflicts with civil authorities from the 20th century onward have flared up over land use, taxes, education, military service, and social security. The discord is often fueled by the rapid growth of Hutterite colonies. When new colonies form, they frequently disturb surrounding rural communities. Several colonies, each with several thousand acres of land, can have a dramatic impact on land prices, school systems, and local consumer markets. Thus, Hutterites sometimes face protests from citizen groups and business organizations when they prepare to plant new colonies. The Hutterite strategy for separation is rather simple—establish colonies in isolated rural areas beyond the reach of urban vices. By controlling the use of vehicles and monitoring who enters and leaves the colony, Hutterites are able to regulate interaction with outsiders. Members traveling outside a colony are often accompanied by another member, providing a mobile system of social control. Non-Hutterites often visit colonies to conduct business, and some Hutterite leaders participate in agricultural organizations. Separation from the world is also maintained with taboos on television and other forms of mass media. Despite the traditional taboos, some progressive colonies have televisions in their schools to watch educational videos and broadcasts. Colonists often read farm magazines or newspapers, but the average member does not read national news magazines, at least not on a regular basis. Entertainment outside the colony is forbidden. By regulating exposure to outside media, the colony limits contact with outsiders and filters contaminating influences. Hutterites believe that easy access to ungodly values would undermine their entire way of life. They do tap the services of outside professionals, veterinarians, medical doctors, dentists, lawyers, bankers, and accountants. Most babies, for
Hutterites
example, are born in hospitals. Nevertheless, in all of these contacts, Hutterites are cautious not to interact too closely with the outside world. The Hutterite “experiment” has endured for nearly 500 years. Hutterites’ strong ethnicity, social control, and social isolation have enabled them to resist assimilation into mainstream society and the acculturation of individualistic values. But in their eyes, communalism is not just an interesting social experiment; it is a sincere attempt to practice Christian teachings that lead to eternal life. Donald Kraybill See also Amish; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Mennonites; Religion, Minority; Schmiedeleut
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Further Readings
Hostetler, John A. 1997. Hutterite Society. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hutterian Brethren, trans. 1987–1998. Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren (Vols. 1–2). Rifton, NY: Plough. Kraybill, Donald B. and Carl Desportes Bowman. 2001. On the Backroad to Heaven: Old Order Hutterites, Mennonites, Amish, and Brethren. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kraybill, Donald B. and C. Nelson Hostetter. 2001. Anabaptist World USA. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press. Packull, Werner O. 1995. Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
I significant volcanic eruption in Northern Iceland in 1874, Icelandic fisherman and farmers from small communities scattered along the Icelandic coast were tempted to emigrate. Like all Icelanders, they were literate people who cherished their mother tongue, so they wished to settle near one another in the New World. Advance teams scouted potential areas in Canada (Nova Scotia and Kinmount, Ontario) and the northern extreme of the midwestern United States (Milwaukee and Washington Island, Wisconsin), where several dozen Icelandic families settled.
ICELANDIC AMERICANS Iceland, a country with an estimated population of .3 million people in 2007, is one of the world’s largest islands and the least densely populated nation in Europe, thanks partly to its historic isolation and its rather inhospitable volcanic and glacial interior. Emigration from Iceland to North America has also significantly contributed to this characteristic. The latest available U.S. Census Bureau statistics list slightly more than 75,000 people who identify themselves as Icelandic in all of North America (United States and Canada combined), but this is not one homogenous group. Rather, Icelandic Americans arrived here in three distinct waves: The first took place between 1870 and 1890, the second between 1950 and 1970, and a third is currently taking place. Distinguishing between these three phases better illustrates the current configuration of the loose Icelandic American ethnic identity. But despite their differences, and despite the ease with which Icelanders have assimilated into the dominant White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) ethnicity (as Scandinavians and Lutherans), members of each immigrant wave have maintained links to their Icelandic heritage. This entry recounts the immigration history of Icelandic Americans and describes the current community.
Greenland
Greenland Sea
Jan Mayen
Iceland Faroe Is.
Ireland
Atlantic Ocean
United Kingdom
France
1870s to 1890s Emigration Portugal
The first emigration of Icelanders took place in the 1870s and continued into the 1890s. Faced with a series of particularly cold winters, and spurred by a
Spain
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“N New Iceland” Canada
In 1875, negotiations with the Canadian government secured land along an 80-kilometer stretch of Lake Winnipeg for an Icelandic colony, dubbed “New Iceland.” This became the destination of choice for Icelandic immigrants, including 1,200 who came to Canada in 1876. Because the Canadian government was eager for European settlers in the newly opened Manitoba province, Icelanders were granted exclusive homesteading rights and a separate constitution. Most Icelanders who had settled elsewhere in Canada and the United States relocated here during that period. These immigrants were primarily fishermen and livestock farmers, with limited experience growing grains or other produce, and they faced considerable hardships in New Iceland. The fishing conditions on Lake Winnipeg were quite different from ocean fishing in the North Atlantic, and locust plights and smallpox outbreaks caused significant loss of life. Nevertheless, the community held on, eventually numbering 1,500. In 1886, a newspaper was founded that is still in print under the title Logberg-Heimskringla. Several churches were established, and Icelandic was spoken by most residents until the 1950s. Although New Iceland eventually integrated into the Manitoba provincial jurisdiction, the towns in Manitoba bearing Icelandic names, such as the former capitol Gimli, demonstrate a distinct Icelandic identity through festivals celebrating Icelandic history, businesses with Icelandic names, a senior center catering to Icelandic speakers, and statues and other landmarks referencing Icelandic heritage. Winnipeg also has a sizable Icelandic population, and the University of Manitoba has the only Icelandic Department in North America. In the 2001 Canadian census, more than 26,000 Manitobans self-identified as Icelandic. Pembin na County, North Dakota
During the early rough years of the New Iceland colony, some Icelanders decided to seek better prospects in the United States. There were already a few Icelanders in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but an enthusiastic younger pastor encouraged his followers to immigrate to the northeastern corner of North Dakota. The towns of Mountain, Beaulieu, Akra, Cavalier, Thingvalla, Gardar, and Park in what is now Pembina County all had Icelandic founding families, and their descendents today number about 3,000. This does not include numerous descendants who
integrated into the existing large Norwegian community, mostly through intermarriage. Today, the Icelandic community in this area has its own church, where guest pastors occasionally still preach in Icelandic, and they have an annual “Icelandic Celebration” in August. From the settlements in Manitoba and North Dakota, later generations spread further west, establishing small communities in Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Utah, and Washington. Though geographically dispersed, the descendants of the 1870–1890 immigrants share familial connections that foster a real sense of an Icelandic American community stretching across the U.S.–Canadian border. The Icelandic National League of North America, which has a large annual meeting, works especially hard to give this disparate group a sense of cohesion. Web sites advertising annual events, such as Icelandic Days in Gimli, also encourage extended families to gather, keeping the connection to Iceland alive.
1950s to 1970s Immigration Later immigrants to North American had a significantly different reason for leaving and a significantly different experience. In 1950, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) base was established in Iceland (which lacks its own military), staffed by the U.S. Navy. Along with this strategic relationship came new business, social, educational, and cultural links between the United States and Iceland. Some immigration to the United States occurred when Icelandic businesspeople and their families moved here to take advantage of this new relationship. Emigration also resulted, quite naturally, from the presence of many young U.S. service members in Iceland, some of whom took home Icelandic wives. Between 1950 and 1970, more than 2,000 of these so-called cold war brides immigrated to the United States, settled permanently in various areas, had families, and took on U.S. citizenship. But they did not simply abandon their links to Iceland: Some taught their children Icelandic, and others frequently took their children to visit extended family in Iceland. They also formed social clubs with one another in urban areas such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, Kansas City, Boston, and Seattle, organizing events on Icelandic Independence Day (June 17th), at Christmas, and in February (to observe an Old Icelandic festival called Thorablot). Because the members of these associations have a more immediate
Identity Politics
link to Iceland, their sense of their Icelandic identity is noticeably distinct from that of the descendants of the 1870–1890 immigrants.
Present Day Since the 1990s, Iceland has enjoyed considerable economic prosperity. This has led fewer families to emigrate, but it has also meant that better educated and more affluent young people are eager to explore other opportunities, because Iceland has limited postsecondary educational facilities. Presently, there are more than 3,000 Icelandic nationals in the United States, many of whom are students or former students who have remained after finding suitable jobs in the United States. This last wave has its own reason for being in the United States, the closest link to Iceland, and a rather ad-hoc social network. But they do sometimes join existing Icelandic associations, giving these clubs new vibrancy. Icelandic Americans are an interesting ethnicity in that there are few external forces contributing to their sense of identity. Lacking “visible” ethnic identity markers (they descend from blue-eyed, blond-haired Vikings) or a distinguishing religious affiliation (Iceland is a Protestant country), Icelandic immigrants have faced few prejudices. Their language has been preserved only in the most concentrated settlement in Manitoba and is dying out with the younger generation. Icelandic naming conventions, which are unusual (Icelanders do not have family names) and hard for English speakers to pronounce, were usually simplified by immigrants upon arrival in North America. Despite this ease of assimilation, Icelandic Americans work to maintain a sense of their Icelandic heritage. Various associations, social clubs, publications, and annual celebrations have all done their part to create a feeling of community—if not necessarily a strong ethnic identity—among the dispersed and disparate populations that constitute Icelandic Americans. The Icelandic government also actively and financially supports the maintenance of this identity. An oft-repeated phrase in Iceland is that there are as many people of Icelandic descent living in North America as in Iceland, a sentiment not entirely supported by the statistics (Iceland’s present population is almost 300,000). However, the census figure of 75,000 Icelanders in North America probably does not reflect the total Icelandic genetic heritage because third- or fourth-generation descendants may no longer
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self-identify as Icelandic. Guðjon Arngrimsson estimated in his study of the first wave of Icelandic immigration that its descendant population, broadly defined, would number at least 200,000 people. No matter what the exact figures are, in a nation as small and interconnected as Iceland, each emigrant is keenly felt as a loss. The Icelandic government therefore sponsors efforts such as the Snorri Program, which provides grants for descendants to come learn Icelandic, as a way to maintain links with this extended population. Icelandic companies (especially Icelandair) cater to all of these groups as a single market, one interested in its Icelandic heritage, thus contributing to a sense of a shared identity. So although each of these three groups has different historical circumstances that brought them to North America and their own internal social networks, all have reason to think of Iceland as their homeland. Elisabeth I. Ward See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Canada; Immigrant Communities
Further Readings
Arngrimsson, Guðjon. 1997. Nyja Island: Saga of the Journey to New Iceland. Translated by Robert Christie. Winnipeg, ON, CA: Turnstone Press. (Originally published Reykjavik: Mal og Menning, 1997).
IDENTITY POLITICS Identity politics—sometimes referred to as the politics of recognition—represents both a practical politics and an analytical tool. As a practical politics, identity politics is associated with the emergence of the varied selfconscious counter-hegemonic social movements arising since the 1960s in particular—for example, the women’s movement, and the Black Civil Rights Movement. Thus, it can be understood to refer to interactions in which individuals relate to others with reference to the group membership of the actors concerned. As an analytical tool or theoretical construct, identity politics is intended to provide a framework for critical analyses that foreground the histories and patterns of oppression experienced by minority groups. Hence, the experiential and theoretical become linked: Activism oriented around recognition and valuation of
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long stigmatized and disadvantaged collectives both inform and are informed by a concomitant discourse on injustice. In both respects, the notion of identity politics has also become a particularly volatile point of debate within the scholarship on difference. This entry examines identity politics and several critiques of these movements and perspectives.
Shifting U.S. Identities The counter-hegemonic movements that have emerged in celebration of diverse identities since the 1960s challenged the traditional primacy and privilege of Whiteness and of masculinist heterosexuality. The “national identity” has undergone dramatic change during the past 2 decades. Immigration patterns have reshaped the demographics of the United States, so that by 2050, it is estimated that Whites will represent a mathematical minority of the population. With numerical strength has come political expression. Beginning with the Black and Native American civil rights movements of the 1960s, racial and ethnic minority groups, as well as women and sexualized minority groups, have mobilized, demanding a place and a voice that represents their identity. They are “in America’s face.” The United States is now in the midst of a cultural shift as identity politics challenges the historical correlation of American-ness with Whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality. What these movements have shared has been a commitment to the equal valuation and treatment of all social groups. Minority groups and women have asserted claims to freedom from discrimination, to group autonomy, to inclusion, and to participation, that is, to the status of American. Such an approach challenged long-standing and deeply embedded ideologies and practices that consciously sought to devalue “otherness”—Jim Crow laws, job segregation, and sodomy legislation, for example. Actors assert the claim to inclusion and recognition in the broader society on the basis of these stigmatized identities, but explicitly as “different” rather than as “same.” The experiences of these increasingly vocal counter-hegemonic movements have inspired a corresponding scholarship on the politics of identity that similarly privileges identities grounded in difference. Theoretically, those engaged in a politics of difference challenge the principles of liberal democracy that reify the equal universal citizen. Such long-standing doctrines are said to deny and occlude the reality of
exclusion and oppression experienced by those who are not represented by the fictional citizen: Those who are not White, heterosexual, Christian males. Those lying outside these rigid boundaries—by virtue of their group membership—have limited and uneven access to power and resources on all levels of society. Yet the object of mobilization should not be to gain an “equal” footing, according to the counter-hegemonic viewpoint; this leads only to assimilation and the loss of discrete identities. On the contrary, emancipatory politics, from this perspective, must concern itself with the recognition and celebration of difference.
A Range of Critiques Both the politics and philosophy of identity have come under fire. Ironically, both the left and the right are critical of identity politics for their potential, if not actualized tendency, to lead to balkanization. Arthur Schlesinger has been among the most vocal in his resistance to what he refers to as the “cult of ethnicity.” He claims that the politics of identity “exaggerates differences, intensifies resentments and antagonisms, drives ever deeper the awful wedges between races and nationalities.” Nancy Fraser lays the blame for such devastating ethnic conflicts as the Rwandan genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans squarely at the feet of identity politics. Writing specifically of hate crime, James Jacobs and Kimberly Potter contend that “legislating hate” reinforces the tendency of people to think of themselves as members of affected identity groups, which subsequently contributes to the balkanization of U.S. society, rather than its unification. Martha Minow succinctly identifies three further interrelated limitations of identity politics. First among these is the tendency toward essentializing identity. This refers to the common tendency to reduce individuals simply to members of a single identifiable group. As such, they are presumed to represent “the group.” Critics respond that although individuals within a group may share some traits, they will certainly differ on others. Are all Black people representative of “the group?” All Muslims? All women? Surely not, argue the critics. Such a view of identity is monolithic and carries on as if all individual members of a group had the same perceptions, experiences, and interests. In a related vein, identity politics is often criticized for its failure to account for the intersectionalities that characterize identity. Each individual occupies multiple identity positions, which may be more or less
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salient depending on context. Moreover, these positions may reinforce or contradict one another. A woman who is also White is privileged by virtue of the latter, but relatively disadvantaged by the former. Each person occupies a racial, a gender, a religious, and a sexual place, among others. Each of these heuristically distinct aspects of identity is shaped by its intersections at the point of contact with the others. Images and expected gender roles, for example, are conditioned by race. Kimberle Crenshaw highlights the significance of intersectionality in her analysis of violence against women of color. In this context, Black women and White women experience male violence differently. Similarly, Black women and Black men understand the dynamics of male violence against women in distinct ways. Minow finally draws attention to the fluidity of the “boundaries” that define identity—both cross-culturally and temporally. Who gets to define group inclusion? Blood quantum laws defining tribal membership of Native Americans may have little in common with who self-identifies as Native American, or with what tribe they associate. Moreover, definitions of race, gender, sexuality, and other related categories shift over time. There was a time when the Irish, the Italians, and the Polish, for example, were not considered White. Today, their “belongingness” goes without question. “Identity” is unstable. It is subject to ongoing challenges and redefinition—sometimes by subordinate groups, sometimes by dominant groups. Consequently, to tie a philosophy or practice of politics to the complex notion of identity is akin to walking on shifting sand. Another set of critiques comes from what might be seen as traditional Marxist approaches. These take identity politics to task for the overreliance on the cultural rather than material roots of oppression. The claim, from this perspective, is that an emphasis on representation, recognition, and cultural worth distracts attention from the structural roots of these phenomena. In short, these critics argue, a politics that seeks only to alter the misrepresentations and cultural value of diverse groups will fail to eliminate the roots of oppression because such efforts have no effect on the structural and institutional dimensions of injustice. The forgoing criticisms not withstanding, identity politics has been a vital driving force behind progressive social change during the last half century. There can be no denying that the self-conscious social movements of the late 20th century have had a profound impact on popular imagery, on the nature of
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democratic practice, and on the (re)distribution of resources. Yet, as Fraser reminds us, alongside the emancipatory potential of identity politics, we have also witnessed the ways in which it can contribute to provocative divisions across racial, ethnic, and religious lines. What is needed, then, is not the wholesale rejection of the logic of identity politics but, rather, a way of connecting—through coalitions, for example— reified social identities to one another based on parallel histories and experiences. Barbara Perry See also Civil Rights Movement; Cosmopolitanism; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Minority/Majority; Minority Rights; Multicultural Social Movements; People of Color; Racial Identity; Racialization
Further Readings
Crenshaw, Kimberle. 1991. Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review 43(July):1241–1299. Fraser, Nancy. 2003. “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics” In Redistribution or Recognition? A PoliticalPhilosophical Exchange, edited by N. Fraser and A. Honneth. New York: Verso. Jacobs, James and Kimberly Potter. 1998. Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Lipsitz, George. 1998. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Minow, Martha. 1997. Not Only for Myself: Identity, Politics and the Law. New York: New Press. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1992. The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. New York: Norton. Taylor, Charles. 1992. Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION REFORM AND IMMIGRANT RESPONSIBILITY ACT OF 1996 President Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) on September 30, 1996, while expressing concern
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about its more draconian provisions. This act contained five major sections: (1) improvements to border control, facilitation of legal entry, and interior enforcement; (2) enhanced enforcement and penalties against alien smuggling and document fraud; (3) inspection, apprehension, detention, adjudication, and removal of inadmissible and deportable aliens; (4) enforcement of restrictions against employment; and (5) restrictions on benefits for aliens. The act continued a tradition of strengthening enforcement, particularly at the U.S.–Mexico border. Four elements of the bill had a particularly negative impact on new immigrants or political asylum applicants. First, the classification of “aggravated felonies,” for which a permanent resident alien could be deported, was expanded and made retroactive with only limited options for relief. Second, the process of deportation became one of “removal” in which undocumented immigrants apprehended near ports of entry lost due process rights, including judicial consideration of an appeal. Third, refugees were no longer to be voluntarily released pending a return court date. Instead, most were to be detained. Fourth, access to welfare benefits and certain social services for legal permanent aliens were withdrawn in conjunction with the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. The IIRIRA also specified that sponsors of aliens coming to the United States had to guarantee support. All these measures were passed by a Congress dealing with a negative public reaction to new immigrants, particularly the stereotypical idea that immigrants come to the United States to receive welfare benefits, and negative opinion about allowing individuals who entered without documents to stay in the United States. These elements are reviewed in more detail in this entry.
Aggravated Felonies as Grounds for Removal An aggravated felony is a crime classified as of sufficient severity to warrant deportation of a noncitizen. IIRIRA is the most recent in a series of legislative acts aimed at deporting criminal aliens. Aggravated felonies were first designated in the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which included murder, drug trafficking, and firearms trafficking as grounds for removal. Next, the Immigration Act of 1990 specified that violent crimes resulting in sentences of more than 5 years were aggravated felonies. After the first attack on the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City bombing, the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) was passed in 1996, 5 months before the IIRIRA. The AEDPA expanded existing aggravated felonies to include gambling, transport for purpose of prostitution, alien smuggling, and passport or other document fraud. It created the aggravated felony designation for obstructing justice, perjury, bribery, commercial bribery, forgery, counterfeiting, and vehicle trafficking convictions with sentences of 5 years or more. The IIRIRA was passed in this climate of crackdowns on criminal aliens and the beginning of more stringent efforts to stop terrorism. IIRIRA significantly expanded the definition of aggravated felonies for which an immigrant could be deported. Fifty new categories of crime, including shoplifting and driving while intoxicated, were added to prior aggravated felonies. Any noncitizens, including permanent resident aliens, were made subject to collateral penalties that affect immigration status. These penalties include removal from the United States and a lifetime ban on having legal status to be in the United States. An immigrant convicted of an aggravated felony is unable to plead on the basis of good moral character or any basis for cancellation of deportation. This collateral penalty has had a major impact on noncitizens because it was applied retroactively. In other words, an immigrant could have committed a crime many years ago and served time for it; if the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit became aware of this record, the immigrant could still be deported. In fact, thousands of immigrants have been designated as “criminal aliens” and deported because of a previously committed aggravated felony or on being released from prison after having served time for such an offense. In legal tests of this legislation, individuals have asked that prior convictions be vacated and that they be retried because they were not legally advised that deportation would be a consequence of their guilty pleas. As a result, some individuals have been permitted to stay in the United States. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court, in INS v. St. Cyr, ruled that permanent resident aliens who pleaded guilty to crimes before IIRIRA do not have to be automatically deported and can undertake judicial review under prior exemptions.
Denial of Access to Judicial Review The second major IIRIRA change was the creation of a process called “expedited removal” in place of traditional deportation procedures. This eliminated access
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to a lawyer and judicial review for most undocumented entry cases. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS, the predecessor of ICE) was given the authority to detain and then deport individuals without a court procedure. This has a strong impact on undocumented immigrants because it also specified that individuals could be barred from entering the country for as long as 10 years depending on the amount of time they were present in the United States. There are two exceptions to removal. First, refugees applying for asylum are permitted to have an interview to determine a credible fear of persecution. If an asylum officer does not find in favor of the refugees, they are to be deported unless they appeal their case, which requires a judicial review. Second, cancellation of removal requires being present for 10 years or more, evidence of good moral character, not having been convicted of a serious crime, and evidence of extreme hardship for a citizen or permanent resident spouse, parent, or child. This is limited to 4,000 cases per year. Except for refugees, limits were placed on judicial review to the effect that individuals could not appeal INS or lower court decisions. At the time the IIRIRA was passed, it applied to individuals apprehended at ports of entry such as the U.S.– Mexico border. As a result, most individuals convicted of aggravated felonies and undocumented entrants who did not make it into the U.S. interior were denied the recourse to due process of law that is granted to citizens.
Refugee Detention International law specifies that applicants for political asylum and refugees should be released into the general population before appearing for a court hearing. Because many applicants were not presenting themselves for a court hearing, IIRIRA significantly changed the asylum process. Refugees were to be detained and then removed if they could not make a case for credible fear of persecution. Detained asylumseekers who are deemed deportable can ask for judicial review of their cases. One significant problem is that asylum-seekers have been sent to overcrowded INS detention centers or jails and prisons without any certainty of when their case will be tried. Once in detention, they are treated the same as prisoners, including uniforms, shackling, disciplinary use of isolation, and verbal and physical abuse. Some individuals have been in detention for years because they have been denied asylum, and they can only appeal once a year.
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Since September 11, 2001, ICE has been uniformly detaining all asylum-seekers and basically treating them as criminals. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 10(1) specifies that detainees should be treated with dignity. The system of federal detention and the actual jails and prisons in which asylees are kept do not meet this criterion.
Provision of Support The fourth major change in IIRIRA concerned the provision for public benefits and for providing affidavits of support for admitting immigrants to ensure that they would not become public charges. Both the IIRIRA and the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 were combined to exclude noncitizens from receiving public benefits such as food stamps and Supplemental Security Income. The IIRIRA specifically applied to new entrants, who require an affidavit of support from an individual who agrees to be responsible for financially supporting them. The change specifies that a sponsor must support an alien at 125% of poverty level income and that the alien must not receive means-tested public benefits or the sponsor or the individual sponsor could be sued. In addition, sponsorship is restricted to U.S. citizens or permanent resident aliens residing in the United States. Sponsors are required to support immigrants until they have naturalized or been employed for at least 10 years in a job providing social security payments. Following the passage of IIRIRA, steps have been taken to restore federal benefits to permanent resident aliens. Judith Ann Warner See Appendix A See also Asylum; Crime and Race; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Naturalization Service; PATRIOT Act of 2001; Refugees; Welfare Reform
Further Readings
Dow, Mark. 2004. American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons. Berkeley: University of California Press. McDermid, Lea. 2001. “Deportation Is Different: NonCitizens and Ineffective Assistance of Counsel.” California Law Review 89:741–778. U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. 1997. Impact of Federal Welfare Reform on Immigrants. Final Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
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Welch, Michael. 2001. Detained: Immigration Laws and the Expanding I.N.S. Jail Complex. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, Welch, Michael. 2003. “Ironies of Social Control and the Criminalization of Immigrants.” Crime, Law and Social Change 39:319–337.
immigrant communities are discussed, including (a) their indicators and composition; (b) their roles, responsibilities, and functions; (c) reasons why some fear strong immigrant communities; and (d) the impact of declining or resilient communities.
The Nature of U.S. Immigration
IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES The policies, practices, performances, possibilities, and prejudices related to U.S. immigration have been and continue to be some of the most hotly contested issues within the public sphere. Indeed, the implications of immigration for community life in the United States have been discussed and debated since the beginning of this democracy. Leaders such as Benjamin Franklin considered the costs and benefits of immigration for colonial communities, noting a particular concern about the ability of immigrants to assimilate into public life. To this day, the influx of immigrants into the United States continues to challenge and enrich traditional notions of the U.S. society as a “melting pot” of many ethnic subcommunities. Consequently, many have questioned the figurative fit of this metaphor, preferring instead to imagine the movements of immigrant communities in terms of tributaries that eventually meet to form a single larger body or a tapestry in which the single threads that represent individual communities remain distinct as they combine to create the larger fabric of society. Many scholars have argued that the late 20th century is a moment of great historical significance for immigration to the United States. During the last 35 years, the number of immigrants to this country has more than tripled. More important, contemporary immigration largely originates from developing countries. These new immigrants bring with them a host of cultural and social practices largely unfamiliar to people in mainstream Western culture. Modern immigrants often work hard to maintain connections, both literal and symbolic, to their countries of origin, modifying traditional notions of assimilation and enculturation. In short, this recent wave of immigration is changing the composition of U.S. communities and raising new issues related to social and racial intolerance, patterns of community integration, and civic participation. This entry begins by considering the current nature of U.S. immigration and the fundamental nature of community. Issues specifically related to
Anxiety regarding immigration into the United States has increased in recent years. Today, there are more than 130 million migrants worldwide, and the foreignborn population in United States has increased to approximately 30 million. As in previous historical moments, today’s immigrants often face ambivalence and acrimony from the broader mainstream society. This situation is further complicated because, as a result of the 1965 immigration act, the countries from which people are migrating to the United States are generally less economically advanced. This has led to the mistaken perception among many U.S. citizens that the immigrants themselves are generally poor and uneducated. In reality, this is often not the case. Many immigrants come with advanced degrees and professional skills and are able to find opportunities that will lead them to successfully negotiate mainstream culture. Immigrants and their families leave their countries of origin for the United States for a wide variety of reasons. In addition to immigrants who seek educational, entrepreneurial, and professional gains, there are labor migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Many are motivated to consider leaving their countries of origin because liberalized provisions allow them to immigrate. Others do so to close gaps between actual and expected socioeconomic status. In other cases, desperate poverty and unemployment motivate immigrants. Most often, individuals immigrate for a combination of reasons. For most, the potential benefits of immigrating to the United States are enticing. However, the process of immigration is often stressful and may have high emotional as well as economic costs. For example, the process frequently destabilizes family life. Data from the Harvard Immigration Project suggest the immigrant journeys are a multiphase process, resulting in intricate patterns of family fragmentation and reunification. Children often are left behind or sent ahead and expected to live in the care of relatives. In many cases, considerable time may pass before families are reassembled. This also tends to undermine parental authority and family cohesion. A common
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fear expressed by immigrant parents is that they will lose their children to the new culture. Previously, acculturation or assimilation was assumed to have overwhelmingly positive consequences for immigrants’ economic progress and psychological well-being. Acculturation, the first step of the adaptation process, is defined by different patterns of learning the language and culture of the host country. Assimilation, the final stage of the process, is defined as the process by which people who do not have a common cultural heritage come to share the same body of opinions, traditions, and allegiances. These concepts advance the notion of straight-line movement into the social and economic mainstream, accompanied by the loss of original language and culture. Today, many scholars argue that contemporary immigration has significantly complicated these models. Immigration today comprises a diverse set of arrival and return patterns, socioeconomic backgrounds, and ways of adapting to U.S. society. That is, theories coined in earlier immigrant contexts— theories that argue for the notion of uniform assimilation as a precondition for social and economic advancement—are increasingly implausible. Some scholars argue that this type of assimilation never happened at all. Rather, the melting pot myth emerged from the need to pressure immigrants into the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural mainstream. In reality, immigrant groups are constantly re-created by new experiences, even after profound language, custom, and culture losses. Beyond this, patterns of assimilation usually depict an upwardly mobile journey; that is, the longer immigrants stay in the United States, the better they do in school, health, and income. However, several scholars have argued that social and economic divisions are creating new patterns of entrance into U.S. culture. Factors such as education, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status all shape immigrants’ experiences in the United States. Consequently, today some immigrants, such as those from South Asia, are climbing the socioeconomic ladder at rates never before seen in U.S. history. Others, however, are denied a place in the opportunity structure, creating what some have termed a “rainbow underclass.” Indeed, for some immigrant groups, length of residency in United States is associated with declining goals, health, and school achievement. For example, a National Research Council (NRC) study revealed the length of time an immigrant youth lives in the United
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States is positively associated with a decline in overall physical and psychological health. Those who had been here longer were more likely to engage in risky behaviors such as substance abuse, unprotected sex, and delinquency, as well as suffer from phobias and antisocial personality disorders. In attempting to explain these findings, the study noted that less acculturated immigrants are least likely to be exposed to these practices and are under the influence of stronger family ties, social controls, and traditional values associated with their cultural heritage. Thus, the best way of dealing with these challenges seems to be balancing the process of acculturation with a reaffirmation of primary social ties within the ethnic community. For example, a study of native-born Mexican Americans found that a strong sense of cultural heritage was positively related to mental health and social well-being. In addition, studies have shown that children who have parents who remain authority figures while encouraging strong ties to an immigrant community will be best able to embrace the widest range of opportunities. Thus, acculturation is not a simple solution to the challenges of immigration.
Community and Immigration Many scholars note that immigrants depend on community networks to ease the pains of culture shock and aid in the development of new social connections and friendship networks. Community can be understood as a social system composed of institutional, organizational, occupational, friendship, and kinship relations. A community is also understood to represent the images and identities that people hold about it. Some scholars even argue that members of a human community not only live together but also feel and think together. Consequently, community involves a common identity and a common way of life. Interestingly, others argue that community is not created merely from shared common characteristics or a common situation. Indeed, even racial distinctions do not necessarily lead to communal relationships. From this perspective, communal relationships are based on a sense of solidarity and mutual orientation growing from emotional and traditional connections among the participants. Ethnic communities may also be the neighborhoods and primary social environments in which many immigrants interact. In general, characteristics that indicate the existence of an immigrant community of this kind include clear geographical areas inhabited
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by the immigrant group, a common language, a common historical and cultural heritage, common interests, and businesses and community leadership expressing an ethnic lifestyle. Yet, immigrant communities, which outsiders often see as tightly organized, may not be characterized by a unity of thought, action, and way of life. Some scholars have noted that internal division may help to maintain ethnic consciousness. That is, immigrants may share a common set of values, cultural heritage, or national identity, but not think and act alike. Scholars have provided a variety of arguments to explain how these communities are created. Many contend that work opportunities are the primary reasons immigrant communities arise. Other scholars focus more closely upon immigration laws and their effect upon patterns of settlement. Scholars even argue that social support in the form of basic institutions leads to community, as migrants bring their theaters, groceries, restaurants, hotels, formal and informal support organizations, and regional societies. This effectively creates communities that reflect, in many ways, those they left behind. Immigrant community connections help individuals preserve and adapt their old-world culture among strangers through the continuation of traditions, festivals, and institutions. And yet, these immigrant communities are also living entities that continue to grow and diversify over time. Scholars who take this approach seek to alter the traditional view that ethnic communities comprise homogeneous, static populations trapped in a defined area. Additionally, immigrants from the same country of origin who settle in different areas of the United States create communities that have distinctive features. For example, early in their creation, midwestern communities of Mexican Americans tended to be less diverse than are those in the Southwest. These immigrant communities comprised primarily of young males from lower economic agricultural backgrounds, who originated from Mesa Central, especially Michoacán, Jalisco, Guanajuato, and Mexico City.
Lack of Community Connection When there is no community connection, immigrants face a host of problems and lose several valuable resources that contribute to economic success and psychological health. They often are denied a voice or presence in economic and political arenas and are cut off from valuable resources that can help to regulate
the pace of acculturation. Problems may arise if parents struggle alone with new social and cultural expectations and are unable to maintain social control of their children. In particular, role reversal can occur when first-generation parents are unable to cope with the outside environment because they do not have personal resources or community support and must depend on their children to negotiate issues involving the mainstream culture. Others assert that the absence of immigrant communities means the loss of a social safety net. Immigrant communities provide recent arrivals with networks of interaction, assistance, and intervention, as well as access to capital, protected markets, and pools of labor. Some scholars express concern that this type of safety net can easily deteriorate as immigrants and their children assimilate and become more like mainstream U.S. residents; their patterns of social mobility become similar to those of the rest of the population. However, other scholars note that the descendants of late 19th-century and early 20th-century immigrants, particularly those coming from the Mediterranean and non-European countries, continue to remain concentrated in particular geographic locations. Beyond this, when members of an ethnic group change locations, they are likely to go where their own group is already plentiful; thus, when an ethnic group moves en masse, it often reconnects in another region.
Fear of Strong Ethnic Communities Despite the important long-term contributions immigrant communities have made in U.S. culture, some people have expressed concern over their potential strength. In some cases, nativism grows from nationalistic movements. These groups tend to rally around issues of job competition and the nature of “being an American,” and their rhetoric focuses on the potential of “alien invasions” and the preservation of “our” nation. Some groups argue that immigration constitutes an attack on “U.S. sovereignty.” In addition, some believe immigrant groups will irrevocably alter U.S. culture and foster the alienation of certain ethnic groups. Immigrants who are minorities in race, culture, and language are often the focus of degrading stereotypes and judged to be incompatible with modern U.S. culture and less deserving of the U.S. dream. These fears certainly found public voice in recent debates over immigration law and its reform. Suggestions, for
Immigration, Economic Impact of
example, have been made to use electrified “superfencing” on the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants. Moreover, to date, thirty states have passed fifty-seven laws prohibiting undocumented individuals from receiving social services. The National Conference of State Legislatures notes that in 2005, almost 500 immigration measures were introduced. In 2006, more than forty-four bills were enacted. Some scholars contend that the response of immigrant communities to these nativist fears has been one of passive endurance rather than active opposition. However, the hundreds of thousands of protesters that participated in the “national day of action” rallies in April 2006 provide evidence to the contrary and illustrate the many ways immigrant communities have taken an active concern in promoting the just treatment of documented and undocumented immigrants in the United States. Scholars studying issues relating to immigration and community have indicated a need to consider how contemporary patterns of immigration are influencing the formation of new types of communities. In addition, many have argued that rather than looking for indicators of difference, researchers should examine how groups of immigrants who display profound differences find ways in which to bond together within a community. In this same vein, it also would seem important to further consider how different immigrant communities interact with one another and with the mainstream society. Christine Garlough See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Barrio; Chinatowns; Colonias; Community Cohesion; Community Empowerment; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Ethnic Group; Gentrification; Ghetto; Immigration, U.S.; Melting Pot; Social Mobility
Further Readings
Capps, Randy. 2006. Immigration and Child and Family Policy. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Dasgupta, S. 1989. On the Trail of an Uncertain Dream: Indian Immigrant Experiences in the U.S. New York: AMS Press. Garlough, Christine 2002. “The Rhetoric of Culture: Shaping Indian-American Identities Through Grassroots Community Education.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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Granatir, June. 1991. “Staying Together: Chain Migration and Patterns of Slovak Settlement in Pittsburgh Prior to World War I.” In Emigration and Immigration, edited by G. Pozzetta. New York: Garland. Kritz, Mary. 2004. Immigration and a Changing America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Navarro, Armando. 1998. The Cristal Experience: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Portes, Alejandro and Rubén. Rumbaut. 1996. Immigrant America: A Portrait. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sanchez Korrol, Virginia. 1983. From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City 1917–1948. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Suárez-Orozco, Carola and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco. 2001. Children of Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vega, William, George Warheit, Joanne Buhl-Auth, and Kenneth Meinhardt. 1985. “Mental Health Issues in the Hispanic Community: The Prevalence of Psychological Distress.” Pp. 30–47 in Stress and Hispanic Mental Health, edited by W. Vega and M. Manual. Rockville, MD: National Institute of Mental Health.
IMMIGRATION, ECONOMIC IMPACT
OF
The United States has always been the land of immigrants, from the arrival of English settlers at the beginning of the 17th century to the present day, and from the beginning, immigrants have had a powerful economic impact. The Irish, Germans, Italians, Jews, Polish, Russians, and others played important roles in the development of the new nation. The agricultural needs of the Southwest and the construction of the transcontinental railroad and mining industries drew many Chinese and other Asian immigrants to the United States in the middle of the 19th century. These immigrants provided cheap labor for growing U.S. industry and created diverse communities in previously undeveloped areas in the Midwest and the Southwest. The beginning of the 20th century saw the tremendous growth of manufacturing industry in the United States, attracting many immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Eastern Europeans also established several dozen garment industries in various industrial cities, reflecting their diverse professional experience from the old country. One study noted that the credit
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Immigration, Economic Impact of
for the development of garment industry in New York must be given to Eastern European Jews because 60% were employed in those industries by 1900. The important role these immigrants played in the local economy is illustrated by the fact that there were 1,000 garment factories in New York City in 1880; by 1910, their number increased to almost 11,000 and made New York the largest clothing manufacturing center at the time. The most recent immigrants to the United States are from Asian and Latin American countries. Asians consist of several distinct groups from East and Southeast Asia, with diverse cultural norms and values. Today, the largest groups are Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indians, Pakistani, Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese. These non-Europeans have something in common with the Europeans who came before them: They all want to fulfill their U.S. dream and to live in peace and prosperity. Spread throughout the country, immigrants are gaining economic stability by getting jobs and education, so they can enjoy a better life for themselves and their families. This entry looks at the economic impact of immigration and how that is related to current debates about immigration.
Economic Effects of Immigration Asians and Latinos are among the fastest-growing ethnic groups in the United States. As indicated in the U.S. Census 2000, most Latinos and Asians are relatively young when they come to the United States with 45% between the ages of 25 and 44, whereas 27% of U.S.-born residents fall in that age range. These immigrants are young, so they are also productive and have a successful and healthy impact on the U.S. economy. Alex Stepick, an anthropologist studying race relations in Miami, observed that young Haitian immigrants in Miami schools tend to have a positive outlook for the future. They feel superior to and typically outperform American Blacks in academics. Another study observed the same optimism among many immigrants in New York and other cities. These immigrants are ambitious youth and have strong faith in opportunities and success. Scholars argue that the younger adult immigrants are, the greater likelihood of their net contribution in taxes because the younger immigrants have longer working lives to contribute to tax and social security payments.
Educatio onal and Pro ofessio onal Achie evementss
The educational and professional achievements of these immigrants also influence their impact. Compared with the past, a much higher proportion of today’s immigrants, particularly Asians, come to the United States with advanced academic credentials. The results from the Current Population Survey 2003 indicate that among Asians as a group, 45% had completed college. In comparison, only 27% of U.S.–born Whites had completed college. The college completion rate for Latin Americans was 11%, much lower than that of natives and Asians. The high level of educational skills among Asians contributes to their success in the labor market, which in turn, helps the United States economy grow. The data further indicate that 37% of Asians had median earnings of $50,000 or higher in 2003, whereas 30% of U.S.-born Whites had reached this income level. The study also shows that Asians have higher levels of professional employment than any other group. For example, 33% of Asians have professional and technical occupations, compared with only 21% of U.S.-born Whites. Although Asians represent only a small percentage of the total U.S. population, their higher educational and professional skills as a group have gained the attention of the U.S. public and media. For instance, studies indicate that these immigrants provide professionals in the field of science, engineering, and hightech industries and helped the United States to maintain its global image in the fields. These facts advance the notion that these immigrants have added much more to the society than they have taken in benefits and that their presence in the country is beneficial. Their services in the health care, high-tech, and service sector, their attainment in education, and their focus on upward mobility provides a rich ethnic diversity to this country and thus makes enormous economic contribution to United States society. Poverty y Rate es
Among immigrant groups, the poverty rate is lowest among Asians; only 11% of Asians are below poverty level in comparison with 11.5% of the U.S.born population. The low poverty level among this group suggests that these immigrants do not impose a burden on United States taxpayers by their use of social and public services.
Immigration, Economic Impact of
In this regard, however, it is important to note that all Asians are not alike. Vietnamese and other Southeast immigrants earn substantially less and have less education than many other Asian groups. For example, the median income for Vietnamese and Cambodians was much less than that for Chinese and Asian Indians, who rank among the highest income earners in 2003. Also, in education, only 20% Vietnamese and 9% Cambodians completed college graduation, which is far less than other Asian groups mentioned earlier. Also, the poverty rates for these groups are much higher compared with Asian Indians and Chinese. This shows that several Asian groups are doing well and outperform Whites on many measures of socioeconomic achievement, whereas other Asian groups perform poorly on social economic indicator, further contributing to their problems of adjustment into U.S. society. Job Categorie es
Among today’s immigrants are engineers, computer scientists, teachers, academics, and health workers. They are hired by U.S. professional institutions such as hospitals, high-tech companies, and colleges and universities and thus are well represented in the U.S. labor force. These immigrants tend to reduce labor shortages that might otherwise occur. The more qualified the immigrants are, the more likely they are to get highly paid jobs, and, consequently, their net contribution in taxes grows. Thus, their fair contribution to the social security system contributes to U.S. prosperity. In the agriculture and labor intensive industries such as construction, food preparation, and manufacturing, many businesses believe that restricting immigration would disrupt the U.S. economy. Many unskilled immigrants contribute their human capital in labor intensive industries where the pay is low, the benefits are nonexistent, and the working conditions are harsh. Mayor Larry Nelson, a Republican from Yuma, Arizona, says that he once believed the border should be closed entirely, but responsibility for his community’s economy has changed his mind. With more jobs than workers in the United States, he says, without immigration the economy would “come to a screeching halt.” According to one study, the post1965 immigrant groups who arrived without much
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education or capital sought employment in the declining occupations and industries that the U.S.born were leaving as well as in the growing lowwage service and retail industries that Whites would not enter. Immig gra ant Entre epreneu urs
Regarding business operation, scholars have observed that middle-class Asians and Latinos come to the United States with the specific objectives of investing their small funds. Although not as well educated, they moved into the small business sector such as grocery, restaurant, construction, and laundry service. They do not mind working long hours and are ardent supporters of the free enterprise system. The Current Population Survey indicates that Latinos and Asians owned 2.7 million non-farm U.S. businesses in 2002, employed 3.7 million people, and generated $548 billion in business revenues. Thus, the success of immigrant business has an important impact on the U.S. economy. Beyond the self-employment of Asian and Latino immigrants, immigrant business also provides jobs and services for other U.S. residents. These jobs would not exist if the immigrants were not here. These immigrants are consumers as well as workers. They raise the demand for goods and services where they reside, as well as the supply of labor, and are more likely to take risks to start and expand enterprise. According to one study, many Korean and Chinese immigrants engage in labor-intensive small businesses to avoid low-paying jobs. They succeed by relying on kinship networks and are therefore able to draw on a larger capital and employee base. Another study argues that California can be prosperous with high levels of recent immigrations. In attempting to explain this, the study notes that Asians and Latinos— accounting for 80% of all U.S. immigrants—form natural connections to fast-growing Pacific Rim and Latin U.S. economies, thus expanding California’s trade with those regions.
Current Immigration Debates Given the ongoing processes of chain migration, family reunification, and liberal immigration and emigration policies, the influx of immigrants from all over the world is likely to continue in the near future.
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Immigration, U.S.
The constant growth of Latino and Asian communities has led to some opposition to current immigration as well as to concern about the ability of the nation to absorb so many immigrants. U.S. residents have also expressed concern about culturally different newcomers: Muslims, Asians, Arabs, or Latinos. Some perceive particular groups as a threat to national security, but other U.S. residents are apprehensive about the new immigrants’ possible integration, believing such an eventuality would somehow undermine the “purity” of the U.S. character. Illegal immigration is also an issue. Many U.S. residents believe that illegal immigrants are a burden on taxpayers’ money and can be a security threat. Others argue that this charge is preposterous because illegal immigrants could not take advantage of welfare benefits without fear of being apprehended and deported. The issue of illegal immigrants, however, is a matter of concern to the U.S. policymakers. Although U.S. laws are against illegal immigrants, many U.S. residents depend on the work of illegal immigrants. Recent studies show that most U.S. people believe that for the safety and security of this country, controlling illegal immigration should be given a top priority. Today, there is a rising fear about continuous immigration from non-European countries. A recent poll that the Pew Research Center carried out shows that 61% of U.S. residents believe that immigrants take more in public benefits such as education and health care than they contribute with their taxes, but only 31% argue that immigrants contribute more in social benefits with their taxes. Against this concern stands a long record in which earlier generations of U.S. residents were successfully integrated into the mainstream. Isbister argued that at a time when many U.S. residents are calling for controlling immigration, the positive side of continued immigration to the United States needs attention. He also argued that immigration helps the United States economy grow and make United States strong as well as benefits the immigrants themselves. Unless the United States takes strong actions to reduce immigration, the U.S. Census 2000 predicts that by the year 2050, Latinos will be the secondlargest ethnic group after Whites, with African Americans and Asians third and fourth in the line. These different cultures, religions, and ideologies are likely to mean socioeconomic changes in U.S. society and lifestyle. Navid Ghani
See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Bilingual Education; Citizenship; Cultural Capital; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Hourglass Economy; Immigration, U.S.; Informal Economy; Model Minority; Remittances; Social Capital
Further Readings
Geis, Sonia. 2005. “Shortage of Immigrant Workers Alarms Growers in West.” Washingtonpost.com. Retrieved November 22, 2005, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/21/AR2005112101357.html Isbister, John. 1996. Immigration Debate: Remaking America. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press. Marger, N. Martin. 2006. Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Perspectives. Belmont, CA: Thompson/Wadsworth. Martin, L. Philip. 1994. “The United States: Benign Neglect Toward Immigration.” In Controlling Immigration. A Global Perspective, edited by W. A. Cornelius, P. L. Martin, and J. F. Hollifield. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Muller, Thomas. 1993. Immigrants and the American City. New York: New York University Press. Pew Research Center. 2006. Polling the Nations: 2006. Available from http://www.orspub.com Portes, Alejandro and Rubén G. Rumbaut. 1996. Immigrant America. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sanjek, Roger. 1998. The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Stepick, Alex, Guillermo Grenier, Max Castro, and Marvin Dunn. 2003. This Land Is Our Land: Immigrants and Power in Miami. Berkeley: University of California Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2000. Current Population Survey. 2000. U.S. Census Bureau. 2003. Current Population Survey. 2003.
IMMIGRATION, U.S. Immigration, the entry and settlement of persons born in another nation-state, has played an important role in shaping the population and culture of the United States since the nation’s founding. The country has experienced three large waves of immigration following the first arrival of Europeans, and is currently in the midst of a fourth. This entry reviews the history of immigration and examines past and present policies governing the arrival of people from other countries.
Immigration, U.S.
The Record The first immigration wave included the original settlers of the U.S. colonies beginning in the 17th century and continuing into the 18th century, consisting mainly of British, Scots, Scotch Irish, Germans, and people from the Netherlands, France, and Spain. Servants and slaves from Africa were also brought coercively to the continent during this period. The second wave began in 1820 and consisted mostly of German, British, and Irish migrants who furthered the westward expansion of the country’s settlements. The third wave, from about 1880 until 1914, included settlers first from Northern and Western Europe, and then from Southern and Eastern Europe. Alongside these European waves, Chinese laborers were recruited from the late 1840s until the 1880s to work in Hawai‘i and California and to build the railroads of the West. Following the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Japanese and Filipino workers took their place until the 1907 “Gentlemen’s Agreement” between the United States and Japan ended migration from Japan.
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Mexican immigrants entered without restriction, and came in growing numbers, particularly after 1880. The United States is now experiencing a fourth wave of immigration. About 14 million immigrants, legal and illegal, came to the country during the 1990s— more than in any previous decade. Unlike previous flows, the most recent immigrants have hailed from Asia, particularly China, India, and the Philippines, and from Latin America, primarily Mexico. Demographers estimate that more than 15 million immigrants will have entered by 2010. However, despite these large flows, the share of foreign-born persons living in the United States is not as high as it was at the beginning of the 20th century, about 12% currently compared with 15% earlier (see Figure 1).
Past Immigration Policy The orientation of U.S. immigration policy has passed through several phases. During the first hundred years following the country’s founding, immigration was
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Figure 1
Number of New Lawful Permanent Residents by Decade and Foreign-Born Share of U.S. Population, 1850s to 2000s
Sources: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2005, Table 1 (Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics, 2006); Campbell J. Gibson and Emily Lennon, “Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United States: 1850–1990,” Population Division Working Paper No. 29 (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, February 1999); U.S. Census 2000. Notes: Percentages show foreign-born share of the total U.S. population in the year of the decennial census, so 1850s data show 2.8 million new lawful permanent residents between 1850 and 1859, with the foreign-born share of the U.S. population at 9.7% in 1850. Although the foreign-born made up 11.1% of the U.S. population in 2000, that share grew to 12% by 2005.
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Immigration, U.S.
quite unrestricted, and both the government and private groups actively recruited new migrants. Immigration did not require any admissions tests or fees. However, some limited bars to admission were enacted following the Civil War, first blocking convicts and prostitutes and later paupers and “mental defectives” from entry. The government established an admissions test in 1917, which required immigrants older than 16 to prove literacy in at least one language. The Immigration Act of 1924 further limited entry by establishing a national origins quota system, which set caps on migration from any given country based on the percentage of U.S. residents who traced their heritage to that country. This arrangement clearly favored immigration from the Northern and Western European countries that had sent the largest numbers in the past. Immigrants were also required to have a sponsor in the United States. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952 generally continued this quota system, with only minor modifications. No special category for entrance by refugees was established until the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, which was followed by the Refugee Relief Act of 1953. The quota system was finally overhauled by 1965 amendments to the INA that equalized treatment of all immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere through the establishment of a 20,000 per-country limit. Migration from individual countries in the Western Hemisphere was not capped, though the hemisphere as a whole was subject to a cap. The revised laws allocated the most visas to family members of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. As a result, immigration levels increased substantially, and immigration flows shifted from mainly European origins to large-scale immigration from Asian and Latin American countries. Furthermore, levels of unauthorized immigration began to grow, as would-be immigrants from Europe and particularly from Mexico found that insufficient permanent visas were available to permit their entry. Mexican workers had lost a primary legal migration stream with the end of the Bracero program, which had allowed entry by temporary agricultural workers from 1942 through 1964. In addition, the 20,000 per-country cap as applied to Mexico in 1976 allowed only half as many visas as Mexican migrants had previously used. The next revision of permanent immigration preference categories came in the Immigration Act of 1990. The act shifted the emphasis of immigration quotas toward employment-based migration, more than
doubling the number of annual employment-based visas and setting aside most of these visas for highly educated workers. It also established the Diversity Visa program for persons from countries with low levels of immigration to the United States. Beginning in 1940, the administration of immigration law, including the adjudication of applications for temporary and permanent immigration and enforcement of immigration laws, had been the responsibility of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, under the Department of Justice. Following the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002, immigration responsibilities were transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), all within DHS.
The Current Immigration System Permanent Immigra ation
The current immigration system remains largely that set by the 1990 law. Most visas for permanent immigration are allocated according to per-country and preference category caps. Uncapped visas are also available for the immediate family, including spouses, minor children, and parents of U.S. citizens age 21 or older, and for certain other humanitarian and assorted special visa categories. Each year, 226,000 visas are reserved for familysponsored preference categories. These visas are divided among four family preference categories, reserving the largest number for spouses, minor children, and unmarried adult children of lawful permanent residents. Employment-based visas are limited at 140,000 a year, with most allocated to skilled and highly skilled workers. Each country of the world is limited to no more than 7% of the visas allocated under any given family or employment-based preference category. Nonimmig grant Syste em
The nonimmigrant (temporary) immigration system offers visas for limited entry to the United States for specific purposes. There are more than seventy classes of nonimmigrant admissions including, for example, temporary visits for business or tourism, work visas, student visas, religious workers, intracompany transferees, diplomats, and representatives of international organizations.
Immigration, U.S.
The number of nonimmigrants entering each year is not capped, although specific nonimmigrant visas do have numerical limitations; this applies to the H-1B visa for those with a bachelor’s or higher degree to work in “specialty occupations” and the H-2B visa for workers in other than agricultural occupations, among others. Temporary visas allow widely differing lengths of stay in the United States. For example, visitors on transit visas are authorized to stay for only a number of hours, but H-1B holders may enter for 3 years, renewable once for a total of 6 years. Individual athletes on P-1 visas may enter for as long as two 5-year periods. Persons on many temporary worker visas can adjust to permanent resident status, including E visas for treaty traders, H-1B visas for specialty occupations, L visas for intracompany transferees, and O-1 visas for individuals with extraordinary ability in science, art, business, or athletics. Huma anita aria an Immig gration n
In addition to the temporary and permanent immigration systems, humanitarian entries as asylum seekers or refugees constitute a third path of entry into the United States. In this area, people are granted protection if they can demonstrate they are unable or unwilling to return to their home country because of persecution, or well-founded fear of persecution, based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. This requirement is adapted from international law set by the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and amended by the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. Refugees and asylum seekers are eligible to apply for lawful permanent immigrant status after one year in the United States. Normally, refugees apply for resettlement and are interviewed while outside the country they fled following the outbreak of armed conflict, violence, persecution, human rights violations, or other circumstances in their home country. In contrast, asylum seekers apply for protection upon entry to or after entering the United States (as long as it is within 1 year of arrival). Each year since the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, the president has consulted with Congress to determine the number of refugees who could be admitted to the United States for the coming fiscal year. The level fluctuates depending on world events and estimates of the size of the refugee population
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worldwide. The cap on refugee resettlement has varied since 1980 between a high of 231,000 in fiscal year (FY) 1980 and a low of 67,000 in FY 1986. Refugee admissions have been capped at 70,000 since FY 2002, though regional allocations have shifted during these years. The number of persons granted asylum in a given year is not limited. In FY 2005, 25,257 people were granted asylum. Numbers of persons granted asylum grew significantly between FY 1991 and FY 2001, but have dropped in each year since then. About 53,800 refugees were admitted to the United States in FY 2005, which was substantially under the 70,000 ceiling. Refugee admissions have reached historic lows following the implementation of new policies after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Unau uthorizzed Immigra atiion
A fourth stream of immigration includes those who enter without authorization or violate the terms of a temporary visa. According to demographer Jeffrey Passel, the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States is 11 to 12 million, more than double the number 20 years ago. He estimates that the size of the unauthorized population is growing by about 500,000 a year. About two-thirds of the unauthorized population have been in the United States for 10 years or less, and 40% have been in the country only 5 years or less. About 40% to 50% of unauthorized immigrants entered on legal temporary visas and remained beyond the terms of the visa, and the rest crossed the U.S. border illegally. As a result of these high levels of unauthorized immigration in recent years, by 2005, almost a third of the foreign-born persons in the country were unauthorized immigrants (see Figure 2). Immigrants from Latin America (particularly Mexico but also Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) compose the largest numbers of unauthorized immigrants.
Trends in U.S. Immigration The level of immigration to the United States has been increasing substantially during the past decade, with growing numbers of temporary, permanent, and unauthorized immigrants. An average of almost 1 million people have gained permanent resident status during each of the past 5 years, and the unauthorized immigrant population has grown by an estimated 500,000
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Immigration, U.S.
Lawful Permanent Residents (LPR) 11.8 Million 33%
Unauthorized Migrants 11.1 Million 31%
Naturalized Citizens (Former LPRs) 11.5 Million 32%
Figure 2
Temporary Legal Residents 1.3 Million 4%
Legal Status of the U.S. Foreign-Born Population, 2005
Source: Jeffrey S. Passel, “The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S.” (Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center, March 2006). Note: Although the unauthorized population was estimated at 11.1 million in 2005, the estimate for 2006 is 11.5 to 12 million.
per year. The majority (64%) of legal permanent immigrants over recent years have been family-based immigrants. Only a small share of permanent immigrants are workers: Employment-based immigrants made up only 17% of all immigrants, but more than half of those employment-based immigrants were spouses and minor children, rather than the workers themselves. About 11% of lawful permanent residents during this period were adjusting from refugee, asylum seeker, or another humanitarian status. U.S. immigration flows are shaped by the existence of substantial backlogs in both the employmentand family-based permanent immigration streams. Employment-based permanent visas are delayed by backlogs for workers from some countries and for some skill levels, and most workers must wait for often-lengthy labor certification processes, intended to protect the wages, working conditions, and job opportunities of U.S. workers. Low-skill workers face another barrier to entry because of the very low number (5,000) of visas available each year for workers with low educational levels. In the family-based permanent immigration system, backlogs for certain categories can stretch to 14 or even 23 years. As a result of backlogs, many workers of all skill levels as well as other would-be immigrants work their way around the permanent entry system. High-skill workers and their employers increasingly turn to temporary
work visas to facilitate faster entry. Nearly two-thirds of those gaining lawful permanent resident status in recent years were already in the country, often on a temporary visa, and were adjusting their status. Among employment-based immigrants, that share was 80%. Congress has facilitated this process by creating increasing categories and subcategories of temporary visas to allow skilled workers to enter the country. Many of these visas now allow adjustment to permanent status. Low-skilled workers often turn to illegal means of entry by crossing the border without authorization or overstaying the terms of a legal temporary visa. Within the overall trend of increasing immigration from Asia and Latin America, migrants’ origins vary somewhat by mode of entry. For example, the main countries of origin for lawful permanent residents in recent years have been Mexico, India, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic. The largest numbers of temporary workers in 2005, in contrast, were from India, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Canada. Tourist and business travelers arrived in largest numbers from the United Kingdom, Mexico, Japan, Germany, and France. Foreign students were most likely to arrive from Asia, with more than half of student admissions in 2005 coming from South Korea, Japan, India, Taiwan, China, and Canada. About 56% of the unauthorized immigrants currently living in the country are estimated to have come from Mexico, 22% from other parts of Latin America, 13% from Asia, 6% from Europe or Canada, and about 3% from Africa and other areas. Asylum seekers in recent years have come from China, Colombia, Haiti, and Venezuela. The main countries of origin of new refugees in FY 2005 were Somalia, Laos, Cuba, Russia, and Liberia. The traditional states of settlement for the largest numbers of immigrants—California, New York, Florida, Texas, and New Jersey—continued to receive the largest absolute numbers of permanent, temporary, and unauthorized migrants in recent years. However, states experiencing the fastest growth in the size of their foreign-born populations in the last 10 to 15 years have included many states for whom immigration is a new phenomenon, including North and South Carolina, Georgia, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Nevada, Arkansas, and Delaware. As growing migration flows, and particularly growing populations of unauthorized immigrants, reach new communities, state and local legislators have faced real challenges and costs. Immigration was
Immigration and Gender
the subject of more than 500 bills in state legislatures around the country during 2006, including measures to limit government services to unauthorized immigrants and prevent employers from hiring workers who lack authorization to work in the country. Both the Senate and House of Representatives passed immigration-related legislation in 2006 after much debate, but ultimately, only a provision requiring a fence became law. Immigration promises to remain a pressing topic of policy debates as the country decides how immigration fits into national values and the country’s demographic and economic future. Julia Gelatt See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Alien Land Acts; “Boat People”; Borderlands; Border Patrol; Bracero Program; Chinese Exclusion Act; Citizenship; Dillingham Flaw; Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908); Guest Workers; Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS); Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; “Marielitos”; McCarran-Walter Act of 1952; National Origins System; Refugees; Remittances; Return Migration; “Wetbacks”
Further Readings
Daniels, Roger. 1990. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life. New York: HarperCollins. Martin, Philip and Elizabeth Midgley. 2003. “Immigration: Shaping and Reshaping America.” Population Bulletin 58:3–44. Meissner, Doris, Deborah W. Meyers, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, and Michael Fix. 2006. Immigration and America’s Future: A New Chapter. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. Ong Hing, Bill. 2004. Defining America Through Immigration Policy. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Passel, Jeffrey S. 2006. “Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S.” Research Report. Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center. Available from http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/61.pdf Patrick, Erin. “The U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program.” The Migration Information Source. Washington, DC: The Migration Policy Institute. Retrieved November 13, 2006, from http://www.migrationinformation.org/USFocus/ display.cfm?ID=229
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U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 2006. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2005. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Williams, Mary E., ed. 2004. Immigration: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press.
IMMIGRATION AND GENDER According to the Social Science Research Council’s Working Group on Gender and Migration, gender structures identities, practices, and institutions of immigration. Considering immigration with gender also is a way of understanding migration from the historically neglected perspective of women. Many racial and ethnic communities in the United States and throughout the world are shaped by changing constructions of gender and family in countries of ancestry, origin, and destination. Thus, a gendered perspective sheds light on social institutions such as migrant families, networks, and employment. The study of gender through migration also demonstrates that gender roles are not fixed in racial and ethnic communities; rather, masculinity and femininity shift over time and in different places. This entry discusses the contemporary feminization of migration related to globalization processes, offers an overview of the field of gender and migration studies, and discusses important arenas and debates on the role of families and households in immigration, the impacts of migration on gender relations and women’s power, and gender and transnationalism.
Feminization of Migration and Migration Studies Historically, much of the understanding of migration was drawn from male experiences presented as normative rather than as relating specifically to one gender. Migration was understood through a male perspective because of the predominance of male labor migration in history, assumptions that women and children migrate to follow male breadwinners, researchers’ tendency to interview only heads of households, and the early domination of men in social science research. An assumption that the male migration experience was the norm masked both the ways that migration is shaped by gender and the distinctive experiences of women migrants.
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Since the 1970s, there has been a significant shift toward gendering an understanding of migration. This change was produced by the entry of more women into migration research, the growth of feminist and gender studies, and the feminization of migration, which refers to the increase in the proportion of migrants who are women. According to UN estimates, approximately 50% of all global migrants are women. The feminization of migration also refers to the growing role of women migrants as family wage-earners; workers in gendered industries such as domestic service, entertainment, and sex work; and providers of hard currency for ailing Third World economies.
Women, Gender, and Migration There are two ways to understand the field of gender and migration, and they complement and stand in tension with each another. A focus on women and migration reveals the historically neglected experiences of women as they differ from those of men, as well as gives voice to migrant women. On the other hand, a gendered perspective examines the ways that migration processes, institutions, and identities are structured by gender. In addition to incorporating women’s lives, this strand analyzes the ways that femininity and masculinity structure and are transformed by migration. It also includes nonconforming gender expressions and sexuality. For example, people who demonstrate same-gender desires and behaviors may migrate because of their sexual orientation or related persecution. Yet, being gay or lesbian was legal grounds for exclusion from immigration to the United States until the 1990s. Looking at migration through a gendered lens offers many insights. Citizenship law has historically been gendered, and women’s citizenship has often been tied to their husbands’ status. Migration networks are gendered; women often migrate, find work, and socialize in the United States through distinctive networks compared with their male counterparts. Gender shapes the decisions that people make about when and how to cross borders. In Mexican communities, migration to the United States may be part of a male rite of passage passed on over generations. Although women are more likely to migrate to flee violent or abusive family situations, they are also highly vulnerable to sexual assault and exploitation during the process of unauthorized border-crossing. Today, both women and men are recruited as labor
migrants. However, migrant labor is structured by race, ethnicity, and gender. Employers believe that women of certain races and ethnic backgrounds are suited to different employment than are their male counterparts. Women are more vulnerable than men to trafficking for sexual and domestic servitude.
Key Themes: Family, Power, and Transnationalism Gender structures migration at multiple levels, including the individual, family, community, nation, and transnational arenas. Gender also shapes a variety of key institutions in the lives of migrants, such as laws of immigration and immigrant incorporation, migrant politics, and the labor force. Key areas where a gendered perspective sheds important light on migration and migrants’ lives are family and household dynamics, power, and transnational processes. Historically, many researchers believed that people migrated based on unified family decisions that weighed the costs and benefits of migration to household income and resources. A gendered perspective has demonstrated that families may be divided about migration. Migration may benefit or harm different family members in distinct ways, and related decisions often reflect gendered power and influence. For example, many young women migrate to urban or border regions within their countries of origin to labor in export-processing zones, or migrate across borders to perform domestic work. Demand for their labor is generated by employers who perceive them as vulnerable and docile workers. The behavior of young women migrants may be a source of family debate and dissention; this includes how much of their earnings will be sent to support their families, how they dress, and what activities they engage in after work hours. Families, communities, and even national economies have become increasingly dependent on the remittances of women migrants as a source of family sustenance and foreign exchange. Another important question is how gendered power shifts and transforms with migration. Early feminist research on women’s migration stressed the importance of women’s entry into the paid labor force in immigrant-receiving countries and its positive impacts on their power in the household. Also, when men migrate for work alone and bring their spouses and children later, gendered dynamics in the household may be disrupted because women have been running
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family affairs in the country of origin during their husbands’ absence. Likewise, men may learn to perform new domestic tasks in the receiving country during their wives’ absence. This optimism about women migrants’ power is tempered when the focus shifts to the stress of family separation across borders, the racialized abuse and exploitation of women migrants in the workplace, and the loss of women’s family support and social networks upon migration. Social isolation, racism, and challenges to male migrants’ masculinity all contribute to domestic violence in the receiving society. Early discussions of transnational identities, institutions, and processes also tended to celebrate the ability of migrants to maintain attachments to both countries of origin and reception. However, transnational institutions and processes, such as leadership in hometown associations, appear to be infused with power inequalities of gender, race, and class. Researchers will continue to examine the gendering of identities, processes, and institutions of migration at multiple scales and in various arenas. Hinda Seif See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Body Image; Bracero Program; Domestic Work; Feminism; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Guest Workers; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Remittances; Transnational People
Further Readings
Bhabha, Jacqueline. 1996. “Embodied Rights: Gender Persecution, State Sovereignty, and Refugees.” Public Culture 9:3–32. Ehrenreich, Barbara and Arlie R. Hochschild, eds. 2003. Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Metropolitan Books. Gabaccia, Donna, Katharine Donato, Jennifer Holdaway, Martin Manalansan, and Patricia Pessar, eds. 2006. “Special Journal Issue: Gender and Migration Revisited.” International Migration Review 40. Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette, ed. 2003. Gender and U.S. Immigration: Contemporary Trends. Berkeley: University of California Press. Louie, Miriam Ching Yoon. 2001. Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take on the Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Luibhéid, Eithne and Lionel Cantu, eds. 2005. Queer Migrations: Sexuality, U.S. Citizenship, and Border Crossings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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Oishi, Nana. 2005. Women in Motion: Globalization, State Policies, and Labor Migration in Asia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Parrenas, Rhacel Salazar. 2001. Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Sassen, Saskia. 1998. “Toward a Feminist Analytic of the Global Economy.” Pp. 81–110 in Globalization and Its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money, edited by S. Sassen. New York: New Press.
Web Sites
Social Science Research Council, Migration: http://www.ssrc.org/program_areas/migration
IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY ACT OF 1965 The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 changed the racial and ethnic landscape of the United States drastically by eliminating the quotas placed on the number of immigrants from non-European countries who would be allowed entry into the United States. The passage of this act brought about an enormous change in the sources of new immigration, compared with the previous U.S. experience. This entry will briefly review immigration law, look at the context of the 1965 act, and discuss how it changed the racial and ethnic make-up of the United States.
The Race-Based Record Race and ethnicity have historically been significant factors in U.S. immigration. Over the years, several laws and policies have prevented immigration from some countries while welcoming immigrants from other places, most notably Western Europe. The Alien Act of 1798, however, reflected a popular fear that Irish immigrants (a once-racialized group in the United States) would rise up against the government, granting the president the authority to deport any alien considered dangerous, including during times of peace. The National Origins Act of 1924 barred immigration from Eastern Europe. The 1924 legislation also halted immigration from Asia, part of a stream of laws and policies restricting entry of people from Asia. Asian immigrants, particularly the Chinese and
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Japanese, have a long history of fluctuating inclusion and exclusion into this country. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers and the naturalization of Chinese in the United States, and the Scott Act of 1888 prohibited any immigration of Chinese into the United States. Scholars note that the Chinese were drawn to the United States to work as cheap labor, then faced extreme prejudice and racism through political and social exclusion. Chinese men were not allowed to bring their wives and children to the United States, nor were they legally permitted to date or marry White women. The War Brides Act of 1945, however, allowed U.S. veterans to bring their foreign wives and children home with them, increasing the number of Chinese (and other Asian) immigrants to the United States. Anti-Japanese sentiments were high in the United States during the early part of the 20th century as well. Along with the National Origins Act of 1924, which prohibited immigration from several Asian countries including Japan, Executive Order 9066 legalized the internment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans during World War II because they were seen as threats to the security of the United States. Arabs and South Asians were also denied citizenship in the United States because citizenship was a right that only “free” White men enjoyed under the U.S. Naturalization Act of 1790. Thus, legally, Asian Americans were excluded from privileges and rights, such as citizenship and entry into the United States, because of the color of their skin.
Tide of Change The McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 changed several portions of the National Origins Act of 1924, allowing limited immigration from Asian countries. The real change came in 1965, however, when the United States was promoting the ideals of democracy and freedom in response to what was perceived then as the threat of communism. Racial tension in the United States was also high, and the Civil Rights Movement had picked up momentum during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The United States found itself trying to rebut the accusations that its laws and policies toward people of color, from Jim Crow segregation laws to the National Origins Act of 1924, were antithetical to the ideology of freedom and democracy that the United States had promoted globally
since World War II. Scholars see this as a relevant context in which the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 paved the way for the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which attempted to make immigration from all countries, European and nonEuropean, more equitable. As a result of this law, the rate of immigration to the United States has greatly increased, and the nature of immigration has changed, with more people of color coming to the United States. This act opened U.S. borders to 170,000 immigrants from the Eastern hemisphere, with no more than 20,000 per country, and 120,000 immigrants from the Western hemisphere. Immigrants from Asia, South Asia, and Middle Eastern countries came in large numbers to the United States. This altered the nation’s racial and ethnic composition and its religious make-up because more Muslims and Hindus migrated. Race and ethnicity scholars argue that this act has changed the United States from a biracial to a triracial society, one that is not simply White and Black but includes a wide range of people of color from various ethnic backgrounds such as South Asian, Asian, and Latino. The skin tone, class, and reasons for migrating to the United States have affected how these new immigrants have fared in the United States. For example, the model minority myth, originating in the 1960s, holds that the success of certain Asian ethnic groups in the United States was the result of their hard work and diligence. This stereotype was used to promote the idea that some cultures encourage hard work and success, which inevitably leads to class mobility, whereas less desirable cultures inhibit this type of progress. The myth also minimizes the struggles of some Asian Americans, ignoring the contextual situation of each immigrant group and personal characteristics such as wealth and education. Scholars found that Chinese immigrants, shortly after the Immigration Act of 1965, were predominantly educated professionals, which gave them an economic advantage in the United States. By comparison, most Vietnamese immigrants at this time lacked the same educational credentials and so were relegated to a different class with different opportunities. Thus, the model minority myth masks the real reasons for success of some immigrant groups over others. Sociologists, especially those who study race and ethnicity and immigration, are currently looking at how the assimilation process for post-1965 immigrants differs from the experiences of previous
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European immigrants. Some scholars argue that comparing the assimilation of White European immigrants with that of Asian immigrants is necessary to reveal the role that racism and discrimination play in predicting rates of acculturation and success in the United States. Further research is needed on the effect of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 on the racial and ethnic composition of the United States and on the subsequent impact on society. Research might also foster a better understanding of the racialized treatment of these new immigrants and how their background affects interracial relationships. Saher Farooq Selod See Appendix A See also Alien Land Acts; Asian Americans; Assimilation; Border Patrol; Chinese Exclusion Act; Citizenship; Dillingham Flaw; Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908); Guest Workers; Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996; Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS); Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; “Marielitos”; McCarran-Walter Act of 1952; Muslim Americans; National Origins System; Refugees; “Wetbacks”
Further Readings
Espiritu, Yen Le. 1992. Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Leonard, Karen Isaksen. 2003. Muslims in the United States: The State of Research. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Portes, Alejandro and Rubén G. Rumbaut. 2006. Immigrant America: A Portrait. 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Takaki, Ronald. 1994. From Different Shores: Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE (INS) The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was among the more enduring bureaucratic attempts to manage the entry of the foreign-born into the United States through a single agency. With a mandate to administer U.S. immigration laws, the INS was responsible for determining the admissibility of new
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entrants, removing and preventing the entry of those not authorized to be in the United States, and processing the applications for citizenship, permanent residence, work authorization, and other such benefits to which applicants were legally entitled. This entry reviews the development of the INS, describing key functions and mandates as well as its shifting institutional location.
History The Immigration and Naturalization Service, as most current readers know it, dates to 1940, when it was transferred to the Justice Department by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a national security measure during World War II. Previously, however, the immigration service had been housed in the Labor Department, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the Commerce Department. When the Congress first established a commissioner of immigration in 1864, it placed the responsibilities in the State Department and specified a relatively narrow mandate of protecting new immigrants from fraud and overseeing their transportation to their final destination. In 1891, Congress consolidated federal control over the regulation of immigration and designated a superintendent of immigration within the Treasury Department, although states maintained responsibility for inspections of new arrivals and naturalization procedures. With a growing focus on enforcing laws regarding foreign contract labor, the Bureau of Immigration was transferred in 1903 to the newly created Department of Commerce and Labor. It was renamed the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization 3 years later. However, in 1913, the Department of Commerce and Labor was subdivided, with the immigration responsibilities moving into the Labor Department but split into two bureaus. Twenty years later, the bureaus were recombined into the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was transferred into the Justice Department in 1940, where it remained until 2003.
Overview of Functions The principal law implemented and enforced by the INS has been the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952, as modified by 1965 amendments and other subsequent legislation. For instance, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA)
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provided amnesty for 2.5 million illegal immigrants residing in the United States. It also authorized, for the first time in U.S. history, sanctions upon employers who knowingly hired unauthorized workers. Similarly, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) charged the INS with developing pilot programs for employment verification and mechanisms to track the entry and exit of foreign travelers. Furthermore, the IIRIRA mandated the detention of criminal aliens and broadened the scope of those who could be deported, applying the new standards retroactively. Both laws imposed significant implementation burdens on the agency and necessitated a shifting of internal priorities and resources to meet the new mandates. As the agency responsible for regulating the flow of immigrants into the United States, INS was charged with a dual mission—service and enforcement. The service side of INS included adjudicating petitions for legal permanent status, citizenship, and refugee and asylum status; issuing work authorization and other documents; regulating the admission of temporary visitors including tourists, foreign students, and guest workers; and administering naturalization tests and ceremonies. Enforcement functions included inspecting arrivals at ports of entry to determine citizenship and admissibility; preventing and apprehending unauthorized entrants between ports; detaining and removing criminal aliens and others without lawful status in the United States; and investigating illegal hiring, smuggling, and document and benefit fraud. By its very nature, the immigration function is a crosscutting one, encompassing a range of policy issues that include foreign policy, economic policy, education policy, law enforcement, and tensions over state and federal roles. The broad array of responsibilities is paperwork-intensive and laden with complex and seemingly contradictory missions that reflect the ambivalence of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. public regarding immigration-related issues. Moreover, the agency’s actions affect the lives of large numbers of individuals, including U.S. citizens and legal residents, as well as the foreign-born and foreign perceptions of the United States. To provide a sense of the scale of INS responsibilities at the beginning of the 21st century, the INS handled 510.6 million inspections at air, land, and sea ports of entry and admitted more that 32 million nonimmigrants in fiscal year (FY) 2001, according to the 2002 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service. It also issued 1.06 million green cards and naturalized more than 600,000 individuals. In the same year, the agency received 7.9 million applications of all types, completed more than 7 million applications, and faced a pending caseload of 4.8 million. Furthermore, the INS was responsible for nearly 1.3 million apprehensions at U.S. borders, formally removed more than 177,000 individuals from the United States, and completed almost 90,000 criminal investigations. These achievements were accomplished with a budget that was nearing $5 billion in FY 2001 and with approximately 32,000 full-time employees in headquarters, three regions, and thirty-three district offices around the country. Of the full-time employees, three-quarters were considered enforcement personnel, the largest group of which was Border Patrol agents. This was significant growth from earlier INS budgets. In the fiscal year before IRCA, the INS appropriation had been a mere $1 billion. Any discussion of the INS, however, must note that a variety of immigration-related functions, including policymaking, have been housed outside the INS. For instance, the State Department is responsible for making determinations about visa eligibility overseas and issuing such visas at U.S. consulates. Similarly, the Labor Department certifies the need for foreign workers, the Department of Health and Human Services resettles refugees brought to the United States, and the immigration courts are housed in the Justice Department.
Structural Change The notion of a centralized federal agency to manage the flow of immigrants into the United States has been critiqued and tweaked ever since it arose in the middle of the 19th century. Within a few decades, the commissioner general of the Bureau of Immigration was expressing frustrations regarding inadequate records and statistics, unclear responsibilities, and insufficient means to enforce the immigration regulations, sentiments likely shared by all twenty-six immigration commissioners. Internal restructurings of the INS have veered from decentralization of services in the regions in 1954 to centralization of management and operations in 1991, and then back to restoration of some field office authority and management responsibilities in 1994, culminating with a neverimplemented 2001 internal reorganization plan that was overtaken by events.
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Among the more recent external reports that addressed the structure of the immigration function were those produced by independent government commissions. For instance, the 1981 Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy recommended separating the INS’s service and enforcement functions and upgrading the level of the INS commissioner within the Justice Department. The Commission for the Study of Migration and Cooperative Economic Development in 1990 proposed creation of an independent Agency for Migration Affairs to centralize and raise the profile of the immigration and refugee issues found across various cabinet agencies. In 1997, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform recommended in its final report eliminating the INS and parceling out of its immigrationrelated functions to the Justice Department and State Department, citing mission overload, overlap with other agencies, and a desire for better delivery of both better service and enforcement functions. The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century concluded in its February 2001 final report that significant changes were required in the U.S. national security apparatus and urged creation of a cabinet-level National Homeland Security Agency that would include the Border Patrol, along with the Coast Guard, Customs Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Despite the repeated efforts at modifying and reshuffling the immigration function during the last century, the problems and challenges remained startlingly similar, particularly relating to agency capacity and clarity of mandate, as have the solutions of separation or consolidation. Ultimately, the placement of the immigration function has reflected shifting policy goals and political priorities, as well as the broader global environment.
Repercussions of September 11 for the INS The attacks of September 11, 2001, were devastating to the country as a whole. For the INS, though, the attacks signaled the beginning of the end, as postevent reviews indicated that some of the hijackers had petitions pending before the agency, which were later approved, and that the hijackers had been inspected and admitted by officers upon arrival into the country. Combined with the frustration with the INS’s performance, which had been mounting throughout the 1990s, and the growing scale and importance of the
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immigration function (the 1990s was the single largest decade of immigration in U.S. history in absolute numbers), these public failures obliterated any remaining confidence in the agency’s capacity or support for the agency’s existence. In the aftermath of the attacks, proposals emanated from the White House Office of Homeland Security to combine aspects of the border enforcement functions; from the House of Representatives and the Senate to dismantle the INS and move its functions directly into the Justice Department (though the proposals differed with regard to leadership structure and policy coordination); and from the Senate to establish a new cabinetlevel Department of National Homeland Security incorporating many existing law enforcement and inspection duties. Ultimately, the White House quietly developed a broader second plan that to some extent drew upon elements of previous proposals and studies, and President George W. Bush announced his proposal for a permanent cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in June 2002. He signed the resulting Homeland Security Act (PL 107–296) in November 2002. The DHS combined 180,000 personnel and elements of twenty-two agencies (including the INS, the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, and FEMA), becoming operational January 1, 2003. On March 1, 2003, the INS was formally abolished; its functions and authorities were transferred into DHS. The principal immigration-related responsibilities were placed into three separate divisions: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Deborah W. Meyers See Appendix A See also Border Patrol; Citizenship; Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
Further Readings
Papademetriou, Demetrios G. and Deborah Waller Meyers. 2002. “Reconcilable Differences? An Evaluation of Current INS Restructuring Proposals.” Migration Policy Institute. Available from http://www.migrationpolicy .org/files/200206_PB.pdf
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Papademetriou, Demetrios G., T. Alexander Aleinikoff, and Deborah Waller Meyers. 1998. Reorganizing the U.S. Immigration Function: Toward a New Framework for Accountability. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Seghetti, Lisa M. 2002. “Immigration and Naturalization Service: Restructuring Proposals in the 107th Congress.” Congressional Research Service. Available from http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/16174.pdf Smith, Marian L. 1998. “Overview of INS History.” In A Historical Guide to the U.S. Government, edited by G. T. Kurian. New York: Oxford University Press. Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). 2002. “DHS at Work: INS History.” Retrieved from http://trac.syr.edu/tracins/findings/aboutINS/insHistory.html U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. 2006. “History, Genealogy, and Education.” Available from http://www .uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. 2002. Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Available from http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/ publications/archive.shtm#2
IMMIGRATION AND RACE At a key moment in The Good Shepherd, the 2006 film about the birth of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), agent Edward Wilson (played by Matt Damon) pays a visit to the Mafia boss Joseph Palmi (Joe Pesci). As they sit down to discuss their common “problem” of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Wilson insinuates to Palmi that he will be deported to Italy if he refuses to cooperate with the CIA. Clearly insulted, Palmi retorts, “You’re not going to deport anyone. I’ve lived in this country since I was two months old.” Palmi then questions Wilson, “Tell me something. We Italians got family and the Church. The Irish got the old country. The Jews got their tradition. Hell, even the Blacks got their music. But, what have you people got?” Perfectly calm and deadly serious, Wilson (a Yale graduate and member of Yale’s secret society, Skull and Bones) responds, “We’ve got the United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.” The preceding pointed exchange captures with dramatic precision the mid-century assumptions about the way that immigration and race are linked in U.S. history. Though often celebrated as an idyllic “melting
pot” or mythic “mosaic” of racial equality and ethnic tolerance, the history of race and ethnic relations in the United States is actually one of struggle for inclusion as full and equal members by a series of immigrant and racial “minorities”—often thought of as immigrant outsiders “just visiting.” Ironically, one “ethnic” or “racial” group never directly named during the above exchange, who Palmi refers to as, “you people” (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants or WASPs), is the very group that founded the United States as a nation and established itself as the charter group atop a surprisingly resilient, if still evolving and increasingly complex ethnoracial hierarchy. More ironic still is that this fictionalized exchange between a “blue-blooded” representative of the U.S. “mainstream” and an Italian American (both of whom would be defined as “White” today) took place before 1965, the year that heralded the arrival on U.S. shores of a massive new wave of non-European and largely non-White immigrants from all across the world. Given their large numbers and unprecedented racial diversity, the arrival of this most recent wave of immigrants has challenged long-established notions of race and ethnicity in the United States. This group has also tested as never before the nation’s ongoing effort to balance the assimilation of immigrants with respect for their racial and ethnic pluralism. In short, what is at stake is the United States’s definition of itself as “a nation of immigrants.” This entry looks at immigration through the lens of race.
The U.S. Ethnoracial Hierarchy Racial and ethnic relations can follow several distinct patterns, including assimilation, pluralism, multiculturalism, segregation, slavery, and even genocide. Although the history of the United States has been dominated by an ambivalent balance between assimilation and pluralism often celebrated as the U.S. “melting pot,” at different times it has included each of these other patterns—especially with reference to the reception and treatment of those defined as nonWhite. Furthermore, changes in racial and ethnic relations in the United States have often come about because of changes in immigration, as well as because of direct moral or legal challenges to the status quo. For example, who could be defined as “White” or as an “American” was gradually expanded between 1850 and 1950 as two massive waves of non-Anglo immigrants from northwest Europe (Germans and Irish)
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and southwest Europe (Italians and Jews) added their distinctive cultures, languages, religions, and colors to the melting pot. Also, as a result of the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans gained protection from legal discrimination for the first time despite having been members of the U.S. mosaic for more than 400 years. Finally, how an ethnic group enters U.S. society (voluntary immigration versus involuntary immigration: conquest, slavery, or annexation) directly affects its subsequent place in the U.S. ethnoracial hierarchy and, thus, the overall pattern of race and ethnic relations in the country. The more than 230-year history of the United States has witnessed the transformation of a fairly homogenous group of thirteen British colonies into the world’s most wealthy, powerful, and, arguably, most ethnically diverse society. Immigration to the United States can be divided into five different “waves”: The colonial period (1607–1775), the early republic (1776–1839), the “old immigration” of the mid-19th century (1840–1879), the “new immigration” of the turn of the century (1880–1924, followed by a forty-year lull), and the contemporary immigration of today, which began in 1965. Each successive wave of immigration has added new groups (races, ethnicities, languages, religions, etc.) in larger numbers, gradually modifying, if not fundamentally altering, the U.S. ethnoracial hierarchy first established by the British colonists. Although the colonial period witnessed the establishment of the ethnic dominance of a charter group of White, English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), the years of the early republic saw an expansion of the racial and ethnic profile of the nation to include European immigrants from a wider array of national, ethnic, linguistic, religious, and “racial” groups, the most prominent of whom were fellow Northern Europeans such as the Germans, French, Dutch, and Swedes. Still, before 1840, most new immigrants to the United States hailed from northwestern Europe and shared similar racial and ethnic backgrounds, as well as similar motivations for immigrating. Of course, from the earliest days of the British colonies, many other, non-White or nonEuropean racial and ethnic groups were already present in North America, and their contribution to the U.S. mosaic has frequently been either overlooked or deliberately suppressed. Most prominent among these groups are Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and African Americans, each of whom initially joined
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the U.S. union involuntarily—either through conquest, annexation, or slavery. Starting in 1840, the size and diversity of the U.S. population began the first of three major expansions that would transform the ethnoracial make up of the nation. Between 1840 and 1880, political and economic upheaval in Europe led to the arrival of hundreds-of-thousands of German and Irish immigrants. An even more massive and diverse flow of newcomers began in 1880 and lasted until the early 1920s, largely made up of Southern Italians and Eastern European Jews. Although the differences of such immigrants are unremarkable in retrospect, these newcomers were routinely met with hostility at the time because of their perceived linguistic, religious, and “racial” distinctiveness. Many early German immigrants were Jewish, and nearly all of the Irish were unskilled Catholics of peasant origins fleeing poverty and famine at home. Likewise, pseudo-scientific racial theories of the era held that “swarthy” peoples of Mediterranean, Slavic, and Semitic stock were racially inferior to those of northwestern Anglo and Alpine origins. Establishing a much repeated pattern, these newcomers sought protection and political power by forming ethnic enclaves across the nation, especially in immigrant-rich cities like New York and Chicago. Ironically, when banding together in immigrant neighborhoods or forming ethnic businesses, these immigrants were subsequently blamed for their supposedly inherent “clannishness,” “miserliness,” and refusal to assimilate to U.S. values and culture. The early 1920s saw the passage of a series of laws restricting new immigration on the basis of national origin quotas to halt the immigration of more of these “unassimilable” southwestern Europeans. Not fully revoked until 1965, these laws purposely favored Europeans of “Anglo” and “Alpine” origins over others because admission quotas were based on the profile of the U.S. population in 1890. These restrictive laws followed previous ones aimed at eliminating “Orientals” from the United States. For example, Chinese immigration was frozen by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Japanese were kept out after the passage of the so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1907.
Race and Ethnicity Since 1965 The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 and the subsequent epoch-making passage of the Immigration and
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Nationality Act of 1965 (also known as the Hart-Celler Act) began a fundamental shift in U.S. ethnic and racial composition, repealing previous race-based restrictions and national origins quotas that had favored immigrants from northwest Europe and making family reunification the basic principle of U.S. immigration law. These changes led to a fundamental, if largely unintended, shift in the numbers, national origins, and racial and ethnic background of subsequent immigrants. As a result, large numbers of non-White immigrants from the developing world began to come to the United States for the first time, led by Mexicans, Filipinos, Chinese, Koreans, Dominicans, Cubans, and Vietnamese. Although the 1970 census counted just 9.6 million immigrants in the nation, by 2000 that number had risen to 28.4 million (constituting just over 10% of the population). Additionally, Latin American, Caribbean, and Asian immigration grew rapidly after 1965, coming to supplant more traditional European immigrant flows. For example, whereas between 1900 and 1965, 75% of all immigrants came from Europe, since 1968, 62% of new immigrants have come from Latin America, the Caribbean, or Asia. This shift has begun to significantly alter the ethnic and racial profile of the United States. Between 1945 and 1995, the White proportion of the U.S. population fell from 87% to 75%, whereas Hispanics (admittedly not a racial category) increased their presence from 2.5% to 10.2% (reaching 12.5% by 2000). At the same time, the entire Hispanic population of the United States (including the U.S.-born children of Latin American immigrants) reached 35.3 million in 2000. Thus, the Hispanics in the United States (12.5%) in 2000 surpassed the number of African Americans (34.7 million or 12.3%) for the first time. By 2002, the population of the United States had reached more than 281 million persons. Official census categories (as modified in 2000) allow respondents to self-identify into one (or more) of a number of racial and ethnic groups. Although 75% (211.5 million) of respondents self-identified as White, another 12.3% (34.7 million) respondents identified as Black/ African American. Asians stood at 3.6% (10.2 million) of the population followed by American Indians who made up just 1.1% (2.9 million). Interestingly, another 7.9% (22.2 million) respondents refused to choose any of the above four racial categories, choosing “some other race” or mixed race instead. Most of these respondents were Hispanics (who can be of any race). That is, of the 35.3 million Hispanics in the
United States, 48% (17 million) identified themselves as White, and another 42% (15 million) marked “some other race.” To its credit, the U.S. Census Bureau has recognized that racial and ethnic definitions and categories are somewhat arbitrary because they have changed in the past and are likely to change in the future. The bureau has also recognized the socially constructed nature of race as a concept, allowing people to selfidentify as one or more races. Furthermore, the race categories include both racial and national-origin groups. Many new immigrants feel that U.S. racial and ethnic labels tend to oversimplify the richness and complexity of their cultural origins and attempt to resist having a racial category imposed on them. Some groups, such as Jews and Italians, see their ethnicity as a symbolic or situational identity that can be emphasized or discarded at will, but others such as West Indians tend to experience it as an unavoidable liability given the persistence of the U.S. color line. Still others attempt to escape this forced choice dilemma by proudly asserting their national, linguistic, or cultural distinctiveness while adopting U.S. cultural norms to achieve socioeconomic mobility.
Race and U.S. Nativism As new immigration has increasingly affected U.S. economic and cultural patterns, the beginning of the 21st century has witnessed a resurgence of the age-old immigration-assimilation debate with a concomitant rise of U.S. nativism. Contentious debates have emerged for a major overhaul of the immigration system, including increased border security, employer sanctions, legalization, and a guest-worker proposal. The Republican Party is split between economic liberals who favor cheap and energetic immigrant labor and social conservatives who seek to safeguard U.S. national identity against what is perceived as a growing cultural (and racial) onslaught against the U.S. mainstream. In short, the United States faces a dilemma regarding the economic benefits that new immigrants bring and the sociocultural accommodations that welcoming newcomers will require. U.S. residents seem to agree that the nation needs immigrants economically but are undecided as to whether they want them as friends and neighbors. Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington has voiced the concerns of many social and economic conservatives by arguing that Latino immigration in
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general and Mexican immigration in particular threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. He distinguishes today’s Latino immigrants from past groups by arguing that they have not assimilated and instead have begun to form potentially divisive political and linguistic enclaves across the country. Moreover, Huntington believes that Latinos have rejected the very AngloProtestant values that built the American dream. Finally, he lists six ways that Mexican immigration in particular is unique and troubling: Latinos come from a nation in direct proximity to the United States, they come in unprecedented numbers, they include a very high proportion of undocumented immigrants, their impact is concentrated in particular regions, they show no signs of diminishing, and they justify their arrival with reference to historical claims to parts of the U.S. Southwest. In response to Huntington’s alarm, one-time neoconservative Francis Fukuyama has questioned the need for such a “Hispanic panic.” Specifically, Fukuyama counters Huntington’s claim that immigrants do not respect U.S. values by pointing out that the United States actually benefits from these new immigrants’ deep belief in values of religion and family. More importantly, new Latino and other immigrants are distinguished from most U.S. residents by their adherence to what Fukuyama considers the true U.S. religion: hard work. Finally, Fukuyama indicates that a more serious threat to U.S. culture arises from the nation’s own internal contradictions rather than from the “wrong” foreign values of supposedly unassimilable immigrants. Indeed, for Fukuyama, if Latino immigrants present a threat at all, it is that of their assimilating the “wrong” U.S. values of laziness, disrespect for authority, and other gangland attitudes after becoming trapped in poor schools and taking on the hopelessness and resentment of the U.S. inner city.
Conclusion Although the United States is today one of the world’s most successful, peaceful, and prosperous multiethnic societies, for most of U.S. history, full and equal membership was restricted to White Protestant males of European descent. Although some immigrant and ethnic groups have been able to assimilate effortlessly, those who did not fit into the WASP mold have had to force their way into the mainstream, sometimes at the price of losing their cultural distinctiveness. Still
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others have sought to preserve their ethnic identity and maintain the dense community ties that often accompany it as a way to achieve economic independence. Finally, there have always been those immigrants who consistently experience rejection in their efforts to become full members of the U.S. mainstream. For some of these groups, such rejection can breed resentment and lead to the formation of an oppositional ethnic subculture where success in the mainstream is stigmatized as an ethnic betrayal. This last struggle has been characteristic of some Native Americans, African Americans, and Latinos (especially Puerto Ricans). However, the history of race and ethnic relations in the United States reminds us that at different times and in different contexts, other immigrant groups as diverse as the Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Jews, and Italians have each had to struggle against the U.S. ethnoracial hierarchy for equal access to the opportunity promised in the American Dream. Ted Henken and Melinda Brahimi See Appendix A See also Americanization; Assimilation; Census, U.S.; Chinese Exclusion Act; Genocide; Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908); Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Melting Pot; Nativism; Pluralism; Police; Segregation; Slavery; Social Movements; Symbolic Ethnicity; WASP
Further Readings
Alba, Richard D. and Victor Nee. 2003. Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bailey, Benjamin. 2001. “Dominican-American Ethnic/Racial Identities and United States Social Categories,” International Migration Review 35(3). Gans, Herbert J. 2007. “Ethnic and Racial Identity.” In The New Americans: A Guide to Immigrants Since 1965, edited by M. C. Waters and R. Ueda with H. B. Marrow. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Glazer, Nathan and Daniel P. Moynihan. [1963] 1970. Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gordon, Milton M. 1964. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins. New York: Oxford University Press. Grieco, Elizabeth M. and Rachel C. Cassidy. 2001. “Overview of Race and Hispanic Origin,” Census 2000 Brief. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.
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Huntington, Samuel P. 2004. Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster. Jacobsen, Matthew Frye. 1998. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Office of Management and Budget. “Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity,” Federal Register Notice. Retrieved October 30, 1997, from http://factfinder.census .gov/home/en/epss/glossary_r.html Perlmann, Joel and Mary C. Waters, eds. 2002. The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Portes, Alejandro. 2000. “An Enduring Vision: The Melting Pot That Did Happen.” International Migration Review 34:243–79. Portes, Alejandro and Rubén G. Rumbaut. 2001. “Not Everyone Is Chosen: Segmented Assimilation and Its Determinants.” In Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Roediger, David. 1990. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and The Making of the American Working Class. Revised ed. New York: Verso.
IMMIGRATION REFORM AND CONTROL ACT OF 1986
Because of the close proximity to their homeland, Mexicans were seen as a more desirable source of labor than Europeans because it was felt that Mexicans could easily return home when the need for labor ceased. Through the mid-1900s, Mexicans were encouraged to migrate to the United States and were even excluded from required literacy exams and quota restrictions to gain entrance to the United States. In 1942, the United States and Mexico launched the Bracero Program, which legally brought thousands of Mexican laborers to the United States to work. Though the program claims responsibility for bringing more than 5 million Mexican workers to the United States during the 24 years the program was in existence, it acted as a catalyst for many more undocumented immigrants to cross the border illegally. The Bracero Program was officially stopped in 1964, but ending the program did not diminish the labor needs, so many of the Mexican laborers stayed and continued to work in the United States, albeit illegally. By the 1970s, nativist sentiments proliferated, and some blamed immigrants for everything that was wrong with society. In this environment, work began on immigration legislation that would eventually become the Immigration and Reform Control Act. Although the bill is written to address immigrants in
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, also recognized by its acronym IRCA, is one of the most comprehensive and significant immigration reform bills of the 20th century, even though it failed to meet its intended goals in the long term. In a three-tiered attempt to reduce the flow of undocumented immigration into the United States, IRCA provided amnesty and legal U.S. citizenship to approximately 3 million immigrants who were living and working in the United States. This entry looks at the context of the act, its implementation, and reasons for its lack of success.
The Historic Need for Workers Historically, the United States has looked to other countries to provide labor for U.S. industries. In 1864, when the first comprehensive federal immigration bill was passed, its intent was to encourage immigration and provide workers to meet production needs during the Civil War. At the time, the United States was experiencing an inflow of about 1 million immigrants annually, and this was seen as positive and beneficial for the U.S. economy.
Illegal immigrants. Mexican nationals apprehended while illegally crossing the U.S.–Mexican border wait in a holding area at the Brownfield Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) processing center in Otay Mesa, California, on March 6, 2006. Mexican nationals caught illegally crossing the border are sent back to Mexico and classified as “voluntarily returned” without any charges filed if there are no outstanding criminal cases against them on record. The U.S. government estimates that 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants reside in the United States as of 2007. Source: Getty Images.
Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
general, the focus is on undocumented Mexican immigrants, as evidenced by the attention to the U.S.–Mexico border and provisions for agricultural workers, who were predominantly Mexican laborers. After many attempts and variations of bills to address immigration, amnesty, and employer sanctions for more than 10 years, the House and Senate finally compromised on a bill. The Immigration Reform and Control Act had several monikers during its lengthy creation process, including the SimpsonMazzoli Act and the Simpson-Rodino Act.
Implementing IRCA In its final rendition, IRCA called for increased border enforcements, introduced sanctions against employers who willingly hired undocumented workers, and granted amnesty to immigrants who had been living in the United States continuously since January 1982. In addition, legalization was available for undocumented workers through the Special Agriculture Workers (SAW) program. The SAW program applied to laborers who had worked in U.S. agriculture for a minimum of ninety days between May 1985 and May 1986. In the amnesty provision of the bill, workers were given one year of amnesty during which documents could be presented to prove continued residency in the United States. This proof of residency led to regularization and, ultimately, full citizenship in the United States. Many undocumented workers did not become legal citizens because of disqualification (because of lack of continuity in residence or employment for the previous 4 years), failure to produce the required documents to prove continuous residency or employment, or inability to understand the process well enough to participate. Socially, this process caused demographic splitting among extended families when some family members gained legal citizenship and others within the family did not.
Lack of Success History has shown that IRCA was not successful in its intent. With the enactment of IRCA, the United States experienced a decrease in immigration numbers, but by 1989, immigration was on an upsurge. The continued influx of immigrants can be linked to the fact that the bill addressed the pull factors of employment, which is why many undocumented immigrants risk crossing the border illegally, but it did not address the
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push factors, namely, what is pushing them away from their homeland. Policymakers theorized that employer sanctions would deter the hiring of undocumented workers, which in turn would decrease the number of illegal immigrants coming to the United States. In practice, the government was unwilling to allocate funds to monitor employer violations, and sanctions were not enforced; consequently, employers kept hiring undocumented workers. Even in cases where violators were caught, fines were rarely assessed for the infractions. There was no incentive to stop hiring undocumented workers, and access to cheap labor was a greater incentive to business owners. Although many employers continued to hire undocumented workers, many others refused to hire anyone who looked Latino rather than risk hiring someone illegally. This presumed ethnicity generated increased discrimination that extended beyond the employment arena. An unintended result of the IRCA was a burgeoning and lucrative business for smugglers, who saw an opportunity to expand their illegal business beyond drugs and weapons to include human trafficking. Individuals wanting to cross the border but lacking the proper documentation often employed coyotes to guide illegal passage across the border. With the promise of increased security at the border and more scrutinizing of documents by employers, smugglers found a market for full-package deals, which consist of transportation across the border, false documents, and job connections. Reduced to commodity status, individuals are inhumanely packed and transported in trucks and vans across the border, stashed in drop houses for undetermined periods, often held for ransom, and run the risk of being the prize at the heart of deadly battles between smugglers. Alma Alvarez-Smith See Appendix A See also Border Patrol; Bracero Program; Citizenship; Guest Workers; Immigration, U.S.; Nativism
Further Readings
Calavita, Kitty. 1993. “The Contradictions of Immigration Lawmaking: The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.” Pp. 229–260 in Making Law: The State, the Law, and Structural Contradictions, edited by W. J. Chambliss and M. S. Zatz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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Krauss, Erich with Alex Pacheco. 2004. On the Line: Inside the U.S. Border Patrol. New York: Kensington. Meyer, Michael C., William L. Sherman, and Susan M. Deeds. 1999. The Course of Mexican History. New York: Oxford University Press.
INCARCERATED PARENTS The United States has the largest incarcerated population in the world, and this number continues to grow with unprecedented increases in women’s incarceration, disproportionate imprisonment rates for women and men of color, and high recidivism rates. Most of these 2.2 million incarcerated U.S. residents are parents—mothers and fathers held in U.S. jails and prisons who typically have one or more children under the age of 18. Today, Black Americans are more than six times more likely to be incarcerated than are Whites; Latinos are more than twice as likely. These vast racial disparities suggest that current U.S. imprisonment has direct and severe consequences for families and communities of color. It is estimated that if contemporary sentencing and incarceration trends remain stable, 2.4 million children will have a parent behind bars in 2007—most of them will be children of color. This entry addresses the experiences of incarcerated parents and their children, focusing on their demographic profiles, the challenges faced in keeping families intact during incarceration, and the implications of U.S. criminal justice and social policies that negatively affect incarcerated parents, their children, and families.
Demographic Profile More than half of those incarcerated in state and federal prisons have children. According to a 2000 Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) special report, “Incarcerated Parents and their Children,” nearly twothirds of women incarcerated in state prisons were mothers to minor children; more than half of all men incarcerated in state prisons were fathers. At the federal level, similar percentages of women and men were parents—approximately six in ten. About half of all incarcerated parents in state prisons were Black, 29% White, and 19% Latino. In federal prisons, Blacks and Latinos made up nearly three-quarters of the parents; 22% were White.
Most (about 60%) parents in both state and federal prisons were less than 35 years old. Most parents in state (70%) and federal (55%) prisons did not have high school diplomas. About half of parents in state prisons had never married; parents, however, were much more likely to have been married than were inmates without children. Incarcerated parents have young children—more than one-fifth were younger than age 5. Many incarcerated parents lived with their children at the time of their offense. For fathers in state prisons, the children’s mothers provide care (in 90% of the cases). However, for the increasing number of mothers being incarcerated, only 28% report that their children go to live with their fathers. Maternal grandmothers (53%), followed by other relatives (26%), are the most likely to become primary caregivers for children with incarcerated mothers. Still, approximately 8% to 10% of children of incarcerated mothers and 2% to 5% of children of incarcerated fathers enter the foster care system. Many parents’ ties to their children will be severed forever while they are incarcerated. Inca arccerate ed Fatthers
Scholars have argued that the criminal justice system has estranged Black men from their families— particularly from their children. Most incarcerated parents are fathers of color, reflecting the gendered and racial nature of the incarcerated population. Many marital relationships end during imprisonment, and relationships with children and children’s mothers are often strained during this time. These strains are financial, emotional, and social. In many cases, employed fathers may have been the primary source of income for their families. Incarccerated Moth hers
Women’s rates of incarceration have skyrocketed during the past 2 decades. The affects of a mother’s incarceration are often thought to be more disruptive because mothers are often their children’s primary caregiver. Indeed, incarcerated mothers often have a difficult time maintaining meaningful relationships with their children and often report missing their children as one of the most difficult aspects of their imprisonment. Many incarcerated mothers report being homeless in the year before their offense, reflecting their tenuous economic situations. Overall,
Incarcerated Parents
incarcerated mothers’ offending should be understood in the context of drug use and a lack of viable economic skills. Childre en of Incarccera ate ed Paren ntss
Children of incarcerated parents have been identified as the “hidden population” most seriously harmed collaterally by incarceration. In 1999, there were nearly 1.5 million children with at least one incarcerated parent, an increase of 500,000 children since 1991. The overrepresentation of incarcerated parents of color spells racial disparities among their children as well. Black children are nearly nine times more likely than White children to have a parent in prison; children of Latino or Hispanic descent are three times more likely. According to the 2000 BJS report, 7% of Black children, 3% of Latino children, and less than 1% of White children had at least one parent incarcerated. Coupled with issues of poverty, instability, and a lack of social support, children with incarcerated parents face myriad emotional, behavioral, and psychological developmental problems. Given that most children of incarcerated parents live in poverty before, during, and after a parent’s incarceration, parental incarceration is thought to deliver a final blow to already vulnerable families. Incarceration affects children’s physical care and custody, and caregivers are placed in a precarious role in meeting the unique emotional, social, and economic needs of children. Children often experience shame and stigma from having an incarcerated parent—a significant number of them actually witnessed their parent’s arrest. Children often have difficulty in maintaining privacy while navigating educational and community settings. They may experience trouble at school and exhibit signs of withdrawal, concentration problems, and poor school performance. Given current criminal justice trends that leave millions of children parentless, the future consequences of mass incarceration remain unseen.
Staying in Touch Vissita atiion
More than half of all parents in prison have not seen their children since their incarceration. Visitation is significantly hindered because women on average
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are incarcerated 160 miles from their children, and men are on average 100 miles away. One-third of federally sentenced women are more than 500 miles away from their children and families. Trying to maintain contact through visitation poses a significant financial burden on families that try to do so. Travel to prisons hundreds of miles away requires time off from work, transportation, meals, overnight lodging if necessary, or child care. Maintaining contact between family members— particularly between parents and children—is not a free endeavor. Collect calls from prison are the most expensive type of phone calls in the United States. Despite this, maintaining familial relationships during incarceration has significant positive outcomes for incarcerated persons, families, and children. Ree entry y
When incarcerated parents return from prison, they are faced with strained familial relationships, limited employment opportunities, and increased housing difficulties. Depending on how much children understand of their parent’s absence and the level of contact throughout their parent’s sentence, reunions may be markedly difficult. Children may be wary of reconnecting with parents who have been absent for lengthy periods. Yet, the scholarly research in this area is clear: Family support during and after incarceration can make the transition from prison to home much smoother. Social support during and after incarceration is thought to lower recidivism rates, disrupt intergenerational patterns of incarceration, and lower the economic costs to taxpayers by mitigating the social and emotional affects of incarceration, providing a link to the “outside world” and assisting with community transition.
Implications of Policies Although strengthening families has long been touted as a goal of U.S. social policy, current criminal justice policies appears at odds, given what is known about the disruptive nature of incarceration on families. Further, the gendered implications of such policies have been ignored, and families and women are disproportionately punished as a result. Public policy changes in drug policy, welfare reform, public housing, and reunification with children are key areas for
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scholars to address in understanding the affects of mass incarceration on families. The war on drugs has stiffened criminal justice sentencing through mandatory minimum sentencing and “three strikes” laws, affecting both women and men. The emphasis on incarceration, rather than on treatment, helps explain why so many poor women and women of color enter the criminal justice system— they are more likely than men to commit drug offenses. Drug offenses account for half the increase in rates of women’s incarceration from 1986 to 1995; the number of women incarcerated for drug offenses rose nearly 900% in this period. Given the vast racial disparities in arrest, conviction, and imprisonment rates among both women and men of color compared with Whites, the war on drugs has filled prisons—particularly at the federal level—with parents who have been overwhelmingly convicted of drug offenses. Relatedly, Section 115 of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act mandated that persons convicted of a state or federal felony offense involving the use or sale of drugs would be banned from receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) for the course of their lives. This ban disproportionately affects Black and Latina women and their children, given their greater likelihood of criminal justice supervision as a result of racial disparities in drug enforcement and sentencing. In addition, Black and Latina women are more susceptible to poverty and disproportionately represented among those in need of cash assistance and food stamps provided by TANF. Also in 1996, the federal government passed the “One Strike Initiative,” which authorizes public housing authorities to obtain the criminal background records of all adult applicants and tenants. In some areas, these investigations are required for all public housing authorities, Section 8 providers, and additional federally assisted housing programs. Women and men found guilty of even one drug conviction can be denied housing under this initiative, making the search for affordable housing for poor families and families of color even more impossible. Lastly, the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (AFSA) disproportionately affects incarcerated parents in terminating parental rights once a child has been in foster care for 15 or more months of the past 22 months. Given that parents serve lengthy sentences spanning several years, those who do not have established long-term caregivers for their children are at most risk for losing them forever. Coupled with foster
care policies that provide less financial aid to relatives who are caregivers than to nonrelatives, this increases the risk of terminating parental rights. Racial disparities within the foster care system indicate that Black children remain in foster care longer, move within foster care more often, and receive less desirable placements, further suggesting that Black families with incarcerated parents are vulnerable to state intervention that is much more disruptive when compared with White families. Several authors and scholars have argued that current criminal justice policies will have long-lasting affects that will affect communities of color for several generations. This era of criminal justice sentencing affects both families of color directly via racial disparities and removing family members from households, but also indirectly. The billions of dollars devoted to mass incarceration have placed fiscal pressure on state budgets; these funds could be devoted to education, health care, and other social service provisions to help the most vulnerable U.S. families. Without drastic reforms to current criminal justice and social policies hinged on punishment reforms, incarcerated parents—and their children—will continue to suffer in trying to maintain their families. Danielle Dirks See also Crime and Race; Criminal Processing; Family; Juvenile Justice; Prisons Further Readings
Braman, Donald. 2004. Doing Time on the Outside: Incarceration and Family Life in Urban America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2000. “Incarcerated Parents and Their Children.” Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Available from http://www .ojp.usdoj .gov/bjs/pub/pdf/iptc.pdf Johnston, Denise and Katherine Gabel, eds. 1995. Children of Incarcerated Parents. New York: Lexington Books. Othello, Harris and R. Robin Miller, eds. 2003. Impacts of Incarceration on the African American Family. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Patillo, Mary, David F. Weiman, and Bruce Western, eds. 2004. Imprisoning America: The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Travis, Jeremy and Michelle Waul, eds. 2004. Prisoners Once Removed: The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.
India
INDIA The inhabitants of India, estimated in 2007 to number at 1.1 billion, have ancient roots in diversity. Applying a U.S. racial/ethnic framework is difficult in a country with different salient identifying characteristics. Instead, we can draw parallels between U.S. race/ethnicity and Indian group differences based on religion, caste or tribal affiliation, language/region, and skin color. This entry looks at how these differences affect Indian society, where the people are predominantly Hindu, ruraldwelling, and economically underprivileged.
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Religious Differences
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Muslim leaders pushing for their own territory began to be seen as outsiders. The 1947 partition separating India and Pakistan at independence left 1 million Muslims dead and 14 million homeless as Muslims left India and non-Muslims left Pakistan. The number of Muslims in the civil service dropped, and Indian Muslims became politically aloof. Like Hindus, Muslims are predominantly rural. Though there has been controversy for decades that Muslims have high birth-rates, these accounts are exaggerated. Muslims are currently 13.4% of the population. There is virtually no intermarriage with other groups. Many women wear full purdah and are guarded from contact with outsiders. No formal caste system separates Muslims from one another, and they have close-knit communities, especially in cities. Though cities were originally more integrated, separate neighborhoods formed in the 1930s, driven by political groups concentrating support. Today, villages see more social interaction between groups because Muslims are not separated into ethnic enclaves. Violence rarely erupts against Muslims in rural areas; most cases occur in cities where Muslims are more visible and clustered together. Muslims tend to be less educated (with a 59% literacy rate compared with 65% for the nation) and have fewer economic resources than average. A lack of specific means to advance through “reservations” (as affirmative action is known there) or scholarships leaves few opportunities for upward mobility. Divisions within the Muslim community impede political power. Those few Muslim candidates who are successful are often sponsored by Hindu parties and have difficulty advocating for their religious constituency. Muslims are still distrusted in India by some wary Hindus, who believe their true allegiance is to Pakistan.
Muslim m Minoritie es
When outsiders consider ethnic conflict in India, they think of Hindu-Muslim violence. Yet, Hindus and Muslims coexisted for centuries. Muslims conquerors swept into India 1,500 years ago. Although some rulers forced subjects to convert, others were religiously tolerant, allowing intermarriage and promoting Hindus in their courts. By the early 1800s, Muslim princes were overtaken by British forces. Disdain for the British prompted Muslims to avoid all things Western. With the independence movement,
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Christianity may have come to India before spreading through Europe. It thrived along the west coast in the 15th and 16th centuries through forced conversions by Portuguese colonists. Conversions grew steadily during British rule but dropped afterward. Protestantism and Catholicism drew low-caste Hindus hoping to escape deplorable social conditions. Many converts lived within Christian compounds to avoid being shunned by disapproving villagers.
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Missionaries brought not only religion but also Westernization to India, especially through Britishstyle education. Christian schools attracted Hindus, Parsis, and other elites who wanted to learn English and gain upward mobility. With the Great Depression in the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s, Christianity went into decline, as fewer funds and greater travel restrictions thwarted missionary efforts. Today, 2.3% of India is Christian; most of them marry other Christians, avoid involvement in politics, and interact with other Indians at work. Most are lowincome, with jobs as industrial or service workers in cities and farmers and milk workers in villages. However, they also have an 80% literacy rate, which provides Christians with better outcomes for education, economic class, and urban living than other Indians. The Powe erfful Sik khs
Though forming only 2% of the population, Sikhs have considerable influence, especially within Punjab. Sikhs are perhaps the most conspicuous minority, with unshorn hair and beards. Sikhism began in the late 15th century with Guru Nanak, who urged followers to strive for salvation without reliance on Brahman priests or worship of idols. He recognized the holiness within all people, regardless of caste, and the values in everyday life, not simply ceremonial rituals. Both Hindus and Muslims were drawn to his teachings. Sikhism fused religion and politics early on; persecution from Muslim rulers threatened by Sikhs’ growing numbers solidified their militarism. Their renown for valor served them well under British rule; a significant percentage of the British colonial army consisted of Sikhs. During drought and famine in Punjab in the 1920s, Sikhs emigrated abroad for better opportunities. During partition, Punjab saw indescribable violence with Sikhs and Hindus unified against Muslims. During this time, approximately 6 million Hindus left newly created Pakistan, and 6.5 million Muslims left India for Pakistan. Sikhs were caught in the middle, with half of their homeland in Pakistan and half in India. Most remained in India, but some moved north and others joined compatriots abroad. Sikhs also advocated for their own state, which eventually resulted in predominantly Hindu Haryana splitting from Sikh and Hindu Punjab in 1966. Many Sikhs align themselves with the Hindu-based Congress Party, though remaining an internally cohesive community resisting assimilation.
Sikh military prowess gained them considerable stature within India. They have a higher economic standing than average and slightly higher literacy rate (69%). The majority are farmers who have contributed greatly to economic conditions. They are well represented in the government of Punjab and nationally—as evidenced by current Sikh Prime Minister Manmohan Singh—though discrimination against them continues, especially in the South. This has led some community leaders to push for an independent Sikh nation. Buddhissm Return ns
Buddhism originated in India around 500 BC with Siddhartha Gautama, called “Buddha,” meaning “enlightened one.” Although today fewer than 1% of Indians are Buddhist, the religion flourished from the 7th through the 12th centuries. The Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra offer murals and sculptures of Buddha dating back more than 2,000 years. Buddhist art from that time has also been discovered from the Western Deccan to Orissa in the East and South in Andhra Pradesh. Although many Hindus see Buddha as an incarnation of their God Vishnu, Buddhists were persecuted by Hindus and Muslims alike. For these and other reasons, Buddhism went into decline and by the 13th century had almost no institutional structure within India. Buddhist monks traveled to Southeast Asia, China, Korea, and Japan spreading teachings. Recent resurgence of Buddhism in India is largely the result of migrations from Tibet and Myanmar (Burma) and conversions from tribal groups and Scheduled Castes, including a mass conversion of thousands in 1956. With a 72% literacy rate, Buddhists are more educated than the average Indian. Most tend to be clustered in the northern states and Maharashtra. The Mora al Jains
Jains, most of whom live in the north, account for less than 1% of Indians. Jainism reaches back 2,500 years and holds among its major tenets ahimsa or nonviolence. Jains reject the rigid Hindu caste system. Rather than performing sacrifices or praying to deities, they revere past teachers called tirthankaras who found liberation through moral living. Jain influence in society predates Indian independence and British occupation; many were favorites of early rulers. They also suffered discrimination, especially in southern India.
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Today, Jains are significantly more assimilated than are other religious minorities. They have no separate forms of dress or language; they have also adopted many cultural and institutional features of Hinduism. Overall, Jains occupy superior status in Indian society based on significantly higher educational attainment with a full 94% literacy rate, acquired affluence through self-employment in business, and urban dwelling. The Parsi Elite
Though the Zoroastrian or Parsi population of India had dwindled to less than 70,000, they remain an elite group. With ancestors who arrived in Gujarat 1,300 years ago after persecution in Persia, the Parsis share national identity and language with locals but maintain separate cultural and religious traditions. Parsis pray to their god Ahura Mazda and seek to live honest and charitable lives to attain heaven. They are the most educated group, with a 98% literacy rate, and are highly urban, with 96% living in cities (especially Mumbai) compared with the national average of 27%. A tradition of entrepreneurship has also led to great economic success.
Caste and Tribal Affiliation The caste system that applies to the 80.5% Hindu population creates additional cleavages. Divided into four groups determined by birth and virtually impossible to change, each category of Hindus corresponds to traditional occupational niches through generations. Thus, Brahmans top the hierarchy as the priestly/scholarly class, and Kshatriyas historically served as military and secular rulers. Vaisyas represent the merchant class, and Sudras are the workers. Hindus believe that one’s caste is a result of fate or karma, that one’s actions in past lives result in one’s position now; the hope is that through obedience and faith in this life, the next life may be better. Thus, most low-caste Hindus dutifully act according to custom to improve their next life. Though there are some marital, occupational, and other distinctions between each caste, the major cleavage separates all four upper castes from the “Scheduled Castes.” The Scheduled Castes
The 18.2% of Indians constituting the “Scheduled Castes” (SCs)—also known as “Untouchables,” “Harijans,” or “Dalits”—have always occupied the
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bottom rungs of society. Although some place SCs within the Sudra caste, they are generally considered outside the caste system altogether. Most SCs continue to work in jobs considered impure for Hindus, including leather-making, tending funeral pyres, and cleaning waste. However, constitutional guarantees that reserve certain percentages of university and government seats for SCs have increased in prominence. Some have sought to escape caste stigma through participation in the military or religious conversion. Discrimination against SCs continues despite antidiscrimination legislation. Recently, SCs have grown more political, resisting ongoing oppression benefiting upper castes. Most live in rural areas, relegated to the outskirts rather than within village boundaries. Because SCs have been subordinated and restricted to menial positions for centuries, they remain segregated. Almost all marry within the group; literacy rates remain extremely low—in some districts less than 2%. The Scheduled Trib bes
In addition to the religious groups previously discussed are the 8.2% making up the Scheduled Tribes (STs). Many of their social, economic, and cultural differences are based on geographic concentration and isolation. Most live in rural areas, especially the mountainous, hilly, or forested regions of northern India, and many have limited contact with outsiders. Each tribe is separate, with distinct religions, languages, and traditions. The economic life of STs centers on hunting, fishing, and slash-and-burn agriculture, though specific constitutional reservations for university admission and government service have increased education and employment. Literacy and school attendance rates are extremely low, except for areas near Christian missionary schools. Thus, STs remain toward the bottom of the socioeconomic structure. Oth her Backward d Classses
The Indian constitution provides for special measures to promote the “Other Backward Classes” (OBCs) along with SCs and STs. Because no explicit definition was provided, the Mandal Commission was convened to make this determination. Released in 1980, the report said that 52% of the population was OBCs deserving of special protections and promotions, including reservations for university admission, government positions, and vocational training programs.
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Language/Region and Skin Color In addition to the earlier-mentioned diversity, India is also divided by linguistic groups representing many different regions. There are eighteen official languages in addition to thousands of dialects. The tribal groups alone have some 700 hundred dialects among them. A strong resistance to internal migration has sustained linguistic diversity and affected skin color. Though some mistakenly believe skin color indicates caste, it is more an indication of regional origination— with lighter tones in the north and darker hues in the south. Some offer this as proof of an “Aryan invasion” from the north that conquered Dravidian locals, though this history has been widely challenged. With British rule and ongoing significant migration abroad, Indians came to have even more of a preference for light skin and the divisions are more pronounced. Indians are separated into diverse groups. Some of these are clearly hierarchical (i.e., Brahmans have higher social standing than SCs), though not all minorities are oppressed (i.e., Parsis are elites). Also, those in the “minority” nationally may be the majority within a state, and vice versa. Meera E. Deo See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Bangladeshi Americans; Caste; Foreign Students; Indian Americans; Muslim Americans; Pakistani Americans; Roma
Further Readings
Kashyap, Subbhash C. 1998. “Ethnicity and Constitutional Reforms in India.” In Ethnicity and Constitutional Reform in South Asia, edited by Iftekharuzzaman. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Regional Centre for Strategic Studies. Muzumdar, Sucheta. 1989. “Race and Racism: South Asians in the U.S.” In Frontiers of Asian American Studies, edited by G. M. Nomura, R. Endo, S. H. Sumida, and R. C. Leong. Pullman: Washington State University Press. Prashad, Vijay. 2000. The Karma of Brown Folk. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Robb, Peter (ed). 1995. The Concept of Race in South Asia. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press. Schermerhorn, Richard Alonzo. 1978. Ethnic Plurality in India. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Varney, Ashutosh. 2001. “Ethnic Conflict and Civil Society: India and Beyond.” World Politics 53:362–398.
Web Sites
Census India 2001: http://www.censusindia.gov.in
INDIAN AMERICANS Indian American communities have been forming since the mid-19th century, when the first of the Punjabi laborers arrived on the U.S. West Coast. Early photographs and written descriptions of these migrants, who worked in lumber mills, railroad yards, and farm fields, often called forth a sense of the exotic that served the xenophobic and nationalistic agendas of the time. Some argue that not much has changed in this respect. In the media, from popular television shows such as The Simpsons to news programs like Fox News, representations of Indian Americans and their communities are often oversimplified and reduced to a single signifier, such as the turban or a heavy accent. Such figures both inform and confound the ability to ascertain what constitutes Indian American communities and how their unity and diversity can be understood. Indeed, the multiple ways of being Indian American have much to do with the diversity of India itself. The population of India is more than a billion people, the second highest population in the world after China and nearly one-sixth of the planet’s population. It is the world’s largest democracy, with twenty-three official languages, and more than 1,000 dialects spoken. Within the nation’s twenty-eight states, there exists a rich variety of regional and tribal cultures, in addition to a wide array of religious affiliations such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, and Zoroastrianism, to name but a few. Consequently, the Indian American community exhibits a notable degree of variance in worldviews and lifestyles. This diversity is both a source of strength and frustration, for although many individuals share common goals of promoting a politically or culturally unified sense of “Indian-ness,” conflicts regarding issues such as communalism or caste continue. Members of the Indian American diaspora also must negotiate this complex set of identities with the wide range of values, beliefs, and practices they find within U.S. culture. Moreover, their community identities also are understood through a history of race and ethnic relations in the United States. Consequently, membership in this diaspora implies a state
Indian Americans
of multiplicity and an affiliation with many different and contextually shifting identifications. Most generally, this entry considers the difficult questions of who might be named an Indian American and how Indian American communities have been constituted. In each section, issues specifically related to Indian American communities will be discussed, including (a) historical immigration patterns, (b) changing immigration law, (c) community identity building and maintenance, and (d) current community concerns.
History of Indian American Immigration Indians’ movements around the globe began long before colonialism. However, it was through colonialism that various modes of migration developed their contemporary character. The abolition of slavery in Britain in 1833 caused labor shortages in agricultural activities and sugar production. Consequently, from 1830 through 1920, indentured labor in Burma, Mauritius, Ceylon, Malaya, and Natal became an option for Indians facing overpopulation and few employment opportunities at home. The first wave of Indian immigration to the United States occurred in the mid 1800s, and by 1899, more than 2,000 Indians were forming communities on the West Coast. Most of these initial migrants were male Sikh Punjabi; the remainder included immigrants from Gujarat and Bengal. Significantly, at the time, only a handful of Indian women made the journey. Most of the male immigrants came from rural areas in India and found work on farms, ranches, lumber camps, and railroads. In addition, a small number of individuals sought refuge as political refugees or arrived to pursue educational opportunities. During this time, Indian immigrants became an integral part of the expanding Pacific economy, so much so that their hard labor and acceptance of low wages began to attract unwanted attention. Like many other non-European migrant workers, the Indian Americans began to be the target of racist and xenophobic groups. For example, in 1907, a group calling itself the Asian Exclusion League began to press lawmakers to oppose immigration from Asia. This led to violent anti-Hindu riots in Washington, California, and Oregon that were organized to drive out “cheap labor.” In 1907, growing out of this burgeoning movement, the Bellingham, Washington, riots occurred. During this unrest, 500 individuals in Bellingham
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destroyed property and injured Indian American community members, until the police, unable to control the mobs, agreed to hold the 200 Indian Americans in the city hall “for their protection.” Days later, members of this Indian American community fled the city, taking with them only what they could carry; many chose to return to India. AntiAsian pressure continued to grow, and in 1917, the “Asiatic-Barred Zone” was enacted, restricting immigration from India. Soon, frustrated by xenophobic laws, prohibitions on land ownership, everyday racism, and the denial of citizenship, more than 3,000 Indians returned to India.
Changing Immigration Law In 1924, a national origin quota system was put into place, further restricting immigration from India. Consequently, Indian immigration to the United States during the first half of the 20th century diminished dramatically. Indeed, until 1952 lawmakers continued to create restrictions on citizenship based on race. These laws did not go unchallenged, however. For instance, in 1923, a crucial confrontation occurred when Bhagat Singh Thind applied for naturalization. Thind had immigrated to the United States in 1913, enrolled as a student at the University of California–Berkeley, and served in the U.S. Army during World War I, receiving an honorable discharge. His appeal for citizenship was denied and eventually his case was taken to the U.S. Supreme Court. After much waiting and deliberating, the outcome of U.S. v. Bhagat Singh was disappointing. The court ruled that Indians were ineligible for naturalization because they were not “White” in the ways that “White” was understood in the United States. Indeed, not until 1946 did immigration law eventually permit the naturalization of Indians, establishing a quota of 100 immigrants a year. In 1965, years of discriminatory immigration legislation were repealed with the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act. This act allowed as many as 20,000 individuals to immigrate from India annually and began what was later to be labeled the brain drain. This term referenced the highly select group of migrants from China, the Philippines, Great Britain, India, and Taiwan who were encouraged to apply. These individuals were extremely well educated and possessed skills in specific sought-after professions such as medicine or engineering. Most Indian immigration to the
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United States occurred from 1966 to 1977, and unlike the past, these immigrants often brought their families as well. This group of newcomers contained 25,000 medical doctors, 20,000 scientists with PhDs, and 40,000 engineers. After 1965, members of the Indian American diaspora began the difficult process of negotiating their degree of assimilation. Although most had held positions of importance in their home country, they often found that respect for their skills, education, or personal background did not outweigh the prejudice fueled by the social designation of “Third World migrant.” And even as the category of “Asian American” disrupted Black-White binaries of race, most Indian American community members disagreed strongly with being categorized as Asian Americans, citing deep and important differences between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indian culture, to name but a few. Together, they struggled through the 1970s to create the category “Indian American” in the U.S. Census. In 1975, their efforts resulted in individuals of Asian Indian descent being re-designated as White by the director of Federal Contract Compliance. In addition, in 1977, the Census Bureau reclassified Indian immigrants to Asian Indian, which still holds. During the same period, the Indian government also worked to create the category of nonresident Indian (NRI) in an effort to repatriate investment from abroad. Through this designation, the Indian migrant is viewed as an Indian national living abroad. This strategy of naming establishes a continuing relationship to India. As such, this person is given benefits not typically offered, such as the right to own property in India, as well as the ability to profess duel political loyalties. This option made immigration to the United States much more appealing for many potential Indian migrants. As a result of these opportunities in the 1970s, Indian American communities grew in the 1980s to more than 300,000. In 1990, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the population was more than 800,000, and the most recent census, performed in 2000, indicates that there are now 1,678,765 individuals. During this time, progressive activists began using the term South Asian to support their sense that individuals from similar geographical areas would be best served by forgoing historical divisions and creating a unified political identity in the United States. Within this framework, Indian Americans constituted a small portion of a larger community of South
Asian Americans that included people from Bangladesh, Maldive Islands, Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. Although many applauded this political move, others in the community expressed a strong desire to mobilize their ethnicity by adopting “Indian American” as a primary selfdescriptor. For these individuals, reference to this ethnicity served as a way of distinguishing themselves from other Asian immigrants—recognizing a specific set of identities in terms of culture, language, and history—and also aided in downplaying their own racialization. Because immigration from India has been heavily weighted toward university-educated professionals, their economic success has been remarkable during the last 2 decades. In 1990, the median household income of Indian immigrants was $48,320. This was $18,000 higher than the median for the U.S. population, and $20,000 more than the figure for foreignborn individuals, even though almost 60% of these immigrants had been in the United States 10 years or less. Moreover, immigrants from India within the last 2 decades have contributed to the diversity of the South Asian population by including larger numbers of working-class families, as well as H-1B visa holders, and international students.
Indian American woman. A woman of South Asian descent shops in a store with a white-skinned mannequin wearing South Asian women’s clothing in the New York City immigrant hub of Jackson Heights in the borough of Queens in New York City. Indian Americans are the largest segment of the growing number of South Asians who have immigrated to the United States. Source: Aurora/Getty Images.
Indian Americans
Negotiating Identity Today, like other Asian groups, South Asian communities continue to comprise primarily foreign-born individuals who are naturalizing in significant numbers. Although most of these immigrants tend to create large communities in major metropolitan areas, the 2000 U.S. Census data also reveals that South Asians are settling in large numbers in less urban areas within the United States. Many of these immigrants choose to negotiate their new environs through the maintenance of particular Indian values, beliefs, and practices. This choice challenges mainstream U.S. notions of ethnicity such as assimilability and foregrounds the complexities of identity politics. Rather than behaving and believing in ways that support traditional conceptions of the U.S. “melting pot,” Indian Americans enact multiple identities, in terms of language, regional culture, ethnicity, religion, and nation. As members of this diaspora negotiate multiple lived categories, they also are simultaneously engaging U.S. public life and democratic culture. In this complex space, Indian American communities continue to develop. For example, for many their identity refers not so much to national affiliation as to an elaborate network of regional culture, dialect, and social custom. This fragmentation, of course, is not surprising, given that India was composed of separate different princely states before and during British colonization and did not become a nation until a little more than 50 years ago. Indeed, India is still developing a sense of what it means to be “Indian.” Most individuals connect much more closely with regional or religious identities rather than with a national loyalty. Given this, it is relatively easy to understand how adopting an Indian American identity might be challenging for some immigrants, particularly those in the first generation. Such a regional identity often is supported in larger, urban environments where the population of immigrants tends to be dense. In these contexts, smaller subgroups, such as the Bengalis or Gujaratis, identify based on a regional dialect spoken at home or regional customs practiced. Relatives who have arrived more recently may reinforce these cultural distinctions and re-inject local practices. This does not mean that Indian American communities have little cohesion. Loyalties to an Indian homeland unite this diverse group on many levels, providing a collective sense of identity. But like all groups, they must struggle against their own discrepancies, differences that must be resolved if the group is to be viable.
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For these reasons, the answer to the question, “Who are you?” is markedly negotiable for many Indian Americans. While in a group of other Indians, a person might identify regionally, as a Gujarati. On the other hand, while at work, surrounded by nonIndians, a person might choose to label as Indian, Indian American, Asian American, Asian, or just American. Strategic with their responses, the answer often depends on who is asking the question and why. In the absence of the cultural environment available in India, exposing children to important aspects of their Indian heritage poses challenges for Indian American parents. Some choose to make frequent trips back to India to expose their children to local practices and traditions. Most families actively try to take advantage of the growing commercial success of Indian markets, restaurants, and clothing. Indeed, in recent years, thanks to celebrities such as Madonna and Goldie Hawn, Indian fashions (saris and churidars), jewelry (belly chains), and body art (mendhi), have found a market with both U.S. and Indian American youths. Beyond this, increasingly, the Indian American community is using the Internet to sell and buy Indian goods. Another means by which children can become more mindful of their Indian heritage is to participate in organizations such as the Indian Association of America or weekend ethnic schools. Of course, these attempts to encourage children to recognize their Indian heritage may go unheeded in favor of more mainstream affiliations. This first generation born in the United States faces many challenges in connecting to a “homeland” they may have never seen. Yet, in creatively appropriating and re-appropriating diverse cultural forms to meet everyday needs and address political exigencies, this group exhibits the important ways in which traditions are also dynamic and can work in ways that can support social and cultural change.
Contemporary Community Issues Despite diversity within Indian American community groups, these immigrants share many common problems. The most pressing include hate crimes, racial profiling, immigration policies, educational inequity, and poverty. The United States is currently struggling with its identity as a “country of immigration.” During the late 1980s into the 1990s, when the foreign-born population reached 20 million (nearly 8% of the total population), anti-immigration sentiment rose among U.S. citizens.
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For instance, in 1987, Navraze Mody was murdered in a “dotbusting” hate crime spree in New Jersey; a practice in which Indian Americans were visually identified by a bindi (a red dot traditionally worn on the forehead of married Hindu women) and then verbally or physically assaulted. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., anti-immigrant sentiment has grown stronger, with large proportions of the populations indicating that they fear certain immigrant groups, such as those from South Asia, and favor polices that restrict or curtail immigration from these countries. Some argue that this rising intolerance may not simply be a function of the attacks but, instead, is linked to the fact that the new influx of immigrants is often not European in origin; rather, they are commonly non-White and from developing countries. Others argue that the tragic events of September 11, 2001, have sharply increased suspicion and prejudice toward South Asian immigrants in a manner that recalls the marked backlash felt by East Asians following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Given this social and political climate, a handful of grassroots advocacy groups have formed around the country to help Indian Americans unite and increase their influence through active civic and political engagement. The continued efforts of groups such as these, as well as the commitment of socially engaged artists, performers, and writers, have great potential to increase understanding and forge connections between Indian American communities, the broader Indian diaspora across the globe, and U.S. mainstream society. Christine Lynn Garlough See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Assimilation; Cross-Frontier Contacts; Desi; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Foreign Students; Hate Crimes; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; India; Melting Pot; Panethnic Identity; Rites of Passage
Further Readings
Backburn, Robin. 1988. The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848. London: Verso. Hall, Stuart. 1996. Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, edited by D. Morely and K.-H. Chen. London: Routledge. Jensen, Joan. 1988. Passage from India: Asian Indian Immigrants in North America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Shukla, Sandhya. 2003. India Abroad: Diasporic Cultures of Postwar America and England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tinker, Hugh. 1993. The New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labor Overseas, 1830–1920. London: Hansib. Varma, Premdatta. 1995. Indian Immigrants in USA: Struggle for Equality. New Delhi, India: Heritage.
INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT OF 1978 Perhaps the most significant threat to the continuing existence of Native American tribes as culturally distinct, self-governing nations has been the forced removal of American Indian children from tribal communities into boarding schools and non-Indian homes. Although both an explicit tactic by federal and state governments to foster the assimilation of Native Americans into mainstream society and the result of well-meaning social workers who lack knowledge about tribal cultures, the removal of American Indian children from the reservations has resulted in the disruption of traditional family life and has hindered the transmission of tribal values, customs, and languages to future generations of Native American people. In the 1970s, after decades of failed assimilation policies that left Native American communities culturally and politically fragmented, tribes began to achieve moderate levels of success in winning recognition of their sovereign rights to exclusively govern their reservations and their members without interference from the states. Tribes argued that a crucial part of this sovereign authority was the ability to protect their most valuable cultural resources, their children, from being taken away and raised in ways that are incompatible with tribal cultural values. As these arguments were consistent with the federal government’s post-assimilation era policy of tribal selfdetermination, Congress responded with the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) in 1978. Specifically acknowledging the importance of protecting the stability and security of Native American tribes and further asserting that it is in the best interest of Native American children to be raised in culturally relevant settings, ICWA implemented sweeping jurisdictional and substantive requirements for all child placement proceedings involving American Indian children. Although not immune from controversy, ICWA’s implications for tribal and state authority
Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978
regarding the welfare of American Indian children have been considerable. Indeed, many assert that ICWA is one of the most significant pieces of legislation dealing with Native Americans that has ever been passed. This entry describes the legislation, its context, and its consequences.
The Removal of American Indian Children Before 1978 The forced removal of Native American children from their tribal communities goes back to the late 1800s and coincides with the beginning of the reservation era, which was marked by the end of tribal military resistance to U.S. expansion. At this time, American Indian children were removed to non-Indian controlled boarding schools as part of the federal government’s policy of assimilation. By separating Native children from their traditional communities and prohibiting them from speaking their native languages, dressing in tribal attire, or practicing their traditional religions, while teaching them the norms and customs of Anglo American society, it was believed that educators could “kill the Indian, but save the man.” The consequences of the boarding school experiment were devastating for the children as well as the tribes. Children suffered emotional and psychological trauma from being separated from their families and forced to adopt lifestyles that were unfamiliar and inconsistent with their traditional customs, and it was not uncommon to hear of physical, sexual, and emotional abuses occurring at these schools. Tribes lost generations of members to boarding schools who, after graduating, either returned to their reservations lacking the cultural knowledge and tribal identities required for reintegration back into the community or, more often, moved away from the tribes and started lives elsewhere. American Indian boarding schools were most active in the late 1800s to mid-1900s, although many continued to operate in the decades that followed. As late as 1971, 17% of American Indian children were still being removed to boarding schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs or by non-Indian religious organizations. In many ways, the adoption of American Indian children into non-Indian homes is ideologically linked to the boarding school experiment. Both endeavors represent the failure of state and federal institutions to recognize and respect native practices of child rearing; they also demonstrate the paternalistic belief that
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American Indian children are better off raised by nonIndian parents in mainstream cultural settings, rather than by members of their own tribe. Whereas the removal of children to boarding schools was often the result of official assimilationist policies, the adoption of Native American children into non-Indian families has more generally resulted from the actions of wellmeaning, but culturally insensitive, state social workers who fail to understand tribal family customs. Because of disproportionate rates of alcoholism and poverty on the reservations, many American Indian children are born into broken homes and raised outside of their nuclear families. Although reliance upon extended families for child rearing is consistent with the traditional, communally focused, customs of many native communities, such practices are regularly deemed unorthodox and flawed by non-Indian child welfare agents. As a result, many more Native American children are removed from their families on allegations of neglect and emotional mistreatment than are non-Native children. Non-Indian biases against tribal child-rearing practices are further reflected in the more general trends of American Indian child placements in the decades before the passage of ICWA. For example, in 1969, 85% of all Native American children who were adopted or placed in foster homes were living in non-Indian households. In states with larger Native American populations, the ratios of adoptions for American Indian children versus non-Indian children were staggeringly high, reaching ten-to-one in Wyoming, and five-to-one in Maine, Wisconsin, Washington, the Dakotas, and Utah.
ICWA and Its Implications ICWA was passed in 1978 as part of a string of legislation purporting to give greater power to Native American tribes in governing their own people, controlling their land bases, and protecting vital aspects of tribal culture. As a general matter, the 1970s marked a shift from federal policies of assimilation to greater acknowledgment of tribal sovereignty and selfdetermination. Specifically, ICWA was enacted to reverse the historic trends of tribal cultural breakdown that had resulted from the forced removal of generations of American Indian children from their communities. It sought these objectives by articulating jurisdictional requirements and placement priorities for all cases involving the adoption or foster placement of Native American children in ways favorable to tribes.
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ICWA recognizes the exclusive jurisdiction of tribal courts in all placement cases involving American Indian children who reside on the reservation and requires the immediate transfer of such cases from state court to tribal court where the appropriate motions are raised. Under ICWA, an “Indian child” is defined as a minor who is a member of, or eligible for membership in, the tribe and who is the biological child of a member. Where state courts retain jurisdiction, such as in cases where American Indian children reside off the reservation, American Indian tribes are permitted to intervene in the proceedings and the courts must adhere to specific preference requirements for placing American Indian children in adoptive or foster homes. Barring good cause to the contrary, preferences for adopting American Indian children should go, first, to members of the Indian child’s extended family; second, to other members of the child’s tribe; and third, to other American Indian families. Although Congress intended ICWA to provide clear guidelines for the adoption and foster placement of American Indian children, the application of the law by state courts has been anything but uniform. For example, some states have interpreted the “good cause” exception to the application of the placement preferences and transfer requirements as an invitation to determine whether placement with an American Indian family is in the best interest of the child. This contravenes a foundational purpose of ICWA, however, which is to uphold native practices of child rearing and remove such practices from the scrutiny of state courts and child welfare workers that lack the cultural knowledge to make such judgments. Other state courts have carved out a judicial exception to the application of ICWA where an American Indian child is not being immediately removed from an “existing Indian family,” even though no such exception is written into the act itself. Although amendments to ICWA were proposed in 2003 to clarify the act by explicitly rejecting the “existing Indian family exception,” the amendments were never passed. Notwithstanding these inconsistencies, the consequences of the act have been mainly positive. The application of ICWA has helped prevent the future removal of American Indian children from tribal communities and has strengthened the autonomy of tribal governments and courts, educated state courts and child welfare workers on matters of tribal sovereignty and
the importance of upholding tribal cultural value systems, and encouraged increased cooperation between tribes and the states over issues of child welfare. Julia Miller Cantzler See also Adoption; Assimilation; Child Development; Native American Health Care; Native American Identity; Native Americans; Sovereignty, Native American
Further Readings
Adams, David Wallace. 1995. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Bensen, Robert. 2001. Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Garner, Suzanne. 1993. “The Indian Child Welfare Act: A Review.” Wicazo Sa Review 9(1):47–51. Harjo, Susan Shown. 1993. “The American Indian Experience.” Pp. 199–207 in Family Ethnicity: Strength in Diversity, edited by H. P. McAdoo. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Jones, B. J. 1995. The Indian Child Welfare Act Handbook: A Legal Guide to the Custody and Adoption of Native American Children. Chicago, IL: American Bar Association.
INDIAN GAMING REGULATORY ACT
OF
1988
The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act or IGRA (Public Law 100–497), passed by Congress in 1988, established a federal statutory basis and regulatory framework for governing the operation of gaming by federally recognized American Indian tribes. This entry describes the legal evolution of gaming as tribal revenue-earning activity and summarizes the law’s content.
History and Background The first federally recognized tribe to operate a highstakes gaming facility was the Seminole Tribe of Florida. The state of Florida tried to shut down the tribe’s bingo parlor, arguing that under Public Law 280, the state had criminal jurisdiction over the tribe’s lands and the tribe was operating a facility that did not comply with a number of state laws. The U.S. Court
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988
of Appeals in the 1979 case of Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida found that because the state generally allowed charitable bingo, the regulation of the industry fell under civil jurisdiction, which the state did not have on the reservation’s lands. In the 1980s, tribal government-sponsored gaming operations began to spread throughout Indian Country, and by 1988, more than 100 tribes were operating bingo halls. Many states attempted to restrict or stop tribal gaming operations on the grounds that they violated state gaming laws and under significant pressure from the non-Indian gaming industry, which feared competition. State interests also voiced concerns that the lack of federal regulation of the industry would lead to an increase in organized crime and social problems associated with gambling. States were also concerned about their inability to tax gaming on American Indian reservations. In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the ability of tribes to operate gaming facilities on their lands independent of state regulation. In California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, the Court ruled six to three in favor of the Cabazon, asserting that Public Law 280 did not grant the state of California the jurisdiction to regulate activities on American Indian reservations if they were not completely illegal under state criminal laws. This meant that if a state prohibited gambling but allowed some form of gaming for charitable organizations, state lotteries, or otherwise, as regulated under civil law, American Indian tribes could engage in those forms of gaming free of state control. If, however, the state completely criminally prohibited gaming, then tribes in the state could not engage in that activity. The California v. Cabazon decision ultimately led states and Nevada gaming interests to seek federal legislation to limit and control tribal gaming and to give states some regulatory authority over it. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which was passed a year later, was Congress’s response, relying on the principles put forth by the Cabazon case. With this legislation, Congress tried to achieve a balance between the right of tribes to be generally free of state jurisdiction and the interest of states in regulating gaming activities. States have a voice in setting the scope and extent of tribal gaming, and the tribes keep regulatory authority over certain kinds of gaming. Neither the states nor the tribes were pleased. Tribes wanted to continue operating according to the Cabazon decision and did not welcome any form of state involvement. States felt
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their role was too limited and worried that the act exposed them to possible lawsuits.
What IGRA Says As stated in the Declaration of Policy or Section 2702 of IGRA, the purpose of the act is threefold: 1. To provide a statutory basis for the operation of gaming by American Indian tribes as a means of promoting tribal economic development, self-sufficiency, and strong tribal governments; 2. To provide a statutory basis for the regulation of gaming by an American Indian tribe adequate to shield it from organized crime and other corrupting influences, to ensure that the American Indian tribe is the primary beneficiary of the gaming operation, and to assure that gaming is conducted fairly and honestly by both the operator and players; and 3. To declare that the establishment of independent Federal regulatory authority for gaming on American Indian lands, the establishment of Federal standards for gaming on Indian lands, and the establishment of a National Indian Gaming Commission are necessary to meet congressional concerns regarding gaming and to protect such gaming as a means of generating tribal revenue.
Regulatio ons Affecting Trib bes
For a tribe to operate gaming facilities under IGRA, it must be a federally recognized tribe. This means that it must be a tribe, band, nation, or other organized group or community of American Indians that is recognized as eligible by the secretary of the interior for the special programs and services provided by the U.S. government to American Indians and as possessing powers of self-government. Federal recognition can be a result of historical continued existence, executive order, congressional legislation, or the Department of the Interior’s federal acknowledgement process. IGRA requires that American Indian gaming occur on Indian lands. These include land within the boundaries of a reservation as well as lands held in trust or restricted status by the U.S. government on behalf of a tribe or individual, over which a tribe has jurisdiction and exercises governmental power. Tribes operating gaming facilities off-reservation on non-Indian lands are subject to the laws of the state where the
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facility is located. A tribe’s lands can only be conferred as federally entrusted lands by an act of Congress, a court decision or settlement, or, most commonly, through an application through the U.S. Department of Interior. Tribes may also operate casinos on lands acquired after the enactment of the IGRA, subject to certain restrictions and exceptions as set forth in Section 2719 of the act. To do so, the secretary of the interior must consult with the tribe and appropriate state and local officials, including officials of other nearby American Indian tribes, to determine that a gaming establishment on newly acquired lands would be in the best interest of the tribe and its members and would not be detrimental to the surrounding community; the governor of the state in which the gaming activity is to be conducted must concur in the secretary’s determination. Gaming facilities may also be opened on lands that are taken into trust as part of a settlement of a land claim or through the restoration of lands through the federal acknowledgement or other federal recognition process. IGRA does not require that a tribe operate a casino within the borders of the state in which the tribe is based. Key Prov visio ons
Under IGRA, gambling operations are divided into three categories with varying levels of tribal, state, or federal regulation. Balancing state and tribal interests, IGRA generally requires that states and tribes enter into compacts to authorize the types of gambling commonly associated with tribal casinos today—such as slot machines—when state law permits similar gambling operations in any other context. The act permits casino operations on American Indian lands, which it defines as (1) reservation lands, (2) lands held in trust by the United States for benefit of an American Indian tribe or individual, or (3) certain specified lands over which an Indian tribe exercises governmental power. The act requires states to negotiate with tribes that request the opportunity to enter into a compact. The IGRA establishes the National Indian Gaming Commission within the U.S. Department of the Interior as a body to limit organized crime and corruption, ensure that tribes benefit from gambling revenues, and enforce the honesty and fairness of certain tribal gambling operations. The regulatory framework established under IGRA divides gaming into three classes:
• Class I gaming is defined by IGRA to include social games played solely for prizes of minimal value or traditional forms of Indian gaming engaged in by individuals as a part of, or in connection with, tribal ceremonies or celebrations. The operation and regulation of Class I gaming activities is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the tribe on its lands. • Class II gaming includes bingo, pull tabs, lotto, punch boards, tip jars, instant bingo, other games similar to bingo, and card games played exclusively against other players rather than against the house. Class II gaming is allowed if these games are authorized or not explicitly prohibited by the state in which the tribal operation is located. Class II gaming does not include banking card games (including baccarat and blackjack), electronic or electromechanical facsimiles of any game of chance, or slot machines of any kind. Class II gaming is permitted as long as the state in which the tribe’s lands are located permits such gaming for any purpose by any person, organization, or entity. Although states almost always heavily regulate and restrict such games, many of those state restrictions do not apply to the tribe. For example, although Class II card games must be played in conformity with state laws and regulations on hours of operation and limitations on wager or pot sizes, state limits do not apply to bingo at a tribal reservation facility. Before a tribe can operate Class II gaming, it must also authorize a tribal resolution or ordinance that is approved by the National Indian Gaming Commission. Regulation of Class II games is thus within the jurisdiction of the tribes, but subject to oversight by the Gaming Commission. • Class III gaming includes all forms of gaming that are not classified as Class I or II games. These include slot machines, blackjack, craps, roulette, and other games that are commonly operated by Nevada or Atlantic City casinos. The Gaming Commission’s Office of General Counsel reviews games on request by a tribe or a game developer and issues advisory opinions about whether they are Class II or Class III. Class III gaming is the most important type of gaming for tribal gaming enterprises. Tribes may use the revenues generated by their Class II and III gaming enterprises only for purposes designated in the IGRA. According to IGRA, these revenues are not to be used for purposes other than the following:
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990
• To fund tribal government operations or programs • To provide for the general welfare of the American Indian tribe and its members • To promote tribal economic development • To donate to charitable organizations • To help fund operations of local government agencies
Once these obligations have been met, a tribe may petition the secretary of the interior to approve a revenue allocation plan under which the tribe may make per capita payments to individual tribal members. Approximately one-third of the tribes engaged in class II and III gaming distribute per capita payments to their members. The size of these payments varies considerably from tribe to tribe, depending on the profitability of the gaming enterprises. Angela Ann Gonzales and Melanie Stansbury See also Bureau of Indian Affairs; Gaming, Native American; Native Americans
Further Readings
Anders, Gary C. 1998. “Indian Gaming: Financial and Regulatory Issues” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 556:98–108. Cornell, Stephen, Joseph Kalt, Matthew Krepps, and Jonathan Taylor. 1998. American Indian Gaming Policy and its Socio-Economic Effects. Report to the National Gambling Impact Study Commission. Cambridge, MA: Economics Resource Group. Eadington, William R. 1990. Indian Gaming and the Law. Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press. Manson, Dale. 2000. Indian Gaming: Tribal Sovereignty and American Politics. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES EDUCATION ACT OF 1990 The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1990 was enacted to decrease the overrepresentation of minorities in special education, which had occurred previously within public education. In reality, however, it has failed at its legislative intent and become a gateway for introducing school-age minorities, more specifically, Black males, into special education at rates disproportionate to those of
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their White counterparts. This entry looks at the law, its application, and its impact.
The Law and Its Context The reauthorized IDEA was enacted into law by President George W. Bush on December 3, 2004, to strengthen IDEA of 1990, which was derived from the federal policy, Education for All Handicapped Children Act. The original intent and continued responsibility of the acts is to provide all students with special needs access to a “free and appropriate” public education, to protect the rights of parents and their school age children, to assist state and local education agencies in educating students with disabilities, and to assess and ensure that state and local education agencies are successful in providing a quality education within a least restrictive environment (LRE) for all children with disabilities. Before these enactments, 1 million children with special needs were segregated from the mainstream classrooms of public schools, and more than 4 million did not receive the educational assistance necessary to access the opportunities offered by the U.S. public school system. The original 1975 act also enabled the federal government to enforce the equal protection clause for families and students. This clause bars state and local agencies from excluding and misclassifying students with special needs. Was the original intent of protecting families and students through IDEA successful? Many in the field of education would answer No. The question has been raised, to how and why an act such as IDEA, which was implemented to protect all children, could allow for the overrepresentation of racial minorities, especially Black and Latino children, in special education. In 1992, according to the Office of Civil Rights, elementary and secondary schools reported that Black males accounted for only 8% of total school enrollment nationally but more than twice that percentage in the categories of Educable Mentally Retarded, Severely Emotionally Disturbed, and Trainable Mentally Retarded. In certain school districts, enrollment in special education for Black students was almost 50% higher than their representation in the districts as a whole. In addition, the Chicago Tribune discussed how Black pupils were 2.9 times more likely to be labeled with a disability than were Whites. Wealthier school areas were more likely to place Black children in special education by labeling them mentally impaired.
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Special education students are still kept apart from regular education students within the United States. Such findings raise concern about potential biases in assigning children of color to special groups, particularly in light of findings demonstrating that advocates for special education students, within and outside of government, have allowed for the continuation of policies that foster inequality and segregation.
The Impact of Racism To understand how this phenomenon occurs, one must realize and understand that the construction of IDEA rests on the notion that race does not influence the identification of students. Furthermore, IDEA is founded on trust for those who evaluate and work with students with disabilities. Current beliefs among many Whites—that race and discrimination are not everyday fundamental aspects of racially marginalized children’s lives—contribute to misrecognition of the covert effects of racism and discrimination that occur as a result of the unanalyzed socialization experiences of special education workers. The premise of IDEA and those within education who feel that racism is not a factor within the determinant classification of students ignore the subtle acts of discrimination toward minority students, especially Blacks, that later become detrimental variables in determining the presence of a disability. Moreover, those who enacted IDEA did not consider that some teachers, especially White teachers, may operate on stereotypes, social distance, racism, biased research, and ignorance of community norms of the minority children with whom they work. In combination with the failure to acknowledge and validate a particular child’s culture and race, these tendencies have a negative impact on the population of school children of color with whom teachers are working. In addition, aside from the fact that race was never factored into the construction of IDEA, the criteria for defining disabilities, such as speech/ language, emotional, and specific learning disabilities, have been highly criticized for vagueness and as invalid testing procedures.
Classification of Students IDEA has helped many students with special needs and their parents. In the face of its explicit mandates against misclassification on the grounds of race, however, it still introduces minority children to special
education at unrepresentative rates. What holes exist to allow misclassification of minority students? The numerical increase in incoming college freshmen who have been diagnosed with disabilities covered under IDEA is one sign of potential problems. The definitions, broadness of terms, and inconsistent application of the policy from state to state and school district to school district because of the broad language of IDEA have allowed for a significant increase in learning disabilities diagnoses. Another reason that the current language of IDEA may have a negative effect on minorities is that the law is based on a system from which they were originally excluded. Numerous studies illustrate that assigning a disproportionately high number of minority students to special education serves as a form of discipline and control in public schools. Disproportionate numbers of Black students are assigned to special education programs, a phenomenon that predates IDEA and continues. Research shows that this results from a complex system that schools unconsciously and consciously employ in an effort to impede the academic success of minority students. By means of labeling, minority students who do not readily comply are easily grouped into a circle of minorities plagued with an inferior and tracked curriculum and decreasing educational expectations by school staff. This in turn reduces the achievement level of labeled students. In addition, this segregation of special education students also encourages labeling and stereotyping of people with disabilities, a disservice to Black and other pupils of color. Terrence Fitzgerald See also Americans with Disabilities Act; Educational Performance and Attainment; Institutional Discrimination; Labeling; Pipeline; Racism; School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning; Stereotypes; Tracking
Further Readings
Barnes, Colin. 1991. Disabled People in Britain and Discrimination: A Case for Anti-Discrimination Legislation. London: Hurst. Barton, Len and Sally Tomlinson. 1984. Special Education and Social Interest. London: Croom Helm. Delpit, Lisa. 1995. Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York: New Press. Fitzgerald, Terrence. 2006. “Control, Punish, and Conquer: U.S. Public Schools’Attempts to Control Black Males. Challenge: Journal of Research on African American Men 12:38–53.
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Glennon, Theresa. 1995. “Race, Education, and the Construction of a Disabled Class.” Wisconsin Law Review:1237–1339. Irvine, Jacqueline. 1990. Black Students and School Failure: Policies, Practices, and Prescriptions. New York: Greenwood Press. Jarvinen, D. and R. Sprague. 1995. “Using Actors to Screen Minority Children for ADHD: An Examination of Items Bias.” Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment: ADHD Special:173–183. Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara. 1978. Worlds Apart: Relationships Between Families and Schools. New York: Basic Books. Pressman, Roger. 1993. “A Comprehensive Approach to the Issue of Disparate Special Education Placement Rates of African American and National-Origin Minority Youths.” Clearinghouse 27:322–332. Skrtic, Thomas. 1991. Behind Special Education: A Critical Analysis of Professional Culture and School Organization. Denver, CO: Love. Turnbull, Rud and Ann Turnbull. 1998. Free Appropriate Public Education: The Law and Children with Disabilities. Denver, CO: Love. Zirkel, Perry A. 2001. “Sorting Out Which Students Have Learning Disabilities.” Phi Delta Kappan: 639–641.
INDONESIAN AMERICANS Most Indonesians are recent migrants, arriving after passage of the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, and they share social and cultural characteristics of people in their homeland. Racial, ethnic, and religious differences and intergroup relations are important because of the cultural diversity in Indonesia and events in Indonesia relating to these differences that encouraged migration, as described in this entry.
Florenese, Catholic; Balinese, Hindu.) Others, such as the populous Javanese, have various faiths.
Colonial Influences The archipelago experienced Dutch influence beginning in the 17th century. In the 19th century, the Netherlands-Indies government was formed, and by the beginning of the 20th century extended control over what is now the Republic of Indonesia. British scholar J. S. Furnivall described the Netherlands Indies as a plural society, two or more social orders living side by side without mingling. These social orders were racially stratified: Dutch at the top, Chinese and other “foreign Asiatics” in the middle, and Indonesians on the bottom. The Dutch led government, big businesses, and professions. Chinese became economic mediators between urban and rural economic sectors. Indigenous Peoples were primarily farmers but increasingly came to cities during the 20th century. The three races had relatively exclusive lives and legal rights and followed dress codes and modes of respect. Conventional separation between the races led to the growth of two interstitial categories of people, Indo-Europeans (or Indo) and Peranakan. The Indo were the offspring of wives or concubines of Dutch and local women. The Peranakan were the offspring of Chinese men with local women. Neither the Indos nor the Peranakan was socially well China Taiwan
Myanmar Laos
Thailand Cambodia
Vietnam
Malaysia
South China Sea
Philippines
Brunei Malaysia
Indonesia’s Diversity
Indonesia
Indonesia has about 8,000 inhabited islands and an estimated population of 231.6 million people as of 2007. Some 200 culturally diverse ethnic groups range in population from several thousands to tens of millions, most with homelands within Indonesia in which they represent the dominant culture. Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and local supernatural traditions are found there. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any nation, with about 90% of its people said to be Muslim. Some ethnic groups mostly follow one faith (for example, Acehnese are Muslim; Batak, Protestant;
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accepted by the other three races. Indos did serve in Dutch governmental, military, and business activities and gained Dutch citizenship. Peranakan were mainly in commerce and professions. Over time, each group developed a subculture that included dress, arts, newspapers, and organizations.
The New Nation A nationalist movement grew from about 1912 through the end of the Japanese occupation in 1945 when its leaders declared independence. Revolution arose in Java and some other islands as the Dutch tried unsuccessfully to reassert control between 1945 and 1949. Indonesia became a nation in 1950 with the motto, “Unity in Diversity.” Indigenous people became citizens and others could choose citizenship, and Indonesian (based on Malay, a long-time lingua franca) became the national language. Local languages were used only in the first three grades of rural schools, and their indigenous literatures were no longer published. Indonesian served government, media, education, and business, but local languages remained used in homes and other settings. Ethnic cultures and regional loyalties were downplayed under the regimes of President Sukarno (the “Old Order”) and Suharto (the “New Order) from 1950 to 1998, because of concerns about the nation’s fragility. Both regimes supported a unitary form of government with power and finances centered in the capital, Jakarta. After the downfall of Suharto in 1998, new efforts grew for “reformation” that included democracy, popular elections, and decentralization. The 2000 census of Indonesia became the first since 1930 to measure distributions of ethnicity and religion.
Indonesian Migrants to the United States The first major migrants from Indonesia were Indos who came following independence. Many Indos, who held Dutch citizenship and faced an unfriendly Indonesian populace, moved to The Netherlands and then, after the Refugee Acts were passed by the U.S. Congress between 1953 and 1962, about 30,000 came to the United States, mainly to southern California. By 1973, another 30,000 had come, sponsored by relatives. In 1972, in Azusa, California, Indo Seventh Day Adventists (and a few Indonesian Adventists, including the Batak pastor) bought a church. By the early 1980s,
many Indonesians had come and joined the church, and conflicts arose between them and the Indos. Many Indos then withdrew to other churches and began assimilation to White U.S. society. Mig gra antss an nd Their Churches
By the time of the 2000 U.S. Census, some 35,000 to 50,000 Indonesians were in the country. About half reside in California, and more than half of those are in southern California, primarily in the Los Angeles and San Bernardino areas. This is the largest concentration of Indonesians in the country. Two major groupings emerged there: Indonesian Chinese (mostly Peranakan and Christian) and indigenous ethnic groups that were predominantly Christian such as Minahasans, Bataks, Ambonese, and Florenese. About 60% are estimated to be Chinese Indonesians, and most of the rest are from the Christian groups. Members of Muslim groups are more likely to be transient students, government officials, and business representatives. These groups migrated for different, but related, reasons. Chinese in Indonesia were classified as citizens of foreign descent and were subject to restrictions on participation in government employment and higher education. There were also regulations governing public celebrations, the use of temples, and public display of written Chinese characters. The Chinese were forced to do business and to reside in urban areas, to develop private universities, and to seek employment and education abroad for family members. In the United States, Chinese Indonesians use their business experience advantageously as do certain groups such as Minahasans and Bataks. In recent decades, violence in Indonesia against Chinese and against Chinese and Indonesian Christians led many people to migrate. In the United States, Indonesians are among minority “people of color” (though in Los Angeles that racial category has gained parity in numbers with White Americans.). Ironically, in the United States, the cultural character of Indonesian Chinese as essentially Indonesian comes to the fore, but their links to other Chinese migrants are few. In many ways, Indonesian Chinese and indigenous migrants become socially closer than they would have been in Indonesia. Most Chinese speak Indonesian in the home, churches, and other contexts. Few speak or are literate in Chinese, and in Indonesia, many had become Christian.
Indonesian Americans
In southern California, for example, which has more Asian migrants than any other region of the country, there are few relationships between ethnic Chinese from places such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan, or China. They differ in national background experiences, Chinese dialects, and facility in English, which leads them to remain socially with migrants from the same country. Indonesian consular personnel, who work with migrants to perpetuate cultural ties and who are not Chinese, remain closer to Indonesian Chinese in the United States than they would be in Indonesia. Los Angeles consular officials are mostly Muslim and sponsor weekly prayer and Koran reading sessions at the consulate, but they maintain close ties with Christian church groups, whether Chinese or indigenous ones, despite increasing conflict between Muslims and Christians in Indonesia. Religious conflict in Indonesia also has led some members of Christian ethnic groups to migrate, and though Christians are a small minority in Indonesia, they are a majority among migrants to the United States. In southern California, for example, Protestant congregations have grown from two in 1975 to about fifty in 2005. Religion and ethnicity may be associated. For example, the Batak Protestant Christian Church is found now in several places in the United States. Its members are all Bataks, and their language may be used in church. Not all Bataks belong to this church. Some are prominent Seventh Day Adventists. Adventist congregations may have a majority of Bataks or Minahasans, but others are more ethnically mixed. People commonly join denominations to which they belonged in Indonesia, but others may be drawn to new churches. Many Chinese in Indonesia are Baptist, and the second Indonesian church in the Los Angeles area was Baptist. Its founding minister and most of its congregation are Chinese. Indonesian migrants are still relatively few, even in southern California, so members of different ethnic groups are more likely to meet in church there than in Indonesia. Churches may help bridge ethnic differences in some cases, but may deter bridging in others. Also, one Indonesian leader in Los Angeles, Emile Mailangkay, has noted that the proliferation of Indonesian congregations there can bring about unhealthy divisions in an Indonesian community that otherwise benefits from unity. Ethnic and Regio onal Associa atio ons
In the late 1960s in Los Angeles, the Union of People of Indonesian Origin was formed. The union
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was an umbrella for all Indonesians, as its name implies, but its membership was largely Chinese Indonesian and remains so. Later, the organization Maesa was formed in Los Angeles (the word maesa means “united” in the Minahasan language of North Sulawesi). Its celebrations are attended by as many as 500 people and include music and dance from the North Sulawesi region. The Batak Community of California Club was established in the 1980s to assist Batak people and provide social activities. This club has another name in the Batak language that means “Descendants of Sri Raja Batak in California” (which refers to lineal descent from a mythical ancestor, Sri Raja Batak). Both Maesa and this club, like the earlier union, reflect the tendency to form broad ethnic or regional organizations in the early days of migration when population is small. As numbers increase, other organizations may grow along lines appropriate to ethnic group cultures. North Sulawesi migrants have formed subregional homeland associations, called rukun, whereas Batak have formed associations of patrilineal clans (marga). Maesa, for example, held a U.S. Labor Day picnic near Los Angeles in 1997, at which its chairperson urged unity among those from the same ethnic homeland: “We are all Minahasans, and all Indonesians.” At the same picnic, also urging unity, were leaders of two rukun groups—one for people from the northern peninsula of North Sulawesi, another for people from the Lake Tondano region. Both are dedicated to preserving their local subcultures in Los Angeles, and there is even an umbrella association of rukun groups, Homeland Associations of California. Such groups proliferate as their numbers allow whereas Maesa serves a broader regional constituency and has expanded to other U.S. cities. The Batak Club’s role has declined somewhat because of the growth of associations of clans that are central to Batak culture and that manage life cycle rituals and social support for their members. The first Batak clan association in the United States, the Organization of the Descendants of Raja Sonak Malela’s Daughters and Sons in California, was formed in southern California in 1997. It consists of four named clans that descend from a common ancestor, Raja Sonak Malela. Others have followed.
“Unity in Diversity” Indonesian migrants gain support from their ethnic and religious identities and associations. They must adapt
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Informal Economy
to racial minority status, and Chinese Indonesians experience stress from having been a racial minority in Indonesia and then becoming one in the United States. These migrants share a problem faced by all of their compatriots in Indonesia: how to achieve and maintain a sense of community while holding to primordial identities that provide social and other supports. Indonesians in the United States can achieve greater intergroup harmony because the forces that threaten relations between ethnic, racial, and religious groups in Indonesia—economic competition, land rights, political power, and religious animosity—are muted or absent among them in their new home. Clark E. Cunningham See Appendix A See also Asian Americans; Chinese Americans; Community Cohesion; Ethnic Group; Religion
Labor Organization (ILO) undertook a major study in Kenya where researchers tested the concept of the informal sector. That study, published in 1972, became an influential document globally; researchers could now affix a label to the many trades and occupations that were previously left undefined in academia. In 2002, the ILO added a modified definition distinguishing between “decent and indecent work.” Initially, most of the informal economic activities were associated with Third World cities. Indeed, most of the literature on the informal sector was from Latin American, Asian, and African cities. In the late 1980s, Alejandro Portes and Manuel Castells focused on industrialized cities of Europe and North America, showing that various entrepreneurial activities in these places fit the same label as those in the cities of the non-industrialized nations. This entry examines phenomena of both informal economic activities in developing nations and industrialized countries.
Further Readings
Cunningham, Clark E. 1997. “Indonesians.” Pp. 433–438 in American Immigrant Cultures: Builders of a Nation, vol. 1, edited by D. Levinson and M. Ember. New York: Macmillan Reference USA. Cunningham, Clark E. 2007. “Unity and Diversity Among Indonesian Migrants to the United States.” Chapter 6 in Emerging Voices: The Experiences of the Under Represented Asian Americans, edited by H. Ling. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Furnivall, John Sydenham. 1938. Netherlands India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Furnivall, John Sydenham. 1956. Colonial Policy and Practice. New York: New York University Press/ Klinken, Gerry van. 2003. “Ethnicity in Indonesia.” In Ethnicity in Asia, edited by C. Mackerras. London: Routledge Curzon.
INFORMAL ECONOMY The concept of informal economy was first used in academia by a British anthropologist, Keith Hart, who was astonished by the busy traders in the streets and markets of Accra, Ghana. He had not seen anything like this in England, and for lack of a better way to present his findings, he referred to this as the “urban informal sector.” His research, begun in 1971, was published in 1973 in the Journal of Modern African Studies. During the same period, the International
Definition The informal economy can be defined as all those economic activities that operate without state regulation. Most of these businesses also tend not to pay taxes and usually operate in zones that are not meant for them, hence, they experienced frequent harassment by local or national police. Informal economic activities are usually considered legitimate but may be seen as illegal, depending on where the operation is taking place; for example, a food seller in a main downtown street who is not licensed to be on that street—the food is legitimate, but selling it in this location is illegal. Researchers on the informal economy have tended to distinguish between the legitimate and illegitimate economic activities. The former activities are seen as legitimate in society but may be considered illegal by government authorities mainly because of zones where they operate. Illegitimate economic activities involve the so-called “Black market”: drug selling and trafficking, money laundering, and prostitution (adult and children, human trafficking). Though some researchers may view illegitimate activities as part of the informal economy, many believe these activities border on criminality. When the concept of informal economy is used, especially in Africa, most people think of the legitimate rather than the illegitimate activities. Another defining character of the informal economy is entrepreneurship. Most of those involved in the
Informal Economy
informal economy are entrepreneurs to the core because they have to come up with their own business ideas and figure out how to fund those ideas. Work in the informal economy is not like a formal job where people present their credentials to become employed. To earn a living in the cities, especially in the Third World, many people have had to be innovative, driven by their acumen and entrepreneurship. In turn, this has made the informal economy grow and expand, particularly in all Third World cities, where it has become the main employer of the majority of the urban dwellers.
Key Issues Gender and the Informal Economy
Just as the larger society features gender differentials, so does the informal economy. A large percentage of women earn a living from various informal economic activities (various forms of trade, for example, cooked food selling, vegetable and fruit selling, hair dressing, being maids, etc.). What is notable is that the women tend to occupy the lower ranks of the informal economic activities. The city authorities in various countries also tend to harass the women’s economic activities much more than those of the men. The men may be involved in more lucrative economic activities such as car mechanics, metal artisan drum selling, and carpentry. The additional harassment may be because women are not in a position to interact closely with male police officers as the men do and are therefore more vulnerable. Women, however, continue to play a big role in the informal economy. For example, the 2006 Nobel Prize went to the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, the world’s largest bank for poor people, and its founder, Muhammad Yunus. Most of its borrowers are women.
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those involved to feel more confidence and to expand their business. Info orm mal Eco onomy and Socia al Netw work ks (Urbanizatio on)
Social networks have been part of the mortar that drives the growth of the informal economy and in turn continues to expand the process of urbanization especially in Third World cities. The movement of people from rural to urban areas has continued to grow, with support for new arrivals coming from social networks (friends, relatives, people from the same rural region, people of the same religion). People do not move to towns blindly; neither do they just bump into an economic activity to operate in the city. Indeed, the informal economy is not easy to enter without the right contacts because it is competitive; even getting the right information about where to start a new business can be challenging without social networks. This is another area in which women tend to be at a disadvantage because men tend to have more helpful social networks, especially for start-up capital. Getting the money to start a business is a problem for most informal economy entrepreneurs. The hope of engaging in an informal economic activity continues to be a “major pull” to the cities for the youth, both men and women, and this has been contributing to the ever-expanding urbanization in Third World regions, especially in Africa. Kinuthia Macharia See also Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Wealth Distribution
Further Readings
Info orm mal Economy and (Urban) Governance
One of the current and future challenges especially in Third World cities is how to govern in such a way that the laws and rules will allow for the formal and informal economies to coexist. Given much evidence that has been shown in the last 30 years about the importance of the informal economy, policies and programs should bring the informal economy (which is itself part of the city economy and, by extension, part of the national economy) more into the fold of legitimacy so that it is subjected to little or no harassment. Licensing and moderate tax systems could help
Hart, Keith, 1973. “Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana.” Journal of Modern African Studies 11:61–89. International Labor Organization. 1972. Employment, Incomes and Employment: A Strategy for Increasing Productive Employment in Kenya. Geneva, Switzerland: ILO. International Labor Organization. 2002. Decent Work and the Informal Economy, 90th Session, International Labor Conference, 2002, Geneva, International Labor Organization (ILO). Macharia, Kinuthia, 1997. Social and Political Dynamics of the Informal Economy in African Cities: Nairobi and Harare. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
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Portes, Alejandro, Manuel Castells, and Lauren Benton, eds. 1989. The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
currently involved with the institution; nevertheless, the negative impact is felt by members of the race or ethnic group affected. The Hou using Case
INSTITUTIONAL DISCRIMINATION Discrimination is the negative treatment of one individual or group by another individual or group based upon some characteristic of that group, such as gender, race or ethnicity, or age because of a belief that the characteristic justifies such negative treatment. Institutional discrimination occurs when that negative or unfair treatment takes place at or is performed by an institution as a result not of individual belief but as a result of the structure, organization, or practices of that institution. Scholars, policymakers, and members of the general population have struggled with the effects and significance of racial and ethnic discrimination in the multiethnic, multiracial U.S. society, one that is based on equality and, in theory, praises and accepts differences, yet so often accepts and at times promotes both individual and institutional discrimination. As described in this entry, institutional discrimination may be more difficult to detect than individual discrimination and is certainly more difficult to address precisely because it requires a review or analysis of the practices, policies, and structure of what are often complex and multilayered bodies: institutions. These institutions may be public, such as governments or government agencies, schools, or public universities, or they may be private, such as businesses, private colleges or universities, corporations, or media outlets.
Racism and Institutional Discrimination Individual discrimination is an almost natural result or outgrowth of racism, which is the belief that one group of people is inherently superior to another. When a person has such a belief concerning members of another race, and sometimes another ethnic group, that belief makes the person feel justified in pursuing negative, often harmful acts that others see as discrimination. In the case of institutional discrimination, the negative or harmful behavior may not be the result of individual racism or of the beliefs of individuals
When the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) preferred to guarantee home mortgages in “stable” neighborhoods or for newer homes, as was the case as early as the 1940s, it practiced institutional discrimination. Blacks were far more likely than Whites to live in less stable neighborhoods because of both a lack of money and individual discrimination, which limited their housing choices and their employment opportunities. Further, Blacks were far less likely than were Whites to be able to afford to purchase newer homes because of a significant degree of discrimination in the labor market at that time. As a result, Blacks were far less likely than were Whites to receive the FHA guarantees. This all had a negative impact on their housing options and choices and ultimately on the neighborhoods in which they lived. Although the U.S. government had guidelines for the FHA that clearly indicated a preference for supporting single-race neighborhoods, the practice of supporting mortgage lending for newer homes or in “stable” neighborhoods was institutional discrimination. It may or may not have been the result of the racism or beliefs of any individual connected to the FHA at that time. Indeed, it may have been just a wise business decision, given that newer homes and homes in more stable neighborhoods are better investments. Still, Blacks felt the effects disproportionately, and to end the discrimination, the practices, policies, and priorities of the institution had to be changed. Because individuals involved with the institution may well claim that they have no negative feelings toward, ideas about, or feelings of superiority regarding Blacks, those changes would be somewhat more difficult to effect. The Ed ducatio on Case
If a university has a policy of legacy admissions— that is, an admissions policy that favors the children of alumni of that institution—that university could be seen as engaging in institutional discrimination because it is making a decision on the basis of a variable other than merit, the accepted standard for admission. Also, Blacks and members of some ethnic
Institutional Discrimination
groups are less likely to be related to alumni because many colleges and universities systematically excluded Blacks until the 1960s. This does not mean or suggest that someone in the university administration or the admissions office desires to discriminate against Blacks and therefore devised the policy to do so. Indeed, it may be the case that no one even considered race or ethnicity when deciding upon the policy. Rather, it may have resulted from efforts by alumni to have their children favored in the admissions process, or from a belief by administrators that such a policy helped build tradition, something highly prized on college campuses. Still, the negative effects are felt by Blacks and by members of ethnic groups whose parents may have been denied admission or had their admission limited for reasons other than merit.
Reverse Discrimination During the past 20 years or so, a heated debate among scholars, policymakers, and politicians has taken place regarding what is often referred to as reverse discrimination. Reverse discrimination tends to be defined as practices and policies of institutions that discriminate in favor of Blacks, members of various non-White ethnic groups, and in some cases women. Critics argue that such practices and policies grew out of what may have been well-intentioned efforts by institutions to either ensure that they no longer discriminated against Blacks or members of certain ethnic groups or to compensate for past discrimination. Some universities, for example, acknowledge that they had in the past systematically failed to admit qualified Black students solely because of their race. In an effort to make up for this discrimination, they devised plans to admit more Blacks than might have been admitted via the normal admissions process. Other universities were less concerned with past acts of discrimination than with whether their current policies had a negative impact on the admission of Blacks or members of certain ethnic groups, including and especially Latinos. The belief is that Blacks and Latinos are just as intelligent, just as capable as Whites of being admitted to universities, and just as capable of doing well in those universities as Whites, but the admissions numbers suggest that they have not been admitted in numbers proportionate to their numbers in the society or among college-age students. To some, the numbers alone suggest institutional discrimination
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and require adjustments by the institutions to either guard against current institutional discrimination or to make up for past discrimination. The same arguments hold for non-educational institutions as well. Latinos and Blacks have argued that they should be represented in all areas and at all levels of institutional life in numbers reflecting their presence in the society. According to this argument, if Blacks are one-third of the population of a city, then they should represent one-third of the workforce of that city, especially in public life, given that public institutions have a special obligation, according to this argument and many court cases, to avoid racial discrimination. Many Blacks and Latinos then believe that if Blacks or Latinos are one-third of the population of a city, then they should be one-third of the police officers, one-third of the firefighters, and onethird of the teachers, assuming that enough Latinos or Blacks want those positions. If they are not, according to this argument, then those institutions—the fire department, the police department, and the school system—are guilty of institutional discrimination. Given that there are often many more Blacks or other underrepresented minorities who want to be admitted to a university or hired by a city than the available positions will allow, some Whites may have to be denied admission or not hired to achieve the goal of diversifying the workforce or the university. Some see this as discrimination against those Whites, or reverse discrimination because they are being denied based almost solely because of their race. For a variety of reasons including attendance at elementary and high schools that often fail to properly prepare their students, some Blacks and Latinos find themselves ill prepared for some standardized tests. Given that such tests often serve as the gatekeepers to certain jobs and for admission to most colleges and universities many see them as inherently discriminatory, and suggest that institutions that use them are guilty of institutional discrimination because they use screening devices that systematically and unfairly limit the opportunities for Blacks and some Latinos. Whites, for reasons that can be debated almost forever, tend to perform better on the standardized tests that are used by various institutions to determine who is hired and who is admitted. Because some Whites are denied admission or are not hired whereas some Blacks and Latinos are admitted or hired with what are seen as lower grades or lower test scores, some suggest that those Whites are being discriminated
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against. If, however, both institutional and individual discrimination can be traced at some point to racism, as most scholars suggest, then reverse discrimination is unlikely, for it is unlikely that anyone in this society believes or has believed that Blacks or Latinos are inherently superior to Whites. Still, practices such as affirmative action, which is a policy that requires institutions, often voluntarily, though sometimes by law, to take positive, affirmative steps to ensure that racial, ethnic, or gender discrimination does not take place in institutions, are seen by many Whites, and some Blacks, as reverse discrimination, or policies that favor Blacks, no matter how good the initial reason or laudable the goals, to the detriment of Whites. Some Blacks also suggest that such policies actually harm Blacks more than they help because they suggest that Blacks require help to be hired or admitted, and this suggests that Blacks are inferior.
Discrimination Against Businesses Institutions hire a host of private companies to perform many tasks. They hire building companies to build schools or libraries. They hire consultants. They hire contractors to build bridges, or to supply food to cafeterias. Often, the decision to hire is a function of public bidding, and those bids must meet often complex criteria. On many occasions, the work requires that the company be a large company because the job is very large. However, in the past in the United States, institutions had a host of practices and policies that restricted the growth of companies owned by Blacks and some by Latinos more recently. If lenders would not lend to Black-owned companies, or institutions did not in the past award contracts to Latino-owned companies even though the bidding was to be open to all qualified bidders, then those companies owned by members of certain racial or ethnic groups could not get much business and therefore could not grow. If an institution now requires that the bidders for certain jobs or contracts be large because the job, such as building a large building or highway, is large, then Black and Latino companies will be at a disadvantage mostly because of practices and policies employed by institutions long ago. They were denied the opportunity to grow because they were owned by members of a racial group or ethnic group that was not favored, and then denied the opportunity to obtain the contract because they could not grow. It may be that one person years ago practiced individual discrimination and
ensured that members of certain racial or ethnic groups were favored but others were excluded. Today, however, the discrimination is institutional because it is based not on the concerns of an individual, but on the requirements for the contract, which systematically limits the opportunities for small companies, and many Black and Latino companies had no choice but to be small. If an institution decides to structure the bidding process so that those companies owned by members of groups that had experienced this institutional discrimination in the past have a better opportunity to win the bid, then some suggest that that institution is engaging in reverse discrimination because it now has policies and practices that may favor companies owned by members of groups discriminated against in the past over companies owned by members of a group favored or discriminated in favor of in the past. Others see this as only a fair response to past discrimination by institutions, and a safeguard against continued institutional discrimination. In the end, this is not an academic debate as much as a power struggle. Many Whites do not want to concede their superior position in this society that they often believe that they have earned, whereas many Blacks and Latinos believe that they deserve more power because of past discrimination, and because of their numbers in the society. Institutional discrimination was one of the factors that limited that power and the opportunities that typically go along with power. As the global economy continues to limit various opportunities in vast parts of the United States, the debate is likely to become even more heated. Fewer opportunities means more competition, and the numbers of Blacks and members of various ethnic groups clamoring for less discrimination by the institutions involved with those opportunities is growing. William Alfred Sampson See also Affirmative Action in Education; Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Carmichael, Stokely; Critical Race Theory; Discrimination; Discrimination in Housing; Northern Ireland, Racism in; Racism; Reverse Discrimination
Further Readings
Banks, William M. 1996. Black Intellectuals: Race and Responsibility in American Life. New York. Norton. Barone-Jeanquart, S. and Uma Sekaran. 1996. “Institutional Racism: An Empirical Study.” Journal of Social Psychology 136:477–448.
Intelligence Tests
Bielby, William. 1987. “Modern Prejudice and Institutional Barriers to Equal Employment Opportunities for Minorities.” Journal of Social Issues 43:79–84. Fredrickson, George M. 2002. Racism: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jalata, Asafa. 2002. “Revisiting the Black Struggle: Lessons for the 21st Century.” Journal of Black Studies 33(1):86–116. McWhorter, John. 2000. Losing the Race. New York: Free Press. Merton, Robert. 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press.
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French Ministry of Instruction to provide reliable diagnosis of mental ability levels in children considered subnormal. Binet’s famous test was made up of a number of different measures of mental ability (now called subtests), and some were incorporated into the Stanford-Binet (S-B), which was made famous by Louis Terman when IQ tests were introduced into the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. The current S-B is in its fifth edition (S-B5) and a brief description of the ten subtests can be found at the publisher’s Web site http://www.riverpub.com/products/ sb5/details.html. The WAIS for Adultss
INTEGRATION See RESEGREGATION; SCHOOL DESEGREGATION, ATTITUDES CONCERNING
INTELLIGENCE TESTS Intelligence tests are widely used in modern industrialized societies to measure various kinds of mental abilities. Some people argue that their results may reveal cultural differences by race and class rather than underlying intelligence. This entry briefly describes the origins of the most famous of these instruments and looks more generally at what the tests attempt to measure and why their results are sometimes challenged.
Early Tests Serious scientific concern with human intelligence and its causes and consequences began somewhat independently in England and France in the middle of the 19th century. In England, Sir Francis Galton attacked the problem by characterizing the accomplishments of highly talented individuals, but he failed to provide any reliable and valid measurement instruments (mental ability tests). The Sta anford-B Binet Test
In France, Alfred Binet developed the first true intelligence tests in response to requests from the
The S-B was initially constructed to measure intelligence in children and did not measure intelligence in adults adequately. Consequently, in the late 1930s, David Wechsler, a clinical psychologist working with patients in the Bellevue hospital in New York City, developed the Wechsler-Bellevue Scale of Intelligence, which in 1955 morphed into the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales (WAIS). The WAIS is now in its third edition (WAIS-III). A version of the WAIS for children is called the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC, now in its fourth edition). Like the S-B and the WAIS, intelligence tests have generally been developed for practical purposes: to aid educators, clinical psychologists, military recruiters, employment services, and so on. Apart from these famous IQ tests, numerous intelligence tests and specialized measures of mental ability are available. The Buros Institute of Mental Measurements provides reviews of nearly 4,000 tests. The Educational Testing Service has a test collection of more than 25,000 instruments and other mental measurement devices.
What Tests Measure Employing modern factor analytic methods, all mental ability tests are positively correlated because they share a broad common factor called g, after the work of the English Psychologist Charles Spearman; g is the underlying theoretical construct most intelligence tests are trying to approximate with their IQ score. Of course, g is not the only mental ability; it is simply the broadest one. According to Carroll, there are about ten other broad mental ability factors and numerous narrow abilities.
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A typical intelligence test like the WAIS-III or the S-B5 is made up of a group of specific mental ability tests that are believed to provide a good assessment of the theoretical construct, “human intelligence” or g. Consequently, it is often argued, particularly by those who dislike intelligence tests, that intelligence is whatever an intelligence test measures. The explicit implication is that every intelligence test measures something different, sometimes a little different and sometimes a lot different. It turns out that this argument is incorrect. Most authors of intelligence test batteries were correct in their assertion that a reasonably broad sample of mental ability tests give a good approximation to the general factor or g and that the g in one battery is highly related to the g in another battery. Intelligence is taken to be a general mental capacity that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience. This general mental capacity is known to be influenced significantly by both genetic and environmental factors. Tests that have revealed differences among racial and ethnic groups also differ in these factors. Although the tests have generally been shown to be reliable and valid in many different groups, they have still been challenged. Some critics of intelligence tests argue that the tests evaluate experiences that are not shared by all racial and ethnic groups; rather, they test the experiences of the privileged. The explanation of group differences in general mental capacity, including gender differences, continues to be controversial. Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr. See also Bell Curve, The; Educational Performance and Attainment; Eugenics; Labeling; Pipeline; Self-Fulfilling Prophecy; Social Inequality; Social Mobility; Tracking
Johnson, W., J. te Nijenhuis, and T. J. Bouchard, Jr. 2007. “Replication of the Hierarchical Visual-Perceptual-Image Rotation Model in de Wolff and Buiten’s 1963 Battery of 46 Tests of Mental Ability.” Intelligence 35:69–81. Kuncel, N. R. and S. A. Hezlett. 2007. “Standardized Tests Predict Graduate Students’ Success.” Science 315:1080–1081, and references therein as well as replies and refutations. Schmidt, F. L. and J. E. Hunter. 2004. “General Mental Ability in the World of Work: Occupational Attainment and Job Performance.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86:162–173.
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION Intercultural communication is communication among people from two or more cultures. It exists in contexts such as traveling, immigration, business transactions, diplomatic negotiations, and multicultural or multinational corporations. The increased diversity in the United States and globalization in the world has made intercultural communication an indispensable part of everyday life. On a daily basis, people may meet and need to communicate with someone from a different race, ethnic group, or nation, someone who may have a different set of values, beliefs, norms, habits, and practices. When these differences are not accepted, tolerated, and appreciated, culture shock and cultural clash often take place, causing misunderstandings, stereotypes, prejudice, and even conflict and violence. Thus, many scholars agree that it is imperative to learn about other cultures, for the self-benefits and for world peace. This entry outlines the history of intercultural communication studies in the United States, major approaches in intercultural communication studies, and major theoretical frameworks that have guided the discipline.
Further Readings
Carroll, John B. 1993. Human Cognitive Abilities: A Survey of Factor-Analytic Studies. New York: Cambridge University Press. Flynn, James R. 2007. What Is Intelligence? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Gottfredson, Linda S. 1997. “Editorial: Mainstream Science on Intelligence: An Editorial with 52 Signatories, History, and Bibliography.” Intelligence 24:13–24. Johnson, W., T. J. Bouchard, Jr., R. F. Krueger, M. McGue, and I. I. Gottesman. 2004. “Just One g: Consistent Results from Three Test Batteries.” Intelligence 32:95–107.
History of Studies Intercultural communication studies in the United States began after World War II when the U.S. government established the Foreign Service Institutes (FSI) to prepare business personnel and foreign diplomats working overseas. The FSI offered courses on language variations and nonverbal communication such as the use of voice, gesture, time, and space across cultures. The focus was on skill development and cultural sensitivity training. Culture was narrowly defined in
Intercultural Communication
terms of nationality, and being aware of the cultural differences between nations was considered essential to effective communication. This stage was characterized by an interdisciplinary approach to the study of culture and communication. Edward T. Hall, an anthropologist, is regarded as a pioneer of intercultural communication studies in the United States. Today’s diversity training programs at workplaces exemplify this training-based model to intercultural education. From the 1960s to 1980s, the United States experienced an influx of immigrants and sojourners from overseas. To help immigrants adjust to the new culture, some scholars developed models of cultural patterns and provided ways to develop knowledge, attitudes, and skills for effective and appropriate communication in intercultural communication settings. In this period, training, cultural-general knowledge, mindfulness, and individual competency were emphasized. The burden of adjustment was placed on immigrants or sojourners, and the best outcome was believed to be assimilation into the U.S. mainstream culture. Beginning in the 1990s, some scholars began to challenge the competence-centered approach to intercultural communication studies. These scholars asserted that the previous models overlooked the role of history and power in shaping interracial, interethnic, and international relations. Scholars critically evaluated how the impact of language and media from the dominant group functioned to stereotype, marginalize, oppress, and dehumanize submerged groups; examined the identity development of multicultural individuals and their diasporic experiences; provided communication strategies to empower marginalized groups; and criticized what they saw as cultural imperialism couched in the name of globalization. Today, intercultural communication has expanded its studies from international cultures to include race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, aging, and persons with disability.
Approaches to Communication Three approaches in intercultural communication studies have been applied and engaged by scholars: the social science approach, the interpretive approach, and the critical approach. The social science approach is generated from the fields of psychology and sociology. It looks at culture as a measurable entity from which communication behavior of a people can be described and predicted. Scholars using this approach gather data by surveys and questionnaires, in what is
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known as quantitative methodology. The approach assumes that culture is a determining variable that influences communication behavior. For example, using the construct of individualistic and collectivistic cultures, scholars have predicted communication differences in the manner and frequency with which people use polite language, the degree of directness and indirectness in asking questions, and the emphasis on face or clarity in conversations among people of different cultures. Although the social science approach has been helpful in generating knowledge of culture and communication, it has been criticized for making broad generalizations about cultures and being insensitive to the native people under study. The interpretive approach is rooted in the disciplines of ethnography and anthropology. In contrast to the social science approach, the interpretive approach treats culture as being created and maintained through communication and assumes that human behavior cannot be predicted and that people’s perception of the world is subjective. This approach employs the methods of interviews, field studies, and participant observation. The goal of this approach is not to predict communication behavior but, rather, to describe and understand it. This approach has been used by scholars to study culture and communication in specific contexts or of a particular group of people in depth. The approach examines how the use of core symbols, rituals, and discursive practices communicate, enact, preserve, or construct a culture, how communicative practices are related to cultural norms, and how meanings are interpreted based on specific contexts and cultural orientations. A lack of a comparative focus and potential bias in the interpretation of other cultures are considered limitations of this approach. The critical approach in intercultural communication studies emphasizes how historical, political, and social contexts affect the outcome of communication in shaping perception, identity, and power relations. Critical scholars are influenced by philosophical orientations of cultural studies, postcolonialism, and postmodernism. The purpose of the critical approach is not to describe, understand, and predict culture and communication, but to critique and make changes in discursive practices that perpetuate and reinforce social injustices, discursive oppression, and human alienation. Scholars using this approach consider culture as a site of struggle that is filled with contestation of meanings and negotiation of identities related to
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historical contexts and power relations. The study of cultures, for critical scholars, is to raise consciousness among, give voice to, and provide strategies for marginalized individuals to resist oppression and empower themselves. The data scholars use are typically textual materials such as speeches, magazine advertisements, narratives, media messages and images, and Internet exchanges. This approach is often used by scholars in the study of race, gender, class, and the Third World population, where voices may be muted or deemed worthless by dominant cultures. Though this approach has its strength in providing a macro perspective and critical analyses, some scholars consider it as missing a face-to-face interaction with the members of a certain culture and lacking guidelines for improving intercultural competency.
Major Theories Theorie es on Value Orie enta atio on
Early intercultural communication scholars were interested in understanding cultural differences as a way to raise cultural sensitivity and improve effective communication. To do so, they have identified different value orientations. For example, cultures are described as having different perceptions of human nature, having different time orientations, and exhibiting different kinds of relationships with nature and among people. Further, cultures have been classified as individualistic or collectivistic cultures, with the former placing individual interests above the group’s and the latter sacrificing the individual interests for the sake of the group. Cultures are also divided into high- or low-context cultures. High-context cultures are believed to value social relationships, use an indirect communication style, and think in spiral fashion. Low-context cultures are supposed to value individual autonomy, use a direct communication style, and think in a linear manner. These contrasting frameworks on cultural value orientations have been criticized as too simplistic, creating overgeneralizations and reinforcing stereotypes. In response, some scholars have created the cultural synergy model, recognizing that a successful intercultural communication must be based on a collaborative effort of people with different value orientations to achieve a common goal. The model assumes that participants in an intercultural communication mutually negotiate their cultural differences, making efforts to adapt to each other’s cultural values and practices.
Theorie es on Process
Another group of theories on intercultural communication describe the process and challenges an individual faces in intercultural situations. The most popular ones are the anxiety and uncertainty management theory, the communication accommodation theory, and the intercultural adaptation theory. The anxiety and uncertainty management theory assumes that the challenges of intercultural encounters consist of anxiety and uncertainty about the new culture. The goal of intercultural communication is to seek information to reduce ambiguity, anxiety, and uncertainty. People with strong selfesteem, flexible attitudes, and cognitive complexity are better able to manage anxiety, reduce uncertainty, and explain and predict others’ behavior. The communication accommodation theory describes three communication processes in intercultural situations concerning the use of language: convergence, divergence, and maintenance. Convergence is characterized by adapting one’s speech behavior to the intercultural partner to show solidarity and seek approval. Divergence refers to choosing a different speech behavior from the intercultural partner as a way to show one’s own cultural pride and emphasize the cultural differences. Maintenance is the type of communication in which one sustains his or her own speech behavior without considering the other person. In intercultural encounters, individuals strategically choose one of the styles over others depending on the contexts and the person’s self-perceived identity. The intercultural adaptation model discusses the process of culture shock by sojourners in four stages: honeymoon, crisis, adjustment, and biculturalism. The honeymoon period is characterized by the person’s fascination with and excitement about the new culture at the initial stage. The crisis period takes place when the person begins to experience confusion, frustration, and hostility on a daily basis because of cultural clash. At this stage, the person may exhibit behavior of cultural superiority or severe depression. With time and effort, the person will gradually adapt to new ways of thinking and behaving in the new culture (the third stage). Moreover, the person will think more positively about the new culture and communicate more effectively in the host culture. In the final stage of biculturalism, the person has become comfortable and appreciative of the new culture and has developed a dual cultural identity. Other scholars believe that intercultural adaptation is not a linear process and may not end with biculturalism
Intergroup Relations, Surveying
in all cases. Rather, adaptation may manifest in four different outcomes: assimilation, separation, integration, and marginalization. Assimilation refers to those individuals who choose or are pressured to adapt to the new culture and in the process abandon their own original culture and language. Separation is to retain one’s original culture and separate oneself from the new culture by choice. However, separation can become a forced segregation when the government imposes it through laws and policies. Integration shows the individual’s attempts to combine one’s original culture with the host culture. Marginalization describes individuals who do not feel they are accepted by either the host culture or their own original culture; this may be caused either by the government’s policy, societal attitudes, or personal perception. All these models deal with intercultural relationships and address the immigrants and sojourners with an objective of raising intercultural awareness, helping to understand the process, and cultivating intercultural competency for both those coming to a new culture and members of the host society. Theo orie es on Imp pact
In recent years, some intercultural communication scholars have used critical frameworks to analyze intercultural communication process in terms of power relations. One of the frameworks is the theory of Whiteness, which asserts that White people in the United States have enjoyed unearned privileges and their norms have become the standard, thus creating racism, discrimination, social injustice, and discursive oppression toward people of color. To reach effective and ethical intercultural communication, this perspective holds, White people must be aware of and unpack their privileges, and the society must provide environments for multiples voices. An example of this is described in the co-cultural theory. In the communication between dominant groups and nondominant groups, the dominant group will use language that supports its dominant perception and practice whereas members of nondominant groups find themselves operating in a communication system that does not represent their experiences and values. Thus, they will face a dilemma of conforming to or resisting the dominant ways of communicating. In the international arena, scholars have turned to the notions of cultural imperialism developed in 1920s in the critique of popular culture, especially
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U.S. domination of the resources and media market in the world and its implications on intercultural communication. These scholars believe that people are informed about other cultures from popular media and cultural products. Often, the media representations of other cultures are problematic, contributing to misconceptions and stereotypes of other cultures. In short, understanding theories and practices of intercultural communication is an important part of multicultural literacy. Scholars have taken diverse approaches and different perspectives in the studies of cultures and how cultures interact. Challenges remain for achieving social equality and harmony among people of different cultures and groups. Xing Lu See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Cultural Relativism; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Intergroup Relations, Racetalk; Surveying; Spanglish
Further Readings
Gonzalez, Alberto, Marsha Houston, and Victoria Chen. 2004. Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity, and Communication. 4th ed. Los Angeles, CA: Roxbury. Gudykunst, William B. and Young Yun Kim. 1992. Readings on Communicating with Strangers. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hall, Edward T. and Mildred Reed Hall. 1987. Understanding Cultural Differences. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press. Kluckholn, Clyde and Fred Strodbeck. 1961. Variations in Value Orientation. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson. Hofstede, Gert H. 1980. “National Cultures in Four Dimensions.” International Studies of Management and Organization, 13:46–74. Martin, Judith N. and Thomas K. Nakayama. 2007. Intercultural Communication in Contexts. 4th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill. Orbe, Mark P. 1998. Constructing Co-Cultural Theory: An Explication of Culture, Power, and Communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Tomlinson, John 1991. Cultural Imperialism. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
INTERGROUP RELATIONS, SURVEYING The National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), called the National Conference of Christians
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and Jews when it was established in 1927, is one of the nation’s first intergroup relations organizations dedicated to opposing bias, bigotry, prejudice, and intergroup conflict. As part of this mission, the NCCJ has commissioned a series of telephone surveys on intergroup relations known as Taking America’s Pulse I, II, and III (TAP-I, TAP-II, TAP-III). Data from TAP-II and TAP-III are available from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut. The surveys provide a snapshot of changing perceptions of relationships among groups varying by race/ethnicity, age, gender, class, and sexual preference. This entry describes the surveys and summarizes the findings.
The Survey Process TAP-I, carried out in 1993 by Louis Harris and Associates, interviewed 2,755 adults living in the United States. TAP-II, conducted in 2000 by Princeton Survey Research Associates, interviewed 2,584 U.S. adults. Oversamples of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians were drawn in TAP-II, yielding interviews with 995 non-Hispanic Whites, 709 non-Hispanic Blacks, 572 Hispanics (who can be of any race), 198 Asians, and 100 of other or mixed races. TAP-III, conducted in 2005 by Princeton Survey Research Associates, surveyed 2,558 adult U.S. residents. As in 2000, there were oversamples of Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics. Of the total sample, 942 were non-Hispanic Whites, 677 non-Hispanic Blacks, 630 Hispanics, 200 Asians, and 109 of other and mixed races. The TAP surveys have greater depth and wider coverage than most studies of intergroup relations. First, by repeating many items over time, the TAP surveys examine changes in intergroup relations. Second, by oversampling major minority groups, they are able to consider not only what the majority thinks of various minorities, but also how the minorities view both the majority and each other. Third, the TAP surveys are particularly comprehensive in the wide range of groups covered. These include races and ethnicities, which form the core of most studies of intergroup relations, and religions, socioeconomic groups, age groups, sexual orientations, and gender. Finally, the surveys cover many topics, including both attitudes, such as judgments on group influence, intergroup harmony, closeness, and level of discrimination, and behaviors such as intergroup contact and personal experiences of discrimination.
Survey Results Among key results from the TAP surveys are the following: The public realizes that intergroup relations need much improvement. A small plurality (58%) say they are not satisfied with the current state of intergroup relations, and 75% of participants acknowledge that the country as a whole has serious group tensions. Although most people see intergroup conflict as a problem, most do not view it as a top priority; rather, they believe the problem largely occurs elsewhere in the country and is not part of their daily lives. The inventories of social groups in general indicate that many are neither thought of nor treated equally. First, there is a definite pecking order in social groups; for example, many people say they are unfamiliar with Muslims and atheists or that they don’t feel close to other groups, such as gays and lesbians, atheists, and Muslims. Only 10% to 12% of U.S. residents felt close or very close to Muslims and atheists. Second, most U.S. residents acknowledge that all groups except Whites suffer a great deal or some discrimination; some, such as Muslims, gays and Lesbians, and the poor, are viewed as especially subject to discrimination. Third, a plurality believes that American Indians, Blacks, the elderly, Hispanics, women, and the disabled have less influence than they should have. Fourth, although intergroup contact is high for many groups, a few groups, such as Muslims, atheists, and American Indians, have rather limited contact with other U.S. residents. Finally, intergroup relations go well beyond race relations. Although races and ethnicities are important groups, they are only one set of groups along with social classes, genders, age groups, and others that make up U.S. society. Differe encess by Race e/Ethnicity y
Evidence of social inequalities also appear for races and ethnicities. First, participants say that intergroup harmony between some groups (e.g., Asians and Whites) is higher but much lower for others (e.g., Whites and Blacks; Blacks and Asians). Second, in the areas of education, health, management promotions, equal justice, police treatment, and media coverage, a plurality recognizes that the four main minority races/ethnicities have notably less opportunity than Whites have. On average, about 45% to 47% believe that Blacks and Hispanics have equal opportunity with that of Whites. Asians are deemed to be better off, with 59% of participants seeing their opportunities as on a
Intergroup Relations, Surveying
par with Whites. Third, the life satisfaction of Blacks and, to a lesser extent, Hispanics, is seen as much lower than that of Whites and Asians. Fourth, interracial/ethnic contact is fairly limited. Although most non-Whites have contact with Whites as friends, neighbors, co-congregants, and coworkers, contact by outsiders with minority groups is much more restricted. For example, most non-Blacks have contact with Blacks only as friends. In each of the types of contact surveyed, most non-Hispanics, nonAsians, and non–American Indians lack contact with those respective groups. Thus, intergroup contact is limited and often restricted to just a few roles (e.g., as employee, but not as supervisor, neighbor, or friend). Fifth, actual experiences of unfair treatment because of race/ethnicity are fairly common, according to participant reports. In a given month, 9.5% of Whites, 21% of Hispanics, 22.5% of Asians, and 32% of Blacks said they experienced discrimination at least once. These reports provide stark testimony that racial and ethnic discrimination remains a common feature of everyday life for many. Finally, when asked about race relations, 36% of U.S. residents still find acceptable the separate but equal model of Plessy v. Ferguson, which the Supreme Court overturned as an acceptable legal standard in Brown v. the Board of Education in 1954. The differences in views of tensions, discrimination, intergroup harmony, and other aspects of intergroup relations are magnified when the points of view of Whites, Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics are compared. Compared with Blacks and Hispanics, Whites see a much more benign intergroup landscape with less tension and discrimination and more opportunity. Blacks have the most negative view, finding much more inequality and conflict and wanting to do the most about the problem. Asians and Hispanics generally have an intermediate outlook on issues such as level of inequality and group conflict, but Asians see even less discrimination existing against many groups than Whites perceive. Differe ences by Regio on, Income, and Age
Similarly, just as races and ethnic groups have their own distinct point of view on intergroup relations, important differences show up across regions, community types, educational and income levels, and age cohorts. Every region has a unique perspective shaped by its own history and the relative prominence of the
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various races and ethnicities within its communities. Differences also exist across community types with rural residents tending to show less support for intergroup equality than those in metropolitan areas show. Education works in opposing ways. Racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in the collegeeducated group, and Whites in that group are less likely to know disadvantaged minorities. On the other hand, more education tends to expand intergroup contacts and to make people more sympathetic toward intergroup equality. This tends to lead to either the least or best educated being the most likely to recognize intergroup disparities and support efforts to improve intergroup relations. The other stratification variable, income, shows less notable differences. Higher earners are more distant from the socioeconomically disadvantaged (the poor and people on welfare) and closer to relatively successful minority groups (e.g., Asians and Jews). Opinions about immigrants are mixed. Compared with low earners, the high earners are more supportive of immigration restrictions but have much more positive views of the contributions that immigrants have made. Older generations are most likely to support the traditional, separate-but-equal doctrine and to be reluctant to accept emergent groups such as gays and Lesbians, atheists, and immigrants, but they often feel closer to many other groups—by race, ethnicity, religion, and class—than the younger generation does. The youngest generation is most concerned about intergroup relations and is most likely to see groups as lacking enough influence, but participants in this age group do not perceive especially high levels of discrimination. The youngest generation is also closest to emergent social groups such as gays and Lesbians and atheists. The differences across cohorts are particularly important because cohort turnover means that society will move toward the viewpoints of the younger, emerging cohorts over time. Inte ere estiing Linkages
The clustering of group evaluations indicates that each group has a distinctive, social profile. The same groups do not consistently link together across dimensions, and the clusters often do not form simple and clean categories such as races or religions. However, social classes do tend to distinguish themselves from racial, religious, and ethnic groups and usually cluster together. Also, newer, emergent
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groups such as gays and Lesbians, atheists, and sometimes recent immigrant groups tend to be linked by how others view them. Most intergroup attitudes and behaviors are associated with each other in expected ways. Of particular note is the connection between contact with other racial and ethnic groups and greater concern over intergroup relations. More contact is associated with more feelings of closeness, more perception of discrimination, more perception of groups as lacking enough influence, more support for intergroup equality and integration, and less negative views of immigrants. Most measures of attitudes toward and behaviors concerning intergroup relations show improvement during the last decade, and this progress comes on top of similar gains during the last half-century. For example, feeling close to Blacks was an experience reported by 38% of participants in 1996 and 56% in 2005. Among Blacks, personal experiences of racial discrimination at work during the last month fell from 21% in 1997 to 11% in 2005, and the judgment that Blacks have too much influence dropped from 20% in 1996 to 10% in 2005. The changes are more of the slow-and-steady type, rather than representing breakthroughs or dramatic surges, but because they have generally been in the same direction over time, notable shifts have often occurred. There is, however, much room for further change. As the large increase in those perceiving a great deal of discrimination against Muslims (from 11% to 35% between 2000 and 2006, before and after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks) indicates, events can intrude to stall or reverse improvements in intergroup relations. Tom W. Smith See also Brown v. Board of Education; Color Blindness; Contact Hypothesis; Discrimination; Intercultural Communication; Interracial Friendships; Muslim Americans; Plessy v. Ferguson; Prejudice; Racetalk
Further Readings
Smith, Tom W. 1998. “Intergroup Relations in Contemporary America: An Overview of Survey Research.” In Intergroup Relations in the United States: Research Perspectives, edited by W. Winborne and R. Cohen. New York: National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ).
Smith, Tom W. 2000. Taking America’s Pulse II: NCCJ’s 2000 Survey of Intergroup Relations in the United States. New York: National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ). Smith, Tom W. 2006. Taking America’s Pulse III: Intergroup Relations in Contemporary America. New York: National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ).
INTERMARRIAGE Family systems reproduce race by insisting upon endogamy, or marriage within the group. Racial intermarriage, the opposite of endogamy, tends to undermine racial barriers. In any society in which race is important, racial intermarriage will be a focus of legal, social, and political interest. The United States has been a society deeply divided by race from its beginning, as a nation in which slavery was practiced, so the issue of intermarriage has always been important in the United States. This entry describes the history of policy on intermarriage and its wider impact.
The Racial Caste System Before the civil war, most Blacks in the United States were slaves. Although there had always been some sexual relationships between White (male) slaveowners and Black (female) slaves, White society worked diligently to make these relationships invisible. White U.S. society adopted what was called the “one-drop rule,” which meant that anyone with as much as “one drop” of non-White blood could not be considered White. By legal definition, if a White slave master made a Black slave pregnant, her child was Black (because of the “one-drop rule”) and a slave as well. Formal marriage was generally not possible between slaves (because slaves had no legal standing), and therefore formal marriage between free Whites and slaves was impossible. One irony of the one-drop rule was that it was created to clarify racial distinctions, but the rule left White racial status always vulnerable. The discovery of some previously unknown brown or dark ancestor (or even an ancestor who was remembered by someone as dark) would rob all descendants of their Whiteness and therefore of their property and their rights.
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With the emancipation of the slaves at the end of the Civil War, White society was suddenly confronted with Blacks as legal equals, at least in theory. White elites professed a horror at the possibility of social mixing on an equal footing with Blacks, and the deepest horror was preserved for the most intimate type of mixing, intermarriage. In the 1864 presidential election, while the Civil War was still raging, proslavery newspaper editors in New York promulgated a hoax implying that Abraham Lincoln and the abolitionists in the North were secretly hoping to marry Blacks to Whites on a mass scale. The proslavery hoax coined Interracial couple with their daughter. During the 20th century, several changes occurred that made intermarriage more acceptable and common, undermining the term miscegenation for racial the racial caste system of the United States. In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court intermixing and intermarriage, and in Loving v. Virginia (1967) overturned state laws that prohibited marriage across such was the fear of intermarriage racial lines. Today, many interracial families live in culturally diverse neighborthat White voters in the North had hoods where they find greater acceptability for interracial households. largely abandoned Lincoln’s reelec- Source: Ronnie Comeau/iStockphoto. tion campaign until battlefield victories ensured his reelection. many states hurried to pass laws making interraWhites feared racial intermarriage for several cial marriage illegal, and these laws were commonly reasons. First, a White person who married a Black referred to as antimiscegenation laws. The state person was throwing his or her lot in with Black socilaws against interracial marriage varied in which ety in more than just a symbolic way. Such a gesture groups were prohibited from marrying which other was sure to be a blow to the social standing of the groups, but every such law prohibited Blacks from White person’s family (raising questions about marrying Whites. whether they were really White after all), so families worked diligently to ensure that their children understood that interracial marriage was taboo. Second, Intermarriage in 20th-Century Law interracial marriage created the possibility that Black descendants could inherit property from White famiThe 20th century brought several changes that made lies. Third, 19th-century intellectual justifications for intermarriage more acceptable and common and that racial differences emphasized the theory that Blacks undermined the racial caste system of the United and Whites were different biological species, a theory States. The first great Black migration North, around that implied that an interracial couple could not reprothe time of World War I, brought several million duce, or that the offspring of a Black-White union Blacks into Northern states, which had never had laws would necessarily be weak of mind and body. against racial intermarriage, partly because these Although there was plenty of evidence that Blacks Northern states had never had many Black residents. and Whites had reproduced successfully, the inforResidential segregation grew in the North as Black mality of liaisons during slavery allowed that evineighborhoods and ghettos grew, and as Whites found dence to be overlooked. ways to limit their social exposure to Blacks. Interracial marriages were such a threat to the Racial intermarriage between Blacks and Whites racial order that in the aftermath of the Civil War, did not begin to increase in the United States until after
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World War II, with the fastest rise coming after 1960. During World War II, the United States mobilized its entire society to fight fascism. The atrocities of Nazi Germany discredited ideas of White biological superiority, which had been used to justify anti-intermarriage laws and other discriminatory legislation. In the aftermath of World War II, citizens challenged the anti-intermarriage laws in state courts. In 1948, in Perez v. Sharpe, the California Supreme Court was the first court to strike down its state antiintermarriage law as unconstitutional. A dozen states followed California’s lead and retired their laws against racial intermarriage, but several other states, mostly the states of the old Confederacy, strengthened their anti-intermarriage laws as a way of demonstrating their fealty to the old racial caste system and their discomfort with Black demands for civil rights. In 1967, in Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared that all the remaining state laws and state constitutional provisions that prohibited intermarriage by race were unconstitutional, and therefore unenforceable. The anti-intermarriage laws remained on the books, unenforced, for decades until the last of the laws was finally rescinded by a popular referendum in Alabama in 2000. The narrowness of the referendum (with a substantial proportion of Whites casting ballots in favor of allowing the unconstitutional and unenforceable anti-intermarriage law to remain on the books) demonstrated that even decades after Loving, White discomfort with racial intermarriage remained strong in some parts of the United States.
Classic Research About Intermarriage Ruby Jo Reeves Kennedy was the first researcher in the United States to make a careful study of historical data on intermarriage trends. Kennedy used marriage license data from New Haven, Connecticut, to support an argument that the United States was not a single melting pot into which all ethnic groups were poured and mixed but, rather, a triple melting pot with strong religious divisions between Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. Kennedy’s vision of a religiously divided society has been influential, even though her own data tables belied her conclusions. Of Kennedy’s original sample of more than 9,000 marriage records from New Haven between 1870 and 1940, there were hundreds of religious intermarriages, but only five marriages between Whites and Blacks.
Racial intermarriage had never been illegal in Connecticut, but Kennedy’s data showed (and subsequent analyses of census data have reconfirmed) that racial intermarriage was rare in the past even where it was legal. The small number of racial intermarriages precluded analysis, so Kennedy ignored the issue of race and focused on religious intermarriage. Because the U.S. Census and other official federal surveys have generally not included questions on religion, meaning that newer data are not easily available, Kennedy’s work on religious intermarriage and the triple melting pot continues to be influential (the March 1957 Current Population Survey did include several questions on religion, but the individual level data were never released to the public). Milton Gordon’s extended essay on Assimilation in American Life is another pioneering and often-cited work about intermarriage. Gordon argued that widespread intermarriage between an immigrant group (and their descendents) and the dominant native group was both a powerful force for greater assimilation and a sure sign that the final stages of assimilation had already taken place. Gordon was impressed with how the early 20th-century immigrants, chiefly Southern and Eastern European immigrants, had managed to assimilate into U.S. society, and specifically into White U.S. society. The Poles, Italians, and Greeks (among others) had faced a great deal of discrimination in the United States when they first arrived, but somehow over three generations, they managed to become integral parts of the dominant White ethnic group. Gordon reasoned that frequent intermarriage between the early 20th-century immigrant groups (such as Italians, Poles, and Greeks) and the already established White ethnic groups (English, Germans, Irish) was a clear sign that Southern and Eastern European national groups had assimilated into White America. Hannah Arendt’s essay “Reflections on Little Rock” is a final and rather controversial statement about the important place of intermarriage rights within the pantheon of civil rights. Arendt’s essay was written in the aftermath of the forced integration of public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Arendt argued that the civil rights establishment was wrong to force the issue of integration (and its inevitable backlash) upon children, who were in no way responsible for racial segregation in the first place. In Arendt’s view, the right to marry the person of one’s choice was a more fundamental human right than the right to attend a racially integrated school.
Internal Colonialism
The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and the 1960s saw school integration and economic issues such as the elimination of workplace discrimination as much more important issues to tackle than antiintermarriage laws. The reasoning of civil rights leaders was that all children attend school, and nearly all adults work at some point, but the number of individuals who were affected by bans on racial intermarriage was thought to be so small as to make the issue of anti-intermarriage laws one of secondary importance. In addition, White hostility toward intermarriage was thought to be so virulent that civil rights leaders feared that a White backlash against intermarriage could possibly overwhelm civil rights gains in other areas such as workplace and school integration. Arendt’s position and the debate about the place of intermarriage rights among all human rights are both increasingly relevant in the early 21st century as the United States grapples with the politically charged issue of same-gender marriage. In the legal debates about same-gender marriage, interracial marriage and specifically the Loving decision are the key precedents. Although the legality of racial intermarriage was conclusively decided in 1967 in the Loving case, the meaning of marriage rights and the openness or exclusiveness of state-defined marriage rights remain an important issue. Michael J. Rosenfeld See also Blood Quantum; Caste; Civil Rights Movement; Hafu; Hapa; Interracial Friendships; Loving v. Virginia; Nikkeijin; One-Drop Rule
Further Readings
Arendt, Hannah. 1959. “Reflections on Little Rock.” Dissent 6:45–56. Davis, F. James. 1991. Who Is Black? One Nation’s Definition. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Gordon, Milton. 1964. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origin. New York: Oxford University Press. Gould, Stephen Jay. 1996. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton. Heer, David. 1980. “Intermarriage.” Pp. 513–521 in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, edited by S. Thernstrom, A. Orlov, and O. Handlin. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
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Kalmijn, Matthijs. 1998. “Intermarriage and Homogamy: Causes, Patterns, Trends.” Annual Review of Sociology 24:395–421. Kaplan, Sidney. 1949. “The Miscegenation Issue in the Election of 1864.” Journal of Negro History 34:274–343. Kennedy, Ruby Jo Reeves. 1944. “Single or Triple Melting Pot? Intermarriage Trends in New Haven, 1870–1940.” American Journal of Sociology 49:331–339. Moran, Rachel. 2001. Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Romano, Renee C. 2003. Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rosenfeld, Michael J. 2007. The Age of Independence: Interracial Unions, Same-Sex Unions, and the Changing American Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Spickard, Paul. 1989. Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Wallenstein, Peter. 2002. Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage and Law—An American History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
INTERNAL COLONIALISM Internal colonialism, a theory on race, came into popularity during the Civil Rights Movement and is used by Black activists to explain White and Black relations in the United States. Internal colonialism exemplifies a form of exploitation and disinvestment in minority racial and ethnic communities by a dominant race in the same nation. This term has also been used by Chicano activists in the United States, borrowing from Latin American theories of exploitation, and in other nations where it describes relations of domination and subordination among diverse races and ethnicities. Although this term has its critics, it is still used to explain systems of domination within regions based on racial and ethnic differences. This entry describes the concept and its use both in the United States and around the world.
Internal Colonialism in the United States Traditional colonialism is conceptualized as political and economic domination by a nation over a region beyond its geographic border; those colonized are
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often of a different race and culture, and their land, labor, and other resources are mined for profit by the colonizer. As well, sociocultural dominance may occur with the colonizer imposing its own values, language, beliefs, and customs on the subordinated populations. Often, a formalized structure is implemented to ensure the continued subjugation of a colonized people. Internal colonialism reflects economic, political, and cultural domination of a subordinate population within its nation’s borders by another group, based upon racial and ethnic differences leading to economic, political, and social exploitation. Usage During th he Civ vil Rightss Era a
The term internal colonialism grew from multiple sources, primarily the discussion of White and Black relations during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights era was a time of wide public discussion about the social, political, and economic abuses of Blacks, including examination of historical abuses. Works about the oppression of Blacks, such as Kenneth Clark’s Dark Ghetto (1965) and Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power (1967), framed the experiences of minorities as being similar to those of colonized groups, with the latter book providing the first detailed discussion of internal colonialism of Blacks in the United States. Black activists found internal colonialism to be a proper theory to explain the oppression they encountered in the United States. Such thinkers viewed similarities between the oppression of U.S. Blacks and relationships of African nations with their White European colonizers. Internal colonialism was used to explain the geographic, economic, political, and social isolation of Blacks from larger institutions. Continued lack of resources in urban areas predominantly inhabited by Blacks fueled the use of this theory, reinforcing the idea of historical processes that exploit the lives of minorities. The subordination of Blacks began to be understood in structural terms, whereas previous race theories focused on purported psychological or cultural inferiorities among people of color. This emphasis on institutions of oppression led to acceptance of such terms as internal colonialism, which became adopted as an expression of dominance and exploitation of Blacks by Whites in the United States. Latiin Americ can Theories
The term internal colonialism also has its roots in Latin American theories explaining economic
relations. The scholarly discussion of economic exploitation in Latin America influenced discourse on U.S.-based race relations. Historically, nations in both Europe and North America have exploited Latin American countries for various resources. However, an internal form of exploitation also occurred, dictated by race; relations between dominant races and subordinated Indians in places such as Mexico and Peru became classified as internal colonialism. These systems of disinvestment in Latin America were then extrapolated and used to describe the lack of power of Blacks in the United States during the Civil Rights period. In addition, Chicano activists at the time used internal colonialism to highlight their perceptions of living in dependent and politically powerless communities in the United States. From economics to education, the lives of Chicanos were seen as impeded by their status as a subordinate group in the United States. The use of the term internal colonialism was a way to conceptualize exploitation, as well as a mechanism to center grievances, helping to formulate and mobilize discontent with a lack of privilege in the United States for racial and ethnic minorities.
Critiques of Internal Colonialism Critics of the use of the term internal colonialism claim that it imprecisely labels the experiences of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. Scholars have highlighted several aspects of Black domination that are at odds with the term internal colonialism. Unlike traditional colonialism, Blacks in the United States are not a numerical majority of insiders dominated by a minority of outsiders; Whites did not settle in land that was primarily Black; also, the geographical separation of colony and mother country is not a component of Black oppression. Such terms as colonization were promoted by race scholar Robert Blauner to represent the process in which the daily life of a minority group is controlled by an outside race, ethnicity, or group. In his view, colonized Americans have less freedom than ethnic immigrants do, and Blacks are unique in the extent to which their segregation is controlled by socioeconomic and political forces from outside the community. Whites perform administrative functions within Black communities while residing outside of them geographically, conveying the reality that Blacks have little impact structurally in their own neighborhoods.
Internalized Racism
Geographic segregation remains a factor in the United States, where a lack of resources impedes social advancement, leading to lower quality of life in racially homogenous communities for lower socioeconomic status Blacks. The concept of internal colonialism has also been criticized in its application to the experiences of Mexican Americans with Whites, and more diverse conceptions of colonization have been offered. U.S. society first engaged in relations with Mexicans through invasion, whereas with Blacks, capitalist motives promoted the idea of importing people into a framework of domination. To some, the relations between Whites and Mexicans may fit more traditional conceptions of colonialism. Scholars such as Joan Moore, however, argue for a multiple understandings of colonialism among Mexican Americans. In examining three diverse regions in the United States (New Mexico, Texas, and California), Moore found varied experiences of domination among Mexican Americans. In New Mexico, once part of a Spanish colony, an institution of formal colonization and informal controls carried over in U.S. occupancy of the region; Mexican elites retained power and political control for many years under White rule. In contrast, Texas experienced a history of violence and conflict as White domination in local communities limited the political power of Mexicans; this was seen as conflict colonialism. In California, Mexicans have historically been barred from political power and exploited for their labor, leading to an economic colonialism that secures their lowered status in the state. Such factors as history, geography, and social, economic, and political relations affect the use and interpretation of the term colonialism when applied to racial and ethnic minorities. The theory of internal colonialism has lost its primacy in the lives of Blacks and Chicanos searching for a tool to mobilize actors to achieve social mobility in the United States. Nevertheless, institutionalized patterns of segregation, disinvestment, and oppression are still recognized as key elements of racial relations between subordinate and dominant groups. Structural constraints that led to the adoption of internal colonialism as tool to rally support for movement actions in the Civil Rights era are still prevalent.
Global Issues of Internal Colonialism Globally, the concept of internal colonialism has become a tool used to describe dominant and subordinate
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race relations. The political, economic, and social relationships between Aboriginal peoples in Canada and the wider Canadian society have been viewed through the lens of internal colonialism. The colonization process, for example, is seen as lowering the academic performance of Aboriginal students, leading to the underdevelopment of their society. Internal colonialism has also been used to explain how lack of education in Australia affects mobility of Aborigines. Internal colonialism is still used to describe institutionalized exploitation and oppression of racial minorities by dominant groups within the same geographic context. Manuel R. Torres See also African Americans; Chicano Movement; Civil Rights Movement; Colonialism; Critical Race Theory; Marxism and Racism; Sami
Further Readings
Blauner, Robert. 1972. Racial Oppression in America. New York: Harper & Row. Carmichael, Stokely and Charles Hamilton. 1967. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. New York: Vintage Books. Clark, Kenneth. 1965. Dark Ghetto. New York: Harper & Row. Gonzalez Casanova, Pablo. 1965. “Internal Colonialism and National Developments.” Studies in Comparative International Development 4:27–37. Gutierrez, Ramon A. 2004. “Internal Colonialism: An American Theory of Race.” Du Bois Review 1(2):281–295. Moore, Joan. 1970. “Colonialism: The Case of Mexican Americans” Social Problems, 17(4):463–472.
INTERNALIZED RACISM When members of racially oppressed groups accept as true the derogatory myths and identities imposed upon them by the dominant group, it is said that they have internalized the racism of the larger society. Although internalized racial oppression is an important feature of racism often discussed among antiracist activists, novelists, and filmmakers, such as Malcolm X, Toni Morrison, and Spike Lee, there has been only a scattering of empirical research on the topic. This may be the result of a widespread tendency to misconstrue internalized racism as reflecting some personal failing
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among those who experience internalized racism rather than as a structural problem imposed on them. This entry looks at how internalized racism operates.
Internalizing Oppression All systems of inequality generate conditions encouraging the subjugated to accept their subordinated position and adopt the negative images and beliefs attached to their identity by the dominant group. One example is racial identities, which are socially constructed from power relations. These socially defined characteristics are often presented as flowing naturally from “real” biological differences. Ideologies that legitimize and normalize inequality and intimate the inferiority of people of color and the superiority of Whites are thus woven into the fabric of commonsense knowledge, where they are easily absorbed by all members of society, including people of color. Cloaked in normalcy, these derogatory myths may be adopted by people of color without their conscious awareness of doing so. This aspect of internalized racism is often likened to the impact of colonial oppression on the colonized and referred to as mental colonization. When people of color are socialized to accept racial inequality and their subordinated position within the racial hierarchy, they pose less of a threat to the power and privilege of Whites. Internalized racism is not the result of any inherent personal deficiencies, frailties, or moral shortcomings, nor is it a consequence of psychological makeup or cultural beliefs. Most important, internalized racism is not a cause or source of racism. Rather, it is an outcome of racial oppression, which is never total. In White-dominated societies, people of color may devise strategies of resistance, disruption, subversion, and rebellion. By studying the subtle forms that internalized racism can take and raising awareness about them, people of color can further develop ways to resist the internalization of racial oppression. Several forms of internalized racial oppression are discussed in the limited amount of literature on the topic. One form is evident when the people of color respond to their denigrated racial status by distancing themselves from their racial group in an attempt to be seen as more like Whites. To avoid the stigmatized racial status, people of color may assume traits and characteristics associated with Whites, denigrate members of their group for not behaving more like Whites or for being “too ethnic,” and avoid association with
their racial group. By reiterating a belief in the inferiority of their own racial group—and the superiority of Whites—they reinforce rather than challenge the system of racial inequality. Another example of internalized racism is the skintone bias or “colorism” within the Black American community. Higher status, greater beauty, and desirability are attributed to those Blacks with lighter skin tone and straight hair while the darker-skinned and nappy-haired are more likely to suffer discrimination and denigration from members of their own racial group. Colorism has its roots in slavery and continues to be propped up by the beauty standards of the dominant society, which defines White European American features as more attractive than the racialized features of non-Whites. This encourages nonWhites to view their own racialized features with displeasure, contributing to high rates of cosmetic surgery among non-Whites, particularly non-White females, who alter racialized features to more closely resemble those associated with European Americans. Many perceive that the pop singer Michael Jackson used some of his many cosmetic surgeries to acquire a more White-like appearance. Common forms of cosmetic surgeries among African and Asian Americans include nose jobs to narrow flared nostrils and raise the bridge. The most popular cosmetic surgery among Asian American women is a double eyelid procedure, which creates an extra fold of skin and widens the appearance of the eyes. Those who undergo such procedures do so to enhance their social prestige by conforming more closely to definitions of beauty that emphasize Whiteness. As these examples highlight, internalized racial oppression is an adaptive response to the experiences of racism. Karen D. Pyke See also Body Image; Color Blindness; hooks, bell; Lee, Spike; Media and Race; Prejudice; Racism
Further Readings
hooks, bell. 2003. Rock My Soul: Black People and SelfEsteem. New York: Atria. Kaw, Eugenia. 1993. “Medicalization of Racial Features: Asian American Women and Cosmetic Surgery.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 7:74–89. Osajima, Keith. 1993. “The Hidden Injuries of Race.” Pp. 81–91 in Bearing Dreams, Shaping Visions: Asian Pacific American Perspectives, edited by L. Revilla,
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
G. Nomura, S. Wong, and S. Hune. Pullman: Washington State University Press. Pyke, Karen and Tran Dang. 2003. “‘FOB’ and ‘Whitewashed’: Identity and Internalized Racism Among Second Generation Asian Americans.” Qualitative Sociology 26:147–172. Russell, Kathy, Midge Wilson, and Ronald Hall. 1991. The Color Complex. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION In 1965, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (hereinafter ICERD). By 2006, 170 of the 192 UN member states had become parties to this treaty. At the time of its drafting, it was a remarkable innovation, the outcome of moves that started in 1960 when attacks on synagogues and Jewish burial grounds in Germany gave rise to fears of a rise in neo-Nazism. When international remedial action by the United Nations was proposed, newly independent African states, with their eyes on Southern Africa, argued for a convention against racial discrimination. This entry examines the treaty, its implementation, and its future prospects.
What It Says The ICERD was the first human rights convention to include a provision by which the actions of state parties were to be monitored to see whether they were fulfilling the obligations they had undertaken. It obliged them to report every 2 years on their implementation of the convention and provided for the examination of their reports by an independent expert committee, which was to report the results of its examination to the UN General Assembly. According to Article 1 of the convention, “The term ‘racial discrimination’ shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.” The differentiation of purpose and effect means
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that both direct and indirect discrimination (or disparate treatment and disparate effect) are covered. Distinctions made by states between citizens and noncitizens are exempted from the definition, as are measures of affirmative action as long as they are not maintained after their objectives have been fulfilled. Articles 2 through 7 condemn racial segregation and define the obligations of state parties: to make incitement to racial hatred a punishable offence, to provide protections, to compensate victims, and to combat racial prejudices by educational and other means.
Implementation Those who negotiated its drafting did not expect many states to ratify the convention, yet the number of states becoming parties to it has steadily risen: from 41 in 1970 to 107 in 1980 and 129 in 1990. The United States became the 141st in 1994, though its ratification was subject to extensive reservations. Many states display an ambivalent attitude to this and other human rights treaties. Although states hope to put pressure on certain other states to secure adequate protections for racial minorities, they may not want to expose their own policies and actions to unfriendly criticism. State reports are examined by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), composed of eighteen experts elected by the state parties. From its first meeting in 1970 through to 1988, its work was influenced by the tensions of the cold war between East and West. Its activities were seen in some quarters as an adjunct to the decolonization movement at the United Nations. CERD found that many governments did not appreciate the extent of the obligations they had assumed by becoming parties to the treaty. For example, in several Latin American countries, citizens could vote only if they understood the Spanish language. CERD held that the less favorable treatment of those who spoke indigenous languages constituted racial discrimination and persuaded these states to amend their laws. In this period, members interpreted the convention as allowing them to receive information from state parties only, and they expressed only their individual opinions on state party compliance. With the ending of the cold war, CERD members were able to agree on concluding observations expressing a collective opinion of state implementation of
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International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
treaty obligations. CERD members started to take note of information received from nongovernmental sources and to use it as a basis for questions put to state representatives in oral dialogue. CERD introduced new measures to review implementation of the ICERD in respect of states that failed to submit reports and to follow up its recommendations to see whether they had been implemented by states. CERD agreed to procedures for issuing early warning about potentially dangerous situations and for outlining the urgent action that should be undertaken. For example, having received credible information alleging that the U.S. government was not protecting the traditional land rights of the Western Shoshone Indigenous Peoples, and having tried to expedite submission of the overdue report of that government, CERD in 2006 issued a decision expressing its concerns and listing the kinds of action required if the United States were to meet its treaty obligations in respect of the Shoshone. The ICERD, by its Article 14, was also the first UN human rights treaty to include a provision whereby a state party could agree to a procedure for individual complaints. By 2005, forty-six states had made the declaration allowing their citizens to petition CERD if they claimed that their governments had not protected their rights as set out in the convention. CERD considers such complaints, and the responses of the governments in question, in private session. In some cases, it has found the complaints to be justified. On occasion, the government has then recompensed the aggrieved person and taken action to prevent any recurrence.
Prospects Despite signs that CERD has been gaining authority, especially with the newer and smaller states, there are occasional disagreements. The government of India denies that its policies relating to caste distinctions come under its treaty obligations, whereas CERD, referring to the use of the word descent in Article 1, has affirmed “the situation of the scheduled castes falls within the scope of the Convention.” The government of Mauritania has protested vigorously about CERD’s statement, “It remains concerned about information on the persistence of slavery-like practices, which constitute serious instances of discrimination based on descent.” After CERD reviewed Australia’s
implementation of its obligations toward its Aboriginal population, the attorney-general of that country, in a press statement, declared, “The Committee’s comments are an insult to Australia.” CERD gave no ground, but reaffirmed its criticisms. If a dispute about the application of the convention were serious enough, the UN General Assembly or Security Council could refer it to the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion. The Third World Conference Against Racism in 2001 concluded, “We affirm that universal adherence to and full implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination are of paramount importance for promoting equality and non-discrimination in the world.” CERD has helped develop application of the convention as the primary expression of international law in its field by agreeing on general recommendations about such matters as racial segregation and the rights of particular groups, notably Indigenous Peoples, the Roma, and noncitizens. CERD operates under restrictive conditions, meeting for only six weeks of the year, and its members serve without salary. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has published proposals for unifying the activities of the seven human rights treaty bodies (covering economic rights, civil rights, race, torture, and the rights of women, children, and migrant workers) and for improving their funding. However, it is doubtful whether UN member states are yet ready for any significant improvement in the international oversight of actions of theirs that they see as expressions of their national sovereignty. More about the text of the convention, the list of state parties, and CERD’s reports and observations can be found on the Web site of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (http://www .unhchr.ch). Michael Banton See also Australia, Indigenous People; Discrimination; Minority Rights; Roma
Further Readings
Banton, M. 1996. International Action against Racial Discrimination. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Banton, M. 2002. The International Politics of Race. Oxford, UK: Polity Press.
Internment Camps
INTERNMENT CAMPS On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed military authorities to exclude “any or all persons” from areas they designated as a military or exclusion zone. On February 25, 1942, this order was used to begin excluding people of Japanese ancestry from the entire Pacific Coast. Thus, almost 120,000 Japanese Americans who lived in California, western Oregon, western Washington, and southern Arizona were removed from their homes in the largest forced relocation of U.S. citizens in U.S. history. Some residents of German and Italian descent also were arrested on an individual basis and interned when deemed to be security risks. Idaho Governor Chase Clark stated before a Congressional committee in February 1942 that Japanese Americans would be welcome in Idaho only if they were in “concentration camps under military guard.” This statement has often been discussed as the precursor to the establishment of internment camps for Japanese Americans. Executive Order 9095 created the Office of the Alien Property Custodian, allowing the government to take control of Japanese Americans’ assets and property. President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9102 on March 18, 1942, which established the War Relocation Authority (WRA) that eventually oversaw the administration of the internment camps. This entry describes the system and impact of internment camps.
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camps were subsequently established in 1942: Poston (Colorado River), Arizona; Tule Lake, California; Gila River, Arizona; Minidoka, Idaho; Heart Mountain, Wyoming; Amache (Granada), Colorado; Topaz, Utah; Rohwer, Arkansas; and Jerome, Arkansas. In September 1943, the Tule Lake, California, internment camp was transformed into a camp for “dissenters” based on evacuees responses to a loyalty questionnaire. The first camp closed was Jerome,
The WRA System Assembly centers were initially established by the WRA as temporary facilities to assemble and organize evacuated residents before transporting them to relocation centers. Relocation centers were camps that were established outside established exclusion zones. The terms relocation centers and internment camps are often used interchangeably. The WRA also established a segregation center at Tule Lake, California, for evacuees identified as security risks and their families. Some also refer to relocation centers as detention camps or concentration camps. Japanese Americans were incarcerated in nine internment camps and one segregation center. The first internment camp was established at Manzanar, California, and opened on March 21, 1942. The following internment
Schoolchildren at Manzanar. This 1943 photograph by Ansel Adams shows schoolchildren at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, California, one of ten camps where Japanese American citizens and resident Japanese aliens were interned during World War II. Starting in the 1960s, many Sanseis (third-generation Japanese Americans, the children of Nisei) became involved in the Civil Rights Movement and began the “Redress Movement,” in an effort to obtain an apology and reparations from the federal government for the interment at Manzanar and elsewhere. In 1980, Congress established a commission to study the matter and finally in 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided redress of $20,000 for each surviving detainee. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppprs-00354.
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Internment Camps
Japanese Americans Fred Korematsu (left), Minoru Yasui (center), and Gordon Hirabayashi, at a press conference on January 19, 1983. During World War II, U.S. citizens of Japanese descent living on the West Coast were first ordered to submit to a curfew and then were relocated to desert internment camps under the provisions of Executive Order 9066. The order was based on a military report by Lt. Gen. J. L. DeWitt stating that there was a danger of espionage by persons of Japanese ancestry. According to the report, all Japanese Americans should be evacuated from the West Coast “out of military necessity” because there was no way to determine which were dangerous. Korematsu, Yasui, and Hirabayashi refused to comply and challenged the constitutionality of the measures. The U.S. Supreme Court first upheld the curfew in 1943 in Hirabayashi v. United States (320 U.S. 81) and then the internment in 1944 in Korematsu v. United States (323 U.S. 214.) Forty years later, researchers discovered evidence that the Department of Justice had suppressed and altered portions of DeWitt’s report at the time of the Supreme Court cases. These actions removed his racially biased statements against all people of Japanese ancestry and his acknowledgement that there was no known threat by these Japanese Americans. On the basis of the newly discovered information, the U.S. District Court ruled in 1984 that Korematsu’s conviction was invalid, and in 1987, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit invalidated Hirabayashi’s. The U.S. government did not appeal either decision to the Supreme Court. Because the subsequent decisions came from lower courts rather than the Supreme Court itself, these wartime decisions still stand, though now in disgrace. The ruling in Korematsu that military urgency can justify measures such as internment remains effective. In recognition of Korematsu’s work for civil rights, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. In 2003, an amicus brief was filed on Korematsu’s behalf in two cases that challenged the constitutionality of detentions at Guantanamo Bay as part of the U.S. “War on Terror.” Korematsu died in 2005. Hirabayashi’s nephew, Lane Rho Hirabayashi, holds the first appointment as the George and Sakaye Aratani Professor of Japanese American Internment, Redress, and Community in the Asian American Studies department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Source: Bettmann/CORBIS.
Internment Camps
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Arkansas, on June 30, 1944, when all inmates were transferred to Rohwer, Arkansas, which was the last camp to be closed on November 30, 1945.
able to find non-Japanese Americans who agreed to tend to their farms, but most property owners were forced to sell their farms and homes at huge losses.
Internal Conditions. WRA reports acknowledged that Japanese Americans were housed in barracks covered in tar paper without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind. Some evacuees themselves were required to build the barracks in which they lived. Evacuees had to use unpartitioned toilets or outhouses in temperatures ranging from 35 degrees below zero in the winter to 115 degrees in the summer. They slept on cots and received 45 cents per day for food rations. Most families did not have clothing appropriate for the climates in which the internment camps were located and were not provided with clothing. Two small internment camps were established in Hawai‘i, which had declared martial law. However, because of the large population of Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i, the U.S. government realized that interning all people of Japanese ancestry in Hawai‘i would result in the destruction of Hawai‘i’s economy.
Reparations
Military Recruitment and Dissenters. Many young men in the internment camps were drafted into the military. On January 14, 1944, the military draft for Nisei (Japanese Americans born of immigrant parents) was restored. Although many volunteered for the draft, there also were many resisters. Some at the Heart Mountain camp organized the Fair Play Committee to support draft resistance. Other soldiers refused to participate in combat training to protest the treatment of their families in the internment camps. Many of the resisters or dissenters were arrested, convicted, and imprisoned before finally being pardoned. Japanese Americans drafted from internment camps and from Hawai‘i were assigned to one of three major units, the 100th Infantry Battalion, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and the Military Intelligence Service. In 1944, the 100th became a part of the 442nd and, to date, is the most highly decorated military unit in U.S. history. Economic Impact. All internees suffered significant property losses. Some estimate it to be around $6 billion. Although the U.S. government promised to store large items such as furniture, if boxed and labeled properly, the security of this property was not promised, and most Japanese Americans did not have their belongings returned to them. A few farmers were
Starting in the 1960s, many Sanseis (third-generation Japanese Americans, the children of Nisei) became involved in the Civil Rights Movement and began the “Redress Movement” in an effort to obtain an apology and reparations from the federal government. In 1980, Congress established a commission to study the matter. The commission’s report in 1983 condemned the internment as unjust, asserting that it was the result of racism rather than military necessity. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided redress of $20,000 for each surviving detainee, totaling more than $1.25 billion. The first nine redress payments were made in October 1990. Gayle Y. Iwamasa See Appendix B See also Asian Americans; Civil Disobedience; Issei; Japanese American Citizens League; Japanese Americans; Military and Race; Nisei
Further Readings
Children of the Camps: PBS Documentary. 1999. Nagata, Donna K. 1993. Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment. New York: Plenum Press. Tateishi, John, ed. 1999. And Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese American Detention Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Weglyn, Michi Nishiura. 1996. Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. Updated ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Yamamoto, Eric K., Margaret Chon, Carol L. Izumi, Jerry Kang, and Frank H. Wu. 2001. Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment. Gaithersburg, NY: Aspen Law & Business. Web Sites
Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project: http://www.densho.org Internment Archives: http://www.internmentarchives.com Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story (by Eric Paul Fornier): http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2001/ ofcivilwrongsandrights/index.html
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Interracial Friendships
INTERRACIAL FRIENDSHIPS Interracial friendships provide a context of equality in which intergroup differences may be addressed to reduce prejudice and conflict. Measures of the extent of interracial friendships also reflect the state of race relations in a society, capturing the positive feelings between group members rather than the negative sentiment so often emphasized in studies of racial attitudes. When friendships cut across racial lines, they represent a form of bonding capital and a form of bridging capital. A sizable body of research finds that having interracial friendships is associated with reduced prejudice and greater social competence for both children and adults. Unfortunately, interracial friendships tend to be shorter lived and less intimate than same-race friendships unless the cross-race friend is one of several rather than an isolated cross-race friend. This entry reviews social science research on interracial friendships in the United States, including the observed benefits, recent trends, historical context, measurement issues, and factors that help initiate and maintain interracial friendships.
Historical Context Historically, interracial friendships were virtually unknown from the U.S. Revolution to the 1830s, partly because of Enlightenment beliefs in hierarchy and order. Even the early abolitionist societies excluded Blacks as members. John Stauffer has shown that this mind-set began to shift in the 1840s as the abolitionist movement gained momentum and moral might. A “golden age” of interracial friendship took place from the 1840s to the 1860s, a period when radical abolitionists, both Black and White, joined forces to defeat slavery. Interracial friendships flowered as activists of all racial groups embraced the idea of a perfect society. This window was not repeated soon, as interracial friendships in both life and literature faded into insignificance before reemerging after World War II. Interracial friendship lost much of the prestige it once possessed. According to Stauffer, the waning of interracial friendship as an inspired ideal coincided with a dramatic rise in overt racism and racial oppression.
Prevalence and Benefits Recent Trends
The bulk of research has focused on Black-White friendships. The estimated prevalence of interracial friendship in the United States varies by study. A closer look suggests that both real changes over time and differences in methodological approach may underlie this variation. A recent longitudinal study using consistent measures by Steven Tuch, Lee Sigelman, and Jason MacDonald found that African Americans increased their friendships with Whites in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but decreased such friendships in the early 1990s until the percentage in 1995 was basically equivalent to the percentage in 1975. The various cross-sectional estimates from other studies paint a more inconsistent picture of interracial friendships, although research concurs that there have been consistent increases in interracial acquaintances over time. How friendship is measured is also an important source of variability, with results varying by how the relationship is defined, whether specific friendship nominations were required, and the number and pool of people from which friends can be considered. For example, a 1998 study by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that when White respondents were asked “Are any of your friends that you feel close to Black?,” 42% of Whites said yes. However, when asked to give the names of friends they felt close to before identifying their race, only 6% of Whites listed a close friend of a different race or ethnicity. Overall, real variation over time, aspects of methodology, and normative pressure on respondents to emphasize interracial friendships may affect the variability and accuracy of estimates. Benefitss
Studies of both children and adults suggest that cross-race friendships increase positive intergroup relations for members of both majority and minority groups. For children, having one or more interracial friendships is associated with greater social competency and multicultural sensitivity. The positive effects of these friendships for children transcend intergroup attitudes to also influence social skills and achievement aspirations. Even observing positive intergroup friendships among children’s fellow in-group members appears to benefit intergroup relations. For adults, interracial friendships
Interracial Friendships
have been most commonly linked to decreased prejudice. Thomas Pettigrew and Linda Tropp’s metaanalysis of studies of intergroup contact revealed that having an interracial friendship was associated with less prejudicial attitudes in thirty-nine studies. Similar to children, even the knowledge among adults that another in-group member has an out-group friendship is associated with more positive out-group beliefs.
Influencing Factors A sizable body of research has sought to identify what factors influence interracial friendships. Empirical work has considered the number of opportunities for contact, the quality of contact, characteristics of the environments that groups share, characteristics of individuals, and the level of family and parental support for interracial friendships. Several studies support the opportunity hypothesis, which suggests that the prevalence of interracial friendships is a function of the number of opportunities to initiate cross-race versus same-race friendships. For children and adolescents, demographically diverse classrooms have had the most success in increasing the prevalence of interracial friendships. A recent study by Ted Mouw and Barbara Entwisle suggests that about a third of friendship segregation by race is attributable to residential segregation, with segregation across schools more important than within them. Among adults, Jennifer Chatman and coauthors found that employees in racially diverse business organizations had more interracial friendships. Michael Emerson, Rachel Kimbro, and George Yancey also found that adults who have lived in multiethnic neighborhoods or attended interracial schools were more likely to have racially diverse friendships and social networks. Maureen Hallinan and Steven Smith found little support for a competing hypothesis that minorities isolate themselves from the majority when there are many opportunities for contact because they feel socially threatened. One caveat of the opportunity hypothesis is that racial diversity has been found to be less effective in fostering interracial friendships in large classrooms because a suitably large pool of same-race peers remain, making it unnecessary for students to make the effort to cross racial boundaries to form friendships. Thus, although opportunity is clearly important, it is by itself insufficient for initiating interracial friendships.
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In addition, several studies have hypothesized that optimal conditions for contact must be present for demographic diversity to blossom into interracial friendships. Supporting this hypothesis, research with children and adults has found that environments and situations that emphasize cooperation, team culture, and collective reward systems tend to foster more interracial friendships. For example, Robert Slavin and Robert Cooper observed that changing school structure from traditional to cooperative learning programs increases children’s formation of cross-race friendships, as well as friendship quality. Chatman and colleagues found that corporate environments that emphasized organizational membership and rewarded team achievement instead of individual achievement increased interracial interaction among adults and reduced the salience of race and ethnic categories. Individual characteristics such as personality, friendliness, gender, social competence, multicultural sensitivity, and shared interests may influence interracial friendships. Friendlier and more popular school children are more likely to report cross-race friends. In addition, students were much more likely to have same-gender interracial friendships than opposite-gender interracial friendships. Social competence and multicultural sensitivity is believed to be both a cause and a consequence of having interracial friendships. Grace Kao and Kara Joyner found that shared activities are important, with cross-race friends reporting fewer shared activities than did same-race friends. The level of support and engagement of family and parents may influence the initiating and retaining of interracial friendships. Worry about family reactions to interracial relationships may deter individuals from making interracial friendships. One study found that African American parents knew more of their children’s cross-race friends than did White parents, and African American parents reported feeling closer to their children’s other-race friends than to same-race friends, whereas White parents reported closer relationships with their children’s same-race friends than with different race friends. Brent Berry See also Contact Hypothesis; Intergroup Relations, Surveying; Interracial Marriage; Melting Pot; Prejudice; Robber’s Cave Experiment; Segregation
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Further Readings
Chatman, Jennifer A., Jeffrey T. Polzer, Sigal G. Barsade, and Margaret A. Neale. 1998. “Being Different Yet Feeling Similar: The Influence of Demographic Composition and Organizational Culture on Work Processes and Outcomes.” Administrative Science Quarterly 43:749–780. Clark, M. L. and Marla Ayers. 1992. “Friendship Similarity During Early Adolescence: Gender and Racial Patterns.” Journal of Psychology 126:393–405. Emerson, Michael O., Rachel T. Kimbro, and George Yancey. 2002. “Contact Theory Extended: The Effects of Prior Racial Contact on Current Social Ties.” Social Science Quarterly 83:745–761. Hallinan, Maureen T. and Steven S. Smith. 1985. “The Effects of Classroom Racial Composition on Students’ Interracial Friendliness.” Social Psychology Quarterly 48:3–16. Kao, Grace and Kara Joyner. 2004. “Do Race and Ethnicity Matter Among Friends? Activities Among Interracial, Interethnic, and Intraethnic Adolescent Friends.” Sociological Quarterly 45:557–574. Mouw, Ted and Barbara Entwisle. 2006. “Residential Segregation and Interracial Friendship in Schools.” American Journal of Sociology 112:394–441. Pettigrew, Thomas F. and Linda R. Tropp. 2003. “A MetaAnalytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90:751–783. Slavin, Robert E. and Robert Cooper. 1999. “Improving Intergroup Relations: Lessons Learned from Cooperative Learning Programs.” Journal of Social Issues 55:647–633. Stauffer, John. 2002. The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tuch, Steven A., Lee Sigelman, and Jason A. MacDonald. 1999. “Trends: Race Relations and American Youth, 1976–1995.” Public Opinion Quarterly 63:109–148.
INVISIBLE MAN Published in 1952, Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man chronicles the trials of a young, Black man making his way from Oklahoma to an all-Black college in the South, and finally settling in New York City. The work made Ellison a leading spokesperson on race relations in the United States because he criticized institutionalized racism and indicted White philanthropy, which often supported segregation and racial biases. The novel also drew attention to economic and social inequalities caused by centuries of racism. Ellison’s targets included White philanthropists and members of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) as
well as some Black leaders who competed for White patronage. Consequently, both Black and White critics accused the novelist of anticommunism, militancy, and self-hate. This entry summarizes the work, its relation to Ellison’s experiences, and its impact.
Section I: Education Generally, scholars laud the first section of the novel for exposing the tenacity of racism and the fragile nature of race relations during the mid-20th century. The main character, the Narrator, receives a college scholarship from a local fraternal organization. At the award ceremony, he learns that the town’s White civic and business leaders expect what Ellison terms a “Battle Royal.” The Narrator and several young Black men must box until one man is left standing. Throughout the match, the White men yell racial epithets at the fighters. The interest of White philanthropists in racial progress contrasts with their vulgar language and confuses the young man. He is reminded of his grandfather’s deathbed advice to resist racism and defy racists at every opportunity. Although not autobiographical, the novel relates experiences similar to those of Ellison and his friends. Ellison spent his youth in Oklahoma City, aware of racial tensions throughout the state. When Ellison was seven, one of the deadliest attacks on a Black community occurred: the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. His interactions with Whites and observations of racism stayed with him as he matured. In 1933, Ellison left his hometown for the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In the novel, the Narrator attends a southern, all-Black technical school, much like Tuskegee, established by “the Founder,” a Black educator, and supported by White philanthropy. Ellison exposes the dichotomy of a segregated institute, created for and by Blacks and financially dependent on White money. Ellison uses the characters of Mr. Norton, a northern White philanthropist, and Dr. Bledsoe, the school’s Black president, to indict this paternalistic system. At school, the Narrator becomes aware of the dysfunctional relationship between Black leaders and White philanthropists. While escorting Mr. Norton around campus, the Narrator inadvertently allows the benefactor to meet the seamier population living near the school. Consequently, the young man is expelled. The school’s president explains that running the university is a game in which he must appease Whites to keep the school funded. Dr. Bledsoe warns the Narrator never to tell Whites the truth or let them know what he is thinking.
Iranian Americans
Section 2: Life in the City Forced to leave school, the Narrator moves to New York City, where he encounters more ambiguities in relationships between White and Black social activists and reformers. This section of the novel created controversy among some scholars who saw it as an attack on communism and Black leaders. After learning that Dr. Bledsoe sabotaged his attempts to find employment, the Narrator becomes an unwilling participant in a medical experiment and an unwitting strikebreaker, and he witnesses racism in a labor union. Unemployed and out of options, he joins the Brotherhood, a thinly veiled cover for the CPUSA. The Narrator is invited to be a spokesman for his race. He learns that the Brotherhood hopes to end racial and class inequality. However, the young man encounters racial chauvinism, prejudice, and ignorance among the White membership. Additionally, Black members who willingly sacrifice each other for recognition by their White comrades mortify him. Ultimately, members of the Brotherhood undermine him for his popularity and he leaves. Some critics believe that Ellison depicted the Brotherhood negatively to insulate himself from the anticommunist hysteria of the Second Red Scare. Although he never officially joined the party, like the Narrator, Ellison left Tuskegee in 1936 and moved to New York City where he spent time among members of the CPUSA, including Langston Hughes, Louise Thompson, and Richard Wright. Although some critics accused Ellison of fabricating overt racism within the party, many of the Narrator’s experiences in this section of the novel mimic those of the novelist and his friends during the 1930s. In truth, Ellison and many other Black Americans abandoned the party by the end of World War II because the communists misunderstood the connection between racial and economic inequality. Upon leaving the Brotherhood, the Narrator becomes involved in a race riot and reassesses his role as a political activist. When he encounters Mr. Norton, who fails to recognize the young man, the Narrator imposes self-exile and vows to follow his grandfather’s advice and use his writing to expose the ambiguities found in relationships between the races. Like the Narrator, Ellison’s writing asks some difficult questions, for example: At what point does the Black beneficiary become equal to the White benefactor? Invisible Man exposed many harsh realities concerning the place of Black Americans in the mid-20th century United States. It is a work of social protest, chastising White paternalism and chauvinism and
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calling attention to the marginalization of social and economic classes in society. At the time of its publication in 1952, it awoke many to consider the nature of race relations and contributed to a growing interest in Black Nationalism and independence from Whites in civil rights organizations. Today, its significance lies in its usefulness in understanding the extent of the frustration among Black intellectuals and leaders in White-dominated society. Amy E. Carreiro See also Black Intellectuals; Black Nationalism; Discrimination; Double Consciousness; Labor Unions; Marginalization; Marxism and Racism; Medical Experimentation Further Readings
Jackson, Lawrence. 2002. Ralph Ellison: The Emergence of Genius. New York: Wiley. Nadel, Alan, ed. 1988. Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. O’Meally, Robert G. 1988. The Craft of Ralph Ellison. New York: Cambridge University Press. Schor, Edith 1993. Visible Ellison: A Study of Ralph Ellison’s Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
IRANIAN AMERICANS Following a wave of immigration from Iran, which was estimated to have a population of 71.2 million people in 2007, during the last quarter of the 20th century, Iranian Americans have emerged as a substantial ethnic community in the United States. Although Iranian Americans are drawn from the several ethnic and religious groups of Iran, a set of shared experiences have reinforced a specifically Iranian identity and strengthened shared cultural traditions. The Iranian American community has simultaneously undergone processes of assimilation to the dominant U.S. culture and strengthening of a specifically Iranian ethnic identity. This entry briefly reviews Iranian immigration and then focuses on the ethnic, religious, and economic characteristics of the Iranian American community, its political issues, and its adaptation to the new home country.
Immigration History Iranian immigration dates back to the late 19th century, including a group of Iranians in the Iranian
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Iranian Americans
Russia
Ukraine
Kazakhstan
Black Sea
Georgia
Uzbekistan Azerbaijan
Turkmenistan
Turkey
Tajikistan
Syria Afghanistan
Iraq
Iran
Jordan Pakistan
Kuwait Persian Gulf
Qatar
United Arab Emirates
Saudi Arabia
India Gulf of Oman
Red
Oman
who also choose “Iranian” as their primary ancestry. Competing estimates of the population vary, with some estimates as high as 1 million Iranian Americans. Iranian Americans live in nearly every state, but specific states and metropolitan regions are host to large Iranian American communities. California contains the largest number of Iranian Americans; more than half of all Iranian Americans live in California, including more than 100,000 in greater Los Angeles alone. The Los Angeles community represents the single largest concentration of Iranian Americans, who are one of the more visible ethnic communities in that city. Virginia, Texas, and New York are also host to sizable Iranian American communities, each with a population greater than 10,000.
Sea
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Exhibition of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Through the first half of the 20th century, the number of new Iranians entering the United States numbered several hundred annually. More substantial numbers of Iranians did not enter until the late 1960s and early 1970s. Iran was rapidly industrializing during this period, and a growing professional class in Iran was seeking education and professional opportunities outside Iran. The political turmoil preceding the Iranian Revolution of 1979 sparked a mass exodus of Iranians to locations in Western Europe and the United States. The Iranian Revolution played a major role in shaping the subsequent relationship between Iranian Americans, the nation of Iran, and their host society of the United States and was the direct cause of many immigrants’ departure for the United States. As such, the Iranian Revolution remains a powerful memory for most Iranian Americans and continues to influence the construction of their ethnic identity.
The modern nation of Iran is composed of multiple ethnic and religious groups. The predominant ethnic group is Persian, composing over half of the population of Iran. Persian culture plays a dominant role in the construction of Iranian identity through the use of Persian language (Farsi) and the importance of traditional Persian customs, holidays, music, and literature. Yet, Iran also contains many other ethnic groups, such as Azeris, Kurds, and Arabs, which collectively constitute more than a third of the population of Iran. Although the ethnic composition of Iran is known, the precise ethnic makeup of the Iranian American population is more difficult to ascertain because of shortcomings in how information on ethnicity, nationality, and race are collected in the United States. Although the Iranian American community has a diverse ethnic composition, some scholars argue that the ethnic differences among Iranian Americans have become less pronounced as Iranian Americans coalesce around a common diasporic experience and shared cultural traditions. Thus, although many non-Persian Iranian Americans may construct part of their ethnic identity from their non-Persian ethnic heritage, it does not lead to a division within the Iranian American community.
Community Characteristics The 2004 American Communities Survey reports a population of 341,979 who identify their primary ancestry as Iranian. This figure is likely an underestimate of the true size of the Iranian American population because it reports only those Iranian Americans who choose to volunteer information on ancestry and
Relig gious Affilliattion n
The dominant religious group of Iran is Shi’a Muslim, containing nine of ten Iranians; other groups include Sunni Muslims, Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, and Baha’is. Although most Iranian Americans are Shi’a Muslim, the level of religiosity varies widely. For
Iranian Americans
some, devout practice of Islam has continued or even increased with migration to the United States. As Georges Sabagh and Mehdi Bozorgmehr have argued, however, the Iranian American community has a strong secular character, in which ethnic identity functions independently of religious identity. This is partly because of the higher levels of migration from Iran for those who had low levels of religiosity and a higher social class standing, leading to an Iranian American community with a lower level of religiosity than Iranian society has. Economic Sta atu us
That Iranian immigration is selective and immigrants are mostly of a higher social class, along with the traditional emphasis on education and upward mobility, has led to an ethnic community that has been economically successful on average. The median household income of Iranian Americans was $58,912 in 1999, which was substantially greater than the national median household income of $41,994. Iranian Americans have also attained a high level of education, with 28% of Iranian Americans over age 25 having a master’s degree or higher, including the 12% with a professional or doctorate degree. In contrast, 9% of all U.S. residents over age 25 have a master’s degree, including 3% with a professional or doctorate degree. The emphasis on education and professional careers is also visible in the disproportionately high number of Iranian Americans who work in the fields of medicine and science, including a large number of physicians and engineers. The economic success of many Iranian Americans illustrates their effort to assimilate to the mainstream. Yet, and seemingly paradoxically, Iranian Americans maintain a strong connection to traditional cultural practices. Nilou Mostofi makes sense of this paradox by emphasizing the strong division of social space for Iranian Americans between the public space and the private or familial space. Although this division exists even for Iranians in Iran, for Iranian Americans, this division allows for the strengthening of ethnic identity concurrent with assimilation to mainstream society. In the public sphere, Iranians have assimilated to mainstream U.S. society in social mobility and the strong identification with U.S. ideals of freedom, individuality, secularism, and civic nationalism. Yet, in the private sphere of the home and in community gatherings, Iranian Americans reinforce their ethnic identity through the practice of Iranian culture and specifically those Iranian traditions
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that predate the introduction of Islam to Iran. This is most evident in the continuing significance of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, as an important holiday for Iranian Americans that also helps to reinforce a sense of Iranian American identity and community. Politiical Isssues
The turbulent political relationship between the United States and Iran has influenced the relationship of Iranian Americans with their host society. Although Iran was closely allied with the United States before the Iranian Revolution of 1979, U.S. support for the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi embittered many of those Iranian Americans who favored democratic ideals and were opposed to the Shah. The IranIraq war (1980–1988), which led to at least half a million Iranian deaths, was a painful event for Iranian Americans, many of whom had close ties to Iran. U.S. support for Iraq during the war created contradictory feelings among Iranian Americans, many of whom were strongly in favor of the U.S. political system yet opposed to U.S. foreign policy. The Iranian Revolution introduced a new government that was hostile to the United States, and the student takeover of the U.S. embassy and the following hostage crisis from 1979 to 1981 led to a pronounced change of U.S. popular opinion from ignorance or apathy toward Iran and Iranian Americans to antipathy and even hostility. Popular attitude toward Iranian Americans was also affected following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as many Iranian Americans reported experiencing a rise in hostility toward anyone perceived to be of a Muslim background. Though these events have led to a degree of tension between Iranian Americans and the mainstream U.S. society, they have led neither to a significant exclusion of Iranian Americans from society nor toward the construction of an Iranian American identity in opposition to the host society. The experience of Iranian Americans, as members of a relatively new ethnic community in the United States, is one of both assimilation to mainstream society and the simultaneous reinforcement of a specifically Iranian ethnic identity. For many Iranian Americans, this process is not contradictory but, rather, results in an identity that is at once Iranian and American, reinforced and validated through the shared experiences of the Iranian American community. Bijan Warner
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Iraqi Americans
See Appendix A See also Assyrian Americans; Diaspora; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Immigration, Economic Impact of; Muslim Americans
Further Readings
Kelley, Ron, ed. 1993. Irangeles: Iranians in Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mostofi, Nilou. 2003. “Who We Are: The Perplexity of Iranian-American Identity.” Sociological Quarterly 44(4):681–703. Sabagh, Georges and Mehdi Bozorgmehr. 1994. “Secular Immigrants: Religiosity and Ethnicity Among Iranian Muslims in Los Angeles.” Pp. 445–473 in Muslim Communities in North America, edited by Y. Y. Haddad and J. I. Smith. Albany: State University of New York Press. Sullivan, Zohreh T. 2001. Exiled Memories: Stories of Iranian Diaspora. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2005. American Community Survey 2004. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
IRAQI AMERICANS Iraqi Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from Iraq, a country of 29.0 million, as of 2007 estimates. Iraqi Americans represent one of the many diverse groups of the Arab nation, which includes those from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, the Republic of Yemen, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates, and of who speak the Arabic language. According to the 2000 census, there were 89,890 people born in Iraq resident in the United States, of whom 50.7% are citizens. This entry will look at recent immigration from Iraq to the United States and the emerging picture of Iraqi refugees.
Services (formerly a part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service), 25,710 Iraqi-born immigrants were naturalized between 1991 and 2001. Many assume that the immigration of Arabs decreased immediately after September 11, 2001. However, the number of immigrants who entered or became legal permanent residents stayed level, though the number of non-immigrants who were issued visas and admitted to the United States as tourists, students, or temporary workers did decrease. There was about a 70% decrease in the number of tourist and business visas issued to individuals from Gulf countries. According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, there were 37,728 people of Iraqi national origin in the United States in 2005. In geographic distribution, the top five states were Michigan, California, Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania. The largest population of Iraqi Americans can be found in Detroit. According to the 2000 census, 50.1% speak English less than “very well.” Their median family income was $41,179 compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Among famous Iraqi Americans are Heather Raffo, playwright and actress; TIMZ (Tommy Hanna), rapper; Eliott Yamin, singer; Chris Kattan, actor; Stephan Smith, singer, songwriter, and musician; and Zainab Salbi, cofounder and president of Women for Women International. Ukraine Russia
Black Sea Georgia Azerbaijan Turkmenistan Turkey
Syria Lebanon Mediterranean Sea
Iran
Iraq
West Bank Israel Jordan
The Iraqi Diaspora
Kuwait Persian Gulf
Egypt Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates
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The large waves of emigration from Iraq that began with the Saddam Hussein regime have continued. This is referred to as the Iraqi Diaspora, and destinations include many other countries besides the United States. Between 1989 and 2001, a little more than 49,000 Iraqis immigrated to the United States. Many entered as refugees or were granted refugee status after entering. According to the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration
Kazakhstan
Sudan
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Ireland
Iraqi Refugees The number of Iraqis granted refugee status averaged 2,000 to 3,000 annually in the years leading up to the Iraq War, and then less than 500 in 2002 and less than 300 annually beginning in 2003 during the subsequent occupation. Numbers granted asylum status similarly declined. With U.S. presence in Iraq continuing, many Iraqis who have aided the U.S.-led mission have increasingly sought refuge in the West. Advocates on their behalf have sought policies similar to those in the aftermath of the Vietnam War when President Gerald Ford authorized the admission to the United States of more than 131,000 South Vietnamese refugees. Observers wonder whether, even if a level of stability is achieved in Iraq, some of the individuals most closely associated with the United States might be put at risk with the departure of U.S. troops. As a more long-term policy is debated, the United States has struggled to respond to the growing number of refugees (more than 8,000 by mid-2007) seeking to flee sectarian fighting within Iraq. Depending on the occupation outcome and U.S. resettlement polices, the Iraqi American community could potentially experience a major transformation in the coming years.
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U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Iraq. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/ socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
IRELAND Ireland, estimated to have a population of 4.1 million people in 2007, is a particularly interesting case for ethnic and racial studies scholars because of its history of colonization, struggle for independence, and recent economic growth. Studying Ireland’s complex ethnic and racial landscape may help scholars understand the processes of changing conceptions of race and ethnicity. This entry discusses the history, religion, language, and politics, all of them important factors in understanding race and ethnicity in Ireland—and elsewhere.
Jan Mayen
Greenland
Norwegian Sea
Iceland Faroe Is.
Jennifer M. Klein
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See Appendix A See also Arab Americans; Assimilation; Assyrian Americans; Diaspora; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Kurdish Americans; Muslim Americans; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity
North Sea Denmark
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands Belgium Germany
France
Italy
Further Readings Atlantic Ocean
Portugal
Spain
Algeria Morocco
ia nis Tu
Ajabi, Fouad. 2006. The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq. New York: Free Press. Cooper, Helene. 2007. “U.S. Officials Admit Delays in Issuing Visas to Iraqis.” New York Times, July 28, p. A10. Department of Homeland Security. 2006. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2005. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs.gov/ ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Samhan, Helen Hatab. 1999. “Not Quite White: Race Classification and the Arab-American Experience.” In Arabs in America: Building a New Future, edited by M. W. Suleiman. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Tripp, Charles. 2000. A History of Iraq. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Switzerland
The English in Ireland The island of Ireland was settled by many different groups of people, including Celts, Gaels, Vikings, Normans, and English. As with any nation, the Irish are not a primordial group but a socially constructed nationality.
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Ireland
Norman settlers (later known as the Old English) arrived in Ireland in the 12th century and established themselves in Dublin and its surrounding area, which became known as the Pale. English rule of Ireland effectively began in 1601, with Hugh O’Neill’s loss at the battle of Kinsale. Less clear is when the negative image of the Irish emerged, but they suffered degradation and stereotyping at the hands of the English. This negative identity was partly associated with Catholicism, which the then-Protestant English viewed as papistry and ignorance. The Role of Religion
Since the time of St. Patrick in the 5th century, Ireland has been largely Catholic. Religion played a significant role in constituting an ethnic Irish identity, partly because it helped differentiate Irish from English. However, the English negative image of the Irish was not solely associated with religion; apparent differences from the English were used to create the Irish as “others.” High taxes and English economic and political favoritism of the New English planters resulted in economic hardship for the majority in Ireland. In an effort to establish firm control in Ireland, extend their influence “beyond the Pale,” and settle Ireland with loyal English, the English established many laws favoring New English and Protestants. Examples include recusancy fines, the Act for the Settling of Ireland, the Penals Laws, and restricting Parliament to Protestants only. Although their rule had created the impoverished situation of the Irish, the English viewed the unemployed, poor, and powerless Irish as deserving their lot because of laziness, stupidity, and backwardness, which helped to rationalize English rule. The Role of Languag ge
Like Catholicism, the Irish language also helped to constitute the Irish as a distinct ethnic group. Official business was usually conducted in English, and the favoritism of the New English settlers effectively eliminated the Irish-speaking ruling class. As a result, Irish language lost cultural respect while it remained a vernacular, particularly in rural areas. Irish language and names came to symbolize resistance to English rule and loyalty to the Irish independence effort. In the path to independence, Irish language helped unite opposition to English rule.
The Gaelic League was established in 1893 and, though originally apolitical, increased Irish ethnic pride and helped organize opposition to colonial occupation. Thus, Irish language helped construct both Irish identity and the nation-state. The role of Irish language in the political and cultural creation of Ireland is reflected in the 1937 constitution, which prioritizes Irish as the first official language. A national language is associated with a people, whereas an official language is related to a state. The constitution deemphasizes English, recognizing it as a second official language or another language (in the Irish version of the constitution). Referencing Irish as the national and official language links the language with Irish people and the Irish state. The Great Potato Famine (1845–1849), and other terrible suffering under English political economic control, caused mass emigration of Irish language speakers and further reduced the vibrancy of the Irish language. However, the suffering also strengthened Irish identity and resistance to English rule. Irish emigrants—in the United States, for example— contributed financially and emotionally to the independence effort. The suffering of the famine produced a strong icon to rally around and remains a powerful symbol in Irish history and identity.
An Independent State The struggle for independence required changing the negative stereotypes of Irishness into a positive selfimage. In the 19th century, Gaelic revival of Irish culture—including athletics, language, literature, and history—helped produce a positive Irish identity and nationalistic pride. The Gaelic Athletic Association (1884) and the Gaelic League preceded the formation of Sinn Féin, an Irish nationalist party established in the early 20th century, now committed inter alia to a united Ireland free of English rule in Northern Ireland. The Gaelic revival helped establish Irishness as a strong and positive identity around which to organize politically. Ireland gained independence from England in 1921, but required a strong Irish identity to do so, which alienated those perceived as different, including non-Catholics, Irish Travellers, and immigrants. The partitioning of the island, with the English maintaining control of Northern Ireland, led to continued efforts to nationalize the entire island and strong nationalistic sentiment evidenced in the goals of Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army.
Ireland
Conflicct in n the e Nortth
Irish ethnicity has played a large part in the conflicts in Northern Ireland. Unionists are mainly Protestants favoring continued British control of Northern Ireland, and Nationalists are mainly Catholics preferring Irish control. The strength of the conflicts has fluctuated, but strong feelings are held on both sides because ethnic identity is so closely involved in these politics. The continued struggle forces those living there to choose a side and strengthens religious, ethnic, and national identity. The conflict in Northern Ireland has also indirectly affected the ethnic and racial landscape in the Republic of Ireland through the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA), which is sensitive to identity and represents a historic step toward peace in Northern Ireland. It emphasized inclusion and equality with a constitutional amendment that anyone born on the island of Ireland is entitled to Irish citizenship. Previously, birth on the island also qualified one for Irish citizenship, but before the 1999 constitutional ratification of the GFA, this qualification for citizenship was only based on law and could have been changed without a national referendum. The GFA might indicate an inclusive society. However, just 6 years later, on June 11, 2004, almost 80% of those who voted in the citizenship referendum approved changing the citizenship requirement from birth on the island (jus soli) to hereditary (jus sanguinis). Since January 1, 2005, the constitutional requirement for citizenship at birth is a parent (or grandparent) with Irish citizenship. The strong Irish identity, which aided the independence effort, was originally largely anti-British. This citizenship referendum indicates that the strong Irish identity has now resulted in closure and exclusion of those not considered Irish; Irish identity was previously largely oppositional and is now exclusive. Economicc Growth h and Racism
The result of the citizenship referendum is surprising because it coincides with tremendous economic growth, which is usually associated with low racial and ethnic conflict. Despite unprecedented economic growth from the early 1990s and gaining the label “the Celtic Tiger,” racism has been apparent in Ireland, as experienced by asylum seekers, for example. This apparent contradiction might be partially explained by the extremely uneven distribution of the
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economic prosperity, with many seeing no economic improvement in their lives. The history of Irish suffering, though cruel and inhumane, may now fuel nationalism and a sense of entitlement to participate in the economic prosperity. When many fail to participate, they may scapegoat recent immigrants, those who do not appear to belong, and those who are supposedly costing them tax money. Asylum seekers are not permitted to work legally and are largely perceived to be a drain on the economy. Politicians scapegoat them to avoid blame for economic disparity and suggest that asylum seekers are only fleeing their homes in search of a better economic life. The long-evident racist treatment of Irish Travellers also remains despite economic success. Meanwhile, return migrants receive a relatively friendly welcome. The ethnic and racial landscape in Ireland is complex, with strong internal and external conflicts. There has been change over time in some respects (e.g., the recent citizenship referendum), but remarkable stability in other areas (e.g., anti-Traveller sentiment and conflict with Protestants). Conflicts along ethnic, religious, national, and racial lines all exist in Ireland, making it an important site for research to understand various forms of exclusion and their processes of change. Antiracism campaigns (such as the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism) are active and may provide other countries with effective strategies to combat racism. Emily Rauscher See Appendix A See also Britain’s Irish; Colonialism; Ethnic Conflict; Irish Americans; Northern Ireland, Racism in
Further Readings
Allen, Kieran. 2000. The Celtic Tiger: The Myth of Social Partnership in Ireland. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Foster, R. F. 1988. Modern Ireland: 1600–1972. London: Penguin Books. Ignatiev, Noel. 1995. How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge. Kirby, Peadar. 2002. The Celtic Tiger in Distress: Growth with Inequality in Ireland. New York: Palgrave. Lentin, Ronit and Robbie McVeigh. 2002. Racism and Antiracism in Ireland. Belfast, Ireland: Beyond the Pale.
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MacSharry, Ray and Padraic White. 2000. The Making of the Celtic Tiger: The Inside Story of Ireland’s Boom Economy. Cork, Ireland: Mercier Press. O’Hearn, Denis. 1998. Inside the Celtic Tiger: The Irish Economy and the Asian Model. London: Pluto Press.
IRISH AMERICANS The Irish presence in the United States stretches back to the 1600s and reflects a diversity based on time of entry, settlement area, and religion. Irish Americans have been visible positively, as playing a central role in U.S. life; however, like many other immigrant groups, they also been victimized at certain historical
periods. The Irish were the first immigrant group to encounter prolonged organized resistance. Strengthened by continued immigration and facility with the English language, and building on strong community and family networks and on familiarity with representative politics, Irish Americans became an integral part of the United States, as described in this entry.
Irish Immigration Before 1845
Protestants dominated early Irish immigration to the colonies even though these Presbyterians from Ireland of Scotch descent accounted for only one of ten, at most one of seven, of the island of Ireland’s residents in the 18th century. Motivating the early immigrants was the lure of free land in North America, a sharp contrast to Ireland where more and more tenants had to compete for land. Powerful Irish property owners took full advantage by squeezing more and more profits, making migration to colonial America attractive. The Roman Catholics among the early immigrants were a diverse group. Some were extensions of the privileged classes seeking to prosper even more. Protestant settlers of all national backgrounds united in their hatred of Catholicism. In most of the colonies, Catholics could not practice their faith openly and either struggled inwardly or converted to Anglicanism. Other Roman Catholics, and some Protestants, came as an alternative to prison or after signing articles of indenture that bound them to labor for periods customarily of 3 to 5 but sometimes as long as 7 years. The U.S. Revolution temImmigration cartoon (circa 1882). Reflecting the prejudices and stereotypes of the time, porarily stopped the flow of Thomas Nast’s cartoon depicts Irish and Chinese immigration to the United States, show- immigration; soon, however, ing “Fritz” and “Pat” seated at table talking. Fritz to Pat: “If the Yankee congress can keep deteriorating economic condithe yellow man out, what is to hinder them from calling us green and keeping us out too?” tions in Ireland spurred even Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ61-2195. greater movement to North
Irish Americans
America. British officials, by making passage to the newly formed republic of the United States expensive, diverted many immigrants to British North America (Canada). Yet a significant number continued to come to the United States, and although still primarily Protestant, they represented a broader spectrum of Ireland both economically and geographically. Many mistakenly overlook this early immigration and see Irish immigration as beginning during the Great Famine. Yet, the Irish were the largest group after the English among immigrants during the colonial period. The historical emphasis on the famine immigrants is understandable given the role it played in Ireland and its impetus for the massive transfer of population from Ireland to the United States.
The Famine Years In 1845, a fungus wiped out the potato crop of Ireland, as well as much of Western Europe and even the coastal United States. Potatoes were particularly central to the lives of the Irish, and the devastating starvation did not begin to recede until 1851. Mortality was high especially among the poor and in the more agricultural areas of the island. To escape catastrophe, some 2 million fled. Most went to England, but many continued on to the United States. From 1841 through 1890, more than 3.2 million Irish arrived in the United States. This new migration from the old country was much more likely to consist of families than of single men. This arrival of entire households and extended kinship networks increased significantly the rapid formation of Irish social organizations in the United States. This large influx of immigrants led to the creation of ethnic neighborhoods, complete with parochial schools and parish churches that served as focal points. Fraternal organizations such as the Ancient Order of Hibernians, corner saloons, local political organizations, and Irish Nationalist groups seeking the ouster of Britain from Ireland rounded out neighborhood social life. Already sick and weak, many migrants died while crossing the Atlantic. Upon arrival, some stayed in New York, but most moved on to other coastal cities. Some traveled inland, but for most Irish, in contrast with English and German immigrants, the railroad tickets to midwestern cities were just too expensive, so the East Coast was typically the final destination. Later Irish immigrants would follow others westward, attracted by the California Gold Rush of the late
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Table 1
Immigration from Ireland to the United States
Decade
Number in 000s
1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2001–2004
50.7 207.4 780.7 914.1 435.8 436.9 655.5 388.4 339.0 141.1 211.2 10.9 19.8 48.4 33.0 11.5 31.9 57.0 5.5
Source: Department of Homeland Security. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2004. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics, 2006. Table 2. Note: Immigration after 1925 from Northern Ireland included with United Kingdom.
1840s or the emergence of new commercial trading points such as Chicago in the 1860s. Another draw was employment as laborers in the difficult and often dangerous work of building the transcontinental railroad that finally linked the East and West coasts in 1869. Even in the best of times, the lives of the famine Irish would have been challenging in the United States, but they arrived at a difficult time. Nativist—that is, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant—movements were already emerging and being embraced by politicians. From independence until around 1820, little evidence appeared of the anti-Catholic sentiment of colonial days, but the cry against Roman Catholicism grew as Irish immigration increased. Prominent citizens encouraged hatred of these new arrivals. Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph and an accomplished painter, wrote a strongly worded anti-Catholic work in 1834 titled A Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States. Morse felt that the Irish were
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shamefully illiterate and deserved no respect. In the mind of the prejudiced people, the Irish were particularly unwelcome because they were Catholic. Many readily believed Morse’s warning that the pope planned to move the Vatican to the Mississippi River Valley. This antagonism was not limited to harsh words. From 1834 to 1854, mob violence against Catholics across the country led to death, the burning of a Boston convent, the destruction of a Catholic church and the homes of Catholics, and the use of Marines and state militia to bring peace to U.S. cities as far west as St. Louis. In retrospect, the reception given to the Irish is not difficult to understand. Many immigrated after the potato crop failure and famine in Ireland. They fled not so much to a better life as from almost certain death. The Irish Catholics brought with them a celibate clergy, who struck the New England aristocracy as strange and reawakened old religious hatreds. According to the dominant Whites, the Irish were worse than Blacks, because unlike the slaves and even freed Blacks who “knew their place,” the Irish did not suffer their maltreatment in silence. Employers balanced minorities by judiciously mixing immigrant groups to prevent unified action by the laborers. For the most part, nativist efforts only led the foreign born to emphasize their ties to Europe. By the 1850s, nativism became an open political movement pledged to vote only for “native” Americans, to fight Catholicism, and to demand a 21-year naturalization period. Party members were instructed to divulge nothing about their program and to say that they knew nothing about it. As a result, they came to be called the Know-Nothings. Although the Know-Nothings soon vanished, the anti-alien mentality survived and occasionally became formally organized into such societies as the Ku Klux Klan in the 1860s and the anti-Catholic American Protective Association in the 1890s. Revivals of antiCatholicism continued well into the 20th century. Mostly of peasant backgrounds, the arriving Irish were ill-prepared to compete successfully for jobs in the city. Their children found it much easier, improving their occupational status over that of their fathers as well as experiencing upward mobility in their own lifetimes.
Becoming White Ireland had a long antislavery tradition including practices that prohibited Irish trade in English slaves.
In 1841, some 60,000 Irish signed a document known as the Irish Address in 1841, which urged Irish Americans to join the abolitionist movement in the United States. Many Irish Americans already opposed to slavery applauded the appeal, but they were soon drowned out by fellow immigrants who denounced or questioned the authenticity of the petition. The Irish immigrants, subjected to derision and menial jobs, sought to separate themselves from the even lower classes, particularly Black Americans and especially slaves. The Irish were not truly “White” during the antebellum period because the Irish as a group were seen as inferior by Whites. Irish character was rigidly cast in negative racial typology. Though the shared experiences of oppression could have led Irish Americans to ally with Black Americans, instead they grasped for “Whiteness” at the margins of their life in the United States. Direct competition between the two groups was uncommon. In 1855, for example, Irish immigrants made up 87% of New York City’s unskilled laborers, but free Blacks accounted for only 3%. In 1863, the Union government implemented a national conscription law requiring able-bodied men between the ages of 20 and 45 to fight in the Civil War. Men could avoid service by presenting an acceptable substitute or paying $300. Irish Americans, already experiencing heavy losses in the war, had grown tired of it. Opposition to conscription was widespread but especially visible in Boston and New York City. The opposition grew violent in New York City with participants, mostly poor Irish Americans, striking out first against symbols of the government and then targeting African American organizations and even individual Blacks. The vandalism and violence were aimed at those even weaker than the working-class Irish who resented “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” The “Draft Riots of 1863,” as they came to be called, violently showed the dilemma many Irish Americans felt in fighting for the freedom of their Negro competitors in the labor market. Eventually the rioters were quelled with the dispatch of troops fresh from Gettysburg, including Irish American soldiers. As Irish immigration continued in the latter part of the 19th century until the Irish gained independence from British crown in 1921, Irish immigrants began to see themselves favorably and as superior to the initial waves of Italian, Polish, and Slovak Roman Catholic immigrants. More frequently, Irish Americans began to assume leadership positions in politics and labor unions. Still, loyalty to the church played a major role.
Irish Americans
By 1910, the priesthood was the professional occupation of choice for second-generation men. Irish women were more likely than were their German and English immigrant counterparts to become schoolteachers. In time, the occupational profile of Irish Americans diversified, and they began to experience slow advancement. They were gradually welcomed into the White working class as their identity as “White” overcame their status as “immigrant.” With mobility came social class distinctions within Irish America. As the immigrants and their children began to move into the more affluent urban areas, they were derogatorily referred to as the “lace-curtain Irish.” The lower-class Irish immigrants they left behind, meanwhile, were referred to as the “shanty Irish.” But as immigration from Ireland slowed and upward mobility quickened, fewer and fewer Irish qualified as the poor cousins of their predecessors. In the 1950s, as in the 19th century, economic hard times in Ireland spurred immigration to the United States. However, a cap of 2,000 immigrants from any one European country led to the sporadic influx of illegal immigrants from the Republic of Ireland. Congressional action in 1987 included a provision that resulted in another 16,000 visas for Irish immigrants. This recent experience with immigration controls led several national and local Irish American organizations to stand with those in 2006 who protested for procedures to allow illegal immigrants in the United States to apply for citizenship. The most visible components of Irish American life, such as schooling and work, had their roots in the 20th century. Extended formal schooling was stressed, and young people were encouraged to enter professions, especially the law. The Irish, with their heritage of the long struggle for political independence in Ireland, comprehended the essentials of representative government. Politics and civic employment opportunities such as law enforcement became a critical path to both influence and upward mobility. This pattern has continued to the present. Indeed, of the 345 firefighters who perished in the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center, 145 were members of the Emerald Society, the fire department’s Irish American fraternal group. For the Irish American man, the priesthood was viewed as a desirable and respected occupation. Furthermore, Irish Americans played a leadership role in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.
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The Irish dominance persisted long after other ethnic groups swelled the ranks of the faithful.
Contemporary Irish Americans In the 2000 census, people identifying as Irish accounted for 30.5 million people—second only to those claiming German ancestry. This represented a decline of more than 8.2 million from the number of people self-identifying as Irish in 1990, a product of assimilation rather than of out-migration. Contemporary Irish immigration is relatively slight, accounting for perhaps 1 of 1,000 legal arrivals today compared with more than a third of all immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s. About 202,000 people in the United States were born in Ireland—comparable to the numbers of Portuguese born in the United States. Today’s Irish American typically enjoys the symbolic ethnicity of food, dance, and music. Gaelic language instruction is offered in fewer than thirty colleges. Visibility as a collective ethnic group is greatest with the annual St. Patrick’s Day celebrations when everyone seems to be Irish, and there is occasional fervent nationalism aimed at curtailing Great Britain’s role in Northern Ireland. Some stereotypes remain concerning excessive drinking, despite available data indicating that alcoholism rates are no higher and sometimes lower among people of Irish ancestry compared with descendants of other European immigrant groups. St. Patrick’s Day celebrations offer an example of how ethnic identity evolves over time. The Feast of St. Patrick has a long history but the public celebrations with parties, concerts, and parades originated in the United States and were exported to Ireland in the latter part of the 20th century. Well-known Irish Americans span society, including the celebrity chef Bobby Flay, actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, comedian Conan O’Brien, and author Frank McCourt, as well as the political dynasties of the Kennedys in Massachusetts and the Daleys in Chicago. But, reflecting growing intermarriage, Irish America also includes singer Mariah Carey, whose mother is Irish and whose father is African American and Venezuelan. Irish Americans are firmly anchored in contemporary United States society. Some members keep a more vigilant eye on their past roots or on contemporary events in Ireland and Northern Ireland, but in everyday life, most people of Irish ancestry move
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through social life with ease and little conscious thought of their ethnic roots. Richard T. Schaefer See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Assimilation; Britain’s Irish; Harlem; Ireland; Nativism; Stereotypes; Symbolic Ethnicity; Whiteness
Further Readings
Fallows, Marjorie R. 1979. Irish Americans: Identity and Assimilation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Greeley, Andrew M. 1981. The Irish Americans: The Rise to Money and Power. New York: Warner Books. Ignatiev, Noel. 1995. How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge. Lee, J. J. and Marion R. Casey. 2006. Making the Irish American. New York: New York University Press. Meagher, Timothy J. 2005. The Columbia Guide to Irish American History. New York: Columbia University Press. Roediger, David. 1994. Towards the Abolition of Whiteness. London: Verso.
ISLAMOPHOBIA The term Islamophobia is a neologism dating from the early 1990s, constructed by analogy with terms such as agoraphobia, xenophobia, and homophobia. Islamophobia denotes a range of negative feelings toward Muslims and their religion, from generalized bigotry, intolerance, and prejudice on the one hand to a morbid dread and hatred on the other. It may manifest itself in an equally broad range of negative actions and responses, including discrimination against Muslims, social exclusion, verbal and physical harassment, hate crimes, attacks on mosques, and vilification of Islam in the media. The history and current manifestations are described in this entry.
Background Islamophobia has been described as “a new name to an old phenomenon.” Its roots can be traced to early Christian and Jewish polemic against Islam, as well as to more recent theories such as the clash of civilizations thesis. Western involvement in Muslim lands, from the Crusades to the widespread colonization in the 17th and 18th centuries and the more recent
political interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, has created a climate in which hostility toward Islam can thrive. In the postcommunist era, Islam can be seen as being drawn into the vacuum created by the absence of an “Other” for the West. The media have fed this hostility in two ways: First, the religion of Islam is often presented as inflexible, barbaric, and so stuck in the past that it is not worth engaging seriously with it as an ideology. Second, particularly in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Muslims have often been stereotyped as aggressive, uncompromising, potential terrorists. The outcome of this sustained targeting in the media and elsewhere is that hostility against Muslims and their religion has become normalized. Several organizations have been set up in the West in recent years with the specific goal of challenging Islamophobia, including the Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism in the United Kingdom and the Collectif Contre l’Islamophobie en France. Public awareness of Islamophobia in the United Kingdom was increased with the publication in 1997 of a report by the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (an offshoot of the Runnymede Trust) entitled Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All. This report defined Islamophobia as “unfounded hostility towards Islam and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims” and recommended sixty ways of challenging and combating its effects. A follow-up report in 2004, entitled Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges and Action, highlighted the lack of progress in challenging and changing attitudes and discriminatory behavior, and argued that the situation would only be improved through a combination of recognizing Muslim identities in official statistics and the legal system, ensuring equality in employment, changing attitudes through education, encouraging community cohesion in multiethnic neighborhoods, and developing more ethical approaches to the coverage of Muslim issues in the media. The term Islamophobia has quickly come into general use throughout the Western world, from Europe to the United States and Australia, and Middle Eastern politicians and scholars increasingly use it to describe a growing sense of alienation between Islam and the West.
Manifestations Four main kinds of Islamophobia can be identified. The first of these is pre-reflective personal
Islamophobia
Islamophobia. This involves prejudice and discrimination against Muslims simply because they have different beliefs and values and is embodied in the phrase, “Why can’t they be more like us?” Such prejudice may have deep roots, which some psychologists consider fundamental to human personality, including motivational dispositions such as rejection, aggression, dominance, and superiority, and the tendency to feel fear, insecurity, and suspicion in the presence of people who are perceived as strange, foreign, or unfamiliar. It may also be related to ignorance of Muslim beliefs and values, which may leave people open to an uncritical acceptance of myths about Islam. From these roots, Islamophobic attitudes can easily develop that are extremely difficult to change by argument or the presentation of facts. The attitudes may be kept hidden or expressed openly and may be directed toward all Muslims or toward an individual because he or she is Muslim. The attitudes are likely to be expressed in hostile behavior that includes blaming all Muslims for terrorist attacks, defacing mosques and Muslim graves, and ripping the hijabs from women’s heads, along with rudeness, threats, verbal abuse, spitting, bullying, attacks on property, violence, and murder. Islamophobia also includes the avoidance of social contact with Muslims (even to the extent of refusing to fly in the same aircraft as a Muslim) and discrimination against them in employment, housing, and other areas of social contact. There is strong evidence to suggest that the less dramatic manifestations of pre-reflective personal Islamophobia form part of the everyday experience of many Muslims in the West and that its more dramatic manifestations are commonly perceived as real threats. The second form of Islamophobia is post-reflective personal Islamophobia. In this form, the hostile attitudes and behavior are more conscious and intentional. Prejudice and discrimination against Muslims are justified by the claim that Islamic values are inferior to the liberal values of the West. Islamic education is dismissed as indoctrination, and evidence of the inferiority of Islamic values is found in the “fanatical” Muslim protests against freedom of speech (for example, against The Satanic Verses or the Danish Jyllands-Posten cartoons that depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist) and the “oppression” of Muslim women symbolized in the hijab and the burqa. Journalists have often led this righteous crusade, legitimizing and giving credibility to hatred and prejudice against Islam, and these attitudes are further
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reinforced through the exaggerated stereotypes of Muslims in films such as The Siege, Aladdin, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. The third kind is institutional Islamophobia. This occurs where certain practices that disadvantage Muslims in the West are built into social institutions and structures, and no attempt is made to remove them as long as the balance of power lies in the hands of non-Muslims. The practices may be existing ones or new policies, but the key factor is that they ignore the needs and wishes of Muslims. An example is dress codes that are not necessary for health and safety reasons but that put Muslims in a position where they are expected to act in a way that contravenes the requirements of their faith. Other examples might be setting public examinations on important Islamic festivals like Eid al-Fitr or Eid al-Adha, denying opportunities for Muslim workers to pray at the workplace in accordance with the requirements of their faith, or insisting that no sacred texts other than the Bible can be used when witnesses are sworn in for testimony in court. The assumption in the West that all religions are like Christianity may also result in institutionalized practices that disadvantage Muslims, especially assumptions that faith is a matter of individual choice and that individuals should be free to interpret their faith in the light of their own understanding. The fourth kind is political Islamophobia. Politicians have frequently played on Islamophobic attitudes to increase their popularity. Policies such as the banning of conspicuous religious symbols in schools in France have also been condemned as Islamophobic, especially when they have led to the expulsion of girls wearing Muslim headscarves from school. Attempts to counter the threat of terrorism in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks have had a disproportionate impact on the lives of Muslims in the West: Muslims are more likely than other groups to be stopped by the police, to be targeted in antiterrorist raids, to be accused of not being fully committed to citizenship in the West, and to be spied on in universities and other institutions as potential terrorist suspects. Political Islamophobia is the most controversial of the four kinds because politicians can always claim that they are representing the views of their constituents and also because the line is not always clear between the legitimate self-protection of a country from terrorist attacks and the illegitimate targeting and harassment of an entire religious group because of the activities of a tiny minority within that group.
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However, some scholars have concluded that the whole concept of Islamophobia is controversial, and have dismissed it as a myth or a form of intellectual blackmail. They argue that the term is unhelpful in the complex context of Muslim minorities in the West because the onus is on Muslims themselves to adopt the dominant public values of the society in which they live. These scholars claim that the term Islamophobia is being used to deflect and silence legitimate critical scrutiny of Islam and its values. From this view, the Danish cartoons should not be considered as Islamophobic, but as an example of a long-standing Western tradition of satire, and raising issues such as wearing the veil as a matter for debate is not Islamophobic but, rather, a necessary approach in a liberal, multicultural society. Claiming that Islamophobia is responsible for the low achievement of Muslim students is also dismissed as an excuse; students should accept responsibility for their own levels of achievement. Though the term may sometimes be misapplied to anything that Muslims do not like, fear, hatred, and prejudice toward Muslims are widespread in the contemporary Western world, and treating these views and emotional responses as natural or as necessarily the fault of the Muslims themselves (because they refuse to change their own beliefs and values) is not a helpful response. States and organizations that claim to base their practices on justice, equality, and freedom must be willing to review policies and procedures to avoid discrimination against, and promote equal opportunities for, Muslims and to ensure that harassment and hostility are not part of the daily experience of Muslims living in the West. J. Mark Halstead See also France; Intergroup Relations, Surveying; Muslim Americans; Muslims in Canada; Muslims in Europe; Prejudice; Racism, Cultural; Religion, Minority; Veil
Further Readings
Allen, Chris and Jorgen Nielsen. 2002. Summary Report on Islamophobia in the EU After 11 September 2001. Vienna, Austria: European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. Bhatia, Amir 2003. The Fight Against Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Bringing Communities Together. Brussels, Belgium: EU Directorate-General for Employment and Social Affairs.
Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia. 1997. Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All. London: Runnymede Trust. Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia. 2004. Islamophobia: Issues, Challenges and Action. Stoke-onTrent, UK: Trentham Books. Vertovec, Steven. 2002. “Islamophobia and Muslim Recognition in Britain.” In Muslims in the West, edited by Y. Y. Haddah. New York: Oxford University Press.
ISSEI First-generation Japanese immigrants/emigrants are called Issei, literally, “first generation” in Japanese. In the United States, the term typically refers to the migrants from Japan who entered Hawai‘i and the U.S. mainland between 1868 and 1924. Official migration began on a large scale following the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act and an agreement between the Japanese government and the Hawaiian monarchy; it officially ended with the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act. Most emigrants to Hawai‘i were from farming families in rural areas of southwestern Japan, in particular Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Kumamoto, Fukuoka, and later, Okinawa prefectures. Japanese who migrated to the United States after World War II are included as Issei but sometimes referred to more specifically as Shin-Issei or “new (postwar) Japanese” to distinguish between the major prewar and postwar waves of Japanese migration. As with other firstgeneration immigrant groups, understandings of Issei in the United States have changed with shifts in scholarship on race and ethnicity. This entry looks at immigration patterns, points out the differences between Issei in Hawai‘i and on the U.S. mainland, and summarizes trends in research on the Issei.
Patterns of Migration Official Japanese migration to what is now the United States actually began to a place that was not part of the United States at the time: the Kingdom, Republic, and later, U.S. territory of Hawai‘i. Between 1885 and 1894, there were three different periods of migration from Japan, according to Alan Moriyama. From 1885 to 1894, married couples and single men emigrated as government-sponsored contract laborers to work
Issei
primarily on sugar cane plantations. From 1894 to 1908, migrant sponsorship shifted from the Japanese government to private emigration companies based in Japan. Finally, between 1908 and 1924 was a period of primarily “independent” emigration, meaning most people were not sponsored by the government or private emigration companies and, instead, had the support of relatives already in the United States. Meanwhile, patterns of migration to the U.S. mainland are generally divided into two major periods, according to Yuji Ichioka. From 1885 to 1907, migrants were mostly single male dekasegi (sojourners) who took on wage labor in mining, lumber, canneries, and agriculture. In large cities such as San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, they often worked as “schoolboys,” attending school while also working as domestic servants. The passage of the 1907–1908 Gentlemen’s Agreement marked the end of prewar labor migration from Japan to the United States. From 1908 to 1924, more settled immigrant communities began to develop around urban centers and farming areas. After Hawai‘i became a U.S. territory in 1900, thousands of laborers left the islands for the mainland, presumably to escape the harsh plantation conditions and to access the relatively higher wages available on the West Coast. Issei women are probably best known as “picture brides.” This refers to the practice of arranged marriage between women in Japan (and Korea) and their countrymen living in Hawai‘i and on the U.S. mainland. In most cases, the wives had seen only pictures of their husbands before meeting them upon arrival in the United States. Picture bride migration peaked between 1908 and 1924 and enabled the formation of Japanese (and Okinawan in Hawai‘i) communities based on the development of families and women’s additional paid and unpaid labor. Four major patterns of migration explain how Japanese migrants ended up in the United States. First, some went to the Kingdom of Hawai‘i, settled there, and Hawai‘i itself became part of the United States. Most people in this group came from poorer farming backgrounds. Second, some emigrants went directly to the U.S. mainland. This group tended to come from slightly higher class backgrounds compared with the first group. Third, some people migrated to Hawai‘i then saved money for the passage to the U.S. mainland and made a second domestic migration after Hawai‘i became a U.S. territory. Finally, a smaller number of Japanese went to Canada or Mexico, then crossed the border to the United States.
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U.S. Mainland Versus Hawai‘i: Differences Issei experiences and identities have been shaped by different social histories and demographics in Hawai‘i and on the U.S. mainland. Starting in 1900, Okinawans also began migrating to Hawai‘i and eventually their numbers became the largest. Okinawa had been an independent kingdom until it became a prefecture of Japan in 1879. Some Okinawans also went to the U.S. mainland, but their numbers remain most concentrated in Hawai‘i, where they represent a large proportion of the Japanese American population today. In contrast to the U.S. mainland, where they are commonly subsumed as Japanese, in Hawai‘i, Okinawan ethnic identity was shaped by plantation experiences and persists, possibly because of their large numbers; Okinawans have distinct cultural and linguistic differences from other Japanese and a history of discrimination by Naichi (mainland Japanese). Perhaps the most significant difference occurred during World War II. People of Japanese ancestry experienced a mass removal and internment by the U.S. government, but this did not occur in Hawai‘i. In the islands, Japanese priests, schoolteachers, and other community leaders were incarcerated at Honouliuli and Sand Island camps on O‘ahu and in U.S. mainland camps, but most Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i were not interned, ostensibly because of their large population and their significance for the territory’s economy.
Developments in Scholarship on Issei Frameworks for conceptualizing and discussing Issei have shifted in recent years. In earlier periods, Issei were studied primarily in terms of their lives in the United States—within what might be called a U.S. ethnic studies framework. This type of research largely assumed that migration was unidirectional and stressed the rightful inclusion of Issei as Americans regardless of citizenship (for which they were ineligible until the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952). It focused on their experiences as immigrants who left their homelands, families, and former lives to start new ones in the United States. More recent scholarship, however, takes a more transnational or global approach, looking beyond Issei experiences in the U.S. domestic context to examine ways in which they
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continued to be influenced by Japan, the country they supposedly left behind. This perspective re-situates Issei as living more multifaceted lives with complicated and multiple allegiances that were not based only in the United States. This shift can be explained by the convergence of several factors. First, a growing awareness and condemnation of Japanese American internment history in mainstream U.S. discourse is changing the way that Japanese Americans as a whole can be, and are being, discussed. Possibilities are opening up to talk about Issei identifications in more complex ways. Instead of dwelling on bifurcated loyalties to either the United States or Japan, discussions can move on to other issues and don’t need to linger on proving the “Americanness” of U.S. residents of Japanese ancestry. Earlier scholars undoubtedly avoided this kind of framework because of the previous need to emphasize the Americanness of Japanese immigrants. The transnational perspective is quite controversial, given the propaganda and discourse that justified the internment of Issei and their U.S.-born children based on continued ties to Japan that supposedly posed a military threat. This discursive shift reflects similar trends in Asian U.S. studies, immigration studies, and racial and ethnic studies. This understanding of the world as more interconnected than previously imagined is affecting the way that contemporary studies are being conducted and the ways in which we understand history. Another contributory factor is the increasing amount of bilingual research being conducted. In addition to studies that previously examined English language documents by and about Issei, a growing body of scholarship also accesses documents in Japanese by and about Issei. Accessing these additional documents is leading to new understandings of Issei lifestyles and attitudes. Scholars producing work on Issei are coming from increasingly diverse backgrounds. More and more scholars in and from Japan are contributing to the body of knowledge about Japanese immigrants/ emigrants. Most work on Issei in the United States was originally conducted by people greatly influenced by the politics of ethnic studies programs; that, too, is changing. Broader interpretations of Issei and other Asian American histories and experiences are leading to what some are calling the denationalization and depoliticization of the field. Finally, Issei experiences are being examined not only in the context of other immigration histories in
the U.S. context, but also in relation to other Japanese emigrants and as part of a larger Japanese diaspora. Increasing interaction between ethnic Japanese communities and scholars in Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Canada, and Mexico, among other countries, is resulting in more of this type of research from a more global perspective. Through comparisons of Issei experiences in North and South American countries, for example, the different ways in which each government shaped the racial (and ethnic) formation of Japanese immigrants and their communities is being better understood. Jane H. Yamashiro See also Chinese Exclusion Act; Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908); Haole; Hawai‘i, Race in; Hawaiians; Internment Camps; Japan; Japanese Americans; Nisei
Further Readings
Azuma, Eiichiro. 2005. Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America. New York: Oxford University Press. Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 1986. Issei, Nisei, War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo, Akemi Kikumura-Yano, and James A. Hirabayashi, eds. 2002. New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ichioka, Yuji. 1988. The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants 1885–1924. New York: Free Press. Kikumura, Akemi. 1992. Issei Pioneers: Hawaii and the Mainland, 1885–1924. Los Angeles, CA: Japanese American National Museum. Kimura, Yukiko. 1988. Issei: Japanese Immigrants in Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Moriyama, Alan Takeo. 1985. Imingaisha: Japanese Emigration Companies and Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
ITALIAN AMERICANS Nearly 16 million strong, Italian Americans are often identified with the tide of poor immigrants who arrived in the early 20th century and built cohesive communities
Italian Americans
Netherlands
Poland Germany
Belgium
Czech Republic Slovakia Austria France
Hungary
Switzerland Slovenia
Romania
Croatia
Italy
Bosnia & Herzegovina
Ad
ria
Serbia
Montenegro
tic S
ea Albania
Tyrrhenian Sea
Mediterranean Sea
Greece
Ionian Sea
Malta
Algeria
Tunisia
Libya
in large cities. Italians, however, were coming to this continent before the United States existed as an independent nation: among them, explorers, artists, and educators. This entry explores the full range of the Italian presence in the United States, with a particular focus on how the immigrant community related to the mainstream culture during more than a century.
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explored Arizona in 1539. Father Eusebio Chino, who arrived in 1681, spent almost 30 years in the U.S. Southwest, exploring and mapping while founding settlements in the region and helping to develop its cattle industry. In the early years of the thirteen English colonies, Italian artisans were often invited to bring their needed skills to the fledgling new settlements. As early as 1621, they were in Jamestown, manufacturing glass beads for British authorities to use as currency to trade with the Indigenous Peoples. In Georgia colony, Italians brought their raw silk production expertise to build a silk industry. Along with many other nationalities, Italians migrated to Maryland colony, which welcomed Catholics in a religiously intolerant age, and there they obtained land to begin their lives anew. Much has been written about Filippo Mazzei—a physician originally from Tuscany with a strong interest in agricultural science—who influenced the writings and farming of his neighbor, Thomas Jefferson. Mazzei’s own writings, which Jefferson helped translate and publish, spoke of all men being equal, an idea and phrase that Jefferson used in the Declaration of Independence. In the Revolutionary War, fifty Italians—including two officers—joined the ranks of the Continental Army, and two regiments of volunteers were recruited in Italy to come fight for the cause of U.S. independence.
The 19th Century The Early Years The presence of Italians in what would become the United States begins with explorers and adventurers who journeyed here almost 5 centuries before Italy itself united and became a modern nation. Included among them were such important early explorers as Cristoforo Colombo (Columbus), Giovanni Cabotto (John Cabot), Amerigo Vespucci, and Giovanni de Verrazano, all of whom explored and charted the new land. Enrico de Tonti, together with French explorer Robert La Salle, was the first European to explore the Mississippi River in 1682. The two of them canoed from the Illinois River to the Mississippi Delta, negotiating peace treaties with many local tribes that allowed French settlement throughout the vast Mississippi Valley, later acquired by the United States through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Long before the English colonies came into existence, missionaries such as Father Marcos da Nizza
Most of the 14,000 Italians who came to the United States between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War were skilled artisans, artists, educators, musicians, or political refugees, rather than the mostly unskilled peasants who would come later. A prime example is Constantino Brumidi, both an artist and political refugee, who arrived in 1852 and spent the next 25 years decorating the Capitol building. Painting monumental frescoes in its rotunda, he became known as the “Michelangelo of the U.S. Capitol Building.” Another example is an 1850 arrival from Florence, Antonio Meucci, who invented the first primitive version of the telephone 26 years before Alexander Graham Bell. When the Civil War broke out, hundreds of Italianborn men living in the South joined the Confederate Army, and thousands in the North joined the Union army. Among the 100 Italian Union officers, three were generals: Enrico Fardello, Eduardo Ferraro, and
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Francis Spinola. Ferraro commanded an all-Black combat division, and Spinola headed four regiments of Italian troops recruited from the New York region. Another Italian, Lt. Col. Luigi Palma di Cesnola, distinguished himself in battle and later became the first director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Throughout the 19th century, some parallels and relationships existed between Italians and Blacks. In some pre–Civil War southern localities, futile efforts were made to replace Black slaves with Italian workers. In other areas, Southerners barred Italian children from White schools because of their dark complexions. In 1899, five Sicilian storekeepers were hanged in Tallulah, Louisiana, for the crime of treating Black customers the same as Whites.
people as of 2007), 80% came between 1880 and 1920. This statistic is misleading, however, because onefourth or more returned home. Although many skilled workers and professionals continued to arrive from Italy, most Italian immigrants during this period were peasants fleeing abject poverty and economic disaster in the harsh Mezzogiorno east and south of Rome. Many of these were those who engaged in “shuttle migration,” males arriving with the intention of staying just long enough to earn sufficient money for dowries or land before returning home. Most of these Italian newcomers, whether sojourners or those who chose to put down roots in their adopted country, came from rural areas and were thus ill prepared for employment in an industrial nation. As a result, some labored in low-status, low-paying manual jobs as railroad laborers, miners, and dock workers. In construction, The Great Migration others dug ditches, laid sewer pipes, and built roads, subways, and buildings in urban areas. Still others worked in Of the more than 5.4 million Italians who have come the factories and mills, with new ones continually opento the United States throughout its history (as coming as the country evolved into an industrial giant. pared to an estimated Italian population of 59.3 million Earning poor wages as part of the unskilled labor force, the new Italian immigrants moved into rundown residential areas vacated by earlier arrivals, whose children and grandchildren had moved up the socioeconomic ladder. Settling in urban enclaves in cities both large and small—many of which had included Italian residents since at least the mid-19th century—the new arrivals re-created in miniature the land they had left behind. Among the most prominent of these “Little Italys” were the North End of Boston, the Mulberry District in New York City’s Lower East Side, the Near West Side of central Chicago, and San Francisco’s North Beach district. Often, families from the same village lived together in Italian neighborhood market. This market, photographed between 1900 and 1910, the same tenement. is on Mulberry Street in New York. The Mulberry District on New York City’s Lower Quickly, these easily recogEast Side was a prominent “Little Italy.” These centers of Italian American life were nized, often overcrowded territorial typically overcrowded territorial neighborhoods. These cities within cities with their everyday ethnicity developed a strong social network that eased the Italians’ adjust- neighborhoods with their everyday ment to a new society. Parallel social institutions—their own churches, social clubs ethnicity developed a strong social and organizations, stores, newspapers, and a vibrant street life—generated a familiar network that eased the Italians’ lifestyle for these urban villagers, even as they struggled to overcome poverty. adjustment to a new society. ParaSource: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-D418-9350. llel social institutions—their own
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churches (perhaps built in an Italian architectural style), social clubs and organizations, stores, newspapers, and a vibrant street life—generated a familiar lifestyle for these urban villagers, even as they struggled to overcome poverty and eke out an existence.
Societal Hostility With a booming chain migration pattern of new arrivals joining family and friends (more than 1 million Italians came between 1901 and 1910), the public became increasingly aware of their presence, stereotyping this “swarm” of immigrants as possessing objectionable traits incompatible with U.S. society. When an Italian got into trouble, newspaper headlines often magnified the event and stressed the offender’s nationality. Italians, like Jews, found certain occupations, fraternities, clubs, and organizations closed to them, and restrictive covenants excluded them from certain areas of the city and suburbs. The now extensive Italian American population—together with the sizable numbers from other parts of Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe—prompted demands to control immigration, which led to restrictive legislation in 1921, tightened even further by additional legislation in 1924. The growing resentment against the presence of so many dark-haired, dark-complexioned Catholics occasionally erupted in violence and even killings. Several Italians were lynched in West Virginia in 1891. That same year, when ten Sicilians were acquitted by a jury of having killed the New Orleans police chief, an angry mob that included many of the city’s leading citizens stormed the prison and brutally executed the prisoners, adding an eleventh victim who had been serving a minor sentence for a petty crime. Four years later, coal miners and other residents of a southern Colorado town murdered six Italians. In 1896, three Italians were torn from a jail in Hahnsville, Louisiana, and hanged. In a southern Illinois mining town, after a street brawl in 1914 that left one Italian and two native-born U.S. citizens dead, a lynch mob hanged the only survivor, an Italian, seemingly with the approval of the town’s mayor. A few months later, another Italian was lynched in a nearby town after being arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder a mining supervisor, even though there was no evidence to substantiate the charge. In Massachusetts, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti—an immigrant shoe-factory worker and a poor fish peddler—were charged with and convicted
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of robbery and murder in 1920. The prosecutor insulted immigrant Italian defense witnesses and appealed to the prejudices of a bigoted judge and jury. Despite someone else’s later confession and other potentially exonerating evidence, the seven-year appeals fight failed to win these men retrial or acquittal; they were executed in 1927. Fifty years later, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis exonerated them. Although debate continues regarding their guilt or innocence, all agree that prevailing anti-immigrant sentiments prevented their receiving a fair trial.
Social Patterns In adapting to life in the United States, Italians continued to rely primarily on their extended families (la famiglia). Relatives were their principal focus of social life, and they usually regarded non-Italians as outsiders, rarely developing true interethnic friendships. Moreover, they did not encourage individual achievement, which was a U.S. tradition. More important were family honor, group stability, and social cohesion and cooperation. Each member of the family was expected to contribute to the economic wellbeing of the family unit. In the old country, absentee landowners had commonly exploited Italian tenant farmers, as priests and educators silently supported this inequitable system, rarely welcoming peasant children in the schools. Landowner resistance to the political unification of Italy, which finally occurred in 1871, further increased the hardships of tenant farmers and small landholders. Consequently, Italian immigrants generally mistrusted priests and educated people. In the United States, as in Italy, the common people—especially males—had little involvement with the church. In the early 20th century, for the most part, Irish priests staffed the churches in the Italian immigrant neighborhoods. These priests typically practiced—at least as the Italians perceived—a strange and harsh form of Catholicism, thus making them less receptive to clergy for whom they felt no affinity. In turn, the Irish priests had little empathy for the extensive veneration of the Madonna and local saints that the Italians displayed. Similarly, Italian newcomers regarded education as having only limited practical value. Their children thus typically attended school for just as long as the law demanded and then, under their parents’ encouragement, went to work to increase the family income.
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A few families did not follow this pattern, but most second-generation Italian Americans who attended college did so against the wishes of their families. Furthermore, the outside world was one of deprivation and exploitation. Not only did their employers exploit them with low wages for long hours under harsh working conditions, but often so did one of their own—the padrone or agent who acted as their representative in the labor market. Seeking help from elsewhere was unlikely, for Italians were reluctant to approach the non-Italians who ran the social agencies and the political machines. Surrounded by strangeness, the immigrants tried to retain the self-sufficiency of the family circle as much as they could. They also founded a number of community organizations that supported this circle, keeping away from the outside world whenever possible.
Social Mobility Upward mobility occurred more slowly for the Italians than for many other groups arriving in the United States at about the same time, such as the Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. Contributing to this outcome were the Italians’ retreatist lifestyle, disdain for education, negative stereotyping, and overt dominant-group hostility, protracted by the continuing flow of new Italian immigrants. Sheltered within their ethnic communities, the Italians gradually adapted to industrial society. They joined the working class and encouraged their children to do likewise as soon as they were able. Second-generation adults, although drawn to la via nuova—“the new way”—through schools, movies, and other cultural influences, still adhered to a social structure centered on the extended family. Expected to contribute to the family’s support early in life, they followed their parents into working-class occupations without benefit of the advanced education necessary to secure higher-status jobs. More Americanized than their parents, who retained much of their language and customs, the second generation experienced marginality, caught between the routines and demands of their parents and the organized ways of their ethnic life, on the one hand, and the attraction of life in the larger society, despite its prejudices against them. In this strain between the two generations, those who did not remain long in the Little Italys assimilated much more quickly. Some even changed their names and religion to accelerate the process.
Today, the picture has changed. Third- and fourthgeneration Italian Americans have greatly improved their educational levels, although they remain behind other non-Italian Whites in graduate education. Nevertheless, their high school dropout rate has significantly declined since the 1980s, and the proportion getting a college education significantly increased. No longer a minority group, most have achieved economic, political, and social power; they are mostly middle class and well represented in the professional fields. Intermarriage, or marital assimilation, is a primary indicator of structural assimilation, the last phase of minority-group mainstreaming. Exogamy among Italian Americans, especially among those three and four generations removed from the old country, exceeds 40%, which is similar to that of most European American groups. As structural assimilation proceeds, Italian Americans, like other Whites of European ancestry, are experiencing “a twilight of ethnicity.” Various expressions of symbolic ethnicity continue—bocce leagues, festivals, and organizations celebrating Italian heritage, foods, and Italian studies programs, for example—but everyday ethnicity, language preservation, and minority group status are fading quickly. Moreover, Italian Americans take pride in the past and present achievements of individuals of Italian ancestry who have excelled and gained wide recognition in academics, the arts, athletics, business, government, literature, the military, and science. Italian Americans still find themselves the target of prejudicial accusations about their allegedly prominent role in criminal activities, however, a stereotype perpetuated in films and television. Despite their progressing assimilation, the perception about members of this group as potential criminals or as part of the Mafia-connection stereotype persists. This especially haunts politicians of Italian descent, undermines voters’ trust in them, and thus limits their political success in non-Italian settings. The 2000 U.S. Census identified 15.9 million people (5.8% of the total U.S. population) claiming Italian ancestry. States with the highest proportions of Italian Americans were Rhode Island and Connecticut (20%), New Jersey (18%), New York (15%), Massachusetts (14%), Alabama (11%), and New Mexico (8%). In addition, other states with populations of 500,000 or more Italian Americans included California, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Vincent N. Parrillo
Italian Americans
See Appendix A See also Americanization; Ethnic Conflict; Immigrant Communities; National Origins System; Sicilian Americans; Stereotypes; Xenophobia
Further Readings
Alba, Richard. 1985. Italian Americans: Into the Twilight of Ethnicity. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
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LaGumina, Salvatore, Frank J. Cavaioli, Salvatore Primeggia, and Joseph A. Varacalli, eds. 1999. The Italian American Experience: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland. Mangione, Jerre and Ben Morreale. 1993. La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian American Experience. New York: HarperCollins. Sensi-Isolani, Paola Alessandra and Anthony Julian Tamburri, eds. 2001. Italian Americans: A Retrospective on the Twentieth Century. Chicago Heights, IL: American Italian Historical Association.
J In 1962, he married Jacqueline Brown; they have five children. In 2001, Jackson admitted to an extramarital relationship that had resulted in the birth of a daughter in May 1999.
JACKSON, JESSE, SR. (1941– ) Like Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesse Jackson is associated with the U.S. Civil Rights Movement by many. He was part of the circle around King and was present when King was assassinated. During the 1970s and 1980s, Jackson’s efforts sought to expand on the legal accomplishments of the movement, seeking economic parity for all of the disenfranchised people in the United States, not just African Americans. He founded Operation PUSH with this goal, and he also established the National Rainbow Coalition to encourage electoral participation; the two organizations are now merged. Jackson also ran for president unsuccessfully in 1984 and 1988. This entry describes his life and impact.
Civil Rights Movement Leadership Opera ation Breadbasket
In 1965, after watching the brutal attacks on civil rights activists in Selma, Alabama, on television, Jackson organized a trip there. Quickly introducing himself to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) directors—including Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr.—he asked for a job. Later that day, he adopted a “staff” role, even taking the podium during a series of speeches. Although his actions surprised and disconcerted many on the SCLC staff, Abernathy was impressed. After two days in Selma, Jackson returned to Chicago and, despite not having been hired by SCLC, began organizing Black ministers on behalf of the organization’s economic arm, Operation Breadbasket. Breadbasket’s “selective patronage” model organized local ministers to encourage White business owners with large Black customer bases to hire Blacks and invest in the Black community. After 6 months—and despite skepticism by King—Abernathy hired Jackson as the head of Operation Breadbasket in Chicago. Afterward, Jackson withdrew from CTS. He was ordained in 1968 but later received his master of divinity degree from CTS in 2000. The Breadbasket group—dogmatically led by Jackson—was successful: 3,000 jobs and more than
Family and Education Jesse Louis (Robinson) Jackson was born October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, to Helen Burns and Noah Robinson. In 1943, his mother married Charles Jackson, who adopted him in 1957. Jackson graduated from Sterling High School in 1959 and used a football scholarship to attend the University of Illinois. After an unsuccessful year, Jackson transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (A&T) in Greensboro. While at A&T, he became student body president and a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Jackson graduated in 1964 with a degree in sociology and enrolled at the Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS). 773
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$20 million were added to the south side of Chicago in 2 years. In 1967, King named Jackson Breadbasket’s national director, with fifteen affiliates. Meanwhile, Jackson built a large and loyal following among Breadbasket members in Chicago. During weekly meetings, Jackson’s “I Am Somebody,” call-and-response refrain was popular: I am—Somebody!— I may be poor—But I am—Somebody!— I may be uneducated—But I am—Somebody!— I may be unskilled—But I am—Somebody!— I may be on dope—I may have lost hope— But I am—Somebody!— I am—Black!—Beautiful!—Proud!— I must be respected!—I must be protected!— I am—God’s child!— What time is it?—(Nation Time!)— What time is it?—(Nation Time!)— All right—look out! . . . In 1969, without SCLC approval, Jackson organized the Black Expo, a weeklong business and entertainment fair held in Chicago. In 1971, board members learned that that year’s EXPO was not an SCLC-sponsored event. As a result, Jackson left the organization and began Operation People United to Save (later Serve) Humanity (PUSH). Opera atio on PUSH
Using Breadbasket resources, staff, and business model, Operation PUSH enjoyed immediate success. During this period, Jackson authored his “kingdom theory” (which reads more like a manifesto), describing how Blacks can exert the absolute “authority of kings” and control every aspect of the numerous economies that influence their lives: employment, banking, and politics. Subsequently, Jackson began constructing a “Marshall Plan” for Blacks, negotiating hiring and partnership “covenants” with various corporate giants. He also developed the PUSH for Excellence program, aimed at increasing the number of Black students graduating from high school.
The Political Arena
Washington, D.C., the goal of the National Rainbow Coalition was a “progressive, Black-led, multiracial, anti-corporate, and anti-imperialist movement that took an electoral form.” The result was the registration of more than 1 million new voters, and it secured 3.5 million primary election votes. Although the campaign was deemed a political success for Jackson and the Democratic Party, it drained resources from Operation PUSH and brought its financial practices and solvency into question. During the election, Jackson was quoted making anti-Semitic remarks in an interview. Although he admitted the blunder and apologized, the backlash dashed his presidential hopes. In 1988, Jackson again ran for president. This time, an additional 2 million new voters registered, and he received 7 million votes. Despite his tremendous popularity and his hopes for the vice presidential candidacy, he was not selected. Rainbow/PUSH Coa alittion n
In 1996, Jackson announced that PUSH and the National Rainbow Coalition would merge to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition (RPC). Headquartered in Chicago, its goal was to continue the selective patronage model. RPC’s Wall Street Project works at increasing the numbers of Blacks on corporate boards of directors and seeks to strengthen Black companies by offering ongoing business and capital investment workshops. Glynis Christine See also Boycott; Civil Rights Movement; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; National Rainbow Coalition; Operation PUSH; Southern Christian Leadership Conference Further Readings
Abernathy, Ralph David. 1989. And the Walls Came Tumbling Down. New York: Harper & Row. Frady, Marshall. 1996. Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson. New York: Random House. Johnson, Ollie A., III and Karin L. Stanford, eds. 2002. Black Political Organizations in the Post-Civil Rights Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Reynolds, Barbara A. 1985. Jesse Jackson: America’s David. Washington, DC: JFJ Associates. Timmerman, Kenneth R. 2002. Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson. Washington, DC: Regnery.
The Natiional Rain nbow Coalitio on
In 1984, to encourage minorities to vote, Jackson announced his bid for the U.S. presidency. Based in
Web Sites
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition: http://www.rainbowpush.org
Jamaica
JAMAICA Jamaica is an island country rich in cultural history located in the Caribbean Sea basin just south of Cuba, east of the Yucatán Peninsula, and due West of Haiti. Jamaica, which enjoys a subtropical climate year round, is separated into a number of provinces called “parishes” where its approximately 2.7 million people live according to 2007 estimates. Its chief exports are bauxite and aluminum, yet it also exports sugar, citrus, and bananas. The culture of Jamaica is a multifaceted phenomenon involving the convergence of African, Native American, and European history and lineage. Human inhabitation began with the Native American Arawak tribe, then transitioned to Spanish control briefly, and then to the British, who ruled the colony for 300 years before its independence in 1962. This entry looks at that history.
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were skilled in hunting and trapping, and maintained complex social structures, economy, and politics. Their contributions to society include the hammock and tobacco. The arrival of the Europeans marked the end of Arawak prosperity because the natives were enslaved and ultimately decimated by disease. By the late 15th century, smallpox had so diminished the island’s Arawak population that demand for labor rose, and consequently the first Black slaves were brought to Jamaica around 1517. From that time, Jamaica became one of the largest importers of slave labor into the New World.
The European Colonists Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer contracted by the Spanish, arrived at Jamaica during his second voyage to the West Indies in 1494. The Spanish took control of what was then an underdeveloped island. The Spanish colonial economy relied on ship repair and buccaneering and as a result was constantly subjected to pirate attacks. In 1655, the Spanish were displaced by the British, and Jamaica began slave importation and sugar production in earnest. Jamaica’s coastline and rolling hills were deemed highly fertile land, and the British began to export citrus in addition to sugar and bananas. During the late 17th and most of the 18th centuries, the British called Jamaica the Jewel of the Empire, as Jamaican exports generated by slave labor on sugar plantations increased England’s profitability margins. The Caribbean climate and the island’s strategic location were important contributing factors that led to its rise as one of the prized Crown Colonies of England during the colonial period. Today, the European proportion of the population is at 0.2%
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The Arawaks The history of Jamaica begins with the Arawak Indians of Jamaica, who lived in prosperity in Jamaica until the 15th century. The Arawak, Native Americans originating in the Andes Mountains, settled many Caribbean islands off the coastal countries of South America. There is some debate about whether the Taíno Indians also inhabited the island. The natives
Because of the large amounts of labor required for sugar production during colonial times, the African population of Jamaica was a solid majority of 90.1%. By 1807, more than 600,000 Africans had been brought to the island, most of them purchased through the transatlantic trade routes that originated in forts on the Gold Coast of Africa, the Bight of Benin, Lonango, Melimba, and Cape Benda. In Jamaica, the Africans were taught skilled labor trades such as masonry, shipbuilding, and plantation maintenance. Many slaves did not stay in Jamaica but were shipped to other colonial islands such as Antigua or Trinidad,
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or as far as the United States. High amounts of labor required to work the sugar fields demanded a slave population many times larger than the number of colonists. In 1790, for example, the number of English colonists on the island was 23,000, whereas the number of slaves was 256,000, roughly 11 slaves to 1 English settler. This uneven ratio was the root of slave revolts that were a colonial reality in Jamaica. Additionally, the Maroons, former slaves freed under Spanish rule before the arrival of the British, were a continual threat to the English. These former slaves lived in the mountainous interior of the island and still enjoy some autonomy from formal government. Many of the Maroon community still keep their African traditions because they are a relatively isolated group. World wide, Afro-Jamaicans have made significant contributions, from the philosophical musings of Marcus Garvey, the major contributor of Rastafarianism, to the musical political movements of reggae. The creoles have a rich dance culture ranging from the religious African tradition to the social hybrid Euro-Creole dances such as the Jonkunnu.
Other Ethnic Groups After the abolition of the slave trade, the sugar and citrus markets needed cheap labor. During the next 50 years, the East Indian and the Chinese migrated to the Caribbean islands looking for work. Today, the East Asians in general control much of the grocery and convenience store businesses in Jamaica. The East Indian and the Chinese are represented in the island’s population at 1.3% and 0.2 %, respectively. The remaining percentage of the population is a mixture of races and other nationalities, and is composed of roughly 7.5% other minorities, including African, Scottish, Portuguese, and Lebanese (.02%).
Statistical Institute of Jamaica. 2001. Population Census 2001 Jamaica Volume 1 Country Report. Kingston, Jamaica: Government of Jamaica.
JAMAICAN AMERICANS Settled primarily along the East Coast, Jamaican Americans constitute a significant segment of the immigrant Black population and have migrated to the United States for more than 100 years. This ongoing migration adds dynamism to the community, constantly circulating culture between the former country and the Caribbean. Transnationalism, along with the cultural and social capital characteristic of the group, partially frames their adaptation to U.S. society, but race is probably most significant in this respect. Like African Americans, Jamaican Americans face racial discrimination but operate instead from a Jamaican frame of reference that often tries to minimize racism. The contradictions between this outlook and their negative racial experiences in the United States complicate assimilation for immigrants, but the second and later generations assimilate more easily into the African American community. This entry provides an overview of Jamaican immigration to the United States
C. Centae Richards See Appendix A See also Caribbean; Colonialism; Creole; Diaspora; Nigeria; United Kingdom
Further Readings:
Butler, Kathleen Mary. 1995. The Economics of Emancipation: Jamaica & Barbados, 1823–1843. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Higman, Barry W. 1995. Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807–1834. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press.
Harry Belafonte. Jamaican American singer and actor Belafonte is shown speaking at an equal rights rally that marked the sixth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZC2-5807.
Jamaican Americans
and of Jamaican American culture. It also explores the way in which race and racism shape the relationship between Jamaican and African Americans.
Demographics Like other British West Indians, Jamaicans migrate at high rates, spurred by Jamaica’s economic underdevelopment, elevated levels of unemployment, and culturally entrenched traditions promoting migration. First manifesting itself in the mid-1900s, these traditions originally spread Jamaicans throughout the circum-Caribbean. The United States became a favored destination in the 20th century, however, and Jamaicans migrated to the United States in three waves: 1900s to the beginning of the Great Depression, the mid-1940s to the 1950s, and post-1965 to the present. Typically, they have outnumbered other British West Indian immigrants. For instance, Department of Homeland Security data show that 18,346 migrated in 2005, which ranked them fourteenth among all immigrants. Guyana, the next largest source of British West Indians, sent 9,318. Most Jamaicans (35%) settle among other British West Indians in the New York City metropolitan area, but Florida—especially the southern region—draws almost as many (30%). The rest reside in such favored locations as Bridgeport and Hartford, Connecticut; Newark, New Jersey; Baltimore, Maryland; and Atlanta, Georgia. Occupationally, they concentrate mostly in service industries, particularly women who, for cultural and financial reasons, find employment in health care particularly appealing. A sizable proportion of the population (19%) also finds employment as managers and professionals.
Culture and Assimilation Jamaican culture intermingles with that of other British West Indians because a history of colonialism bequeathed to that Caribbean zone a common language, institutions, and pastimes. Nevertheless, a peculiar Jamaican element stands out, often being taken by U.S. society as representative of the whole group. Ska and Reggae music and Rastafarianism are especially noteworthy in this respect because their infiltration into U.S. culture has made what was once exotic now commonplace. The popularity of Jamaican resorts such as Montego Bay and Negril among U.S. tourists has added to the allure of Jamaican culture.
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Among Jamaican Americans, the culture is constantly reinforced through frequent back-and-forth travel. The resulting cultural consciousness, enhanced even more by the growing Jamaican American population, has created semi-autonomous, mixed Jamaican–West Indian enclaves that somewhat retard assimilation into the African American population. This assimilation is viewed as natural because most Jamaicans are of African ancestry, and anti-Black racism blocks the full absorption of both groups into U.S. society. But immigration-related factors, political dynamics in areas settled by Jamaicans and other West Indians, and sociohistorical differences between Jamaica and the United States make Jamaicans’ assimilation into the African American population bumpy rather than automatic. This occurs because these factors often orient Jamaican Americans inwardly rather than outwardly toward the larger Black community. Specifically, Jamaican Americans’ ever-increasing numbers enhance feelings of in-group solidarity (ethnicity) by allowing them, and West Indians in general, to replicate many aspects of West Indian life—such as religion, voluntary organizations, informal banking networks, and cuisine—in areas of concentrated settlement. Parts of New York City—such as Crown Heights and East Flatbush—are typical in these respects, and the large West Indian, not just Jamaican, presence has served as a magnet for ethnic and nonethnic politicians seeking to tap into and magnify the West Indian vote. The ethnic feelings underlying these dynamics build on an immigrant mentality among West Indians that emphasizes economic and social mobility to validate the decision to migrate. Behind all this is a British West Indian cultural tendency to de-emphasize race in those societies despite centuries of slavery and colonialism. Although historically deep, racism in British West Indians societies was less institutionalized, and those societies changed more quickly to allow for Black political prominence. Moreover, the reality of majority Black populations—allied with nation-building ideologies promoting multiculturalism and complex ways of viewing race—effectively removes race as a day-to-day issue for many modernday Jamaicans (although the issue remains salient on other levels). Typically, they express greater worry over entrenched economic problems. In contrast with these dynamics, Jamaican Americans experience racism that is typical for Blacks in the United States, and this contends with their ethnic consciousness, while helping to shape their assimilation into the African American population. Importantly,
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Jamaicans’ acquaintance with African American culture is long-standing, stemming historically from frequent travel and from the popularity of Black music, which inspired the birth of reggae. U.S. racism tightens these nascent bonds, forging a common Black voice on a wide range of issues. In recent years, police mistreatment of Blacks in core settlement areas has often produced such unity. This and other issues manifest themselves politically, where Jamaican Americans are as likely as are African Americans to vote Democratic. Residential segregation is crucial in tightening bonds between the two groups because in many cases “Jamaican/West Indian” neighborhoods are essentially segregated Black neighborhoods with high concentrations of West Indians. Such proximity promotes friendships and alliances of all sorts between Jamaican Americans and African Americans, even though first-generation Jamaican Americans continue to maintain an ethnic consciousness. U.S. birth attenuates this consciousness in the second generation but immigrant Jamaican parents often encourage its maintenance, believing that it facilitates social mobility. Although this view remains contested, it is more certain that second and later generation Jamaican Americans are creating a hybrid culture as they interact, intimately, with African Americans. Though many expressions of this melding exist, music is, perhaps, the most significant because of its importance to Black culture. Stylistically, “Dancehall and Rastafarian” reggae owes much to hip-hop, but an early 1970s version of reggae—“Toasting” (where performers talked over beats)—contributed to the development of hip-hop in New York City. Consequently, some early hip-hop celebrities—for example, Busta Rhymes, Shinehead, and Biggie Smalls—were of Jamaican ancestry. Trends such as these indicate that in coming years, second-generation Jamaican Americans will increasingly merge with the African American population in the large, East Coast metropoles where Jamaicans have resided for more than a century. Milton Vickerman See Appendix A See also African Americans; Assimilation; Caribbean Americans; Crown Heights, Brooklyn; Cultural Capital; Hip-Hop; Immigration, U.S.; Jamaica; Social Capital; West Indian Americans
Further Readings
Bashi, Vilna. 2007. Survival of the Knitted. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bryce-Laporte, Roy. 1972. “Black Immigrants: The Experience of Invisibility and Inequality.” Journal of Black Studies 3(1):29–56. Foner, Nancy. 2001. Islands in the City. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kasinitz, Philip. 1992. Caribbean New York. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kasinitz, Philip, John Mollenkopf, and Mary Waters. 2002. “Becoming American/Becoming New Yorkers: Immigrant Incorporation in a Majority Minority City.” International Migration Review 36(4, Winter):1005–1019. Model, Suzanne. 1995. “West Indian Prosperity: Fact of Fiction?” Social Problems 42(4, November):525–552. Palmer, Ransford W. 1995. Pilgrims from the Sun. New York: Twayne. Sutton, Constance and Elsa Chaney. 1984. Caribbean Life in New York City: Sociocultural Dimensions. New York: Center for Migration Studies. Vickerman, Milton. 1999. Crosscurrents. New York: Oxford University Press. Waters, Mary. 1999. Black Identities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
JAPAN Japan, a country with an estimated 2007 population of 127.7 million people, has long been seen as a racially and ethnically homogeneous nation; however, many scholars argue that Japan has actually been a multiethnic, rather than a mono-ethnic, society. The continuing influx of foreign workers since the 1970s has brought visible changes to Japan—changes that, concomitantly, have shed light on the ethnic minorities that have long been present, but invisible, in Japan. In a population of 1.9 million foreign residents in 2002, the largest group consisted of Koreans, many of whom have been in Japan for generations; they are labeled “foreigners” (Zainichi Koreans) even when born or raised in Japan. The second largest group of foreign residents, Nikkeijin, includes second- and third-generation Japanese who were born and raised mainly in Brazil and Peru. Most of them came to Japan in the 1990s and have been employed largely as unskilled contract workers. Other foreign residents
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include service and unskilled workers who entered from the Philippines, Thailand, China, South Korea, India, and Bangladesh after the late 1980s. Many have been employed in jobs often shunned by the Japanese, with low pay and little job security. And what may be less well understood outside Japan is that, even among Japanese nationals, there are different ethnic groups: the Ainu, Okinawan, and Burakumin people. All these groups have challenged Japan’s monoethnic ideology and have raised serious questions about citizenship and multiculturalism: For example, how can Japan provide them with civil and social rights and lessen pervasive discrimination against them? This entry discusses those questions.
Ethnic Minorities in Japan ns Zainichi Korean
The largest contingent of foreign residents in Japan is Koreans (635,422 in 2002); they are the product of the nation’s colonial legacy. Japan’s colonization of Korea between 1910 and 1945 brought approximately 2 million Koreans into Japan by the end of World War II. With the defeat of Japan in 1945, Koreans were deprived of their Japanese nationality and voting rights. The Alien Registration Law, enacted in 1952, ensured
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that resident Koreans would be regarded as foreigners. Japan only conferred citizenship through bloodlines and naturalization, and excluded non-nationals. Throughout the postwar period, Korean Japanese continued to be treated with contempt. Many resident Koreans hid their backgrounds from ethnic Japanese for fear of discrimination, passing as Japanese in their public lives. Since the late 1980s, however, Japan has loosened restrictions on naturalization, and a large number of resident Koreans have become naturalized. Nikkeijin
The Nikkeijin population, typically consisting of second- and third-generation Japanese who were born and raised mainly in Brazil and Peru, increased in the 1990s. These individuals are Japanese by blood but categorized as “foreigners” because of their foreign birth. The population increased after 1990 because, in that year, the Japanese government revised the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act, providing new long-term visas exclusively for the descendants of Japanese emigrants. The legal admission of Nikkeijin to Japan was a critical step, designed to prevent illegal immigration from other Asian countries and to meet a labor shortage in small-scale factories. Many Nikkei-Brazilians were trained in professions before coming to Japan, but most of them could only find positions as contract laborers upon their arrival. Although the Nikkeijin bloodline was seen as a critical asset in the ability of these individuals to assimilate into Japanese society, most did not speak Japanese fluently and experienced blatant prejudice and discrimination in the workplace. Filipin no Women n
Of the 1.9 million registered foreigners recorded in 2002, Filipinos constitute the third largest group of migrant women, following Koreans and Chinese. Intermarriage between Filipino women and Japanese men has increased rapidly since the 1980s; in fact, Filipino women account for the highest number of foreign wives in Japan, followed by Korean women, Chinese women, and Thai women. This situation resulted from a shortage of women in rural areas in the 1970s; Japanese local governments promoted marriage with Filipino women, and Filipino brides started arriving in the 1980s. At the same time, many
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Filipino women, most of whom were provided with “entertainer visas,” started working as dancers and hostesses in Japan. These women have encountered economic and emotional exploitation at the hands of Filipino and Japanese brokers and have been denied basic legal protections, making them vulnerable to victimization by the sex industry. In 2004, the Japanese government adopted the Action Plan for Measures to Combat Trafficking in Persons, which, for the first time, criminalized trafficking in persons to enhance the protection of these women’s rights. Ainu, Okinawan, and Burakumin
Much like the Zainichi Korean and Chinese, the Ainu and Okinawan peoples were also the products of colonialization. Japan annexed Hokkaido in 1873, imposing an assimilation policy on the “backward” Ainu people. The government assigned Japanese names to the Ainu and encouraged intermarriage with ethnic Japanese. Through the post–World War II period, many Ainu were economically deprived and discriminated against in the workplace, in marriage, and in the schools. Beginning in the late 1960s, activists and organizations such as the Utari Kyokai organization campaigned for a policy of Kyosei: coexistence or multiculturalism, in a society free from racial discrimination. More recently, in 1997, the Ainu Cultural Promotion Act (CPA) was introduced to enhance the public recognition of Ainu as a distinct group with a non-Japanese cultural identity. Okinawa, an island group to the south of Japan, also became part of the Japanese Empire in the 1870s, providing sugar and coal to the nation. Like the Ainu, Okinawans were often seen as primitive and inferior and were thus treated as second-class citizens. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, Okinawa was occupied by the United States. The U.S. occupation fostered anti-U.S. sentiment and a desire to return to Japan, further complicating the local Okinawans’ ethnic identities. Although the Burakumin people are often characterized as having the same ethnicity as ethnic Japanese, scholars categorize the Burakumin as a distinct ethnic group because of its distinct shared culture and history of exclusion. For many years, the Burakumin people were seen as a breed apart from mainstream Japanese, consigned to living in particular assigned villages and to working in the leather and funerary industries. Many among them were poor,
homeless, and even handicapped. The Japanese government abolished the caste system in 1871 in its efforts to convert Japan into a modern nation-state. Yet the Burakumin saw few benefits; they still held the worst jobs, lived in inferior housing, and suffered poverty and social stigmatization. With emancipation, they even lost their occupational monopoly on leatherwork and their tax exemption for their low status. Many decades later, legislation passed in 1969, 1982, and 1987 provided funds to improve the living conditions of the Burakumin.
Multiculturalism in Japan Many point out the increasing voices of multiculturalism and the coexistence of diverse ethnic groups as positive changes in Japan. Yet questions remain about how the idea of multiculturalism can translate into the political and social empowerment of previously ignored or oppressed ethnic groups. It is not clear whether making ethnic minorities culturally visible will transform the hierarchical or colonial view of the ethnic Japanese as being superior to the other groups. Furthermore, some argue that Japan’s policies regarding the citizenship of minority groups or multiculturalism derive mainly from political pressures from foreign countries such as the United States, or from the United Nations’ human rights agenda, rather than from within its own society. Although social awareness of multiethnic cultures and a pragmatic acceptance of ethnic minorities have become much more common in public, xenophobic reactions toward ethnic minority groups seem to remain strong. Plans for multicultural education have been much discussed, yet most remain far from implementation. Kumiko Nemoto See Appendix A See also Burakumin; Colonialism; Foreign Students; Hapa; Hawai‘i, Race in; Japanese Americans; Nikkeijin; Race; Racism; Xenophobia
Further Readings
Douglass, Mike and Glenda S. Roberts, ed. 2000. Japan and Global Migration: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society. London: Routledge. Ito, Ruri. 2005. “Crafting Migrant Women’s Citizenship in Japan: Taking ‘Family’ as a Vantage Point.” International Journal of Japanese Sociology 14:52–69.
Japanese American Citizens League
Lie, John. 2001. Multiethnic Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 1998. Re-inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Takamichi, Kajita, ed. 2001. Kokusaika to Aidentiti (Internationalization and Identity). Kyoto, Japan: Minerva Shobo. Weiner, Michael, ed. 1997. Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Weiner, Michael, ed. 2004. Race, Ethnicity and Migration in Modern Japan (Routledge Library of Modern Japan). London: RoutledgeCurzon. Weiner, Myron and Tadashi Hanami, eds. 1998. Temporary Workers or Future Citizens? Japanese and U.S. Migration Policies. London: Macmillan.
JAPANESE AMERICAN CITIZENS LEAGUE The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) was established in 1929 in California, initially to address discrimination against individuals of Japanese ancestry residing in the United States. JACL is the oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organization in the country. The JACL’s current mission is to focus on securing and maintaining the civil and human rights of Japanese Americans and others who experience injustice. It has 113 chapters and 8 regional districts composed of more than 24,000 members. The JACL national office is located in San Francisco, with regional offices located in Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. This entry describes the development of the JACL. At the time the JACL was founded, Japanese Americans in California faced numerous and significant limitations in human rights, as well as the actions of organizations such as the Japanese Exclusion League, founded for the sole purpose of ridding California of residents of Japanese ancestry, including U.S. citizens. At the time of JACL’s formation, more than 100 statutes in California limited the rights of anyone of Japanese ancestry. Other nongovernmental organizations such as the Grande Association and Sons of the Golden West lobbied the state legislature and Congress to limit the rights of Japanese Americans. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II, JACL leaders found themselves confronting the U.S. government, which subsequently decided to exclude and imprison all Japanese Americans on the U.S. West Coast. During the war,
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the JACL fought for the right of Japanese Americans to serve in the U.S. military, which led to the formation of the well-known 100th Infantry Battalion/ 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the most highly decorated military unit in U.S. military history. Following World War II, the JACL began working on a series of legislative efforts to obtain rights for Japanese Americans. In 1946, the JACL began work to repeal California’s Alien Land Law, which prohibited Japanese immigrants from owning land. In 1949, the JACL began efforts to allow Japanese immigrants to become naturalized U.S. citizens. The JACL also reportedly played a large role in the initiation of the McCarranWalter Act, which afforded women more rights to participate in politics, as well as the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. During the 1970s and 1980s, the JACL participated in the Redress Movement, which sought reparations from the U.S. government for the imprisonment and loss of property suffered by Japanese Americans interned during World War II. The 10-year effort to obtain redress resulted in the passage of the Civil Liberties Act in 1988, which provided monetary compensation and a formal apology from the U.S. government to Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II. Although a major focus of the JACL remains the rights of Japanese Americans, the JACL has expanded its focus to include the welfare of any who experience social injustice, Asian Americans in particular. Among its responsibilities, the JACL now pays attention to the well-being of all Asian Americans, particularly new immigrants, who may be least able to protect themselves from social injustice. This broadening focus began in the early 1980s when Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man, was murdered by two Caucasian men in Detroit because they thought he was of Japanese ancestry, and they attributed the decline of the U.S. auto industry and the economy of Detroit to competition with the Japanese. Chin’s murder made it apparent that those who hold racist and discriminatory attitudes toward Japanese Americans often generalized their bigoted attitudes to other Asian Americans and people of color. Recently, the JACL underwent a strategic planning process to reevaluate its mission and develop a plan for the next century. This culminated in an internal report, Vision 2000, which articulated the JACL’s plan for education, community empowerment, capacity building, and protecting the rights of Asian Americans
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and those who may be disadvantaged. Additionally, the JACL recognizes that the United States has undergone significant changes since September 11, 2001, and that its own work has been affected by issues involving national security and civil liberties. Continuing changes in the composition of society in race, ethnicity, and age also continue to be challenges. Thus, the JACL has developed a Program for Action Committee, whose recommendations set the objectives for each biennium. The most recent recommendations of the committee focus on the following areas: membership, youth, finance, planning and development, operations, and public affairs. Further information about JACL’s activities may be found on its Web site, which includes JACL press releases, and Web pages on anti-hate, educational activities and resources, leadership development activities, JACL events, and resources and links. JACL also publishes the biweekly Pacific Citizen, which is also available online on JACL’s Web site. Gayle Y. Iwamasa See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Chin, Vincent; Internment Camps; Japanese Americans; McCarran-Walter Act; Nisei Further Readings
Takezawa, Yasuko. 1995. Breaking the Silence: Redress and Japanese American Ethnicity. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Web Sites
Japanese American Citizens League: http://www.jacl.org
JAPANESE AMERICANS Japanese Americans are residents or citizens of the United States whose ancestry is Japanese or Okinawan. Okinawa, formerly an independent nation, was annexed by Japan in the late 19th century. Japanese Americans constitute one of the earliest Asian American ethnic groups in the United States, along with Chinese Americans. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American groups in the United States until the 1990s. Since then, in addition to Chinese Americans and Filipinos, the populations of Asian Indians, Vietnamese Americans, and Korean Americans have surpassed the population of Japanese Americans, which
now compose the sixth largest group. Historically, Japanese Americans have experienced hatred, bigotry, discrimination, and institutionalized racism by the U.S. government, including the unconstitutional internment of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast during World War II. Later, Japanese Americans were included among the “model minorities,” a term, although seemingly flattering, that divides Japanese Americans from other minority groups and stereotypes Japanese Americans. This entry discusses Japanese Immigration to the United States, the effects of World War II, Japanese American farming, and issues facing contemporary Japanese Americans.
Japanese Immigration to the United States The Japanese first began immigrating to the United States in the mid-19th century, following political, cultural, and social changes resulting from the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Further, Japanese laborers were recruited by many business owners following the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to replace the no longer available Chinese laborers. In the 1890s, young Japanese men were recruited to provide labor for Hawaiian sugarcane and pineapple plantations, as well as to work on California fruit and produce farms. In the early 1900s, the Japanese who had come to the United States had begun to lease land and sharecrop. However, in 1907, the so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement was established between the United States and Japan, which stated that Japan would stop issuing passports for new laborers. This occurred because of White farmers’ and landowners’ concerns about Japanese competition. In 1908, Japanese women, mostly picture brides, were allowed to enter the United States. As a result, the population of Japanese Americans began growing, and these women began giving birth to U.S. citizens. In 1913, the California Alien Land Law was enacted, banning those of Japanese ancestry from purchasing land. This act was initiated by Whites who were threatened by the increasingly successful independent Japanese farmers. This act was followed by the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924, which banned immigration from Japan. Given the previous immigration patterns and the prohibition of new immigrants, Japanese Americans born after 1924 were by definition Japanese Americans and U.S. citizens. The bans on immigration produced well-defined generations within the Japanese American community. Issei were the immigrant
Japanese Americans
generation, followed by the Nisei, who were their U.S.-born children. Japanese American activism to address the continual racism and discrimination faced by Japanese Americans began in the early part of the 20th century. The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) was founded in 1929 in California to address discrimination against individuals of Japanese ancestry.
The Effects of World War II Following the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, demanding that those of Japanese ancestry residing on the West Coast be “excluded” from areas deemed military or exclusion zones. The order was signed on February 19, 1942; 6 days later, the order was implemented, and nearly 120,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese descent were forced to leave their homes and belongings and taken to internment camps. Each family was allowed only two suitcases of belongings. Subsequently, Executive Order 9095 was implemented to allow the U.S. government to take control of the property and assets of Japanese Americans in internment camps. Much of this property was never returned once the internment camps were closed. Japanese Americans were incarcerated in nine camps and one segregation center located in mostly desolate areas. The segregation center was established for individuals identified as “dissenters” and their families. The last camp to close was at Rohwer, Arkansas, on November 30, 1945. Although an initial attempt was made to intern Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i, the U.S. government realized that it was not economically feasible to incarcerate all the people of Japanese descent in Hawai‘i. Following their release, many Japanese Americans returned to the West Coast to rebuild their lives. Some returned to family businesses such as grocery stores and farming, and some Japanese American communities were reestablished. Others, who were not able to recover their property, went elsewhere to find work and housing, in cities such as Chicago and New York. Following their release, many Japanese Americans faced continued racism and discrimination in finding housing and employment, even those who were educated and had served in the U.S. military. During the war, through the assistance of the JACL, some of those interned fought for the right to serve in the U.S. military. As a result, the all-Japanese
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American 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team were formed. This combined unit is the highest decorated military unit in U.S. history. These brave individuals are memorialized in Washington, D.C., at the National Japanese American Memorial. The Redress Movement to obtain an apology and reparations from the U.S. government for the unconstitutional incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II was initiated by Sanseis, third-generation Japanese Americans. Many of these individuals were young children of the Nisei who were interned. After several decades of efforts, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act in 1988, which provided redress of $20,000 to each surviving detainee. The first payments were made in October 1990.
Japanese American Farming Japanese Americans have contributed significantly to the agriculture on the West Coast of the United States since the Issei first immigrated. Upon arrival in the United States, the Japanese immigrants introduced sophisticated irrigation techniques that allowed for the cultivation of crops on previously unusable lands, thus leading to successful production. As indicated previously, many White land owners and farmers were concerned about competition by these successful Japanese and Japanese American farmers, resulting in many laws and acts to squelch the competition. Although many of the immigrants who began farming independently were successful in the early part of the 20th century, many of them lost their farms during the internment, when the U.S. government confiscated much of their property. However, some Japanese Americans remain involved in the agriculture industry today, particularly in Southern California, where some Japanese American family farms continue to exist.
Contemporary Japanese Americans Genera atio ons and Communitie es
Japanese Americans have special names for their generational groups. The Issei are the first generation, born in Japan or Okinawa. Nisei are the second generation, born U.S. citizens. Sansei are the third generation, Yonsei is the fourth generation, and Gosei is the fifth generation. Japanese American sociologists coined the term Nikkei to encompass all Japanese Americans across the generations. The term Kibei refers to those who are born in the United States, but
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who are chiefly educated in Japan. These individuals often returned to the United States as adults, but have vastly different experiences than the Nisei. Currently, Japanese Americans constitute the sixth largest Asian American group in the United States. The states with the largest numbers of Japanese Americans are California, Hawai‘i, Washington, and New York. Each year, although approximately 7,000 new immigrants arrive from Japan, net immigration of Japanese to the United States hovers around zero because some older Japanese Americans immigrate to their ancestral homeland each year. Many Japanese Americans live in communities with established Japanese American neighborhoods, such as those found in Northern and Southern California and Seattle, Washington. One issue facing the Japanese American community is the high rate of out-marriage. This has resulted in the dispersion of Japanese Americans as well as an increase in the number of biracial Japanese Americans. Some are concerned that continuation of this trend will result in the demise of an actual “Japanese American community” and the loss of Japanese and Japanese American traditions among young Japanese Americans, particularly those who live in areas that are less apt to have Japanese American activities. Further evidence of increasing diversity is that older Japanese Americans (i.e., age 65 years and older) are now composed of many different groups. For example, some Issei are still alive, but now Nisei and even some Sansei are included in the category of older adult. Additionally, many U.S. military servicemen stationed in Japan during World War II who had married Japanese women brought their wives to the United States when they returned home. These women have vastly different cultural values and experiences, not to mention differences in language and food preference, compared with Japanese American older adults who have higher generational status. Language Issues
Many Issei and Nisei speak Japanese or Okinawan in addition to English. However, later generations of Japanese Americans speak primarily English, and may learn Japanese as a second language. One exception is in Hawai‘i, where Nikkei comprise about 20% of the population; thus, Japanese is more apt to be spoken, written, and studied by many residents of
Hawai‘i, including those not of Japanese descent. Japanese women who met and married U.S. military personnel still tend to speak Japanese and very little English even though they might live in areas where few people speak Japanese. Education n
Japanese and Japanese American culture emphasizes and values education of its youth. Often as a result, Japanese Americans do well in academics, exceeding national averages in many different subject areas. This has resulted in stereotyping of Japanese Americans and in assumptions that Japanese Americans are skilled only in areas of science and math, rather than in areas such as social sciences and humanities. Further, because of their academic strengths as well as the influence of the “model minority” stereotype, Japanese Americans are often not eligible for scholarships or Affirmative Active programs, and are sometimes even assailed as being coconspirators with the dominant group against other ethnic minority groups. Spiritu uality y and Celebra atiions
Japanese Americans practice a full range of religions, including Christianity, various forms of Buddhism, and Shinto. In Japan, the practice of Buddhism and Shintoism were ingrained in values and traditions. Although a large number of Japanese Americans continue to practice Buddhism in some form, these practices have a decidedly Japanese American flavor rather than a traditional Japanese one. For example, in many Japanese American communities, the annual Obon Festival in July or August, where the spirits of deceased ancestors are celebrated, is much more of a family celebration rather than a solemn religious event. These festivals often occur at local Japanese American community centers and involve food, obon dancing, carnival games, and other forms of family entertainment. They provide opportunities for families to gather with other Japanese American families and enjoy historical and cultural practices and traditions. In areas where large groups of Japanese Americans live, they may have their own Christian churches, which may even offer some services in Japanese. In other areas of the United States, however, Japanese American Christians tend to attend churches in predominantly White communities. On the West Coast,
Jewish Americans
many Japanese American community centers were established after the internment. These community centers provided people with a place to celebrate and experience their heritage in a positive and uplifting manner. Many community centers are located next to or near Japanese American churches and temples and often collaborate on events. Activities such as Japanese language school, sports teams for youth, and older adult day services are provided by such centers. Many Japanese American celebrations tend to focus more on community-building than on religious foundations. Although many invoke aspects of Japanese traditions and influence, such as Cherry Blossom festivals and Taiko Drumming Festivals, some are Japanese American specific such as Nisei Week in Los Angeles.
Accultu uration n and Ethnicc Identity y
Contemporary Japanese Americans are vastly diverse in their level of acculturation—that is, the degree to which they value, live by, and interact in the dominant society, and the strength of their ethnic identity—their sense of themselves as Japanese Americans. This is not surprising given that this group comprises individuals across many different generational levels with vastly different experiences. For example, some Japanese Americans clearly recall their experiences being interned during World War II, but the youngest Japanese Americans, who may be biracial, might have no knowledge or understanding of the internment. Some Japanese Americans are recent immigrants, but others have U.S. family histories that date back to the 1800s. Many Japanese Americans are used to living and functioning in predominantly White environments such as neighborhoods, schools, and industry, and have become accustomed to being one of few ethnic minorities. Some of these individuals may not often reflect on their ethnicity, but others are much more active in their interest in and desire to learn more about the Japanese American experience. Gayle Y. Iwamasa See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Acculturation; Alien Land Acts; Asian Americans; Asian American Studies; Hawai‘i, Race in; Immigration, U.S.; Internment Camps; Issei; Japanese American Citizens League; Model Minority; Nikkeijin; Nisei; Pacific Islanders
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Further Readings
Daniels, Roger. 1993. Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II. New York: Hill and Wang. Fugita, Stephen S. and David J. O’Brien. 1991. Japanese American Ethnicity: The Persistence of Community. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Hohri, William. 1988. Repairing America: An Account of the Movement for Japanese American Redress. Pullman: Washington State University Press. Kimura, Yukiko. 1988. Issei: Japanese Immigrants in Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Matsumoto, Valerie. 1993. Farming the Home Place: A Japanese American Community in California, 1919–1982. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Nakano, Mei. 1990. Japanese American Women: Three Generations, 1890–1990. Berkeley, CA: National Japanese American Historical Society. Takagi, Dana 1994. “Japanese American Families.” In Minority Families in the United States: A Multicultural Perspective, edited by R. L. Taylor. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Weglyn, Michi. 1976. Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. New York: Morrow. Web Sites
Discover Nikkei: http://www.discovernikkei.org Japanese American National Museum: http://www.janm.org Japanese American Citizens League: http://www.jacl.org National Japanese American Historical Society: http://www.njahs.org National Japanese American Memorial Foundation: http://www.njamf.com Nikkei Federation: http://www.nikkeifederation.org
JEWISH AMERICANS American Jewry is among the most complex groups in the United States. Although there are only about 4 million to 7 million Jews out of 300 million U.S. residents, that is, between 1% and 2% of the population, they make up a vastly disproportionate number of people in politics, the arts, academia, national media (movies, TV, radio), law, and medicine. Thus, they are in a position to influence though not control a great deal of public debate. The actual figures of U.S. Jewry are difficult to ascertain because one can only rely on surveys; the census does not collect data on religion or offer “Jewish” as an ethnic identity.
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Based on available estimates, the United States has the largest Jewish population in the world, with 46% of the world’s Jewish population living in the United States. Jewish Americans play a prominent role in the worldwide Jewish community, as well as in the United States. The nation with the second-largest Jewish population, Israel, is the only one in which Jews are in the majority, accounting for 81% of the population, compared with less than 2% in the United States. This entry offers an overview of Jewish identification, immigration history, and their current situation in the United States.
Racial, Ethnic, or Religious Group? The issue of what makes a Jew is more than a scholarly question; in Israel, it figures in policy matters. The Israel Law of Return defines who is a Jew and extends Israeli citizenship to all Jews. Currently, the law recognizes all converts to the faith, but pressure has grown recently to limit citizenship to those whose conversions were performed by Orthodox rabbis. Although the change would have little practical impact, symbolically this pressure shows the tension and lack of consensus, even among Jews, regarding who is a Jew. The definition of race used here is fairly explicit. The Jewish people are not physically differentiated from non-Jews. Many people believe they can tell a Jew from a non-Jew, but actual distinguishing physical traits are absent. The wide range of variation among Jews makes it inaccurate to speak of a Jewish race in a physical sense. Jews today come from all areas of the world and carry a variety of physical features. Most Jewish Americans are descended from Northern and Eastern Europeans and have the appearance of Nordic and Alpine people. Many others carry Mediterranean traits that make them indistinguishable from Spanish or Italian Catholics. Many Jews reside in North Africa, and although North African Jews are not significantly represented in the United States, many people would view them as a racial minority, Black. To define Jews by religion seems the obvious answer because there are Judaic religious beliefs, holidays, and rituals. But these beliefs and practices do not distinguish all Jews from non-Jews. To be a Jewish American does not mean that one is affiliated with one of the three religious groups: the Orthodox, the Reform, and the Conservative. A large segment of adult Jewish Americans, more than a third, do not participate in
religious services or even belong, however tenuously, to a temple or synagogue. They have not converted to Christianity, however, nor have they ceased to think of themselves as Jews. Jewish religious beliefs and the history of religious practices remain significant legacies for all Jews today, however secularized their everyday behavior. In a 1998 survey, half of all Jews felt that a “shared history or culture,” much more than religion, defined what it means to be Jewish. The trend for some time, especially in the United States, has been toward a condition called Judaization, the lessening importance of Judaism as a religion and the substitution of cultural traditions as the ties that bind Jews. Depending on one’s definition, Judaization has caused some Jews to become so assimilated in the United States that traditional Jews no longer consider them acceptable spouses. Jewish identity is ethnic. Jews share cultural traits, rather than physical features or uniform religious beliefs. The level of this cultural identity differs. Just as some Apaches may be more acculturated than others, the degree of assimilation varies among Jewish people. Judaization may base identity on such things as eating traditional Jewish foods, telling Jewish jokes, and wearing the Star of David. For others, this cultural identity may be the sense of a common history of centuries of persecution. For still others, it may be an unimportant identification. They say, “I am a Jew,” just as they say, “I am a resident of California.”
Immigration Patterns The first Jews came to the Americas in late August or early September of 1654, to New Amsterdam, a Dutch colony in what is today New York. Twenty-three arrived from the Recife, also a Dutch colony, in northeastern Brazil. A few generations earlier, however, their families had lived in Spain and Portugal. These Iberian Jews were known as Sephardim (Sepharad in Hebrew means “Spain”). Under Muslim rule, they were a large, prosperous, and close-knit community. But the Golden Age of Jews living in Spain ended in 1492, and Jews were forced to convert to Christianity. Thousands fled all over the world, including to Brazil, and from there, a few came to the United States. These Sephardic Jews became known as the “grandees,” the most elite of all Jews. The second wave of Jews to arrive in the United States comprised the German Jews. They also came
Jewish Americans
seeking freedom from the revolutions in Europe. The height of their immigration was from 1820 to 1880. A distinct third wave, from 1880 to 1924, came from Russia and Eastern European countries. From 1924 to 1945, because of immigration quotas, the Depression, and World War II, immigration slowed down, with only small numbers allowed to leave Nazi Germany. However, after the Shoah and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, numerous refugees from Europe, the Middle East (another type of Sephardic immigration), and later thousands from the former Soviet Union enlarged and broadened the Jewish community of the United States.
Assimilation and Intermarriage One of the major threats and challenges to Jewish Americans has been intermarriage. An early study in the 1960s shocked the community: Intermarriage was 17% and rising. Today, the figure is greater than 50%. This has led to alarm but it has also led to a renewed tolerance and acceptance of non-Jewish partners. Some even delight in the process, seeing it as a means of enlarging and broadening the community. For many in the Jewish community, intermarriage is viewed as a social problem. Intermarriage makes a decrease in the size of the Jewish community in the United States more likely. In marriages that occurred in the 1970s, more than 70% of Jews married Jews or people who converted to Judaism. In marriages since 1996, that proportion has dropped to 53%. This trend means that U.S. Jews today are just as likely to marry a Gentile as a Jew. For many, religion is a non-issue; neither parent practices religious rituals. Two-thirds of the children of these Jewish-Gentile marriages are not raised as Jews. Many Jewish Americans respond that intermarriage is inevitable and the Jewish community must build on whatever links the intermarried couple may still have with a Jewish ethnic culture. There are many programs throughout the United States to help Gentile spouses of Jews feel welcome so that the faith will not lose them both. Yet other Jews feel that such efforts may be sending a dangerous signal that intermarriage is inevitable. Therefore, it is not surprising to see that probably more than any other ethnic or religious group, organizations within the Jewish community commission research on the trends in intermarriage
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Organizational Life The Jewish American community has a vast array of organizations for such a small community. They are religious and secular, defense and artistic, schools, colleges, seminaries, and community centers. No organization, secular or religious, represents all U.S. Jews, but there are more than 300 nationwide organizations. Among the most significant are the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and B’nai B’rith. The UJA was founded in 1939 and serves as a fund-raising organization for humanitarian causes. Recently, Israel has received the largest share of the funds collected. The American Jewish Committee (founded in 1906) and the American Jewish Congress (1918) work toward the similar purpose of improving JewishGentile relations. B’nai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant) was founded in 1843 and claims 500,000 members in forty nations. It promotes cultural and social programs and, through its Anti-Defamation League, monitors and fights anti-Semitism and hate crimes directed at other groups. Besides the national groups, many communitybased organizations are active. Some local organizations, such as social and business clubs, were founded because the existing groups barred Jews from membership. The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently ruled that private social organizations such as country clubs and business clubs may discriminate against Jews or any other ethnic or racial group. Jewish community centers are also prominent local organizations. To Gentiles, the synagogue is the most visible symbol of the Jewish presence at the community level. However, the Jewish community center is an important focus of local activity. In many Jewish neighborhoods throughout the United States, it is the center of secular activity. Hospitals, nurseries, homes for the elderly, and child care agencies are only a few of the community-level activities sponsored by Jewish Americans.
Politics U.S. Jews, along with Blacks, have been the mainstay of the Democratic Party and of liberal, as well as leftliberal, politics in U.S. life. Though this is substantively still true, a powerful shift since the 1980s, the Reagan years, have shifted the Jewish community to the right. This shift has not simply found expression in support of Republicans but more seriously, in a small
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but vocal group support by Jewish right-wingers, both religious and secular, for such issues as immigration, Muslim influence in the United States, anti-Semitism, and support for Israel. These right-wing groups include The David Project, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the American Zionism Organization, the American Jewish Congress (which was once liberal), the Agudat Yisroel orthodox groups, and many others. Although Jews still vote liberal, most of them are not affiliated with the Jewish community; those affiliated tend to be more reactionary and conservative. This shift during the past 25 years has become a major challenge for the Jewish community and the general U.S. community.
Religion in the Future Jewish identity and participation in the Jewish religion are not the same. Many U.S. residents consider themselves Jewish and are considered Jewish by others even though they have never participated in Jewish religious life. The available data indicate that 57% of U.S. Jews are affiliated with a synagogue or temple, but only 10% view participation in religious worship as extremely important. Even in Israel, only 30% of Jews are religiously observant. Nevertheless, the presence of a religious tradition, which for some represents symbolic religiosity, is an important tie among Jews, even secular Jews. The era of the one Jewish leader, especially a religious one, that all could admire and follow has long been over. The Jewish community is splintered and shattered into many factions. There is no one person or organization to lead. Furthermore, the latest surveys and studies showed some shocking conclusions: The fastest growing Jewish group in the United States was Reform Jews, 29%, often considered the most “assimilated,” whereas the group with the greatest loss of members was Conservative Jews, down to 32%, and the Orthodox, which many thought was the fastest growing group, actually had only a slight increase to 19% of U.S. Jews. Reconstructionism and other “Jewish renewal” groups grew faster than the Orthodox, but still emerged at about 2% to 4%. Other important determinants of Judaism included day school attendance, summer camps, and trips to Israel. These factors are crucial in determining one’s future Jewish identity. Jack Nusan Porter
See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Americanization; American Jewish Committee; AntiDefamation League; Anti-Semitism; Argentina; Assimilation; Diaspora; Holocaust; Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists; Intermarriage; Jewish-Black Relations: A Historical Perspective; Jewish-Black Relations: The Contemporary Period; Jewry, Black American; Ku Klux Klan; Racialization; Stereotypes; Symbolic Religiosity; Zionism
Further Readings:
American Jewish Committee. 2002. 2001 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion. New York: AJC. American Jewish Committee. 2005. 2005 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion. New York: AJC. Diner, Hasia R. 2003. A New Promised Land: A History of Jews in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Feldberg, Michael. 2005. Three Hundred and Fifty Years: An Album of American Jewish Memory. New York: American Jewish Historical Society and the American Jewish Archives. Finklestein, Norman H. Forged in Freedom: Shaping the Jewish-American Experience, Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 2002. Gans, Herbert J. 1956. “American Jewry: Present and Future.” Commentary (May 21):424–425. Los Angeles Times Poll. 1998. American and Israeli Jews. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Times and Yedioth Ahronoth. Porter, Jack Nusan, ed. 1980. The Sociology of American Jewry: A Critical Anthology. 2nd rev. ed. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Rosenthal, Steven T. 2001. Irreconcilable Differences? The Waning of the American Jewish Love Affair with Israel. Hanover, VT: Brandeis University Press. Ruggiero, Adriane, ed. 2006. The Jews. Detroit: Greenhaven Press. Ukeles, Jacob B., Ron Miller, and Pearl Beck. 2006. Young Jewish Adults in the United States Today: Harbingers of the American Jewish Community of Tomorrow? New York: American Jewish Committee.
JEWISH-BLACK RELATIONS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE African Americans have been in the United States for several hundred years—often arriving involuntarily— whereas Jewish Americans are more recent and voluntary arrivals to the United States, arriving in large numbers only within the last 120 years. Nonetheless,
Jewish-Black Relations: A Historical Perspective
these two groups have a strong history that at times has been supportive but full of conflict and disagreement at other times. At times, there have been charges of Black anti-Semitism and Jewish racism. At other times, similarities in their experiences as groups have been highlighted, with oppression and lack of acceptance by the dominant majority the most salient. The reality is that all of this is true. This entry focuses on a chronological review of that history, beginning with the pre-20th century period, then moving on to the 1900s through 1960s, and ending with an exploration of the relationship through 1970.
Before the 20th Century Historically, Black leaders often pointed to the experiences of Hebrews in bondage in ancient Egypt as being similar to their own experiences under slavery and then under Jim Crow discrimination. In addition, some Blacks have presented themselves as actual descendents of the tribes of Israel. Although the number of Jews in the United States rose dramatically during the peak years of immigration from 1880 through 1924, a small number of mainly German Jewish immigrants were living in the United States during slavery. There have been arguments about the role these few Jews played in both the slave trade and in slavery itself. What historians generally agree on is that Jews did play various although limited roles in the African slave trade. Few Jews owned plantations mainly because Jews in the old country of Europe were not allowed to own land and, therefore, fulfilled roles as merchants or peddlers. In keeping with this tradition in their new country, Southern Jews tended to fill these same positions, living in more urban areas. Nonetheless, there were some Jewish plantation and slaveowners, though the numbers pale in comparison with the larger White population. Overall, Jewish relations to slaves in the South differed little from those of nonJews in the South. As more Jews began entering the United States in the 1850s fleeing persecution and seeking economic and social freedom, the Jewish abolitionist participation in the United States began to emerge. Sharing certain political and ideological leanings, this group helped create the Reform Judaism movement, which largely believed that all humans should be treated equally. The Jewish abolitionists arose from this movement.
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By the late 1800s, as more and more immigrants arrived in the United States, Black Americans had a keen awareness that the newcomers were given special treatment whereas Blacks were still being treated as second-class citizens. However, the general population often did not include Jews in the favored group, feeling that Jews were often as discriminated against as they were. Further, the Black press, as well as various Black leaders, frequently pointed to Jews as examples and role models for Black economic success and social behavior. Most especially, Black leaders pointed to Jewish solidarity as a successful model for Blacks to adopt. At this time, some Black leaders began to see the potential for collaboration with Jews in achieving social acceptance and for financial assistance from Jews for Black causes. Two such leaders were Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. Booker T. Washington firmly believed that to succeed in the United States and be fully accepted, African Americans needed to work hard together to gain full access to all that the United States had to offer. In making this argument, Washington believed that Blacks should look to Jews as examples of what Blacks could do. Washington also actively sought Jewish financial support for various Black causes, particularly for educational institutions. Another major African American leader, W. E. B. Du Bois, also welcomed Jewish support of Black causes and organizations. Du Bois invited Jewish participation in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which he founded, and he even helped a Jewish man win election as president of the NAACP. In particular, during the years of World War II, Du Bois consistently compared what Hitler was doing to the Jews in Germany with what the United States had done to African Americans.
1900 Through 1970 From 1890 to 1924, thousands of Jews streamed into the United States. Mainly from Russia and other areas of Eastern Europe, these new Jewish immigrants were different from the mostly German Jews already living in the United States. These newer Jews came into contact with African Americans in two ways. First, many of the new immigrants primarily stayed in the North, and as Blacks began migrating north in massive numbers during and after World War I, they often moved into neighborhoods that were predominantly Jewish. Second, some Jews went south to try to make a living,
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often owning small stores or managing larger factories. Contact in both of these ways had a lasting impact on the relations between Blacks and Jews. Leo Frank: The Lynch hin ng of a Jew
Between 1900 and World War I, more than a thousand Blacks had been lynched in the South. In 1915, Leo Frank, a White Jewish manager of a factory, was accused of killing a young White girl. After a guilty verdict was returned but before he could be sentenced, a White mob stormed the jail where Frank was being held and hung him. The trial itself had rested on the word of one witness, a Black janitor. To Jews everywhere, Frank’s lynching highlighted how much they had in common with Blacks; Jews felt they were not seen as White, but as a separate race altogether. Frank’s lynching actually made many in the Black press angrier. Essentially, they questioned why there was now so much outrage over a White man being lynched when hundreds of Blacks had been lynched and ignored. For Jews, Frank’s lynching highlighted their similarities with Blacks; for Blacks, it highlighted their own continued lower-class status in society. Blacks Move North
Although Blacks continued to use Jews as role models for success as outsiders in the United States, their relations became more strained as Blacks moved north into urban areas. For Blacks, the move often meant Jewish property managers, Jewish shop owners, and employment as servants in Jewish homes. Often filling what has been referred to as the “middleman position,” Jews were often self-employed, owning the small retail shops frequented by Black residents. Although many interactions between the groups were positive, there were problematic exchanges that often became overcharged, leaving both sides with a negative view of the other. Nonetheless, by the end of the 1940s, Black and Jewish groups were joining in efforts to benefit one another. As their agencies and organizations began to realize, protecting the rights of one minority group meant protecting the rights of all. Many of the issues raised by Black civil rights leaders were the same problems being faced by U.S. Jews, including being rejected by U.S. centers of power. Furthermore, the Jewish tradition meant a commitment to human rights and equality, and being racist was seen as being “un-Jewish.” Jewish involvement in civil rights causes has often included financial support of various Black organizations.
In particular, wealthy Jews made significant contributions to support the NAACP, as well as contributions to various Black educational institutions, such as Howard and Fisk universities. Working-class Jewish immigrants in unions often believed, contrary at times to the racist practices of the larger national unions, that Blacks should be unionized as well. One of the most famous of these unions, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, had a significant Jewish leadership that extended full union benefits to Blacks and was a militant promoter of Black civil rights. By the end of the 1950s and throughout the 1960s, Black organizations in the North and South grew less accommodating and more radical in their attempts to achieve equality. For example, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) eventually asked all Whites to leave their organization. As Blacks began pushing to take control of their own movements and make more demands of White establishment, some Jews began to feel Blacks were asking for too much too quickly. Nowhere was this more evident than in the 1968 Ocean Hill–Brownsville Teachers’ Strike in New York City, a situation many believe was the beginning of the disintegration of positive Black-Jewish relationships. Increasingly, Blacks and Puerto Ricans had entered previously Jewish neighborhoods, yet the school boards continued to reflect the previous Jewish population. Unhappy with the educational situation, the community attempted to take control of the schools, resulting in more than 350 teachers going on strike. Although 50% of the replacement teachers were Jewish, the teacher’s union (United Federation of Teachers) continued to have a predominantly Jewish leadership, which resisted the efforts of the local community. Although the Ocean Hill–Brownsville community control experiment was eventually eliminated, relations between the two groups were never the same. Beth Frankel Merenstein See also African Americans; Anti-Semitism; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Jackson, Jesse, Sr.; Jewish Americans; Jewish-Black Relations: The Contemporary Period; Lynching; Washington, Booker T.
Further Readings
Adams, Maurianne and John Bracey, eds. 1999. Strangers and Neighbors: Relations Between Blacks and Jews in the United States. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Jewish-Black Relations: The Contemporary Period
Berman, Paul, ed. 1994. Blacks and Jews: Alliances and Arguments. New York: Delacorte. Diner, Hasia. 1977. In the Almost Promised Land: American Jews and Blacks, 1915–1935. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Pritchett, Wendell. 2002. Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
JEWISH-BLACK RELATIONS: THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD Throughout U.S. history, the relationship between Blacks and Jews has been complex and sometimes volatile, marked by periods of collaboration and troubled by episodes of conflict and contention. Perhaps because from the beginning both groups were considered outsiders by the White Christian majority, Jewish perceptions of similarities between White racism and anti-Semitism led to organized efforts to aid African American’s struggles to eliminate racism. Yet, as some observers have pointed out, if those efforts were motivated chiefly by altruism, they were also based to some degree on self-interest. To the extent that Jews, as White European Americans, had always been accorded somewhat higher status than Blacks in U.S. society, the relationship between the two groups could not be one of collaboration between true equals. Accordingly, Blacks have sometimes viewed Jews as allies and at other times as exploiters, though usually as different from other Whites. Even at the peak of their relationship, during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s when Jews and Blacks worked together to achieve racial equality, considerable ambiguity, sometimes leading to hostility, existed about what was perceived as Jews’ own role in maintaining inequality. Contemporary relations remain fraught with ambiguity as class and cultural conflict have increased and as contemporary national and international events have highlighted group differences, as this entry shows.
Urban Competition and Conflict Northern urban Jews have often lived in close contact with African Americans, but at different status levels, and maintained unequal hiring and renting practices. Jews’ intermediary status allowed some to profit from Blacks’ earnings, resulting in unequal contact
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and thus fostering anti-Jewish sentiment within the Black community. Local Jewish merchants offered credit and a wide variety of goods, but also fixed prices. Similarly, many Jewish landowners rented to Blacks, but some among them were notorious for overcharging Black renters and not keeping appliances, heat, and electricity in their buildings in clean and working order. Those Jewish merchants and owners who exploited Blacks were a minority of the Jewish population, and many other Jews had no problems living side-by-side with Blacks in integrated neighborhoods. However, systematic exploitation by a minority left a deep impact on Blacks’ consciousness of Jews. As U.S. Jews improved their material condition, many came to interpret racial difference through a lens of liberalism that placed responsibility for success on group prowess and ambition rather than on a recognition of the existence of structural inequalities. Believing that success for Blacks would come with their willingness to integrate and conform to mainstream U.S. society, even as Jews refused to wholly do so, resulted in cultural strife, notably during the Ocean Hill–Brownsville conflict of 1968 to 1971. Nationally, Jews’ status improved relative to Blacks’ throughout the postwar period, creating and exacerbating class-based and cultural differences. As Jews assimilated, they tended to acquire the attitudes of the dominant culture, further distancing themselves from the Black community. Some educated Jews, embracing neoconservatism, began to oppose affirmative action policies that had significantly aided Blacks and better positioned them to compete in universities and for jobs. Moving into power positions in business and politics, Jews could not necessarily be relied on to assist Blacks in gaining access to or a step up on the economic ladder.
Contemporary Cleavages Contemporary national and international events have highlighted the growing divergence between the two groups. For example, activists promoted ideological links to other oppressed peoples, such as Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, precipitating another fissure in Jews’ and Blacks’ relationship. In August 1991, a Black youth was accidentally struck and killed in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, by a car driven by an Orthodox Jew; in retaliation, a Jewish religious school student was stabbed to death. These highly publicized events generated increased alienation
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between the two communities and continue to loom large in the collective histories of both groups Some argue that Jews’ alleged indifference to Black inequality constitutes a particular betrayal and abandonment of civil rights ideologies, given Jews’ earlier arguments of their linked fates. A growing conservative Republican Jewish population, opposed to civil rights legislation, suggests that assimilated Jews have become more like their non-Jewish counterparts with regard to racial attitudes. Inaction and inattention by Jews concerning Blacks’ contemporary social, political, and economic condition is seen as perpetuating the racial hierarchy and status quo. Contemporary research suggests that although Blacks see Jews as different from other Whites, Blacks are ambivalent and unsure of Jews’ allegiances. Recent studies find Blacks have higher rates of anti-Semitism than do Whites, because of both contemporary antagonisms and collective memories of Jewish exploitation of Blacks. Because of this history, many Blacks no longer consign fellow-victim or minority status to Jews. Black-Jewish relations remain complex. Though contemporary scholars within each community have attempted to bridge the gap between the groups, alliances remain fragile. Different perceptions of the specific policies needed to support Black advancement and Jews’ higher status relative to Blacks in the U.S. racial hierarchy remain formidable barriers to collaboration. Nevertheless, organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith continue to unite Jews and Blacks seeking to eliminate racism and anti-Semitism. Melissa F. Weiner See also Anti-Defamation League; Anti-Semitism; Civil Rights Movement; Crown Heights, Brooklyn; Jewish Americans; Jewish-Black Relations: A Historical Perspective; White Racism
Jews in the Twentieth Century: Studies in Convergence and Conflict. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn. 2006. Troubling the Waters: BlackJewish Relations in the American Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Marx, Gary T. 1967. Protest and Prejudice: A Study of Belief in the Black Community. New York: Harper & Row. Salzman, Jack and Cornell West, eds. 1997. Struggles in the Promised Land: Toward a History of Black-Jewish Relations in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Sniderman, Paul M. and Thomas Piazza. 2002. Black Pride and Black Prejudice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
JEWRY, BLACK AMERICAN Although some African Americans belong to traditional Jewish congregations, there also exists a separate African American Jewry, one of the many variants of Judaism and one with a long history in the United States. Although numbers have been debated, there is some consensus that Black American Jewry may consist of between 100,000 and 260,000 members. Some in mainstream Judaism may believe that Black Jewry is at odds with how Judaism should be practiced, but many African American Jews have also rejected features of European Jewry, asserting their right to define and practice Judaism while incorporating many features of their historical and cultural background as long as they remain true to Jewish religious law. In this manner, Black American Jewry seeks to validate its version of Judaism in the same spirit with which similar validations have been made regarding the uniqueness of Ethiopian Jewry, Yemenite Jewry, and Moroccan Jewry. This entry summarizes the history and current status of African American Jewry.
Beginnings Further Readings
Adams, Maurianne and John H. Bracey, eds. (2000). Strangers and Neighbors: Relations Between Blacks and Jews in the United States. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Berman, Paul, ed. (1994). Blacks and Jews: Alliances and Arguments. New York: Delacorte. Franklin, V. P., Nancy L. Grant, Harold M. Kletnick, and Genna Rae McNeil, eds. (1998). African Americans and
Many believe the Judaic presence in African American religious life can be traced to the exile and diaspora that followed the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE; this resulted in the dispersion of many Jews to many parts of Africa. Hence, African and African American Judaism are deeply rooted in some of the legends, folk tales, and uncertainties surrounding the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and the more than 2,500-year history of Ethiopian Jewry (Beta Israel).
Jewry, Black American
It may be difficult to unravel all of ancient Judaism’s history, but what is verifiable is the historical identification of Black Americans with Ancient Israel and the Hebrew people. In 18th and 19th centuries, in speeches and sermons, and especially in the spirituals, suffering African Americans poured out their grief, joy, and their longing for freedom as they too imagined themselves marching forward to their Promised Land. They viewed their persecution, enslavement, exile, and emancipation as paths that would follow the path of the suffering Hebrews. This identification with the Ancient Israelites also included the idea of having been selected like the Israelites as the Chosen People who were, like the Hebrews, in search of their Promised Land, which would be a return to Africa, though the double meaning of the term would also mean Heaven. Though fragmentary data indicate some Hebraic ideas and practices within African American religious practices in the early and mid-19th century, the earliest record of formal institutional Judaic practices occurred in 1886 with the formation of the first Black Jewish sect, the Church of the Living God, the Pillar Ground of Truth for all Nations, founded by F. S. Cherry in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This was followed by The Church of God and Saints of Christ, organized by William S. Crowdy in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1896. Though both groups contained elements of Christian teachings, they introduced ideas and practices that served as foundations for subsequent African American Jewish groups: that Blacks were the true descendants of the ancient Hebrew people and that Europeans had usurped the original meaning and intent of the Hebrew scripture to elevate themselves over others and therefore claim to be the sole inheritors and interpreters of the scripture and Jewish life. Crowdy’s Jewish sect was the first among many groups that followed his lead to initiate circumcision rites, observe the Shabbat on Saturday, wear the yarmulke, and observe Pesach and kosher. The next major development in African American Jewry was the congregation B’nai Abraham founded by Rabbi Arnold Ford, musical director for Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, and the Commandment Keepers Congregation, one of the largest African American Jewish synagogues, founded in Harlem by Rabbi Wentworth Arthur Matthew. Rabbi Matthew was born in Africa and raised in the West Indies. He elevated the importance of Africa and Ethiopian Jewry for Black Jews in the
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United States, therefore creating the link that validated legitimate Black claims to authentic Judaism, one that he asserted was much older than the European claims to Judaism. He was also the first African American Jewish rabbi to create a rabbinical college, the Ethiopian Hebrew Rabbinical College, and until his death ordained dozens of men into the rabbinate. These early attempts to validate Judaism as a natural, and true, religion for African Americans also often included the proviso that indeed African Americans were the “original” and “true” Hebrews. Efforts to forge a Black Jewish presence would take the form of a rejection of Christianity, indictment of the Christian West’s role in the international slave trade, the enslavement of Blacks in the United States, and the European colonization of Africa. Establishment of a Judaic presence was rooted in a deeply felt belief by many Black Jewish sect founders that African people had been robbed of their rights and dignity by Christianity. Therefore, only an intense sense of nationalism and pride, and the restoration of Black dignity, which they believed always existed in Africans and African Americans within some parts of their Jewish past, would rescue the group.
Today’s Practice A review of African American Jewry today reveals a variety of names—Hebrew Israelites, Israelites, Black Hebrews, Ethiopian Hebrews, or Black Jews; what is clear is the absence of any doctrine related to Christianity. African American Jewish congregations observe the High Holy Days, and many might recognize, but not observe, the minor holidays; some observe kashrut; some have separate seating for males and females; and many have choirs with drums and other non-Western musical instruments that are played during the service. Despite these similarities, there are differences and variations in some ritual practices between European American Jewry and African American Jewry. Whereas the two largest U.S. Jewish mainstream denominations (the Conservative and Reform movements) orient themselves culturally to Yiddish, Yiddishkeit, and the Holocaust, African American Jewry focuses largely on Africa, the history of the Black struggle in the United States, and Black leaders who have waged the battle for Black freedom, such as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Marcus Garvey,
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W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Many African American Jews believe that contemporary European Jewry simply reflects the infusion of long-standing European cultural habits and values rather than Halachah, Jewish law based on the Torah. Some African American synagogues reflect and depict the cultural life and history of African Americans, choosing to have special days honoring Black leaders and celebrating Emancipation Proclamation Day and Juneteenth, and other important highlights of the African American experience. For example, during Pesach, rice, and kosher foods such as corn bread, collard greens, and yams may be served, and “Let My People Go”; “We Shall Overcome”; and the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”; and other songs may be sung. Thousands of African American Jews belong to the four mainstream Jewish denominations, the Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, and Reconstruction movements, though most of them are likely members of the Conservative and Reform movements. Many became Jews through conversion, and many are or were the children of at least one and sometimes two Jewish parents. One of the greatest hurdles confronting African American Jewry is the deeply held view by many— Jews and non-Jews alike, and European American and African American—that Judaism is a religion for and by Europeans. For this reason, many Jews may be surprised when told of the existence of large numbers of African American Jews. Subtle forms of rejection and racism may be directed toward African American Jews, especially if it is believed that their form of Judaism does not fit the European American model and paradigm. Likewise, African American Jews may encounter suspicion from other Blacks, who may view Black Judaism as a betrayal of their historical Christianity, because they, too, may see Judaism as a European religion. There is a double irony here, because Christianity in the modern era has taken on the paraphernalia of being largely a European religion. Some of the problems African American Jews face parallel many of the problems of mainstream European American Jewry: Quite often the nonJewish world knows and hears so little about Judaism from its adherents, and there are historical reasons why this has been the case. Just as most White Christians don’t know much about Jewish Americans, most Black Christians know little about African American Jewry.
Thus, African American Jews may experience what W. E. B. Du Bois called “double consciousness” and what this author calls “dual marginality.” Both terms can suggest paradoxes surrounding Jews in the United States, but for African American Jews, the setting can be labeled a “triple paradox” in that they are a minority religious group located within another group that is also a minority group in the society. To offset their feeling of being outsiders and what they believe to be structural barriers that hinder their sense of being Jews, several organizations have been created to provide a venue for discussion, creativity, and the probing of their Judaism: The Alliance for Black Jews, Ayecha Resource Organization, and the Pan-African Jewish Alliance. The latter group attempts to include Jews on every continent. The various ways of practicing Judaism inevitably raise the larger question, “Who is a Jew?” This issue is currently at the center of an intense debate between the Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox religious leadership in Israel, just as it is often an issue in many U.S. Jewish synagogues and communities. Ari Goldman puts the question within larger Jewish contexts when he notes four important points germane to the question of who is a Jew and what constitutes Jewishness. These points serve as an important epilogue to the discussion and analysis of African American Jewry: (1) There was never one true, divinely approved way of “being Jewish”; (2) Judaism has always been a work-in-progress; (3) Jews in the United States and elsewhere “do” Judaism in eccentric, idiosyncratic ways; and (4) Jews respond to the large “table” of Jewish practices, teachings, memories, texts, art, and relationships and are creating a Judaism that makes sense to them. Rutledge M. Dennis See also Double Consciousness; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Emancipation Proclamation; Holocaust; Jewish Americans; Marginalization; Pluralism
Further Readings
Azoulay, Katya Gibel. 1997. Black, Jewish, and Interracial. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Berman, Paul. 1994. Blacks and Jews. New York: Delacorte. Chireau, Yvonne and N. Deutsch eds. 2000. Black Zion. New York: Oxford University Press. Cohen, David, ed. 1989. Jews in America. San Francisco, CA: Collier.
Johnson, Charles S. (1893–1956)
Landing, James. 2002. Black Judaism. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Lester, Julius, 1988. Lovesong: Becoming a Jew. New York: Arcade.
JIM CROW Jim Crow refers to the laws and customs present in the United States, typically in the former states of the Confederacy, that prescribed a segregated society and kept Black people in a subservient position in everyday life. The term is taken from a song, “Jump Jim Crow,” which was performed in minstrel shows by White singers in Blackface. The character Jim Crow was a rural Black man who was poorly dressed. This entry describes the history of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Following the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction in 1876 and lasting until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, different states, particularly in the South, enacted various laws to enforce racial segregation between Whites and Blacks. Jim Crow laws reflected the racial ideology that Whites were superior to Blacks and any forms of integration would destroy the purity of the White race. During the Progressive era, Jim Crow laws were broadened to the federal level. Although Jim Crow laws were tightly enforced, there were challenges. In 1896, a Black man named Homer Plessy was convicted in Louisiana for riding in a Whites-only railway car. Plessy appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the Louisiana decision. The “separate but equal” doctrine was thus established. The actual nature of Jim Crow practices was limited only by the imagination of Whites who wanted to keep Blacks separate from—and not necessarily equal to— themselves. In many places, Blacks and Whites attended separate schools, and there were often separate facilities, including restrooms and water fountains, for Blacks and Whites in public places. In Louisiana, the law prohibited renting housing to someone of African ancestry if the housing was partially occupied by Whites. In Georgia, there were separate restaurants for Blacks and Whites. Throughout the South, Blacks and Whites could not legally marry. Some signs said, “No dogs, Negroes, and mulattos.” In many places, a Black man could not extend his hand to a White man, have any contact with White women, or curse White people.
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Jim Crow laws were gradually dismantled after World War II. In the 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attempted to end the segregation on buses and trains. In 1950, the Supreme Court declared that the University of Texas must admit Herman Sweatt, an African American, to the law school on the ground that the state should provide equal education for him. The Supreme Court finally declared the segregation of the railway unconstitutional in 1952. In 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the segregation of educational system unconstitutional. Despite the Court’s decision, segregation continued in some states. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 when Lyndon Baines Johnson was the president. This act made racial segregation illegal. Although Jim Crow law is a de jure system of segregation; the de facto segregation of races continues in some places today. Shu-Ju Ada Cheng See also African Americans; Civil Disobedience; Civil Rights Movement; Discrimination; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Plessy v. Ferguson; Racism; Racism, Types of; Sundown Towns
Further Readings
Klarman, Michael J. 2006. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Upchurch, Thomas Adams. 2004. Legislating Racism: The Billion Dollar Congress and the Birth of Jim Crow. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Woodward, C. Vann. 2001. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Commemorative ed., afterword by William S. McFeely. New York: Oxford University Press. Wormser, Richard. 2004. The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. New York: St. Martin’s.
JOHNSON, CHARLES S. (1893–1956) Charles S. Johnson used social science methodology to systematically seek to understand the impact of race on the social and personal challenges of African Americans. His personal experiences with racial discrimination, from childhood on, shaped his intellectual curiosity about human relations, and after a close
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call on his life during the Chicago riots of the 1920s, Johnson’s career in race relations began. After receiving the PhB in 1917 from the University of Chicago, he began to study the societal conditions that shaped the hatred manifested in the race riots, and he served on the Chicago Race Commission. He became the national director of research for the Urban League. As founder and editor of the Urban League’s Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Johnson provided a vehicle for under-recognized artisans such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Aaron Douglas. This entry describes Johnson’s career. Johnson was a scholar, a researcher, and a policymaker, but perhaps one of his greatest skills was in the role of convener. He convened a group of African America’s most talented artists, writers, poets, and musicians, which blossomed into one of the most productive intellectual and cultural movements—the Harlem Renaissance. In 1924, he convened a grand dinner seeking philanthropic donations to establish literary awards for the under-recognized stars of the Harlem Renaissance. Later, at Fisk University, Johnson attracted Black intellectuals such as Arna Bontemps, E. Franklin Frazier, James Weldon Johnson, and Horace Mann to ultimately create a new intellectual renaissance at Fisk University. Johnson went on to convene teams of researchers to form the Fisk Race Relations Department and study race relations across the global diaspora. Johnson’s research, using the survey method combined with a case study approach, provided a voice to the oppressed and disenfranchised. Scholarly works such as Shadow of the Plantation, Growing Up in the Black Belt: Negro Youth in the Rural South, and Patterns of Negro Segregation became landmark studies that provided an understanding of the impact of segregation on the American Negro. Beginning in 1944, he convened annual Race Relations Institutes where Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many White activists came together in desegregated spaces in the midst of the segregated South. Within the intellectual oasis that he helped to shape at Fisk University, Johnson built a rigorous research infrastructure that rivaled the best of the majority White institutions. His academic training at Chicago under the direction of Robert E. Park had provided a theoretical underpinning that served as the foundation of Johnson’s race relations model. The Fisk Race Relations Institute provided leadership to the field of race relations.
Over the objection of W. E. B. Du Bois, the board hired Johnson as the first African American President of Fisk University. His mentor and former teacher, Robert E. Park, retired from University of Chicago and finished his academic career working alongside Johnson at Fisk. As Fisk University president, Johnson continued to attract substantial funding for Fisk and to develop innovative academic programs such as the Basic College for talented young teenagers who matriculated at Fisk University in their mid-teens. Johnson continued to balance his research with his growing administrative duties in service to Fisk. He served, in addition, as consultant to the United Nations. Johnson was criticized for his relationship with his White philanthropic contacts as well as for his diplomatic demeanor. His groundbreaking research paradigm was well respected within academic circles, even though Johnson would become less well known than some contemporaries. Still, he touched the social sciences and shaped policies on race relations within educational systems, the Armed Forces, and regional, national, and international policies. Although Johnson did not live to see the fulfillment of the Civil Rights Movement, his work laid the blueprint for policy development addressing racial discrimination and segregation. Known as the sideline activist, Johnson used research as a tool to shape policy that would improve race relations. His action research—and his study of urban, rural, Southern, and Northern America, as well as racial patterns and practices in other countries—provided the basis for disenfranchised groups to gain a voice in the face of segregation. Johnson, who struggled in his later years with migraine headaches, succumbed on a trip by train to a Fisk board of trustees meeting in New York in 1956. Sheila Renee Peters See also Chicago School of Race Relations; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Frazier, E. Franklin; Harlem Renaissance; Jim Crow; Marshall, Thurgood; Park, Robert E.
Further Readings
Gilpin, Patrick J. and Marybeth Gasman. 2003. Charles S. Johnson: Leadership Beyond the Veil in the Age of Jim Crow. Albany: State University of New York Press. Johnson, Charles S. 1934. Shadow of the Plantation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
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Johnson, Charles S. 1941. Growing Up in the Black Belt. New York: American Council on Education. Johnson, Charles S. 1943. Patterns of Negro Segregation. New York: Harper Brothers. Robbins, Richard. 1996. Sidelines Activist: Charles S. Johnson and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
JORDANIAN AMERICANS Jordanian Americans are the immigrants from Jordan, a kingdom of 5.7 million in 2007, and their descendants. Jordanian Americans represent one of the many diverse groups of the Arab nations—including Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, the Republic of Yemen, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates. Jordan, as an independent nation, is relatively young. However, the land it now occupies (about 35,000 square miles, bordered by Israel to the west, Syria to the north, Iraq to the northeast, and Saudi Arabia to the east and the south) has been inhabited for thousands of years, and historically, under great conflict. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 46,795 people born in Jordan were resident in the United States, of whom 60.1% were citizens. This entry will look at the background of immigration from Jordan to the United States and the contemporary picture of Jordanian Americans.
Immigration Patterns Since 1850, Arabs have been migrating to the United States, but Jordanian immigration began after World War II. According to census statistics, during the 1950s, about 5,000 Jordanians immigrated to the United States. The number of Jordanian immigrants doubled to about 11,000 in the 1960s and continually increased, reaching about 25,000 in the 1970s. This mass increase was mainly because of conflict with other Arab nations. About 2,900 Jordanians immigrated annually during the 1980s. However, an estimated 42,755 arrived during the 1990s.
Contemporary Community In recent years, people from Jordan have sought permanent residency and completed the naturalization
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process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2006, about 3,700 Jordanians immigrated to the United States annually. At least 2,400 Jordanian Americans have become naturalized citizens annually beginning with 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 2005 American Community Survey, there were 45,113 of Jordanian national origin in the United States in 2005. In geographic distribution, the top five states were California, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, and New York. Because Jordanians are at or have not reached third generation, many are not well “Americanized.” Therefore, Jordanian immigrants find comfort in settling into areas and neighborhoods that have already been established. Additionally, immigrants may face a language barrier. According to the 2000 census, 45.9% speak English less than “very well.” Their median family income was $45,532 compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Of those Jordanborn present here in 2000, 27% had entered the country before 2000. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Arab Americans; Assimilation; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Islamophobia; Muslim Americans; Refugees
Further Readings
Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/ publications/yearbook.shtm Horani, Albert. 1991. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Warner Books. Metz, Helen Chapin. 1991. Jordan, A Country Study. Washington, DC: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. Satloff, Robert B. 1986. Troubles on the East Bank: Challenges to the Domestic Stability of Jordan. New York: Praeger, 1986. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Jordan. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/ socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Washington, DC: Author. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
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JUVENILE JUSTICE The U.S. juvenile justice system has evolved considerably over the years, moving from informal discipline during the colonial era to more formal systems of social control—police, courts, corrections—in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, a number of themes and trends have remained essentially unchanged, as this entry shows. Juvenile justice institutions have focused their attention on lower-class children, particularly African Americans and the progeny of immigrants: the “dangerous classes.” Juvenile reformatories and courts, as well as newer innovations, have attempted to instill in lower-class offenders the habits of order, discipline, and self-control, fitting them into their “proper place” in the economic, political, social, cultural, and legal order. There has always been a wide disparity between the promise and practice of U.S. juvenile justice: Rehabilitation and social control have both been elusive goals.
Colonial America: Managing Troublesome Children Crime and delinquency were not serious problems during the colonial era. Colonial towns and villages were, as legal historian Lawrence Friedman concisely puts it, small and homogeneous “tight little islands.” The attention of the early colonists was focused on survival: building shelters, planting crops, maintaining security against Indian attacks. The colonists were intimately familiar with neighbors and kept them, as well as their own children, under close surveillance. Juvenile misbehavior and serious adult crime—for example, murder, rape, and robbery—were secondary concerns. Colonial criminal justice systems were small and informal, and there was no need for separate juvenile justice systems. Sheriffs, marshals, or constables—the title varied by colony—served as the chief law enforcement officers. Some colonies, following the example of England, used the night watch system: Citizens took turns patrolling the streets at night. The structure of court systems and the content of penal codes were also colony-specific. In some colonies, especially in the 17th century, religious congregations served as courts. Other colonies, following the example of England, adopted state-based judiciaries. But these court systems, much like the night watch, were staffed by amateurs. Adult criminals and juvenile offenders were processed through the same system of
justice, but juveniles received more lenient punishments. Throughout the colonial period, parents and family members were the first line of defense against juvenile misbehavior. Colonies also developed unique systems of punishment. Prisons and juvenile reformatories, both costly post-Revolution inventions, did not exist. Instead, adult criminals and juvenile offenders were subjected to a variety of colony- and case-specific forms of discipline. Minor offenders issued apologies, paid fines or restitution, wore badges of dishonor—for example, the letter “D” for drunkenness—or served time in the stocks. More serious offenses merited whipping. Some colonies built small jails or lockups to hold offenders for brief periods of incarceration. Criminals might be forced to serve apprenticeships. In extreme cases, they were banished from the community. Colonial punishments were generally based on the notion of reintegrative shaming: public humiliation followed by reintegration back into the community. The death penalty was prescribed for the most serious offenses. Juvenile offenders were not exempt from capital punishment. In 1642, 16-year-old Thomas Graunger, a servant, was executed in Massachusetts for bestiality—specifically, sodomizing a horse, cow, and chicken. In 1722, 17-year-old William Battin, an indentured servant, was executed in Pennsylvania for arson and murder. In 1786, 12-year-old Hannah Ocuish was hung for stoning and strangling a young child. However, capital punishment was rarely used for adult or juvenile offenders.
19th Century: The Juvenile Reformatory Movement The end of the U.S. Revolution set the stage for a variety of extraordinary political, economic, and legal transformations. The ratification of the Constitution and Bill of Rights laid the foundation for the rise of democracy, as well as new legal rights and legal institutions. The introduction of capitalism transformed the economic system, including production, distribution, and consumption and exchange networks. During the 19th century, the United States became a world economic and political power. The arrival of millions of immigrants sparked economic growth and laid the foundation for the rise of big cities. But economic bounty came with a cost. Old U.S. residents, who traced their roots to England, viewed the new immigrants—Irish immigrants early in the century and later Germans, Italians, and Russians—as biologically,
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psychologically, socially, culturally, and morally inferior. Xenophobia and class conflict intensified. The emancipation of millions of Black slaves in 1865 exacerbated U.S. anxieties, particularly in the South. Rising city-related social problems—crime, delinquency, drinking, and immorality—convinced many U.S. residents that immigrants and Blacks were virtually social dynamite. Armageddon, from this perspective, was at hand. New strategies of social control were needed to maintain social order. Formal police departments replaced the inefficient night watch system and neighbor surveillance. New laws were written to define the limits of acceptable behavior and control the “dangerous classes.” Courts became more formal, and amateur parttime judges were replaced with trained lawyers. Prisons were opened to punish and deter adult criminal offenders. Put simply, 19th-century U.S. residents introduced more complex state-specific criminal justice systems to tame, train, and discipline the criminal classes. U.S. residents in the 19th century were also concerned with increases in juvenile misbehavior, particularly in urban areas. The opening of the New York House of Refuge, the nation’s first juvenile reformatory, on January 1, 1825, was a pivotal event in the history of the U.S. criminal justice system. This marked the birth of a separate juvenile justice system in the United States. Juvenile offenders would no longer—except in extreme cases—be committed to adult prisons. More importantly, the New York House of Refuge, in theory, provided children with kindly treatment and benevolent reform. A carefully crafted regimen of reform—education, labor, religion, classification, and post-release supervision (indenture and later parole)—was to steer youthful lower-class offenders away from the temptations of the city and prepare them to become respectable citizens. The New York House of Refuge was hailed as a new model for saving criminally inclined and troublesome children. Other states followed New York’s example. The opening of the Boston House of Reformation in 1826 and the Philadelphia House of Refuge in 1828 set the stage for the birth of the juvenile reformatory movement. By 1857, thirteen reformatories had opened in the United States. By 1876, fifty-one were in operation. Nineteenth-century reformers believed that they had found the magical elixir for juvenile crime and misbehavior. There was, however, a much darker side to 19thcentury juvenile reformatories. These institutions were, in fact, miniature prisons. Beyond that, reformatories
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employed four versions of “treatment” and “reform.” White males received the most intense academic education and vocational training and were prepared to take their place in society as obedient lower-class workers. White females, the second priority, received training aimed at making them domestics and good wives and mothers of the next generation of lower-class workers. Black boys were denied vocational and academic skills and were prepared to assume their “proper place” in the economic order: obedient lower-class laborers. Black girls were stigmatized by race and gender. Reformatory regimens prepared them for the lowest domestic duties. Ultimately, they would raise and train the next generation of “nigger workers.” Race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and social class were, then, key driving forces behind the “rehabilitation” of 19thcentury juvenile offenders.
Modern Juvenile Justice: The Rediscovery of Punishment In the 20th and 21st centuries, the United States has been marked by increasing urbanization, new waves of immigration, more industrialization, new economic relations, technological innovations (e.g., electricity, telephone, automobile, computers and the Internet) and increasing civil liberties for African Americans and women—in short, a march toward modernity. But concerns with juvenile misbehavior remain unchanged. Modern juvenile justice history can be divided into two distinct eras. The period from 1899 through the 1960s was dominated by a new legal innovation, the juvenile court, which was aimed at rehabilitation. The period from the 1970s into the 21st century has been marked by the introduction of more complex forms of juvenile social control structured around a recycled goal: punishment. However, the issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and social class have continued to shape the aims, operation, and evolution of the U.S. juvenile justice system. The opening of the nation’s first juvenile courts in 1899 in Denver and Chicago was, perhaps, the single most important event in the history of juvenile justice. Juvenile courts were introduced to remove youthful offenders and troubled children from adult courts and, in theory, provide them with kindly reform. Legal rights for children were, then, not necessary. Children who appeared in juvenile courts did not have the right to an attorney. There was no jury. Juveniles did not have the right to notification of the charges against them or the right to confront their
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accusers or call witnesses on their behalf. Courts proceedings were under the direct control of the judge. The judge asked questions, weighed evidence, decided guilt and innocence, and meted out sentences—a model that remained essentially unchallenged and unchanged into the late 1960s. Historians have discovered, however, that early juvenile courts failed to achieve many of their stated goals. Decisions made by judges were often arbitrary and capricious. Traditional levels of proof required in adult court—guilt beyond a reasonable doubt—were not employed. As a result, juveniles were sometimes sent to reformatories even though the charges against them were unproven. Complicating matters, dependent, neglected, and incorrigible children could be sent to juvenile reformatories with hardened delinquents, including murderers. From the turn of the century into the 1960s, the decisions of juvenile court judges often reflected prevailing racist, nativist, and sexist views. Juvenile courts, like reformatories, were aimed at human refuse management. The shroud of secrecy surrounding the U.S. juvenile justice system was unceremoniously lifted in the 1960s and 1970s. The U.S. Supreme Court, ruling for the first time in history on a juvenile justice case, declared in 1966 that there was a wide disparity between the promise and practice of the juvenile court system. The Court issued a series of rulings in the late 1960s and early 1970s that afforded juveniles many of the same legal rights as adults, with the exception of the right to a jury trial. The findings of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice (1967), a major governmental investigation of adult and juvenile justice, also raised questions about the alleged benevolent impact of juvenile courts and reformatories. Research by academic criminologists, an emerging discipline, provided historical and empirical evidence to buttress these concerns. The juvenile justice system was radically transformed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. States created separate legal procedures in juvenile court for delinquents and status offenders (dependent, neglected, and incorrigible children), and the federal government mandated that status offenders and delinquents not be incarcerated together in juvenile reformatories. Overt forms of racism and discrimination were prohibited. Diversion programs were introduced to keep children out of juvenile court. Community-based corrections programs were expanded to keep juveniles out of reformatories. Some states actually closed their
reformatories to avoid the abuses of the past. In short, the U.S. juvenile justice system attempted to fulfill its historical mission: treatment and reform. The movement to help, treat and reform juveniles was, however, short-lived. The rise of the conservative movement in the late 1970s, culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980, marked the introduction of a new approach to juvenile justice. Juveniles, much like adults, were increasingly regarded as free, rational, and hedonistic actors who needed and deserved punishment. During the last 2 decades of the 20th century, the juvenile justice system moved in a new direction. States have introduced boot camps and reopened reformatories. “Softhearted” diversion- and community-based corrections programs have been terminated. Chronic juvenile offenders have been transferred back to adult courts and given long, mandatory sentences aimed at punishment, deterrence, and incapacitation. America’s new dangerous classes—poor, uneducated, city-raised Blacks, Hispanics, and “White trash”—are still being prepared to assume their “proper place” in the economic, political, social, cultural, and legal order. One could conclude that with the return of punishment, modern U.S. juvenile justice has “progressed” into the 18th century. Alexander W. Pisciotta See also African Americans; Crime and Race; Criminal Processing; Drug Use; Gangs; Pachucos/Pachucas; Xenophobia
Further Readings
Friedman, Lawrence M. 1994. Crime and Punishment in American History. New York: Basic Books. Mennel, Robert M. 1973. Thorns and Thistles: Juvenile Delinquents in the United States, 1825–1940. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. Pisciotta, Alexander W. 1994. Benevolent Repression: Social Control and the American Reformatory-Prison Movement. New York: New York University Press. Platt, Anthony M. 1977. The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Schlossman, Steven L. 1977. Love and the American Delinquent: The Theory and Practice of “Progressive” Juvenile Justice, 1825–1920. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Streib, Victor L. 1987. Death Penalty for Juveniles. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
K Because of the age and location of the Kennewick Man, the Corps decided that the claimant tribes were indeed affiliated with the remains and so repatriation for reburial at an undisclosed location would be proper. The claimant tribes included the Yakima Nation, the Nez Perce, and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Before the Corps could return the remains, however, a group of eight forensic scientists filed suit in federal court disputing whether the skeleton was indeed Native American. They sought an injunction of the repatriation of Kennewick Man until they could first study the bones. Ancient human remains of the age of Kennewick Man are very rare in North America, and paleoanthropologists consider them to be source material that opens a window into prehistory on the continent. From the perspective of the scientific community, the loss of even one of these scarce skeletons to a secret burial place is tantamount to losing a critical volume that completes a larger collection telling the vital story of the human narrative. Obversely, the Native American community places a larger emphasis on continuity of respect for the dead and the undisrupted spiritual narrative of the tribe. Moreover, many Native American religions and faiths are based on tenets holding that they were the original people of this continent and have always been here. Thus, ancient human remains discovered in North America are by definition Native American and should be considered revered ancestors of present-day Native Americans. Scientific discoveries proving that non-Native-American peoples might have predated Native Americans in the Western Hemisphere would run directly counter to such beliefs. The views of
KENNEWICK MAN Kennewick Man is the appellation bestowed upon the prehistoric human remains of an individual discovered in the Columbia River at its confluence with the Snake River, near Kennewick, Washington, during the summer of 1996. A legal battle ensued between the scientific community and the Native American community as to whether the bones should be studied or buried.
Discovery and Disputed Claims Kennewick Man’s near-complete skeleton had washed into the riverbed from a nearby eroding bank. The remains were examined by Dr. James Chatters, a local anthropologist, who initially described the morphology of the bones as that of a Caucasian middle-aged male. Although Chatters initially considered the skeleton to be that of an early pioneer, a stone spearpoint lodged in the pelvis caused Chatters to order further analysis, which revealed an age of over 9,000 years. Because the skeleton was discovered in a navigable waterway, it came under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency subject to federal laws and regulations. Upon announcement of the find, several Native American tribes laid claim to the bones on the basis of shared ancestry, under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA). This federal law allows for a claim of repatriation of Native American remains to affiliated tribes. Among the many bases for such a claim is a showing that the claimant tribes historically occupied the area in which the remains were found. 801
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Native Americans are given far greater legal weight in NAGPRA than those of the scientific community. Consequently, a strict application of the law would have resulted in repatriation and reburial.
Legal Resolution of Kennewick Man’s Case The federal case erupted into a media frenzy as a dramatic tug-of-war ensued between scientists and Native Americans. Because Kennewick Man exhibited morphology quite distinct from what Native Americans typically exhibit, news reports began to provocatively ask what a person with Caucasoid, as opposed to moreAsian features, was doing in North America before the Native Americans. That, in turn, drew a third claim from a group of Norse pagans, based on the presumed White racial features of the bones. However, only the Native American claim was defended by the federal government against the plaintiff scientists in district court, which eventually ruled that Kennewick Man could be studied because the tribes claiming the remains could not be proved lineal descendants. The Department of Interior had previously found Kennewick Man to be culturally affiliated with the claimant tribes. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the lower court’s decision, ruling that the government’s finding of cultural affiliation was tenuous and unproven. Judge Ronald Gould wrote, “No cognizable link exits between Kennewick Man and modern Columbia Plateau Indians.” Subsequent rulings and approved study plans enabled the plaintiff scientists to begin their long-awaited study of the remains. Kennewick Man is housed at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum, in Seattle. Studies on the bones continue to be carried out. Recent discoveries include that he did not physically resemble the Native Americans of that location or time, that the stone spearpoint in his pelvis was not the cause of death (it had healed over), and that he was buried by other humans with his feet facing downstream and his head elevated five degrees to face the eastern rising sun. Leaders of the Yakima Nation remain dismayed that Kennewick Man is being studied by scientists. Nevertheless, an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court has been ruled out so as not to risk extending the negative precedent on NAGPRA’s interpretation with regard to prehistoric human remains to the rest of the country. Other claims by Native American groups to
repatriate prehistoric human remains are ongoing, such as that by Great Basin Intertribal NAGPRA coalition to secure the 10,000-year-old “Spirit Cave Man,” discovered outside Reno, Nevada, in the 1940s. Although this discovery is within the 9th Circuit, it is unclear whether the facts will require the district court to strictly follow the Kennewick Man precedent. Further legal battles are likely to ensue in the courts until NAGPRA is adequately amended to either specifically allow or disallow scientific study of particularly ancient human remains that do not exhibit physical features of modern-day Native Americans. Michael J. Kelly See also Blood Quantum; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990; Native Americans
Further Readings
Bonnichsen v. United States, 357 F.3d 962 (9th Cir. 2004). Chatters, James C. 2001. Ancient Encounters: Kennewick Man and the First Americans. New York: Simon & Schuster. Kelly, Michael J. 1999. “A Skeleton in the Legal Closet: The Discovery of ‘Kennewick Man’ Crystalizes the Debate over Federal Law Governing Disposal of Ancient Human Remains.” University of Hawai‘i Law Review 21(1):41–72. Thomas, David Hurst. 2000. Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity. New York: Basic Books.
KENYA Kenya is a nation of 36.9 million people, according to 2007 estimates, and is located on the east coast of Africa. Its neighbors to the north include the Horn countries of Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. To the south is the Republic of Tanzania, and to the west is Uganda, with the Indian Ocean to the east. The country has temperate climates, except along the coast and also to the north where the environment is more one of semidesert vegetation, dry, and generally hot. In the Central Highlands and the Rift Valley are located some of the most fertile lands. This entry discusses the history of Kenya and current political, economic, and social conditions.
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Colonial Background The first British came to Kenya in 1890 under the flagship of the Imperial British East African Company, and administrators as well as missionaries followed. Settler farmers also started occupying some of the most fertile land in Kenya (30% of the most fertile land was occupied by British settlers). Kenya became a British colony in 1920, and the British settlers decided Kenya was to be their home forever and had no intentions of leaving the country. They appropriated for themselves the most fertile lands, often referred to as the “White Highlands.” Africans could not own land in this exclusive area, and they existed only as workers or squatters. The most affected ethnic group in the land issue was the Kikuyu of Central Highlands of the Kiambu, Nyeri, and Murang’a districts. Their population had been growing in numbers, and when the British came, the Kikuyu was the largest ethnic group and continues to be—to date, numbering about 7 million, or one-fifth of Kenya’s total population of 30 million people. The Kikuyu were forced to live in crowded situations in the Central Province. They were also forced to work as cheap labor for the White settlers. Taxes were imposed in the colony and Western culture was introduced, and the Africans were forced, for example, through Christianity, to abandon many of their cultural traditions.
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Many Kenya tribes felt deprived of their land, and the Kikuyu were the most agitated group, mainly because they were in close proximity to the land settled by the British. They were politically astute and started organizing political groups as early as the 1920s under the auspices of the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA). In 1928, they sent one of their own, Jomo Kenyatta, to England to present to the King and the Home Office their grievances, especially related to their “stolen land” and racial discrimination in their own country. Such grievances went unattended, and this led to the violent movement, called the Mau Mau War, from 1952 through 1956. This was guerrilla-like war, where the majority of Kikuyu, Meru, and Embu youth went to the forests of Nyandarua and Mt. Kenya to fight against the British authorities, who firmly governed the country. While there is no unanimous agreement as to whether the British left and gave Kenya independence because of the violent Mau Mau, most agree that the Mau Mau disrupted peace and stability in Kenya. The movement also instilled fear in the settlers and disrupted their farming; they started to have second thoughts about making Kenya their permanent home. The colony also started being a liability, and the Home Office back in London had grown tired of subsidizing the Kenya colonial government. Thus, the Mau Mau movement accelerated Kenya’s road to independence, which came in 1963. The first Kenya president was Jomo Kenyatta, who had been jailed for 7 years, having been accused of leading the Mau Mau movement against the Kenya Europeans and the colonial government.
Current Situation Politiccs/Government
Kenyatta died in 1978, and his vice president, Daniel Arap Moi, took over. By the 1980s and 1990s, he had become a tyrannical dictator, clinging to power with all his might. In 1992, constitutional reforms in Kenya limited an individual to holding the presidency for two 5-year terms. In 2002, Moi was forced to give up power. His anointed successor, Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of the first president, was defeated at the polls. That also saw the end of KANU (Kenya African National Union), the ruling party since independence in 1963. President Mwai Kibaki, the current president, took over on December 31, 2002. He is about to finish his
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first 5-year term, and he has already declared that he will be contesting again when the elections are called in December 2007. The Econ nom my
Kenya’s economy is based mainly on agriculture. The primary cash crops are tea, coffee, pyrethrum, livestock, and dairy products. Tourism has also been a major foreign income earner and is second to agriculture. The first 10 years after independence saw a booming economy, growing at about 5%. The Moi years, especially the1980s and 1990s, saw a declining economy in Kenya; and, in the late 1990s, there was negative growth. Corruption was at its highest level with scandals like “Goldenberg” (a scheme hatched by government officials to siphon out money under the pretext that Kenya was to export gold—which it does not mine). The economy has been improving since the new government came to power in December 2002. While the formal economy has not been performing well, the informal economy, especially in the large and mediumsized towns, has been booming and indeed is the mainstay of the Kenyan economy besides agriculture and tourism. More people are today employed in the informal economy than in the formal economy (60% and 40%, respectively). Socciety y
Before the coming of the British in the late 1800s, Kenya was inhabited by over forty ethnic groups. Along the coast, in the towns of Mombasa, Malindi, and Lamu, there had been a long association with outsiders, mainly Portuguese and Arabs, who fought regularly for the control of the coastal towns, especially Mombasa. In the interior were a number of ethnic groups who interacted with each other, sometimes on a friendly basis and at other times at war. The Kikuyu and the Maasai were such an example, sometimes warring and sometimes experiencing friendly relations, for example, involving intermarriage. In western Kenya, the Luo and the Luhya as well as the Kalenjins also had such relations. Today, there are at least forty-two different ethnic groups in Kenya. While they have generally coexisted and do speak a unifying national language, Kiswahili, there have been politically motivated animosities, especially in the Rift Valley. There were tribal clashes
during the Moi regime, especially between the Kalenjin (Moi’s group) and the Kikuyu, and especially in Nakuru district. Conflict also occurred between the Maasai and the Kikuyu and between the Nandi and the Luhya and the Nandi and the Luo. Social class formation has been a continuing problem in Kenya, where the gap between the rich and the poor has continued to widen. This has led to various types of crime, especially carjacking, violent robbery, and ordinary thuggery. Social justice and equality will remain a challenge in Kenya and will have to be addressed through sound policies and programs. Kinuthia Macharia See Appendix A See also Africans in the United States; Colonialism; Diaspora; HIV/AIDS; Informal Economy
Further Readings
Kinuthia Macharia and Muigai Kanyua. 2006. The Social Context of the Mau Mau Movement (1952–1960). Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Republic of Kenya. 1999. Kenya Population Census. Nairobi, Kenya: Government Press.
KING, MARTIN LUTHER, JR. (1929–1968) The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was one of the most significant U.S. figures of the 20th century, not just for Black America, but for the entire nation. Leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), advocate of nonviolent resistance, and an eloquent spokesman for the Civil Rights Movement, King set events and ideas in motion that were to shape the country, as shown in this entry.
Early Years The great civil rights proponent was born with the name Michael Luther King, Jr., just before noon on Tuesday, January 15, 1929, at the King family’s home at 501 Auburn Avenue in northeast Atlanta, Georgia, in the house that belonged to the parents of his “Mother Dear.” His father was Michael Luther King, Sr., the prominent pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, and his mother was Alberta Williams King, a musician.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1929–1968)
Young Michael was the second of their three children. In 1937, when Michael was 8 years old, his father changed his own name, and, by extension, the name of his son, to Martin Luther King, Sr., in honor of the great Protestant reformer Martin Luther. By the standards of the day, the King family was comfortably middle class, and, by all accounts, young Martin’s childhood was no different from that of other middle-class Black children of the 1930s. The expectations the Reverend and Mrs. King had for the King children reflected the temperament and values of the middle class. The Reverend King, Sr., was the wellrespected patriarch of the extended King family, some of whom were part of the King household. Together, they provided all of the instrumental (food, clothing, and shelter) and expressive (love, identity, and security) functions that are expected of stable, strong families. King’s early years were “normal,” with the usual high jinks of youth. He played with two White boys whose parents owned a store in the Sweet Auburn Avenue neighborhood. His father’s sense of the injustices and indignities Blacks suffered during his early years was reflected in his apparent decision to try to shelter his children from racial discrimination. The young King’s first realization of racial discrimination came when the parents of his White childhood playmates stopped their children from playing with him because he was a “Negro.” The memory of this loss remained with him for the rest of his life. The religious values and sense of justice espoused by the King family formed the foundation of the young King’s vision of a better world. He joined Ebenezer Baptist Church, where his father was the pastor, on May 1, 1936, and his father, his family, and his church were the greatest influences on his development. His father, a graduate of Morehouse College, in Atlanta, was an exceptional preacher who believed that the minister and the church should be committed to the social and spiritual uplifting of Black people.
Education Martin Luther King, Jr., attended Atlanta public schools. His high school friends gave him the nickname “Tweeds” because of his penchant for good clothes, especially those made from tweed cloth. In 1944, at the end of eleventh grade and at the age of 15, King enrolled as a freshman at Morehouse College. On his admission to and matriculation at Morehouse, Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, sixth president of the college,
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said that no one could have predicted King’s future. He was a typical college student, concerned about his appearance and dating the young women at nearby Spelman College, a school for Black women. After flirting with the idea of a professional career in medicine or law, he majored in sociology at Morehouse. At Morehouse College, King came under the powerful influence of Dr. Mays. Dr. Mays was a scholaractivist and a renowned preacher in his own right, and he instilled the call to service in the men of Morehouse during the 27 years that he led the college. King was one of “Benny’s Boys,” as Morehouse graduates who studied at the college under the leadership of Dr. Mays often called themselves. Although King was a member of a family of preachers when he entered Morehouse, he had not decided on a career in the pulpit, and by this time he had taken a nonliteral interpretation of the scriptures. King began to consider a future in the ministry during a religion course that he took under the tutelage of George D. Kelsey, a professor of religion at Morehouse. With his father’s approval, King preached his trial sermon at Ebenezer, on February 25, 1948, less than 4 months before he graduated from Morehouse. After completing the requirements for the bachelor’s degree in sociology at Morehouse in 1948, King continued his studies at Crozer Theology Seminary, in Chester, Pennsylvania. At Crozer, he embraced the “evangelical liberalism” of Dr. George W. Davis. Davis introduced King to the ideas of Walter Rauschenbusch, the principal exponent of the early 20th-century Social Gospel movement. He also studied the communist theories of Karl Marx and the theological perspectives of Reinhold Niebuhr. The most valuable experience that King had at Crozer may have been social rather than intellectual, as this was the first time that he had lived in an integrated social setting for any length of time. Whereas King did not have a stellar academic career at Morehouse, he graduated at the top of his class at Crozer in 1951. He continued his academic career at Boston University, in Massachusetts, where he finished the doctorate in June 1955. His dissertation was titled “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.” Before he completed the requirements for the PhD, King married Coretta Scott, the daughter of Obie and Bernice Scott, of Marion, Alabama. She had studied music at Antioch College, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and
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was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music when King met her. The marriage was strong, and the couple would come to symbolize the movement. Before he completed his dissertation, King accepted the call to become the pastor of historic Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, in Montgomery, Alabama. So, in 1955, Martin and Coretta moved to Montgomery, a city that prided itself on being the “Cradle of the Confederacy.” Over the years, Dr. and Mrs. King became the parents of Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott, and Bernice Albertine.
Civil Rights Movement On December 1, 1955, Mrs. Rosa Parks, a seamstress at the Montgomery Fair Department Store, refused to give up her seat to a White man in the segregated section on a city bus, sparking the successful Montgomery bus boycott. King emerged as the leader and voice of the Montgomery Improvement Association, which helped to prosecute the struggle against racial discrimination on the city’s buses. Jo Anne Robinson and the Women’s Political Council were also pivotal to the successful outcome of the struggle. King devoted the remainder of his life to the cause of civil rights for Blacks and justice for mankind. To facilitate his crusade, he and other religious leaders formed the SCLC in 1957. The headquarters were first located in Montgomery but were soon moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where SCLC occupied permanent offices on Auburn Avenue, two blocks west of King’s birthplace. King was SCLC’s first president and held that office until his assassination in 1968. As the African American Civil Rights Movement escalated with the sit-down protest events by four college freshmen from North Carolina A & T College, King was arrested with college students protesting the discriminatory policies and practices of Rich’s Department Store in Atlanta. His arrest and incarceration in the DeKalb County Jail and the Reidsville, Georgia, State Prison, and the intercession by Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, were major events in the civil rights struggle. King’s credibility among activists was made stronger by his arrest and resolve in the face of untold dangers. In 1963, King made two important philosophical contributions to the Black struggle for freedom in America. The first was his powerful “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” written during his arrest and incarceration on Good Friday, April 12, 1963. The
letter became his most systematic explanation of civil disobedience. He bluntly warned of a “frightening racial nightmare” if Blacks surrendered to bitterness and racial hatred. A little more than 4 months later, on August 28, 1963, King gave his “I Have A Dream” speech, one of the most famous speeches of the 20th century, at the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs. In January 1964, Time magazine named him “Man of the Year.” Dr. King’s persuasive explanation for the Black Civil Rights Movement and the other tragic events of 1963—the murder of Medgar Evers, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy—provided the impetus and context for passage of the civil rights bill. The Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, on July 2, 1964. Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo, Norway, on December 10, 1964.
Martin Luther King, Jr. King, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is shown speaking at the Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. King delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech” on this occasion. He was just 34 at the time. Source: National Archives.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1929–1968)
Black Consciousness With the establishment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, King and his fellow crusaders in the struggle for freedom turned their attention to voting rights. After a successful campaign to get the U.S. Congress to eradicate the obstacles to voting for U.S. citizens, which included the March from Selma to Montgomery, the voting rights bill was passed, and President Johnson signed it into law on August 6, 1965. With the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, many civil rights protesters became “civil rights testers.” But the winds of Black consciousness were changing, and Willie Ricks (Mukasa) gave the rallying cry for “Black Power” at the James Meredith March in Mississippi, in June 1966. Stokely Carmichael began the popular use of the slogan when he screamed it from the back of a flatbed truck at a voters’ registration rally in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1966. King, ever conscious of the tenor and temperament of his time, began to shift the focus of SCLC in the struggle for freedom and justice. In 1967, he published Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? and devoted a chapter to a discussion of “Black Power,” He saw Black Power as “a cry of disappointment,” as “a call to Black people to amass the political and economic strength to achieve their legitimate goals,” and as “a psychological call to manhood.” As a counterpoint to the tenets of Black Power as he had come to understand them, toward the end of 1967 King began planning the Poor People’s Campaign. By this time, he had also begun to speak out against the Vietnam War. King called for “a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society,” but he did not live to see the realization of his “Beloved Community,” where Blacks and Whites of all social strata would join together for their salvation. According to Crane Brinton’s The Anatomy of Revolution, in the first stage of a revolution, writers and other intellectuals criticize existing conditions. King’s message can be seen as part of this stage. In the second stage, there is widespread dissatisfaction, including riots and assassinations. In 1967, King led a march of thousands on the United Nations headquarters in New York City to protest the War in Vietnam. In the summer of that year, riots occurred in many northern cities. Several attempts had been made to kill King over the 12-plus years he was directly involved in the Black struggle for freedom, including
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the stabbing by Izola Ware Curry in New York City, on September 17, 1958. Late in the afternoon of April 4, 1968, an assassin succeeded. King’s death came while he was in Memphis, Tennessee, leading a march in support of striking Black sanitation workers, a demonstration of his belief that Blacks of all social strata must join together for their salvation. He was shot to death as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel, and James Earl Ray was charged with and convicted of his murder. King’s funeral was held at Ebenezer Baptist Church, in Atlanta, and thousands attended a memorial service at Morehouse College, his beloved alma mater. His body was borne to the Morehouse campus by a mule-drawn wagon. King’s body was first interred in the Southview Cemetery in southeast Atlanta, but later, he was entombed at the King Memorial site on Auburn Avenue, one block south of his birthplace and adjacent to the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. His epitaph, “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty I’m free at last,” is recited by people of all races and ages around the world. On November 20, 2006, Coretta Scott King’s body was entombed beside her husband. Her epitaph resonates in so many ways: “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Cor. 13:13. Marcellus C. Barksdale See also African Americans; African American Studies; Black Power; Boycott; Carmichael, Stokely; Civil Rights Movement; Civil Rights Movement, Women and; Parks, Rosa; Religion, African Americans; Segregation; Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Further Readings
Branch, Taylor. 1988. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63. New York: Simon & Schuster. Branch, Taylor. 1998. Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65. New York: Simon & Schuster. Branch, Taylor. 2006. At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68. New York: Simon & Schuster. Fairclough, Adam. 1995. Martin Luther King, Jr. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Farris, Christine King. 2003. My Brother Martin: A Sister Remembers Growing Up with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks. Forman, James. 1985. The Making of Black Revolutionaries. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
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Garrow, David J. 1988. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. New York: Vintage Books. King, Coretta Scott. 1970. My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Avon Books. King, Martin Luther, Jr. 1968. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Mays, Benjamin E. 1971. Born to Rebel: An Autobiography. New York: Scribner’s.
KINSHIP Kinship is the relation of a group of persons of common ancestry and in some instances others who have been adopted formally or informally into the family. Although the degree of kinship varies across different groups, it plays an important role for all racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Although the definition of family and kin has changed throughout U.S. history, kinship still plays a defining role in the function of familial groups, especially ethnic and racial minority families. This entry examines kinship historically and currently for the major racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Notions of kinship vary considerably across both settings and minority groups. The term kinship is sometimes used to include only people related by common ancestry, or “blood.” Other times, it is used in a broader sense, in which a whole group shares kinship. At still other times, it includes those with whom one feels closeness. These latter uses are reflected in the related concepts of Confucian filial piety and the Christian concept of charity toward others. In all of these uses, individuals may be expected to forgo their own wants and needs for needs of the larger group. Kinship, then, is the tie formed through familial relationships or larger group relationships that bring economic, emotional, or other support. Family kinship connotes a tie that is sufficiently strong that the kin group is expected to help members when needed. Hence, this expectation explains why some people, especially in immigrant groups, are immediately integrated into a family structure that provides economic and social well-being. Kinship relations also help new immigrants while they establish themselves in their new countries. Kin give important advice and emotional support. To some, these ties may be the only defining relationships they have. These helps are
expected and often provided without request. Thus, kinship is key to group identity and even survival. Classically, kinship units provided sustenance for all of the members of the group. Members had a duty to provide for the survival of their extended families. Some argue that kinship historically was defined only as it related to human reproduction and biological relatedness. With the change from a traditional, agriculturalbased society into a more modern one, the view of kinship ties broadened. The unit of kinship remained the ancestral family but was now viewed as providing emotional support as well as sustenance. During industrialization, kinship became more limited for European Americans, with a focus on the nuclear family instead of the extended family. Minority families have often relied on extended family to compensate for grinding poverty and as a source of emotional support. Thus, these families have tended to retain larger family ties that provide financial, social, and emotional support. Kinship for African Americans began immediately as they arrived here as indentured servants and, for most, as slaves. Though often from different groups in Africa, they melded together as a community, albeit a suppressed one. Kinship played a vital role in the emotional health of slaves in their transition from African freedom to American slavery. Plantation slaves were related by blood or marriage. For example, it is estimated that slaves on the Good Hope Plantation of South Carolina from 1835 to 1856 were related by “blood” to 28% of the other slaves. Geographic isolation and oppression often made for tight communities of related slaves. As slaves were bought and sold, the kinship ties were reduced, but a sense of a larger kinship of all slaves emerged. Evidence of kinship among the African American community continued after slavery, as numerous ex-slaves traveled long distances to find family members from whom they had been separated. African American kinship declined in the 20th century, as families became more nuclear and less extended. Kinship ties were further reduced in the African American community by the mass movement of many to urban areas and to the North. Whereas approximately 90% of African Americans lived in the South at the turn of the 20th century, only about half lived there by midcentury. Though kinship relations were often maintained, the ties were not as complex and close because kin did not live close by. Nevertheless, kinship ties of African Americans remain strong today, with African American grandparents playing a crucial role in child rearing and supervision.
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According to reports from the 2000 census, 51.7% of African American grandparents had grandchildren living with them, with neither parent present. The grandparents have prime responsibility for these grandchildren. Often, grandparents become the guardians because the parents are in prison, on drugs, or financially unable to care for their own children. Grandmothers are the main guardians for their grandchildren, with 64% of coresident grandparents being women. Guardianship of the grandchildren is a clear result of kinship ties. Regardless of how they may feel about the responsibility of child rearing again, grandparents prefer to raise and provide for their kin rather than have them in the state foster care system. These kinship relations also foster better opportunities for the children and parents to see one another. Kinship relations among African Americans are also strong because they band together for support against racism. Hispanics in the United States today are composed of quite separate and distinct groups based on country of origin. The majority of Hispanics in the United States are of Mexican ancestry, but the term Hispanic includes large groups of Puerto Ricans, both in Puerto Rico itself and in the continental United States; Cuban Americans; and people from a variety of other South American countries. All have a strong sense of kinship identity. Kinship ties are especially prevalent within immigrant groups and often result in “chain migration.” Newly arrived immigrants needing housing, food, and help finding employment usually move to locations where previous immigrants have settled. Another major component of Hispanic kinship is compadrazgo, the creation of godparents through ceremonial rituals. Compadrazgo began with the invasion of Europeans, who brought war and disease to the indigenous groups. Other natives became substitute parents or godparents to many orphaned children. These rituals can include baptism, communion, or the inclusion of a best man or woman at a marriage. Godparents became de facto members of the family. If birthparents are unable to provide for the children, the godparents assume full responsibility. Godparents also play an important function as role models for the children. Some argue that the economic functions of compadrazgo are diminishing but that it is still a vital source of emotional support. Among Asian Americans, kinship ties tend to be strong in part because of the experience of immigration but also in part because of the traditional ethic of
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filial piety: love, respect, and obedience to one’s parents and ancestors. As with other groups historically and Hispanic immigrants in the 20th century, new immigrants from Asia need support while settling. Typically, Asian families have strong expectations about care of kin. After acculturation, kinship ties remain intact. Indigenous groups in the Americas often had small societies that were highly endogamous, with a high sense of kinship. Native American kinship includes extended family and nonkin, as among other minority groups. Historically, nonkin formally became family members through rituals that conferred upon them the obligations and responsibilities of family and kin. The allotment policies and later the relocation policies of the U.S. government had the potential to substantially reduce the kinship ties of Native American groups. Though most Native Americans today live in urban areas, they often retain strong kinship ties and identity with tribal affiliations. In sum, most Americans have kinship ties. The strength and type of ties vary, however, among the various racial or ethnic groups in the United States. Recent immigration, group size, and historical and cultural factors are some of the influences that affect the type and strength of kinship ties found in various groups. Robyn J. Barrus and Cardell K. Jacobson See also Community Cohesion; Ethnic Group; Familism; Family; Immigration, U.S.; Peoplehood
Further Readings
Carsten, Janet. 2004. After Kinship. New York: Cambridge University Press. Franklin, Sarah and Susan McKinnon. 2001. Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Parkin, Robert and Linda Stone. 2004. Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Pasternak, Burton, Carol R. Ember, and Melvin Ember. 1997. Sex, Gender, and Kinship: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Rawick, George P. 1972. From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Schneider, David Murray. 1980. American Kinship: A Cultural Account. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
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Stone, Linda. 1997. Kinship and Gender: An Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. U.S. Census. 2003. Grandparents Living with Grandchildren: 2000. Available from http://www.census.gov/prod/2003 pubs/c2kbr-31.pdf
KITANO, HARRY H. L. (1926–2002) Harry H. L. Kitano was a pioneer in the development of cross-cultural and multicultural literature in the social sciences and the field of Asian American studies, applying a broad spectrum of sociological and behavioral science theories to enhance the understanding of intergroup and intragroup dynamics. His work explored cross-cultural interactions and illuminated the historical experiences and cultural contexts of various ethnic groups within the United States, with an emphasis on Asian American populations and the Japanese American population in particular.
Internment Camp Experience Born in San Francisco to immigrant parents, Kitano was raised in a family-owned hotel in Chinatown. In 1942, in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the federal government’s mandatory relocation of all persons of Japanese descent on the West Coast forced Kitano’s family into the Topaz concentration camp, in Utah, where he completed high school as the class valedictorian. In 1997, he served as keynote speaker for the graduation ceremony, at which he was awarded the high school diploma denied him by his incarceration. In 1945, Kitano moved to Milwaukee, where his talent as a trombone player led to his being hired by an African American jazz band. Due to prejudices and hostility toward persons of Japanese descent at the time, the band leader hired him on the condition that he assume a Chinese American identity while touring with the band, dubbing him “Harry Lee” (the initials “H. L.” represent this nom de guerre).
Education and Scholarship Returning to California, Kitano continued his education at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a BA in 1948, an MSW in 1951, and a PhD in 1958. His dissertation, The Child Care Center: A Study of
the Interaction Among One-Parent Children, Parents, and School (1963), resulted in his first major publication. The sociological analysis in his 1969 book, Japanese Americans: The Evolution of a Subculture, was the first scholarly study of Japanese Americans from their earliest immigration in the 19th century to post–World War II. He published the well-regarded American Racism: Exploration of the Nature of Prejudice (1970) (with Roger Daniels) and, shortly thereafter, Race Relations (1974), which became an important text in universities across the nation, into its fifth edition. He authored over 150 books and articles, including such major works as The Japanese Americans (1987), Asian Americans: Emerging Minorities (1988, 1995, 2001, with Roger Daniels), and Generations and Identity: The Japanese Americans (1993). His articles in academic journals were based on his empirical research in a number of areas, including interracial marriages, juvenile delinquency, mental health, and alcohol abuse among various Asian American populations. The impact of Kitano’s wartime relocation experience is reflected in his scholarly work, most notably in two of his books: Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress (1986, 1991, with Roger Daniels and Sandra Taylor) and Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress (1999, with Mitchell Maki and S. Megan Berthold). The latter chronicles and presents a theoretical structure for understanding the decades-long struggle and development of the movement and multiple forces that led to the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided redress to survivors of the Japanese American incarceration during World War II. Securing a grant from the trust fund established by this act, Kitano served as the driving force for a historic 3-day conference, “Voices of Japanese American Redress,” held at UCLA. The presentations and group discussions brought together for the first time the diverse segments of those involved in the redress movement across time, including scholars, political activists, legislators, and individuals from the community, to discuss the process and its effects. His work and life had come full circle to a satisfying culmination. Kitano was deeply committed to his academic career at UCLA, which spanned 4 decades. He was a full professor, with a joint appointment in the departments of Social Welfare and Sociology. As professor
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emeritus after his retirement in 1995, he continued his scholarship and his service in various positions within the university, including acting chair of the Department of Social Welfare (1997–1998). Throughout his career, he held a number of influential positions within UCLA and other academic institutions, including acting director of the Asian American Study Center (1971–1972, 1988–1989), Academic Affirmative Action Officer (1977–1982), codirector of the UCLA Alcohol Research Center (1979–1981), and visiting professor at universities in Hawai‘i, Japan, and England. Dr. Kitano was recognized for his contributions both within the university and the broader community. He was appointed the first incumbent of the endowed chair in Japanese American Studies at UCLA, the only academic chair of its kind in an American university. The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) presented him with honors on three separate occasions: Nisei of the Biennium, Nikkei of the Year, and the JACL Pacific Southwest District Annual Award; the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission honored him as Outstanding Volunteer. He was a member of numerous governmental and community boards and commissions over the years, including the Board of Visitors, Equal Opportunity Management Institute, U.S. Department of Defense (chair); the Advisory Committee of the Columbia University Minority Leadership Project; the Los Angeles Police Department Advisory Committee; the Skirball Institute of American Values; and the Japanese American National Museum. An important part of Kitano’s legacy is his influence as an outstanding teacher and generous mentor for decades of students, junior and aspiring academics, and colleagues. He served as an important role model, in particular, for academics of color, demonstrating that legitimate scholarly endeavors could focus on one’s community, as these communities were an integral, significant, and equal part of the American fabric, and that one’s personal experience as a member of this population brings a unique perspective critical to an accurate understanding of the cultural context. Diane de Anda and Roger Daniels See also Asian Americans; Asian American Studies; Internment Camps; Issei; Japanese Americans; Japanese American Citizens League; Nisei
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Further Readings
Kitano, Harry H. L. 1963. The Child Care Center: A Study of the Interaction among One-Parent Children, Parents, and School. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kitano, Harry H. L. 1993. Generations and Identity: The Japanese American. Needham Heights, MA: Ginn Press. Kitano, Harry H. L. 1995. Japanese Americans: The Evolution of a Subculture. 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Kitano, Harry H. L. 1997. Race Relations. 5th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Kitano, Harry H. L. and Roger Daniels. 1970. American Racism: Exploration of the Nature of Prejudice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Kitano, Harry H. L. and Roger Daniels. 2001. Asian Americans: Emerging Minorities. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Kitano, Harry H. L., Roger Daniels, and Sandra Taylor, eds. [1986] 1991. Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Kitano, Harry H. L., Mitchell Maki, and S. Megan Berthold. 1999. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
KOREAN AMERICANS Korean Americans commemorated the centennial of their immigration to the United States in 2003. The fifth-largest ethnic group within a heterogeneous Asian Pacific Islander American (AAPI) population, Korean Americans numbered over 1.2 million in the 2000 census. Despite this long history in the United States, more than three-fourths of Korean Americans are foreignborn, reflecting a historical legacy of exclusionary immigration and citizenship laws aimed at Asians and continued significance of contemporary immigration policies and social, economic, and political conditions in South Korea (a nation of 48.5 million people according to 2007 estimates) and the United States. Popular media accounts and scholarly research have often focused on Korean Americans and their high rates of entrepreneurship. Korean Americans exhibit the highest rate of self-employment among all racial/ethnic groups in the United States. Firstgeneration immigrants, in particular, unable to find jobs commensurate with premigration education levels and occupations, have used self-employment as a vehicle to pursue economic stability and upward mobility for themselves and their children.
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Yet, in 1992, Korean Americans realized that this pursuit of the “American Dream” cannot happen in a political vacuum; Korean Americans realized their political invisibility in the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest, a multiethnic disturbance with the highest death toll and financial costs in U.S. history. The psychological and economic devastation of Sa-I-Gu, or “4–2–9,” served as a catalyst for political awakening for Korean Americans in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Often portrayed as monolithic and culturally/ linguistically homogeneous, Korean Americans include descendants of those who landed in Hawai‘i in 1903, as well as diasporic citizens who have arrived from China, Brazil, Russia, Argentina, and South Korea in the last decade. They represent a range of socioeconomic, multiracial, and political ideology backgrounds and are a vibrant part of contemporary United States, while reworking transnational kinship, ethnic, and institutional ties in the age of globalization, as this entry shows.
U.S. Immigration Korean immigration to the United States can be divided into three different waves. A handful of Koreans came to the United States before the turn of the 20th century as students and ginseng merchants.
About 7,000 Koreans, about 90% men, migrated between 1903 and 1905 as contract laborers to work in the sugar cane fields of Hawai‘i and the farmlands along the West Coast of the United States. Sugar plantation owners, working with American missionaries in Korea, recruited Koreans as strike breakers to replace Japanese workers who were demanding higher wages; the Korean government abruptly ended emigration in response to pressure from Japan, which declared Korea its protectorate in 1905. Approximately 1,000 Korean “picture brides” arrived between 1910 and 1924 to join—or in some cases, meet for the first time—their husbands, under a provision of the Gentlemen’s Agreement between Japan and the United States, which categorized Koreans as Japanese nationals. These women played a pivotal role in the early Korean communities as they raised families, contributed to household income, provided social services, and actively promoted and organized the Korean independence movement. Many first-wave immigrants were also Protestant Christians seeking to escape persecution under Japanese colonial rule; upon arrival, they organized churches to cope with harsh immigrant life as well as passionately engage in the Korean independence movement, the primary concern of most Koreans at this time. The early Korean community worked with students and political exiles, a small but significant part of first-wave arrivals, to gain international support for Korean liberation. They organized around political leaders such as So Chae-pil (Philip Jaisohn), Ahn Chang Ho, Pak Yong-man, and Syngman Rhee, who advocated different and often divisive approaches to achieving independence. After the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, Koreans and other Asians, categorized as “aliens ineligible for citizenship,” were barred from migrating to the United States. Postw warr Yea ars
After Korea gained its independence from Japan in 1945, the United States more directly intervened in the political and economic affairs of Korea as a strategic means to contain communism centered in the Soviet Union, resulting in its heavy military involvement during the Korean War (1950–1953). A second wave of Korean immigrants came to the United States between the 1950s and mid-1960s, including about 18,000 wartime brides, orphans, and students. The military brides and orphans, who tended to come from
Korean Americans
impoverished backgrounds, married or were adopted by non-Koreans and settled throughout the United States. Those who entered as students tended to be men from elite families. Most Korean immigrants arrived after the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, a product of the Civil Rights Movement and post–World War II international relations. It abolished the racial quotas that had effectively excluded most Asian immigration for decades. Due to the historical legacy of exclusionary policies, the wartime brides and students who entered the United States between the 1950s and early 1960s played a critical role in the establishment of the thirdwave Korean immigration due to their ability to sponsor their family members. After 1965
Most Koreans tended to emigrate through occupational preferences of the Immigration Act of 1965. The changes in U.S. immigration policies followed changes in South Korean emigration policies, such as the 1962 Overseas Emigration Law. The third wave, responding to economic, political, cultural, and military relations between South Korea and the United States, tended to be from urban, middle-class backgrounds, seeking educational, occupational, and economic opportunities, along with other foreigneducated and trained post-1965 immigrants sent to work in underserved areas of the United States. After U.S. immigration laws were amended in the 1970s to restrict occupational admissions, Koreans have entered largely through family reunification preferences. Recent immigrants represent a greater spectrum of education and occupational backgrounds that more accurately reflects the South Korean general population. Throughout the 1970s, more than 30,000 Koreans migrated to the United States each year; Korean immigration peaked in the late 1980s, but new immigrants continue to arrive.
Contemporary Communities Like a majority of AAPI groups, Koreans tend to live in the western U.S. region, in particular the states of Hawai‘i and California, with the largest concentration living in the Los Angeles/Riverside/Orange County metropolitan area in Southern California. Ethnic enclaves such as Koreatown in Los Angeles (now with local “satellite” locations) receive much attention
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as the cultural, social, and economic centers for all things Korean, and they are continuously reinvented and revitalized by newly arrived immigrants. However, Koreans are more geographically dispersed than most AAPI groups; according to the 2000 census, 44% of Koreans live in the West, 2% in the Northeast, 21% in the South, and 12% in the Midwest. About 80% of Korean Americans live in suburbs and central cities of large metropolitan areas. A large percentage of those immigrating after 1965 have experienced downward mobility and language barriers in accessing work, regardless of education levels and premigration occupations. For many firstgeneration Koreans, the church is a sanctuary from the everyday experience of racism and linguistic and cultural barriers; it is a place to interact with other Koreans. Korean immigrant churches were established as community centers as early as 1903 and continue to be a community force and institution for more than two-thirds of the population. As one of the strongest and accessible social institutions for first-generation Koreans, the church provides critical social networks, support, and ways of obtaining meaningful social status in the United States. Among the second generation, Korean American ministry involvement has provided not only spiritual support for young Korean Americans (especially within a college campus setting) but also opportunities to share familiar struggles and experiences and ways to cope not only with marginalization but also with bicultural and intergenerational conflicts. In addition, secondgeneration Korean Americans engage in social, political, and civic participation through churches and faith communities in the United States.
Korean American Families For many Korean immigrants, the adolescent years of their U.S.-born and/or raised children are a turbulent time exacerbated by cultural and language differences; at the same time, the children of immigrant parents observe and appreciate the difficulties their parents face in the dominant society, in particular in the workplace. In response, children are driven by a combination of self-motivation and parental pressure to do well in school, as education is seen as a path to economic and career opportunities. According to Jamie Lew, many Korean immigrant parents are informed by their experience with the highly competitive South Korean educational system,
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even though they may not know how to navigate through the U.S. system. As a result, they often seek out special college preparation courses or private tutors for their children to make up for their lack of knowledge in hopes that this might increase their children’s chances for admission to an elite university, as a strategy for collective socioeconomic mobility. An emerging issue is the caretaking of aging post1965 immigrants who make up the majority of the Korean American population. Second-generation Korean Americans, adult children of their first-generation parents, face structural, cultural, and intergenerational issues not only when it comes to child rearing but also in caring for aging parents. Filial piety, a central aspect of Confucianism that continues to shape Korean and Korean American societies, can be defined as the expression of responsibility, respect, sacrifice, and family harmony that regulates children’s attitudes and behavior toward family-based support. Older Koreans as well as their children must negotiate different traditions and expectations in the contemporary United States. With increasing acculturation and adaptation, these ideals of filial piety may or may not resonate with subsequent generations. Korean American families and communities are also increasingly racially and ethnically heterogeneous. In 2000, more than 12% of Koreans were racially and/or ethnically mixed. Many of the more than 200,000 military brides and Korean adoptees (and their families and extended kin) have consciously created communities that challenge dominant notions of Korean, American, and Korean American identities. These emerging generations will continue to negotiate and expand aspects of Korean/Korean American culture, history, traditions, and identity as individuals, families, and communities.
National Citizens, Global Citizens Even as the first wave of Korean immigrants in Hawai‘i and California rallied around the Korean national independence movement, Korean immigrants and their U.S.-born children have demonstrated that they are here to stay. Contemporary immigrants have largely arrived with a positive outlook and a firm belief in the pursuit (and attainability) of the “American dream” as a result of the strong U.S. military, economic, political, and cultural presence and influence in Korea since the 1940s.
Scholars and media coverage have focused on the hard work and sacrifices of the first-generation immigrants to establish communities and economic stability for themselves and their children. But many Korean Americans continue to struggle; the high rates of ethnic entrepreneurship, for example, may be one reason why in California, Koreans have one of the lowest rates of health insurance coverage, a situation that could significantly impact their emotional and financial well-being. Events such as Sa-I-Gu have served to remind Korean Americans that regardless of socioeconomic status and generation, they need to think and act beyond ethnic solidarity and economic mobility. While they maintain contact with the dynamic South Korean society and transform their ethnic and cultural identities, Korean Americans are increasingly entering diverse professions and creating alliances for political and economic empowerment that serve themselves and other members in the multiethnic, multiracial, and multilingual U.S. society. Barbara Kim and Grace J. Yoo See Appendix A See also Asian Americans; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Foreign Students; Immigrant Communities; Model Minority; Pan-Asian Identity
Further Readings
Chang, Edward Taehan, ed. 2003–2004. “What Does It Mean to be Korean Today?” Special issue. Amerasia Journal (29)3: xix-xxvi. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center. Chin, Soo-Young. 1999. Doing What Had to Be Done: The Life Narrative of Dora Yum Kim. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Lee, Mary Paik. 1990. Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lew, Jamie. 2006. Asian Americans in Class: Charting the Achievement Gap among Korean American Youth. New York: Teachers College Press. Park, Kyeyoung. 1997. The Korean American Dream: Immigrants and Small Businesses in New York City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Park, Lisa Sun-Yee. 2005. Consuming Citizenship: Children of Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurs. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Yoon, In Jin. 1997. On My Own: Korean Businesses and Race Relations in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Ku Klux Klan
KU KLUX KLAN Although the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is often treated as a unitary organization, it is more accurately a collection of ideologically linked symbols appropriated by groups that have gained influence and popularity in varied places and times. From its earliest incarnation, the Klan has been synonymous with the promotion of White supremacy, often through terrorist or otherwise violent means. This entry will discuss the history and significance of the Klan and its activities. The first wave of KKK activity swept across the South soon after the Civil War, with hundreds of chapters, or “dens,” engaging in thousands of violent acts against Black and Unionist enemies. During the 1920s, the Klan reemerged across the nation, recruiting millions of members—including a significant number of elites and professionals—to their political program, which incorporated anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, antiSemitic, and anti-communist elements into its traditional White supremacist agenda. And in response to 1960s civil rights activity, a variety of newly established KKK organizations recruited tens of thousands of members throughout the South. Klan adherents committed many of the most brutal and infamous acts of
Ku Klux Klan rally. The Grand Dragon of the Michigan Ku Klux Klan (left) addresses the crowd as another Klan member looks on during a Klan rally on August 21, 1999, in downtown Cleveland. This rally was part of the Klan’s effort to spread its message of segregation, hate, and intolerance toward African Americans, gays, and Jews. Source: AFP/Getty Images.
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racial violence of the era, including the murder of four teenage girls in the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church, the killing of three civil rights workers during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign, and the fatal shooting of a Michigan woman during a 1965 protest march in Alabama. Various incarnations of the Klan have continued to mobilize since, though in small numbers and without significant impact on mainstream political processes.
Origins The origins of the KKK had less to do with purpose than circumstance. Conceived initially as a fraternal organization for its own members’ amusement, the Klan was formed in 1866 by a small group of young Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee. These founders established much of the Klan’s enduring iconography, including its elaborate initiation rituals, complex slates of offices, and long robes topped with conical hoods. The group’s name drew upon the Greek word for “circle,” kuklos, supplemented, for alliterative purposes, by the word klan. In Pulaski, a community beset by pervasive lawlessness following the Civil War, the group’s fraternal aims were superseded by new members’ desire to restore order. In the Reconstruction-era context, in which many White Southerners feared political, economic, and social upheaval engineered by newly freed Blacks and their Republican allies, such calls referred not only to reducing criminality but also to a reassertion of the White supremacist culture that had defined the antebellum status quo. An 1867 meeting in Nashville reorganized the Klan, placing it in the hands of several prominent Confederate officers, including General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who became the group’s first and only “Grand Wizard,” or national leader. Forrest and his associates proceeded to recruit extensively, mobilizing many Confederate veterans throughout the South as local leaders. With the added assistance of newspapers supportive of Southern Democrats and their causes, the KKK grew significantly throughout 1868. The Klan’s appeal was greatest where Democrats could pose an effective challenge to “radical” Republican political institutions. Along with similar vigilante groups, such as the Order of Pale Faces and the Knights of the White Camellia, the group quickly became known for its efforts to violently intimidate Black community leaders
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and the “carpetbaggers” (i.e., Northerners who settled in the South during this period) and the “scalawags” (i.e., White Southern Republicans) who supported them. During Reconstruction, KKK adherents committed literally thousands of criminal acts, ranging from arson to severe beatings, shootings, and lynchings; it was not unusual for a single Southern county to witness 100 Klan-perpetrated “outrages” over the course of a year. While this violence had a pervasive logic—to consolidate support for White supremacy—it also occurred in the absence of significant regional or national coordination. Despite their nominal ties to the overall KKK organization, local Klan “dens” were largely autonomous and increasingly engaged in unregulated terrorist activity. In reaction, Grand Wizard Forrest issued a largely unsuccessful order to curtail members’ actions in 1869. Mounting public outrage against the Klan’s vigilante-style atrocities led to the passage by the U.S. Congress of the Enforcement Act in 1870 and the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871, as well as to subsequent federal government investigations. Hundreds of Klan members were arrested as a result of these measures, and despite the fact that relatively few were ultimately prosecuted, such actions resulted in a drastic downturn in Klan-related violence during the 1870s.
Revival of the KKK With the fall of Republican control and the end of Reconstruction in 1877, the KKK had all but disappeared. But the group’s legacy endured in the occasional rise of Klan-like groups and, more significantly, as a romanticized ideal. The Klan’s image as heroic defenders of the White South became increasingly resonant, furthered by the popular Thomas Dixon novel, The Clansman, the basis of the epic D. W. Griffith film, The Birth of a Nation. William J. Simmons, a failed minister and salesman, had long dreamed of reviving the KKK, and, in 1915, the high-profile release of Griffith’s film provided an ideal opportunity to do so. Shortly before the movie’s Atlanta opening, he gathered a handful of sympathetic fraternal types and led them up nearby Stone Mountain for the KKK’s official refounding. Following a scene in Dixon’s novel, the ceremony featured the Klan’s first cross burning. Simmons’s KKK grew rather slowly at first, claiming a membership of several thousand Georgia and Alabama residents by 1920. That year, in an effort to bolster the group’s appeal, Simmons hired professional
marketers Edward Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler to build the organization. Clarke and Tyler commissioned hundreds of Klan recruiting agents, who emphasized the group’s focus on racial purity, Protestantism, and patriotic “100% Americanism.” In a nation beset by post–World War II nativist tendencies, along with racial and labor strife, an agricultural crisis, and the start of Prohibition, these appeals resonated with many White Americans, who perceived the Klan to be the solution to a variety of political, economic, and moral ailments. Within the year, Klan membership took off, reaching 85,000 in 1921 and somewhere between 3 and 5 million by 1925. Unlike the Reconstruction-era KKK, chapters were not confined to rural communities or to the South. Membership reached six digits in many states across the nation, with tens of thousands joining in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Denver. While the Klan was an exclusively male organization, a parallel group, the Women of the Ku Klux Klan, recruited tens of thousands of women into its ranks. Far from marginal individuals, Klan adherents came from both white- and blue-collar sectors and frequently included prominent community leaders. The Klan accumulated considerable political influence, and scores of Klansmen were elected or appointed to local and state offices. While vigilantism at times remained associated with the organization, such violence was often subsumed by the Klan’s populist civic character. Chapters often had ties to a range of fraternal and church groups and sometimes organized around issues such as law enforcement and good schools. These emphases have caused some historians to suggest that racism was not primary to the 1920s Klan, though the intersection of class and race issues in many localities aligned the KKK’s civic efforts with its overarching White supremacist—and anti-immigrant, anti-communist, anti-Jew, and anti-Catholic—agenda. The Klan began to lose momentum after 1925, as the organization became plagued by leadership crises and moral and financial scandal. Unlike the Reconstruction-era KKK, Simmons’s outfit was highly centralized, profiting tremendously from initiation fees and the sale of regalia and other Klanrelated products. As early as 1923, issues of financial control created rifts within the Klan’s leadership. Paired with Klan politicians’ general inability to live up to their rhetoric, increasingly pervasive charges of financial and moral corruption contributed to a sharp decline in membership. By the end of the 1920s, the KKK had almost entirely lost its support base and
Kurdish Americans
political influence. What remained of the organization was officially disbanded in 1944 after the Internal Revenue Service filed a lien for unpaid back taxes.
The Civil Rights Era and After The first of many independent Klan organizations emerged soon after, when Atlanta obstetrician Samuel Green organized a Stone Mountain cross burning to introduce his Association of Georgia Klans. By 1954, when the Supreme Court’s school desegregation decision provided impetus for the segregationist cause, there were at least eight self-styled Klan organizations competing for adherents across the South. Much of this activity ultimately consolidated into the United Klans of America (UKA), headed by Alabama-based Robert Shelton. By the mid-1960s, the UKA had more than 20,000 members, spread over nearly 400 chapters in seventeen states. Though the UKA never achieved the broad national appeal of Simmons’s Klan, it did retain a similar public character, building support through nightly rallies and cross burnings across the South, as well as periodic parades featuring members in full regalia. Despite considerable opposition from community elites and the media, the UKA’s hard-line response to federal desegregation efforts drew hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of supporters to each of its rallies. The group’s militant core was also responsible for much, though not all, of the violence that befell civil rights workers across the South. During the 1964 Freedom Summer voter registration campaign, three civil rights workers were killed in Neshoba County, Mississippi, by members of the Mississippi White Knights, a highly secretive and militant group that competed with Shelton’s UKA for members in that state. In response, the FBI began infiltrating various KKK organizations, as well as actively disrupting their activities through a formal counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO). These efforts, alongside various internal struggles and quickly receding hopes for the resuscitation of Jim-Crow-style segregation, contributed to the Klan’s significant decline by the late 1960s. The UKA continued on with only a small fraction of its peak membership until the 1980s. In 1981, in reaction to the killing of a White police officer, two UKA members abducted at random and then lynched Michael Donald, a 19-year-old Black man, in Mobile, Alabama. Five years later, a landmark civil suit sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center
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resulted in a $7 million settlement against the UKA, which officially put the group out of business. Various self-declared Klan organizations have emerged since, sometimes in partnership with neoNazis and other factions of the far right. In a few instances, such as the 1979 killing of five Communist Workers Party members in Greensboro, North Carolina, and a 1991 gubernatorial bid by former Klansman David Duke, adherents have gained national attention, though their organizations have never come close to approaching the size or influence of the Klan’s three previous waves. David Cunningham See also Anti-Semitism; Civil Rights Movement; Jim Crow; Lynching; Racism; Voting Rights; White Supremacy Movement
Further Readings
Blee, Kathleen M. 1991. Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chalmers, David M. 1981. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. New York: New Viewpoints. Lay, Shawn, ed. 1992. The Invisible Empire in the West: Toward a New Historical Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Trelease, Allen W. 1971. White Terror: The Ku Klux Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities. 1967. The Present-Day Ku Klux Klan Movement. 90th Congress, 1st Session. Washington, DC: Author.
KURDISH AMERICANS The Kurds are a nomadic, distinct, and global group without an autonomous or politically recognized homeland. Estimates of the Kurdish population range from 5 to 26 million. The Kurds are an ethnic group without a nation. In this respect, they have a similar status to that of Jews, the Roma (Gypsies), and Assyrians. Kurds are typically Sunni Muslims but are not Arabs and are culturally closer to Persians (Iranians). This entry clarifies who the Kurds are and discusses their settlement patterns in the United States. Kurds typically speak Kurmanji and the language of their home country (such as Arabic among Iraqi
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Kurds). Kurds have distinct gender roles, with men serving as the heads of families. Although Islamic, Kurdish women are less restricted than many Muslims; they do not wear veils, feel free to associate with men who are not family members, and may occupy political office, for example. “Kurdistan,” is the name commonly given to the territory between the mountain areas of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, which the Kurds claim as their homeland. Because their region is subdivided among four countries, the Kurds who live in each region have varying types of relationships with the governments. For instance, Kurds in Iraq refer to the region as “Iraqi Kurdistan,” which is administered by the Kurdistan Regional Government; it is, in other words, a state within a state. Most recently, Iraqi Kurdistan has been strengthening bonds with the United States and promoting business and travel to their region. On the other hand, the region of “Turkish Kurdistan” has no unified administrative identity, and the Turkish state even rejects the use of the term Kurdistan to describe it. Kurdish history is filled with struggle, conflict, destruction, and displacement. War and persecution often fuel constant movement and migration of their people. Although major concentrations of Kurds live in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, a large diaspora community exists outside the Middle East. Prior to 1970, very few Kurds were documented as living in the United States. During the 2-year period between 1975 and 1977, however, the number of Kurdish immigrants, mostly refugees, rose to about 350 per year. Across the world at this time, thousands more fled from Iraq to Iran after a failed Kurdish revolution. In addition, during the Iran/Iraq War (1980–1988), 60,000 Kurds fled from Iraq to Turkey. Their plight captured global attention during this time. While many stayed in refugee camps or were forced to return to Iraq, a “safe haven” for Kurds was created in Iraq in 1991. As of 2007, Kurds make up 20% of Iraq’s population. Some of the estimated 1.5 million Kurdish refugees worldwide have resettled in North America as a result of an international humanitarian relief effort; about 40,000 Kurds live in the United States. Kurdish communities can be found in Nashville, Tennessee; San Diego, California; and Washington, D.C. Changes in immigration practices after the attacks on September 11, 2001, have posed challenges for those seeking citizenship, as well as those wanting to return home. Given the recency of their arrival and instability in the Middle East, the small Kurdish American
community is vigilant about the treatment of Kurds worldwide, especially in Middle East, and many look toward a future with a truly independent Kurdistan. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Diaspora; Immigrant Communities; Immigration U.S.; Iranian Americans; Iraqi Americans; Islamophobia; Minority/Majority; Muslim Americans; Refugees; Syrian Americans; Turkish Americans Further Readings
Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2007. “Kurds Cultivating Their Own Bonds with U.S.” Washington Post, April 23, p. A01. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/04/22/AR2007042201568.html Jabar, Faleh A. and Hosham Dawod, eds. The Kurds. 2006. Berkeley, CA: SAQI. McDowall, David. 1996. A Modern History of the Kurds. New York: I. B. Tauris. McKiernan, Kevin. 2006. The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Wahlbeck, Osten. 1999. Kurdish Diasporas: A Comparative Study of Kurdish Refugee Communities. London: Macmillan Press.
KWANZAA Kwanzaa is a 7-day African American and panAfrican holiday that celebrates family, community, and culture. It begins on December 26 and continues through January 1. Based on ancient African firstfruits harvest celebrations, its name is derived from the Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza, which literally means “first fruits.” This entry recalls the history and describes current celebration.
Historical Background The celebrations of first-fruits harvests are recorded from the earliest African history and have various names depending upon the language of the society in which they are observed. Examples of such festivals are Pert-en-Min in ancient Egypt, Umkhozi in Zululand, Incwala in Swaziland, Odwira in Ashantiland, and Odu Ijesu in Yorubaland. Dr. Maulana Karenga, an activist scholar and now professor of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach, created the U.S. Kwanzaa
Kwanzaa
celebration in 1966 in the midst of the Black Freedom Movement. Kwanzaa was created to reaffirm African Americans’ rootedness in African culture, to bring Africans together to reinforce the bonds between them, to meditate on the expansive meaning of being African in the world, and to introduce and reaffirm the importance of communitarian African values, especially the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles). Kwanzaa was first celebrated in the context of the cultural and social change organization Us (us, African people), which Karenga chairs, and then in the country as a whole. However, Kwanzaa soon developed into an international pan-African holiday, now involving over 30 million celebrants throughout the world African community.
Meaning and Celebration The meaning and activities of Kwanzaa are rooted in and organized around the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles), also developed by Maulana Karenga. These principles are directed toward cultivating practices that reaffirm and strengthen family, community, and culture. They are Umoja (Unity), Kujichagulia (Self-Determination), Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility), Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics), Nia (Purpose), Kuumba (Creativity), and Imani (Faith). In fact, one of the reasons Kwanzaa is 7 days is to dedicate a day to the discussion and modeling of each principle by those who celebrate Kwanzaa. In addition, Kwanzaa is organized around five fundamental kinds of activities rooted in the practices of ancient African harvest celebrations: (1) the ingathering of the people to reinforce the bonds between them, especially those of family, community, and culture; (2) special reverence for the Creator and creation in gratitude for the bountifulness and goodness of the earth and with a self-conscious commitment to preserve and protect it; (3) commemoration of the past, in fulfillment of the obligation to remember and honor the ancestors and to reaffirm the fundamental mission and meaning of African history (i.e., to constantly bring good into the world); (4) recommitment to the highest African cultural, ethical, and spiritual values that bring forth the best of what it means to be African and human; and (5) celebration of the Good—the good of family, community, and culture; of work, struggle, and life; and of the wonder of the world and all in it. Kwanzaa has seven basic symbols and two supplementary ones. Each symbol represents views and values rooted in African culture and contributive to
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the reaffirmation and strengthening of family, community, and culture. The seven basic symbols are the mazao (crops), symbolizing African harvest celebrations and the rewards of productive and collective labor; mkeka (mat), symbolizing tradition and history and therefore the foundation on which to build; kinara (candleholder), symbolizing ancestral roots, the parent people, Continental Africans; mishumaa saba (the seven candles), symbolizing the Nguzo Saba, the Seven Principles; muhindi (corn), symbolizing children and the future of African people they embody; kikombe cha umoja (unity cup), symbolizing the foundational principle and practice of unity, which makes all else possible; and zawadi (gifts), symbolizing the labor and love of parents and the commitments made and kept by the children. The two supplemental symbols are a representation of the Nguzo Saba and the bendera (flag), containing three colors: black, red, and green. These colors, respectively, symbolize African people, their social struggle, and the promise and future that come from the struggle. Kwanzaa activities are numerous and varied, directed toward reaffirmation and strengthening of family, community, and culture. Moreover, daily activities are organized around discussion, dramatization, and modeling of the principles through conduct, recitation, reading, narrative, performance, libation, sharing meals, and candlelighting. Most often at the evening meal, family members light one of the seven candles each night to focus on the principles. This ritual is called “lifting up the light that lasts” and symbolizes lifting up and upholding the Nguzo Saba and all the other life-affirming and enduring principles that reaffirm the good of life, enrich human relations, and support human flourishing. As each candle is lit, the person lighting the candle explains the meaning of the particular principle of the day to her or him. Also, a narrative from Black history or a poem might be told or recited to illustrate the principle. A central and culminating event is the gathering of the community on December 31 for an African karamu (feast), featuring libation to the ancestors and ceremonies honoring elders, narratives, poetry, music, dance, and other performances to celebrate the goodness of life, relationships, and cultural grounding. The last day of Kwanzaa, January 1, called Siku ya Taamuli (The Day of Meditation), is dedicated to selfassessment and recommitment to the Nguzo Saba as well as other African values that reaffirm commitment to human rights and dignity, family and community well-being and flourishing, environmental protection
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and preservation, and human solidarity. To conduct this self-assessment, each person is to ask and answer three questions: Who am I? Am I really who I am? Am I all I ought to be? This represents measuring oneself in the mirror of the best of African culture and history and recommitting oneself to standards and practices of human excellence that reflect this. Through this practice and throughout Kwanzaa, the people reaffirm the values and life lessons of the ancestors; strengthen commitments to family, community, and culture; and thus create the context for the ongoing creation, harvesting, and sharing good in the world. Maulana Karenga
See Appendix B See also African Americans; Afrocentricity; Black Nationalism; Multicultural Education; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Karenga, Maulana. 1998. Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community, and Culture. Los Angeles, CA: University of Sankore Press.
Web Sites
Official Kwanzaa Web Site: http://www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org
L American (American Indian) people is perpetuated by the frequent use of tribal names or even terms such as Indians and Redskins as sports team mascots. However, this labeling is not limited to racial/ ethnic groups. For instance, age can be used to exclude a person from an activity in which he or she is qualified to engage. Groups are subjected to stereotypes and discrimination in such a way that their treatment resembles that of social minorities. Social prejudice exists toward ex-convicts, gamblers, alcoholics, lesbians, gays, prostitutes, people with AIDS, and people with disabilities, to name a few. Labeling can also be positive, as in the model minority notion that often characterizes Asian Americans as being very successful and intelligent and, significantly, as not causing trouble or asking for any special allowances. Even positive labeling has negative consequences, for in this case some Asian American adolescents may feel undue pressure to succeed by society’s standards and may see failure even in modest accomplishments. Furthermore, by relishing the alleged success of the model minority, society seems to reassure itself that racism is disappearing if not gone entirely. Labeling points out that stereotypes, when applied by people in power, can have negative consequences for people or groups identified falsely. A crucial aspect of the relationship between dominant and subordinate groups is the prerogative of the dominant group to define society’s values. U.S. sociologist William I. Thomas, an early critic of racial and gender discrimination, saw that the “definition of the situation” could mold the personality of the individual. In other words, Thomas observed that people respond not only to the
LABELING Labeling is a concept introduced by sociologist Howard Becker during the 1950s in an attempt to explain why certain people are viewed as deviant while others who engage in the same behavior are not. Although not initially applied to issues of race, ethnicity, and gender, labeling has become widely used in these social contexts. This entry defines the term and discusses its impact.
Definition According to labeling, a child who misbehaves might be considered and treated as delinquent if she or he comes from the “wrong kind of family,” whereas another child who commits the same sort of misbehavior might be given another chance before being punished if she or he comes from a middle-class family. Using this formulation, observers of racial/ethnic relations observe that the behavior of members of different groups is labeled depending on the relative power that these groups are able to exert in society. For example, in the scrutiny of the media in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, many contended that Black people seen taking items from abandoned stores were labeled by reporters as “looters,” whereas Whites engaged in the same apparent behavior were seen as “survivors” or “scavengers.” The labeling perspective directs attention to the role that negative stereotypes play in race and ethnicity. Stereotypes are unreliable generalizations about all members of a group that do not take individual differences into account. The “warrior” image of Native 821
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objective features of a situation (or person) but also to the meaning these features have for them. So, for example, someone out walking alone who sees a young Black man approaching may perceive the situation differently if the oncoming person were an older woman. In this manner, people can create false images or stereotypes that become real in their social consequences.
Jennifer Lopez who “makes it,” many more will end up disappointed. Richard T. Schaefer See also Deviance and Crime; Hurricane Katrina; Marginalization; “Marielitos”; Model Minority; Prejudice; Racial Profiling; Self-Fulfilling Prophecy; Stereotypes; “Welfare Queen”
Impact of Stereotypes In certain situations, people may respond to negative stereotypes and act on them, with the result that false definitions become accurate. That is known as a selffulfilling prophecy. A person or group described as having particular characteristics begins to display the very traits attributed to the person or group. Thus, a minority child may be defined by teachers as a troublemaker, and this in turn may encourage the student to repeat the behavior or to believe that it is useless to try to stem antisocial behavior. Society may come to “blame the victim” for unacceptable actions and not enter into any reexamination that society’s structure may bring about unfavorable results or behavior. Self-fulfilling prophecies can be devastating for minority groups. Such groups often find that they are allowed to hold only low-paying jobs with little prestige or opportunity for advancement. The rationale of the dominant society may be that minority people lack the ability to perform in more important and lucrative positions. Training to become scientists, executives, or physicians is denied to many individuals in subordinate groups, who are then locked into society’s inferior jobs. As a result, the false definition becomes real. The subordinate groups have become inferior because they were defined at the start as inferior and, therefore, were prevented from achieving the levels attained by the majority. Because of this vicious cycle, talented people in subordinate groups may come to see the worlds of entertainment and professional sports as their only hope for achieving wealth and fame. Thus, it is no accident that successive waves of Irish, Jewish, Italian, African American, and Hispanic performers and athletes have made their mark on culture in the United States. Unfortunately, these very successes may convince the dominant group that its original stereotypes were valid—that these are the only areas of society in which members of subordinate groups can excel. Furthermore, athletics and the arts are highly competitive areas. For every LeBron James or
Further Readings
Becker, Howard S. 1963. The Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. Ryan, William. 1976. Blaming the Victim. Rev. ed. New York: Random House. Thomas, William Isaac. 1923. The Unadjusted Girl. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
LABOR MARKET SEGMENTATION Throughout U.S. labor history, peoples of color have been disproportionately tracked and channeled into secondary or periphery sectors of the labor market. Although federal legislation, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, has been central in addressing racially discriminatory employment practices and policies, U.S. Census data continually show an overpopulation of racial/ethnic minorities in occupations or firms associated with the service sector and manual labor. As a consequence, underrepresented minorities have generally had a lower socioeconomic status, fewer occupational choices, and less social mobility—relative to White non-Hispanic populations—throughout U.S. history. This entry discusses the concept of labor markets and the process by which work and workers in the United States become racially segmented within this economic and sociopolitical construct.
The Significance of Labor Markets Labor markets are social and economic constructs that organize the process by which labor—or, in the Marxian context, one’s labor power—is purchased and sold. This socioeconomic exchange exists between the laborer (who may be defined as an individual who must sell his or her labor or labor power to capitalists as a means of earning wages) and the
Labor Market Segmentation
employer (who owns the means of production specific to a given labor market or occupational niche). According to the writings of early labor market scholars such as Richard Edwards, Michael Reich, and David Gordon, a labor market functions as the socioeconomic context through which various institutions merge to govern and determine the interactions between the laborer and the employer. Within the published scholarship on the labor market process, two leading schools of thought emerge. A more conservative and orthodox economic argument posits that the labor market is composed of various key actors who enter into a competitive labor market with varying levels of human and skill capital. The market is seen as an imperfect yet efficient system that best organizes the labor process, the production and cost of goods and services, the wages of laborers, and the profits of employers or corporations. At the core of this system is the Western economic principle of supply and demand, which is perceived as being pivotal to the organizing of every aspect of the labor market process. A more radical perspective about the labor market process also exists within the published scholarship. This perspective is grounded in the Marxist tradition and, therefore, begins with the fundamental assumption that the labor market process seeks only to generate or accumulate profits for capitalists. The ability of capitalists to accumulate profits is linked to the structure of the labor market, which creates a system of wage laborers whose well-being and survival are dependent on their ability to sell their labor or labor power to those who own the means of production. Because of this inequitable arrangement, the labor market’s most important, if not its most central, function is to maintain a hierarchical relationship between laborers and employers, on the one hand, and to legitimize a stratified distribution of resources, power, and opportunities among all workers, on the other. Although the exchange of labor power for wages— or various occupational rewards—is a defining and underlying process associated with labor markets, this interchange often occurs in a context that is undetectable or constantly being redefined. In other words, a labor market is also a series of interlocking and invisible boundaries. A boundary can be defined as a physical construct that marks a territory and, subsequently, restricts or regulates the movement both within and outside its parameters. As it relates back to the concept of labor markets, the idea of boundary can
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also function as a metaphor for how labor markets exist. Regardless of the work performed, most laborers find themselves bound to specific work sites, workspaces, or geographical regions, thereby demarcating a physical characteristic or boundary of labor markets. However, a boundary need not always be physically present to restrict or regulate an individual’s mobility. Even when a boundary is invisible, it is capable of distinguishing space, establishing who may and may not occupy that space, and reifying the idea of the marked “other” through means of differentiation, devaluation, and discrimination. Although the regulation and division of labor and capital are fundamental socioeconomic characteristics of any labor market, labor markets are also distinguishable by the marked and unmarked boundaries that underlie the fragmentation and segmentation of work and workers across their varying sectors.
The Segmentation of Labor Markets The process of labor market segmentation is widely recognized as a distinct marker of the age of Western industrialization. As Western societies began to transition from a more agrarian and feudal-based mode of economic production and social arrangements to a worker-based society grounded in industrial labor and manufacturing, there was the increased homogenization and centralization of the Western labor force. Western industrialization is at the core of the labor market process given both the formation of wage labor and the emergence of extremely routinized or specialized occupations. For Michael Piore and other early dual economy theorists, the rise of the industrial age created the need for increased differentiation of labor within labor markets. Most dual economy theorists identify four labor market characteristics when conceptualizing the polarized and bifurcated nature of the industrial labor market: the stability of occupations within a given sector, the wages earned, the level of skill and human capital required for employment, and the odds of upward mobility within an occupational niche. The dual economy argument assumes that the structure of the labor market is organized into two fairly distinct labor market sectors: the primary sector and the secondary sector. The primary sector (or center) firms are seen as consisting of highly prestigious, competitive, and stable occupations or firms within a given labor market.
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The secondary sector (or periphery) firms are defined by a socioeconomic arrangement that is often less prestigious, constantly in flux, and lacking the degree of upward mobility associated with the primary sector. Dual economy theorists developed a theoretical framework by which to assess the complex structure of the industrial labor market. Such structures, moreover, are pivotal in shaping the conditions and manner in which various “classes” of workers must labor. Furthermore, the division of labor that underlies this dual economy is inextricably linked to the durability of larger forms of social (e.g., race, ethnicity) and economic inequalities.
Race and the Segmentation of Labor The uneven distribution of various racial/ethnic groups across and within sectors of the labor market can be best understood with a historical and sociopolitical assessment of labor in the United States. The racialized division of labor has been a central phenomenon throughout the evolution of labor in the United States. As the institution of chattel slavery took root in the Americas, so did sociopolitical systems and cultural norms that were fundamental in creating and legitimizing the positioning of racial/ethnic groups into racespecific forms of labor. At its most basic level, the institution of chattel slavery identified the racialized boundaries of work and occupations in a preindustrial United States. This peculiar institution also set in motion legal policies and sociocultural practices that shaped the racial/ethnic composition of labor during the rise of the industrial era in the early waves of immigration to the United States. As the United States transitioned into an industrial era marked in part by the ascendancy of a more federally centralized economy and a more urban, manufacturingbased workforce, the racialization of work or the racialized division of labor became increasingly intense and severe. This intensification was largely the result of two interconnected and colinear socioeconomic phenomena. The first half of the 20th century can be characterized by an increased demand for manual labor in the booming urban labor market sectors in the Northeast and Midwest. This demand for labor was addressed largely by an expanding labor force with significant variations in its racial/ethnic, citizenship, sex, and skill composition. Although this supply of labor was essential to meeting the enormous demand for (manual) labor in these industrial centers, the
demands for increased economic resources and prestigious occupational positions by increasingly non-White populations—which also included “White” ethnic groups from non–Western European countries— threatened a hegemonic racial structure that emerged during the preindustrial era in the United States. As noted by early race scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper, and Oliver Cox as well as by more contemporary (critical) race scholars such as Jacqueline Jones, George Lipsitz, and David Roediger, the racialized distribution of workers across stratified sectors of the labor market is grounded in the preservation of whiteness and the maintenance of White privilege and supremacy. To that end, federal, state, and local labor policies during the late 19th century and at the turn of the 20th century reinforced the privileged occupational status of White men— especially those who had high socioeconomic status, were Protestant, were U.S. citizens, and were affiliated with organized labor. As for the majority of women and non-White peoples, the emergence of Jim Crow labor policies further positioned them in what critical labor scholars such as Teresa Amott, Julie Matthaei, Jacqueline Jones, and Donald TomaskovicDevey described as a legacy of race/sex segregated, substandard, and highly devalued labor conditions.
Conclusions The distribution of workers across sectors of the U.S. labor market remains both a stratified and segmented process. Classic arguments concerning labor market segmentation have been a hallmark of the early scholarship on social stratification and occupations in the United States. At the core of this body of literature are three fundamental arguments. First, it is widely assumed that occupations are distinguished by distinct and stratified sectors of the labor market. This division of labor is seen as emanating from the increased specialization of labor during the rise of both industrialization and advanced capitalism. Second, the distinction between these labor sectors is often characterized by the inequitable distribution of job rewards and the social demographics of their respective labor force. Finally, theories of labor market segmentation often argue that mobility both between labor sectors and among occupations within a labor sector is highly constrained and credentialed in the primary sector, whereas mobility in the secondary sector is more tenuous. For critical labor market theorists, the structure of the labor
Labor Unions
market is racialized or race specific, and, as a consequence, it is responsible for maintaining the subordinate status of racial/ethnic minorities in society. Gary Kinte Perry See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Declining Significance of Race, The; Racism; Social Mobility; Split Labor Market; White Privilege
Further Readings
Amott, Teresa and Julie Matthaei. 1991. Race, Gender, and Work: A Multicultural Economic History of Women in the United States. Boston, MA: South End Press. Brewer, Rose, Cecilia Conrad, and Mary King. 2002. “The Complexities and Potential of Theorizing Gender, Caste, Race, and Class.” Feminist Economics 8(2):3–18. Browne, Irene, ed. 1999. Latinas and African American Women at Work: Race, Gender, and Economic Inequality. New York: Russell Sage. Cohn, Samuel. 2000. Race and Gender Discrimination at Work. Boulder, CO: Westview. Gordon, David, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich. 1982. Segmented Work, Divided Workers: The Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States. London: Cambridge University Press. Jones, Jacqueline. 1985. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present. New York: Vintage Books. Piore, Michael. 1975. “Notes for a Theory of Labor Market Stratification.” Pp. 125–150 in Labor Market Segmentation, edited by Richard Edwards, Michael Reich, and David Gordon. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath. Reich, Michael, David Gordon, and Richard Edwards. 1973. “A Theory of Labor Market Segmentation.” American Economic Review 63:359–365. Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald. 1993. Gender and Racial Inequality at Work: The Sources and Consequences of Job Segregation. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press. Wilkinson, Doris. 1991. “The Segmented Labor Market and African American Women from 1890–1960: A Social History Interpretation.” Research in Race and Ethnic Relations 6:85–104.
LABOR UNIONS Labor unions are organizations formed or joined by workers to represent them at their workplaces and negotiate with employers over wages, hours, and
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conditions of employment. Labor unions are bargaining agents with legal rights to sign collective bargaining agreements. When impasses are reached in bargaining, unions pressure employers to offer better terms by mobilizing their members to withdraw from work, that is, to go on strike. This entry deals with the activities and structures of labor unions and their representation of minority and immigrant workers.
Union Activities, Structures, and Governance Aside from collective bargaining with employers, unions organize nonunion workers and engage in political action. Unions organize when they recruit new members, and they ask employers to recognize them as bargaining agents. Under the certification procedures of the federal and state labor boards (judicial agencies that enforce labor laws), a union can gain certification as a bargaining agent by proving, usually in a secret-ballot election, that it is supported by a majority of employees at the workplace. Unions engage in political action by endorsing candidates and contributing to their election campaigns, encouraging members to help get out the vote for endorsed candidates on Election Day, and lobbying for legislation that is pro-worker or pro-union (e.g., favoring higher minimum wages, favoring protections against employment discrimination, favoring stronger penalties against employer misconduct during union organizing). Historically, unions have overwhelmingly supported candidates and policies of the Democratic Party because they believe that this party values the economic concerns of workers and their families. However, unions do not affiliate with any party formally. Their political creed is simple—to reward their friends and punish their enemies. Labor unions are among the most diverse organizations in the U.S. society. There is no typical union. There are 60 national and international unions (international unions have some members in Canada) as well as 2,000 to 3,000 regional or companywide unions. Eight national unions have more than 500,000 members each, whereas another eight national unions have fewer than 10,000 members each. Regional and companywide unions usually have fewer than 1,000 members each. Some unions represent mostly government workers (e.g., American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees), others confine themselves to the private sector (e.g., United Food and Commercial
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Workers), and still others organize both government and private employees (e.g., Communications Workers). Some unions are exclusive, restricting membership to a particular occupation (e.g., Screen Actors Guild, Airline Pilots Association, Major League Baseball Players Association), whereas others will represent any worker in any occupation or industry (e.g., Teamsters, Service Employees). Most unions represent workers in their core industry (e.g., automobile manufacturing for United Auto Workers), a few related industries (e.g., farm and construction equipment), or some miscellaneous groups of workers (e.g., educational workers and maintenance workers). Unions are administered at their national headquarters, but collective bargaining and organizing are often carried out by union locals individually or through councils of locals. Local size can range from a dozen workers to several thousand workers, and the local can be for a particular shop, office, or factory or for all of a union’s members in a geographic area. There are approximately 33,000 union locals. Labor unions are self-governing organizations with their own constitutions, elected officers, and conventions. Union constitutions have clauses specifying how members run for office or vote in officer elections, when and why conventions are held, and how membership dues are increased. Because unions should act as a voice for their members, they are expected to be run democratically. Union officers should be responsive to the will of the members, negotiating for what members want and letting them participate in running the union. Officers should be challenged in elections and voted out if they become autocratic. Most unions affiliate with labor federations that coordinate their political and organizing activities and restrict rival organizing. The principal federation is the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations), which was established in 1955 and has 53 affiliated unions with 9 million members. An alternative federation, Change to Win (7 affiliated unions with 6 million members) was formed in 2005 by officers of AFL-CIO affiliates who were dissatisfied with the federation’s apparent inability to revive union growth.
Union Decline There has been a severe and continuing decline in union membership. Since 1980, unions have lost 4.4 million members. Membership losses are the result of intense employer opposition, the time-consuming
and expensive certification election process used by unions for organizing, and the inability or unwillingness of most unions to devote sufficient financial resources and staff for large-scale organizing. Union density—the percentage of the labor force in unions—fell from 23% in 1980 to 13% in 2005. The proportion of private nongovernmental workers in unions dropped to approximately 8%. It is widely believed that it would be extremely difficult to reverse membership losses because the organizing task is so difficult and expensive. As employment declines at unionized firms, primarily because of globalization and the movement of production overseas, unions must offset membership losses through extensive new organizing. Unions need to organize roughly a halfmillion new members each year to offset losses. They must organize a million new members each year to raise union density by 1 percentage point. Because it costs unions nearly $2,000 to recruit each new member, unions would need to allocate one-third of their operating budgets to organizing merely to offset membership losses. Most unions devote approximately 5% of their budgets to organizing (the rest is used for bargaining and political activities), and only 250,000 workers are organized each year.
Minority and Immigrant Workers in Unions The unionization rates are 11% for White workers, 15% for African American workers, 11% for Asian workers, and 10% for Hispanic workers. Unions have had a mixed relationship with minority and immigrant workers. Many early unions gave in to the wishes of their White members by ignoring or segregating African American and/or Asian workers or blocking them from entry into skilled and higher paying jobs. For example, in southern paper mills, there were often separate union locals for White and African American workers. African American workers were excluded from the best jobs and membership in most unions in the railroad and construction industries. The first union label (a symbol indicating that a product is union made) appeared in an 1872 union boycott of cigars made by nonunion Chinese workers. But there have also been numerous positive cases. In the garment industry, unions were a powerful force for the assimilation of Eastern European Jews and Italian immigrants a century ago as well as for the assimilation of Mexican and Asian immigrants during recent decades. During the early years of the
Laotian Americans
20th century, the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical union, gained great notoriety for its skill in organizing diverse groups of immigrant workers at textile mills and mobilizing them for strikes; for example, in a 1912 strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the union led a group of 25,000 textile workers representing 25 different nationalities. During recent decades, the Hospital Workers Union has organized extensively among African American, Puerto Rican, and Filipina/o health care workers in large cities. The United Food and Commercial Workers organized low-paid minority workers at meatpacking plants and grocery chains, whereas the Service Employees International Union organized immigrant janitorial workers in urban areas. The United Farm Workers Union, founded by César Chávez, has always considered itself to be more of a social movement for the working poor than a traditional labor union, and it has organized extensively among Mexican American agricultural workers. Unions now recognize that minority and immigrant workers are most in need of unionization to protect against job loss, substandard wages and working conditions, and arbitrary employer conduct. For example, unions from the AFL-CIO and Change to Win are forming alliances with advocacy groups ranging from associations of day laborers (many are minorities and immigrants) to community associations of Asian workers in the garment industry. The labor federations and their affiliated unions are prominent in demonstrations for the rights of undocumented immigrants, for universal health care, and for higher minimum wages. Most unions now place a high priority on organizing minority and immigrant workers in their plans for revival. They consider such organizing vital if they are to present themselves as the voice of all workers and their families. Union leaders recognize that the only alternative to organizing and representing minority and immigrant workers is that of further decline.
Milkman, Ruth and Kim Voss, eds. 2004. Rebuilding Labor: Organizing and Organizers in the New Union Movement. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ness, Immanuel. 2005. Immigrants, Unions, and the New U.S. Labor Market. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Tait, Vanessa. 2005. Poor Workers’ Unions: Rebuilding Labor from Below. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Wheeler, Hoyt. 2002. The Future of the American Labor Movement. New York: Cambridge University Press.
LAOTIAN AMERICANS Laotian Americans’ recent immigration has contributed to the heterogeneity of Asian American communities and the diversity of U.S. society. They arrived mostly as refugees, and thus the difficulties in their transition from life in an agricultural country to life in an industrialized one have placed Laotian Americans among the most disadvantaged of population groups. This entry briefly explores the nature of the contexts surrounding the experiences of Laotian Americans—their ethnically diverse population; their process of settlement, adjustment, and acculturation; their traditional values and culture; and the lives of Laotian Americans today.
China
India
Myanmar
Gary Chaison See also African Americans; Assimilation; Chávez, César; Chinese Americans; Discrimination; Huerta, Dolores; Immigration, Economic Impact of; Jewish Americans; Mexican Americans; Ukrainian Americans
Laos
Bay of Bengal Thailand
South China Sea
Cambodia Vietnam
Further Readings
Chaison, Gary. 2006. Unions in America. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Chaison, Gary and Barbara Bigelow. 2002. Unions and Legitimacy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
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Indonesia
Malaysia
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Laotian Americans
History of Laos Laos is an underdeveloped country and home to an estimated 5.9 million people, as of 2007, who mostly practice subsistence agriculture. A mountainous country landlocked by Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), and China, it is home to an ethnically diverse population. Laos traces its history to the Kingdom of Lan Xang (or “Land of a Million Elephants”), which existed from the 14th to 18th centuries. The country has been ruled by competing monarchies and foreign powers such as Thailand, Japan, and France. In 1954, Laos gained full independence with the end of France’s colonial rule of Indochina; however, years of civil war ensued, and in 1975 the communist Pathet Lao regime took control of the country. Consequently, many Laotians sought refuge in neighboring Thailand and other countries, where they were placed in refugee camps. Through resettlement programs, many Laotians gained entry to the United States as refugees. Today, Lao People’s Democratic Republic is founded as a socialist multiethnic nation.
Migration and Settlement Laotian Americans’ ethnic makeup is diverse, with ethnic groups that have their own distinct languages, beliefs, and cultural traditions. The three major subgroups are named after their traditional residence patterns: the lowlanders (Lao Loum, also referred to as Lao), the midlanders (Lao Theung), and the highlanders (Lao Soung). The lowlanders are the largest of the many ethnic groups and are linguistically and ethnically close to neighboring Thailand. The midlanders are considered to be of Austro-Asiatic (Mon-Khmer) origin and are regarded as the original inhabitants of Laos. They have the greatest cultural and linguistic differences, with groups including the Kmhmu, Lamet, Katang, Makong, Loven, and Lawae. The highlanders are considered an ethnic minority group and include the Hmong, Mien, Akha, and Lahu—all linguistically different. Indigenous to southern China, they migrated 200 years ago to escape Chinese oppression and have resided in the highlands of Laos as subsistence farmers practicing slash-and-burn cultivation. For the purpose of this entry, Laotian Americans include all people with roots in Laos, including Hmong Americans. However, statistics presented in this entry exclude Hmong Americans because data reported by the U.S. Census Bureau are separate for them.
Due to changes in immigration laws, the number of Asian Americans has increased greatly since the 1960s. The Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975 opened the gate for the flow of migration of refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Laotians were predominantly part of the second wave of refugees, who tended to be farmers and villagers and to be less educated and poorer than the firstwave immigrants. From 1979 to 1981, they arrived in great numbers—approximately 105,000. Resettlement continued throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, totaling more than 230,000 Laotians. This resettlement was also due to the U.S. family unification program, which allowed refugees already in the United States to sponsor their relatives. Many were resettled all over the country to prevent formation of ethnic enclaves and to minimize their impact on local communities. However, most were originally settled in California, and many later resettled in Minnesota, Texas, Wisconsin, and Washington because of the large Laotian American communities, job availability, lenient eligibility requirements for public assistance, and higher public assistance benefit levels in those states. Today, most Laotian Americans live in large metropolitan areas in California, especially in the Central Valley (Sacramento, Stockton, and Fresno), San Diego, and San Francisco Bay areas. They have also formed large communities in Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Washington. Other communities are located in North Carolina, Georgia, Kansas, Illinois, Tennessee, Oregon, Ohio, Iowa, Florida, and Pennsylvania. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, there are approximately 227,000 Laotian Americans who reported one or more ethnic designations. Most Laotians are either one-and-one-half-generation Americans (individuals who immigrated to the United States before their early teens) or second-generation Americans. They account for 1.7% of the Asian American population in total. As a group, Laotian Americans are a young population, and in 1990 their median age was 20.4 years. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, approximately 84,000 Laotian Americans are naturalized as U.S. citizens. To date, as many as 31% of households are linguistically isolated.
Religion The values, cultures, and religions of Laotians vary by their subgroups. Most Laotian Americans adhere to Theravada Buddhism, and the temple (wat) serves as an
Laotian Americans
important center for spiritual, social, and cultural needs of the community. A significant number of Laotian Americans have been converted to Christianity owing to the influence of early Western missionaries and have established Lao churches, which also serve as community centers. Animist religions, shamans, and spirit practitioners are seen among some Laotian Americans, who believe that inanimate objects and natural phenomena have souls. Despite different faiths, Laotian Americans come together during the Lao New Year (Pi Mai) in mid-April, funerals, and the traditional Baci-Sou Khuan ceremony. The traditional Baci-Sou Khuan ceremony is celebrated to maintain the balance of good relationships between individuals and their neighbors. Laotians continue to respect the spirits and believe that in each person there are thirty-two spirits that are linked to cause health, happiness, and prosperity. A lack of any of these spirits can cause depression, illness, and disease in an individual. The purpose of the ceremony is to promote recovery of the individual by calling back the spirits that have left a person’s body. The ceremony is performed by an elder male, usually one who is respected in the community. During the ceremony, an offering plate of food and the tying of cotton strings around the wrist of the person for whom the ceremony is being held represent a blessing by the well-wisher.
Family and Kinship Many Laotian Americans have retained values and traditions brought with them from their homeland. The family relationships are arranged in a nuclear family, and extended families often live in the same house or within close proximity for social and financial support. The attachment to the family, home, and community is seen as a stable and integrated whole of Laotian Americans’ traditional values. Women are important decision makers within the household and manage the family’s finances. The husband or oldest male heads the home and family, and elders are given great respect. Laotian American children are expected to respect and care for their parents. The changing dynamics of family have created tensions in the home. Although women are gaining independence and joining the workforce to contribute financially to the family’s income, one-and-one-halfand second-generation Laotian Americans are acquiring power in the family by learning English and becoming familiar with U.S. society and culture. They are called on as translators or interpreters for family interactions
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outside of the home. Inevitably, some traditional parental authority over one’s children is lost with this role reversal as children undertake adult responsibilities.
Process of Adjustment As second-wave refugees, most Laotians started their lives in the United States in poverty and were dependent on the U.S. welfare system. However, the community has built its own organizations and social programs throughout metropolitan centers to provide a variety of services, including job training and placement, youth services, English-language tutoring, citizenship classes, health care services, and psychological counseling. Compared with other Southeast Asian ethnic groups, Laotians have the highest percentage of people on public assistance, with one of every three Laotians living below the poverty line and receiving government assistance income. They remain one of the poorest Asian ethnic groups in the United States, with a poverty rate of approximately 19.1% and a median per capita income of less than $12,000. Furthermore, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, 22.7% of Laotians age 25 years or older in the United States had no formal schooling, 50.5% graduated from high school, 26% had some college, and 7.6% held a bachelor’s degree or higher. As noted earlier, lack of formal education among Laotian immigrants is attributable to their agrarian background, with little or no access to schools. It is difficult to predict the future course of Laotian Americans’ assimilation and acculturation given that they are recent members of U.S. society. However, one-and-one-half- and second-generation Laotian Americans are seeking educational attainment and immigrant adaptation by maintaining a positive outlook to attain self-reliance. They are a dynamic and rapidly growing community, creating visibility through education and becoming active participants as students, professionals, and community leaders. Davorn Sisavath See Appendix A See also Acculturation; Asian Americans; Assimilation; Hmong Americans; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees
Further Readings
Bankston, Carl L. 1995. “Who Are the Laotian Americans?” Pp. 131–142 in The Asian American Almanac, edited by Susan Gall and Irene Natividad. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.
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Caplan, Nathan, John K. Whitmore, and Marcella H. Choy. 1989. The Boat People and Achievement in America: A Study of Family Life and Cultural Values. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Haines, David W., ed. 1989. Refugees as Immigrants: Cambodians, Laotians, and Vietnamese in America. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield. Hein, Jeremy. 1995. From Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia: A Refugee Experience in the United States. New York: Twayne. Kunstadter, Peter, ed. 1967. Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities, and Nations. Vol. 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mansfield, Stephen. 1997. Culture Shock! A Guide to Customs and Etiquette: Laos. Portland, OR: Graphic Arts Center. Ngaosyvathn, Mayoury. 1990. “Individual Soul, National Identity: The Baci-Sou Khuan of the Lao.” Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 5:283–307. Proudfoot, Robert. 1990. Even the Birds Don’t Sound the Same Here: The Laotian Refugees Search for Heart in American Culture. New York: Peter Lang. Rumbaut, Ruben G. 1995. “A Legacy of War: Refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.” Pp. 315–333 in Origins and Destinies: Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in America, edited by Ruben Rumbaut and Silvia Pedraza. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Tenhula, John. 1991. Voices from Southeast Asia: The Refugee Experience in the United States. New York: Holmes & Meier.
LA RAZA La Raza translates literally to “the race,” but a more accurate or colloquial translation is “the people.” The term la raza cósmica (the cosmic race) was coined by Mexican scholar and politician José Vasconcelos to refer to the mixing of the races and, consequently, to the birth of a new race, latinoamericanos (Latin Americans). According to Vasconcelos, over time various races mix with one another to form a new type of human. La Raza was used sparingly prior to the 1960s, but during the 1960s political activists, especially Chicano movement activists, used the term increasingly to refer to themselves and other people of Latin American descent who shared the cultural and political legacies of Spanish conquest and colonialism and U.S. imperialism and internal colonialism. The term is
similar to the panethnic terms Latino and Hispanic insofar as all three refer to the same group, although raza has been used, and continues to be used, more narrowly by some to refer solely to people of Mexican descent. The term retains some of the racial significance associated with Vasconcelos’s use of the term in that it captures the “mestizo” character of Latinos—a people of indigenous, African, and European descent. Criticized by some as a term that promotes separatism or even racism, La Raza was employed, and continues to be employed, by political and community activists principally to promote political unity and cultural pride among Latinas/os. La Raza harkens back to and acknowledges the contributions of advanced pre-Columbian civilizations to the Americas and the indigenous roots of present-day Latinas/os, or la raza. The concept places as much importance on these indigenous and African roots as it does on the European roots of Latin Americans, thereby celebrating, rather than denigrating, the mixed origins and identity of Latinas/os in the United States. It is a form of “Brown pride,” similar to the “Black is beautiful” slogan of the Black Power movement in the United States, and like the Black Power slogan, it has been used to mobilize people into collective action. A common placard among protesters reads El Pueblo Unido, Jamas Sera Vencido (“The People United Will Never Be Defeated”). Often La Raza Unida is substituted for El Pueblo Unido. Columbus Day is celebrated on the second Monday in October in the United States, but El Dia de la Raza, either combined with or in place of Columbus Day, is celebrated on October 12 in most of Latin America, principally as a celebration of the birth of a new people, or raza, and not as a tribute to the explorer. The history of the conquest or “discovery” and the subsequent centuries of exploitation and bloodshed are well known, and for this reason many Latin Americans and Latinas/os in the United States do not celebrate Columbus Day as a day of discovery. For many indigenous people, it is a day of mourning. Millions of their ancestors were slaughtered or died from diseases borne by the European conquerors. But despite this history and distortions of this history, Latin Americans and Latinas/os are a product of that history, and they and their cultures reflect the fusing of these populations. This is what is celebrated on El Dia de la Raza. A number of organizations have adopted raza in their names, including the National Council of La Raza, the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. Ethnic studies departments
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and community centers have adopted La Raza in their names, and in 1970 the La Raza Unida party was created to give a stronger political voice to Chicanas/os in the United States. The party enjoyed limited success in challenging the two major parties, but it instilled ethnic pride and promoted political activism in the Chicano community. The term and what it embodies contributed to a renaissance in Chicano and Latino art, theater, and literature, and it continues to inspire a sense of unity and purpose among many Latinos. Héctor L. Delgado See also Alamo, The; Black Power; Chicano Movement; Hispanics; La Raza Unida Party; Latin America, Indigenous People; Latina/o Studies; Panethnic Identity
Further Readings
Gonzales, Manuel G. 1999. Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the United States. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Muñoz, Carlos, Jr. 1989. Youth, Identity, and Power: The Chicano Movement. London: Verso. Vasconcelos, José. 1997. The Cosmic Race/La Raza Cósmica, translated by Didier T. Jaén. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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of farming, Mexicans—who where clearly marked as a subordinate racial group—continued to migrate to Crystal City so that by 1930 Crystal City’s population was majority Mexican. Even though Mexican Americans constituted the overwhelming majority of Crystal City residents, Whites had controlled the city—its political and educational systems—since its inception. However, in the early 1960s, this Texas town witnessed a complete turnover from an all-White to an all–Mexican American city council. The 56-year White leadership ended when five Mexican Americans, known as Los Cinco, won in 1963. Their sweeping victory was fueled by the long history of discrimination and oppression in Crystal City. Jose Angel Gutierrez, a nineteen-year-old Crystal City high school student at the time, later founded La Raza Unida Party. Although many claimed there was no discrimination, he says, one had only to look around to know the truth. Los Cinco’s reign was shortlived and struggled against many challenges, including retaliation from the entrenched power structure. Nonetheless, although Whites regained power, the success of Los Cinco aided in the formation of the political consciousness of the Mexican Americans of Crystal City.
The Chicano Movement
LA RAZA UNIDA PARTY The La Raza Unida party was founded in Crystal City, Texas, located in the southeastern portion of the state approximately forty miles from the Mexico–Texas border. This locale and the emergence of the party played an important role in the long struggle of Chicanas/os (persons of Mexican origin) against racism, discrimination, and inequality, as shown in this entry.
Crystal City Background The roots of Crystal City extend back to 1884, when the first artesian well was discovered in the area. During the early part of the 20th century, Whites migrated to the region and transformed the economy from ranching to farming. The native Mexican-origin population became essential to the development of farming in the region. Thus, White farmers, despite their deep animosities toward Mexicans, saw them as a limitless source of cheap labor. With the proliferation
During the 1960s, a significant social change took place in U.S. politics. The Civil Rights Movement stimulated similar activities in the United States, including the Chicano movement. The goals of the movement included ethnic pride, autonomy, and the improvement of the standing of the Chicano community. It was during this era that the terms Chicano and Chicana, which connote a cultural identity of pride associated with the group’s indigenous roots, were popularized. Events surrounding the Chicano movement provided the social and political context for the rise of the La Raza Unida party. Crystal City and its native son, Gutierrez, took center stage in the development of the party and the building of Chicana/o political muscle. Even though Chicanas/os comprised 85% of the population of the city, they did not hold political or school administration offices after the short-lived victory of Los Cinco. Young Chicanas/os faced similar treatment within the schools. For example, custom dictated that the high school’s cheerleading squad be made up of four White females and one Chicana, a rule established by the
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White power structure. When a qualified Chicana was bypassed in favor of two less qualified White girls, the student body clearly saw the system of discrimination that Chicana/o students were forced to endure. Given the increasing political consciousness of Chicanas/os in the community, many students and parents took their grievances to the school board. The group was assisted by Gutierrez, who was now the president of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. The group achieved some temporary progress, but tensions rose with a “grandfather clause” that limited the competition for homecoming queen to those who had at least one parent who had graduated from Crystal City High School, a policy that clearly disadvantaged Chicanas/os. Severita Lara, a student, was suspended when she distributed flyers pointing out the injustice of this policy. With the help of Gutierrez, the aggrieved students got their parents to join in the revolt. The school board claimed that allegations of discrimination were unfounded and dismissed the Chicano group’s request for an end to such practices. Then the aggrieved students replicated what had been done in Elsa, Texas, in 1968—the “walkout.” Students and parents united to execute these walkout protests. The students employed these peaceful actions to address the public school system’s injustices. On the first day, 500 students marched, and by the second day, one-third of the student body was absent from school. The school board eventually gave in to the students’ demands for equality. From this mobilization, Gutierrez went on to form the La Raza Unida party and become one of the major figures of the Chicano movement in the country.
The Party and Its Legacy The La Raza Unida party was established on January 17, 1972, in Crystal City. Chicanas/os were dissatisfied with the Democratic and Republican parties; La Raza Unida was a third party—one that represented the interests of the Chicano community. The party achieved significant successes in Crystal City and other selected communities of south Texas, with chapters emerging in numerous other states as well. During the early 1970s, La Raza Unida party members won political offices, including representation on school boards. The party ran Ramsey Muniz as its candidate in the 1972 Texas gubernatorial election. Although Muniz did not win, he received a significant
number of votes that nearly cost Democrats the election. Chicanas were also crucial to the development of the political party. For example, Alma Canales, from Edinburg, Texas, was nominated to run for lieutenant governor of the state in 1972. The high point for the party occurred at its first national convention in September 1972 in El Paso, Texas. Toward the middle and end of the 1970s, as the national political pendulum swung to the right, the La Raza Unida party was challenged with internal conflicts and began to fragmentize. In 1978, the party lost its legal status by failing to receive the required 2% of the total vote in that year’s gubernatorial election. Nonetheless, the party had confronted the power structure and left an important legacy—the social and political awareness of the racial oppression of Chicanas/os. Carlos Siordia and Rogelio Saenz See also Chicano Movement; La Raza; Mexican Americans; Voting Rights
Further Readings
Barrera, James B. 2004. “The 1968 Edcouch–Elsa High School Walkout: Chicano Student Activism in a South Texas Community.” Aztlán 29:93–122. Chávez, Ernesto. 2002. Mi Raza Primero! Nationalism, Identity, and Insurgency in the Chicano Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Garcia, Ignacio M. 1989. United We Win: The Rise and Fall of La Raza Unida Party. Tucson: University of Arizona, Mexican American Studies Research Center. Goodwyn, Larry. 1963. “Los Cinco Candidatos.” Texas Observer, April 18, pp. 3–9. Gutierrez, Jose Angel. 1999. The Making of a Chicano Militant: Lessons from Cristal. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Gutierrez, Jose Angel and Rebecca E. Deen. 2000. “Chicanas in Texas Politics.” Occasional Paper No. 66, Julian Samora Research Institute, Michigan State University. Handbook of Texas Online. 2007. Raza Unida Party. Austin: University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved from http://www .tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/RR/war1.html Marquez, Benjamin and Rodolfo Espino. 2002. “The Origins and Impact of Mexican American Support for Third-Party Candidates: The Case of La Raza Unida in the 1972 Texas Gubernatorial Election.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston. Muñoz, Carlos. 1989. Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement. New York: Verso Books.
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Navarro, Armando. 2000. La Raza Unida Party: A Chicano Challenge to the U.S. Two-Party Dictatorship. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Rivera, George, Jr. 1972. “Nosotros Venceremos: Chicano Consciousness and Change Strategies.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 8:56–71. Shockley, John S. 1974. Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press. Trujillo, Armando. 2005. “Politics, School Philosophy, and Language Policy: The Case of Crystal City Schools.” Educational Policy 19:621–654.
LATIN AMERICA, INDIGENOUS PEOPLE The terms indigenous, native, and Indian emerge from the colonial experience but at the same time are very much a part of modernity and postmodernity. On their arrival in Latin America, conquering European forces of the 16th through 20th centuries imposed this single identity on vastly diverse groups of peoples with their own histories, practices, problems, and conflicts. Even today, the term Maya, referring to descendants of preconquest populations throughout much of contemporary southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Belize, incorporates no less than twelve distinct groups, many with mutually indistinguishable languages. Since conquest, the meanings inherent in the indigenous moniker have been heavily weighted through multiple forms of actions, policies, and dialogues, although always under conditions of domination by groups of European descent. During the past 20 years, massive popular mobilizations indicate that the indigenous populations of Latin America are acquiring the full rights of citizenship, parallel to the accomplishments of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the United States. These new mobilizations, based significantly on indigenous identity and rights, emerged from populations long regarded as heavily subjugated and politically marginal. Where did these mass movements come from? How are they changing society? How is this related to the larger changes of globalization? This entry outlines the historic struggles over the meaning of indigenous to address these contemporary questions.
The European Conquest At the time of conquest, the most high-profile groups were the Mixtec (Aztecs) of central Mexico and the
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Tawantinsuyo (Incas) of the central Andes. These groups are particularly famous because they had recently engaged in local conquest and had established empires of their own. Although many argue that the Aztec Empire was in precipitous decline by the time Hernando Cortez and his small cavalry arrived, the ability of the small invading Spanish fleet to quickly overcome these battle-hardened peoples derived in no small part from the ruling strategy of the Aztecs. By creating discord and animosity between conquered groups, the Aztecs dominated but also created bitter local enemies willing to unite under an invading force with the vastly superior military technology of horses, steel, and gunpowder. In 1532, Francisco Pizarro followed Cortez’s example, uniting parts of an Andean population highly divided by a civil war most likely precipitated by the spread of European diseases. Both conquerors seated themselves at the head of the defeated empire, using their positions to indulge their seemingly unquenchable gold lust. In the genocidal violence that followed initial contact, the Spanish tried to repeat this strategy of placing themselves in the most advantageous position of already existing social structures so as to extract the maximum amount of labor and resources from the native populations. Beyond superior technology, however, the Catholic Spaniards needed to morally justify their conquering actions to themselves. Notions of universal human equality were then emerging out of the European Enlightenment, which seemingly contradicted the bloody actions and policies of the new colonies, a point made by some European dissenters of the time such as Bartolomé de las Casas. To address this predicament, Europeans ruled that all natives were subhuman and, therefore, needed the enlightened guidance of European masters. For this reason, many journals of conquistadores show the Spanish praising God after they have mercilessly slaughtered the entire population of an indigenous village. By royal decree, natives faced a choice of either converting to Christianity or being put to the sword even if they did not understand the language in which the proclamation was read or its terms. This supposed indigenous “biological inferiority” (to use current parlance) has informed social relations in Latin America ever since, with natives incorporated into the various states as wards to be looked after rather than as citizens with full rights and the ability to participate in creating and enforcing the institutions and laws that govern them.
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these conditions, with families rotating their fields and homes over large territories of land, across long periods of time. Jungle areas proved to be particularly resilient to Spanish conquest, with horses and cannons having difficulty in engaging a population scattered through forests and not predisposed to exploitation through already belonging to an empire or a federation. But the European hunger for wealth seemed to be an inexhaustible resource, driving the colonizing forces into most corners of the New World. Paternalistic European rule Aztec Indian children in Mexico (1910). The term Aztec, originally associated with the was redolent with strife and migrant Mexica, is today used as a collective term that is applied to all the peoples conflict. The drive to extract linked to these founders by trade, custom, religion, and language. During the past 20 years, massive popular mobilizations indicate that many of the indigenous populations resources and native labor throughout Latin America are acquiring the full rights of citizenship, parallel to the reduced the indigenous populaaccomplishments of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the United States. tions by approximately 97%, Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-9967. with this “great dying” representing the most genocidal period on the planet. From its The Conquered Groups nadir during the 18th century, the population levels of The native populations were highly diverse in their the Americas did not recover until the second half of cultural practices and forms of social organization. the 20th century. Native groups continually attempted Indeed, prior to conquest, the Incas had never successto resist these policies, generally forced to choose fully overcome the groups in the lowland jungle areas between the extremes of “weapons of the weak” and and regarded them as uncivilized. The major groups militaristic uprisings. Many millenarian cults, such as of this time—the Incas, Aztecs, and Mayas—had creTaki Onqoy in Peru, envisioned an “inevitable” disapated vast cities, many of which rivaled or even surpearance of Europeans, providing practitioners with passed those in Europe in terms of the differentiation an alternative framework around which to organize and specialization of activities of the populace. Much their lives. Uprisings were also common, ranging from of the population of these empires, however, lived in highly localized scuffles against draconian overlords villages of distinct ethnic origins over which the domto near revolutionary movements sweeping up large inant group ruled through acts of colonization and territories. Some of the more famous of these include theocratic sway. Prior to conquest, many vast cityTupac Amaru and Tupac Katari in late-18th-century states had emerged through agricultural domestication Peru and Bolivia and the Caste War in 19th-century and centralized religion and later declined through the Yucatan, Mexico. twin processes of warfare and natural resource depleNative discontent frequently focused on land in tion. Tiwanaku in contemporary Bolivia, Teotihuacán terms of who controlled it and how it was controlled. in Mexico, Tikal in Guatemala, and Huari in Peru are Since conquest, people of European descent have but a few examples. dominated through a system of “indirect rule” in Large populations also lived throughout the vast which local overlords have been granted authoritarian territories of the Americas. Swidden (slash-and-burn) powers in exchange for managing local discontent. agriculture was widely practiced throughout the These state proxies have largely governed through Amazon basin and other lowland jungle areas. Human mixing patronage with sowing divisions. Rather than settlements tended to be much less centralized under quelling local restiveness, these overlords used the
Latin America, Indigenous People
resources they controlled to redirect discontent against other partsof the indigenous populations. In this way, natives remained divided against themselves, beholden to powerful patrons, and the overall situation remained highly volatile. Natives almost always immediately directed their militancy against these local strongman figures, particularly in their hoarding of land resources or their ability to circumscribe native control. Larger movements tended to be based on these same grievances writ large such as the globally minded Zapatistas, whose primary complaints focused on local despots.
Recent Movements The processes of conquest and colonization continued overtly until the independence movements at the beginning of the 19th century. Indeed, Europeans did not bring to heel the more recalcitrant populations, such as the Mapuche and the Apache, until the 20th century. Government reforms starting in the mid-20th century were intended to alter the land-based system of patronage by redistributing land to the native populations (although this did not occur in all countries). Many of these changes, however, were embedded in assimilationist policies. The state granted lands to native peoples based on their use of the land as smallscale farmers (peasants) rather than on their ancestral claims. State officials deliberately changed legal categories from “native” to “peasant.” Although they saw the former as “racist,” their actions ironically stripped indigenous groups of their legal claims to the lands their peoples had historically controlled; the indigenous groups were peasants—not natives—and so had no patrimonial claims. The racism of previous centuries persisted through these policies, with natives still seen as a barrier to progress and needing to be assimilated so as to achieve “modernization.” Furthermore, Indigenous Peoples generally did not achieve citizenship through these policies but rather acquired a new patron in the form of the state and its bureaucrats. These reforms, however, were generally responses to widespread popular mobilizations through which subaltern populations acquired rich experiences in networking and political action. At least by the 1980s, however, marginalized groups throughout the Americas began mobilizing for various forms of inclusive citizenship based on the central assertion of the validity of native cultures. As this entry has shown, such practices were not vestiges from preconquest times but rather customs that had
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been reformed and reshaped as “indigenous” during the previous centuries. These movements generally demand different forms of control over their ancestral land, much of which has been stripped from them. Whereas groups such as the Zapatistas in Mexico demand nearly total autonomous control, other groups, such as COCEI (Coalición Obrero Campesino Estudiantil del Istmo) in Oaxaca are willing to undertake power-sharing agreements. The policies of neoliberal globalization prove to be particularly threatening to native peoples, opening their resource base to exploitation by multinational corporations while removing traditional protections such as corporate rights to lands. These threats have helped to spur much of the population to nationwide mobilizations, aided considerably by the abilities to network nationally and internationally. At the same time, however, neoliberalism’s embrace of multiculturalism also threatens to diffuse native demands by recognizing their cultural claims but not their economic claims; dominant groups generally no longer view native cultures as barriers to modernization but condemn redress of historic wrongs as “reverse racism.” In addition, the parallels between indigenous calls for autonomy and neoliberalism’s emphasis on political decentralization have tended to weaken indigenous calls for economic redistribution in favor of regressive market-based policies aided by the power of transnational organizations (e.g., the World Bank, Chevron) coupled with the long history of localized authoritarianism. As such, native movements have suffered a serious weakening and realignment, and the prospect for inclusive citizenship remains elusive. Arthur Scarritt See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Belize; Colonialism; Internal Colonialism; Mexico; Native Americans; Peru; Zapatista Rebellion
Further Readings
Hale, Charles R. 2006. Mas Que un Indio. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Nelson, Diane. 1999. A Finger in the Wound. Berkeley: University of California Press. Postero, Nancy Grey and Leon Zamosc. 2004. The Struggle for Indigenous Rights in Latin America. Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press. Wolf, Eric R. 1982. Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Yashar, Deborah J. 2005. Contesting Citizenship in Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Latina/o Studies
LATINA/O STUDIES Latina/o Studies typically refers to Latina/o Studies programs in educational institutions, but it can also refer to a body of knowledge on and alternative approaches to the study of Latinos and Latinas in the United States. Although Latina/o Studies as a body of knowledge is more than a century old, Latina/o Studies programs are of a more recent vintage. Latina/o Studies can refer to programs focusing on Latinos and Latinas broadly or collectively to more specific programs such as Chicana/o Studies, Puerto Rican Studies, Dominican Studies, Cuban Studies, and Central American Studies. All of these programs were created only within the past 40 years. This entry looks at research about Latinos and Latinas and at academic programs that help to enlarge and disseminate this body of knowledge.
Research and Writing It is difficult to pinpoint the exact age of Latino Studies. If we include memoirs from the Mexican– American War and the second half of the 19th century, for example, Chicano Studies is roughly 150 years old. During the early 1900s, labor economist Paul Taylor conducted research on Mexican Americans in the Southwest and other locales, including Chicago, where Robert Redfield, the noted anthropologist, conducted fieldwork on Mexican colonias during the 1920s. The work of Mexican archaeologist Manuel Gamio during the 1930s on the migration to and work in the United States by Mexican immigrants also contributed to this nascent body of research, as did the work of folklorist Aurelio Espinosa, Jr. in New Mexico and Colorado during the first half of the 20th century. George I. Sánchez made important contributions, both as a scholar and as an activist, in the area of Mexican Americans and education. Sociologist Julian Samora conducted pioneering work in Mexican American Studies and participated in the creation of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project. As a professor at Notre Dame University, he created the Mexican Border Studies Project and mentored generations of Latino graduate students. He wrote several books, but perhaps the best known is his classic Los Mojados: The Wetback Story. The Julian
Samora Research Institute at Michigan State University was named in his honor. Perhaps no scholar is linked more closely to the genesis of Chicano or Mexican American Studies than Américo Paredes, an English and anthropology professor at the University of Texas at Austin. His contributions to the Latino Studies literature, including his groundbreaking book With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero, and to the creation of Latino Studies programs were enormous. He cofounded the Center for Intercultural Studies of Folklore and Ethnomusicology in 1967 and fought to create a Mexican American Studies program at the University of Texas at Austin a few years later. Other trailblazers in the creation and development of Chicano Studies included Rodolfo Acuña, Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Jesús Chavarria, Tomás Rivera, and Luis Leal. Other Latino Studies programs had their own trailblazers, including Frank Bonilla and Juan Flores in Puerto Rican Studies; Ruth Behar, Lisandro Perez, Alejandro Portes, Silvia Pedraza, and Eliana Rivero in Cuban Studies; and Silvio TorresSaillant, Ramona Hernández, Sherri Grasmuck, and Patricia R. Pessar in Dominican Studies. Although the road for women into scholarly circles was difficult to travel because of a long history of sexism in the academy and Latino communities, today women are among the top scholars in Latino Studies and other disciplines. In addition to the women already mentioned, these scholars include Marta Tienda, Vicki Ruiz, Ruth Zambrana, Beatriz Pesquera, Adela de la Torre, Edna Acosta-Belen, Norma Alarcon, Denise Segura, Sandra Cisneros, and Judith Ortiz Cofer. Latino Studies is interdisciplinary in its approach to the study of Latinas/os in the United States. Latino Studies scholars study virtually every facet of Latino life and experience. The individuals mentioned in this entry represent many disciplines, including sociology, history, anthropology, political science, the arts, and literature. Latino Studies, of course, has the widest breadth of all these programs, but even programs that focus on a particular group (e.g., Mexican American Studies) typically compare “their” group not only with other Latinos but also with other minority groups and the majority population. This body of knowledge, beginning early in the 20th century, contributed to the movement that eventually gave birth to academic programs in Latino Studies. Interest in Latino Studies is not confined solely to Latina/o scholars and students. Non-Latino
Latina/o Studies
scholars have made important contributions to this literature, and growing numbers of graduate students who are not Latino are drawn to the study of Latinos in the United States.
Academic Programs The earliest Latino Studies programs were born from political struggles on college campuses during the 1960s as a response to Latino students’ demands for a curriculum that recognized their history and culture, increases in Latino student enrollments and retention, and the hiring of Latino faculty members and administrators. Latino Studies programs sought to fill a gap left by traditional disciplines that, in the opinion of Latino Studies scholars and students, either ignored or misrepresented the histories and cultures of Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Central Americans, and other Latino groups in the United States. These programs did this principally with faculty members who offered courses specifically on these groups and wrote books and published articles in journals on Latinos in the United States. Some of these scholars established journals in Latino Studies, including Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies and Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, usually in response to traditional journals’ reluctance or refusal to publish articles submitted by Latino scholars. Today, articles on Latinos can be found in most mainstream academic journals, and books on Latinos are published by most of the major publishing houses. Chican no/Mexican Americcan Stu udies
The first Chicano Studies program was established at California State University, Los Angeles, in 1968 after sustained pressure by Chicano students, but especially by the United Mexican American Students (UMAS). A year later, a Chicano Studies department was established at California State University, Northridge (at the time it was called San Fernando Valley State College) after heated confrontations between protesters and the institution’s administration. Others followed. Today there are Chicano or Mexican American Studies programs or departments in many states, including Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Most Chicano Studies programs, however, are found in the Southwest, where the bulk of the Chicano or Mexican American population resides. Key events in the creation and proliferation of Chicano Studies were the
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Denver Youth Conference in Denver, Colorado, and a conference in Santa Barbara, California, in 1969. At the Santa Barbara conference, a document, El Plan de Santa Bárbara (as it became known), called for, among other things, the creation of Chicano Studies programs with both academic and community foci. Chicano Studies has evolved over the years in response to both internal and external challenges and debates. Internally, there have been epistemological debates and challenges by Chicana feminists to the male-centric character of the new discipline. Most Chicano and Latino Studies programs now have both female and male faculty members, who offer courses and write on the experiences of Chicanas/Latinas and on the role of gender in virtually every facet of Latino life. Externally, many in the academy challenged the legitimacy of the new discipline, charging that it was more political than academic in character, and often tried to prevent the creation of new programs or to undermine existing ones. Chicano Studies weathered these and other storms, some of which still rage on, and today is credited, both directly and indirectly, for contributing new approaches to the study of and knowledge about Latinos, the fastest growing population in the United States; increasing the number of Chicana/o and Latina/o faculty members, administrators, and students on college campuses; and helping to train scores of Latina/o scholars, intellectuals, and professionals. Puerrto Riccan Stu udies Pro ogramss
Most Puerto Rican Studies programs and departments are located in the northeastern part of the United States. In 1969, the Board of Higher Education of the City University of New York (CUNY), in response to student and community demands, announced its support for Black and Puerto Rican Studies programs. Programs were created in the CUNY system and eventually in adjoining states and the Midwest. These programs focus principally on the Puerto Rican diaspora but on Puerto Rico as well given that Puerto Ricans on the island are U.S. citizens and have been since 1917. Furthermore, an understanding of the Puerto Rican experience in the United States requires knowledge of the island and the relationship between the island and the continental United States. The political status of the island is an issue at the heart of many discussions, both academic and nonacademic, on the island and in the continental United States.
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Puerto Rican Studies programs offer courses on other Latino groups, such as Dominicans, Mexicans, and Cubans, in response to significant demographic changes in the Latino population in the Northeast. One of the oldest programs in the CUNY system changed its name to the Department of Latin American and Hispanic Caribbean Studies. Puerto Rican/Latino Studies is a “sequence” in Hunter College’s (CUNY) Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies and includes the study of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba specifically, and the Caribbean generally, in addition to the study of Puerto Ricans in the continental United States. In fact, a number of institutions have moved toward syntheses of Latino and Latin American Studies. In addition to Puerto Rican Studies departments, several research centers or institutes were created. The best known and oldest of these is El Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, located on the Hunter College campus. The center’s mission is to collect and preserve archival and library resources about the history and culture of Puerto Ricans and to produce and disseminate interdisciplinary research about the experiences of Puerto Ricans in the diaspora, linking scholarly inquiry to social action. The center collaborates and participates in exchange programs with scholars and institutions in Puerto Rico and other Latin American countries.
Cuban, Dom min niccan, and Centrrall Americcan Stu udie es Progra ams
Although Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Latino Studies programs often include the study of Cubans, Dominicans, and Central Americans in the United States, these groups have formed separate programs as well. Cuban Studies programs, sometimes housed in Latin American and Caribbean Studies programs, were created to study Cuban politics and the Cuban exile to and presence in the United States. Cuban Studies programs are offered at several institutions, including the Institute of Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami and the Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute at Tulane University. The Center for Cuban Studies in New York City is one of the oldest programs in the United States. The center was created in 1972 by scholars, writers, and other professionals who wanted to improve relations between the United States and Cuba. The scholarly
journal Cuban Studies was founded in 1970 and since 1985 has been published in English and Spanish by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Dominican Studies and Central American Studies are the newest programs. In 2000, California State University, Northridge, created the first Central American Studies program and minor. The Chicano Studies department and the Central American United Student Association (CAUSA) played important roles in the creation of the program, which focuses on Central Americans in the United States and the relationship between the United States and Central American countries. Half of the Central American population in the United States lives in the Los Angeles area. Another rapidly growing segment of the Latino population is Dominicans. In 2004, CUNY instituted a bachelor of arts degree program in Dominican Studies, and in 1994 it had already established the Dominican Studies Institute (DSI) as a research unit of the institution. The Council of Dominican Educators group played the most important part in the creation of the institute, but the Dominican community played an important role as well. The institute, in turn, maintains close ties with the Dominican community, whose population will surpass—if it has not already surpassed—that of the Puerto Rican community in New York City. Although resistance to Latino Studies programs persists, it is more muted than it was during the early years of these programs. These are young programs by academic standards, but they have managed to carve out niches in their home institutions, and many have finally been accepted in the academy. On many campuses, faculty members hold joint appointments in traditional departments and Latino Studies programs. The rapid growth and economic importance of Latino populations in the United States have given a boost to these programs and departments, as evidenced by the new programs and the growing number of scholars from a wide range of fields studying these groups. The current and future impact of Latinos on the economy, education, and politics requires serious study, and Latino Studies programs are likely to take the lead. Héctor L. Delgado See also Central Americans in the United States; Chicano Movement; Cuban Americans; Dominican Americans; La Raza; Mexican Americans; Puerto Rican Americans; Samora, Julian
Latvian Americans
Further Readings
Butler, Johnnella E., ed. 2001. Color-Line to Borderlands: The Matrix of American Ethnic Studies. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Cabán, Pedro. 1998. “The New Synthesis of Latin American and Latino Studies.” Pp. 195–216 in Borderless Borders: U.S. Latinos, Latin Americans, and the Paradox of Interdependence, edited by Frank Bonilla, Edwin Meléndez, Rebecca Morales, and Maria de los Angeles Torres. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. De la Torre, Adela and Beatriz M. Pesquera, eds. 1993. Building with Our Hands: New Directions in Chicana Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press. Flores, Juan. 2003. “Latino Studies: New Contexts, New Concepts.” In Critical Latin American and Latino Studies, edited by Juan Poblete. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Muñoz, Carlos, Jr. 1984. “The Development of Chicano Studies, 1968–1981.” In Chicano Studies: A Multidisciplinary Approach, edited by Eugene E. García, Francisco Lomelí, and Isidro D. Ortiz. New York: Columbia University, Teachers College Press. Torres-Saillant, Silvio and Ramona Hernández. 1998. The Dominican-Americans. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
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In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1905, approximately 5,000 Latvians immigrated. Their reason for migrating was mainly political, and immigrants included many well-educated socialist and nationalist leaders. Due to World War I, the Immigration Act of 1924, and the Great Depression, migration to the United States slowed during the period between world wars. In addition, when Latvia gained independence in 1918, several hundred Latvians returned to their home country. Only 4,669 Latvians arrived between the years 1920 and 1939. Census data indicate that more than 40,000 Latvians arrived between 1939 and 1951, with the majority arriving after 1945. Many of these immigrants arrived in the United States as refugees and displaced persons who were fleeing Nazi and Soviet suppression. This second group of Latvian immigrants often referred to themselves as living in exile and as having a great desire to return to Latvia. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which reestablished Latvia’s independence, very few have undertaken return migration and many have made the United States their permanent home.
Contemporary Community
LATVIAN AMERICANS Latvian Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from Latvia, a country of 2.3 million as of 2007 estimates. According to the 2000 census, there were 27,230 people born in Latvia residing in the United States; of these, 73.2% were citizens. This entry describes the background of immigration from Latvia to the United States and the contemporary picture of Latvian Americans.
During recent years, people from Latvia have sought permanent residency and refugee status and have completed the naturalization process to become citizens.
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Immigration Patterns Latvian immigration can be divided into two distinct groups: those who arrived in the United States before World War II and those who arrived after the war. The first group, often referred to as the “Old Latvians,” began to be documented in the 1850 census. According to census data for that year, there were 3,160 Latvians in the United States, although Lithuanians were included in this group in census data because they spoke a similar language. Half a century later, the number of Latvians residing in the United States was 4,309, most of whom were sailors, artisans, missionaries, laborers, and craftsmen.
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From 1997 to 2006, approximately 6,100 Latvians immigrated to the United States. An additional 600 refugees arrived between 1999 and 2006. Approximately 325 Latvian Americans have become naturalized citizens annually beginning in 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2005, there were 63,867 people of Latvian national origin in the United States in 2005. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states were California, New York, Michigan, Florida, and New Jersey. According to the 2000 census, more than 75% spoke a language other than English at home. Their median family income was $55,209, as compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Europe; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees; Return Migration; Symbolic Ethnicity Further Readings
Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs .gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Neimanis, George J. 1997. The Collapse of the Soviet Empire: A View from Riga. Westport, CT: Praeger. Plakans, Andrejs. 1995. The Latvians: A Short History. Stanford, CA: Stanford University, Hoover Institution Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Latvia. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/ www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
the United States; of these, 67.7% were citizens. This entry looks at the background of immigration from Lebanon to the United States and the contemporary picture of Lebanese Americans.
Immigration Patterns Arabs have been migrating to the United States since 1850. However, early Lebanese immigrants were categorized together with Syrian immigrants. Therefore, accurate records and statistics are difficult to obtain. The first wave peaked in 1914 with 9,023 people immigrating; however, immigration fluctuated greatly through the 1920s. Many were drawn to the United States because of economic opportunities. The years between 1870 and 1918 were quite significant because Lebanon lost a quarter of its population to emigration. The Immigration Act of 1924 primarily ended all immigration from Lebanon during the years it was in force. Most Lebanese arrived during the first wave. However, the end of the Arab–Israeli war in 1967 sparked the second wave of immigration. In addition, the civil war between Muslims and Christians that lasted from 1975 to 1991 created a mass exodus from Lebanon during those years. The new immigrants carried with them a strong Arab identity, or “Arab consciousness,” with their Islamic and political traditions.
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Lebanese Americans are immigrants from Lebanon, a country of 3.9 million people as of 2007, as well as their descendants. Lebanese Americans represent one of the many diverse groups of the Arab nations, including Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and the Yemen Arab Republic. According to the 2000 census, there were 105,910 people born in Lebanon residing in
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These immigrants were better educated than their predecessors and helped to revive their customs and culture in Lebanese communities in the United States.
Contemporary Community During recent years, people from Lebanon have sought permanent residency status and have completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 to 2006, approximately 3,700 Lebanese immigrated to the United States annually. At least 3,400 Lebanese Americans have become naturalized citizens annually beginning in 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2005, there were 363,015 people of Lebanese national origin in the United States in 2005. Large Lebanese communities can be found in the Northeast and Midwest. Detroit has the largest Lebanese community. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states are Michigan, California, Florida, Massachusetts, and New York. According to the 2000 census, 32.4% spoke English less than “very well.” Their median family income was $54,798, as compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Of those Lebanese-born individuals present in the United States in 2000, 20% had entered the country prior to 2000. Americans of Lebanese descent have made many contributions to entertainment and politics. Among famous actors of Lebanese descent are Danny Thomas and his daughter Marlo. Other famous Americans of Lebanese descent include Frank Zappa, musician; Paul Orfalea, founder of Kinko’s; and John Elway, professional football star quarterback. James Abourezk was the first Lebanese American to serve in the U.S. Senate (1974–1980) and founded the American Arab Anti-discrimination Committee. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Arab Americans; Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Islamophobia; Muslim Americans; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs.gov/ ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm
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Horani, Albert. 1991. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Warner Books. Kayal, Philip M. 1975. The Syrian–Lebanese in America: A Study in Religion and Assimilation. New York: Twayne. Khater, Akram Fouad. 2001. Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870–1920. Berkeley: University of California Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Lebanon. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/ www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
LEE, SPIKE (1957– ) Spike Lee has used the art of film to entertain, tell stories, and—at his most compelling—provoke the viewer to think about society. To date, Lee’s body of work includes twenty films completed between 1986 and 2006. Although the genres of his films vary from comedy and satire to drama and documentary, consistent themes of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and the inequalities arising from these social categories have emerged to make him one of the leading provocateurs of U.S. cinema. This entry provides a brief biography of Lee and discusses the impact of his films and their role in reflecting U.S. race and ethnic relations.
Beginnings Raised in Brooklyn, New York, Lee was exposed to ethnic diversity throughout his childhood given the multiculturalism of his neighborhoods and schools. He has characterized his childhood and growing up in these communities as enriching and as raising his awareness of race and ethnic relations. Occasionally, Lee and his family would experience the effects of racist attitudes. For example, on the first day of moving into the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, his family was called “nigger.” However, most of his interactions and relationships cultivated with Jews, Italians, Puerto Ricans, and Blacks were not filled with conflict; rather, they were felt to be mutually rewarding. Many early experiences shaped Lee’s interest in becoming a filmmaker. His father, a jazz musician, exposed him to ideas and to the process of creating one’s voice through art. His mother, a teacher, encouraged constant exposure to the arts through attending the theater and museums. Later, Spike graduated from
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Morehouse College with a bachelor of arts degree in mass communication and went on to graduate from the New York University (NYU) Film School with a master of fine arts degree.
Authentic Representations of African Americans In 1986, the year Lee debuted as a filmmaker, there was still a dearth of diverse images and representations of African Americans. His first three films, She’s Gotta Have It, School Daze, and Do the Right Thing, signaled a departure from the blaxploitation genre that had dominated films portraying Blacks since the early 1970s. Blaxploitation films gave Black filmmakers and actors opportunities to work; however, the films were a hyperbole of urban ghetto life, with characters depicted as hypersexual and hyperviolent. Overwhelmingly, stereotypes of African Americans were reinforced, as were those of Whites. Lee’s films deviated from the formula of blaxploitation and sought to depict African Americans in their everyday lives. Moreover, he used his films as a platform to wrestle with the ways in which race and racism shape people’s identities and interpersonal relationships. In a sense, Lee returned to the roots of cinema initiated by filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, who in 1919 became the first African American to make a film. Lee has credited Micheaux as one of his most significant influences and as a model of how to address race and challenge stereotypes in film. In addition, all of Lee’s films have tapped into a social consciousness to reflect the relevant social and political issues of the times. His first student film, The Last Hustle in Brooklyn, captured images of people looting during the New York City power blackout of 1977. At NYU, his student film The Answer nearly got him dismissed from the program for challenging D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. In The Answer, Lee selected some of the most degrading images of how African Americans were depicted to demonstrate how stereotypes about African Americans were perpetuated. In challenging the status quo and the iconic work of Griffith, Lee provoked controversy by addressing issues of racism. His later films continued to push the status quo by addressing a range of taboo topics, from intragroup racism, interracial relationships, and ethnic relations to retelling U.S. history in the form of historical dramas and documentaries.
His Films Lee’s body of work includes more than films; however, his films have garnered the most attention and raised the most controversy. At times, Lee has been criticized for exploiting the issue of race and even of reinforcing stereotypes, especially of ethnic groups such as Jews and Italians. Although a discussion of all of Lee’s films is beyond the scope of this entry, several of them warrant discussion here. School Daze, Do the Right Thing, and Jungle Fever are films that most prominently feature aspects of race and ethnic relations. School Daze grapples with the complexity of identity and how belonging to a marginalized ethnic group shapes one’s identity. In so doing, Lee brought to light how African Americans have been affected by internalized racism and have struggled with the historical legacy of racism that privileges light skin color and straight hair. He called for African Americans to resist this form of racism and “wake up,” as the protagonist challenges the audience to do at the end of the film. Do the Right Thing captures the tension that results when an outside ethnic group benefits economically Table 1
Chronology of Films by Spike Lee
Film
Date of Release
She’s Gotta Have It School Daze Do the Right Thing Mo’ Better Blues Jungle Fever Malcolm X Crooklyn Clockers Girl 6 Get on the Bus 4 Little Girls He Got Game Summer of Sam The Original Kings of Comedy Bamboozled Jim Brown: All American 25th Hour She Hate Me Inside Man When the Levees Broke Lovers & Haters
August 20, 1986 February 12, 1988 June 30, 1989 August 3, 1990 June 7, 1990 November 18, 1992 May 13, 1994 September 11, 1995 March 22, 1996 October 16, 1996 October 16, 1997 May 1, 1998 July 2, 1999 September 18, 2000 November 11, 2000 March 22, 2002 December 16, 2002 December 29, 2004 March 24, 2006 August 29, 2006 September 16, 2007
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from an African American community. The pizza restaurant owned by an Italian American serves as a catalyst to ignite the sense of powerlessness that results from racial inequality. The character Radio Raheem symbolizes the frustration and anger triggered by racism. As in Jungle Fever, where the viewer observes how a fictional Italian American family responds to an interracial dating relationship, Do the Right Thing purports to show how members of other ethnic groups construct beliefs about race. Finally, each of the later films Malcolm X, Get on the Bus, and Bamboozled, as well as each of the documentaries 4 Little Girls and When the Levees Broke, reflects some historical event, wrestles with a political or societal issue of the day, and seeks to give voice to a story that was silenced or perhaps underrepresented. This body of work might be considered Lee’s most compelling in that these films focus on the multiple faces of oppression and the intersection of race, class, geography, and gender. As Lee continues to make films, he also continues to challenge the viewer to reflect on issues of race and ethnic relations. As a filmmaker, he has garnered critical acclaim and received mainstream success; the film Inside Man opened successfully at the box office and was overwhelmingly supported by a major studio company. Continually faced with the struggle to secure financing for his films, Lee seems to persist and sustain his work by seeking and taking on alternative and independent projects. Tracey Lewis-Elligan See also African Americans; Black Cinema; Black Intellectuals; Internalized Racism; Malcolm X; Stereotypes
Further Readings
Bowser, Pearl, Jane Gains, and Charles Musser. 2001. Oscar Micheaux and His Circle: African American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. hooks, bell. 1996. Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies. London: Routledge. Lee, Spike and Kaleem Aftab. 2005. That’s My Story and I’m Sticking to It. New York: Norton. Lee, Spike and Nelson George. 1987. Spike Lee’s Gotta Have It: Inside Guerrilla Filmmaking. New York: Simon & Schuster.
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Lee, Spike and Ralph Riley. 1997. Best Seat in the House: A Basketball Memoir. New York: Crowne. Micheaux, Oscar. 1994. The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
LEISURE The sociological analysis of leisure is a valuable window through which to view issues of race and ethnicity. All leisure behavior is learned, and the norms, attitudes, values, and beliefs that govern leisure involvement are learned through the process of socialization. Precisely what norms, attitudes, values, and beliefs people learn are often shaped by their racial/ethnic identity. Like all of the major social institutions (the educational system, the criminal justice system, and government), leisure is embedded within the larger society, and as such all of the elements of that society are evident. In leisure, one can find privilege and stigma, equality and stratification, benevolence and selfishness. However, unlike interactions with most other social institutions, leisure involvement is freely determined. And because there is more freedom regarding what people do (and how they choose to do it), those decisions are more revelatory of what people perceive is their true identity. Leisure is a notoriously difficult concept to define. Much like the terms race and ethnicity, most people have a general understanding of what leisure is but have a hard time in articulating an exact definition. In theory, a complete definition of leisure combines three different but related concepts: (a) leisure as residual time, (b) leisure as activity, and (c) leisure as a state of mind. However, in practice, researchers typically operationalize leisure, referencing only one of these concepts. How one chooses to define leisure is especially important when examining leisure in the context of race and ethnicity because the choice that researchers make has consequences for whether or not leisure differences are revealed and what the extent of those differences may be. This entry looks at leisure from each of these perspectives, as well as related research, with a particular focus on race and ethnicity.
Leisure as Residual Time The first conception of leisure, as residual time (also as discretionary or unobligated time), is commonly
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used by researchers trying to determine how much leisure time people have and by researchers employing “time diaries” as a primary methodological tool. In this instance, leisure is whatever people choose to do in the time that is left over after work (occupation), personal maintenance (e.g., sleeping, eating, bathing), and the other chores of daily living (e.g., cooking, cleaning) have been accomplished. It does not matter whether the activity is active or passive or whether the motivation for that activity is primarily intrinsic or extrinsic; so long as the activity occurs during residual time, it is designated as leisure. These studies generally report that members of racial/ethnic minority groups have less available leisure time than do Whites, although such differences are usually conflated with social class differences. For example, people with lower status occupations accrue less vacation time than do people with higher status occupations, and they often need to work longer hours or multiple jobs to make ends meet. Historically speaking, members of racial/ethnic minority groups are overrepresented in lower status occupations, have been less able to take early retirement, and have higher rates of unemployment. All of these factors result in less available leisure time. The definition of leisure as unobligated time is somewhat problematic because, for most people, the obligations of daily living are never fully completed. Yet people still experience leisure. Many people combine leisure with compulsory or work-related activities (multitasking) that make mutually exclusive categorizations difficult. For example, how does one classify time spent folding laundry while watching television or time spent washing dishes while listening to music? Similarly, a dinner out with friends or business associates typically involves more than just consuming the basic calories required for sustenance, so how does one properly portion the time spent? How one chooses to classify residual time can greatly affect the determination of how much leisure time is available.
Leisure as Activities The second conception of leisure is as an activity. Following this line of thinking, researchers compile a finite list of leisure activities (e.g., dancing, watching television, knitting, snorkeling, playing softball, working crossword puzzles) and then ask people to list the activities in which they participate. Whoever acknowledges participating in one of the predetermined activities
has engaged in leisure. This definition is most commonly used by researchers seeking to measure leisure involvement; whether participation in selected activities is increasing or decreasing; or whether certain groups differ in their respective rates of participation. Such studies reveal that African Americans and Latinos, when compared with Whites, prefer homebased and family- or group-oriented leisure activities. Also, African Americans and Latinos are less likely to participate in “high-culture” leisure activities (e.g., visiting art museums, attending operas or symphony concerts) and are less likely to be involved in outdoor resource-based leisure (e.g., hiking, camping), waterbased recreation (e.g., swimming, boating, snorkeling), and winter sports (e.g., skiing, snowshoeing, sledding). Finally, minority group members are less likely than Whites to be involved in “extreme” leisure (e.g., skydiving, bungee jumping, mountain climbing). Much of the research of this type has focused on Black–White differences and has been informed by two broad theoretical traditions: the marginality perspective and the ethnicity perspective. The marginality perspective attributes leisure differences to the history of socioeconomic disparity between the races—stating, in essence, that racial difference are really social class differences. Proponents of this perspective argue that the dominant group (Whites) has historically had larger discretionary income and greater access to recreational facilities and other public goods, resulting in a broad set of leisure opportunities from which to choose. Conversely, socioeconomic discrimination has prevented people in marginalized groups from developing an appreciation for expensive or high-culture leisure activities, and even if they do have a desire for such leisure activities, they lack the resources to engage in them. The ethnicity or subculture perspective offers a cultural explanation for intergroup differences. It states that an identifiable set of Black leisure activities stems from a distinctive Black subculture. In other words, Black Americans have culturally based values and tastes that are different from those of White Americans, and those subcultural values result in alternative leisure choices. Although there may be overlap between the two races regarding some activities, ethnic differences lead Blacks to prefer some leisure pursuits in which Whites do not engage and to reject other activities that Whites embrace. This perspective is often applied post hoc after observing leisure differences that cannot be explained by socioeconomic
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factors, and proponents rarely outline what ethnic or cultural values are responsible for leisure differences or how they influence leisure involvement. Like the previous view of leisure, the conception of leisure as an activity is also problematic. First of all, it is difficult to compile an exhaustive list of activities on which everyone agrees. For example, some people consider only active pursuits as leisure and so would not include activities such as napping, reading, and watching television. Some may discount hedonistic or antisocial activities (e.g., drinking alcohol, using recreational drugs, gambling), whereas others may fail to consider socially beneficial or altruistic behavior (e.g., volunteering). Finally, some activities that most people would consider to be leisure might not be perceived as such by people whose involvement is primarily one of obligation, remuneration, or other extrinsic motivations. For example, the survey question “Have you played basketball during the past week?” may have a different meaning for suburban Whites than for urban Blacks. There is some research suggesting that members of racial/ethnic minorities are more likely than Whites to value leisure activities for the potential extrinsic benefits. Some young African Americans may see playing sports or making music as the only real chance they have for economic success—an attitude that could conflict with their freedom to participate.
Leisure as Attitude That brings us to the third and final conception— leisure as an attitude or state of mind—which hinges entirely on the motivation. In this view, leisure is conceptualized as behavior that is intrinsically motivated— something done for its own sake, free from coercion and without the promise of external rewards. Whereas the first conception focuses on when (during discretionary time) and the second conception focuses on what (a set list of activities), this perspective focuses on how. Leisure is carefree behavior performed with a sense of freedom and enjoyment regardless of what the activity is or when it is performed. In fact, some people are able to turn tasks deemed by others to be unpleasant responsibilities into opportunities for leisure by internalizing the activities and redefining them as chances for creative self-expression and satisfaction. One person’s dreaded chore or obligation (e.g., gardening, cooking) may be another person’s prized form of relaxation or amusement. For
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most people, intrinsic motivation is the true essence of leisure, and although this definition has high validity, from a research perspective it has low reliability. It is difficult to compare results when attitudes regarding a potential leisure activity vary from person to person (and from day to day). That is why few researchers tend to operationalize leisure in this way. Regardless of the exact definition chosen, members of racial/ethnic minorities tend to have less leisure than do members of the dominant group. As stated earlier, members of minority groups have historically been underrepresented in high-status occupations, so they have fewer resources available to them to spend on leisure. Similarly, because of historical discrimination, the menu of leisure activities from which members of racial/ethnic minority groups may select is not as broad or varied as that from which members of the dominant group may select. For example, in many parts of the United States, African Americans are still rarely observed on golf courses, on tennis courts, or in the audiences at classical music concerts. Although leisure activities are freely chosen, that freedom is more restricted for some groups than for others. Members of minority groups are more likely than Whites to report the presence of barriers or constraints to leisure participation. As noted earlier, in some cases lack of participation can be attributed to social class differences, but it is naive to assume that race does not also play a part. In some instances, overt discrimination or the threat of physical harm may serve as an obstacle to participation. In other cases, the barrier may be something more subtle such as the uneasy feeling of being the only dark face among a sea of Whites at Carnegie Hall. Either way, leisure opportunities for minorities are narrowed. Derek Martin See also Cultural Capital; Media and Race; Negro League Baseball; Popular Culture, Racism and
Further Readings
Bradshaw, Tom. 1998. 1997 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts: Summary Report. Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Arts. Falk, John H. 1998. “Visitors: Who Does, Who Doesn’t, and Why.” Museum News, March/April, pp. 38–43. Floyd, Myron F. 1998. “Getting beyond Marginality and Ethnicity: The Challenge for Race and Ethnic Studies in Leisure Research.” Journal of Leisure Research 30:3–22.
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Gartner, William C. and David W. Lime, eds. 2000. Trends in Outdoor Recreation, Leisure, and Tourism. New York: CABI. Martin, Derek Christopher. 2004. “Apartheid in the Great Outdoors: American Advertising and the Reproduction of a Racialized Outdoor Leisure Identity.” Journal of Leisure Research 36:513–535. Philipp, Steven F. 2000. “Race and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Journal of Leisure Research 32:121–124. Robinson, John P. and Geoffrey Godbey. 1997. Time for Life: The Surprising Ways Americans Use Their Time. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Schor, Juliet B. 1991. The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure. New York: Basic Books. Veal, Anthony J. 1992. “Definitions of Leisure and Recreation.” Australian Journal of Recreation and Leisure 2(4):44–52. Washburne, Randel F. 1978. “Black Under-participation in Wildland Recreation: Alternative Explanations.” Leisure Sciences 1:175–189.
LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER The phrase lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) refers to members of a community of people marginalized by sexuality and gender. The acronym LGBT itself owes its existence to decades of identity politics and organizing. Ethnoracial minorities who are LGBT face specific issues where sexuality, gender, and their experience as people of color intertwine, and LGBT categories are infused with racial readings not often discussed. This entry consists of two sections; the first discusses the historical relationship between these categories, and the second addresses specific aspects that relate to ethnoracial groups, LGBT identity, and community organizing.
Historical Overview In general, social scientists, service providers, and even lawmakers are beginning to make a distinction between gay, lesbian, and bisexual as a type of sexual orientation (along with heterosexual and, as some people would argue, asexual) and transgender and transsexual as specifically referring to one’s own sense of gender identity (or a rupture from the basic categories of male and female imposed on all social
beings at birth as man and woman and based primarily on genitalia). In mainstream U.S. society, however, conflations among sex, gender, and sexuality continue to be made in reading lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender/transsexual people as members of the same group. The language of much community organizing during the past 15 years or so has employed the terms lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (or transgendered) and only sometimes names transsexuality explicitly. Transgender as a category often refers to an action against gender-binary impositions, and transsexual is much more specific to a move from one gender construct to another. In addition, the use of transexual— with one s—was coined by Riki Anne Wilchins to denote a different relationship to a transgender person’s experience; the term transsexual—with double ss—is historically tied to the psychiatric, medicalized, and surgically based experience that tended to define and regulate transsexuality. Although of some utility, the application of broad community labels such as gay and lesbian; gay, lesbian, and bisexual; or gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender/transsexual is problematic because these categories of identity did not come together without continual experiences of social discrimination and bias, sometimes including violence, for instance, the constant sexism faced by many lesbian and bisexual women in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco when it was becoming a primarily gay male neighborhood during the 1970s and the frequent invisibility of bisexual and transgender people even though current social movement leaders and organizations often name or list “bisexual” and “transgender” as part of their titles. The use of the acronym LGBT is much more recent in identity politics and community organizing. Organizing among same-sex male- and same-sex female-bodied individuals, which only emerged with some political significance during the 1950s, took place separately as organizations such as the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society erupted. Organizing for “gay” rights was first gay, then gay and lesbian, and co-ed organizing began during the 1970s with the former National Gay Task Force becoming the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Bisexuality is seldom mentioned, although in much theorizing, as well as in organizing since perhaps the 1980s, bisexuality is attached to “gay and lesbian,” often to counter accusations of atypical gender presentation by gays and lesbians—attempting to produce gender-normative men and women with nonhegemonic sexualities.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender
Transsexuality was mentioned in relationship to the psychiatric and medical establishments and only began to be linked explicitly to lesbian, gay, and bisexual nomenclatures later on. Transgender is a 1990s term, as argued by writers such as David Valentine. From this brief historical outline of “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” and “transgender/transsexual” as newly emerged identity markers, it should be clear that decades of struggles to this level of organizing and inclusiveness did not just come about “naturally.” Many activists and scholars alike, however, use the acronym LGBT without much consideration to where sex/gender/desire intersect with these identities.
Racial Aspects of LGBT Identity and Organizing
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is rarely noticed) and to read communities of color as more homophobic. And because communities of color are highly affected by issues such as HIV/AIDS, a simple justification is made to link and establish homophobia as the basis for such high incidence. LGBT people of color have historically been involved in community organizing and activism on various fronts. Writers such as Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Cherríe Moraga, and Gloria Anzaldúa have discussed the relationship of being women of color and managing their own sexuality as such. Many community organizing centers in the United States, for example, organizations such as the Austin Latina/o Lesbian and Gay Organization in Texas and the Audre Lorde Project in New York City, use the experience of being both LGBT and people of color as an active platform to mobilize. In sum, both racial status and sexual status are active components of their organizing and activism. (Note, however, that in many instances the placement of LGBT people of color’s racial status as secondary by mainstream LGBT people tends to be accompanied by that general group’s sense of tolerance
Racial/ethnic minorities and immigrants in U.S. society who are LGBT experience not only those challenges that White LGBT people experience but also the legal, institutional, and social barriers to people of color and immigrants. For instance, during recent decades requests for political asylum on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity have become increasingly common in applications to stay in the United States. There are structural differences to understanding LGBT communities of color; in the United States, a certain hegemonic way of being LGBT is often imposed without a racial reading of whiteness noticeably imposing it. Whiteness fuses with gayness in ways that have unfortunate results for people of color. For instance, the relationship of Black and Latino sexuality in contemporary portrayals has solidified notions of how communities of color are homophobic; how men of color are often “closeted” and cannot identify as gay, remaining (as commonly stated) on the “down low”; and how machismo is perceived to be an element that Gay rights rally. Tina and Melissa Lesley-Fox of Portland, Oregon, holding their affects only Latino culture. Similarly, 13-month-old daughter Amelia at a rally for gay rights at the Oregon State Capitol whereas Black and Latino men are in Salem on March 7, 2007. The rally was being held to support the Oregon Equality Act, a statewide nondiscrimination bill that would prohibit discrimination hypersexualized, Asian men tend to in housing, employment, and public accommodation on the basis of sexual orienbe desexualized or effeminized. These tation, and the Oregon Family Fairness Act, a relationship recognition civil unions structural readings make it much bill that would extend to same-sex couples benefits, protections, and responsibilmore feasible to read whiteness as an ities similar to those afforded to opposite-sex couples through marriage. ideal basis for gayness (although this Source: Getty Images.
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toward racial minorities in the LGBT communities; interracial dating is often understood to be proof of such lack of bias toward LGBT people of color.) Gender and sexuality are also complex categories through which LGBT people understand their experiences. Although no reductionist approach should be used to juxtapose Whites’ and people of color’s experiences with these categories, it is important to mention how terms such as two-spirited, same-gender loving, family, and de ambiente (Spanish for “from the crowd”) are used by various communities of color to identify their behavior, attraction, or belonging to an LGBT community (or to a community at large but with some specific recognition). Lesbians and lesbians of color are particularly affected by the erasure of gender and gendered experiences within studies of LGBT communities because much funding, attention, and literature respond to male-identified individuals who are members of LGBT communities—more so when speaking of African American or Latino men. Lesbians also experience a set of erasures when their sexuality is highlighted; commonalities between them and heterosexual and bisexual women concerning harassment, experiencing sexism and developing tools to respond to it, and histories of abuse and trauma tend not to be foregrounded. In sum, LGBT communities comprise a variety of experiences. LGBT identities are often framed through the lens of whiteness even when seldom noticed. LGBT people of color experience additional barriers toward social acceptance in society. And although LGBT is used as a coalitional term, it does not mean that all communities are represented equally—or treated equally—within such coalition movements. Salvador Vidal-Ortiz See also Civil Rights Movement; Discrimination; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Machismo; People of Color; Privilege; Sexuality
Further Readings
Fung, Richard. 2001. “Looking for My Penis: The Eroticized Asian in Gay Video Porn.” Pp. 515–525 in Men’s Lives, 5th ed., edited by Michael S. Kimmel and Michael A. Messner. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Guzmán, Manolo. 2006. Gay Hegemony/Latino Homosexualities. New York: Routledge. Hidalgo, Hilda, ed. 1995. Lesbians of Color: Social and Human Services. New York: Harrington Park Press.
Luibhéid, Eithne and Lionel Cantú, Jr., eds. 2005. Queer Migrations: Sexuality, U.S. Citizenship, and Border Crossings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mukherjea, Ananya and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz. 2006. “Studying HIV Risk in Vulnerable Communities: Methodological and Reporting Shortcomings in the Young Men’s Study in New York City.” The Qualitative Report 11:393–416. Rodríguez-Rust, Paula. 2000. Bisexuality in the United States: A Social Science Reader. New York: Columbia University Press. Somerville, Siobhan. 2000. Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Valentine, David. 2003. “‘I Went to Bed with My Own Kind Once’: The Erasure of Desire in the Name of Identity.” Language & Communication 23:123–138. Wilchins, Riki Anne. 1997. Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books.
LIFE EXPECTANCY Life expectancy, broadly defined as the number of years an individual can expect to live, is widely regarded as one of the most powerful indicators of the overall health of a society as well as the health of specific subpopulations within a society. In the United States today, Blacks have a significantly lower life expectancy than do their White, Asian, and Hispanic counterparts, with Blacks living roughly 7 fewer years than Whites. This gap is due largely to Blacks’ high infant mortality rate, which is more than twice that of Whites. Multiple factors contribute to race disparities in life expectancy, including socioeconomic resources, lifestyle and health behaviors, social environment, and access to and quality of health care services. This entry describes the methods used to calculate life expectancy and document racial differences in life expectancy throughout the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States. It describes the social factors that influence life expectancy and reviews current debates about the relative strengths of these purported influences. Finally, it discusses ways in which policies and public health practices may help to close the race gap in life expectancy.
Defining Life Expectancy Life expectancy is a statistical projection of the length of an individual’s life. Specifically, it is an estimate of
Life Expectancy
the average number of additional years a person can expect to live if the age-specific death rates for a given year prevail for the rest of his or her life. It is a hypothetical measure because it is based on current death rates, yet actual death rates change over the course of a person’s life. Consequently, each person’s life expectancy changes as he or she ages. Demographers typically calculate two different life expectancy measures: (a) life expectancy at birth, or the number of years a new baby born in a given year can expect to live, and (b) one’s life expectancy at age n, or the number of additional years an individual who is n years old can expect to live. Life expectancy at birth does not simply equal life expectancy at age n plus n years because age-specific life expectancy is selective. That is, individuals who have survived the potentially dangerous years of infancy and childhood are more likely to have an extended life span than is the average member of their birth cohort. For example, life expectancy at birth for a given cohort may be 75 years, yet 75-year-olds in that birth cohort probably can expect to live another 10 years. Life expectancy at birth is lower than life expectancy at 75 years of age because it includes in its calculations those babies who went on to die during infancy, adolescence, or young adulthood. These young ages at death reduce the average life span for members of that birth cohort.
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Life expectancies vary widely across nations and within nations by race, ethnicity, and social class. In developing nations, high infant mortality rates contribute to low life expectancies. For instance, life expectancy at birth in Malawi was approximately 46 years in 2006. In contrast, life expectancy at birth in Japan topped 80 years. In addition, life expectancy is affected heavily by “crisis” mortalities that affect large numbers of young persons such as wars and epidemics. For example, life expectancies in many subSaharan African nations during the early 21st century range from 35 to 40 years, reflecting high rates of AIDS in nations such as Botswana and Swaziland and reflecting warfare in Sierra Leone and Angola.
Race Differences in Life Expectancy in the United States In the United States today, the leading causes of death for Blacks and Whites are similar. The top three causes of death (heart disease, cancer, and stroke) and seven of the ten leading causes of death are the same for both groups (Table 1). However, Blacks generally die younger than do Whites, and the racial gap in mortality has widened during the past 2 decades. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, White women outlive Black women by roughly 5 years, with life expectancies at
Ten Leading Causes of Death Among Non-Hispanic Blacks and Non-Hispanic Whites in the United States, 2002 Non-Hispanic Blacks
Rank
Cause of Death
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Heart disease Cancer Stroke Diabetes Unintentional injury Homicide Chronic lower respiratory disease HIV/AIDS Nephritis Septicemia All others
Total
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Non-Hispanic Whites Percentage 26.8 21.6 6.5 4.4 4.3 2.8 2.7 2.7 2.6 2.1 23.5 100
Cause of Death
Percentage
Heart disease Cancer Stroke Chronic lower respiratory disease Unintentional injury Influenza and pneumonia Alzheimer's disease Diabetes Nephritis Suicide All others
Source: National Vital Statistics System. 2005. “Deaths: Leading Causes for 2002.” National Vital Statistics Reports, March 7, Tables E and F.
29.2 23.1 6.7 5.7 4.1 2.8 2.7 2.6 1.5 1.3 20.2 100
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birth of 80.3 and 75.6 years, respectively (Figure 1). For men, the gap is even more pronounced; in 2003, White men’s life expectancy at birth was 75.3 years as compared with just 69.0 years for Black men. During the first half of the 20th century, all U.S. residents experienced tremendous gains in life expectancy and the race gap nearly halved from 15 to 8 years between 1900 and 1950. The gap narrowed again during the 1970s and 1980s, yet it has widened over the past 2 decades. The narrowing disparity during the 1970s and 1980s is attributed to four factors. First, racial differences in smoking declined during that time. Second, Blacks experienced a large reduction in the prevalence of hypertension, especially among men. Third, with the passage of Medicare and Medicaid programs in 1965, Blacks gained greater access to health care. Finally, racial differences in income declined slightly during the 1970s and early 1980s; however, progress has since stalled and, in some cases, reversed. A 2005 study by former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher found that the racial gap in mortality increased during the late 1980s and 1990s for infants and for men age 35 years or older. This retrenchment is due largely to the AIDS epidemic and deaths from violence 90
Life expectancy at birth
80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1900 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1995 2000 2003 Year White men Black men
Figure 1
White women Black women
Life Expectancy at Birth, by Race and Sex, United States, 1900–2003
Source: National Center for Health Statistics. 2006. “United States Life Tables, 2003.” National Vital Statistics Reports, April 19, Table 12.
(particularly homicides related to drugs), both of which increased during the 1990s.
Infant and Late-Life Mortality A further analysis of the race gap in mortality reveals that it is most pronounced at the beginning of life, particularly during infancy. The gap narrows, and actually reverses according to some scholars, during old age. Infant mortality rates can be calculated in three ways. First, overall infant mortality rates refer to the number of deaths of infants under 1 year old per 1,000 live births during a given year. Second, neonatal mortality rates reflect deaths of infants under 28 days old per 1,000 live births. Third, postneonatal mortality refers to deaths of infants between 28 days and 1 year of age per 1,000 live births. Regardless of the measure used, Black infant mortality rates are roughly twice those of Whites today, whereas White, Asian, and Hispanic rates are roughly comparable. Native American rates are slightly higher than those of Whites yet lower than those of Blacks. Perhaps the most disheartening pattern is that the race gap in infant mortality has remained large and stable for the past 5 decades. Figure 2 shows infant mortality rates by race and Hispanic ethnicity from 1940 to 2003 (rates for Hispanics were first calculated in 1985). Although infant mortality rates were nearly halved between 1940 and 1950, dropping from 74 to 43 for Blacks and from 43 to 27 for Whites, the racial gap has narrowed only slightly. The high infant mortality rate among Blacks in the United States is the single largest contributor to the overall life expectancy gap and also contributes to the fact that the United States is currently ranked 28th worldwide in its infant mortality rate. Infant deaths are due primarily to congenital abnormalities, preterm or low birth weights, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), problems related to pregnancy complications, and respiratory distress syndrome. However, each of these risk factors affects infants born into ethnic minority families far more than those born into White families, with Blacks being the most severely affected. Maternal health behaviors such as smoking, substance use, poor nutrition, lack of or delay in receiving prenatal care, medical problems, and chronic illness (particularly maternal diabetes) have been cited as the primary contributors to the high infant mortality rates in the Black community. Although Blacks are disadvantaged relative to Whites during infancy and adulthood, some demographers argue that the race gap in life expectancy
Life Expectancy
80
Infant mortality rate
70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2003 Year White Hispanic
Figure 2
Black
Infant Mortality Rates (Deaths of Infants Under 1 Year of Age) per 1,000 Live Births, by Race and Hispanic Origin, 1960–2003
Source: National Center for Health Statistics. 2006. Health, United States, 2006 (Table 22). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
actually reverses among the “oldest-old” (persons age 85 years or older). To date, evidence for the “race crossover” effect is equivocal. Some propose that Blacks who have managed to withstand and survive the environmental stresses of their younger years may have a survival advantage or “hardiness” that destines them to live especially long lives. However, others counter that the apparent crossover reflects age overreporting among older Blacks, for whom advanced age is a source of pride and respect.
Unpacking the Race Gap in Life Expectancy Racial/ethnic differences in life expectancy are not unique to the United States. Among countries with reliable data, demographers have documented that in the early 21st century, Whites have a higher life expectancy than do First Nations people in Canada, whereas Parsis in India and Jews in Israel have higher life expectancies than do members of minority ethnic groups. Policymakers and practitioners must recognize the specific sources of mortality differentials if they hope to develop effective strategies for reducing such gaps. Four explanations are widely accepted for these discrepancies in the United States and elsewhere: socioeconomic factors
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(e.g., education, employment stability, job quality, income), lifestyle and health behaviors (e.g., nutrition, physical activity, diet, smoking, substance use), social environment (e.g., neighborhood and work conditions, discrimination, social integration, stress), and access to and quality of health care services (e.g., quality of local hospitals and clinics, treatment by health care professionals, access to early screening and vaccinations). On each of these dimensions, Blacks are disadvantaged relative to Whites in the United States, and these disparities in social and personal resources contribute to the life expectancy gap. Scholars disagree, however, about the relative importance of these influences. Although social epidemiologists emphasize socioeconomic resources as a powerful influence on life span, some researchers point to the “Hispanic paradox” as evidence that economic disadvantage does not necessarily portend a shortened life span. Hispanics, like Blacks, have lower levels of education and income than do Whites, yet they enjoy life expectancies and infant mortality rates on a par with those of Whites. This pattern is attributed, in part, to the hardiness of Hispanics— particularly Mexicans—who migrate to the United States, but it is also attributed to the healthy diets, greater reliance on breast-feeding infants, low levels of smoking and drinking, and extensive social networks and strong family ties maintained by recent Mexican immigrants. Adherents to the Hispanic paradox perspective focus on targeting health behaviors as a strategy for reducing the race gap in life expectancy. Experts also disagree about the influence of genetics. Although some racial/ethnic groups have a heightened risk of specific illnesses, such as sickle-cell anemia among African Americans and Tay-Sachs disease among Ashkenazi Jews, social scientists generally believe that such illnesses are not pervasive enough to explain overall racial differences in life expectancy. During recent years, many scholars have turned their attention away from individual-level risk factors, such as health behaviors and genetics, and instead have focused on social relationships that influence health and, ultimately, mortality. Recent research documents that racial discrimination is associated with elevated blood pressure, whereas neighborhood characteristics, including the availability of goods and services and the social integration and stability of neighborhoods, affect the health, health behaviors, and mortality of the residents. Policymakers also increasingly recognize the role of community, socioeconomic resources, and access
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to care as powerful influences on health and longevity. Healthy People 2010, a policy statement developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has as its top two objectives “to increase quality and years of healthy life” and “to eliminate health disparities.” The strategies proposed for achieving these aims encompass “improving health, education, housing, labor, justice, transportation, agriculture, and the environment.” Ultimately, the elimination of economic and social disparities on the basis of race may be the most effective way to alleviate racial disparities in health and longevity. Deborah Carr and Alena Singleton See also African Americans; Discrimination; Health Disparities; HIV/AIDS; Social Inequality
Further Readings
Goodman, Alan H. 2000. “Why Genes Don’t Count (for Racial Differences in Health).” American Journal of Public Health 90:1699–1702. Institute of Medicine. 2003. Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Johnson, Nan. 2000. “The Racial Crossover in Comorbidity, Disability, and Mortality.” Demography 3:267–283. Palloni, Alberto and Elizabeth Arias. 2004. “Paradox Lost: Explaining the Hispanic Adult Mortality Advantage.” Demography 41:385–416. Pearce, Neil and George Davey Smith. 2003. “Is Social Capital the Key to Inequalities in Health?” American Journal of Public Health 93:122–129. Rogers, Richard, Robert A. Hummer, and Charles B. Nam. 1999. Living and Dying in the USA: Behavioral, Health, and Social Differentials of Adult Mortality. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2000. Healthy People 2010: Understanding and Improving Health. Washington, DC: Author. Wise, Paul H. 2003. “The Anatomy of a Disparity in Infant Mortality.” Annual Review of Public Health 24:341–362.
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM (1809–1865) Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Previously, he had been in the Illinois legislature (1834–1842) and the U.S. House of
Representatives (1847–1849). He was an unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate in 1855 and 1858, losing the latter race to Stephen A. Douglas.
Views on Slavery Lincoln’s views on slavery were consistent but complex. His father had moved the family from Kentucky to Indiana partly to avoid association with slave society. During his 20s, Lincoln transported goods on a flatboat to New Orleans, where he observed the slave markets and reportedly expressed revulsion at slavery. As a member of the Illinois legislature, he refused to sign a resolution condemning abolitionists for encouraging slave revolts; he endorsed another resolution that, although critical of abolitionists, noted that the system of slavery was founded on injustice and bad policy. Yet in his early public career, Lincoln did not give prominence to the issue. In speeches such as the 1838 Lyceum Address and the 1842 Temperance Society Address, he referred to slavery only elliptically and by analogy. As a lawyer, he defended a master seeking to reclaim a fugitive slave as well as a fugitive claiming his freedom. Lincoln’s antislavery convictions were aroused by the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. Until then, he said, public opinion was that the founders had placed slavery on the path to extinction. So long as that was the case, its continued existence could be tolerated as a matter of necessity. But the Kansas–Nebraska Act opened the possibility of perpetual slavery. Lincoln made opposition to slavery’s extension the centerpiece of his political creed, and it became the organizing principle of the new Republican Party. He believed that slavery must either expand or die, so containing it would be the first step toward its demise. He considered this to be a conservative position, returning to the approach of the founders. For Lincoln, the fundamental evil of slavery was that it denied slaves the fruits of their labor, and secondarily, it was inconsistent with self-government. To the argument that slaves in the South were treated better than wage earners in the North, he responded that slavery precluded upward mobility, whereas northern wage earners might become self-employed merchants or capitalists. He defended the right to strike on the grounds that one retained control over one’s labor. Frequently, he maintained that any system holding that one person was entitled to rule another person placed liberty for all at risk. Lincoln was not insensitive to the
Lincoln, Abraham (1809–1865)
plight of the slaves, but neither their wretched condition nor the brutality of their owners furnished the principal grounds of his opposition. Although opposed to slavery, Lincoln was not an abolitionist. His preferred solution was colonization— the simultaneous voluntary emancipation and deportation of slaves. Despite evidence of the infeasibility of colonization and the lack of enthusiasm for it, he continued to advocate it as late as 1862. Even if he had not shared dominant U.S. views about race, Lincoln believed that he was legally precluded from doing anything about slavery where it already existed. Slavery was recognized—albeit implicitly—in the U.S. Constitution. It was a matter over which each state was sovereign. The Constitution also recognized the obligation to return fugitive slaves to their masters. Lincoln thought that he was bound by these compromises as much as by any other provisions of the Constitution. Accordingly, he frequently disclaimed any intent to interfere with slavery in the southern states. As president-elect, he indicated that he would be willing to accept a proposed constitutional amendment irrevocably guaranteeing protection of slavery where it already existed. Believing that this protection was already implicit in the Constitution, he did not object to making it explicit.
The Civil War At the outset of the Civil War, Lincoln believed that the war was not about slavery but rather about preservation of the Union. This judgment was partly a matter of constitutional principle and partly a practical necessity to keep the slaveholding border states from seceding. Lincoln twice revoked emancipation orders issued by commanders in the field. He did not vigorously enforce the First and Second Confiscation Acts, which declared slaves as contraband that could be seized from rebellious owners. Replying to a newspaper editorial by Horace Greeley urging emancipation, Lincoln said that his goal was to save the Union, not to protect or destroy slavery. Yet the course of the war radicalized Lincoln’s thought. He had heard the argument, first developed by John Quincy Adams, that the president’s war powers were sufficient to overcome normal constraints against emancipation. Under stress of military defeats, he came to recognize that slavery’s survival aided the Confederate cause by releasing owners for military service, bolstering the South psychologically and
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depriving the North of a source of manpower. Moreover, Northern failure to crush the rebellion and the lack of an overriding moral issue increased the risk that Britain and France would extend diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy. For these reasons, after the Union success in the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Some critics have chastised him for issuing a proclamation that he could not enforce given that it applied only to areas in rebellion. But Lincoln had justified emancipation as a war measure, so that was the extent of his constitutional power. Furthermore, he recognized that the proclamation was a signal that, as Union troops advanced on the ground, emancipation would follow. This signal, in turn, created a powerful incentive for slaves to desert their masters and escape behind Union lines. Still, the authority of the proclamation might expire with the end of the war. To guarantee slavery’s demise, a constitutional amendment would be needed. Radical Republicans in Congress had proposed the Thirteenth Amendment, and Lincoln endorsed it in 1864.
Views on Race Relations Lincoln’s views about race relations were more convoluted than his opposition to slavery. For most of his career, abolitionism was outside of the political mainstream. Abolitionists who championed social and political equality of the races were particularly derided. It was advantageous for Lincoln’s political opponents to insist that he secretly was an abolitionist regardless of what he might say publicly. His “House Divided” speech, in which he predicted that the nation would become all slave or all free, was seen as a reluctant confession of abolitionism. To blunt these attacks, Lincoln vigorously disclaimed any belief in social and political equality. His strongest statement came in the fourth debate with Douglas, where he announced that he opposed permitting Blacks to vote, to serve on juries, or to intermarry with Whites and that he favored the White race having the superior position. Lincoln’s harshest critics today cite this passage as evidence of racism, whereas his defenders allege that it was a necessary adaptation to the realities of Illinois politics. Even as he denied social and political equality, however, Lincoln firmly maintained that Blacks and Whites were equal in the right to enjoy the fruits of their own labor, and this was the meaning he attributed to the phrase “the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence.
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In personal relationships, Lincoln did not display racial prejudice. He befriended Frederick Douglass, who had escaped slavery and become a prominent abolitionist speaker and writer, and invited him to the White House. He also invited a delegation of African American clergymen, although his purpose was to seek their support for colonization. Once he admitted Black soldiers into the Union Army, he opposed their discriminatory assignments and pay. Moreover, the experience of war began to modify his view of race. Impressed by the performance of Black soldiers and by their heroism, he thought that their valor called for additional recognition beyond emancipation. Accordingly, in describing his reconstruction plan, Lincoln proposed—without insisting—that educated Blacks, as well as those who fought in the Union army, be permitted to vote. Interestingly, Lincoln did not advance this proposal until what would become the final speech of his life. At the time, his reconstruction proposals were being criticized by congressional radicals who considered them to be too lenient. Meanwhile, it is likely that Black suffrage would have been anathema to conservatives. As it was, the Fifteenth Amendment was not added to the Constitution until 1870. Lincoln was neither the principled abolitionist implied by the stereotype of the “Great Emancipator” nor the committed racist implied by the application of 21st-century moral standards. He was a politician attempting to address slavery and race within the arena of practical politics, the venue in which he believed that effective action was possible. David Zarefsky
LITHUANIAN AMERICANS Lithuania, a nation roughly the size of West Virginia and having an estimated 2007 population of 3.4 million people, is located in northeastern Europe, between Russia and Latvia and bordered by the Baltic Sea. The first Lithuanian Americans who immigrated to the United States, around the beginning of the 20th century, were economic immigrants. Like most other immigrant groups of that period, they were concerned mostly with assimilating into U.S. society. Those who did retain an ethnic identity or who later constructed one were generally more concerned with expressing their ethnic heritage than with political events in Lithuania. These turn-of-the-century emigrants differed from those Lithuanians who left their country after it was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940. The latter, a distinct group who were convinced that someday they would return to their homeland, believed that they, as part of a diaspora, had a mission to keep alive the ideals of an independent Lithuania and to work toward restoring Lithuanian independence. Consequently, they were not as eager to assimilate into U.S. society as were earlier immigrants, and they formed their own ethnic enclaves separate from non-Lithuanian Americans as well as from earlier Lithuanian immigrants. These émigrés had the additional problem of trying to educate their children
Sweden Finland
See also Abolitionism: The People; Douglass, Frederick; Dred Scott v. Sandford; Emancipation Proclamation; Slavery
Baltic Sea
Estonia
Russia
Latvia
Further Readings Lithuania
Donald, David Herbert. 1995. Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster. Fehrenbacher, Don E. 1962. Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Miller, William Lee. 2002. Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Paludan, Phillip Shaw. 1994. The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Zarefsky, David. 1990. Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Belarus Poland
Ukraine
Czech Republic Slovakia Austria
Mold ova
Hungary Romania
Croatia Serbia
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to be Lithuanian while living in the United States. Gradually, however, many of the émigrés or their descendants adopted an ethnic identity more consistent with that of the Lithuanian ethnic population. Since the independence of Lithuania from the Soviet Union in 1990, there has been additional immigration to the United States, primarily for economic reasons.
Waves of Immigration The differences between the first two waves of Lithuanian immigrants to the United States, however, are greater than simply having disparate reasons for emigrating. The first wave of immigrants were derived primarily from the peasant population and arrived before the U.S. immigration restrictions of 1924. The second wave, composed primarily of skilled and educated individuals, immigrated under the U.S. Displaced Persons Act of 1948, following World War II and Lithuania’s incorporation into the Soviet Union. (World War I and the restrictive immigration laws of the 1920s had severely limited Lithuanian immigration between the two waves.) These two groups ultimately formed very different conceptions of themselves as Lithuanian Americans. They had different relationships with their homeland, had different socioeconomic backgrounds, and arrived during different eras in U.S. history. Studying the two distinct waves, therefore, is useful for understanding the factors that produce variations in the processes of ethnic identity and ethnic mobilization. The first wave of Lithuanian immigration to the United States, beginning in the 1880s, was a response to the abolition of serfdom; compulsory military service introduced by the Russian czar in 1874; religious, political, and national oppression by Russia; and famine in Lithuania. Many Lithuanians, of course, believed that the “American dream” of wealth and a better life was awaiting them in the United States. The movement to the United States grew through the 1880s and peaked during the late 1890s and early 1900s. Information about Lithuanian immigration before 1899 is not available because incoming Lithuanians were not registered as Lithuanians but instead were counted as Poles, Russians, or Germans. The 16-year period following the start of registration of Lithuanians by the U.S. Immigration Service shows a constant stream of Lithuanian immigration to the United States. In all, approximately a quarter-million Lithuanians immigrated to the United States. The peak years within
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that time frame were 1907, 1910, 1913, and 1914. The majority of the immigrants settled in urban industrial centers, especially in Chicago and in northeastern states such as New York and Pennsylvania. Lithuanian immigrants soon formed social, economic, and cultural organizations to help themselves adapt to their new home yet still retain ties with the old one. Frequently, immigrants from the first wave had no particularly strong attachment to Lithuania because they saw themselves more as part of a village or family than as citizens of a nation-state. Often, they settled in Lithuanian–Polish neighborhoods and spoke more Polish than Lithuanian. Many Lithuanian Americans were proud to belong to a group whose members could easily assimilate into U.S. society. Although U.S. immigration from Lithuania was never completely stopped by the changes in U.S. immigration laws, a sharp decline in the numbers of more recent immigrants meant that Lithuanian American identity would be deprived of a revitalizing influence. Leaders back in Lithuania, on the other hand, were quite concerned about the Americanization and assimilation of Lithuanian immigrants, especially around the turn of the 20th century when Lithuania was mobilizing for independence from Russia. Not all Lithuanian immigrants, however, became entirely assimilated. Some formulated a national identity after they had settled in the United States. For example, in 1893 they were rallied to the cause of their homeland when police and Cossack troops were used against Lithuanian demonstrators who were protesting the close of their Catholic Church and convent. The Lithuanian press in the United States also contributed to the creation of a Lithuanian identity by keeping Lithuanian immigrants informed about events in their homeland and the struggles for its independence. Still, they gradually came to consider themselves 100% American and saw the advantages of their lives in the New World. According to U.S. Census figures from 1910 to 1990, however, the numbers of Lithuanian Americans born in Lithuania have declined steadily since 1930 because the older waves of Lithuanian immigrants died off at a faster rate than they could be replaced by new arrivals. Only in the data from 1950 to 1990 can one see the impact of the refugee wave of immigration in increased numbers of Americans of Lithuanian heritage. When it became clear that Lithuanian occupation was not a temporary situation, many Lithuanians petitioned to relocate to the United States. However, the
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nationality quota was only 384 Lithuanians per year and thousands wished to immigrate. In 1948, Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act, which ultimately led to the immigration of approximately 36,000 Lithuanians. These émigrés had a tremendous impact on Lithuanian civic and cultural organizations that had already been formed by members of the first Lithuanian migration by renewing their interest in their ethnicity. One could argue that Lithuanians who immigrated before 1924 and those who immigrated under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 (émigrés) formulated their ethnic identities differently. In a sense, the Lithuanian Americans whose grandparents and great-grandparents had immigrated to the United States during the preindependence years relied on a more flexible set of standards for ethnic behavior, whereas the émigrés believed that ethnicity was a fixed phenomenon tied to their homeland. For example, Lithuanian American ethnics accept as “Lithuanian” even those who do not speak Lithuanian, whereas Lithuanian American émigrés place great importance on maintaining the mother tongue. As a result, the émigrés have accused the earlier immigrants of not exhibiting the proper feelings of Lietuvybe (Lithuanianness). Lithuanian Americans whose ancestors had immigrated to the United States voluntarily in search of better economic opportunities or to escape poor conditions in Lithuania often did not understand the concerns of the émigrés. However, the variations were not simply because of generational differences. The depth of the émigrés’ nationalist sentiments was also created by their experiences in the displaced persons camps. People’s past lives and careers may have been lost, but they were still Lithuanians. Despite the strength of the Lithuanian identity of the émigrés, soon they faced the same problems of identity maintenance with their children as the ethnic Lithuanian Americans had faced. They also had the additional burden of dealing with their grief and guilt over the loss of their country. Thus, the exiles were caught between two worlds; they were not like the Lithuanians they left behind, and their children would not experience the same grief and guilt as they did. This does not mean that third- and fourth-generation Lithuanian Americans—the descendants of the first wave of Lithuanian immigration—have no ethnic identity; on the contrary, it simply signifies that they changed their ethnic identity to fit current needs and circumstances. The refugee community, for example, is characterized by the use of language as a boundary
marker. This is due to the belief that if there is to be any hope for a return to Lithuania, language must be retained at all costs. On the other hand, the retention or learning of Lithuanian cultural aspects, such as knowledge of foods and folk dances, is a marker of Lithuanian ethnic identification for ethnics because they do not expect to return to Lithuania permanently. Jewelry specific to the region, such as Baltic amber, is another easily identifiable cultural marker for both ethnics and émigrés. The maintenance of ethnic identity, therefore, has a variety of expressions among Lithuanian Americans. The differences, however, can result in misunderstanding and tensions between the groups.
Contemporary Lithuanian Americans Lithuanian Americans today are still a relatively small ethnic group. In 1990, there were 842,209 Lithuanian Americans living in the United States, according to the U.S. Census; of these, 30,344 were foreign-born and 811,865 were born in the United States. The total number in 1990 was up from the 1980 figure of 742,776. The five states with the largest populations of Lithuanian Americans in both 1980 and 1990 (in descending order) were Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and California. In general, the percentage of the 1990 Lithuanian American population in each state was the same as, or similar to, that in 1980. There were, however, a few notable exceptions. Traditional strongholds such as Illinois and Pennsylvania experienced a decline in the percentage of Lithuanian Americans (15.1% to 13.9% for Illinois and 14.3% to 12.4% for Pennsylvania). Florida, however, experienced an increase in its percentage of Lithuanian Americans from 1980 to 1990 (3.8% to 5.3%). This was attributed to Lithuanian American retirees moving from the northeast to Florida and other sunnier climes. Since 1990, there has been an 18.7% decline in the Lithuanian American population. The current immigration has not been enough to offset the deaths of older Lithuanian Americans from the first waves. It remains to be seen how these three very different groups, some with lived experiences of communism, interact and blend together in the United States. Mary E. Kelly See Appendix A See also Americanization; Assimilation; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Immigration, U.S.; Polish Americans; Symbolic Ethnicity
London Bombings (July 7, 2005)
Further Readings
Ališauskas, Aru- nas. 1980. “Lithuanians.” Pp. 665–676 in Harvard Encyclopedia of Ethnic Groups, edited by S. Thernstrom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Baškauskas, Liucija. 1981. “The Lithuanian Refugee Experience and Grief.” Immigration and Migration Review 15:276–291. Baškauskas, Liucija. 1985. An Urban Enclave. New York: AMS Press. Budreckis, Algirdas M., ed. 1976. The Lithuanians in America, 1651–1975. Bobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana. Gedmintas, Aleksandras. 1989. An Interesting Bit of Identity. New York: AMS Press. Jonitis, Peter. 1985. Acculturation of the Lithuanians of Chester, Pennsylvania. New York: AMS Press. Kelly, Mary E. 2006. Born Again Lithuanians. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas. v Kucas, Antanas. 1975. Lithuanians in America. Boston, MA: Encyclopedia Lituanica. Roucek, Joseph Slabey. 1978. “General Characterizations of Lithuanian Immigrants.” Pp. 46–60 in Lithuanians in the United States, edited by Leo J. Aliunas. San Francisco, CA: R&E Research Associates. Senn, Alfred Erich and Alfonsas Eidintas. 1987. “Lithuanian Immigrants in America and the Lithuanian National Movement before 1914.” Journal of American Ethnic History 6(2):5–19.
LONDON BOMBINGS (JULY 7, 2005) The London bombings of July 7, 2005, killed 52 people and injured nearly 800, and four British-born Muslims were identified as the perpetrators. The coordinated attacks were aimed at the London transport system, with explosions both on a bus and underground. This entry describes the events and their aftermath, with particular attention paid to their racial, ethnic, and religious social contexts. On July 6, 2005, London was awarded the Summer Olympic Games for 2012. Within 24 hours of that announcement, the jubilant mood in the English capital would swing from euphoria to complete terror. The first bomb exploded at 8:50 a.m. on a Piccadilly Line train traveling south from King’s Cross station to Russell Square. Here 26 people and the bomber were killed, and nearly 350 people were injured. At the same time, another bomb exploded in a Circle Line train traveling from the Liverpool Street station to Aldgate.
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Here 7 people and the bomber were killed, and more than 150 people were injured. Yet again, at 8:50 a.m., a third device exploded on another Circle Line train that was traveling between Edgware Road Station and Paddington. Here 6 people and the bomber were killed, and more than 150 people were injured. Finally, at 9:47 a.m., a bomb tore apart the back of a No. 30 double-decker bus at the junction of Tavistock Square and Upper Woburn Place. Here 13 people and the bomber were killed, and more than 110 people were injured. The planning of the operation was simple, the operation did not cost much, and little expertise was needed to turn the materials into bombs. The suicide bombers, on the morning of July 7, had driven separately down from Yorkshire and met in Luton, north of London, where they took a train south to Kings Cross and then went their separate ways on the London transport network. The aftermath of the bombings quickly brought increased scrutiny for both the Muslim and Arab communities of the United Kingdom. Indeed, the notion of “homegrown terrorists” seemed to take on a renewed ethnic tone. One of the most pertinent questions that the Report of the Official Account of the Bombings asked was the following: Why did the terrorist attackers do it? Mohammad Sifique Khan, the 30-year-old Edgware Road bomber, had a university education and had also been a teaching assistant and youth worker. Shehzad Tanweer, the 22-year-old Aldgate bomber, also had received a university education and was working for his father, who was looking to set him up in business. Hasib Mir Hussain, the 18-year-old Tavistock Square bomber, was not a high academic achiever but still studied an advanced business program in college. Germaine Lindsay, the 19-year-old Russell Square bomber, was bright, successful academically at school, and good at sports. All of the bombers were British-born Muslims. Socially, Khan, Tanweer, and Hussain met around the mosques, youth clubs, gyms, and Islamic bookshop in Beeston, Yorkshire, in the north of England. Lindsay was the outsider but had met Khan through Islamic networks in the Huddersfield and Dewsbury areas of Yorkshire. The official report described Khan as a leading figure and a mentor to many in his local area. Khan’s video statement, which was first broadcast on the Al Jazeera network on September 1, 2005, provided insights into his motivations. Khan suggested, “Until we feel security, you will be our targets. And until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment, and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight.” The official report highlighted that Khan’s last will
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and testament focused on the importance of martyrdom as supreme evidence of religious commitment. This links with similar attacks by suicide bombers— the fierce opposition to perceived injustices by the West against Muslims in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan and a resulting desire for martyrdom. The group involved in the bombings was integrated into British society, and this meant that detecting people with similar goals would be difficult. The general public became more suspicious of its native Arab and Muslim populations. Terrorist attacks are nothing new to Londoners, nor have they been without an ethnic context before. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) attacked London on several occasions; in 1993, one bomb explosion ripped apart the NatWest Tower in central London. However, the IRA would send coded telephone messages as a warning. The terrorists of July 7 attacked without any such warning. This fact alone increased tension in a society where terror seems, in the 21st century, to constantly reside just under the surface. Perhaps due to an increase in security measures, some subsequent attacks were prevented, most notably on July 21, 2005, with the halting of four attempted bombings, three of which were again aimed at underground trains and one of which was aimed at a bus. However, on June 29, 2007, unexploded car bombs were discovered in London, and a day later two men drove a car loaded with gas canisters into barriers at the Glasgow airport. No one was killed in these attacks, which appeared to be related. A current issue that concerns security forces in the West is how to gain insider information on ethnic immigrant communities without infringing on immigrant rights. The British government has called for continuous national preparedness involving the public, private, and voluntary sectors at all levels across the United Kingdom against the continuing possibilities of future attacks.
Bombings: What We Learned and What We Are Doing about It. Retrieved from http://security.homeoffice.gov.uk/ news-publications/publication-search/general/lessonslearned?view=Binary U.K. House of Commons. 2006. Report of the Official Account of the Bombings in London on 7th July 2005. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Available from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/11_05_06_ narrative.pdf
LOVING V. VIRGINIA The Loving v. Virginia (1967) U.S. Supreme Court decision, which rendered antimiscegenation laws unconstitutional, was the final element in a series of civil rights legislative and judicial actions that dismantled legalized segregation in the United States. The plaintiffs—Mildred Delores Jeter, of mixed African American and (Rappahannock) Indian ancestry, and her White fiancé, Richard Perry Loving, both of Central Point, Virginia—were married in Washington, D.C., on June 2, 1958. The Lovings returned to Central Point and resided with Mildred’s parents while Richard worked to build a new house for his pregnant bride. On July 11, 1958, as the Lovings lay asleep in bed, the sheriff, accompanied by two additional law enforcement officers, burst into the couple’s bedroom and arrested them for the felony of miscegenation. Two separate
Richard Race See also Europe; Immigrant Communities; Islamophobia; Muslim Americans; Northern Ireland, Racism in; Racial Profiling; Terrorism; United Kingdom
Further Readings
Gove, Michael. 2006. Celsius 7/7. London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson. U.K. Home Office. 2006. Addressing Lessons from the Emergency Response to the 7th July 2005 London
Mildred and Richard Loving. Married couple Mildred and Richard Loving answer questions at a press conference the day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in their favor in Loving v. Virginia (June 13, 1967). The Court, in a unanimous decision, overturned Virginia’s antimiscegenation statute, which had resulted in the Lovings’ arrests shortly after their 1958 marriage. Source: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.
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warrants along with an indictment were issued for Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter, respectively. The Lovings were in violation of Virginia’s 1924 Act to Preserve Racial Integrity, a law passed during the apex of the American eugenics movement, which promoted ideals of racial purity. The racial integrity act was the culmination of Virginia’s three-centuries-long obsession with racial purity, as demonstrated by the earliest statutes recorded by the legislature of the Virginia Colony dating back to 1630. From the colonial era until the end of the 19th century, the Virginia General Assembly enacted no fewer than forty statutes against mixed marriages. Despite such laws, interracial liaisons persisted. Hence, Virginia’s 1924 act, forbidding intermarriage between Blacks and Whites, served to tighten any loopholes in previously enacted legislation and to stiffen the penalty for those who violated the law. Prior to 1930, however, several multiracial couples, who were denied marriage licenses by vital statistics clerks, successfully sued in the Virginia courts, claiming in each case that the spouse in question was not Black but rather American Indian. Mildred Loving, whose Central Point community was composed of people of mixed Black, White, and Indian ancestry, laid claim to an exclusive Native American identity as indicated on her District of Columbia marriage license. Nevertheless, as a result of earlier challenges to the racial integrity act, the Virginia General Assembly in 1930 enacted legislation that recognized as Indian only those residing on reservations. All others, even those of unquestionable Indian ancestry, were classified as Negro and forbidden to marry Whites. Hence, Mildred Loving’s claim to an exclusive Indian identity did not exempt her from the racial integrity law. Miscegenation was a felony, and the penalty for violation was a year in the penitentiary. On January 6, 1959, Judge Leon M. Bazile suspended the sentence provided that the couple leave the state and not return as husband and wife for 25 years. The Lovings immediately moved to Washington, D.C. In 1963, they petitioned the Virginia Supreme Court to vacate the 1959 judgment and to set aside their sentence. Bazile, who had handed down the earlier decision, denied the motion, stating that God had not intended for the races to mix. The couple returned to the District of Columbia and wrote a letter to Robert Kennedy, then U.S. attorney general, requesting his assistance. The Attorney General’s Office forwarded the letter to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Bernard Cohen, a young lawyer who at the time was doing pro bono work for the ACLU, took the case. Another
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lawyer, Philip J. Hirschkof, signed on as cocounsel when he joined the Cohen firm. Both men were aware that the case was destined for the U.S. Supreme Court, but two earlier attempts to overturn state antimiscegenation laws, in the cases of Naim v. Naim (1955) and McLaughin v. Florida (1964), caused the lawyers to question whether the High Court was ready to take such a drastic measure. The Naim case involved Ham Say Naim, a Chinese sailor, and his White wife, Ruby Elaine Naim of Virginia, whom he had married in North Carolina. Whereas Virginia held that Whites could marry only Whites, North Carolina restricted only White–Black marriages. The couple returned to Virginia and lived for a time in Norfolk but later separated. Ruby Naim petitioned the Virginia court to grant her an annulment on the grounds that her husband had committed adultery; however, if the court refused to grant her petition on that ground, she requested that the petition be granted based on Virginia’s antimiscegenation law. Ruby Naim’s petition was granted. Ham Say Naim challenged the decision in the Virginia Supreme Court on the grounds that the lower court decision violated his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Nevertheless, as it did for the Lovings, whose lawyers would use the same argument 10 years later before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Ham Say Naim. Yet unlike for Loving, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the Naim case. Subsequently, in the 1964 U.S. Supreme Court case of McLaughin v. Florida in which a White woman and a Black man were arrested for unlawful cohabitation, the Supreme Court justices, although not overturning antimiscegenation laws, voted unanimously to overturn the couple’s conviction, rendering it unlawful for states to prohibit people from living together on the basis of race. When the justices agreed to hear the Loving case on December 12, 1966, twenty of the thirty-one states that had once enforced antimiscegenation laws had repealed them. However, eleven states, all in the South, remained steadfast in their position against mixed-race marriages. Both sides for the Loving v. Virginia case presented their arguments on April 10, 1967. On June 12, 1967, the High Court handed down its decision. It overturned the Lovings’ conviction and declared antimiscegenation laws unconstitutional. Arica L. Coleman See also Ethnicity, Negotiating; Eugenics; Intermarriage; Multiracial Identity; One-Drop Rule; Racial Formation
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Further Readings
Coleman, Arica L. 2006. “‘Tell the Court I Love My Indian Wife’: Interrogating Race and Identity in Loving v. Virginia.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 8(1):67–80. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967). McLaughin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184 (1964). Naim v. Naim, 197 Va. 80 (1955). Newbeck, Phyl. 2004. Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers: Interracial Marriage Bans and the Case of Loving v. Virginia. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Wallenstein, Peter. 2002. Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law—An American History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
LYNCHING Any historical account of the United States must note the violence associated with race relations. An important part of understanding this history lies with examining lynching and its violent impact on U.S. society and discourse. Recently, the definition of lynching, the historical accounts of its victims, and the reasons and motivations for lynching have been examined closely to shed more light on this disturbing component of U.S. history. The late-18th-century definition of lynching as nonlethal flogging, tarring and feathering, and running people out of town began with Colonel Charles Lynch, a justice of the peace in Virginia and creator of an informal court system of “lynch mobs” to deal with Tories and suspected horse thieves in the county. During the following century, lynch mobs were formed as an expression of Whites’ fears of Black uprisings or slave insurrections, increasingly with lethal consequences. The definition later changed to the extralegal murder of individuals and groups of people by a mob of two or more persons.
Lynching Documented In 1882, Tuskegee University began keeping records of lynchings in the United States. Tuskegee’s first director of records, sociologist Monroe Work, and subsequent generations of Tuskegee librarians and students maintained newspaper and magazine reports of lynchings. This record, published annually from 1882 to 1962, became an important contributor to public attention to this phenomenon. From 1882 to 1885, the
number of Whites lynched outnumbered the number of Blacks lynched. After the year 1886, the number of Blacks lynched always exceeded the number of Whites lynched. Through 1944, Tuskegee recorded 3,417 lynchings of Blacks, meaning that, on average, a Black person was murdered by a White mob nearly once a week, every week, during this time period. Although lynchings declined after 1944, it was not until 1952 that a year passed without a single recorded lynching. It is important to note that these records indicate only the number of documented lynchings and that many lynchings occurred without public record.
Reconstruction and Mob Violence In the Reconstruction era South, lynching of Blacks was used, especially by the Ku Klux Klan, in an effort to reverse the social changes brought on by federal occupation. With the development of the Black Codes, and later the Jim Crow laws, a rise in African American lynchings in the South occurred. Lynching was a means to intimidate, degrade, and control Black people and to soothe the tensions of Whites throughout the southern and border states from Reconstruction to the mid-20th century. Lynching was an illegal act because it denied a suspect due process under the law. Thus, the information that due process generated (including lawyers’ arguments, sworn testimony, and evidence) was not available to assist in understanding the instigating deed and in weighing guilt or innocence. In many cases, if a person was charged with a particular crime, the details of the actual incident would become obscured or falsified. If an individual was being detained by criminal justice authorities, an incensed vigilante mob would form and demand that law officials release the prisoner to the crowd. The law officials either easily acquiesced or surrendered the prisoner through force. Once the mob had obtained the prisoner, a crowd would gather—sometimes up to several thousand people—and the act of the lynching would occur. Many scholars note that lynchings were highly ritualized spectacles.
Advocacy Against Lynching Rather than viewing lynching as a frenzied abnormality, historians during recent years have sought to understand it as a tradition, a systematized reign of terror that was used to maintain the power that Whites had over Blacks, a way to keep Blacks fearful and to forestall Black progress. Owing chiefly to advocacy
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by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and by several key figures from the early 20th century, including antilynching activist Ida B. Wells, Congress began to create laws to abolish the practice of lynching. The United States still suffers from the legacy of lynching. Many opponents of the death penalty cite its historical roots in lynchings. In 1998, a Black man, James Byrd, Jr., was lynched in Jasper, Texas. The killers placed a chain around his neck, and Byrd was dragged for three miles behind a truck before his remains were deposited in front of a Black cemetery. The White men who murdered Byrd were later charged and convicted of a hate crime. Troy Harden
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See also Death Penalty; Homicide; Jewish-Black Relations: A Historical Perspective Jim Crow; Ku Klux Klan; Racism; Wells-Barnett, Ida B.
Further Readings
Allen, James. 2000. Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms. Dray, Philip. 2002. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. New York: Random House. Pfeifer, Michael J. 2004. Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874–1947. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Tolnay, Stewart E. and E. M. Beck. 1992. A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882–1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
M According to the Dictionary of Mexican Cultural Code Words, machismo means (a) rejecting so-called feminine characteristics, such as unselfishness and kindness; (b) being willing to lie; (c) being suspicious and jealous; and (d) being willing to fight or even to kill to protect an image of manliness. Proof of being a man, in this definition, includes dominating the family, having sexual relations with anyone one chooses, and never showing one’s real feelings. Jerry Tello, cofounder of the National Compadres Network in the United States, says that this negative—and typically American—view of machismo is uninformed. According to Tello, a true man in Latin America is someone who carries respect, responsibility, and honor. This latter notion of machismo harks back to pre-Columbian times, when to be a man meant respecting sacred things and people, including women. Such a man was considered in that cultural tradition to be an hombre noble—an honorable man. In most societies, female and male roles are considered complementary; in Hispanic cultures, machismo refers to essentially male or masculine attributes and behaviors, while hembrismo pertains to matters feminine. Some writers note that just as machismo may be seen as an exaggerated sense of masculinity, hembrismo is the feminine quality of being excessively submissive and subservient to men. The two concepts must be considered in concert. It is evident that there are contradictions within the range of matters that pertain to machismo. Definitions of machismo may be placed on a grid, where one axis represents “self-confidence” and the intersecting axis represents “self-doubt.” On the former axis are attributes such as honor, shame, formality, and respect.
MACHISMO The term machismo has been used in a variety of ways to mean different, sometimes contradictory things. It is typically associated with Latin American men as an imputation of negative character traits related to masculinity. The American Heritage Dictionary defines machismo as a strong or exaggerated sense of masculinity stressing attributes such as physical courage, virility, domination of women, aggressiveness, and an exaggerated sense of strength and toughness. The Diccionario de la Real Academia Española, 21st edition, defines machismo as “an arrogant (prepotencia) attitude by men towards women.” Machismo—the idea of being macho—appears to be embedded in matters pertaining to the roles, statuses, rights, responsibilities, influence, and moral positions of men as they relate to women. The principal characteristics of machismo are exaggerated aggressiveness and intransigence in male-to-male relationships and arrogance and sexual aggression in male-to-female relationships. In a broader cultural context, machismo may be associated with male chauvinism, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as male prejudice against women and the regarding of women as inferior to men. Whether the notion of machismo originated in Latino culture is debatable. Some social scientists argue that the term was coined by ethnographers studying Latino cultures and then became part of the Latino lexicon. At any rate, while the male attributes associated with machismo are universal, the term in the popular as well as the scholarly literature is often explicitly connected with Latino culture. 863
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The self-doubt axis comprises characteristics pertinent to inferiority and insecurity. Thus, where males feel that they are not in control regarding power relationships and matters involving prestige, they put on a façade of “in your face” masculinity to obscure any possible personal shortcomings. The popular conception of machismo tends to consider only the self-doubt axis, and discussions of machismo consequently exaggerate the negative attributes of machismo. Naturally, intense male feelings of superiority ensure that a man holds a traditional view of the role of women: A woman’s place is in the home. This traditional patriarchal view of the role of women seems inextricably bound up in the treatment of women by men around the world. However, to equate machismo with patriarchy would be a disservice to the cultural context in which machismo must be understood. Some writers in the Latin American context expressly relate machismo to the domestic situation: Women are of the home (la mujer es de la casa), and men are of the street (el hombre es de la calle). Whereas women are thought of by macho men as destined to be domestic, men expect—and are expected—to have little, if anything, to do with the household; their role, aside from fathering progeny, is to be in the public domain only. While expectations with respect to machismo are not held exclusively by males, the male perspective is unique to those of the masculine gender. In addition to a gendered perspective, there is evidence that social class and educational level impinge upon how one views machismo. A 1999 Colombian study demonstrates that for the 7,035 consumers sampled, there was a positive correlation between agreement with the statement “A woman’s place is at home” and the respondent’s sex, age, social class, and educational level. Male respondents were more likely than females to agree. Similarly, older respondents, those who had not completed primary school, and those in the lowest socioeconomic categories were more likely to agree with the statement than those who were younger, those with relatively higher levels of formal education, and those at the higher socioeconomic levels. Many would argue that failure to promote and ensure equal rights for women contributes to the deleterious effects of machismo. In certain Latin American countries, such as Nicaragua, wife beating and abandonment are accepted as normal, and only recently have there been systemic or even grassroots
initiatives undertaken to educate men about the disastrous effects of domestic violence. The status of women globally can be seen as a direct result of macho attitudes. Certainly, many Latin American feminist writers identify machismo as the cause of sexual inequality. As an indication of this phenomenon, the United Nations Department of Public Information reports that worldwide, up to 50% of women experience some degree of domestic violence during marriage. Many more are the victims of rape, both domestically and when rape is used as a weapon of war. From such statistics, it is evident that an excessive expression of male power and privilege has a corresponding indication of low status, inferiority, and powerlessness among women. Peter Doell See also Barrio; Central Americans in the United States; Domestic Violence; Film, Latino; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Hispanics; Latina/o Studies
Further Readings
Boye, Lagayette de Mente. 1996. NTC’s Dictionary of Mexican Cultural Code Words. Chicago, IL: NTC Publishing Group. Brusco, Elizabeth E. 1995. The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia. Austin: University of Texas Press. De La Torre, Miguel. 1999. “Beyond Machismo: A Cuban Case Study.” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 19:213–233. Jensen, Evelyn E. 1987. The Hispanic Perspective of the Ideal Woman. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Information Service.
MALCOLM X (1925–1965) Malcolm X was an African American political leader whose dynamic speaking ability, keen intellect, and fiery persona catapulted him to the forefront of the Black Nationalist Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the early phase of his career, his analysis of the links between religion and racial oppression made him a lightning rod for controversy. Closely linked to his shifts in ideology, however, was his private pursuit of truth—the wellspring of radical
Malcolm X (1925–1965)
Malcolm X. Black Nationalist and Muslim leader Malcolm X (1925–1965) talks with to a woman inside Temple 7, a Halal restaurant that serves food permissible under Islamic law. The restaurant, patronized by Black Muslims, is situated on Lenox Avenue and 116th Street in the Harlem section of New York. A portrait of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam, appears on the back wall of the restaurant. Source: Getty Images.
character transformations throughout his life. Author of a best-selling autobiography and, by the time of his death, an internationally famous figure, he was assassinated in New York City in 1965. This entry focuses on the three phases of Malcolm X’s adult life: his days as a small-time street hustler and drug addict, his religious conversion and public leadership of the Nation of Islam, and his analytical shift away from biological arguments about White racism toward a more global and structural understanding of intergroup relations. While Malcolm X was not directly involved with the Civil Rights Movement, his combative perspective strongly influenced militant factions in the struggle for racial equality. Consequently, to this day, Malcolm X remains revered for his assertion that Black progress must occur “by any means necessary.”
Malcolm Little Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little, on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. Soon after his birth, Malcolm’s family relocated near Lansing, Michigan. His father, Earl Little, was a Baptist preacher and member of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro
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Improvement Association (UNIA). This allegiance, as well as his speaking out against racial injustice, led to his violent death at the hands of White supremacists. Unable to cope with this loss and its aftermath, Malcolm’s mother, Louise, was subsequently committed to a mental institution. Malcolm and his siblings were sent to live in foster homes. Despite his family’s circumstances, he continued to excel in school, remaining near the top of his eighth-grade class. In his autobiography, Malcolm described an incident in which his favorite teacher asked him whether he had considered his occupational future. After Malcolm divulged that he was interested in the legal profession, the teacher told him that becoming a lawyer was not a “realistic goal for a nigger” (Autobiography of Malcolm X, p. 36). Malcolm dropped out of school soon after this unfortunate interaction.
Detroit Red Malcolm divided his adolescent and early adult years between Boston and New York City. During this time, he became fascinated with urban Black life; the cosmopolitan culture sharply contrasted with the small-town environment of his youth. Malcolm became a hipster, frequenting nightclubs and emulating the latest trends. His superior dancing and social skills earned him a favorable reputation. He developed a network of Black underworld associates and pursued relationships with White women. Although interracial intimacy was taboo in mainstream society, in urban Black society it was a mark of high status. Malcolm’s loose associations with the underworld soon evolved into structured criminal activity. He went from working odd jobs and abusing drugs to organizing illegal hustles such as drug dealing, gambling, prostitution, and armed robbery. He soon earned the nickname “Detroit Red” because of his Michigan familial roots and fair-skinned complexion. In 1946, at age 21, Malcolm was sentenced to 8 to 10 years in prison for orchestrating a string of burglaries.
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Minister Malcolm While serving his prison term, Malcolm was informed that many of siblings had converted from Christianity to the Nation of Islam (NOI). His brother, Reginald, had hoped that Malcolm would join along with them. During a prison visit, he proselytized Malcolm with an account of how God appeared on earth in the form of a Black man, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who had come to uplift the Black condition by defeating the devil—the American White man. Malcolm was taken aback by this theology. He carefully considered this information for several weeks, reflecting on his family’s history and his involvement in the underworld. He soon joined the NOI, which he now believed was the “natural religion for the Black man” (Autobiography of Malcolm X, p. 155). For the remainder of his prison term, Malcolm wrote to Elijah Muhammad daily and studied religious doctrine and world history so relentlessly that his eyesight suffered. His tutelage under Elijah Muhammad was much more than mentorship. Malcolm came to believe that Muhammad was a supernatural being who possessed the “power of the sun” (Autobiography of Malcolm X, p. 212). In 1952, Malcolm was paroled after serving nearly 7 years of his sentence. After meeting Elijah Muhammad in person, he changed his name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X. This change, which was customary for NOI members, symbolized the Black man’s unknown African identity. Within months, Malcolm X was named an assistant minister of the Detroit mosque. His efforts helped triple the local membership. Muhammad soon declared Malcolm X the NOI’s national spokesman and charged him with increasing membership in major metropolitan centers, including New York City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. His efforts helped the group’s following swell from less than 1,000 members in the early 1950s to over 30,000 within 10 years. Malcolm X and the NOI were becoming nationally known. Mike Wallace, a noted television news journalist, broadcast an exposé of the NOI entitled “The Hate That Hate Produced.” The general public in the United States would now become familiar with Malcolm X’s arguments that Christianity was a “White man’s religion,” that Blacks and Whites could not coexist equally, and that the Black community suffered from deep-seated racial self-hatred. The New York Times reported that by 1963, Malcolm X was the second most sought-after public speaker in the United States.
By this same year, however, problems emerged within the NOI. Malcolm X discovered that Muhammad had committed adultery, fathering several children with women within the NOI. He warned several of his closest confidants about Muhammad’s indiscretions. Some of these members considered Malcolm’s investigation and dispersal of information an act of treason. By November 22, 1963, Malcolm X’s leadership within the NOI had become tenuous. His direct disregard for Muhammad’s order to not publicly comment on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy brought group tensions to a boiling point. Malcolm X’s statement that the president’s death was symptomatic of the “chickens coming home to roost” outraged the general public. Consequently, Muhammad stripped Malcolm X of his authority for 90 days. It was made known that his authority would not be restored unless Malcolm X submitted to Muhammad’s leadership. On March 8, 1964, Malcolm X publicly announced his break with the Nation of Islam. It was during this tumultuous period that he realized “after twelve years of never thinking for as much as five minutes about myself, I became able finally to muster the nerve, and the strength, to start facing the facts, to think for myself” (Autobiography of Malcolm X, p. 306). He soon converted to orthodox Islam and announced the establishment of his own Islamic temple, Muslim Mosque, Inc.
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz As required by the tenets of his new faith, Malcolm X soon commenced his Hajj, or pilgrimage, to the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. This excursion proved to be a fundamental, life-changing experience. In this Islamic capital, Malcolm X reported experiencing the “true meaning of brotherhood” (Autobiography of Malcolm X, p. 362) with Muslims from all over the world. These believers, whose backgrounds crossed a range of racial/ethnic groups and nationalities, welcomed him in ways he had never previously experienced. This appreciation inspired an ideological transformation within Malcolm X; he came to realize that the American White man was not inherently evil, but rather a victim, just as Blacks were, of an oppressive social structure that fostered racial discord. During this trip, Malcolm X traveled extensively throughout Africa and the Middle East, meeting with
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Arab dignitaries and African politicians. These experiences broadened his beliefs about religion, politics, and the need for building alliances with oppressed people across the globe. Upon his return to the United States, Malcolm X announced that he had changed his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. This name change was consistent with his more traditional Sunni Islamic beliefs. He also made known his intent to establish the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), an interfaith nonpartisan group aimed at advancing human rights. Soon after making these statements, Malcolm X was asked by a White man if they could shake hands. Malcolm responded, “I don’t mind shaking hands with human beings. Are you one?” (Autobiography of Malcolm X, p. 363). He now lamented that he once told a young White coed that there was nothing she could do to help his cause. Instead, he believed that Blacks and Whites could work together, although independently, toward the promotion of human rights. Unfortunately, Malcolm X was unable to follow through with much of his new agenda. On February 21, 1965, he was assassinated while giving a speech at the Audubon Ballroom, in New York City. He was 39 years old. Although some scholars theorize that several organizations were involved in his death, all three of the men prosecuted for his murder were members of the NOI. Further information about his assassination and records of the FBI’s investigation of Malcolm X are available on the Federal Bureau of Investigation Web site. Jason Eugene Shelton and Jeffrey C. Johnson See Appendix B See also Baldwin, James; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Muslim Americans; Nation of Islam
Further Readings
Malcolm X, with Alex Haley. 1964. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine. Malcolm X, with George Breitman. 1965. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements. New York: Merit Publishers and Betty Shabazz. McCartney, John. 1992. Black Power Ideologies. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Sales, William. 1994. From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Boston, MA: South End Press.
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Web Sites
Federal Bureau of Investigation Web Site, information on Malcolm X: http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/malcolmx.htm Official Web Site of Malcolm X (maintained by the Estate of Malcolm X): http://www.cmgworldwide.com/historic/ malcolm/about/index.php
MANDELA, NELSON (1918– ) Born in a small, rural village in racially segregated South Africa, Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela, lawyer and political activist, attained international recognition for his commitment to social justice. For many, he has come to personify the struggle against racial oppression in the modern world. Released from prison in February 1990, after 27 years behind bars, Mandela led the African National Congress in the negotiations that led to South Africa’s first democratic elections and served as his country’s first democratically elected president, from 1994 to 1999. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. Mandela’s life has entailed, to quote the title of his autobiography, “a long walk to freedom.” When his father, a hereditary chief, died, Mandela was taken into the care of a much more senior chief. From him, Mandela learned that a great chief is able to keep together all of his people, whether traditionalist or reformist, conservative or liberal. Mandela’s schooling was completed at Methodist mission schools. In 1939, he moved on to the South African Native College at Fort Hare, then the only Black university in South Africa and thus the key institution forming the new Black South African intellectual and professional elite. Despite being generally apolitical, he was expelled after challenging the university’s principal. In 1941, he migrated to the fast-growing “City of Gold,” Johannesburg, where he was employed as a night watchman. Mandela soon moved to a legal firm and began to study law. He was slowly drawn into circles of political activists around the African National Congress (ANC) and the Communist Party of South Africa. The ANC had been formed in 1912, just after the establishment of the Union of South Africa. The early ANC was dominated by a mission-educated, Anglophile, professional African elite, whose goal was neither to resist colonization nor to transform it, but rather to achieve full political and economic
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assimilation into colonial society. But instead of making progress toward a common nonracial society, the ANC spent its first 3 decades in unsuccessful opposition to deepening racial segregation and discrimination. It generally failed to build strong support and was often overshadowed by more ephemeral millenarian movements. The Communist Party has also spent much of its short life since 1920 applying inappropriate policies dictated from Moscow. In 1944, Mandela joined with other young activists, including Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, and Anton Lembede, in forming the ANC Youth League. The young radicals espoused an anticolonial African nationalism and were generally hostile to the Communist Party, which they saw as dominated by White and Indian activists and importing foreign ideas. In 1949, the Youth League effectively seized power in the ANC, with Sisulu becoming SecretaryGeneral and Mandela soon being persuaded to become the national executive. In 1950, Mandela was elected president of the Youth League. The Youth Leaguers quickly radicalized the ANC and pushed it toward greater militancy. Mandela’s attitude to both multiracial politics and communism shifted from hostility to support (although Mandela never joined the Communist Party), and he soon emerged as a champion of direct action. In 1952, he was prominent in the ANC-led Defiance Campaign (against “unjust laws”), which resulted in the ANC’s membership rising to 100,000. In 1953, Mandela designed the M-Plan (the M standing for Mandela) for rebuilding the ANC’s organization. In addition to his political work, Mandela, with Oliver Tambo, ran a legal practice in Johannesburg. In 1955, Mandela and 155 others were charged with treason. The mammoth treason trial was concluded only in 1961, with the acquittal of all accused. In the meantime, South African politics had been transformed. The ANC’s co-operation with White, Indian, and colored activists, especially Communists, had resulted in a split and the formation of the rival Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). In 1960, both the ANC and the PAC proposed new defiance campaigns focused on the “passes” that governed where African people were allowed to live and work. At Sharpeville, the police fired on a large crowd of Black protesters in a PAC-organized demonstration, killing sixty. In Cape Town, a massive march into the city center was defused only with promises that were soon broken. The state banned the ANC and PAC, detained
activists, and forcefully tried to regain control. When the Treason Trial ended, therefore, Mandela immediately went into hiding. Faced with their apparent inability to achieve change through nonviolent action, the ANC and other organizations turned to sabotage. Mandela was given the task of forming the ANC’s armed wing, called Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation). The campaign was aimed at infrastructural, not human, targets and at sabotage, rather than terrorism. In 1962, soon after returning from a trip around much of newly independent Africa as well as Europe, Mandela was arrested and convicted of minor crimes. The following year, together with other senior leaders of the ANC and Umkhonto we Sizwe, Mandela was put on trial for the much more serious crime of sabotage. Mandela used the trial as an opportunity to promote the ANC’s message. Asked to plead, he declared that “it is not I, but the government, that should be in the dock.” Speaking in his own defense, and facing a possible death penalty, Mandela made what was probably his most famous speech: “During my lifetime, I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against White domination, and I have fought against Black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” Mandela and his coaccused were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Mandela spent the following 25 years out of sight in jail, first on Robben Island (just off Cape Town) and later at prisons on the mainland. Robben Island was a harsh environment. Prisoners were subjected to hard labor in the lime quarry, poor food, and routine brutality from warders. Visits and reading materials were strictly controlled. When Mandela’s oldest son died in a car crash, he was refused permission to attend the funeral. Prisoners ran their own political education programs and debated strategies and tactics. Meanwhile, South African society and politics were changing rapidly. In the 1940s and 1950s, South Africa was still a largely rural society. Most Black people in urban areas had been born and raised in the countryside and retained a rural orientation in many respects. Several of the laws singled out as unjust in the 1952 defiance campaign affected the countryside alone. Despite restrictions on education and urbanization, a new generation of urban-born and -schooled
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Black adolescents grew up, reaching high school in the 1970s. At the same time, semiskilled (and later skilled) occupations were opening up to Black workers. These changes provided fertile conditions for the emergence of protests in township schools—notably in Soweto and elsewhere in 1976 and 1977—and the emergence of trade unions among Black workers. Repression and exile had diminished the ANC’s stature, however, and anti-apartheid protesters lacked a clear identity. From the late 1970s, the ANC resumed its premier role, and with it Mandela became reestablished as an international as well as national icon. After 1976, militant and politicized young people left the country, joined the ANC in exile, and revived Umkhonto we Sizwe. In 1983, pro-ANC organizations inside South Africa joined together to form a United Democratic Front (UDF), with the initial objective of opposing the apartheid state’s constitutional reforms (which sought to co-opt colored and Indian South Africans into support for a reformed version of apartheid). The UDF became the vehicle for the reestablishment of the ANC’s hegemony in anti-apartheid politics inside South Africa. When, in 1984 and 1985, protests erupted in Black townships across the country, the UDF was given the much broader task of coordinating internal opposition to apartheid. Both inside and outside the country, demands grew that Mandela should be released from jail. Faced with escalating protest, the South African government offered to release Mandela in 1985, on the condition that he would renounce violence. Mandela replied that it was the government that should renounce violence. He could and would not renounce violence until the people of South Africa had their freedom. The South African government recognized the necessity of dealing with Mandela. Soon after his rejection of their conditional offer of release, the Minister of Justice opened an informal conversation with Mandela (as well as with the exiled ANC leadership). Mandela’s negotiations worried many of his colleagues in jail and exile, but the ANC’s varied leaders converged around support for a transitional deal: In broad terms, if the government unbanned the ANC and other organizations, released political leaders, and committed to negotiations, then the ANC would suspend the armed struggle. Following his release from prison in 1990, Mandela immediately assumed de facto leadership of the ANC. Over the following decade—as president-in-waiting
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and then, from 1994, as elected president—he did not take the leading role in negotiations or policymaking, but rather focused his efforts on racial reconciliation and nation building. His leadership style was that of the people’s chief of his childhood: Listen and unite. Mandela was the ideal antidote to the racialized divisions of apartheid. He was less well suited to the challenges of tackling poverty that required hard policy choices. Tall and heavily built (Mandela was an enthusiastic amateur boxer in his 20s) but a reluctant convert to violence, Mandela was an ideal icon for the global struggle against racism. His story is, as one of his biographers, Anthony Sampson, wrote, a story of “the triumph of the human spirit, the return of the lost leader.” Jeremy Seekings See also Apartheid; Apartheid, Laws; South Africa, Republic of
Further Readings
Buntman, Francine. 2003. Robben Island and Prisoner Resistance to Apartheid. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lodge, Tom. 1983. Black Politics in South Africa since 1945. London: Longman. Lodge, Tom. 2006. Mandela: A Critical Life. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Mandela, Nelson. 1995. A Long Walk to Freedom. New York: Little, Brown. Sampson, Anthony. 1999. Mandela: The Authorised Biography. London: HarperCollins. Seekings, Jeremy. 2000. The UDF: A History of the United Democratic Front in South Africa, 1983–1991. Cape Town, South Africa: David Philip. Walshe, Peter. 1970. The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa. London: C. Hurst.
MAQUILADORAS Introduced in the mid-1960s, maquiladoras are assembly plants that are located in Mexico and owned by foreign companies. These outsourcing mechanisms of globalization generate 40% of Mexico’s exports and are the single most important factor in the Mexican economy. Maquiladoras have changed the geographic landscape and socioeconomic conditions of the U.S.–Mexico border region.
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In the maquiladora industry, components, including machinery and nonprecious metals, are transported to Mexico duty-free, where labor-intensive assembly is performed by a low-paid Mexican labor force, and the finished product is then returned to the country of origin. In accordance with sections 806.30 and 807.00 of the U.S. tariff schedule, finished products that are transported back to the United States are taxed only on the value-added cost. Although many countries participate in the maquiladora industry, the United States enjoys the next-door-neighbor advantage of doing business with minimal transportation activity and expense. Maquiladora businesses are also known as in-bond plants and twin plants. In-bond refers to the in-bond industry, in which components are brought into the country under bonded status, the finished product cannot be sold in Mexico, and reexporting of the product is required. The reexporting requirement was lifted in 1983, first allowing 20% of finished products to be sold within Mexico, and later increasing this allowance to 50% in 1989. The term twin plant refers to the sets of twin cities on either side of the U.S.–Mexico border, where most of the maquiladoras operate. While the assembly work is done in Mexico, the administrative work, including capital and development, remains in the country of origin. Mexican foreign-investment laws limit foreign investors to minority ownership, but maquiladoras are exempt from these laws, permitting headquarters and ownership to reside outside of Mexico. The twin cities hosting maquiladoras are Mexicali, Baja California/Calexico, California; Nogales, Sonora/Nogales, Texas; Matamoros, Tamaulipas/ Brownsville, Texas; Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua/ El Paso, Texas; Nuevo Laredo, Nuevo Leon/Laredo, Texas; Reynosa, Tamaulipas/McAllen, Texas; and Piedras Negras, Coahuila/Eagle Pass, Texas. The term maquiladora comes from the Spanish word maquila, which is used in reference to the grinding of grain. When someone takes grain to the miller for grinding, the miller keeps a small portion of the resulting flour as payment for the grinding. That small portion is known as a maquila. In the scenario of maquiladoras, when foreign companies bring components to Mexico for assembly, the wages paid for the labor are, in essence, the maquila. The maquiladora industry was part of the 1965 Border Industrialization Program (BIP), which was intended to raise the standard of living in the border regions.
The maquiladora program was expected to generate foreign exchange for Mexico by stimulating the manufacturing sector, create linkages with the national economy in the interior of Mexico, encourage technical transfer, and create new jobs and provide employment for displaced braceros returning from the United States. (Braceros were Mexican laborers who participated in the guest worker Bracero Program, in effect in the United States between 1942 and 1964.) Maquiladoras host numerous and varied businesses, such as food packing, electronics, apparel, auto parts, furniture, toys, television sets, refrigerators, and computer keyboards, to name a few. Some of the companies represented include RCA, GE, Sylvania, Motorola, Zenith, Sony, and Samsonite. The industry, which began in 1965 with twelve plants and 3,000 employees, saw a 14% annual job growth rate between 1978 and 1993. By 2001, the industry had peaked, with 3,763 plants and 1.3 million employees. Originally confined to the border region, maquiladoras expanded into the interior of Mexico after 1972. Maquiladoras are typically housed in industrial parks that provide utilities such as electricity, water, and natural gas; amenities such as phone and data lines and satellite; and conveniences such as access to transportation and low-cost housing for employees. Professional services such as legal, fiscal, customs, and banking often draw companies to industrial parks, while support from public and private sectors, cooperation from customs officials, and interest from the academic community and labor force can draw companies into regions. While maquiladoras have increased purchasing power in Mexico and been instrumental in producing managers and technical professionals, the industry has also encountered issues and concerns, including institutionalized sexual discrimination and uncontrolled environmental pollution. In its infancy, the industry perceived female workers as more passive and less likely to unionize, possessing higher levels of manual dexterity with small components, and demonstrating more patience with tedious, repetitive work. Given these characteristics, many companies preferred to hire female employees. Unfortunately, the predominantly female workforce was managed almost exclusively by males, creating an environment ripe for extortion of sexual favors and firing (or not hiring) pregnant women. A 1998 complaint filed with the U.S. Labor Department reported that pregnancy tests were administered at maquiladoras in an effort to weed out pregnant applicants.
Marginalization
With the tremendous growth in the number of plants, the border region has experienced an increasingly scarce water supply, air pollution caused by fugitive emissions from industrial processes and unpaved roads, and industrial waste released into the municipal drainage system without pretreatment. Lack of legal integration between the two countries, unclear laws, and lax enforcement help explain why only12% of the companies have complied with hazardous material regulations. Exacerbating the environmental problem is the fact that Mexico’s infrastructure has not kept pace with the growth. In 1997, Mexico only had two fully operational treatment, storage, and disposal (TSD) sites, prompting companies to rely on alternative solutions for disposal of hazardous waste. The maquiladora industry has created an economic interdependence between the United States and Mexico due to U.S. reliance on low-paid Mexican labor to make a profit and Mexico’s dependence on the vitality of the U.S. economy. At the same time, the border twin cities have developed complementarity and unexpected bonds resulting from shared experiences. Alma Alvarez-Smith See also Borderlands; Bracero Program; Colonias; Environmental Justice; Globalization; Mexico
Further Readings
Candelaria, Cordelia C. 2004. “Maquiladora.” Pp. 516–517 in Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture, edited by C. C. Candelaria, A. J. Aldama, and P. J. Garcia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Lorey, David E. 1999. The U.S.–Mexican Border in the Twentieth Century: A History of Economic and Social Transformation. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. Wilson, Patricia A. 1992. Exports and Local Development: Mexico’s New Maquiladoras. Austin: University of Texas Press.
MARGINALIZATION Marginalization is the singling out of a specific group on the basis of some social demographic characteristic that is negatively viewed by a dominant group or class who, through institutionalized and informal practices, exclude the unwanted from social, economic, and political realms of the larger society. During the colonial
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period, attributions of inferiority based on phenotype or the physical appearance of the Indigenous Peoples supported the manipulation of people of color for the economic and social benefit of European nation-states, which also profited greatly by the enslavement of African people. The parallel development of the notion of “whiteness” through such ideologies as Social Darwinism allowed Europeans to legitimize beliefs about phenotype as a rationale for restricting the freedom of those identified as non-White throughout the world. This entry looks briefly at some historical and contemporary examples of marginalization. U.S immigration history provides an example of how phenotype, culture, and historical context affect rates of exclusion. Rates of assimilation for contemporary immigrants underscore the racial, social, and economic differences between late-19th- and early20th-century European immigrants and post-1965 Asian, Latino, and West Indian immigrants. Although Jews, Italians, and Irish were initially discriminated against, these early immigrants and their successive generations were able to advance due to social and economic opportunities in the industrial sector, as well as through the establishment of ethnic enclaves. In addition, these European immigrants were able to become “White,” allowing for many to assimilate fully into society. In contrast, post-1965 U.S. immigrants have often been non-Whites who come into a society where they may face discrimination based upon their physical appearance, although public debates on the issue are phrased in terms of issues relating to skills, education, and English literacy. Even second-generation immigrants from this cadre may have become marginalized on the basis of skin color, lack of social resources within their families, and their proximity to impoverished urban neighborhoods. Marginalization in European countries, such as Italy and Spain, is sanctioned through laws and policies that prohibit the inclusion of immigrant workers, keeping them marginalized as a ready pool of labor for low-wage positions that natives will not perform. These immigrants (Asian, Latin American, and subSaharan African) in Europe are often denied permanent residence and cannot become full citizens. The construction of the immigrant as the “other” in Europe and the marginalization of immigrants in the United States keep these populations on the fringes of society. Immigration globally often serves to benefit the political and economic interests of the host country, while emigrants are kept from mobility.
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Issues of marginalization in U.S. society are also evident in the legal system. Such political campaigns as the “war on drugs” have had a grossly negative impact on people of color in the United States. The rate of incarceration for African American minority populations in the United States is generally higher than that for Whites. Such differences are often attributed to the greater severity of criminal histories and racial bias in prosecution and sentencing, especially for drug sentences. Such racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system is evident in David Jacobs and Jason Carmichael’s analysis of death penalty sentencing. They discovered that those states with the greatest economic inequality and the largest African American populations retained the use of the death penalty. Such racial disparities highlight how non-Whites experience greater likelihood of loss of freedom. The removal from society or punishment of certain groups based upon phenotype is a common occurrence cross-nationally: For example, race has been correlated with higher incarceration rates of Aboriginals in Australia. The marginalization of racial and ethnic minorities has an impact on later generations’ social, political, and economic mobility. Current studies on wealth as a source of stratification highlight how historical processes widen the discrepancy in social and economic capital between African Americans and Whites in the United States. Racially biased acts, such as discrimination against African American veterans obtaining federal housing loans after World War II and the practice of residential segregation, have limited the accumulation of capital among minorities, preventing the purchase of a home, a key facet of economic stability. Wealth derived primarily from homeownership acts as a safety net for hard times. In addition, inherited wealth perpetuates inequality, with many more Whites than Blacks passing along wealth. As W. E. B. Du Bois stated in The Souls of Black Folk, the problem of modernity is that of the “color line,” referring to a widespread system of social stratification based on skin color. While a variety of factors contribute to social stratification, skin color remains a relevant factor in the 21st century. Manuel R. Torres See also American Apartheid; Australia, Indigenous People; Color Line; Discrimination; Double Consciousness; Drug Use; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Labeling; Racialization; Racial Profiling; Social Capital; Social Darwinism
Further Readings
Calavita, Kitty. 2005. Immigrants at the Margins: Law, Race, and Exclusion in Southern Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DuBois, W. E. B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago, IL: A. C. McClurg. Feagin, Joe. 2000. Racist America. New York: Routledge. Hogg, Russell. 2001. “Penalty and Modes of Regulating Indigenous Peoples in Australia.” Punishment & Society 3:355–379. Jacobs, David and Jason T. Carmichael. 2002. “The Sociology of the Death Penalty: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis.” American Sociological Review 67:109–131. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mauer, Marc. 1999. Race to Incarcerate. New York: New Press. Portes, Alejandro, Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, and William Haller. 2005. “Segmented Assimilation on the Ground: The New Second Generation in Early Adulthood.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28:1000–1040. Shapiro, Thomas M. 2004. The Hidden Cost of Being African American. New York: Oxford University Press.
“MARIELITOS” “Marielitos” was the blanket label applied to the 125,000 Cubans who arrived in the United States during a Cuban-government-sanctioned boatlift from Mariel, Cuba, in 1980. The label, which literally means “little person from Mariel,” was coined by the established anti-Castro, Cuban American community in South Florida as a way to distance itself from those the Cuban government and Cuban President Fidel Castro had labeled as “social deviants” and “scum.” These characterizations were not only unfair, but inaccurate, since the overwhelming majority of those who arrived in the boatlift were just as honest, hardworking, and enterprising as their predecessors, as this entry shows. The biggest differences between the recent arrivals and the previous Cuban exodus were race and class. The Cuban community established in South Florida was predominantly White (91%) and came mainly from the upper and middle classes in prerevolutionary Cuba. The Mariel entrants were more racially mixed, and most were classified as working class and poor upon arrival. However, despite the label and class and
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racial discrimination, most Marielitos made a relatively smooth transition to the economic and social life of Cuban Miami.
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As the Mariel entrants continued adjusting to life in the United States—and many became successful in business, education, the arts, and other professions— the “Marielito” stigma was applied almost exclusively to a group of 2,746 boatlift participants who were classified as “excludable” by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and detained upon arrival in the United States. The main reason for their exclusion and detention was the fact that most had committed crimes in Cuba and therefore had to be kept in captivity until they completed their sentences in U.S. prisons or were deemed admissible to the country by a U.S. court. The detention of this group stirred a major controversy and created a legal dilemma for the U.S. government, since (a) they had been invited to the United States by President Carter, who allowed the boatlift to continue for 5 months; (b) they were imprisoned for crimes committed in a foreign country, a country that the United States did not even recognize; (c) they were detained indefinitely, without specific charges; (d) prison conditions were considered “deplorable” and “shameful” by national and international human rights groups; and (e) they were denied a speedy trial by a jury of their peers. Even worse, most were never charged nor tried in the United States. The detention, exclusion, and treatment of this group represented a sharp reversal in the traditional “open arms” U.S. immigration policy of welcoming and admitting virtually all Cuban migrants as political refugees. Cubans are also privileged by the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which allows Cubans entering the United States, by any means, the right to permanent resident status 1 year and 1 day after their arrival. The Mariel detainees, however, were not protected by the act, since they were never officially admitted to the United States.
feared that Castro had intentionally sent hardened criminals on the boatlift to export Cuba’s crime problems to the United States. Although there was some truth to the latter, 98% of all boatlift entrants were hardworking, law-abiding citizens. The harsh treatment of the detainees and their detention without trial, however, represented a gross violation of U.S. civil rights and universal human rights. Political and civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Coalition to Support Cuban Detainees (CSCD), and the CubanAmerican National Foundation (CANF), among others, advocated for the prisoners’ rights through litigation and public pressure but had little success. The failure of these efforts indicated that the Cuban exile community was losing political clout in Washington, at least on immigration issues, as the detainees lingered in prison without charge and without trial. It was not until 1984 that the U.S. and Cuban governments agreed on a plan to repatriate all Mariel entrants who had been detained since 1980. Unfortunately, the agreement was short-lived when Cuba suspended the deportation to protest the Reagan administration’s creation of Radio Martí, a U.S.government-funded radio station dedicated to transmitting propaganda programs to Cuba. The Mariel boatlift and detainees controversy came at a time when the United States was confronted by more than 1 million asylum seekers from Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Although most of these people were trying to escape and survive political repression and war in their home countries and had legitimate cases by humanitarian standards, the INS ruled on their cases according to U.S. foreign policy priorities in the sending country, not the humanitarian merits of the case. For example, most Salvadorans were denied political asylum, since they were escaping the violence and repression of a government supported by the United States. On the other hand, Nicaraguans escaping the leftist Sandinista government (1979–1990), which the United States was trying to overthrow, were welcomed as political exiles.
A Question of Human Rights
Political Impact
The U.S. government justified the extreme measures taken against the detainees by claiming that it had been overwhelmed by the more than 125,000 Cubans who arrived during the Mariel boatlift and because it
The detention and exclusion of Mariel entrants and the double standard used by the INS to grant and deny asylum had significant political repercussions for both the Carter and Reagan administrations. Many analysts
The Cuban Excludables
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agree that the Mariel boatlift and the way it was handled was one of the main causes for President Jimmy Carter’s failure to win reelection in 1980. Faced with 125,000 asylum seekers from socialist Cuba and 50,000 Haitians fleeing from a pro-U.S. government, the Carter administration created a vague migratory status: “Cuban-Haitian Entrant: Status Pending.” The new category helped cover the policy contradiction but did not solve the status issue. Likewise, the Reagan administration faced a major crisis when the Cuban detainees rioted to protest the reactivation of the 1984 Cuba-U.S. immigration agreement. Frustrated by their seemingly endless prison terms and faced with the possibility of being deported to Cuba, the prisoners staged riots in the two prisons holding the largest numbers of Mariel detainees. The November 1987 riots in the Oakdale, Louisiana, Detention Center and the Atlanta Penitentiary lasted 10 days and left a toll of one detainee killed and more than a dozen injured. The rioters also burned five prison buildings and caused more than $20 million in property damage. Almost 30 years after the boatlift, the detainees’ situation may soon be resolved. In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal law prohibits openended detention of Cubans who entered the United States during the boatlift and who, despite crimes later committed, cannot be held indefinitely. Thus, the nearly 800 Mariel “excludables” who remain imprisoned in the United States may soon be tried and many, if not all, released. The ruling also provides new hope for Haitian asylum seekers, who, like the Cubans, live in an indefinite state of limbo and are still seeking asylum in South Florida. The Supreme Court ruling was a major victory for Mariel entrants, and although Cubans are still arriving illegally in South Florida in large numbers, as a result of a U.S.-Cuba migratory agreement, most are almost immediately deported back to Cuba. There, the U.S. government guarantees them an opportunity to apply for a U.S. entry visa, without the Cuban government’s interference. The agreement was an attempt by both governments to eliminate the illegal human traffic in the Florida Straits. Félix Masud-Piloto See also “Boat People”; Crime and Race; Cuba: Migration and Demography; Cuban Americans; Nicaraguan Americans; Refugees; Salvadoran Americans
Further Readings
Grenier, Guillermo J. and Alex Stepick III, eds. 1992. Miami Now: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Social Change. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Hamn, Mark S. 1995. The Abandoned Ones: The Imprisonment and Uprising of the Mariel Boat People. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Larzelere, Alex. 1988. Castro’s Ploy–America’s Dilemma: The 1980 Cuban Boatlift. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press. Masud-Piloto, Félix. 1996. From Welcomed Exiles to Illegal Immigrants: Cuban Migration to the U.S., 1959–1995. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Porte, Alejandro and Robert L. Bach. 1985. Latin Journey: Cuban and Mexican Immigrants in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press.
MARSHALL, THURGOOD (1908–1993) Thurgood Marshall was the first African American justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, appointed in 1967. He had been a successful civil rights lawyer, winning twenty-nine of thirty-two cases he argued before the Court, including Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. In an earlier federal appointment, nominated by President John F. Kennedy and confirmed after fiery Senate debates, Marshall served from 1961 to 1965 as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Subsequently, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall as solicitor general of the United States in 1965, a position in which he served until 1967, when President Johnson named him as Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. An African American had never before held any of these positions. This entry describes Marshall’s life and achievements.
Early Years Born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 2, 1908, to William and Norma Williams Marshall, the future justice attended local racially segregated elementary and secondary schools. After graduating from Douglass High School in 1925, he attended Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania. At that time, Lincoln was a college for African American men.
Marshall, Thurgood (1908–1993)
Official portrait of the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court: Justice Thurgood Marshall. Besides being a lifelong advocate for civil rights, Marshall strongly supported free speech, stood firmly against use of the death penalty, and was a defender of a woman’s right to an abortion. Source: Public domain.
Marshall met many Black men who would assume leadership roles throughout the nation. He was a member of the varsity debating team, which faced off on various topics with interracial and international opponents. Marshall married Vivian G. Burey in 1929, and, upon his graduation in 1930, he decided to pursue a law degree. He thought about attending the University of Maryland law school, but it was not open to African American students at that time. Instead, he attended Howard University law school, where he met his mentor, the law school dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, an accomplished Harvard law school graduate. Howard was a coeducational university open to all qualified students but attended primarily by African Americans. Many African American law students who argued and analyzed their civil rights cases at the law school later went on to become the vanguard in the Civil Rights Movement.
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With the NAACP Marshall graduated at the top of his class, passed the bar exam, and practiced law in Baltimore from 1933 to 1937. In 1934, he became counsel for the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and, from 1936 to 1938, he was assistant to the special counsel for the NAACP. His former dean, Charles Houston, held the special counsel position. Marshall and Houston traveled all over the racially segregated South offering legal aid to African Americans who could not afford to hire their own lawyers to protect their rights. The NAACP, a rights organization founded in 1909, worked tirelessly to restore the rights guaranteed to African Americans by the U.S. Constitution, especially the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. These amendments were passed after the Civil War in an attempt to establish civil rights for 6 million newly emancipated Blacks. One of Marshall’s early successes as an NAACP lawyer was a case against segregation policies at the University of Maryland. In the NAACP’s efforts to desegregate the university’s graduate and professional schools, Houston and Marshall filed a case before the Maryland Court of Appeals on behalf of an African American law school applicant named Donald Gaines Murray. They won, and Murray was admitted in 1936. When Houston retired 2 years after Marshall’s appointment as his assistant, Marshall succeeded him as the NAACP’s chief legal officer. In 1939, Marshall was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court. Marshall was the founding director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which was established in 1940, after the U.S. Treasury Department refused to grant tax-exempt status to the NAACP. The fund’s purpose was to raise money to finance the organization’s legal fights against discrimination and to fund other programs that were eligible for tax-deductible contributions. Marshall served as counsel and director of the fund from 1940 to 1961. During that time, Marshall was responsible for scores of legal actions to secure full citizenship rights for African Americans. The fund’s records at the Library of Congress document Marshall’s grueling travel and meeting schedule as well as his acute sense of humor even in the face of threats from Whites and the distrust and fear of southern Blacks he was trying to help. His work focused on voting privileges, justice in criminal proceedings, and the equalization of the
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funds granted for public education throughout the United States. The NAACP awarded Marshall its coveted Spingarn Medal in 1946. The citation he received described his unrelenting efforts to ensure equitable treatment of African Americans by leading the courts to overturn laws discriminating against African Americans in travel, labor, education, military service, public accommodations, and other areas of life in the United States. The NAACP particularly cited his leadership in the Texas all-White primary election case, which the organization’s leadership felt would have greater influence than other cases in ending racial disenfranchisement in America. Sometimes Marshall’s office worked on as many as 400 cases at a time. Marshall’s long and successful career as a trial attorney culminated with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. When Marshall and the other NAACP lawyers presented their arguments in Brown, they used cases relating to segregated schools in various parts of the United States so that the “separate but equal” doctrine could be challenged in a variety of settings around the country. The court actually heard the case twice before ruling unanimously that separate schools were inherently unequal. This was the NAACP’s key victory in the legal battle to dismantle segregation in the United States. Marshall’s first wife died in 1955, and he married Cecilia A. Suyat in the same year. They had two sons, John and Thurgood, Jr.
On the Federal Bench Marshall’s federal career began in 1961, when he was appointed by President Kennedy to be a federal judge in the Second District Court of Appeals in New York City. From this point on in his career, Marshall could no longer focus on civil rights issues. He had to make decisions about whatever case came before him in court. Despite the fact that he was no longer in his area of specialty, the Supreme Court did not overturn any of his decisions. In 1965, President Johnson appointed Marshall as Solicitor General of the United States. Of the nineteen cases he tried, he won fourteen. Outside of the courtroom during the 1960s, Marshall traveled to Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda as a representative of the State Department. In his official capacity as a Supreme Court justice, Marshall tried to ensure that the civil rights gained for
African Americans and other minority groups would be secure. He was also a tenacious advocate for the rights of women and affirmative action. He wanted judicial remedies to be securely in place so that the hard-won civil rights gains would not be lost. His opinion files at the Library of Congress generally document Marshall’s many concurrences with the liberal majority position of the court during the early years of his tenure on the court and an increasing number of his dissents as the court’s position changed when Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush appointed conservative judges to the court. Marshall’s opinions reflect his strong advocacy for the rights of minority and disadvantaged individuals, his arguments for First Amendment rights, and his support for the rights of criminal defendants, including arguments in almost 200 cases against capital punishment as a cruel and unusual form of punishment. After serving on the United States Supreme Court for 24 years, Justice Thurgood Marshall announced his retirement in the fall of 1991 because of ill health. He died on January 24, 1993. In an editorial in the Washington Post on January 31, one of his biographers, Juan Williams, said Marshall was “a man who led a team that skillfully deployed the Constitution in an unprecedented way: to dismantle the world of ‘separate but equal.’ Little attention is paid to the man who loved the law and legal argument, who would arrange long moot court sessions to prepare for any day in court. Largely forgotten is the brilliant advocate of free speech, the man who along with Justice William Brennan stood firmly against use of the death penalty, the fierce defender of a woman’s right to an abortion.” Debra Newman Ham See also Brown v. Board of Education; Civil Rights Movement; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Segregation; Separate but Equal
Further Readings
Greenberg, Jack. 1994. Crusaders in the Courts: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Basic Books. Kluger, Richard. 1963. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality. New York: Knopf. Rowan, Carl. 1993. Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
Marxism and Racism
Thurgood Marshall Papers. n.d. Washington, DC: Library of Congress. Williams, Juan. 1998. Thurgood Marshall, American Revolutionary. New York: Times Books.
MARXISM AND RACISM Marxists argue that it is impossible to discuss racism without also considering the economic context in which that racism exists. In the United States, that means capitalism and its accompanying class exploitation. Racial oppression, it is argued, has always been an integral part of U.S. economic and political history. That being said, there are at least two general approaches taken by Marxists who study racism. The first, traditional Marxism, sees class as the fundamental or primary source of oppression, with racism being an important but secondary issue. The second approach, race-sensitive Marxism, argues that both race and class are primary sources of oppression. What follows is an outline of the major points within each of the two approaches.
Traditional Marxism Traditional Marxists argue that the class oppression that is part of capitalism affects both White workers and workers of color. While all workers are exploited by capitalists, they argue, workers of color are “superexploited.” In other words, while capitalists make profits from the labor of White workers, they make larger profits from workers of color due to race-segregated labor markets and unequal pay for the same work. The degree of exploitation of workers of color and White workers is viewed as a difference in degree rather than a difference in kind. In this view, people of color are also seen as part of the “reserve labor force” that is necessary to the smooth functioning of capitalism. In periods of economic expansion when more workers are needed (i.e., World War II), people of color are pulled into jobs they can’t usually obtain. During periods of contraction, they are pushed out of these jobs. It is in the interests of the working class to become class conscious, say traditional Marxists. This means that workers of all races and cultures will understand that their common class interests (exploitation by capitalists) are more important than any differences they
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may have in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, or culture. It is in the interests of the capitalists, on the other hand, to keep the working class divided. Racism is one of the ways that the working class remains divided. The ideological and attitudinal aspect of racism (stereotypes, prejudice, political beliefs) make workers believe that workers of other races, rather than capitalists, are their enemies. Whites and people of color will fight each other rather than uniting against the capitalists. This is sometimes called “false consciousness.” Sometimes, capitalists purposely try to use race to divide workers, such as by using Blacks as strikebreakers in a predominantly White workplace. Most of the time, however, the free-floating culture of racism causes workers to think in racial rather than class terms. Traditional Marxists tend to be suspicious of Nationalist movements among people of color (e.g., Black Power during the 1960s and 1970s), since this could further divide the working class. In analyzing social phenomena like racism, traditional Marxists always ask the question “Who wins and who loses?” White capitalists clearly benefit from racism, and workers of color clearly lose out. As for White workers, Marxists say that they lose more than they gain from racism. Although they have short-term benefits (e.g., better housing, jobs, pay, education), they are ultimately hurt by their continual exploitation by the capitalists. They would be better off uniting with workers of color against the capitalists. Capitalists of color, according to traditional Marxists, also lose more than they gain. Although they can make profits off the labor of workers of any race, their businesses are often small and marginal, and they are at the mercy of the more powerful White capitalists. However, traditional Marxists are more interested in organizing workers of color than in building a strong business class among people of color. The expectation of traditional Marxists is that once capitalism is replaced by socialism, the material base of racism is removed. All that remains is to address some of the residual attitudes, cultural stereotypes, and behavior patterns that no longer fit the new economic conditions.
Race-Sensitive Marxism The militant social movements in the Black and Latino communities during the 1960s and 1970s gave rise to a more race-sensitive Marxism, which argued that both race and class are fundamental sources of
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oppression. While people in these movements would agree with much of traditional Marxism, they would argue that racial oppression has a life of its own that goes beyond issues of class. The prejudiced attitudes and discriminatory behavior of White workers are seen as more than just false consciousness. White workers are seen to gain real material benefits from being the privileged group in society. While they are still exploited by White capitalists, they also share some of their racial privilege in terms of better jobs, higher social status, and more political power than workers of color. Prejudice and stereotypes are seen as part of a racist ideology that justifies and protects White privilege. This also has implications for postcapitalist society, since White workers would still have real advantages over workers of color. Their better education, for example, means that they would be more likely than workers of color to qualify for better jobs, even in a socialist society. Creating racial equality in a socialist society would be a long-term process that involves more than just changing residual prejudiced attitudes. Several all-Black political organizations have articulated race-sensitive Marxism. The Black Workers Congress had some success in organizing Black autoworkers in Detroit in the 1970s by seeing both the companies and the liberal, predominantly White United Auto Workers Union as their enemies. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense focused on organizing poor Black communities around issues of police brutality and political oppression in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although both groups were Black, they were willing to work in coalition with White Marxists who supported their principles. Race-sensitive Marxists are also concerned about the globalization of capitalism. Immigrants of color come to the United States from poor countries in search of jobs and compete with native-born workers of color for low-paying jobs. This, in turn, has caused animosity between White workers and immigrants as well as between native-born workers of color and immigrant workers of the same race. In the view of race-sensitive Marxists, the predominantly White capitalists continue to make profits from the labor of native-born and immigrant workers of all races. Fred L. Pincus See also Black Nationalism; Black Panther Party; Chicano Movement; Color Line; Privilege; Social Mobility
Further Readings
Geschwender, James A. 1978. Racial Stratification in America. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown. Marable, Manning. 2000. How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
MCCARRAN-WALTER ACT
OF
1952
The McCarran-Walter Act, also called the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, was meant to systematize immigration to the United States. This act is noted for establishing trends in immigration policy that were expanded in later congressional legislation. The most liberal change was the opening of the United States to immigrants of all races and ethnicities. Other trends included establishing immigration preferences based on skill or family preference and the keeping of systematic documentation of aliens. The act was an expression of national sovereignty because it established social boundaries as to who could enter, and it finally recognized a need for political alliances with other nations through inclusion of their immigrants. This entry looks at its historical context and impact.
Historical Context The two World Wars of the 20th century had a definite impact on shaping immigration policy. World War I did not overturn a U.S. policy of isolationism and resulted in a rejection of immigration through limited quotas established by the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. This was because of a U.S. reaction to the conflict in Europe as based on racial and ethnic quarrels. In contrast, World War II prompted the internationalization of the United States and an understanding that the United States had made alliances with nations of varied races and ethnicities. In world opinion, Hitler’s policy of racial eugenics had been destructive, and the fact that the United States barred certain races from immigration was rendered suspect. In this period, immigration was recognized as germane to foreign policy, and those in favor of changing the rules wanted to recognize foreign alliances and show compassion for a common humanity. It was thought that increased immigration would offset the global cold war rivalry with the Soviet bloc, so that ideology rather than race was seen to define America’s enemies. Opening up immigration was
McCarran-Walter Act of 1952
recognized as an international position that would maintain goodwill and provide labor. Power was increasingly felt to be based on moral authority, which could not rest on discrimination. It was felt that U.S. power should be based on foreign alliances with countries of other races who could provide manpower and economic markets for U.S. goods. It seemed hypocritical to condemn imperialism and colonialism and yet retain a racist immigration policy. The McCarran-Walter bill was sold as an anti-Nazi weapon to undermine the idea of racial superiority and inferiority.
Quotas Replace Exclusion The McCarran-Reed Act of 1952 maintained the eastern hemisphere quota system of the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, with a cap of 154,667 based on percentages of the population in the 1920 census. The difference was that it allowed for immigrants of all races and ethnicities to enter within the quota. As a result, the racist national origins principle of the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 remained in place only to the extent that the quota system prevented individuals of national origins with low representation from having a substantial immigration quota. Quotas for this act were based on one-sixth of 1% of individuals of a given national origin enumerated in the 1920 census, with a minimum quota of 100. A major change was the end of exclusion for Asians. The law added twelve new quota areas in Southeast Asia and the Arab Gulf, referred to as the “Asia-Pacific triangle,” and assigned a maximum quota of 2,000.
Special-Preference Immigrants The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 introduced the principle of admitting “special preference” immigrants in professions or with skills considered useful. It paired this concept with an emphasis on reuniting citizens and permanent resident aliens with their relatives. First preference was given to aliens with special skills who had spouses and children (50%). Second preference was parents of U.S. citizens (30%). Third preference was for spouses and children of resident aliens (30%). Fourth preference was for additional relatives of U.S. citizens (25%, with use of slots not taken under other preferences). Finally, any remaining unused slots were to be used without preference. In either category or within quotas, gender
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discrimination was eliminated. In addition, the number of relatives admitted could be above the quota limits. Unlimited entrance was given to husbands of U.S. citizens.
The Alien Registration System It should be noted that individuals were supposed to officially enter with documents. A significant practice established at this time was the alien address report system. It required aliens to file papers each year specifying their address, which would be kept in a central system. This paperwork proviso became an issue, as the Mexican “Bracero” guest worker program had been under way since 1944 and many growers had started giving work to undocumented entrants under a lower pay scale. In reaction, the U.S. government began stigmatizing undocumented Mexican workers as “illegal aliens” and launched “Operation Wetback” in 1954. Operation Wetback involved a roundup of undocumented Mexicans and caused tensions between Mexico and the United States. These tensions continue today due to quotas for Mexico and current policies requiring documentation whereby mutual violation by employers and workers results in negative public opinion about undocumented Mexican immigration.
Other Exclusionary Criteria Another element of the 1952 act was the ideological exclusion of communists because of the cold war, a provision that has been described as racist, xenophobic, and destructive of foreign policy efforts. The legislation tightened deportation procedures, especially for “communist subversives.” An unexpected impact of the bill was that a formerly racially identified group, the Chinese, became excluded because China was a communist nation. Racial outcasts, in effect, became ideological outcasts. Previously, southern Europeans were racially identified with very restricted quotas, but despite fascism in Italy during World War II, they became recognized as refugees from communism. Their country quotas, however, were not raised until passage of a new system under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Cellar Act). Other categories of individual exclusion under provisions of this legislation included drug addicts, fraud attempters, polygamists, homosexuals, and
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“subversives,” a category that included communists. Although the act made the point that no individual was excluded from citizenship, in practice, many individuals were excluded based on this act and prior legislation prohibiting persons who were considered physically or mentally defective or diseased, likely to become public charges, or considered to be characterized by “moral turpitude,” otherwise referred to as criminality.
Isolationism Versus Internationalism In the early 1950s, members of Congress who wanted to preserve U.S. isolationism and those who wanted a more liberal immigration bill opposed the act. Internationalists wanted to expand America’s relations with other nations through barring racial exclusion in order to extend America’s power base and adopt a policy of cold war alliances. Isolationists viewed all immigrants as potential subversives. Internationalists saw the strength of immigrants. A divided Congress passed a compromise bill, and President Harry Truman vetoed it. Truman thought that immigration policy impacted foreign policy by indicating national attitudes toward particular racial and ethnic groups and that this bill was insufficiently liberalized. The Congress disagreed with Truman and overrode his veto. As a result, the McCarran-Walter Act continued the U.S. policy of isolationism. The legislation changed the United States from thinking in racial terms to thinking in terms of ideological issues. This legislation strengthened the boundary between citizens and aliens and still impacts debate about immigration policy today. The United States continues today to debate who belongs and who doesn’t in a new context of national security, as well as terms of the economic impact immigration has on the United States. Immigration policy is connected to how the United States is perceived in the world. The McCarranWalter Act was substantially criticized for using the national origins principle to regulate quotas. Although the act had a liberal principle, removal of race or ethnicity as a basis for barring people from immigrating to the United States, the retention of the national origins quota system was more likely to restrict potential southeastern Europeans than individuals from northwestern Europe. As a result, race and ethnicity remained a source of bias because of retention of lower quotas for countries without a major presence in the U.S. population in 1920.
These quotas were not removed until the very liberal Immigration and Nationality Act was passed in 1965. Under the 1965 act, national origin, race, or ancestry would no longer be criteria for immigration to the United States, and Eastern Hemispheric quotas were equalized. In addition, Western Hemispheric quotas were created and equalized. The McCarranWalter Act began but did not fully realize a trend toward liberalization of immigration by elimination of racial criteria, a trend that is reflected in the current cultural diversity of U.S. society. Nevertheless, the conservative distinction between citizen, alien, and the undocumented continues today and remains a source of controversy about immigrants and how to legally admit individuals. Judith Ann Warner See also Alien Land Acts; Bracero Program; Discrimination; Europe; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; National Origins System
Further Readings
Grebler, Leo, Joan W. Moore, and Ralph C. Guzman. 1970. The Mexican American People. New York: Free Press. Reimers, David M. 1985. Still the Golden Door. New York: Columbia University Press. Shanks, Cheryl. 2001. Immigration and the Politics of National Sovereignty. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
MEDIA AND RACE For most of its history, U.S. television has been predominantly White—not simply in the faces it has portrayed but also in its support of White cultural norms. Until the 1990s, White media bias went largely unexamined. This entry discusses media portrayals of race, examines critical theories of media and race, and reviews the findings of cognitive research in this area. Because Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos have, for the majority of U.S. television history, been noticeable primarily for their absence, most of the discussion here deals with media portrayals of African Americans. Concerns about the influence of electronic media on U.S. race relations predated television, and the roots of those concerns go back to depictions of
Media and Race
Blacks in Western popular culture since the 17th century. In many respects, television simply extended and recycled these earlier popular forms. However, television’s arrival in the late 1940s coincided with growing hopes among African Americans for greater inclusion in U.S. society. Television, it was hoped, could help speed that inclusion. The medium’s capacity to expose viewers to supposedly unmediated reality helped stoke the belief that it would correct the distortions of earlier media. Moreover, its widespread adoption, with nearly 90% of homes possessing a set by the end of the 1950s, meant that realistic images of African Americans could be beamed into almost every U.S. household. Given these high hopes, many African Americans were indignant about early fiction series starring African Americans. The now infamous Amos ’n’ Andy, for instance, came under fire from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which passed a resolution criticizing the show at its 1951 convention. The NAACP’s objections continue to shape research and thinking about media and race today. Eight of the NAACP’s twelve objections addressed the lack of diverse African American characters and their reliance on received caricatures, including charges that “every character . . . is either a clown or a crook” and “Negroes are shown as dodging work of any kind.” The remaining four objections dealt with the perceived impact of these televisual characterizations on White viewers. “Amos ’n’ Andy on television is worse than on radio because it is a picture, . . . not merely a story in words. . . . Millions of White children learn about Negroes for the fist time by seeing Amos ’n’ Andy.” These related yet distinct concerns—about the diversity of African American portrayals and the impact of such portrayals on viewers’ attitudes—spawned distinct research traditions in media and race. Concerns about diversity of African American portrayals were initially limited to distinctions between positive and negative images, with researchers chronicling disparities between portrayals of African American life and its realities. Under the influence of cultural studies, feminist theory, and African American literary theory, critical media scholars began moving beyond questions of positive and negative characters to examine how television as an aesthetic medium, encompassing settings, narratives, and generic classifications as well as characters, participates in ideological struggles over race.
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Contemporary critical research on media and race addresses three main areas: the role that African American audience members play in reinterpreting and reproducing the ideologies of popular television texts; the impact of network decline, globalization, and channel multiplication on African American portrayals; and revisionist histories of African American television, often looking at how African American creative workers actively shaped representational strategies. The NAACP’s concerns about Amos ’n’ Andy’s influence on audience perceptions of African Americans led to social scientific research into the effects of televised imagery on individuals. This research generally employed a pretest–stimulus– post-test model, in which participants were first probed on their racial attitudes, then exposed to stereotyped material, then probed again on their racial attitudes. Typically, this research exposed White participants to stereotyped African American imagery, but research on African American subjects as well as Native American and Asian American stereotypes has also been conducted. This research design was prey to increasing social pressures against espousing racist attitudes, which plagued responses in both the preand post-tests. Moreover, little evidence existed that any attitudinal changes were more than the momentary effects of the artificial research conditions. Current cognitive research tries to bypass these problems by distinguishing between implicit and explicit racial bias and limiting its focus to implicit biases. The large, ongoing Project Implicit measures participants’ automatic responses to combinations of ideas and images in an effort to uncover participants’ positive and negative associations of skin color. Cognitive research on media and race assumes that in the aggregate, African Americans are portrayed in the media as an undesirable out-group, that the consequence of these portrayals is that a majority of Americans of all races have internalized the equation of blackness with undesirability, and that these basic cognitive schemas then serve to underwrite higherorder discriminatory attitudes, as reflected, for example, in housing segregation. Cognitive research does not generally distinguish between fictional and nonfictional television because it views both as visual stimuli that either accurately or inaccurately represent the social world. Nevertheless, these researchers share with some critical scholars an interest in story frames, or received ways of constructing
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news stories. Research on story frames has examined which types of frames recur in stories about race, the ways in which journalistic practices encourage racially discriminatory frames, and the effects of frames on viewers’ racial attitudes. Some critical researchers, however, go beyond story frames, analyzing such topics as the ways in which the visual power of television journalism helped civil rights politics in the late 1950s, while civil rights protests legitimated television journalism as a news source that showed the violence of the protests more vividly than newspapers or radio. Both cognitive and critical theories of media and race have also been applied to non-Black minority groups. For cognitive researchers, implicit bias measurements work equally well for all races and demonstrate that non-White groups are, in the aggregate, more associated with out-group status than are Whites. For critical scholars, questions of diversity of portrayal and the ideological struggle over the meanings of race have also been asked about non-Black minorities. Articles and books have chronicled conventional stereotypes of Latinos, Arabs, Asians, and Native Americans in popular television, as well as the continued privileging of White supremacist story frames in news reports of these minorities. Since the 1990s, a number of critical media scholars have explored the media’s role in perpetuating and challenging White privilege. This research tends to take one of two approaches: The first set of approaches examines the discursive processes whereby whiteness naturalizes contemporary racial hierarchies in the United States, especially through strategies of invisibility and naturalizing. The second set of approaches examines White audiences and the ways in which they negotiate their identities as racially privileged members of society through media texts. Research has shown, for instance, that The Cosby Show encouraged White viewers to believe that the only reason for African American poverty in the 1980s was lack of motivation. The current increase in specialty minority channels due to cable and satellite television raises questions that confound traditional assumptions of both cognitive and critical research on media and race. Scholars in both traditions have typically relied on prime-time network programming as a barometer of racial attitudes, but the accelerating decline in network primetime viewership has drawn that practice into question. In many ways, the total television output available to U.S. audiences today defies accurate description.
Latinos now have access to dozens of channels of programming from Latin American and U.S. Latino sources. While Asian Americans and Native Americans have fared less well than Latinos, specialty channels devoted to Asian Americans have begun to appear. Likewise, Internet Protocol Television allows viewers worldwide to watch streaming video on their television sets, promising to further increase accessibility to nondomestic minority programming, while also decreasing start-up costs for new minority channels. Some researchers question whether this increased segmentation by race undermines racial tolerance, while others insist that it allows for more complex imaginings of racial difference. Yet others point out that the political economy of these specialty channels tends to limit program diversity to middle- and upperclass cultural values regardless of race. One final area of inquiry that has received only scant scholarly attention involves the question of television production and ownership. Most such research has been carried out by political interest groups such as the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza. In general, this research confirms that minority participation in television production is minimal and concentrated in the less prestigious jobs. Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission’s removal of caps on the number of broadcasting outlets a single entity can own has diminished minority-owned broadcast stations. In the cable arena, Black Entertainment Television (BET), founded by African American businessman Robert Johnson, was sold to media giant Viacom in 2000, although the impact of the sale on BET’s programming has been debated. Some critical research has begun to explore the link between political/economic changes and portrayals of race, but more research of this type is needed. Timothy Havens See also Birth of a Nation, The; Black Cinema; Crime and Race; Digital Divide; Film, Latino; Hip-Hop; Japanese American Citizens League; Lee, Spike; Leisure; Model Minority; Multiracial Identity; Rap: The Genre; Rap: The Movement; Stereotypes; Urban Legends
Further Readings
Dates, Jeanette and William Barlow. 1983. Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media. Washington, DC: Howard University Press. Dyer, Richard. 1997. White. London and New York: Routledge.
Medical Experimentation
Entman, Robert M. and Andrew Rojecki. 2000. The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fiske, John. 1986. Media Matters: Race and Gender in U.S. Politics. Rev. ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gandy, Oscar. 1998. Communication and Race. London: Arnold. Gray, Herman. 2004. Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hamamoto, Darrell Y. 1994. Monitored Peril: Asian Americans and the Politics of TV Representation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End Press. Jhally, Sut and Justin Lewis. 1992. Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences, and the Myth of the American Dream. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. MacDonald, J. Fred. 1992. Blacks and White TV: AfroAmericans in Television since 1948. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall. Rodriguez, Clara E. 1997. Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam. 1994. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. New York and London: Routledge. Smith-Shomade, Beretta. 2007. Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy: Selling Black Entertainment Television. London and New York: Routledge. Torres, Sasha, ed. 1998. Living Color: Race and Television in the United States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Zook, Kristal Brent. 1999. Color by Fox: The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
MEDICAL EXPERIMENTATION Medical experimentation is the use of human subjects to evaluate, test, and monitor the effects of medical treatments and practices on the human body. Researchers have long relied on medical experimentation as a means to advance scientific knowledge in treating myriad diseases and conditions. Historically, however, it has been chiefly members of ethnic minorities and socially marginalized groups who have been used in such experiments. This has had profound implications for medical ethics generally and for the way in
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which members of these groups have constructed meaning and interacted with the medical establishment and government-sponsored research. This entry reviews the nature of medical experimentation and uses three case examples to illustrate how ethnic minorities and the socially marginalized have been used in medical experimentation and research. At its best, medical experimentation adheres to rigorous research protocols that serve to protect human subjects. For example, in the United States, before any prescription drug is made available for mass consumption, pharmaceutical companies are required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct clinical trials of the drug’s efficacy and safety. This typically involves recruiting individuals who will participate in a study to evaluate the effects of the drug. Participants are randomly assigned to either a group that will receive the drug or a group that will receive a placebo. The effects of the drug, including health consequences and side effects, are monitored. If its effectiveness is high and the associated risks are relatively low (for example, the drug is highly effective in reducing the presence of a disease and death is unlikely to occur from taking it), the drug has a high probability of making it to the market. This example reflects the ideal form of medical experimentation: All human subjects who participate in medical experimentation are informed of the purpose, methods, and risks of the experimentation, and subjects must give their consent to participate. This is known as informed consent. Ultimately, the benefits of the experimentation for the advance of science should outweigh any potential human costs or risks. Unfortunately, these conditions have not always been met, and, moreover, society’s most vulnerable and marginalized have been used to advance the agenda of science and industry. It can be argued that medical experimentation reflects the stratification of society and reinforces the inequality of groups. Consequently, members of marginalized groups such as African Americans, Jews, the poor, children, people with mental illness, and the prison population have been exploited and used to test myriad conditions on the human body. Moreover, researchers conducting medical experimentation have not always adhered to the practice of soliciting informed consent from participants and, at worst, have used deception and coercion to exploit participants as human subjects. The use of such methods has sometimes resulted in extreme harm to participants—including suffering and death.
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Historical Cases Prior to World War II, little attention was given to safeguarding human rights in medical research and experimentation. Three of the most well-known cases that violated human rights are recognized as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, conducted on African American men in the United States; the Nazi experiments conducted on Jews in concentration camps in Germany; and the Willowbrook School Study, conducted on children with disabilities in the United States.
syphilis. Instead, the men were told, disingenuously, that they were being treated for an illness that physicians called “bad blood.” The Tuskegee Syphilis Study reflects the intersection of race and class inequality. Members of a minority population were exploited, while the larger society benefited from the findings of the experimentation. Not until 1997 did President Clinton offer a public apology to the community and families who were victims of the abuse. Nazzi Experrim men ntss
Tuskegee Syphilis Study
Over a 40-year period, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932–1972) to evaluate the progression of syphilis. The purpose of the study was to determine the effect of syphilis on the human body if left untreated. Deceptive tactics were used in the study. First, African American males who were infected with the disease were recruited as participants, but information about their diagnosis was withheld: The men—rural, poor, and mostly illiterate—were deliberately not told they had syphilis. Second, even after penicillin became available, the men were denied any treatment for
Some of the most egregious medical experimentation was performed on Jewish inmates at concentration camps in Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Auschwitz during the German Nazi regime. The physician Joseph Mengele is notorious for having conducted some of the most inhumane studies on twins and dwarfs. According to documented accounts from Holocaust survivors and hearings on war crimes, victims were used as involuntary subjects in experiments involving hypothermia, injection of infectious diseases, and amputations, to name only a few of the experiments conducted. These experiments were justified, it was later explained, as a means to improve society for the dominant group, or what the Nazi regime referred to as the “superior race.” Willlowbro ook Sch hool Stu udy
Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Dr. David Albritton is shown drawing blood from an unidentified individual for the notorious Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1930s). The purpose of the study was to determine the effect of syphilis on the human body if left untreated. Source: National Archives and Records Administration, Southeast Region.
The Willowbrook School Study (1963–1966) used children with mental disabilities to investigate viral hepatitis. Willowbrook, located in Staten Island, New York, was a state institution for children with mental disabilities. For children to be admitted to the institution, their parents had to consent to allow them to participate in the study. As in the Tuskegee study, a deceptive approach was used. Parents were told their children would receive a vaccination for hepatitis. Instead children were deliberately infected with hepatitis, and inoculations against the virus were then tested.
Melting Pot
Reform of Medical Experimentation To safeguard against these unethical practices, the scientific community has established guidelines to protect human rights. Today, two of the most widely instituted guidelines followed by medical researchers include the Nuremberg Code and the Declaration of Helsinki. The overall objective of these guidelines was established to protect human subjects in medical research and to minimize the risk of exploitation and abuse of individuals. The Nuremberg Code was established in 1947 as a result of the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals following the end of World War II; it laid the foundation to ensure that individuals have rights in medical research. Among the core principles of the Nuremberg Code, it is held that individuals must be voluntary participants in research, they cannot be coerced into medical experimentation, informed consent must be granted, and the benefits of the experiment must outweigh the risks of participation. Similarly, the Declaration of Helsinki was established in 1964 by the World Medical Association to provide ethical standards for how physicians should interact with patients when conducting medical research. The declaration echoed the principles outlined in the Nuremberg Code, such as ensuring that medical experimentation be voluntary, informed consent be granted, and the benefits of the research outweigh the risks. In addition, it specified guidelines for medical research and experimentation to further protect human subjects in research. These include protecting the privacy and confidentiality of participants, establishing a research protocol by the researcher, establishing a review of the research protocol by an independent committee, and protecting children and other vulnerable populations by soliciting their assent. The Declaration of Helsinki has been adopted by most institutions that conduct any kind of research with individuals. Most universities, research institutions, and hospitals have developed an independent committee, or institutional review board, which requires all research with humans to be approved and monitored. Reform in medical experimentation has been helpful in establishing protocols to protect human rights in medical research; however, violations of human rights persist, especially with marginalized groups. For example, as recently as 2001, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer was sued for conducting clinical trials of a drug for tuberculosis with African children. It is alleged that the experimentation was conducted
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without informed consent and that participation in the study was not voluntary. Tracey Lewis-Elligan See also African Americans; Eugenics; Holocaust; Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists; Scapegoats; Social Inequality
Further Readings
Caplan, Arthur L. 1992. When Medicine Went Mad: Bioethics and the Holocaust. Totowa, NJ: Humana. Jones, James H. 1993. Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. New York: Free Press. Jonsen, Albert R., Robert M. Veatch, and Leroy Walters. 1998. Source Book in Bioethics: A Documentary History. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Lewin, Tamor. 2001. “Families Sue Pfizer on Test of Antibiotic.” New York Times, August 30, Business Section p. 1.
MELTING POT Few social metaphors have dominated American thought as pervasively as that of the melting pot—a key symbol for the United States. A melting pot is, literally, a vessel in which metals or other materials are melted and mixed; this metaphor compares America’s sundry racial, ethnic, and religious groups to foundrytype metals that are transmuted, in the crucible of the American experience, into social gold. This entry charts the origins and ideological trajectory of this defining idea and that of its rival, cultural pluralism. The verbal trope of melting as a code for Americanness can be traced to J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735–1813), author of Letters From an American Farmer (1782). Here, he likened “Americans” to individuals from all nations being “melted” into a new race. As a full-blown descriptor of the United States, however, the term melting pot made its dramatic debut in Israel Zangwill’s (1864–1926) play, The Melting-Pot, which opened in Washington, D.C., in October 1908. The play’s protagonist is David Quixano, a young Jewish immigrant bent on composing the great American symphony. The visionary Quixano heralds America as “God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot” where “the Great Alchemist” (God) “melts and fuses” those who hail from “all nations and races” in coming to her shores. This prophetic exaltation of America
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soon captured the public’s imagination in New York, when in 1909, it was performed 136 times to popular acclaim, despite critical disdain. This mythic image of America has had its share of demythologizers. The melting pot is perhaps defined more sharply by its detractors than by its proponents. Indeed, social reality in the United States has arguably belied the myth. The melting pot, for one thing, excluded African Americans. Proverbially, it was “the pot calling the kettle black,” in that Jim Crow segregation was the polar opposite of Quixano’s vision of integration. Among the most detailed and welldocumented cultural histories of the initial reception of The Melting-Pot and its subsequent impact is that of Philip Gleason, who concluded that among intellectuals, the real challenger to the symbol of the melting pot is the concept of cultural pluralism.
Cultural Pluralism Over time, the trope of the melting pot became tarnished, for it threatened to gradually destroy diversity, not preserve it. Ironically, a year before the image of the melting pot was popularized by Zangwill, the term cultural pluralism was coined and later, in 1915, was used to criticize Zangwill’s gilded metaphor. Horace Kallen (1882–1974), a Jewish pragmatist philosopher, invented the term in 1907 at Oxford University, after refusing to attend a Thanksgiving dinner with Rhodes Scholars from the South because they had excluded Alain Locke (1885–1954), who earlier that year had won national acclaim as the first African American Rhodes Scholar. In his most famous essay, “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot” (1915), Kallen had already subjected Zangwill’s conceit to a searing critique. Yet it was not until 1924 that the term cultural pluralism—antipode of the melting pot—first appeared in print. Kallen defined cultural pluralism as the view that democracy is an essential prerequisite to culture and asserted that culture can be and sometimes is a fine flowering of democracy, as illustrated by U.S. history. The countermetaphor that Kallen proposed is that of the philharmonic, in which American civilization may be seen to embody the cooperative harmonies of European civilization—a multiplicity, but unified in a sort of orchestration of humanity in which every type of instrument contributes to the symphony that is civilization. Among other critics of the melting pot, Randolph Bourne, John Dewey, and Isaac B. Berkson, author of
the 1920 book Theories of Americanization, figured prominently, as well as Alain Locke himself. Like Kallen, Locke called into question the assimilationist paradigm of the melting pot. In one lecture, Locke reportedly characterized America not as a melting pot, but as a crucible for enrichment. In a speech titled “The Negro Renaissance,” held in Chicago at the Women’s City Club and reported in the Chicago Defender, Locke advocated the continuing development of African American culture, rejecting both Zangwill’s “melting pot” and Kallen’s “symphony of civilization” in favor of a Bahá’í-inspired vision of “unity through diversity,” where cross-fertilization is made possible only when cultural identity is preserved and intergroup reciprocity encouraged. Yet Locke conceded that ultimately the races would, in the distant future, disappear. Beyond Kallen’s own formulation of cultural pluralism, Christopher Buck showed how Locke enfolds cultural pluralism into a multidimensional theory of democracy. To be fair, the melting pot concept continued (and continues) to have its proponents, such as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., who listed the melting pot as among America’s ten great contributions to civilization. Rather than one or the other, perhaps both or neither of the concepts will embody the hope and enthusiasm they once did.
Beyond the Melting Pot The idea of the melting pot held sway among many U.S. sociologists until the 1950s and 1960s. The publication of Beyond the Melting Pot in 1963 was a watershed event that overturned the metaphor by sheer force of sociological analysis. While the rhetoric of the melting pot was still in play as a patriotic ideal, social reality in the United States was a thing apart. Chronicling the ethnic and religious cleavages of New York City at midcentury, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan’s sociology remains a classic work, although subsequent waves of immigration have altered New York’s racial, ethnic, and religious landscape so considerably that the dream of cultural pluralism was as unlikely as any hope of a melting pot. Assimilation operated on immigrant groups in different ways to change them but still make them identifiable. This finding suggests that the reality of U.S. society is in equipoise between the ideals of the melting pot and cultural pluralism and that the future course of U.S. civilization may be difficult to chart
Melting Pot
with precision. An overarching American ideology may be one thing, but a sociological theory— especially one with explanatory power and predictive potential—remains elusive. The melting pot, and its rival, cultural pluralism, are by no means the only theories of Americanization— or of minority socialization in the North American context generally. Added to Zangwill’s assimilationist paradigm and to Kallen’s and Locke’s pluralist models are the sovereigntist examples of Quèbec and Nunavut (“our land,” in the Inuktitut language). Generally, an overarching policy of multiculturalism, officially adopted in 1971, both informs and structures Canada (with English and French as its two official languages). Canada offers its official brand of multiculturalism expressed in the trope of the cultural mosaic— which may be thought of as a kind of “tossed salad” of ethnic, racial, and religious minorities. Somewhat anachronistically, perhaps, Canadians contrast their social model of the mosaic with the American ideal of the melting pot. While this alternative Canadian paradigm has its appeal, its critics can still show the dominance of the founding British and French cultures and argue that successive Québécois referenda have come dangerously close to sundering Canada as a nation. The huge Aboriginal Canadian land claim settlement that led to the redrawing of the map of Canada in the formation of the territory of Nunavut in 1999 illustrates Kallen’s model in the extreme. Furthermore, too great an emphasis on multiculturalism (which is the modern progeny of Kallen’s and Locke’s cultural pluralisms) can lead to hyphenated identities and ultimately to “ethnic ghettoization.” To make matters worse, that not-so-well-hidden prejudice known as “polite racism” continues to vitiate Canada’s multicultural ideals such that its model—just like Canada’s nationalized health care system—affords neither an easier nor a readier solution for North Americans south of the forty-eighth parallel. One of the most thought-provoking recent reflections is Werner Sollors’s chapter on “Melting Pots” in his book, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture; he argues that ethnicity is nothing more than a key metaphor, a typological rhetoric that serves as social symbolism for defining a group (rather than a nation). This is somewhat akin to Alain Locke’s theory of race as a social construct, arguing that “race” is far more socially than biologically determined and that race consciousness, like individual
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personality, is always in flux in an ongoing process of “transvaluation.” Among contemporary advocates, Michael Barone, senior writer at U.S. News & World Report, expresses renewed support for the old social paradigm in The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again. (Space does not permit a survey of other contemporary examples.) Social metaphors, such as the melting pot, are condensed paradigms: constellations of competing American values collapsed into symbolic slogans. All of these—from Walt Whitman’s “orbicular” vision of American democracy, to Zangwill’s “melting-pot,” to Kallen’s “symphony of civilization,” to Locke’s “unity through diversity” (and “the New Negro”), to the Canadian “mosaic,” and to everything in between—shows how identity politics is not only highly topical, but intrinsically tropic. In the fusioning crucible of Zangwill’s melting pot, a more unifying vision of America may someday emerge. Christopher George Buck See also African Americans; Assimilation; Canada, First Nations; Civil Religion; Cosmopolitanism; Cultural Relativism; Culture of Poverty; Desi; Identity Politics; Internalized Racism; Jewish Americans; Jim Crow; Marginalization; Minority/Majority; Multicultural Social Movements; Nativism; Pluralism; Race; Race, Social Construction of
Further Readings
Barone, Michael. 2006. The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again. Washington, DC: Regnery. Buck, Christopher. 2005. Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy. Los Angeles, CA: Kalimát Press. Crèvecoeur, J. Hector St. John de. [1782] 1999. Letters from an American Farmer, edited by S. Manning. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Glazer, Nathan and Daniel Moynihan. 1970. Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gleason, Philip. 1964. “The Melting Pot: Symbol of Fusion or Confusion?” American Quarterly 16(1):20–46. Kallen, Horace M. 1915. “Democracy versus the Melting Pot.” Nation 100, February, pp. 18–25. Reprinted 1996, pp. 67–92 in Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader, edited by Werner Sollors. New York: New York University Press. Kallen, Horace M. 1924. Culture and Democracy in the United States: Studies in the Group Psychology of the American People. New York: Boni & Liveright. Reprinted 1977, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
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Kraus, Joe. 1999. “How The Melting Pot Stirred America: The Reception of Zangwill’s Play and Theater’s Role in the American Assimilation Experience.” MELUS 24(3):3–19. Sollors, Werner. 1980. “A Defense of the Melting Pot.” Pp. 181–214 in The American Identity: Fusion and Fragmentation, edited by R. Kroes. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amerika Instituut. Sollors, Werner. 1986. “A Critique of Pure Pluralism.” Pp. 250–279 in Reconstructing American Literary History, edited by S. Bercovitch. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sollors, Werner. 1986. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Szuberla, Guy. 1995. “Zangwill’s The Melting-Pot Plays Chicago.” MELUS 20(3):3–20. Zangwill, Israel. 1909. The Melting-Pot Drama in Four Acts. New York: Macmillan. Reprinted 2005, Whitefish, MT: Kessinger.
MENNONITES Mennonites, members of a Protestant group that originated in the 16th-century Anabaptist movement in Europe, migrated to North America in several waves that began in 1683 and continued into the mid-20th century. Differences in ethnicity, history, and convictions have produced some thirty different Mennonite groups in the United States. Some Mennonites have a Swiss-German lineage, while others come from Dutch-Russian stock. Sizable numbers of Asian, Latino, and African American members also add color to the ethnic mosaic. Mennonites in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, for example, worship in nearly a dozen languages. The different immigrant groups exude distinctive cultural, historical, and theological flavors. All of these factors create a complicated but fascinating story of ethnicity.
to baptize their babies, raised questions about the mass, scorned the use of images, and criticized the morality of church officials. The Anabaptist refusal to baptize infants, swear oaths of allegiance, or follow the dictates of established tradition incensed political and religious authorities. Leaders of the new movement were promptly arrested, imprisoned, and banned from several cities and regions. Within 4 months of the first rebaptism, the first Anabaptist was killed for sedition, and the “heretics” began to flee for their lives. Meetings were often held secretly and in secluded places to avoid detection. Thousands of Anabaptists were imprisoned, tortured, branded, burned, and drowned. Nevertheless, Anabaptism mushroomed in many areas of Europe. Stories of the harsh persecution can be found in the Martyrs Mirror, a book of some 1,100 pages, which chronicles the bloody carnage. Anabaptism surfaced in the Netherlands about 1530. Menno Simons, a Dutch Catholic priest, had growing sympathies for Anabaptist convictions. He joined the movement in 1536 and soon became a leader and writer with a sizable following. As early as 1545, some followers of Menno were called “Mennists,” and, by 1550, they were the dominant group of Anabaptists in North Germany and Holland. Anabaptists in other areas soon carried the Mennonite name as they migrated to Prussia, Russia, and, eventually, North America. Swiss and South German Mennonites settled in Pennsylvania throughout the 18th century and soon became known as outstanding farmers. They gradually moved westward and southward with the frontier, settling in Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and other states, as well as in Ontario, Canada. Mennonites with Dutch-Russian roots came in later waves of immigration in the 1870s and settled in the Great Plains, the far West, and Canada.
History
Old Order, Transitional, and Assimilated Mennonites
The Mennonite story began in 1525, in Zurich, Switzerland, when a group of young radicals secretly baptized each other. In 16th-century Europe, baptizing an adult was a defiant act of civil disobedience—a capital crime that could lead to execution. The young reformers were soon nicknamed “Anabaptists,” meaning “rebaptizers,” because they had already been baptized as infants in the Catholic Church. They refused
In terms of assimilation into U.S. society, there are three broad types of Mennonites: Old Order (10%), transitional (20%), and assimilated (70%). On the traditional end, the Old Order groups preserve and perpetuate many older Mennonite customs. At the other end of the spectrum are assimilated Mennonites, who have absorbed mainstream values in the United States related to dress, technology, and lifestyle. In the
Mennonites
middle are the conservative groups that are in transition. They drive cars but still wear plain clothing and embrace conservative standards and church practices. After the Civil War, tradition-minded Mennonites began resisting certain innovations that were creeping into the Mennonite Church. Those who clung to traditional ways were eventually identified as Old Order Mennonites. The Old Order movement that emerged between 1872 and 1901 protested the acceptance of Sunday school, evening services, revival meetings, the use of English in worship, the foreign missions movement, higher education, and other aspects of U.S. culture that were beginning to influence Mennonite life. The rural, separatist Old Orders have preserved some of the earlier forms of Mennonite ethnicity and religious practices. Old Order Mennonites can be sorted into two types—those who drive automobiles and those who do not. The two largest Old Order groups are the cardriving Horning Mennonites and the Wenger Mennonites, who use horse-and-buggy transportation. Most of the Old Order groups have Swiss-German roots. The Wenger Mennonites speak the Pennsylvania German dialect, but most other Mennonites, apart from recent Asian and Hispanic immigrants, speak English. The conservative, transitional churches are largely rural, but many of their members no longer farm. Although they dress plainly, ordain lay ministers, and emphasize separation from the world, they have few restrictions on technology for agriculture or business purposes. Homes are equipped with telephones and electricity. Virtually all of the transitional Mennonite groups forbid television, and many have a taboo on the radio and computers. They are less likely to pursue higher education, engage in professional occupations, participate in politics, or advocate for social justice. They embody the historic Mennonite standards of nonresistance (pacifism) and separation from the world, and they will excommunicate members who do not uphold conservative standards. These groups strongly detest divorce as well as the ordination of women—practices that have become acceptable among many assimilated Mennonite groups. The two major assimilated denominational bodies are the Mennonite Brethren (23,000) and the Mennonite Church USA (110,000), which was formed in 2002, when the former Mennonite Church and General Conference Mennonite Church merged into one body. The two ethnic immigrant streams of the 18th-century Swiss-German and Dutch-Russian have
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shaped this denomination. However, with recent immigrants, the current Mennonite Church USA is sprinkled with many strains of ethnicity, race, nationality, and language. Some rural congregations still embody a traditional outlook in religious practice and cultural lifestyle. Other congregations in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, as well as in many suburban areas, are quite cosmopolitan. Some follow informal patterns of worship; others are more formal; and still others have a charismatic flavor. The ethnic mix is growing as well. White persons of German ancestry still dominate the formal church structures, but growing numbers of Latinos, African Americans, Asians, and people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds participate in the church. Recognized bodies within the Mennonite Church USA represent African Americans, Hispanics, Hmong, Lao, Native Americans, and Vietnamese. Members of some of the congregations of the former General Conference Mennonite Church were German-speaking immigrants who had come to the United States and Canada from Poland, Prussia, and Russia in the 1870s. Many of these new immigrants settled in the midwestern and central states, especially in Kansas. Compared with the Mennonite Church prior to the merger in 2002, the General Conference Mennonite Church had a stronger Dutch-Russian flavor, flourished more in the central states, and granted more autonomy to local congregations. The General Conference Church never developed distinctive patterns of plain dress like the Mennonite Church did. In some regions of the country, the General Conference Church assimilated into U.S. culture more quickly than the Mennonite Church did in the first half of the 20th century; but in some communities, General Conference Mennonites spoke German longer. Nevertheless, the Mennonite Church, at least before World War II, was generally more separatist in many regions of the country. The Mennonite Brethren are the other large assimilated group. Some 10,000 Mennonite and Hutterite immigrants came to the United States in the 1870s and 1880s from Prussia and Russia. Russian Mennonite farmers, along with other Russian immigrants, brought a hardy and productive variety of “red” wheat with them to the prairie states. Numerous historical, geographical, cultural, and theological differences hindered the new immigrants from easily fraternizing with the earlier Amish and Mennonite immigrants of Swiss-German stock.
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Some of the Prussian and Russian Mennonites joined the General Conference Mennonite Church, and others formed the Mennonite Brethren Church. Members of this group trace their roots back to renewal movements among Mennonites in Russia in the 1860s. In the 1880s and 1890s, Mennonite Brethren immigrants established congregations in Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. Eventually, the Mennonite Brethren moved westward to California, a stronghold of the denomination today that claims more than a third of their congregations. Many Mennonite Brethren also settled in Canada, and by the end of the 20th century, over half of their membership was residing north of the U.S. border. Cultural, regional, ethnic, and theological differences crisscross the American Mennonite landscape in the early 21st century. With some thirty distinct subgroups, descendants of the followers of Menno Simons can be found singing in Chinese, English, Pennsylvania German, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Some drive horse-drawn carriages on back roads, while others drive their Corollas and BMWs on metropolitan freeways. Some wear plain dress, and others sport designer clothing. Some manufacture computer software, and others prohibit the use of it. Ethnic identity is most crystallized among the Old Orders and transitional groups, whose distinctive clothing sets them apart from mainstream culture. Assimilated Mennonites, on the other hand, have few external symbols of ethnicity, but values such as pacifism, community, and international service shape their sense of Mennonite identity. Donald B. Kraybill See also Amish; Belize; German Americans; Hutterites; Schmiedeleut
Further Readings
Kraybill, Donald B. and C. Nelson Hostetter. 2001. Anabaptist World USA. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press. Kraybill, Donald B. and James P. Hurd. 2006. Horse and Buggy Mennonites: Hoofbeats of Humility in a Postmodern World. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. The Mennonite Encyclopedia: A Comprehensive Reference Work on the Anabaptist-Mennonite Movement. 1955–1990. Scottdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House/Herald Press. The Mennonite Experience in America, 4 vols. 1985–1996. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press.
Nolt, Steven and Harry Loewen. 1996. Through Fire and Water: An Overview of Mennonite History. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press. Scott, Stephen E. 1996. An Introduction to Old Order and Conservative Mennonite Groups. Intercourse, PA: Good Books.
Web Sites
Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online: http://www.gameo.org
MENOMINEE The Menominee Tribe are a small, federally recognized tribe of Native Americans who still reside in their ancestral homeland in northern Wisconsin. The Menominee are from the Algonquian linguistic group and are present-day Wisconsin’s oldest continuous inhabitants, with a 10,000-year history of living in the Great Lakes and Green Bay area. Once reduced to only 2,221 in 1937 and 3,700 in 1957, the current total tribal enrollment is 7,200 people, with approximately half (3,400) living on the reservation and the rest living in other locations, including cities and suburbs. The ancestral land base of the Menominee comprised 9.5 million acres (including areas of present-day Minnesota, Illinois, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula) and was reduced to the reservation of 235,000 acres in the Treaty of 1854. The reservation is heavily forested (223,500 acres), with the largest single tract of virgin timberland in Wisconsin. The Menominee are a selfgoverning, sovereign nation and are internationally renowned for their forestry and natural resource management. The struggle of most racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States has been to gain a place in the so-called melting pot of American society. For the Menominee and other indigenous people, however, the struggle has been, and continues to be, to preserve their ancestral lands, natural resources, political sovereignty, and distinct culture. Throughout their long history, the Menominee have proven themselves to be highly resilient and adaptive to many threats, including disease, warfare, colonization, and radical cultural change.
History and European Contact The Menominee (also spelled Menomini) called themselves Mamaceqtwa (“The People”) and were given the
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name Menominee (meaning “wild-rice gatherers”) by neighboring tribes. The French explorers and missionaries called them Folles Avoines, or “wild-oats people.” The Menominee gathered wild rice as a staple of their diet, which also consisted of fish, game, and cultivated beans, corn, and squash. The oral history and creation story of the tribe originates at the mouth of the presentday Menominee River, and unlike other tribes, the Menominee have no migration story. They are part of the widely diverse Woodland cultural grouping (beginning in 1,000 BC), and although some archaeologists have asserted that they may be descendants of the Mississippian mound-building cultures on account of the abundance of mounds in the area, this conflicts with the tribal history. Tribal history mentions the presence of a separate mound-building people in the area who either migrated elsewhere or were absorbed into the Menominee or other local tribes. The tribe was organized into various bands consisting of the five clans: Eagle, Bear, Moose, Crane, and Wolf. The Menominee’s first European contact was with French explorer Jean Nicolet (1634). During the period of early European contact and colonization, the area was dominated by the French (1630–1760), and, in 1671, the French annexed the Great Lakes region, and all tribes were declared French subjects. The Menominee became very successful in the fur trade; however, contact with French explorers, traders, and missionaries greatly reduced the tribe’s population through epidemics of smallpox, cholera, and measles. Their success in the fur trade changed the economic focus of the tribe, and the frequent raids by the Iroquois (1600–1800) created a further reliance on trade with Europeans for weapons and ammunition. Unlike other Great Lakes tribes of similar size who disappeared, the Menominee also survived additional threats from large and powerful tribes, such as the Fox Sauk, the Ojibwas, and the Huron. As colonization progressed, the tribe faced new threats to its existence from the newly formed United States.
Missionaries and Religion One of the threats to Menominee culture has been the freedom to practice and preserve the traditional tribal religion. Like all indigenous people, the Menominee had their own ancient spiritual practices and beliefs at the time of European contact. During the early 1600s, the Jesuits entered Menominee territory along with other tribes from the East. The Jesuits were unsuccessful and left the region by the 1680s. The Franciscans, however, were much more successful at converting the
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Menominee to Christianity. They entered the region in 1831, and, by 1855, it is estimated that over half of the population was Roman Catholic. In 1883, the U.S. government passed the Major Indian Crimes Act that made the practice of traditional religions a federal offense. This forced the remaining Menominee practicing the traditional religion to go underground. The Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 returned religious freedom to Native people but was not enforced until 1978. Many traditional beliefs and practices have survived into contemporary times. Understandably, those who practice or have knowledge of traditional spiritual practices (such as the Big Drum Society) are secretive and protective of these traditions. On the reservation today, there are not only a large number of Roman Catholics but also Presbyterians and members of the Assemblies of God and the Native American Church.
Threats to the Language The Menominee language is a melodic Algonquian language. It is, however, an endangered language. Despite renewed interest and numerous efforts to teach and preserve it, it is estimated that there are only 39 fluent speakers remaining. For the Menominee and other Native people, language is a central element of tribal identity and cultural survival. The key components in the preservation of culture and language are economic success, a strong tribal government, and control over the educational system. A prosperous tribe has the resources for preserving language and culture. A strong tribal government ensures control over these resources and control over the educational system that allows for the early transmission of language and cultural values. Despite threats to all of these areas, the Menominee’s success in attaining all three of these leaves room for optimism.
Economic Success: A Double-Edged Sword Just as they became successful in the fur trade, the Menominee later achieved success through the timber industry. In the state of Wisconsin during the 1800s, the so-called pine barons had thoroughly exploited the timber outside of the reservation boundaries. Utilizing their natural resources allowed the Menominee to achieve a great deal of economic success, and they opened their own lumber mill in 1872—only 18 years
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after the establishment of the reservation. Forestry and the timber industry became the central component of the Menominee tribe, and it remains so today. The logging museum on the reservation hosts the largest collection of logging artifacts in the world. Despite their ability to achieve early economic independence and success through their pioneering work at sustainable forest management, the Menominee faced numerous continued threats through various U.S. policies and legislation. It was the strength of various leaders that allowed the Menominee to survive. For example, the General Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887 posed a serious threat to the Menominee; however, they refused to participate. Because of this, they were able to retain their reservation lands for at least another three generations. Attempts by the U.S. government to relocate the tribe to Minnesota were successfully staved off by Chief Oshkosh. The “Termination Policy,” in which the U.S. government sought to end its obligations to and protection of sovereign Native nations, proved to be catastrophic for the Menominee. The U.S. government used the Menominee’s success with building an economic base and infrastructure (such as the first tribally owned and operated clinic, law enforcement, judicial, and educational systems) to justify termination. In 1954, the Menominee Termination Act was signed into law by President Eisenhower, which started a downward economic spiral and turned one of the most successful Native nations into one of the most impoverished. In addition, the tribe lost thousands of acres of its reservation. The Menominee fought back against termination in the 1960s and early 1970s, spurred on by the other civil rights movements, such as the American Indian Movement (AIM). Leaders and activists such as Ada Deer formed DRUMS (Determination of Rights for Menominee Shareholders) to draw national attention and media coverage to the plight of the Menominee. In 1971, the Menominee March for Justice, from Keshena to Madison, drew further attention to the problems created by termination. Finally, in 1973, President Nixon signed the Menominee Restoration Act, ending the termination era and reestablishing the original reservation boundaries. The Menominee Nation today is in many ways a model for other Native nations. They have a strong tribal government consisting of a tribally elected, nine-member legislative branch and a judicial branch consisting of a lower and a supreme court. In addition to the lumber industry (now Menominee Tribal
Enterprises), there is a tribally owned and operated casino and tourism bureau. The tribal clinic, opened in 1977, is the first tribally owned and operated health care facility. The tribe runs its own schools, and in 1987 founded the College of the Menominee Nation, offering higher education to both tribal members and students from surrounding communities off the reservation. The tribe has demonstrated that it can not only survive but, in many ways, thrive. Arieahn Matamonasa-Bennett See Appendix A See also American Indian Movement; Assimilation; Blood Quantum; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Dawes Act of 1887; Native Americans; Reservation System; Trail of Broken Treaties
Further Readings
Davis, Thomas. 2000. Sustaining the Forest, the People, and the Spirit. New York: State University of New York Press. Keesing, Felix M. 1987. The Menomini Indians of Wisconsin: A Study of Three Centuries of Cultural Contact and Change. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Spindler, George and Louise Spindler. 1984. Dreamers with Power: The Menominee. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
Web Sites
Case Study: Menominee Tribal Enterprises: http://www.menominee.edu/sdi/csstdy.htm Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin: http://www.menominee-nsn.gov Menominee Tribal Clinic: http://www.mtclinic.net/history.htm
MEXICAN AMERICAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND (MALDEF) The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, also known by its acronym, MALDEF, is a nonprofit organization that has been providing Latinos with legal assistance and advocacy since its inception in 1968. In addition to litigation, MALDEF empowers Latinos through educational outreach programs that build skills and train individuals to participate in their communities as leaders and advocates. Modeled after the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense Fund
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF)
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(NAACPLDF), MALDEF was established in 1968, in San Antonio, Texas. Under the tutelage of Jack Greenberg, director of the NAACPLDF, Pete Tijerina, a civil rights attorney and the first executive director of MALDEF, launched the organization with a $2.2 million grant from the Ford Foundation. The grant was secured on the conditions that the money would be spent in five states (Arizona, Texas, California, New Mexico, and Colorado) over 5 years to conduct civil rights legal work for Mexican Americans and that $250,000 would be distributed through scholarships for Chicano students pursuing an education in law and legal Immigration reform demonstration. On May 1, 2007, in Detroit, Michigan, studies. thousands marched for immigration reform and to stop deportations in southwest The organization is headquartered Detroit, a heavily Hispanic neighborhood. in Los Angeles and maintains regional Source: © Jim West/The Image Works. offices in Atlanta, San Antonio, Chicago, Sacramento, and Washington, program, which provides parents with information and D.C., and a program office in Houston. MALDEF is skills to advocate for their children to receive a quality governed by a board of thirty-five directors, made up of education. This 16-week training program teaches parleaders from throughout the public and private sectors, ents about curriculum, partnerships, parent rights and government, and law firms. The focus of MALDEF’s responsibilities, and leadership skills. Another major mission is to safeguard the civil rights of Latinos program in this department, the Leadership Development through the fostering of sound public policy, programs, Program, provides midcareer professionals with leaderand laws and to expand the opportunities for Latinos to ship skills and knowledge, preparing them to take leadparticipate as positive contributors to society. This misership roles on boards and commissions that set policy sion is accomplished by implementing activities that at the local, state, and national levels. The education are grounded in litigation and legal assistance or traindepartment also instructs the Latino community on the ing and leadership development. MALDEF efforts are electoral and legislative processes, voter rights, and concentrated in six areas, including employment, educivil rights issues, such as redistricting and census cation, political access, public resource equity issues, adjustments. immigration, and language. In the Fair Share and Equal Access Department, MALDEF’s Employment Economic Development the primary work occurs in the Public Resource Department houses the Employment and Equal Equity Program, ensuring that Latinos are receiving Opportunity Program, which addresses workplace disan equitable share of public resources. Another aspect crimination, cases involving unfair and inhumane labor of equitable distribution pertains to access, so practices, and the need to protect employee rights. Many MALDEF works to eliminate language barriers and of the court cases that have passed through this departprotect the rights of individuals who have a limited ment pertain to equal opportunity issues, hiring pracproficiency in the English language. tices, discriminatory practices, and the right to work. MALDEF’s work in the area of immigration has Education is a large part of the mission for grown as immigrant communities continue to expand MALDEF, and one of the busiest departments is the and spread across the nation. In addition to addressing Community Education and Leadership Development issues of denied education, fair housing, and language (CELD) department, where programs are promoted to access, MALDEF’s Immigrant’s Rights Program has keep community members informed so they can be produced materials to assist immigrants in adjusting strong, knowledgeable advocates. One key program in to their new homeland and devotes time to monitoring this department is the Parent School Partnership (PSP)
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proposed legislation on the federal and state levels and attending hearings that could impact immigrants. From the time MALDEF opened its doors for business in 1968, the organization has been inundated with cases dealing with injustices like school segregation, racial discrimination, and employment abuses. Today, the cases continue to pour in, and many of the concerns remain the same, although additional issues have been added, such as police brutality, immigration, and voting rights abuses. Over the years, MALDEF has been involved with many precedent-setting cases. Some examples of the types of cases MALDEF fights on behalf of the Latino community include Ramirez v. Desert Community College District, in which the college refused to promote Ramirez to supervisor because he did not have a high school diploma, yet they expected him to participate in the interviewing of candidates and to train the new supervisor. MALDEF challenged these actions as discriminatory. In Velez v. Lindow, a landlord’s policy of not renting to monolingual Spanish-speaking tenants was challenged under the umbrella of unfair housing practices. MALDEF argued that Latinos are disproportionately affected when federal housing laws are violated. In Guevara v. City of Norcross, Georgia, a minister faced criminal charges when he posted signs inviting the community to religious services. The signs were in Spanish and deemed in violation of a city ordinance that restricts sign display to English. MALDEF argued that the city ordinance violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and the criminal charges were dismissed. In Rodriguez v. Malloy, MALDEF challenged the right of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to invade a person’s home without a warrant. The work MALDEF does to protect the basic rights of Latinos serves to protect everyone, because when a community suffers from or allows unjust treatment such as discriminatory practices, voting rights violations, and direct violations of constitutional rights to occur, it is not an individual violation, but a violation against society. MALDEF provides an invaluable and much-needed service to the Latino community through their legal and advocacy work, collaborations with state, local, and federal agencies, and contributing to the education of the community. Alma Alvarez-Smith See also Hispanics; Mexican Americans; Minority Rights; Proposition 187; School Desegregation; Voting Rights
Further Readings
Alvarez-Smith, Alma. 2004. “MALDEF.” Pp. 508–509 in Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture, edited by C. C. Candelaria, A. J. Aldama, and P. J. Garcia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Magaña, Lisa. 2005. Mexican Americans and the Politics of Diversity. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Web Sites
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund: http://www.maldef.org
MEXICAN AMERICANS Mexican Americans are U.S.-born citizens of Mexican descent and represent the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States. An overview of key historical events in this group’s history and contemporary social and cultural characteristics illustrates the important role that this group has played in American history. Mexican Americans use a variety of ethnic selfidentification terms, including Hispanic, Hispano, Mexican, Mexicano, Latino, and Chicano. These vary with history, geographical region, and age; many Mexican Americans use all or some of these terms interchangeably. The U.S. Census Bureau uses Hispanic as an umbrella term that includes Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and other groups from Latin and South America. In 2005, there were approximately 40,425,000 Hispanics in the United States representing 14% of the total population. Mexican Americans numbered approximately 26,630,000 and made up 65% of the total Hispanic population.
Historical Overview The historical legacy of Mexican Americans begins with the history of the Spanish conquest of the New World. With colonization, the Spanish intermixed with the native population and produced a Mestizaje, the blending of races, cultures, and society between Spaniards and the indigenous groups of the Western Hemisphere. Like other parts of Spanish America, Mexico established its independence from Spain in 1825 with a national territory that reached into what is now the American Southwest. The U.S. doctrine of
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manifest destiny culminated in the Mexican American War of 1846–1848. With Mexico’s defeat, the United States annexed the Southwest and, in so doing, gained nearly 80,000 Mexican Americans. Their descendants and future waves of Mexican immigrants, particularly during the Mexican Revolution of 1910, changed the social fabric of American society. Throughout the 20th century, the Mexican American population has confronted serious obstacles that have jeopardized their rights as U.S. citizens. During the Great Depression, the U.S. government engaged in widespread deportation of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans who were mistaken for foreign-born Mexicans. The belief that Mexicans were taking jobs away from U.S. citizens combined with hostile and xenophobic public sentiments against Mexican Americans. The U.S. government implemented the policy of repatriation of almost a half million of the estimated 3 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans living in the United States between 1929 and 1939. For Mexican Americans, as native-born citizens, this policy represented a violation of their civil rights. Despite the mass deportations, Mexican Americans engaged in several important strikes in the Southwest. The San Joaquin, California, cotton strike of 1933 (considered a precursor to the workers’ strike against the grape industry led by labor activist Cesar Chavez in the early 1960s) began as a response to low wages and poor working and living conditions. Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans joined together and walked off their work in the cotton fields. A series of violent confrontations involving the owners and the police eventually led to mediation and the end of the strike, but tensions between cotton workers, the owners, and the police continued for years. In San Antonio, Texas, pecan shellers, mostly women, went on strike in 1938 to protest their low wages and the conditions on the shelling assembly lines. With the help of organizers such as Emma Tenayuca, approximately 12,000 workers joined together in the Texas Pecan Shelling Workers Union. The strike broke out in violence and resulted in the arrest of 6,000 union members. The settlement of the strike brought few benefits for the workers, who were gradually displaced with the mechanization of the industry. Labor activism continues to the present date. With the entrance of the United States into World War II, the U.S. government encouraged Mexican immigration to the United States to fill labor shortages produced by the war. The Bracero Program (brazo is
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Spanish for “arm”) represented an agreement between the United States and Mexico to guarantee a steady supply of workers. An estimated quarter of a million braceros worked in the agricultural fields and war industries. Although the Bracero Program stipulated that the workers would return to Mexico at the conclusion of the war, large numbers of Mexican immigrants stayed in the United States, creating new Mexican communities throughout the Southwest and also in the Midwest, where they had worked on building railroads. Their U.S.-born children, the second generation, increased the Mexican American population, with subsequent generations making this the largest Hispanic group in the United States. Despite the end of the Bracero Program, the rate of Mexican immigration, both documented and undocumented, continues to increase. Mexican immigration remains a national issue because the constant flow of Mexican immigration has always contributed to population increases among this ethnic group. World War II produced major changes within Mexican American communities. Due to the growth of the U.S.-born population of Mexicans living in the United States, World War II, unlike World War I, led to the participation of approximately 300,000 Mexican Americans in the armed forces. Their service exposed them to life in different parts of the country and the world. Mexican Americans became the most decorated ethnic group. They returned to their communities with new experiences and outlooks. Having fought in a war to end the horrors of genocide, Mexican American veterans, more so than Mexican immigrants, were appalled when they experienced prejudice and discrimination. In some cities, ordinances and informal practices barred Mexican Americans from swimming pools, eating establishments, theaters, and public bathrooms. The case of Felix Longoria represented one of the most tragic examples of such discrimination. Longoria was a Mexican American soldier who was killed in the Pacific, and when his body was returned to Texas for burial, his widow could not find a chapel that would hold services for him, because he was Mexican. Ultimately, U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas intervened and had Longoria buried in Arlington National Cemetery. As a response to such episodes of discrimination, Mexican Americans, many of whom had reached middle-class status due to the G.I. Bill that provided veterans with low-interest loans for homes and college educations, started numerous civic organizations.
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The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), founded in Texas in 1929, rose to prominence in the post–World War II period through its attempts to gain full citizenship rights for Mexican Americans. LULAC spearheaded the fight to end school segregation and other forms of discrimination in the legal system, business, and politics. The Mexican American Political Association (MAPA) was founded in California in 1959 as a nonpartisan lobby group whose major goal was to pressure politicians to address problems facing their communities. MAPA also sought to increase the number of Mexican American elected officials. Congressman Edward R. Roybal, from California’s 25th District, and Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez, from Texas’s 20th District, emerged as key Mexican American national political figures. The climate of social protest of the1960s produced changes among Mexican Americans, particularly among the youth. Referring to their protest movement as “El Moviemiento,” Mexican American students adopted the ethnic self-identification term Chicano or Chicana, a controversial label that had been used as early as the late 19th century by Anglos as a derogatory name for Mexicans and Mexican Americans. The term Chicano became a symbol of nationalism and ethnic pride for Chicano students who mobilized to fight against all forms of discrimination, particularly educational inequity. Chicano student groups emerged throughout the United States and organized marches, boycotts, and conferences. Their movement also joined the anti–Vietnam War protest movement that culminated in the National Chicano Anti-war Moratorium held in East Los Angeles on August 29, 1970, with over 20,000 demonstrators. The noted Chicano international journalist Ruben Salazar was killed by the police under suspicious circumstances and became an icon of the Chicano movement’s fight against social injustice. César Chávez’s farmworker movement developed during this time and included lettuce and grape strikes and boycotts. The United Farm Workers Union, started in 1962 in Delano, California, brought the plight of the farmworkers, largely Mexican Americans, to the national and international scene. The union won many labor strikes, and their efforts resulted in the passage of laws to protect farmworkers. A Chicano renaissance in the arts, literature, drama, and music emerged with strongly nationalistic overtones. A Chicana feminist movement developed
within the Chicano movement to address the issue of sexism and homophobia within the ranks of Chicano activists whose political agendas ignored the specific injustices experienced by Chicanas within the movement’s organizations and the larger U.S. society. Chicanas formed both parallel and separatist organizations to advance their feminist agendas, which were frequently met with hostility. Mexican Americans in Texas formed a political party called La Raza Unida Party (LRUP) (the United People Party) in 1970 to harness Mexican American voters into an independent third party. Their greatest electoral victory came in Crystal City, Texas, when Mexican American LRUP candidates won every seat on the city council; for the first time, Mexican Americans to controlled an entire city government. LRUP gained widespread support throughout the Southwest, achieving various degrees of success, but, by the late 1970s, it declined with the waning of protest politics. With the decline of the social protest movements of the 1960s and early 1970s, Mexican Americans turned to other political venues. Organizations such as the Southwest Voter Registration Office worked within Mexican American communities to register voters in an attempt to harness the group into an ethnic voting bloc.
Mexican American Politicians During the 1980s, Mexican American politicians, both Democrat and Republican, turned to mainstream politics and won major political offices. Democrats and Republicans now make regular efforts to campaign in cities with large Mexican American populations. The political careers of Henry Cisneros and Gloria Molina serve as examples of Mexican Americans who have succeeded in making inroads into U.S. politics. Henry Cisneros (1947– ) became one of the two Mexican Americans to be elected mayor of a major city in the United States. He was mayor of San Antonio, Texas, in 1981, and served until 1989, when he completed his fourth term. Cisneros also became the first Hispanic and Mexican American to be appointed as a cabinet member. He served as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton. Prior to his election as mayor, Cisneros had achieved a distinguished record in politics. He gained political experience working with the Washington, D.C., National League of Cities, and as a White House Fellow. In 1974, he was elected to San
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Antonio’s city council and served two terms. Then, as mayor, Cisneros aimed to develop the city into a major metropolis by attracting tourism and high-tech businesses and other businesses. He worked to increase the political clout of Mexican Americans in San Antonio. Owing to his son’s serious illness, he did not run for a fifth term and started his own business. As U.S. secretary of housing and urban development under President Bill Clinton, Cisneros addressed issues such as racial segregation in housing and supported reform measures of federal housing policies. In 1999, Cisneros became a controversial political figure when, during the regular investigation conducted for all cabinet appointees, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for lying to the FBI about his payments to a former mistress. (Clinton pardoned Cisneros in 2001.) Univision Communications, the largest Spanishlanguage broadcasting company, named him president, and he continues to work with several nonprofit groups, particularly those that deal specifically with Mexican American communities. Gloria Molina (1948– ), a native of Los Angeles, made Mexican American history in 1991 when she was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, becoming the first Mexican American and woman to be elected to this position. This victory represented one of the most significant political developments for Mexican Americans. Molina started her political activism as a Chicano student activist during her undergraduate years at East Los Angeles City College and later worked as a volunteer in Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign. After completing college, Molina became active in various Mexican American community organizations and dedicated herself to such community issues as health care, education, and housing. She founded and was elected the first president of the Comisión Femenil de Los Angeles (Women’s Council of Los Angeles), an organization that developed social services programs for Mexican American women. Molina’s early political involvement in Los Angeles involved the establishment of Hispanic American Democrats and a chapter of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO). She also worked on the political campaigns of several California politicians, and, in 1976, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to a position in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. In 1982, Molina won in an election for the California Assembly. Time magazine named Gloria Molina one of the Democratic Party’s
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“Ten Rising Stars” in 1996. She served as one of the four vice-chairs of the Democratic National Committee. In 2006, Hispanic Business magazine named Molina as Hispanic Businesswoman of the Year, and, in 1992, she received the prestigious Aztec Eagle Award from the Mexican government, the highest honor given to a foreigner.
Demographic Overview An overview of some of the major demographics identifies several issues facing Mexican Americans. They have always been the largest group within the total Hispanic population and continue to live primarily in the Southwest. Among Hispanic groups, Mexicans have the lowest percentage of persons with at least a high school diploma and of persons who have attained at least a bachelor’s degree. The percentage of Mexican Americans without a high school diploma is alarming, with rates averaging close to 45%, or almost three times that of the national figure. Mexican Americans rank fourth among seven of all Hispanic groups in family income. Their poverty rates have remained steady over the last 20 years; almost 25% fall below the poverty level, a rate twice that of the total population. As with other groups, femaleheaded households with children have the highest poverty levels. Women are clustered in service and sales occupations, while men are concentrated in construction and transportation. Although the number of middle-class Mexican Americans is growing, the general population continues to be slow in improving its socioeconomic status. The impact of Mexican immigration, both documented and undocumented, on U.S.-born Mexicans continues to be a major social and public policy issue. The effect of immigration on occupations and income is a subject of debate and ongoing research, with some studies stressing a positive impact on the native-born population and others emphasizing the negative, although most studies identify both positive and negative effects.
Artistic Contributions Mexican Americans have contributed to the wealth of U.S. artistic diversity that has been described as part of the “Latinization” in the nation’s music, art, theater, literature, and other forms of artistic expression. Although these artists may focus on universal themes, themes rooted in Mexican culture, such as the group’s
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indigenous cultural heritage, permeate their works. Their cultural expressions have been greatly affected by their experiences as a historically marginalized group. Novelists such as Tomas Rivera and Francisco Jimenez draw on their family experiences as farmworkers. Sandra Cisneros documents her urban life in a working-class, second-generation family. The paintings of Yolanda Lopez and Rupert Garcia document the political issues their communities have faced, particularly during the Chicano movement. The popular singer Selena, whose life was cut short when she was killed by a troubled associate, contributed to the development of Tejano music, a male-dominated genre. Many more Mexican American artists are shaping U.S. popular culture, and a younger generation is emerging.
their own cultural distinctiveness through time, even if they are physically indistiguishable from other mestizos or Indigenous Peoples. While the national identity has been the object of countless debates and reflections since the independence of Mexico, today, it is of interest to rethink and redefine the idea of the mestizo nation from a pluricultural perspective that includes all the different cultures that make up the society.
Canada
United States
Alma M. Garcia See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Bracero Program; Colonias; Hispanics; Latina/o Studies; Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF); Mexico; Pachucos/Pachucas; Samora, Julian; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848); “Wetbacks”
Gulf of Mexico Mexico Cuba
Belize
Jamaica
Guatemala Honduras
Further Readings
Garcia, Alma M. 2004. Narratives of Mexican American Women: Emergent Identities of the Second Generation. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Meier, Matt and Margo Gutierrez. 2003. The Mexican American Experience: An Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Meier, Matt and Feliciano Rivera. 1981. Dictionary of Mexican American History. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
MEXICO Mexico, the country that lies just to the south of the United States, had an estimated population of 106.5 million people in 2007. In Mexico, there has been a tendency to define and study Indigenous Peoples in terms of ethnicity, Blacks in terms of race and racism, and mestizos (the mixed population) as embodying the national identity. In the last 2 decades, however, there has been a move toward understanding how the category of Indian became important in the construction of discourses of race and how this group is fundamentally part of the nation. Conversely, there is an interest in looking at how Blacks have been able to reproduce
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Nicaragua Costa Rica
Panama
Colombia
Ecuador
“Indians” in the 16th Century As the Spanish conquerors began to explore and settle in what was then called “New Spain” during the 16th century, many of the Indigenous Peoples they encountered fell under their influence and power. The main objective of the conquerors was to encroach upon the lands, exploit labor, and gain tribute, as prescribed in the Crown encomiendas, or trusteeship, they had been granted over the Indigenous Peoples. In return for this right, the encomenderos were required to indoctrinate and protect the Indigenous Peoples, while also maintaining military control on behalf of the Crown. This system facilitated the enslavement of Indigenous Peoples at the same time that it also fostered the demise of the population. In the first decades after the conquest, the indigenous population decreased significantly due to genocide, diseases and epidemics, forced labor and abuse, and famines. This
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prompted the Crown to abolish the encomienda and replace it with the repartimiento system, by which the conquerors could organize and use for a period of time the labor of Indigenous Peoples in agriculture, mining, construction, public works, and shipbuilding. The Spanish conquerors moved and concentrated Indigenous Peoples in reducciones de indios, that is, Indian reductions or towns, to facilitate their control, exploitation, and evangelization. The ownership system in these reductions was communal, and the land and resources could not be transferred to others. While the idea of collective ownership of the land was an integral part of indigenous society before the conquest, the Indian community that developed from this system became heavily constrained by legislation, a situation that has remained, albeit with different conditions, until today. The “Indian” identity, thus, became an administrative category under which the vast cultural diversity that existed among Indigenous Peoples was reduced and subsumed. However, this administrative category gave Indians an institutionalized position that Blacks did not have. Nevertheless, the Indian communities, especially their lands, have been the object of continuous attacks throughout Mexico’s history. In 1542, the slavery of Indigenous Peoples was outlawed in the Spanish colonies, but their exploitation and abuse did not diminish. The mistreatment and population demise of Indigenous Peoples became an object of controversy between Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in the Valladolid Debate (1550–1551). Las Casas argued that Indians were free humans and that Africans should replace their labor; Sepúlveda, instead, claimed that Indians were natural slaves and their conquest a “just war.” Although many other missionaries concerned with the mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples were able to convince the Crown to establish special protections for them, in fact, their actions also helped consolidate the status of Indigenous Peoples as minors incapable of self-governance. This status has had everlasting effects and changed very little with the independence of Mexico or after the Mexican Revolution. The Spaniards brought Africans, called Blacks, as slaves to New Spain beginning with the conquest. They used their free labor in mining, agriculture, and domestic service. As the indigenous population declined, Africans replaced them. However, as the Black population grew because of new arrivals and intermarriage, some slaves were able to mount rebellions
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and escape. The rebellious slaves were called cimarrones. They were able to form communities with other slaves who had escaped the harsh conditions in plantations and mines and also with freed slaves. These communities were called palenques. The first free African community in the Americas was founded in the Atlantic coastal region in the 1570s, but it was not recognized as such until 1630.
Race and Ethnicity in the Colonial Period During the colonial period, dual images of the Indians and Africans coexisted. The Africans were considered both infidels and Christians, and the Indians were seen as both pagan savages and innocent native beings. This ambivalence justified the status of both groups, but it also influenced social relations and interactions with the Spaniards. Africans were “justly” enslaved because they were “infidel,” that is, not Christian, but the enslavement was a temporary condition, and they could potentially become free. The Indians had to be reformed and protected, but exploited as well. While the authorities tried to keep these three different groups separate as distinct social strata, their social interaction and mixing was very significant from the beginning of the colonial period. Indigenous Peoples moved into urban areas, whereas Spaniards and the criollos (Spaniards born in America) settled in rural areas, usually by usurping land. While these last two groups were able to consolidate their power and authority outside of the cities, the Indigenous Peoples continued to be dependent laborers. Furthermore, the move to the cities and the latifundios (great landholdings) weakened their ties with the Indian community, which was and still is an important source of their identity. This resulted in the loss of status and privileges in the Indian community. Their sexual and spatial mixing with Spaniards as well as the interchange of cultural elements resulted in the rise of the mestizos as an important, and eventually dominant, social group; because of their mixed heritage, mestizos held a better social status than Indians and Blacks. Although the Spaniards and Creoles tried to regulate marriages among the social groups, Blacks also mixed sexually, spatially, and culturally with Indigenous Peoples, mestizos, Spaniards, and Creoles. In the social stratification, their offspring were recognized as mixed people. All the social groups were classified and stratified in a system of castas that developed throughout the
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colonial period as the mixing continued. While Spaniards, Indians, and Blacks all had specific status and different positions in the system of privilege, the status and position of the various castas was more indeterminate. For these middle strata, color and descent were important bases for determining status but were not definitive factors. Occupation and other socioeconomic criteria also played important roles in the status of the various castas. By the 18th century, there were a vast number of labels to classify people; however, only five basic terms were ordinarily used: Black, Indian, mulatto, mestizo, and Spanish. In New Spain, there was no strict idea of race (something that continued in Mexico). The Indians that had lost their connections with their communities and had adopted different cultural elements could “pass” and be considered mestizos. The same applied to Blacks and castas. Rather, the factor that distinguished the various social groups was their calidad; this concept of “quality” was related to an idea of blood as conferring status, but there were also other elements, such as occupation and marriage, that could have the effect of blanqueamiento (whitening) on people and influence their upward social mobility. However, those considered Indians and Blacks, especially those enslaved, had a more difficult time moving up in the social stratification as their culture and calidad were submitted to constant devaluation.
Mexican Independence (1810) to the Revolution (1910) Black communities in the 19th century were concentrated in the central coastal zones and had maintained close interaction with indigenous and mestizo populations over the years. The majority of Blacks and other mixed peoples of African descent who lived in the cities and towns had become integrated into the rest of society. Several of them fought together with Creoles and mestizos for the independence of Mexico. Blacks had a very important role in the abolishment of slavery in Mexico after its independence in 1821. For example, Vicente Guerrero, a mulatto leader, emancipated slaves during his presidency in 1829. Over the course of the century, some Black Seminoles and descendants of slaves who escaped the sugarcane farms in the United States settled in Northern Mexico. Slave hunters and slaveowners often threatened to cross the Mexican border and, on some occasions, tried without success to pressure the
Mexican government to return Blacks to slavery. In 1857, taking a stance regarding slavery in the United States, Mexico declared that any slave who set foot on its territory would become free. During the ethnic conflicts of the 19th century, several Blacks and castas participated in various peasant movements, sometimes in conjunction with Indigenous Peoples. At the end of that century, some of the Blacks working in the oil refineries of Tampico established a branch of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and also rose in arms along with other peasants and workers during the Mexican Revolution. However, during the next 2 centuries, while the idea of an “Indian problem” put indigenous issues in the social, economic, political, and cultural agendas of the nation-state, the absence of a discourse regarding a “Black problem” as it existed in other Latin American countries contributed to Blacks’ invisibility and further marginalization. Mexico’s search for a national identity in the 19th century was influenced by liberalism and theories about human difference and heredity. As Mexico sought to modernize the countryside under the liberal ideas of equality and freedom of the citizenry, the status and legal position of the Indians, as well as their lands and communities, came under attack. Together with this, a proposal emerged in the national imagination that the mestizo represented the quintessential Mexican identity and the solution to Mexico’s social and economic problems. In order to achieve the ideals of prosperity and progress, an agrarian reform freed large portions of “unused” lands and labor for the market. Thus, the special protection of the Indians ended. The idea was to convert the Indians into citizens who owned small plots of land. Over time, the agrarian reform failed due to the opposition of the clergy, the large latifundios, and the Indian communities. Ethnic conflicts increased significantly in the 19th century due to the attacks on indigenous lands and identity. Most of the indigenous and castas rebellions in this time included both land and ethnic claims, among others, as these were seen as interrelated and essential elements of the indigenous communities. The absence of a strong state presence and racial prejudices (which marked these conflicts as a battle between the “civilized White people” and the “indigenous barbarians”) fostered intensified violence in these rebellions. But it also allowed an alliance between peasant mestizos and Indigenous Peoples that was important in the Mexican Revolution of 1910.
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Postrevolutionary Mexico The Constitution of 1917, in Article 27, restored the ejido system by which Indian and mestizo peasant villages were given land to be held in common; it could not be sold. In this system, the land was owned by the state but could be used by the villagers in usufruct. The land distribution reached its climax during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas in the late 1930s. Yet in the new ideology of the agrarian reform, there were few provisions for improving the living conditions of peasants and Indians. During the revolution, indigenous cultures were celebrated as the true soul of the nation, and a great interest in rescuing what was called the “glorious indigenous past” emerged. Nevertheless, it was also widely believed that the only way to rescue Indigenous Peoples from poverty and marginalization was to integrate them fully into the socioeconomic dynamics of the country. The Mexican state developed an official ideology, called indigenismo, to tackle this issue and incorporate the Indians into society, and the Instituto Nacional Indigenista was established to carry out this policy. This was also an ideology espoused by the clergy, academia, and civil society. This postrevolutionary ideology underwent many changes throughout the century, reflecting socioeconomic and political interests but also the consolidation of an indigenous movement in Mexico. Early indigenista ideology of the 1930s and 1940s viewed the ethnicity of Indigenous Peoples as a problem because it did not allow them to fully integrate into the national society. Thus, racial and ethnic relations and identifications were not the object of study or address. The study of Afro-Mexicans, their contributions to the cultural mix of the nation, and their distinctiveness in the 1940s was the exception. These studies, however, were very few. When, in the 1950s and 1960s, the study of ethnic relations became important, indigenous communities were seen as coherent harmonious wholes characterized by interdependency, and total cultural assimilation was seen as unnecessary or even negative. Yet the idea that indigenous communities could improve only by modernizing remained imperative. By the 1970s, important critiques of indigenismo began to challenge this idea. Studies at this time argued that the exploitation and marginalization of Indigenous Peoples was a condition of capitalist development and that their apparent isolation and discrimination was
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the result of the expansion of dominant society. Two important realizations that came out of this period were (1) that that the label Indian was a tool used to indicate and ascribe an inferior status vis-à-vis the mestizos and thus justify this group’s exploitation and (2) that despite continuous interethnic relations and indigenista projects, indigenous ethnic identities survived and maintained their cultural distinctiveness. Indigenous movements strengthened in the 1970s with the organization of various conferences and congresses to discuss indigenous issues. These movements voiced their claims and at the same time denounced the system that oppressed them. For the most part, the movements remained local and regional. One of the most significant movements was that of the Worker-Peasant-Student-Coalition of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (COCEI), in the state of Oaxaca. The COCEI used an ethnic banner in its mobilizations, which was significant, as other movements of the time prioritized socioeconomic demands. In the 1980s, they were able to win twice in electoral politics but were then repressed violently. At this time, many scholars began continuous advocacy work on behalf of Indigenous Peoples, arguing that they had to participate in their own ethnodevelopment as well as in national politics. The proposition that Mexico’s cultural diversity had to be recognized and fully embraced became an important political issue in the 1990s. It not only challenged the idea that Mexico was a mestizo nation but also pointed out the need to protect legally the cultural diversity existing in its territory. In 1992, as a result of indigenous mobilization against the celebration of the quincentenary of the “discovery” of America, the work of anthropologists, and political opening, Article 4 of the Constitution was reformed to recognize Mexico as a pluricultural nation. Other reforms recognized the juridical personality of the indigenous community and a limited right to autonomy and self-determination. These constitutional reforms have energized an important debate in Mexico about the place of Indigenous Peoples in society. However, at the same time that constitutional recognition was given to the indigenous community, Article 27 was also reformed as part of the neoliberal agenda of the Mexican state, ending the protection of the ejido system. Today, this lack of legal protection presents a great challenge to Indigenous Peoples’ rights to land and territory. In response to the neoliberal agenda of the Mexican state, another important movement appeared on the national scene in 1994: the Zapatista Army of
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National Liberation (EZLN). This movement has dominated indigenous–state relations since then, at the same time that it has achieved international recognition and solidarity. The EZLN has been able to maintain in the national agenda the issue of indigenous rights. Today, there has also been a slow but growing consciousness within the communities of Afro-Mexicans about their heritage. In sum, most people in Mexico consider themselves to be mestizos, or peoples of mixed cultural and biological descent. Although discriminated against and marginalized and despite continuous efforts to assimilate them, Indigenous Peoples have been important in the imagination of the colonial and the national spaces in Mexico. As Mexico consolidated its self-image as a mestizo nation, the Indigenous Peoples have concurrently resisted and struggled for their recognition as distinct peoples. Blacks or Afro-Mexicans have had a different place in society. While their enslavement and distinctiveness conferred on them a separate status during colonial times, after the abolishment of slavery in 1829, Blacks were made invisible in the making of a national identity and were marginalized in the social, economic, political, and cultural life of the nation. Blacks are imagined to have become an undistinguishable part of the mixed population. AfroMexicans have yet to create a movement for their cultural recognition and rights at the national level. Sylvia Escárcega See Appendix A See also Borderlands; Bracero Program; Colonialism; Ethnic Conflict; Identity Politics; Latin America, Indigenous People; Maquiladoras; Marginalization; Mexican Americans; Mexico; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848); “Wetbacks”; Zapatista Rebellion
Further Readings
Hernández Cuevas, Marco Polo. 2004. African Mexicans and the Discourse on Modern Nation. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Joseph, Gilbert M. and Timothy J. Henderson, eds. 2002. The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Levi, Jerome M. 2002. “A New Dawn or a Cycle Restored? Regional Dynamics and Cultural Politics in Indigenous Mexico, 1978–2001.” Pp. 3–49 in The Politics of Ethnicity: Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States, edited by D. Maybury-Lewis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
MacLachlan, Colin and Jaime E. Rodríguez. 1980. The Forging of the Cosmic Race: A Reinterpretation of Colonial Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tresierra, Julio C. “Mexico: Indigenous Peoples and the Nation-State.” Pp. 187–210 in Indigenous Peoples and Democracy in Latin America, edited by D. L. Van Cott. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Wade, Peter. 1997. Race and Ethnicity in Latin America. London: Pluto Press.
MILITARY AND RACE African Americans, as well as Whites, have always fought in America’s wars. In more recent eras, other peoples of color also have fought in this nation of immigrants. This entry examines the history of this participation, some of the racial issues in the military services, and current trends in participation.
Colonial Period During colonial times, African Americans participated in the military services, including the early engagements at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. The Revolutionary War was unusual in that African Americans sometimes fought alongside Whites, sometimes as free men and sometimes as indentured men or even as slaves. The British offered emancipation for any slaves who joined them, though, like the Americans, they were reluctant to recruit many African Americans; they, too, had their racial prejudices. Military commissions as early as 1775 recommended the exclusion of African Americans from military service, but military necessities resulted in both covert and overt enlistments. The lower South, in particular, strongly resisted arming African American slaves. The service of African Americans in the Revolutionary War was one of the contributing factors to the abolition of slavery in the northeastern states. The issue of whether African Americans should be part of the military services simmered for several decades, even as the United States was engaged in wars with England in 1812 and with Mexico from 1846 to 1848 and the nation debated the role of slavery before the Civil War. At least 3,000 African Americans reportedly participated in the Mexican American War in de facto integrated units, despite the official policy of exclusion. Following the U.S. victory
Military and Race
and annexation of territory, many Mexicans became Americans without relocating, as a result of the changed national boundary. Likewise, numerous Native American groups and their territories eventually became part of the United States as a result of American-Indian wars, though most Native Americans were not given the right to vote until the 20th century.
Civil War During the Civil War, neither the South nor the North initially enlisted African Americans, free or slave, in the armed services. Nevertheless, many volunteered. The law at the time restricted militia duty to White males; the regular army had a policy of not enlisting African Americans. Further, the policy of the Lincoln administration at the beginning of the Civil War, not wanting to disaffect the border states, was to return all fugitive slaves to their masters. Some states in the South began to use free men of color both as soldiers and in support services. As the war wore on, and particularly after the Emancipation Proclamation, in January 1863, the North used African Americans as soldiers. Almost all in both the North and the South served in segregated units. The implementation of the Conscription Act became another major step toward abolition of slavery and the granting of citizenship for African Americans.
World Wars I and II Segregated units remained the norm during subsequent wars through most of World War II. This included the brief conflict with Spain in 1898 and World War I, where an estimated 380,000 African Americans served. Senior officers for these units were always White. Between World Wars I and II, the army adopted a quota system that kept the number of Blacks in the Army proportionate to the total population. More than a million African Americans served in World War II, which was about 10% of the total military personnel and roughly their proportion in the population. Several ironies and inconsistencies exist with regard to race and ethnicity in World War II. First, while the United States was at war with Japan, Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps in the interior of the United States. While some argued that they were potential spies for Japan, the military itself never considered them as such. Further, the largest concentration of Japanese Americans was on the Islands
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of Hawai‘i, where America was first attacked and probably the most vulnerable territory of the United States. Yet those on the islands were never interned. Later, young men from among the internees were recruited and served with honor in the European theater. African Americans also served with honor during World War II, usually in segregated units. Of particular note were the Tuskegee Airmen, trained at Tuskegee, Alabama. Training began there even before the outbreak of World War II, in July 1941. Commissions were awarded from 1942 through 1946, and 994 pilots graduated at Tuskegee Army Air Field, eventually receiving commissions and pilot wings. Many were highly decorated for their service in the war. The general tradition of segregation in the military services prevailed until conditions in World War II necessitated the combination of units. In 1945, Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson appointed a commission to study the issues surrounding segregation in the services. A presidential commission appointed in 1947 recommended desegregation. Official desegregation of the military services began after World War II, in 1948, when President Harry Truman signed Executive Order No. 9981, which stated, “It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.” The order also established the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services. Some army staff officers resisted the desegregation order so that some parts of the military services were not desegregated until 1951. In late 1953, the Army announced that 95% of African American soldiers were serving in integrated units. Integration of the leadership was much slower, however, and racial hostility increased over the course of the Vietnam War. Only in the 1980s, after the increase in the number of African American military leaders and the change to an all-volunteer army, did race relations improve in the military services.
Military Services Today Today, the military services are generally recognized as one of the best examples of integration in U.S. society. Fully integrated military services were characteristic of the Persian Gulf War of 1990 to 1991 and the Iraqi War begun in 2003. While cultural norms and prejudice are part of the nexus of segregation in the larger society, these forces are greatly mitigated
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in the military services. The military emphasizes nonprejudicial, nondiscriminatory treatment of other groups. Because military service requires reliance on other soldiers in times of battle, the services emphasize equality of treatment. To track problems, the services survey members about their perceptions on intergroup relations. The result is that Blacks and Whites commingle and socialize together by choice, and they carry out their military duties together, with little display of racial animosity. Further, rates of intergroup marriage are higher in the military services than in the country as a whole. The educational differences between Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics are lower in the services than they are in the country as a whole. Thus, even though the U.S. military services are highly structured and hierarchical, they provide an environment that is characterized by heterogeneity and egalitarianism within ranks, a substantially different environment than exists in the larger society. Percentages of racial and ethnic groups in the military services and trends in them are available from a variety of sources, including each of the services. Total numbers and percentages are available from the Department of Defense and from each of the services with offices of demographics. In 2003, the Department of Defense reported that 35.8% of the active duty members of the military services identified themselves as a minority (African American, Hispanic American, Native American, Alaskan American, Asian American, Pacific Islander, or multiracial). From 1990 to 2003, the number of officers who identified themselves as a minority increased from 9.1% to 20.2%; and the number of enlisted personnel increased from 28.2% to 38.7%. The overall percentage of self-identified minorities in the Reserves and National Guard was somewhat lower, at 30.1% (compared with the 35.8% among the enlisted). These numbers are further delineated by racial and ethnic groups. Self-identified African Americans were 19.1%, Hispanic Americans 9.0%, Asian Americans (including Pacific Islanders) 4.1%, and Native American/Alaskan Natives 1.2%. Two-tenths of 1% identified as multiracial. African Americans (12.3% of the national population in the 2000 census) were overrepresented in the military services, while Hispanics (12.5% of the population) and Asians (3.6% of the population) were underrepresented. Native populations were about equal to their percentage in the total population.
The total percentage of minorities is higher in the army (40.7%) and slightly higher in the navy (38.6%), slightly lower in the Marine Corps (32.7%), and substantially lower in the air force (27.7%). Interestingly, minorities in the air force are more likely than those in the other services to be officers. The percentage of officers among minorities serving in the military nearly doubled from 1990 to 2003. Likewise, the percentage of minority officers in the Reserves and National Guard roughly doubled from 1990 to 2003, but the overall numbers of both minority officers and enlisted personnel are lower than in the regular forces, and they are much closer to the percentages of minorities in the national population. African Americans are somewhat overrepresented, while Hispanic and Asian Americans are underrepresented among the Reserves. African Americans remain underrepresented among casualties in the Iraqi War. Through November 5, 2005, African Americans represented about 17% of the force in Iraq yet accounted for 11% of deaths. On the other hand, Whites accounted for 67% of the force and suffered 74% of deaths. The corresponding numbers for Hispanics were 9% and 11%. These casualty rates likely reflect the occupational choices made by the racial and ethnic groups in the services. For example, African American youth choose to serve in support occupations such as the health care field, which tend to feature valuable job training over bonuses or education incentives. The South produces 41% of all recruits (compared with 36% of the 18- to 24-year-old population). The Northeast generates 14% of new recruits, whereas the region has 18% of the 18- to 24-year-old population. The West and North Central regions produce 21% and 24% of new recruits, whereas they have 24% and 23%, respectively, of the 18- to 24-year-old population. Currently, the army has the highest number of minorities, and the air force has the lowest. In 2005, just over 39% of the active army members were minorities, and 40.9% of the Reserves were minorities. The percentage of minorities in the Reserves is lower (26.0%). The number of African Americans in the army has been declining (from 22% in 2000 to 13.5% in 2005), while the number of Hispanics has been increasing (from 6.5% to 11.7%) in the same time period. The number of officers has remained more stable (10.2% African Americans and 5.5% Hispanics in 2005). The number of Asians on active duty was 4.0% in 2005.
Minority/Majority
Minority women, especially Black women, are overrepresented in the military services, and they are more likely than minority men to serve. White women represent only about 50% of all women in the services. Cardell K. Jacobson See also Discrimination; Internment Camps; People of Color; Prejudice; Racism; Segregation
Further Readings
Berry, Mary Frances. 1977. Military Necessity and Civil Rights Policy: Black Citizenship and the Constitution, 1861–1868. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press. Jacobson, Cardell K. and Tim B. Heaton. 2003. “Intergroup Marriage and United States Military Service.” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 31:1–22. Moskos, Charles C. and John Sibley Butler. 1996. All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way. New York: Basic Books. U.S. Department of Defense. N.d. Armed Forces Equal Opportunity Survey, 1996–97. Retrieved from http://www.defenselink.mil/prhome/e096exsum.html U.S. Department of Defense. N.d. Demographics Profile of the Military: 2003. Retrieved from http://www .militaryhomefront.dod.mil/dav/lsn/LSN/BINARY_RESO URCE/BINARY_CONTENT/1869841.swf
MINORITY/MAJORITY The related concepts of minority and majority denote inequalities in social, political, and economic power. Both terms originate in ideas of democratic government, where it is assumed that the majority should rule. This view of political authority has its origins in the idea of popular sovereignty. As defined, for example, in the 1789 “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen,” the doctrine of popular sovereignty asserts that the principle of sovereignty rests essentially in the nation and therefore all authority must emanate from the nation expressly. Yet, as Ivor Jennings famously pointed out, this formulation still leaves open the necessity of determining who are the people in whom sovereignty ultimately resides. To resolve the ambiguity of the term popular sovereignty, democracy is usually defined as the “will of the people” determined by a majority of votes in free and fair elections. In this way, the
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“majority rules” by periodically voting in the government. By extension, therefore, the minority is that group which is currently excluded from power.
More Than Numbers The minority/majority relationship is often presented as a matter of numeric difference. Majorities outnumber minorities. For example, the leader of the political party with the most seats in the United States Senate is known as the Majority Leader; in contrast, the leader of the second-largest party is designated the Minority Leader. Indeed, at its most general, a minority can be any group of people (political party, club, family, etc.) that can be distinguished from the rest of society in some way (opinions, beliefs, associations, behavior, etc.). Thus, by counting the number of respondents on any given issue—the invasion of Iraq, political parties or candidates, or the latest movie releases from Hollywood—it is possible to identify both a majority and a minority. In this rendering, majority and minority are not so much competing interests, but rather aggregates of individuals in a certain arithmetical relationship. The usual assumption of “majority rule” is that membership in government will change over time, so that majorities and minorities are fluid rather than fixed arrangements. But that assumption does not always hold true. Instead, the dynamics of political, economic, and social power may produce minority/majority cleavages of a more enduring nature—particularly when disparities in power follow ethnic, racial, religious, or linguistic divisions. Situations like this existed, for example, in the southern United States prior to the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and in apartheid South Africa; in both instances, they paralleled racial divisions, and in Northern Ireland during the “time of troubles,” they paralleled sectarian divisions. If “majority rule” becomes fixed in this way, it is anything but democratic. Instead, it becomes a “tyranny of numbers.” For this reason, the idea of democracy has itself been reconsidered by liberals, who have come to recognize the need for social consensus that is more than just “majoritarian.” In this rendering, democratic government involves not only making decisions by majority voting but also conceding political rights to minorities. Deny one, and the moral case for the other largely disappears. The contemporary “problem of minorities” thus emerges as a lack of consent or
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entitlement to full participation in political life such that the principle of democracy is compromised in some way. Minorities are in a position to claim special treatment from majorities precisely because they are not fully integrated into or do not exercise control over their own political community. They are thus “imperfectly” or “incompletely” self-determined.
y Defining Minority No universally agreed definition of minority exists at the present time precisely because the “problem of minorities” often manifests itself in efforts to distinguish between those who belong to a political community and those who do not. Nevertheless, the definition of minority advanced by United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesco Capotorti in his Study on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic, Religious, and Linguistic Minorities has emerged as the most widely cited among international lawyers and policymakers. It may therefore be reasonably considered the closest approximation to a universally accepted usage. Capotorti’s definition emphasizes that a minority is a nondominant group numerically inferior to the rest of the population that possesses unique ethnic, religious, or linguistic characteristics and a desire to preserve these characteristics. As the Capotorti definition makes clear, what makes minority status politically significant is not size, but belonging: Minorities are those who are denied or prevented from enjoying the full rights of membership within a political community because their religion, race, language, or ethnicity differs from that of the official public identity. For this reason, minorities are often described as being nondominant, that is, not in a position of control or authority within a political community. This emphasis on “nondominance” is an attempt to ensure that the term minority is not improperly applied to “dominant” numerical minorities, such as the White population of apartheid South Africa. In other words, it excludes those groups who exercise control or authority within a political community, even if in strict demographic terms such ruling communities are outnumbered. Capotorti’s characterization of the “problem of minorities” in terms of a “sense of solidarity directed towards preserving their culture” challenges the tendency to limit entitlements arising under selfdetermination to individual demands for equality. By restricting the application of self-determination in this way, the end result is to conflate otherwise distinct
minority circumstances and corresponding claims. On one hand, there are those groups, such as non-AngloSaxon immigrant communities in the North American context, whose members seek and yet are denied incorporation into the larger community and therefore require antidiscrimination guarantees and equal civil liberties: minorities by force. The claims of individual members of these minority cultural communities do not entail any guarantees beyond those of equal citizenship. On the other hand, there are minority cultural groups whose members want to preserve a separate collective existence but are prevented from doing so by the larger community. Such groups are often labeled national minorities or stateless nations to underscore their separate normative status. National minority claims arise because such groups possess that normative characteristic, namely, national identity within a historic territory, which has historically been recognized as the basis for political legitimacy, and yet, for various reasons, they are not members of a state that reflects their cultural characteristics (e.g., Kurds in the Middle East or Roma in Europe and North America). In addition to the rights of equal citizenship, national minorities may also claim special provisions that would provide them with a measure of autonomous collective existence. Examples of such provisions include an appropriate share of public revenues in order to build and maintain schools, churches, and other community institutions and perhaps even self-government in those regions where such groups predominate.
Individual Autonomy The fundamental value at stake in all endeavors to recognize minorities remains that essential liberal concern for the autonomy of the individual. Capotorti’s definition discloses this presumption in favor of “autonomous” action on the part of individuals giving rise to “self-determined” cultural communities when it refers to the members of minority groups. In other words, the normative value accorded to cultural identity is derivative of the fundamental liberal belief in the individual. From this perspective, humans are understood to possess wills, sentiments, beliefs, ideals, and ways of living peculiar to themselves and so crave room to “be themselves” and opportunities to express characteristics that define their individuality: the wish to be and do something of their own choosing and not simply that which another has compelled them to do or to
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become. Many choices an individual makes will concern his or her relationships with others: Humans are social animals. In totality, they desire and form an extremely diverse range of social relationships and associations that reflect their above-noted sentiments, beliefs, ideals, and ways of living. Included among these are social relationships and associations that reflect their identification with particular national, ethnic, religious, cultural, and linguistic groups, be these families, tribes, nations, states, or religions. Accordingly, most people want to associate freely with other people like themselves, people with whom they can feel at home. They do not wish to be obliged to assume personas or form associations that are contrived for them by others, whether by the state, the party, or the nation or by any other agency that aims at reducing if not eliminating the recalcitrant individuality of human beings. For this reason, humans seek liberty of action and determination of their own lives, both collectively and individually, and are naturally resistant to paternalism, oppression, and assimilation. Minority rights are thus intended to guarantee the individual’s ability to make autonomous cultural choices. For this reason, minority status should not itself become a form of tyranny, either by the majority over the minority or by the minority over the individual member. On this basis, groups must respect the liberty of their members, including those who freely choose to dissent from majority opinions or ways of life. This line of reasoning currently applies to those traditional bearers of the right to self-determination—namely, states— and so one can only assume that it would also apply to other groups (i.e., national minorities or Indigenous Peoples) that might acquire rights under this principle. This brief survey of the usage most commonly assigned to the concepts majority and minority is sufficient to make the point that political discourse on the subject reflects fundamental normative assumptions. The identity and culture of the population within a state is significant only because there is a presumption in favor of popular sovereignty and democratic government. Regardless of whether or not the people are defined in civic or in ethnic terms, their free associations and expressions and the identities and cultures these create are now matters of concern within both domestic and international politics, because legitimate rule is constructed in terms of self-determination. This explains why cultural groups have a normative status distinct from that of other minorities and indeed why individuals belonging to such groups may have special entitlements beyond those accorded to
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them as human beings. In sum, minorities are normative outsiders whose very existence challenges prevailing assumptions with respect to political membership and legitimacy, and, for this reason, their claims for recognition require a public policy response. Whether that response is recognition in the form of special rights or denial in the form of oppression or assimilation may be debatable in instrumental terms. However, once prevailing norms with respect to individual autonomy and collective self-determination are taken into account, the latter become extremely difficult to defend or justify. J. Jackson Preece See also Apartheid; Assimilation; Citizenship; Cross-Frontier Contacts; Ethnonational Minorities; Identity Politics; Kurdish Americans; People of Color; Roma
Further Readings
Capotorti, Francesco. 1979. Study on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic, Religious, and Linguistic Minorities. New York: United Nations. Claude, I. 1955. National Minorities: An International Problem. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jackson Preece, J. 1998. National Minorities and the European Nation-States System. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Jackson Preece, J. 2005. Minority Rights: Between Diversity and Community. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Jennings, I. 1956. The Approach to Self-Government. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Laponce, J. 1960. The Protection of Minorities. Berkeley: University of California Press. Minority Rights Group. 1991. Minorities and Human Rights Law. London: Minority Rights Group International. Musgrave, T. 1997. Self-Determination and National Minorities. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Thornberry, P. 1993. International Law and the Rights of Minorities. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. United Nations.1949. Definition and Classification of Minorities. E/CN.4/SUB.2/83
MINORITY RIGHTS In culturally diverse societies, provisions and processes are needed to protect minority rights from the majority and from majoritarian processes. In this way, the cultural, political, and economic rights of nondominant groups can be protected from the tyranny of the majority.
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Democracy, equality, and justice require that not even a single group’s or person’s political rights, civil liberties, and cultural rights should be constrained, including by a majority. This entry discusses the consequences of the majoritarian process in multicultural societies, ethnic conflicts, types of minorities, the evolution of minority rights and the norms of individual and group rights, the contributions of diversity, and mechanisms to protect minority rights.
Majoritarian Process, Exclusion, and Ethnic Conflicts The majoritarian process is sound in principle but becomes problematic in practice in culturally diverse societies. It works in societies where cultural divisions are not salient bases of mobilization. People regularly change their political or economic preferences, and this facilitates alternation of power among different groups and political parties. However, in ethnically diverse societies, people’s preferences on specific cultural issues may differ perennially. Such situations create permanent majorities and minorities. The ethnic minority groups may never form governments. Thus, the majoritarian process often leads to the exclusion of minorities. As the dominant group influences and defines the state and its institutions with their values and norms, the exclusion of minority groups becomes institutionalized. Political institutions rooted in dominant values do not equally address the aspirations of minorities in the society. If their rights are not protected, minorities may not feel bound by the rules that exclude them. Exclusion has led to violent conflicts in many regions of the world. Most major conflicts around the globe in the post–cold war era are identity related and occur within and across states, not between states. Violent conflicts often occur in developing countries where identity differences coincide with resource inequalities. According to the Minorities at Risk (MAR) project at the University of Maryland, ethnic conflicts have been increasing since the Second World War and reached a peak in the mid-1990s. Since then, there has been a slight decline, but most major conflicts are still identity related.
Minority Groups Ted Gurr and the MAR project classify minorities broadly into two categories, national peoples and
minority peoples, and into three subgroups within each group. Ethnonationalists, national minorities, and Indigenous Peoples fall under national peoples. Ethnoclasses, communal contenders, and religious sects fall under minority peoples. Ethnonationalists are regionally concentrated groups with a history of autonomous governance. National minorities are groups who are a minority in the state of residence but whose kindred control an adjacent state. Indigenous Peoples are descendants of conquered native people. Ethnoclasses, on the other hand, consist of descendants of slaves or immigrants. Communal contenders are ethnoclasses that are politically organized. They could be disadvantaged, advantaged, or dominant groups. Religious sects are groups whose activities are centered on religious beliefs and cultural practices and their defense. According to Ted Gurr, 17.5% of the world’s population in 1998, or more than a billion people, were minorities. However, this count does not include numerous smaller minorities (fewer than 100,000 and minorities in countries of less than 500,000 population) and those that are not politically mobilized. Thus, the overall count of minorities would be much higher if the less mobilized and numerous smaller groups were counted.
Individual and Group Rights Minority rights were protected by the League of Nations after World War I, but the concept was undermined when Germany used it as a pretext to attack neighboring countries with German minority populations during the Second World War. The international community and the modernizing and nationalist elite who controlled the state were reluctant to recognize the rights of diverse groups inside states’ borders. The world largely emphasized individual rights for promoting modernization and democracy. However, it failed to provide equality to members of minority groups and in many instances led to their repression. Individual rights alone cannot ensure equality and justice in culturally diverse societies. Political equality understood as equal treatment of everyone at an individual level can suppress differences. True equality requires not identical treatment, but rather differential treatment in order to accommodate different needs. Members of different communities, with varying worldviews and lifestyles, have different needs and aspirations. When major democratic institutions fail
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to take account of needs of different groups by ignoring their varied identities, those who are not recognized are hurt. Individuals whose languages and cultures are not protected cannot compete equally with those whose languages and cultures are promoted by the state. In culturally plural societies, equality can be achieved not by eliminating group differences, but rather by ensuring equality among different groups. Recognition of group identity and group rights, therefore, is essential for attending to the specific situations of social-cultural groups. Intergroup equality, then, can promote equality among members of different groups. Respecting minority rights is thus not only consistent with individual freedom, but can actually promote it. Tension between collective and individual rights, however, could exist. Certain segments may control communities and impose their views in the name of the community. Women in general suffer from these tendencies in many societies. Will Kymlicka has resolved this tension by distinguishing between two types of claims ethnic or national groups might make. The first, called internal restrictions, involves the claim of a group against its own members; the second, called external protection, involves the claim of a group against the larger society. The first type is intended to protect the group from the destabilizing impact of internal dissent (e.g., the decision of individual members not to follow traditional practices or customs), whereas the second is intended to protect the group from the impact of external decisions. Internal restrictions raise the danger of individual oppression and so may not be compatible with liberal democratic theory. External protections, on the other hand, uphold liberal rights and democratic institutions by enhancing individual freedom of the members of the minority groups. These protections enable them to be on a more equal footing with members of the dominant group.
Benefits of Cultural Diversity The protection of minority rights promotes diversity and enhances freedom. Freedom involves making choices among various options, and culture not only provides these options but also makes them meaningful. People understand and communicate better and make intelligent choices within their own cultural milieu. A shared vocabulary of everyday life, embodied in practices and institutions covering most areas of human activity, facilitates the process. It is important
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for promoting different cultures to enable members of those cultures to grow and develop. When a culture is decaying, options and opportunities available for the members of that culture will shrink and their pursuit is less likely to be successful. Enabling different cultures to flourish benefits the society by making more choices available for everyone. Diversity enhances the quality of life by enriching our experience and expanding cultural resources. Hence, not only is it an obligation for the majority to protect minority rights in keeping with norms of justice and equality, but it is also in their self-interest to do so, since it offers them more resources and choices.
Mechanisms to Protect Minority Rights In multiethnic and multicultural states, the state often has to make certain decisions that will favor one group and disadvantage others. In the areas of official languages, political boundaries, public holidays, and the division of powers, there is no way to avoid supporting one group over others by the state. In such circumstances, members of minority groups are disadvantaged because the dominant cultural elements are chosen by the state to conduct its business. To compensate for such disadvantages, minority cultural elements have to be somehow recognized, safeguarded, and promoted. Otherwise, minorities face injustice. Group-differentiated rights like territorial autonomy, nonterritorial federalism, veto powers, guaranteed representation in central institutions, land claims, affirmative actions, reservations, and language rights can help rectify this disadvantage. The protection of minority rights has to be incorporated in the national constitution, and the passing of constitutional amendments has to be made difficult. Arend Lijphart formulated the theory of consociationalism, which propounded power sharing among different groups. Major political institutions mentioned above are incorporated in it. The United Nations and the international community have also come forth with covenants, treaties, and declarations like the Minority Rights Declaration, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and others for protecting minority rights. Such protections ensure that members of the minority have the same opportunities to live and work in their own culture as do members of the majority, thus
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Model Minority
providing a more level ground between members of dominant and dominated groups. Mahendra Lawoti See also Civil Rights Movement; Cross-Frontier Contacts; Ethnic Group; Ethnonational Minorities; Identity Politics; International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; Minority/Majority; Multicultural Social Movements; Racism; Reservation System
Further Readings
Gurr, Ted Robert. 2000. Peoples versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace. Hannum, Hurst. 1998. Autonomy, Sovereignty, and SelfDetermination: The Adjudication of Conflicting Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Horowitz, Donald. 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kymlicka, Will. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Lijphart, Arend. 1977. Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
MODEL MINORITY The term model minority refers to a racial or ethnic minority that despite past prejudice and discrimination is able to achieve great success economically and socially. The minority subgroup emerges as the “main character of a success story” about how a disadvantaged group overcomes those disadvantages and achieves prosperity. Typically, the term model minority has been used in the United States to refer to Asian Americans generally or, more specifically, Japanese Americans, Asian Indians, and Korean Americans. The alleged prosperity of the model minority is usually measured in terms of economic success, educational attainment, cultural contributions, political participation, and other forms of incorporation to the larger national community, such as exogamy or intermarriage. The minority group is a “model” because its members set an example for other groups to follow. The term has been put to controversial uses, particularly because it foists responsibility for a group’s success, failure, and recovery from historical discrimination
on the shoulders of the group itself, rather than the larger society. Credit for the term’s coinage is usually attributed to a January 9, 1966, article in New York Magazine, titled, “Success Story: Japanese American Style.”
An American Success Story The concept of model minority is a product of competing visions of the social and cultural heterogeneity of the United States. Before the fairly recent ascendance of the ideal of a pluralistic multiculturalism, where differences are tolerated if not also celebrated, a single, common culture had been the desired product of cultural interactions, often referred to as a “melting pot.” The melting-pot metaphor offered an image of viscous mixing. This conception was appealing because of the smoothness of both the mix and the mixing. Yet this smoothness did not account for myriad conditions that maintained differences, ranging from labor segmentation, ghettoization, and citizenship ineligibility to ethnic pride, linguistic diversity, and self-determination. “Salad bowls” and “mosaics” offered alternative explanatory power for making sense of the persistence of distinctions within a common social formation. The model minority exists somewhere between the melting pot and the mosaic/salad bowl, because there is the simultaneous celebration of difference and sameness. This simultaneity is particularly evident when various features associated with the distinctness of a distinct group ironically serve as the basis for its commonality with an idealized larger whole. For example, a group’s religious piety and strong emphasis on family and filial devotion, rather than setting it apart from the public sphere, turns out to promote a value system that encourages behavior seen as crucial to success, such as self-sacrifice, deferral of gratification, and communal distribution of resources, particularly in times of scarcity and crisis.
Model Minority Myth Myth is often a term that accompanies the term model minority. The myth of the model minority concerns the questionable cause-and-effect relationship that is implied or at times explicitly articulated. A model minority’s success, such as cultural assimilation and class mobility, is seen to be caused by characteristics that make that group a group in the first place. These
Model Minority
characteristics can be and often are racial. For example, membership in a marked group may imply academic skills that test well or personality traits associated with compliance (or even independence) or highly valued physical attributes. Therefore, the failure of other minority groups, such as their cultural ostracism and persistent poverty, are seen to be caused by characteristics that make that group a group in the first place. These characteristics can be and often are racial as well. For example, membership in a marked group may imply lack of academic skills that test well or personality traits associated with antisocial behavior or physical attributes of little value. The “effects” side of the cause and effect is controversial as well, as the terms of measuring success are held up to critical scrutiny. Questions arise over which numbers matter and what can and cannot be measured at all. Does one track individual or household income? Does one measure income or assets? Does visibility in the larger culture necessarily mean understanding and acceptance of differences? The emergence and circulation of the model minority label or stereotype from the mid-1960s to today is also an important indication of the often heated debates around social justice legislation, such as affirmative action. Model minority is an implicit argument against the state playing an active role in redistributing wealth and opportunity, because model minority explicitly describes how a group picks itself up by its proverbial bootstraps and, in the spirit of the phrase famously used by Booker T. Washington in 1895, casts down its bucket where it is. That is, a group stops fighting for rights and the protection of those rights by the state and starts participating in the economic and perhaps social life of the larger community, even if their rights are curtailed and surrendered at that moment. A model minority is then counterrevolutionary. By contrast, the critical circulation of model minority as myth is a counter to that counterrevolutionary stance that emphasizes the contradictions to the actuality of model minority success. And, consequently, the critique of model minority can be a critique of arguments for the dismantling of social justice regulations. Arguments for the existence of model minorities are also important for ideals of national culture, especially in times of war. Model minority can therefore be seen as a way of understanding social and cultural dynamics during the cold war. A minority is seen to be a model because of its steadfast allegiance to a country
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and its ideals, even when current and historical circumstances demonstrate the failure to realize those ideals. A model minority resists the appeal of a perceived enemy who offers the possibility of social, cultural, and economic transformations. Rather than espouse radical ideas, particularly from the Left, ideas that advocate an overthrow of existing systems of governance, the model minority adheres to the current system as a means for effecting social change. Rather than stridently protesting, a model minority quietly assimilates and, in choosing that path, putatively rejects outside agitators.
Recent History With the rise of the neoconservatism generally associated with the 1980s, the model minority became an especially noteworthy site of ideological contestation. That era saw the rise of a backlash against the social justice measures that grew out of the Civil Rights Movement. Model minorities were used as evidence of the needlessness of affirmative action and the arrival of meritocracy. Indeed, affirmative action and welfare were seen as an affront to the ideals of meritocracy, which are seen as the core beliefs upon which U.S. civilization was built. Model minority, on the other hand, only seemed to make more dramatic the power of those core beliefs because a deserving group thrived in the face of adversity, with no apparent help—and in some cases outright harm—from the government and the larger society. While assertions of the actual existence of model minorities may have become less feasible and more nakedly interested, the idea of model minorities lives on as neoconservatism has led to neoliberalism, particularly with the ascendance of globalization. Under cold war neoconservatism, subgroups have overcome historical discrimination to participate on the presumably level playing field of U.S. civilization. Under neoliberal globalization, the new world order is a leveled playing field—or at least one that can be leveled under existing forms of global management, such as free trade agreements. Like the dominant group, model minorities under both neoconservatism and neoliberalism, by their example if not also their declarations, view the existing economic, social, cultural, and political order, that is, secular global capitalism, as the best possible way of life after the unsustainable détente of the cold war. For model minorities who embrace the terms of their
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inclusion by a majority, the current world order possesses the material and ideological resources suitable to the daunting task of managing the manifestations of difference across the globe. Victor Bascara See also Affirmative Action in Education; Asian Americans; Assimilation; Chin, Vincent; Chinese Americans; Cultural Capital; Indian Americans; Intermarriage; Internment Camps; Japanese Americans; Korean Americans; Labeling; Media and Race; Stereotypes; Washington, Booker T.
Further Readings
Lee, Stacey J. 1996. Unraveling the Model Minority Stereotype: Listening to Asian American Youth. New York: Teacher’s College Press. Osajima, Keith. 1988. “Asian Americans as the Model Minority: An Analysis of the Popular Press Image in the 1960s and 1980s.” Pp. 165–174 in Reflections on Shattered Windows, edited by G. Y. Okihiro, S. Hune, A. A. Hansen, and J. M. Liu. Pullman: Washington State University Press. Takagi, Dana. 1992. The Retreat from Race: Asian American Admissions and Racial Politics. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
MORMONS, RACE AND The racial conceptions and policies of Mormonism can best be understood in four overlapping historical contexts: (1) European rationales for colonial expansion, including such concepts as Anglo-Saxon triumphalism and British Israelism; (2) the related American doctrine of Manifest Destiny; (3) the sectional conflicts in the early United States over the status of African American slaves and of Native Americans, along with the religious rationales used to justify the national policies toward those peoples; and (4) the growing preoccupation in popular religion with millennialism and the coming End Times. All four of these contexts generated emotional issues in the American consciousness as the new Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also “LDS” or “Mormon” Church) came into existence beginning in 1830 along the western frontier. Out of that political, cultural, and religious mix, plus their own religious ingenuity, the Mormons acquired specific doctrines about themselves as a people and about three other ethnic peoples in particular: Jews, Native Americans, and African Americans, or Blacks.
Starting in the mid-1830s, Mormons came increasingly to understand themselves as literal descendants of the Israelite tribe of Ephraim, called out of the world by the Holy Spirit in the End Times, as a kind of vanguard to prepare the world for the gathering of the rest of Israel. The Jews were to be gathered to Palestine and the rest of Israel to North America under the sponsorship of modern Ephraim (i.e., the Mormons). From this perspective, Jews came to be understood by Mormons as literal cousins. Mormon apostles made several trips to Jerusalem during the 19th century to dedicate that holy land for the return of the Jews and consistently supported international efforts to establish a new state of Israel in the ancient Jewish homeland. The modern Mormon Church then cultivated a special relationship with the modern state of Israel. Though the Israeli government has been vigilant in prohibiting Mormon proselytizing there, it has permitted the church to build a large Mormon Center for Near Eastern Studies on Mt. Scopus, in Jerusalem, under the auspices of Brigham Young University, where students come for a semester’s study and various church-sponsored religious and cultural events are held. Given such a Mormon posture toward Israel and the Jews, it is not surprising that anti-Semitism has always been absent in official Mormon discourse, public or private, and is rare among Mormon individuals. Philo-Semitism is far more apparent. Jews living among Mormons in the western states have often testified to warm relationships between the two peoples. The first two Jewish governors of any U.S. state were elected in Mormon country: Moses Alexander in Idaho (1914) and Simon Bamberger in Utah (1916), and systematic surveys have consistently shown comparatively low rates of anti-Semitism among Mormons. While the Mormons officially hold that Jews will eventually be brought to accept Christ as Messiah, Mormon proselytizing among Jews has historically been rare, somewhat halfhearted, and decidedly unproductive. Where the Native Americans are concerned, Mormon conceptions have varied according to the responsiveness of the various American Aboriginal peoples to proselytizing. The first generation of Mormons, led by the founding prophet Joseph Smith, held a rather idealized view of the “Lamanites,” as the Native Americans were called in Smith’s Book of Mormon. They are portrayed there as a temporarily fallen and apostate Israelite race with a divine potential for redemption and destiny as a superior people, if only they will accept the gospel. However, once the
Mormons, Race and
Mormons arrived in Utah (1847), the Natives among whom they lived (and skirmished) proved largely impervious to any but the most temporary conversion, although several serious missionary forays produced baptisms in the hundreds. As the century closed, the nomadic peoples of the Americas came to seem less like the redeemable Lamanites of the Book of Mormon and more like “plain old Indians.” For at least 3 decades in the mid-20th century, the Mormon Church, and many White Mormon families, supported thousands of high school and college students from various tribes with lodging and free education at both public schools and church-owned institutions such as Brigham Young University. Systematic evaluations of these efforts revealed that the “Indian” youth benefited greatly in secular and economic terms from these Mormon outreach efforts, but they were not much more likely to stay with the faith than their 19th-century ancestors had been. Accordingly, by about 1980, the official and unofficial Mormon characterization of the “Indians” had become quite ambivalent as far as their divine future was concerned, and the church redirected its proselytizing and educational efforts instead toward Latin America, where the various native peoples had been showing much more receptivity to the Mormon gospel. Indeed, at the time of this writing, more than a third of all Mormons (about 4 million) live in Latin America, leaving many Mormons with the conviction that the real Lamanites, or Israelitish peoples of the Book of Mormon, are now to be found in the southern part of the hemisphere, rather than among the tribes of North America. A thriving scholarly enterprise in the Maxwell Institute at Brigham Young University is devoted to collecting historical, ethnographic, and archaeological evidence to support Mormon claims about the Book of Mormon as an authentic record of ancient Meso-American peoples. The LDS Church has been far better known, however, for its traditional doctrines and policies about African Americans than for those about Jews or Indians. Until a special revelation and proclamation in 1978, people of Black African ancestry could not hold the priesthood in the Mormon Church. This policy was not instituted by Joseph Smith, who, in fact, ordained at least one Black man in the 1830s. The policy apparently crept into church practice gradually in the late 1840s, after Smith had been succeeded by Brigham Young, and, in 1852, Young formally announced that Blacks were prohibited by divine command from holding the priesthood. The precise motives and theological
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basis for that announcement remain obscure. The occasion for Young’s announcement, furthermore, was rather peculiar—namely, at the opening session of the Utah Territorial Legislature in his secular capacity as governor of the territory—the same legislature that passed an act permitting slavery. Although Young, typical of much of White society in the United States at that time, believed in the inherent inferiority of Black people, he was not an advocate particularly of either slavery or its abolition, but he was prepared to tolerate slavery in the Utah territory for strategic reasons. In the so-called Compromise of 1850, Congress had adopted a policy of admitting new states to the federal union alternatively as slave or free states in roughly equal numbers. California had been admitted as a free state in 1850, and Young was exceedingly anxious to get Utah admitted next. He might have calculated that the chances would be better if Utah permitted slavery. That seems to be the political context in which he also barred the few Black Mormons from access to the priesthood. This was a more public and conspicuous restriction than it would have been in other religious denominations, for the LDS Church has always operated with a lay priesthood open in various ranks to all males of age 12 or older. Other denominations were able to restrict access to the priesthood simply by restricting entry to seminaries (as was also the case with access to medical and law schools). During the ensuing decades, Mormon theological thought, at both official and grassroots levels, contrived a variety of explanations to justify the racial restriction. Much of this was simply borrowed from traditional Christian sources (e.g., stories about biblical curses on Cain or Ham, or both), but some of it was peculiarly Mormon (e.g., a notion about divine punishment for alleged past sins). Yet the racist Mormon policies and folklore were scarcely noticed in a nation permeated with Jim Crow practices until the age of civil rights in the 1960s. During those decades, the restriction created a public relations nightmare for the church, which usually responded to criticism by claiming the right to its own internal ecclesiastical policies, however unfashionable for the times, and invoked the necessity for a divine revelation in order to abolish the discriminatory policy. The revelation came in 1978, and since then, the church has reached out in many different ways to improve relationships with African Americans both inside and outside its membership. Africa has proved an astonishingly fruitful missionary field for the
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Multicultural Education
Mormon Church, though the growth of its membership among African Americans has generally been much slower. Armand L. Mauss See also Danish Americans; Jim Crow; Native Americans; Religion; Social Darwinism
Further Readings
Bringhurst, Newell G. 1981. Saints, Slaves, and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black People within Mormonism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Bush, Lester E., Jr. and Armand L. Mauss, eds. 1984. Neither White nor Black: Mormon Scholars Confront the Race Issue in a Universal Church. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books. Also available from http://www .signaturebooks.com Mauss, Armand L. 2003. All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION Carl Grant and Gloria Ladson-Billings, in the Dictionary of Multicultural Education, define multicultural education as a philosophical concept and educational process. They explicitly connect it to the ideas spelled out in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence and indicate that like the United States itself, multicultural education is based on principles of freedom, justice, equality, equity, and human dignity. A social movement created in response to the dominance of Eurocentric and patriarchal power and ideas in the United States and to the influence this dominance has had on the beliefs, values, attitudes, and public ethos of generations, multicultural education has evolved to become a primary deterrent to hegemony, sexism, homophobia, and other “isms” in our society.
Early Years Multicultural education arose as the historical legacy of the movement that led to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka verdict. This case helped make public the inequities and inequality of the nation’s school systems and society in general during the Jim
Crow era. The process of integrating the nation’s schools created a demand that teachers already in the field, as well as those in teacher preparation programs, think about and develop skills to address the needs of racially and ethnically different students. Energized by President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty,” the Congress passed legislation for programs such as Head Start, which began to address the needs of minority and low-income children. The release of the Coleman Report in 1967 significantly helped multicultural education reformers to address greater equity and equality and led to legislation such as Public Law 94-142, which expanded these concerns to include gay and lesbian people as well as students with disabilities.
Creating an Academic Discipline The role of James Banks in this movement has been substantial. His Teaching Ethnic Studies, now in its eighth edition, is one of the most respected books in the field. With his wife, Cherry McGee Banks, he has authored numerous other publications, but none more important than the seminal 1999 anthology, Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education. The contributors to this text represent a “who’s who” in the field and establish multicultural education as a significant discipline in education. The Bankses called upon scholars, including Amado Padilla, Shirley Brice Heath, and Carl Grant, to establish a research agenda. Carlos Cortes and Beverly Gordon laid the foundation for a construction of knowledge theory, while Sonia Nieto, Carol D. Lee, and Valerie Ooka Payne contributed chapters on specific ethnicities. The handbook took a stand on the achievement gap, with chapters by Linda Darling Hammond and John Ogbu, and on higher education, with work by Christine Bennett and Gloria Ladson-Billings. The handbook concluded with sections on intergroup education and with international perspectives on multicultural education, by Janet Ward Schofield, Robert Slavin, and Derald Wing Sue. In addition to his publications, Banks helped establish the Center for Multicultural Education in the College of Education at the University of Washington, Seattle. The center has been able to attract some of the top scholars in the field, including Geneva Gay and Johnnella Butler. James Banks’s ascension to the presidency of the American Educational Research Association was equally significant. This distinction,
Multicultural Education
in essence, recognized the importance of his work in multicultural education as well as the movement that he helped to establish.
Organizations, Institutions, and Conferences The National Organization of Multicultural Educators, the flagship organization in the field, was founded in 1990 and now has a membership of several thousand. Its quarterly journal, Multicultural Perspectives, features articles on contemporary research, curriculum transformation, and instructional strategies. A variety of other organizations with slightly different but overlapping themes now flourish. The National Conference for Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE) has successfully promoted large national conferences dealing with multicultural education issues. NCORE held its first conference in 1988 and has evolved as one of the most important forums on diversity. Many regional and state organizations have also been developed. For example, the New Jersey Project, under the direction of Paula S. Rothenberg, has been a center for inclusive scholarship, curriculum, and teaching throughout New Jersey. The project’s workshops and publications have been recognized as major contributions to the field of multicultural education. Similarly, the Dealing With Difference Summer Institute, sponsored by the Illinois Cultural Diversity Association (ICDA), was originally funded through a grant by the Illinois Board of Higher Education and has been providing annual conferences, workshops, publications, video media, and resources since 1989. Related to these organizations and expanding multicultural education’s initial focus on cultural diversity within the United States are those organizations promoting training in cross-cultural communication and social interaction. Among them are the Intercultural Communication Institute and the Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research, the world’s largest interdisciplinary network of students and professionals working in the area of intercultural communication.
Contemporary Influences The impact of multicultural education on education generally can be seen from the accreditation of education programs to policy considerations at the federal,
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state, and district levels. Multicultural education has created a consciousness that is present throughout the educational field, perhaps most noticeable in curriculum changes and in language that challenges those vocabularies demeaning to specific groups in society because of their physical characteristics, geographic origins, gender, or ability. The official watchdog group for teacher preparation, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, ensures the quality of the basic standards governing the preparation of our nation’s PK–12 educators. The fourth of six basic standards concentrates on issues of diversity and calls on schools of education to provide a diverse cohort of aspiring teachers with the knowledge and instructional skills to help all their students succeed academically. This standard clearly reflects the influence multicultural education has had on the skills that teacher preparation schools and teacher candidates are expected to demonstrate. This suggests teachers should be able to understand issues of diversity, develop and teach curriculum about issues of diversity, and create classroom and school climates that value diversity. In the 1990s, to assist teachers in the field, organizations like the National Council for the Social Studies developed specific curriculum guidelines for reforming public schools through multicultural education. More recently, the Center for Multicultural Education produced a widely disseminated document called “Diversity Within Unity: Essential Principles for Teaching and Learning in a Multicultural Society,” which has influenced hundreds of school districts that wrestle with the demands of multicultural education and the No Child Left Behind legislation that President George W. Bush made the center of his administration’s educational reform efforts.
Critics of Multicultural Education A number of critics over the years have expressed concern about multicultural education, asserting that it promotes divisiveness and leads to increased ethnic tensions reminiscent of conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Conservatives such as Dinesh D’Souza and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and activists like David Duke have warned against balkanization resulting from immigrants maintaining their ethnic identities instead of fully assimilating into the mainstream culture. Duke, for instance, believes that integration has not successfully worked
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Multicultural Social Movements
in the United States or in any other major society and cites examples of ethnic conflict in Brazil and Eastern Europe as proof. Others, like Linda Chavez, promote immersion programs rather than English as a second language, bilingual, or dual-language programs that promote multicultural education perspectives. Changes in the law, such as California’s Proposition 227 and Arizona’s Proposition 203, have greatly influenced the education of English learners in both of these states. Still others, like affirmative action opponent Ward Connerly, have actively lobbied state legislators in California and Michigan to pass legislation that has influenced the criteria for admissions to colleges and universities based on race and ethnicity. All of these changes have greatly impacted the goals of multicultural education in the United States.
What the Future Holds Given current demographic trends, the changing face of America will continue. The nation is “browning,” but the economic and political clout is still in the hands of the White population. This country’s ability to maintain a viable middle class and continue the pursuit of full equity and equality still needs to be one of the primary goals of the nation’s educational system. Researchers Gary Orfield and Marcelo SuarezOrozco have documented the increasing racial/ethnic residential segregation in local communities and the “hypersegregation” of African Americans, Hispanics, and members of the lower socioeconomic classes in the nation’s schools. Dr. Maulana Karenga, the creator of Kwanzaa, while strongly supporting multicultural education and asserting the importance of ethnic peoples being grounded in their own cultures, heritage, and histories, also recognizes the necessity for citizens of the United States and the world to know the many other cultures that exist. As increased globalization becomes the standard for the planet, multicultural education will be part of the new literacy required for living in an increasingly interdependent world. Lack of knowledge of other cultures is often evident in U.S. foreign policy decisions in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, even though the advent of the Internet has created the means for connections between people never before thought possible. Whether this connectivity is used to bring greater knowledge and freedom to all people or to reinforce divisions remains to be
seen. Multicultural education will play a key role in how this future unfolds. J. Q. Adams See also Affirmative Action in Education; Antiracist Education; Brown v. Board of Education; Globalization; Kwanzaa; Multicultural Social Movements; Pluralism; School Desegregation; Social Inequality
Further Readings
Adams, J. Q. and Pearlie M. Strother-Adams, eds. 2001. Dealing with Diversity. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Banks, James A. 2005. Teaching Strategies for Ethnic Studies. 8th ed. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Banks, James A. and Cherry A. Banks, eds. 1995. Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education. Old Tappan, NJ: Macmillan. Banks, James A., Peter Cookson, Geneva Gay, Willis D. Hawley, Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, Sonia Nieto, et al. 2001. Diversity within Unity. Seattle: University of Washington, Center for Multicultural Education, College of Education. Coleman, James. 1967. The Concept of Equality of Educational Opportunity. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Grant, Carl A. and Gloria Ladson-Billings, eds. 1997. Dictionary of Multicultural Education. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx.
MULTICULTURAL SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Race and racial identities and ideologies critically affect social movements. Multicultural social movements theory addresses the connections between demands for the recognition of identity and the redistribution of resources. It also highlights the role of racialized systems of oppression and identities on social movement demands and outcomes. Building upon and synthesizing existing theories regarding “new” social movements, race, and multiculturalism, this theory posits that in social movements, race and racialized identities and group cultures play a pivotal role. Using examples from the Civil Rights Movement, this entry describes the resources on which these movements draw and the role racial identity has played in these movements in the United States. During multicultural social movements, activists draw on their particular cultures and histories to articulate politics of difference and semblance, reflecting
Multicultural Social Movements
their cultural past and U.S. citizenship, respectively. Multicultural movements’ trajectories of activism, mobilization, and success are shaped by race-related social, historical, and institutional contexts; characteristics of the group (such as networks of solidarity, access to various forms of resources, communities of support, oppositional consciousness, and traditions of activism); and the decisions and reactions of state agencies. Different racial constraints on mobilization and different group histories in particular times and places critically affect both short- and long-term outcomes. Like identity movements, recognition struggles, and new social movements, the ultimate goal of multicultural movements is to rearticulate and recognize group-based identities such that they no longer retain connotations of inferiority. However, multicultural movements move beyond identity politics by seeking redistribution and equalization of resources. Similarly, multicultural movements theory recognizes that not all identities provide activists with equal resources to mobilize and sustain protest, nor do they result in similar constraints. Racialized groups enter protest cycles with unique culturally and historically based resources, while groups maintaining a White racial identity are considerably more advantaged than non-White activists in societies organized as a racial hierarchy, such as the United States. By explicitly linking identity to resources, multicultural struggles seek to subvert the subjective reality of activists’ political and racial status, question society’s meanings of race and racial identities, challenge preexisting ideologies, and construct alternative oppositional frameworks of belonging within U.S. society. They not only destabilize the racial terrain through the reconstruction of identities and privileges using group cultures embedded within each racial community but also often attempt to rearticulate a larger national identity such that the formerly disadvantaged group is able to claim membership within the U.S. citizenry. These attempts to change the racial hierarchy result in the potential instability of racial meanings for all racial groups such that the system must either allow for change or further institutionalize racial difference.
Group Culture as a Mobilizable Resource Racial activists have taken their cultures and identities to be not the basis of inequality, but a means to subvert the racial order, at the same time working to
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preserve those cultures and identities within a society that they demand recognize their rights and grant them resources as U.S. citizens. Thus, group-based knowledge and cultures act as mobilizable resources to inform the use of culturally and historically rooted tactics, strategies, and narratives. In the long term, these efforts often increase group cohesion, networks of solidarity, and critical and oppositional consciousness within minority communities and display the potential for political power embedded within each community. Civil rights activists mobilized resources and tactics deeply embedded in their communities, such as long-standing networks developed in the Black church and working-class communities. Oppositional cultures inform the use of movement tactics deeply rooted within each community as well as group-specific political culture (and culturally based) objects. Racialized understandings of inequality embedded in each community as oppositional cultures and consciousness are deployed during multicultural movements as agency and resistance, using culturally stored transformative knowledge. To do this, racial groups draw on specific cultural histories of collective trauma and contemporary cultural conditions to shape both resource- and identity-related demands and translate group-based oppositional consciousness and political cultures into action. In this way, protest activities draw heavily on social movement tactics rooted in groups’ histories and cultural repertoires. Particular narratives embedded in group cultures feature prominently in multicultural movements as activists seek to enact change, mobilize a participation base from within communities, and gain support from those outside it, either from allied organizations or from the target of protest. Group culture provides activists with both a concrete language and a context for their desires for social change. Demands often link their racialized identities to their lack of access to social, economic, and political resources. Speaking to members of the community using group-specific frames to create widespread mobilization, action, and activism, activists often develop a changing rhetoric that combines the dominant racial narrative of the time with concrete desires for social, political, and economic change. Organizational leaders and activists mobilize existing symbols and stories related to their distant and recent past, which are deeply rooted in group cultures and consciousnesses, resources to which only they have access. Collective action frames often draw directly on group cultures by
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Multiracial Identity
engaging cultural artifacts, events, and experiences from the group’s past and present. These frames strike responsive chords and resonate with existing cultural narratives, heritage, and traditions.
Racialized Contexts and Constraints Resources, opportunities, and life chances are directly and critically linked to racial identities in racialized societies such as the United States. But social movements theories rarely take into consideration the specific role of race and White privilege, particularly privileges associated with citizenship, such as voting. During multicultural movements, existing opportunity structures based on histories of oppression and privilege impede racial minorities and critically influence the outcome of these racially based social movements. Specifically, White privilege and the social, political, and economic power embedded in different institutions impact racialized groups’ abilities to change ideologies and gain access to privileges therein. Social movements involving racial minorities are deeply affected by existing racial identities, attitudes, and hierarchies. During the Civil Rights Movement, existing prejudices toward Blacks affected the types of protest that were acceptable and ultimately hindered their ability to achieve full equality. The specific social, political, and economic historical context results in differential racialization of each racial group, resulting in different obstacles depending on the intensity of racial ideologies. Formal laws and informal sanctions often work in conjunction to maintain hegemonic claims to identities and resources that preclude the possibility for systemic change. Racial groups often lack power and representation in institutional bureaucracies. There may be a lack of legal precedent such that demands have no judicial backing. The media may contribute to racist ideologies that hinder support for social or political change. Actors may lack allies outside their communities that could create additional pressure for change. Perhaps most problematic, institutions and powerful individuals may outright deny that the problem articulated by activists exists, thereby making change nearly impossible. Activists are often able to use only existing frames to issue demands. Civil rights activists were most successful when they sought integration rather than Black empowerment. Black activists during the Civil Rights Movement sought to rearticulate the meaning of Blackness from
one associated with inferiority to one reflecting pride in an African American heritage. They also sought to redefine U.S. citizenship to extend to African Americans all the rights, resources, and protections to which citizens are entitled, such as access to quality education, public accommodations, and the ballot. Institutional constraints, which vary over time, rarely allow for simultaneous recognition of racial equality in conjunction with substantive resource distribution. Hegemonic conceptions of race remain unaltered as movements and activists are absorbed into existing institutions and dispersed. By the end of the Civil Rights Movement, significant changes had been made, though these were constrained by existing stereotypes about Blacks. These attitudes and structures ultimately inhibited activists from gaining full access to equal resources. Instead, the government acceded to small demands without significantly altering the larger structure of racial inequality in America. Melissa F. Weiner See also Civil Rights Movement; Minority/Majority; Minority Rights; Multicultural Education; Racial Identity; Racialization; Social Inequality
Further Readings
Calhoun, Craig. 1994. Social Theory and the Politics of Identity. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Hobson, Barbara, ed. 2003. Recognition Struggles and Social Movements: Contested Identities, Agency, and Power. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lipsitz, George. 1998. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Moya, Paula M. 2002. Learning from Experience: Minority Identity, Multicultural Struggles. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Willett, Cynthia. 1998. Theorizing Multiculturalism: A Guide to the Current Debate. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
MULTIRACIAL IDENTITY Multiracial (also biracial) identity is a concept of personal identity based on the physical mixing of biological
Multiracial Identity
racial essences. The assertion of a multiracial identity necessarily implies that the subject has parents or more distant ancestors of at least two different biological racial groups. Therefore, at the most fundamental level, the assertion of a multiracial identity requires a corresponding assent to belief in biological race. This entry briefly examines the tension between biological and social concepts of multiracial identity and its expression in North American culture and society during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Ideological Structure Expressers of multiracial identity, as well as those who advocate its expression, make the basic argument that persons having parents (and sometimes ancestors farther back) who are members of two different racial groups are distinct racially from either of those parents (or more distant ancestors) and should be categorized as multiracial, as opposed to being categorized as monoracial (Black, White, Asian, Native American, etc.). Sometimes the argument includes the specific caveat that the races of those parents (or more distant ancestors) are socially, not biologically, determined. However, this caveat does not evade the problem of explaining why, logically, the child of parents from two different socially determined races should be categorized biologically instead of socially. In other words, it does not explain how the social designation of the parents or more distant ancestors is transferred biologically to the child, since the child could just as well be given a social designation herself or himself. Beyond this necessary, albeit often disavowed, connection to biological race, adherents of multiracial identity have also struggled to define a criterion for inclusion that is not circular in nature. One popular criterion of inclusion is “having the experience of being multiracial,” but beyond the logical circularity inherent in the qualification, that “experience” is often decidedly different for people of varying ancestral combinations. For example, persons of partial Japanese ancestry who express a multiracial identity often struggle for inclusion as full members within traditional Japanese American society, while persons of partial African American ancestry who express a multiracial identity are generally always accepted as full members by the American Black community as long as there is no perception that Black identity is thereby being rejected. It is thus unclear how “having the experience of being multiracial” would in a
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logically compelling way link the multiracially identifying individuals in these two hypothetical cases. Nonetheless, these structural and logical difficulties have not prevented people from assuming and expressing a multiracial identity and arguing for its recognition as a racial identity alongside the existing set of biological races acknowledged in U.S. society. Local and regional multiracial support groups have grown in number, although the membership of such organizations is generally composed of parents of multiracially identified children, as opposed to people who themselves express a multiracial identity. College support groups have also grown, and the members of these organizations are usually individuals who personally identify as multiracial.
Contemporary History Although multiracial identity has been an issue of varying emphasis and concern for British North America and the United States since the earliest days of population mixture on the North American continent, it has taken on a more enduring presence in contemporary times owing to a number of related phenomena that occurred in the late 20th century. First, a movement dedicated to the assertion of multiracial identity began to surface in California in the late 1970s with the formation of I-Pride (Interracial/ Intercultural Pride), which agitated for separate multiracial identification on local school forms. Following this effort, similar organizations arose across the country. These organizations included local support groups similar to I-Pride as well as a national umbrella organization, the Association of MultiEthnic Americans (AMEA). Under the coordination of AMEA, these various groups eventually engaged in a lobbying effort to revise the federal racial categories authorized by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in order to institute a separate federal multiracial category to be effective in time for the 1990 decennial census. Although this effort was ultimately unsuccessful, it served to bring the notion of multiracial identity into limited national debate and set the stage for activists to make a subsequent and much more comprehensive and vigorous lobbying attempt timed for the 2000 census. This second attempt to institute a separate federal multiracial category, which, in addition to being backed by AMEA, was backed by another national organization, Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally), also failed, but it did result in a compromise
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Muslim Americans
modification by the OMB in 1997 that changed the federal standard for the collection of racial data from “Mark one only” to “Mark all that apply.” Second, the early to mid-1990s witnessed a significant increase in publications touching on multiracial identity. One such source was the publication of a number of book-length academic works on multiracial identity, primarily in the form of anthologies. Another was the proliferation of glossy newsmagazine articles that appeared during the public debate period established by the OMB prior to the 2000 census. These articles tended in a very uniform way to treat the subject of multiracial identity with maudlin sentimentality and overly affected appeals to “hipness,” as opposed to the application of indepth reporting and journalistic rigor. Finally, two relatively short-lived magazines devoted exclusively to multiracial identity, Interrace and New People, were available during this time. These magazines, both of which struggled with issues of basic journalistic quality, carried content ranging from poetry and advertisements for mixed-race dating services to personal testimonies and reports on the ongoing census debates. In various ways and for various audiences, these publications served to raise the national profile of the concept of multiracial identity at a time when the federal government was considering an official recognition of it. Third, beginning in the late 1990s and in response to the debates surrounding the 2000 census and to the several kinds of publications mentioned above, a second wave of scholarly publishing ensued—this time featuring a larger number of single-authored books. The result of that continuing publishing boom, which includes anthologies as well, has been a richer and more nuanced intellectual dialogue that has begun to organize multiracial identity studies into a disciplinary subfield consisting of scholarly voices both in favor of and opposed to the concept of multiracial identity. Rainier Spencer See also Blood Quantum; Census, U.S.; Hafu; Media and Race; One-Drop Rule; Racial Formation; Racial Identity; Racial Identity Development
Further Readings
Brunsma, David, ed. 2006. Mixed Messages: Multiracial Identities in the Color-Blind Era. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Dalmage, Heather M., ed. 2004. The Politics of Multiracialism: Challenging Racial Thinking. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Ifekwunigwe, Jayne O, ed. 2004. “Mixed Race” Studies: A Reader. London: Routledge. Root, Maria P. P., ed. 1996. The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Winters, Loretta and Herman DeBose, eds. 2003. New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
MUSLIM AMERICANS Often referred to erroneously in the media as a homogeneous unit, Muslim Americans constitute a large population that is far from monolithic and is, in fact, extremely diverse. Although Muslims have been in the United States for centuries and have been studied by scholars interested in religion and new religious movements, the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, have stimulated scholarship from a wider range of disciplines. A richer and more complex understanding of American Muslims and their varying rates of assimilation into U.S. society requires closer attention to differences in race, class, and ethnicity among the various American Muslim groups and the tensions and coalitions that exist between them. Indeed, American Muslims consist of many factions, such as Sunnis, Shi’as, and Sufis. Sunnis make up the largest numbers of American Muslims, followed by Shi’as, with Sufis in a small minority. This entry provides an overview of this diverse group and related issues.
African American Muslims Muslims came to America from different parts of the world and at different times. The first accounts of Muslims in America were of those who came as slaves from Africa. One slave was eventually freed because of his literacy and knowledge of Islam. Many slaves were forced to convert to Christianity, but a few studies have shown that Islam played a role in encouraging rebellion of slaves against their masters. There are two major types of African American Muslims in the United States today. The introduction of Islam to African Americans in the 1930s can be attributed to W. D. Fard and then later to Elijah Muhammad, who were both integral in increasing the size and popularity of the Nation of Islam among African Americans. Scholars claim that the Nation of Islam enjoyed the most conversions in the late 1950s, during the charismatic leadership of Malcolm X, at
Muslim Americans
the very same time the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum. The type of Islam practiced by the Nation of Islam was far from orthodox, but it underwent a significant change that focused on the racial liberation of African Americans living under oppressive conditions in a racist society. After the death of Elijah Muhammad, his son Warith Deen Muhammad took over the Nation of Islam and tried to move the teachings closer to the practices of orthodox Sunni Muslims while still retaining a focus on African American issues. Louis Farrakhan split from Warith Deen in order to bring the Nation back to the original teachings of Elijah Muhammad. The Nation of Islam under the leadership of Farrakhan organized two marches on Washington, the Million Man March in 1995 and the Millions More March in 2005, in an attempt to bring racism and the struggles of African Americans back into the consciousness of the American public.
Muslim Immigrants Accounts of later groups of Muslims immigrating to America describe phases that have been divided by scholars in two different ways. The first divides Muslim immigration to the United States into five waves, with the first three waves (late 1800s to early 1900s) consisting primarily of Arab Muslim immigrants who were predominantly rural and uneducated. Immigrants who arrived during the fourth wave consisted of the elite and refugees and came from South Asia, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. The fifth wave of Muslim immigrants came to the United States after immigration restrictions were lifted through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. These Muslim immigrants contributed to the diversity of American Muslims that we see today, for there were a substantial number of immigrants from Asian, South Asian, and some African and Caribbean countries. In a different view of Muslim immigration, the first wave occurred from the late 19th century until World War II and consisted primarily of Arab Muslims. In the second wave, between World War II and 1965, Muslims in America began to create religious institutions, reflecting the immigrants’ desire to stay in America. The third wave accounted for all of the immigrants that migrated to America after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Owing to the influx of Muslim immigrants to the United States, scholars have tried to better understand assimilation rates for this demographic. Although
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African American Muslims have been in the United States for centuries, the new immigrant Muslims have varied experiences. The first wave of immigrants from Islamic regions were mostly Arab (Syrian and Lebanese) and Christian, not Muslim. They came to America as sojourners, although many ended up staying. Between World War II and 1965, more Muslim immigrants migrated to the United States, and after the mass immigration of Muslims after 1965, religious institutions such as mosques appeared on the U.S. landscape. Most scholarship on American Muslims focuses on “mosqued” Muslims (those who go to mosques and are considered somewhat religious) rather than “unmosqued” Muslims (those who do not attend mosques), because of their accessibility. Scholars identified two types of mosqued American Muslims who follow very different paths in terms of assimilation. The first are Muslim Isolationists, who see limitations to participation in the public sphere. These Muslims are more concerned with U.S. foreign policy and the Muslim world than with local issues. They feel that Muslims in the United States should avoid participation in anything that would compromise their religiosity. The second type, Muslim Democrats, are concerned with policies that affect Americans. According to scholars, they are interested in an interpretation of Islam that reflects the freedoms that American Muslims enjoy through their rights and privileges as citizens and is more compatible with American values. These Muslims are more active and participate in the public sphere. As a result of these Muslims’ efforts to civically engage in the U.S. political system, many Muslim American organizations exist to help meet the needs of the growing American Muslim population.
American Muslims and Race, Class, and Ethnicity American Muslims are divided on issues of race, ethnicity, and class. Because of the diversity among American Muslims, there has yet to be a unified Muslim coalition. Scholars note that racial tension between African American Muslims and the new immigrant Muslims divides American Muslims. Because Muslims are so diverse in racial and ethnic composition and class, their relationship with one another is complex. Ten nsion ns With Afriican Amerricans
The relationship between South Asians and African American Muslims is best understood by looking at a
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Muslim Americans
variety of factors. First, scholars of race and ethnicity note that the United States is heading toward a triracial society rather than a biracial one, owing to the increasing number of immigrants from non-European countries after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. This new racial hierarchy helps to explain the racial tension that exists between South Asian Muslims and African American Muslims, who are treated differently in the United States because of their skin tone. The context of immigration to America differs among the various ethnic groups. Many of the South Asian Muslims who immigrated after the passage of the 1965 law were professionals. As a result, the relatively affluent South Asian Muslims are less residentially segregated from Whites than are African American Muslims. A second reason for tension between African American Muslims and South Asian and Arab American Muslims involves the differences in their religious practices and beliefs. The Nation of Islam is not recognized by Sunni Muslims as a “real” Muslim religion because South Asian and Arab Sunni as well as Shi’a Muslims see it as a separatist religion based on race and not on the true teachings of the Koran. Warith Deen Muhammad and his followers are recognized as practicing a valid Muslim religion because they follow orthodox Islam, even though issues of racial oppression are integral to them. Khutbas (religious sermons) in African American mosques find in Islam and the Koran a way to address racism, similar to Black liberation theology. The khutbas in South Asian American and Arab American mosques do not focus on issues of race, but rather preach the conventional tenets of Koranic scripture. Cultural differences between Arab American Muslims, South Asian Muslims, and African American Muslims have also had an effect on their relationships. The Racia alizzatiion of Muslimss
The racialization of American Muslims is something that has been going on for decades in the United States. Scholars note that while “Muslim” is not a racial category, there has been a process in the United States and in European countries whereby Muslims have become racialized, that is, viewed by others as a distinct homogeneous group. They are then denied full access to opportunities because of their identity as Muslims. Citizenship historically is an example of a status that has been denied to people of color in the United States. Citizenship was granted to only free
White men, as the U.S. Naturalization Act of 1790 limited the right to become a naturalized citizen to “free” White persons. Blacks, the poor, Native Americans, and women were denied the rights that citizenship guaranteed in the United States. Several policies and acts precluded citizenship for immigrants who were not White. According to scholars in 1909 and 1914, Arabs were not seen as “free” White persons and were denied access to citizenship in the United States. In 1923, Asian Indians were denied citizenship as well because they were racially classified as Asiatic and “not White.” A year later, the National Origins Act of 1924 made immigration of aliens who were not eligible for citizenship in the United States because of their race an illegal act, thereby preventing many Muslims from migrating to America. The passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 changed the terrain of America by a reversal of racist policies such as the National Origins Act of 1924, opening up immigration to countries that were previously denied immigration to the United States and making legal the naturalization of immigrants who were previously denied citizenship on the basis of racial classification.
Impact of Terrorism Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the reports of discrimination that American Muslims face have increased significantly. Studies have found that negative images of Muslims in the American media have often helped to fuel suspicion of Muslims in the United States. Recent policies, such as the USA PATRIOT Act, differentially impact U.S.-born and immigrant Muslims in the United States through increased surveillance by the government. Policies developed to curb terrorism in the United States and abroad have been viewed by many in the Muslim American community as resulting in the illegal incarceration and deportation of Muslim immigrants. Consequently, many organizations, such as CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), are taking on the responsibility of ensuring that the civil rights of American Muslims and Muslim immigrants are not violated in the United States. ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) is also encouraging its members to become citizens of the United States, if they are not already; to condemn terrorism; and to encourage Muslims in the United States to create a more positive image of themselves.
Muslims in Canada
Further research is needed in the field of race and ethnicity of second- and third-generation Muslims, a population that is not only growing but also complex and often misunderstood. Saher Farooq Selod See Appendix B See also Arab Americans; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Islamophobia; Malcolm X; Muslims in Canada; Muslims in Europe; National Origins System; Nation of Islam; Orientalism; PATRIOT Act of 2001; Religion; “Us and Them”; Veil; Xenophobia
Further Readings
Allen, Ernest, Jr. 1998. “Identity and Destiny: The Formative Views of the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of Islam.” Pp. 201–266 in Muslims on the Americanization Path? edited by Y. Yazbeck Haddad and J. L. Esposito. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. Curtis, Edward E. 2006. Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Esposito, John L. 1998. “Muslims in America or American Muslims?” Pp. 3–17 in Muslims on the Americanization Path? edited by Y. Yazbeck Haddad and J. L. Esposito. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck. 1998. “The Dynamics of Islamic Identity in North America.” Pp. 19–46 in Muslims on the Americanization Path? edited by Y. Yazbeck Haddad and J. L. Esposito. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck. 2004. Not Quite American? The Shaping of Arab and Muslim Identity in the United States. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Leonard, Karen Isaksen. 2003. Muslims in the United States: The State of Research. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Nuruddin, Yusuf. 1998. “African American Muslims and the Question of Identity: Between Traditional Islam, African Heritage, and the American Way.” Pp. 267–330 in Muslims on the Americanization Path? edited by Y. Yazbeck Haddad and J. L. Esposito. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press.
MUSLIMS
IN
CANADA
Even 10 years ago, an encyclopedia on race and ethnicity probably would not have included an entry on Muslims in Canada. It is a sign of the changing demographics of immigration to Canada that it is warranted
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and recognized now. Although the first Muslims came to Canada in the 1890s, the 1990s witnessed the greatest influx of immigrants adhering to Islam. Cities like Toronto and Montreal, which have the highest concentrations of Muslim Canadians, have been rapidly transformed from largely Christian enclaves to multiethnic and multireligious communities. While the muchheralded commitment to a multicultural Canada has mitigated some of the hostile response that has met Muslims elsewhere, it is still the case that this rapidly growing community has met with some resistance in Canada, especially in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks (9/11) in New York and Washington, D.C. This entry looks at the community of Muslim Canadians and their experiences of discrimination, especially since the advent of terrorism.
Muslim Canadians: Demographics Muslims constitute approximately 2% of the Canadian population (579,600), as measured in the 2001 census. This is nearly double the 1991 figure of 253,300; in fact, over the 1990s, Muslims accounted for 15% of all new immigrants. Sixty-one percent of Canadian Muslims live in Ontario; 86% live in the major metropolitan areas; over 300,000 live in the Greater Toronto region; and over 150,000 live in Montreal. Vancouver, Ottawa, and Edmonton have smaller but nonetheless significant numbers of Muslims; the latter is the city in which the first Muslim immigrants to Canada settled. By the opening years of the 21st century, there were more than eighty mosques across the country, most of which were located in those urban centers noted above. Roughly one-third of Canadian Muslims are of South Asian background, one-third of Arab background, and one-third of other backgrounds, including African and European. Especially since 9/11, proportionately more Muslims have made their way to Canada than to the United States, over concerns of confronting racism and Islamophobia there. Most Muslim immigrants to Canada are highly skilled professionals; one-fourth of Muslims in Canada hold university degrees, including an elevated proportion of advanced degrees. They are trained as health professionals, engineers, and business professionals. Yet Muslim integration into the fabric of Canadian society has not been without its limitations. As in other Western nations, the welcome mat has not been universally laid out for Muslims, and despite their
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credentials, they are overrepresented among the unemployed and underemployed.
Muslims in the Canadian Media The apparent disparities in employment for Muslims can be explained in part by the widespread diffusion of negative images of Islam. In fact, many commentators have suggested that Arabs generally and Muslims specifically may represent the last “legitimate” subjects of negative stereotypes. The media are seen by many in the Muslim Canadian community as especially complicit in the dissemination of anti-Muslim imagery through the perpetuation of narrow caricatures of Muslims as terrorists and as rejecting Canadian values. There is a widely held belief within the Muslim Canadian community that Muslims are not represented fairly in the mass media. In a 2002 nationwide survey of some 300 Canadian Muslims of South Asian, Arab, African, and European backgrounds, the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) found that 55% of respondents thought the Canadian media had become more biased since 9/11. Researchers single out the National Post as especially likely to engage in disparaging and inflammatory coverage of Islam, tending to emphasize extremist “tendencies.” While there is evidence of anti-Muslim bias in the Canadian news media, it is also important to note positive representations. Indeed, Denise Helly cites research suggesting that many Canadian media outlets offer relatively “balanced” or “objective” coverage of Islam. A recent case in point is newspaper coverage of the foiled terrorist attack in Toronto, in which seventeen suspects were arrested. Coverage in the Toronto Star, for example, has been rather sympathetic, taking pains to call for tolerance and pointing out that the suspects were fringe members of a marginal sect. Muslim leaders are cited liberally, in an apparent effort to present the peaceful side of Islam.
The Post–9/11 Environment In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States; October 12, 2002, in Bali; the London Underground in 2005; and the arrests of seventeen terror suspects in Toronto in 2006, reports of discriminatory treatment of those perceived to be Muslim have escalated dramatically, especially in Western nations like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Even in Canada, one of the
few Western nations that did not initially support the U.S. military action in Iraq, anti-Muslim violence as well as anti-Muslim practices by the state mushroomed. These have included restrictions on immigration of young men from Muslim countries, racial profiling and detention of “Muslim-looking” individuals, and an increase in reports of hate violence against Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities in the wake of 9/11. For example, a survey of Canadian Muslims in 2002 by CAIR-CAN found that 56% of respondents had experienced at least one anti-Muslim incident in the 12 months since 9/11. The same percentage reported increased media bias against Muslims and Islam. Some 33% had experienced verbal abuse, 18% had experienced racial profiling, and 16% had experienced workplace discrimination. In 2003, the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) reported a 1,600% increase in the annual incidence of anti-Muslim hate crimes reported to them, from a low base of 11 cases in the year prior to 9/11 to 173 cases in the subsequent year. The CIC, for one, fears the possibility of more backlash violence following the arrests of seventeen young men arrested for their roles in a plotted terrorist attack in Toronto in June 2006. Indeed, within a day of the arrests, a major Toronto mosque was vandalized. Interestingly, on one hand, Canadian politicians have been relatively temperate in their statements on Muslim involvement in terrorism. Yet, on the other hand, Canadian leaders have not been consistently quick to come to the defense of Muslims. Many in the Canadian Muslim community were critical of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s failure to condemn the hatemotivated violence perpetrated against Canadian Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11. No public calls for peace and understanding were forthcoming; no strengthening reforms to hate crime legislation were ever considered (in contrast to rabid action on antiterrorist legislation; see below); nor were increased police or prosecutorial vigilance on the public agenda. The 2004 CAIR-CAN report documents experiences in which law enforcement agents (Canadian Security Intelligence Services, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, municipal police) “approached” or “contacted” Arabs and Muslims, often with no explanation for the contact. In fact, of the 467 respondents, 8% had been contacted, the bulk of whom (84%) were Canadian citizens; among those who were not directly contacted, nearly half (43%) knew at least one other Canadian Muslim who had been.
Muslims in Europe
According to the CAIR-CAN report, what was especially problematic about the contacts were the tactics used by law enforcement agents. Among the practices identified were discouraging legal or other third-party assistance; aggressive and threatening behavior; threats of arrest; problematic and suggestive questions about individuals’ loyalty to Canada, as opposed to loyalty to their religious faith; improper identification; attempts to recruit participants as informants; and interrogation of minors. The ultimate result of these patterns has been to increase the alienation and mutual distrust between Muslims and law enforcement agents. In addition, it reinforces the public perception that Muslims are questionable with respect to their loyalty to Canada and with respect to their knowledge of, if not involvement in, terrorism. However unfounded or unjustified the police surveillance and racial profiling may be, it nonetheless leaves a lingering sense of doubt. Patterns of anti-Muslim discrimination in Canada do not go unchecked. Formal Muslim organizations and associations across Canada have been very vocal in their resistance to both popular and political expressions of Islamophobia. Moreover, they have also been at the forefront of providing an array of services to the Muslim community. Some of the organizations, such as CAIR-CAN, are national in scope, with local contacts, and some (for example, the Ottawa Muslim Association) are local and specific to the communities in question. All are committed to serving the Muslim community, albeit in different ways. Local organizations tend to provide educational and religious services, while the national bodies tend to emphasize advocacy and community action. In the short term, at the very least, such agencies will be vital to empowering the growing Muslim community in Canada. Barbara Perry See also Canada; Hate Crimes in Canada; Islamophobia; Muslim Americans; Muslims in Europe; Racial Profiling; Xenophobia
Further Readings
Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations. 2004. Today’s Media: Covering Islam and Canadian Muslims. Submission to Standing Committee on Transport and Communications, 26 February. Available from http://www.caircan.ca/downloads/sctc-26022004.pdf
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Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations. 2005. Presumption of Guilt: A National Survey on Security Visitations of Canadian Muslims. Available from http://www.caircan.ca/downloads/POG-08062005.pdf Canadian Islamic Congress. 2002. Anti-Islam in the Media 2002. Retrieved from http://www.canadianislamiccongress .com/rr/rr_2002_1.php Helly, Denise. 2004. “Are Muslims Discriminated against in Canada since September 2001?” Journal of Canadian Ethnic Studies 36(1):24–47. Ismael, T. Y. and John Measor. 2003. “Racism and the North American Media Following 11 September: The Canadian Setting.” Arab Studies Quarterly 25(1/2):101–136. Khouri, Raja. 2003. Arabs in Canada—Post 9/11. Toronto, Canada: Canadian Arab Federation/G7Books.
Web Sites
Canadian Islamic Congress: http://www.canadianislamiccongress.com
MUSLIMS
IN
EUROPE
An estimated 13 to 15 million Muslims are living in Europe today (not counting those living in the Russian Federation and the Balkan states). This number is difficult to determine more precisely because of illegal immigration and the lack of census data regarding a person’s religious background; also, leaders of proand anti-Muslim causes inflate the numbers to advance their agendas. The majority of Muslims in Europe today came as labor migrants and their dependents to the prospering post–World War II economies of western Europe. More recently, with the arrival of asylum seekers, refugees, professionals, and students, the pool has diversified in both work background and country of origin. Identification of Muslim immigrants primarily by their religion rather than by their ethnic and national origin is itself a relatively recent phenomenon, in both official debates and scholarly inquiry. Moreover, public discourse today often represents Muslims in Europe as a homogeneous group, when, in fact, the members of the community are rather diverse in terms of ethnicity, language, and culture, as well as individual adherence to Islam. While there has never been such a large number of Muslims in Europe, their presence in European history is not a new phenomenon, but rather started with Muslim
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Muslims in Europe
rule in the Iberian Peninsula in medieval times; Muslims were also among colonial subjects in the context of European colonization of Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. In the 20th century, a significant proportion of Muslim migrants to France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands came as a result of decolonization. Thus, these countries are home to some of the largest groups of Muslim communities today. Due to labor migration, significant numbers of Muslims (mostly from Turkey) have also settled in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden. This entry traces the history of the Muslim population in Europe and discusses some current issues.
Granada, the last Iberian Muslim state, in southern Spain. With the establishment of a united Roman Catholic kingdom, Muslims as well as Jews were forced to convert to Christianity or face expulsion. So-called Moriscos, nominal Christians who still secretly maintained their Muslim faith, faced persecution during the Spanish Inquisition, which was established to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in Spain. Finally, a decree to expel Moriscos was issued in 1609. Hundreds of thousands had to leave and resettle in North Africa.
Early Muslim Presence
Muslim Migration to Europe after World War II
Sicily was under Arab Muslim leadership from 831 to 1072, but the best-known conquest of European territory by Muslims dates back to the 8th century. In 711, in the context of territorial expansion, “Moorish forces,” as they were then called, attacked the Iberian Peninsula and within 8 years brought most of it under their control. Andalusia in Southern Spain became the center of Muslim rule, and a caliphate was established in 929. The history of Muslims in Spain is often told in one of two extreme versions: either as the golden age of religious tolerance or the total subjugation of dhimmis (non-Muslims in a Muslim state whose rights might be restricted but who are not enslaved). A third interpretation presents a middle ground between the two. Muslim rulers placed some limitations on Jews and Christians, such as restrictions on clothing, construction of synagogues and churches, and marriage between Muslim women and nonMuslim men, and dhimmis had to acknowledge Muslim supremacy, but Muslim rulers largely practiced ethnic and religious tolerance and treated nonMuslims better than many other victorious powers treated subjects at the time. This rule of relative tolerance might be explained in a variety of ways: Judaism and Christianity were seen as fellow Abrahamic monotheistic religions; Christians outnumbered Muslims; and integrating dhimmis into the government provided loyal administrators not attached to any of the various Muslim groups. Aided by both external forces and internal divisions among Muslims themselves, Muslim reign in Spain effectively ended 800 years later, in 1492. The reconquista, efforts of Spanish Christian forces to regain lands from the Muslims, had begun soon after the Muslim invasion and ended with the fall of
Decolonization as well as labor migration in the post–World War II period brought a growing wave of immigrants to Europe, feeding the postwar economic boom from the 1950s onward. Among these immigrants were Muslims from various countries in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Many former colonial subjects initially had legal advantages over other labor migrants, facilitating their immigration. In the case of Great Britain, for example, members of the Commonwealth were extended British citizenship and given equal rights to enter the country and the British job market. Similar legislation existed in France. This led to inhabitants of India, Pakistan, and the West Indies coming to Great Britain; Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians coming to France; and people from Indonesia, Surinam, and the Dutch Antilles coming to the Netherlands. Furthermore, throughout colonial times, many immigrants had become familiar with the culture and language of their former colonizers, further aiding the immigration process. Other immigrants in this period were recruited by national governments and companies, Turks among them, coming in the context of so-called guest worker programs. While the majority of them settled in Germany, they also migrated to other European countries, such as France, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland. The 1970s marked a shift in the postwar migration regimes, as labor recruitment programs were halted in the wake of the oil crisis early in the decade. What followed was not an end of immigration, however, but an intensification of family unification, a pattern of migration that had already begun a decade earlier and increased as more migrants decided to settle in their host countries, leading to a continued rise in the number of Muslims in European countries.
Muslims in Europe
More recently, immigration has diversified, with immigrants originating from a wide variety of countries and entering Europe as asylum seekers, refugees, professionals, and students. Especially since the end of the cold war, the war in Yugoslavia, and the conflict in the Middle East, the number of those seeking asylum in Europe has drastically increased, leading to tougher asylum policies in many receiving countries. These changes have contributed to the creation of the conception of a “Fortress Europe.” A variety of factors have led to singling out immigrants of Muslim background and identifying them by their religion rather than national origins. With some exceptions, major public concerns about the presence of immigrants did not surface until the 1970s, and by the 1980s, immigration and integration had become integral components of major party platforms across Europe. Initially, labor migration had been envisioned as temporary, and neither the host countries nor the majority of the foreign laborers themselves had planned on their permanent settlement. However, as their stay lengthened, the attitudes of immigrants about living in their host countries evolved, and they started to settle and bring their families. Moreover, labor migrants generally filled jobs as semi- or unskilled laborers, often disproportionately vulnerable to changes in the economy. Combined with prejudicial attitudes of employers, unemployment among this group became disproportionately high, especially from the 1970s onward. More recently, populist parties with anti-immigrant agendas, generally targeting especially those with Muslim backgrounds, have been able to gain a foothold in politics, among them the Front National in France, the Freedom Party in Austria, the People’s Party in Denmark, and the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). Initially mainly supported by those on the right fringes, these parties are now increasingly buoyed by the center as well, gaining seats in local, regional, and national parliaments and becoming coalition partners of more moderate parties. While Muslims have been singled out as migrants and ethnic minorities, scholars have recently argued that particular developments within and outside of Europe over the course of the last decades have aided in placing the focus on Muslim immigrants qua Muslims. An increasing turn toward fundamentalism within Islam and a growing series of violent events— among them conflicts in the Middle East, the kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972
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Olympics in Munich by members of a Palestinian terrorist group, and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 leading to the establishment of an Islamic republic— converged with the phenomenon of immigrants within Europe speaking out as Muslims, as in the case of the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in 1988. Also drawing wide media attention was the 1989 incident in Creil, outside of Paris, when three Muslim girls were expelled from school for wearing headscarves.
The Integration Debate Discussions about the possibility of integrating Muslims into European culture have become vociferous, and the intensity of debate has only been fanned by the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, and the bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004, and in London on July 7, 2005. Also, an Islamic extremist killed the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh on November 11, 2004, because he had become enraged by the Islam-critical film van Gogh had helped produce. One position, popularized by Samuel Huntington, supports the argument that Muslims are fundamentally different in their values and outlook and that religious background can explain Muslim discontent and lashing out in Europe, making the failure of integration a foregone conclusion. Other scholars have focused more on the socioeconomic context as well as national institutional barriers to integrating Islam, the interconnection of religion and public policies in Europe, and the novelty of religious pluralism within its borders. States have responded to these developments by rethinking citizenship procedures and mechanisms of integration. The Netherlands, historically known for its openness and tolerance, has recently tightened its immigration controls and efforts to integrate ethnic minorities in an attempt to counter the trend of growing Turkish and Moroccan ghettos. Now, prospective immigrants to the Netherlands must pass a language test and prove their knowledge of Dutch history and society before their applications are considered. Once in the Netherlands, they are required to take classes on Dutch culture. While Germany liberalized its citizenship law in 2000, allowing children born in Germany to foreign permanent residents to acquire German citizenship, the definition and preservation of Germany’s core values and culture (Leitkultur) have been repeatedly debated among politicians. Since 2006, some states
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Myanmarese Americans
within the Federal Republic require Muslims who are applying for German citizenship to take a “naturalization test,” in an effort to assess their attitudes toward basic German social, cultural, and political values. In 2004, France, in an effort to maintain its republican principles of laicité, or secularism, passed a law forbidding the wearing of the headscarf and other “ostentatious” religious symbols in school. Since 2001, Denmark has one of the strictest foreigner and refugee legislations in Europe, and its government has attempted to counteract what it considers the dangerous creation of parallel societies, especially among Muslims in Denmark, who are accused of refusing to integrate into the majority culture. As a countermeasure, in 2006, Denmark also introduced a mandatory Danish culture canon (containing eighty-four pieces of work in seven different categories, such as architecture, literature, film, and the fine arts) to be taught in school. The situation in Denmark came to a head in 2005/2006, when the editor of a Danish newspaper, citing freedom of expression, invited cartoonists to draw images of Muhammed, after a children’s book author had been unsuccessful in finding an illustrator for a book on the prophet. Such images are forbidden in the Muslim faith, and illustrators cited fear of retaliation after the murder of Theo van Gogh. After the cartoons were published, fundamentalist imams in Denmark declared them an affront to Muslims worldwide. Reactions to the cartoons expanded well beyond the borders of Denmark and Europe, ending in numerous demonstrations and riots. Despite at times highly charged political rhetoric and often sensationalist news coverage to the contrary, most scholars agree and have pointed out repeatedly over the last few years that the majority of Muslims in Europe do want to integrate and that the attacks in Madrid, Amsterdam, and London are the deeds of a small number of extremists. Opinions differ, however, on how far the symptoms of alienation and lack of rootedness reach. Some argue that the violence of the few in the last several years is only a symptom of a much more far-reaching alienation among Muslim immigrants in Europe, which needs to be taken seriously. Julia M. Woesthoff See also Europe; France; Immigration and Race; Islamophobia; London Bombings (July 7, 2005); Muslim Americans; Muslims in Canada; Religion; Turkey; Xenophobia
Further Readings
Bleich, Erik. 2006. “Constructing Muslims as Ethno-racial Outsiders in Western Europe.” European Studies Newsletter 26:1–7. Buruma, Ian. 2006. Murder in Amsterdam. New York: Penguin. Cramer, Jane. 2005. “Comment: Difference.” New Yorker, November 2005. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker .com/archive/2005/11/21/051121ta_talk_kramer Goody, Jack. 2004. Islam in Europe. Malden, UK: Polity Press. Haddad, Y. Yazbeck and John L. Esposito, eds. 2002. Muslim Minorities in the West: Visible and Invisible. Lanham, MD: Alta Mira Press. Huntington, Samuel. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster. Klausen, Jytte. 2005. The Islamic Challenge. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Nielsen, Jørgen. 2004. Muslims in Western Europe. 3rd ed. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Shepard, Todd. 2006. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
MYANMARESE AMERICANS Myanmarese Americans are immigrants and their descendants from Myanmar (formerly Burma), a country of 49.8 million as of 2007 estimates. According to the 2000 census, there were 32,590 people born in Myanmar resident in the United States, of whom 57.5% were citizens. There are more than 125 different ethnicities found in Myanmar. The majority of U.S. immigrants ethnically identify with the Burmans, Burmese, Arakese, Karens, Mons, Shans, and Nagas. This entry looks at the background of immigration from Myanmar to the United States and the contemporary picture of Myanmarese Americans.
Immigration Patterns Myanmarese immigrants began to arrive during the 1960s. The year 1962 was significant because many Burmese (doctors, professors, and students) fled the country at the beginning of General Ne Win’s rule, after a military coup d’état. In addition, when the quota cap of the Immigration Act of 1924 was lifted, many Asians began to immigrate to the United States
Myanmarese Americans
China
Nepal Bhutan Bangladesh
India Myanmar
Bay of Bengal
Laos
South China Sea
Thailand Cambodia
Vietnam
Sri Lanka
Malaysia Brunei
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According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, there were 21,110 individuals of Myanmar national origin in the United States. Many have settled in large cities, such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states were California, New York, Indiana, Florida, and Washington. As a result of their British colonial heritage and mandatory education in both the English and Burmese languages, many Myanmarese immigrants are bilingual and continue to speak Burmese at home, as well as at social gatherings. According to the 2000 census, 9% spoke a language other than English. Economic characteristics of the Myanmarese include occupations in management and professional sectors, as well as a significant portion working in the manufacturing, educational, and health industries. Myanmarese Americans’ median family income was $61,725, compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole.
Singapore
Jennifer M. Klein
Indonesia
looking for economic opportunities. Immigration during the past few decades has been quite small, especially in comparison to other Asian groups.
Contemporary Community In recent years, people from Myanmar have sought permanent residency and refugee status and have completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2004, about 1,300 Myanmarese immigrated to the United States annually, many of them arriving under immigration provisions that allowed for family reunification. During the years 2005 and 2006, about 6,600 Myanmarese were granted legal permanent status. About 300 refugees arrived annually between the years 1997 and 2004. The period 2004 through 2006 brought about 2,800 refugees. At least 10,000 Myanmarese Americans have become naturalized citizens since 1997.
See Appendix A See also Asian Americans; Assimilation; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www .dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Kyi, Aung San Suu. 1997. Letters from Burma. New York: Penguin Books. Steinberg, David. 2006. Turmoil in Burma: Contested Legitimacies in Myanmar. Norwalk, CT: East Bridge. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Myanmar. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/928 www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
N organization as membership reached 90,000 within 10 years of its conception. Du Bois served as director of publicity and research, a member of the board of directors, and editor of The Crisis, the NAACP’s monthly magazine, from 1910 to 1934. After leaving the organization to pursue an anti-integration agenda of his own, Du Bois returned as director of special research from 1944 to 1948. During his second tenure, he was a consultant to the United Nations founding convention (1945) and wrote the famous “An Appeal to the World” in 1947. Historically, the NAACP dealt with violence among its own ranks. In 1919, in Austin, Texas, John R. Shillady, executive secretary of the NAACP, was badly beaten; in 1951, Henry T. Moore, another executive secretary, was bombed in his house along with his wife; and, in 1963, Medgar Evers was murdered in Jackson, Mississippi. Despite the violence directed toward individuals directly involved with the organization, the NAACP advocated nonviolent protests, litigation, and legislation to advance the rights of Blacks. Their methods often conflicted with the strategies of extremist Black groups, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); the Black Panthers, in the 1960s and 1970s; the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); and the Nation of Islam, in the 1980s and 1990s. The aforementioned groups often criticized the NAACP for being passive. However, the NAACP was also criticized for being outspoken with its condemnation of racist policies by such nonviolent advocates as Booker T. Washington. The NAACP’s nonviolent strategy was carried out in the late 1980s, when it organized silent marches in
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE (NAACP) The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the nation, focusing on improving the situation of African Americans. It has been criticized as both too radical and too conservative, but over the years, it has amassed an impressive record of achievements, which are summarized in this entry.
History After the lynching of two Blacks in 1908, Mary White Ovington, a White woman and Brooklyn native, organized a conference in Springfield, Illinois, to discuss the growth of political and social equality of Blacks. The National Negro Committee was established shortly after, in 1909. The second conference, in the following year, led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a permanent body led by William E. B. Du Bois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard, William English Walling, and Ida WellsBarnett. From its conception, the NAACP was composed largely of Black Americans, but many White members were actively involved. The ultimate goal of the NAACP was to strive for the end of racial discrimination and segregation. An early success arose for the 931
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National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Washington, D.C., as a form of protest against racial inequality. By the 1990s, the organization shifted its focus to the political arena on issues such as legislative redistricting, voter registration, and community activism through programs such as the Fair Share Program, Economic Reciprocity Program, and “Stop the Violence, Start the Love” campaign. In the early 1990s, the organization encountered financial difficulties and weak leadership. By the late 1990s, it had weathered those difficulties through new leadership and played a prominent role in the 2000 national election. As of 2007, the NAACP is the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. There are about 500,000 members in 2,200 adult branches and 1,700 youth and college chapters. The NAACP remains the most influential civil rights organization in the United States.
Political Lobby Initially, many of the efforts by the NAACP were geared against lynching, which virtually disappeared by the 1950s. However, the NAACP has worked on a number of social justice issues since its conception. In 1913, the NAACP launched a public protest against President Woodrow Wilson, who officially introduced segregation into the federal government. By 1918, the pressure from the NAACP led President Wilson to issue a statement against lynching. The organization fought and won the battle to permit Blacks to be commissioned as officers in World War I in 1917. As a result, 600 Black officers were commissioned, and an additional 700,000 Blacks registered for the draft. This military achievement continued during World War II, as the NAACP led the effort against discrimination in war-related industries and federal employment through President Franklin Roosevelt’s policies. When Medgar Evers was turned away from the University of Mississippi Law School in February 1954, the NAACP launched a campaign to desegregate the school. Later that year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education proclaimed that segregated schools were unconstitutional. In December of that year, Evers became the NAACP’s first field officer in Mississippi. In February 1995, Myrlie Evers-Williams, the wife of Medgar Evers, became the first woman to be elected to the position of Chairman of the National Board of Directors of the NAACP.
In the 1960s, the NAACP played an instrumental role in the passage of two major acts, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was extended in 1981 for another 25 years. In 2001, George W. Bush became the first president since Herbert Hoover, during the Great Depression, not to address the NAACP, in what was seen as retaliation for the group’s criticism of his leadership as the president. This friction lasted until 2006, when he addressed the NAACP at its convention for the first time.
Legal Battles The NAACP has been involved in legal battles against segregation and racial discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting, and transportation. The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, an independent legal aid group, argues in court on behalf of the NAACP and other civil rights groups. Along with the NAACP, this group was also instrumental in influencing the Supreme Court’s ruling (1954) against segregated public education, in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case, under the leadership of Special Counsel Thurgood Marshall. The NAACP also won Morgan v. Virginia in 1946, which banned segregated facilities in interstate travel by train and bus. Kiljoong Kim and Christina Diaz See also Brown v. Board of Education; Death Penalty; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Lynching; Marshall, Thurgood; Voting Rights
Further Readings
Hughes, Langston. 1962. Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP. New York: Norton. Jonas, Gilbert. 2007. Freedom’s Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle against Racism, 1909–1969. New York: Routledge. Mosnier, L. Joseph. 2005. Crafting Law in the Second Reconstruction: Julius Chambers, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Title VII. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina. Tushnet, Mark V. 2005. The NAACP’s Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925–1950. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
National Congress of American Indians
NATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICAN INDIANS The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is the largest intertribal organization in the United States. Its membership is composed of American Indian tribal leaders from federally recognized tribes across the United States. Because of this diversity in membership, it is generally considered to be a politically moderate organization. Since its founding in 1944, NCAI has focused its efforts on preserving and protecting tribal sovereignty by bringing tribal leaders together to work toward this common goal. It strives to educate tribal leaders on federal policy that could impact tribal communities, and it serves as an international meeting place for tribal leaders. NCAI was founded primarily by politically active American Indians who worked at the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). They were concerned about the political tide in Washington at the time, as some congressmen were pushing for tribal termination. The U.S. Congress passed HR 108 in 1954, which over the next decade caused the termination of relations between the federal government and over 100 tribes. Proponents of the bill were hoping for a complete tribal dissolution and the assimilation of tribal people into mainstream society. D’Arcy McNickle (Flathead Indian), Archie Phinney (Nez Perce), and Charles E. J. Heacock (Rosebud Sioux) were the original architects of the National Indian Education Association (NIEA). At first, Phinney wanted to create an Indian organization within the BIA, but McNickle believed it needed to operate independently from the BIA. He stressed that it was important to be seen as independent from the BIA and those policies. The organization began with 100 members from forty-two different American Indian tribes. These members were well educated and knew how to operate in tribal society as well as mainstream U.S. society. Most members were drawn from the American Indian elite: professionals, U.S. veterans, and boarding school graduates. An early challenge for the young organization was finding a way to bring tribal people together in which discussions did not break down based on tribal or regional factionalism. It was successful in that it effectively demonstrated the power of working together on tribal sovereignty issues when dealing with the federal government. While many pan-Indian organizations have advocated for rights based on American Indians
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as an ethnic group within the larger U.S. society, NCAI has always recognized the sovereign political status of tribal governments and the unique cultural and emotional identities of their members. Critics say NCAI has been too moderate in its politics by not advocating a more militant approach to social and political change. NCAI proponents argue that this was part of the plan. Members wanted to stay away from association with U.S. ethnic civil rights group tactics. By imitating tactics, it might have convoluted the differences between ethnicity and sovereign nation status. Tribal rights are rooted in sovereignty and the tribes’ inherent rights to govern themselves on their homelands. Other groups were advocating for a different status in U.S. society. NCAI was concerned with protecting the sovereignty of tribal nations, not with changing Native people’s position within the U.S. society. Events of the day could not be completely ignored. It is believed that “Red Power” was first used by Vine Deloria, Jr. during the 1966 NCAI convention. This concept helped to spur an American Indian ethnic group movement, eventually leading Indians to demand equal treatment as U.S. citizens. NCAI supported these goals but remained true to its original mission of protecting tribal sovereignty. The NCAI Policy Research Center opened in 2003, focusing on policy issues that directly affect tribal communities across the country. NCAI continues its work on strengthening tribal governance and the right to self determination through educating Indians and non-Indians about Native rights and tribal sovereignty. It is concerned with improving public safety in Indian Country and securing safe and affordable housing for Native Americans. It is addressing the health issues of tribal members, particularly the high rates of diabetes, and improving health care delivery in Native communities. It supports tribal economic development opportunities, including gaming, and the role of tribal members in steering community development. Continuing from its highly educated membership roots, the NCAI remains a strong supporter of promoting educational opportunities for Native youth. It continues to address issues of Native religious freedoms and the protection of traditional cultural resources. A more recent policy issue has been advocating increased roles for tribes in the discussion of natural resources and the environment. NCAI has been a supporter of young people interested in tribal government and leadership. The Miss NCAI Scholarship Pageant began in 1968, in which
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young women served as goodwill ambassadors in the American Indian community. This program was expanded to include young men in 2006 and was retitled the “NCAI Youth Ambassador Leadership Program.” The NCAI Youth Commission was designed to introduce young people to government and leadership issues. NCAI has proved to be a political powerhouse in Washington, D.C., and serves as the premiere national government organization. Today, it has 250 member tribes and is an extremely powerful lobbying organization on Capitol Hill. NCAI is currently raising capital to build an Embassy of Tribal Nations, which would solidify the international standing of American Indian tribes. As an intertribal, nonpartisan organization, NCAI remains one of the largest and most powerful Indian organizations in the United States. It influences decision making on federal policy regarding American Indians, and it affects how tribes implement programs and plan for their futures. Elizabeth Arbuckle Wabindato See Appendix B See also Bureau of Indian Affairs; Deloria, Vine, Jr.; National Indian Youth Council; Native American Education; Native Americans; Pan-Indianism; Red Power
Further Readings
Cornell, Stephen. 1988. The Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence. New York: Oxford University Press. Cowger, Thomas W. 1999. The National Congress of American Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Deloria, Vine, Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle. 1984. The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty. Austin: University of Texas Press. Nagel, Joane. 1997. American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
Web Sites
National Congress of American Indians: http://www.ncai.org
NATIONAL COUNCIL
OF
LA RAZA
Recognized as the largest national organization in the United States advocating for Latinos and civil rights,
the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) works with community-based organizations to improve opportunities for Latinos. The NCLR touches millions of Latinos annually throughout the United States and Puerto Rico, addressing quality-of-life influences such as poverty, discrimination, education, health, and housing.
Origins The impetus for the NCLR was a small group of Mexican Americans in Washington, D.C., who in 1963 organized as the National Organization for Mexican American Services (NOMAS). This group of advocates, which included a young man from Texas named Raul Yzaguirre, approached the Ford Foundation for funding to establish an organization that could provide technical assistance and organizational structure for the Mexican American community. Although interested, the Ford Foundation confessed to a lack of understanding of the Mexican American community and its needs. In 1966, the Ford Foundation hired three Mexican American leaders, Dr. Julian Samora, Dr. Ernesto Galarza, and Herman Gallegos, to travel the Southwest and identify how the foundation could help Mexican Americans. Within 9 months after the three consultants returned from their research travels, with a recommendation to establish an organization, the Southwest Council of La Raza (SWCLR) was incorporated in Arizona in 1968. Herman Gallegos was installed as the founding executive director, and Maclovio Barranza was the first chairperson of the board. In December 1972, SWCLR became a national organization and changed its name to National Council of La Raza; in 1973, the organization moved its headquarters to Washington, D.C. The term la raza was introduced by a Mexican scholar and visionary by the name of José Vasconcelos, in his book La Raza Cosmica. Although the term has been mistranslated to mean “the race,” a more accurate translation is “the people.” Vasconcelos referred to the “cosmic people,” those who share a mixture of races, cultures, and religions inherent in Latin America. La raza is an inclusive concept that is conducive to interaction and gathering of all peoples. In 1974, Raul Yzaguirre became the national director for NCLR, marking the beginning of an enduring and stable leadership that would project the organization to the strong national status it holds today. Yzaguirre led the organization for 30 years, during
National Council of La Raza
which time the organization was influential in providing the Latino perspective on countless legislative issues. Upon Yzaguirre’s retirement in 2004, Janet Murguía stepped into the role of president and chief executive officer of NCLR. With a degree in law and experience as former deputy director of legislative affairs and senior White House liaison to the Congress, Murguía was well prepared to be the official spokesperson for the NCLR and to lead the organization into the next era.
NCLR TODAY: Mission and Programs NCLR is a nonprofit, private, nonpartisan advocacy organization with offices in Atlanta; Chicago; Los Angeles; New York; Phoenix; Sacramento; San Antonio; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. The organization is governed by a board that has been constructed for success, including representation from all Latino subgroups and all geographical regions of the United States, with approximate division by gender. According to its charter, 12 of the board members must represent affiliates. The organization is also guided by a corporate board of advisers (CBA), which is made up of senior executives from twenty-five major corporations. Originally conceived to address the needs of the Mexican American community, the board took a major step in 1979 to expand the scope of representation and assistance to all Latino subgroups. The mission of NCLR is built on these cornerstones: capacity-building assistance to community-based organizations and public policy analysis and advocacy. Through these two complementary approaches, NCLR focuses on eight areas of concern for the Latino community, including advocacy and electoral empowerment, civil rights and justice, community and family wealth building, education, employment and economic opportunities, farmworkers, health and family support, and immigration. In the area of advocacy and electoral empowerment, NCLR has been instrumental in providing input on policies regarding voting rights and racial profiling and the implementation of “LEAP to Action,” a voter mobilization program. Latino homeownership has been increased and social security reform addressed through efforts in the community and family wealthbuilding programs. Through the education arm of the strategic plan, NCLR sponsors Americorps, a program that provides educational and workforce development to increase
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the number of Latinos in national services; KIDS COUNT, a program in Puerto Rico that addresses the information gap concerning child-related issues such as poverty, education, health, abuse and neglect, adolescent drinking, teen pregnancy, and youth suicide and homicide; and the Early Care and Education (ECE) Program, focused on increasing the number of Latino children who are ready to enter school. In the area of health and family support, NCLR has been active on issues of access to health insurance and language access and has partnered with California State University, Long Beach, to sponsor the NCLR/ CSULB Center for Latino Community Health, Evaluation, and Leadership Training, a center that promotes health and disease prevention, provides technical assistance, information, and research, and works to increase the number of Latinos in the health professions. Immigration and farmworkers pose many opportunities for NCLR, including being a force in policy debates regarding civil liberties after the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the DREAM Act, which proposes in-state college tuition for immigrant students, migrant education, and general immigration reform. The NCLR Policy Analysis Center, in Washington, D.C., which serves as the hub for policy analysis and applied research, is recognized for its capacity to provide analysis and advocacy expertise. Covering a broad range of issues, work done at the center often leads to policy-oriented documents, fact sheets, training materials, congressional testimony, statistical analysis, selected speeches, and research papers, with a reputation for being a credible source of information and facts. NCLR also publishes a quarterly magazine, Agenda. Advocating for Latinos in public policy issues relating to topics such as immigration, affordable housing, education, health, and tax reform, NCLR is the premier voice in Washington, D.C., and is often called on to testify in congressional hearings to provide a Latino perspective. NCLR played a major role in shaping the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) and is credited with influencing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Alma Alvarez-Smith See Appendix B See also La Raza; Mexican Americans; Minority Rights; Social Inequality; Voting Rights
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Further Readings
Alvarez-Smith, Alma. 2004. “National Council of La Raza (NCLR).” Pp. 582–584 in Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture, edited by C. C., Candelaria, A. J. Aldama, and P. J. Garcia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Magaña, Lisa. 2005. Mexican Americans and the Politics of Diversity. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Web Sites
National Council of La Raza: http://www.nclr.org
NATIONAL INDIAN YOUTH COUNCIL The National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) began as a militant American Indian civil rights organization in 1961 but has since evolved into a nonprofit charitable organization that focuses on global and regional indigenous issues. NIYC was founded in Gallup, New Mexico, by college students and recent graduates, partly in reaction to young Indians feeling excluded from decision making at the American Indian Charter Convention in Chicago (AICCC) in 1961. Delegates attending AICCC created a Declaration of Purpose to present to President John F. Kennedy urging that he stop the federal policy of tribal terminations. The AICCC discussions were dominated by older, long-term tribal and urban Indian leaders, many currently affiliated with the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). After feeling shut out at AICCC, some young, well-educated, confident, defiant, and mostly urban American Indians formed their own organization, the NIYC. It was founded by ten youth from nine different tribes. Leaders Clyde Warrior (Ponca), Melvin Thom (Paiute), and Herbert Blatchford (Navajo) early on envisioned NIYC as starting a Red Power movement, with individuals who were grounded in their Indian heritage but still able to work within the White culture and education system. They saw themselves as remnants of a traditional warrior society, which fought any potential threat to the tribes. They were adamant their group would never allow political climbing or become complacent. Unlike NCAI, the NIYC was developed to represent young American Indian people, not tribes. Melvin Thom coined the slogan “For a Greater Indian America,” which rejected the values and
capitalism of mainstream U.S. society. Clyde Warrior coined the term “Uncle Tomahawks” to describe tribal leaders of the day, whom he saw as too closely affiliated with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). NIYC leaders patterned their attitudes and organization after civil rights organizations of the day. NIYC had a confrontational style in their challenges of current tribal individuals and institutions designed to serve Indians. The well-educated members believed they could awaken an American Indian ethnic consciousness through efforts patterned after those of the Black Civil Rights Movement. NIYC leaders found their first national target in the Pacific Northwest. Tribes in the state of Washington were fighting for the right to exercise fishing treaty rights. In the early 1960s, NIYC supported these efforts by staging “fish-ins,” patterned after the effective Black civil rights “sit-ins.” NIYC members watched from the shore as Washington tribal members fished. Eventually, thousands of Native Americans from over fifty different tribes around the country came to support treaty rights. There were arrests, protests at the state capitol building, marches, and canoe parades. NIYC member Hank Adams (Assiniboine and Sioux) was an instrumental leader during the fish-ins. The fish-ins were designed to gain media and political attention for treaty rights violations. The most famous arrest came in 1964, on Puyallup River, when actor Marlon Brando was arrested for fishing without a state permit. The treaty rights issue was eventually settled in what came to be known as the Boldt decision. Federal Judge George Boldt ruled in 1974 that the treaties were valid and that the tribes were entitled to half of the salmon in Western Washington. NIYC was one of eight American Indian organizations that participated in the Trail of Broken Treaties caravan in the fall of 1972. The caravan was designed to raise awareness of American Indian issues, including poor living conditions and treaty rights violations. The caravan began on the West Coast, traveling across country until it reached Washington, D.C. After lodging arrangements there turned out to be unsuitable for the protesters, some participants took over the BIA building. In a misguided attempt to protest the oppressive tactics of the BIA, several protesters vandalized the offices and destroyed important documents. During the 1970s, NIYC expanded its scope to include a lawsuit-driven agenda in the fight to protect American Indian communities, particularly those
National Origins System
trying to preserve their environments from exploitation. Efforts by the NIYC and others led to the halting of coal gasification plants worth $6 billion on the Navajo reservation. Today, NIYC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and is overseen by a seven-member board of directors. It relies heavily on federal funding sources to maintain its operating costs and programs. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is the primary funder, but private donations and grants supplement the NIYC budget as well. With DOL funds, NIYC operates a job training and placement program for off-reservation American Indians in the New Mexico cities of Albuquerque, Farmington, and Gallup. As a nonpartisan organization, NIYC advocates increasing American Indian political participation in the U.S. political system. It holds voter registration drives in Native American communities and conducts its own political behavior poll. It has published an Indian Elections Directory and serves as a national resource for Indian political data. It has also filed lawsuits regarding unfair voting practices. Other domestic initiatives include litigation promoting the protection of treaty rights and sacred Native sites and efforts to educate the public about Native American concerns. The international focus of NIYC is on raising awareness of problems faced by indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere. NIYC has nongovernmental organization (NGO) consultative status with the United Nations. Elizabeth Arbuckle Wabindato See Appendix B See also American Indian Movement; Bureau of Indian Affairs; National Congress of American Indians; Native Americans; Pan-Indianism; Red Power; Trail of Broken Treaties
Further Readings
Shreve, Bradley Glenn. 2006. “Up against Giants: The National Indian Youth Council, the Navajo Nation, and Coal Gasification, 1974–1977.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 30(2): 17–34. Steiner, Stan. 1968. The New Indians. New York: Dell.
Web Sites
National Indian Youth Council: http://www.niyc-alb.org
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NATIONAL ORIGINS SYSTEM The U.S. Immigration Act of 1924, which launched what has come to be known as the National Origins System, was the apex of a restrictionist movement 3 decades in the making. Also known as the JohnsonReed Act, after its congressional sponsors, the National Origins Act replaced a hastily passed emergency immigration bill in 1921 that served as a stopgap measure to an anticipated massive immigration from Europe following World War I. This emergency bill limited the number of immigrants to 3% of the foreign-born population of a given nationality resident in the United States based on the 1910 census. Viewed as insufficient in stemming the immigrant tide and as discriminatory toward the U.S. native-born population, the 1924 National Origins Act addressed these perceived deficiencies. Using the 1890 census, the bill restricted the number of entrants to 2% of the U.S. native-born White population as determined by their national origins—a nebulous concept that required a series of adjustments.
Historical Development While efforts to restrict immigration to the United States extend to the 1830s, wholesale efforts to limit admissions did not begin until the latter part of the 19th century. Early efforts sought to exclude “undesirables”—such as convicts, sexual deviants, and the mentally ill—from the larger immigrant pool. As the flow of immigrants shifted from northern and western Europe to southern and eastern Europe, calls for immigration restrictions emerged. Seen largely as inferior to their northern and western European cousins, the often swarthier, olive-skinned newcomers (such as Slavs, Italians, and Jews) were of concern especially to the adherents of the newly emerging area of pseudoscientific inquiry known as eugenics. Concerns about their “poor racial stock” and the evils that could result by allowing them into the United States were voiced by Immigration Restriction League founder Prescott Hall, as well as by members of the American Breeders Association and the Eugenics Record Office, among others. Opposition to immigration from southern and eastern Europe was heightened by economic recession, labor unrest, anti-Catholic sentiment, and events surrounding World War I. Fears that southern and
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National Origins System
eastern Europeans were unassimilable were intensified by persistent ties to the “old world” among even the earliest immigrant groups during World War I. With the restrictionist sentiment building, efforts to restrict immigration ensued. Indeed, it became the main mission of the Immigration Restriction League. Formed in 1894 by Harvard graduates, the League had its political allies, including Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (later a member of the influential Dillingham Commission), who in 1896 introduced an immigration bill requiring all immigrants to read forty words in any language as a condition for entry. Although the bill passed Congress, it was vetoed by President Grover Cleveland in 1897 on the grounds that it contradicted traditional American values. This pattern was repeated three times—vetoed by President Taft and then by President Wilson (1915 and 1917). Yet Congress was able to successfully override Wilson’s 1917 veto, making literacy requirements another provision of U.S. immigration law. Similarly, legislation containing quota restrictions was introduced over several legislative sessions before achieving success in 1921 and 1924.
Key Provisions Writing shortly after passage of the 1924 National Origins Act, New York University sociology professor Henry Pratt Fairchild provided a summary of the key provisions of this law. The act specified that for 3 fiscal years, beginning July 1, 1924, immigration to the United States would be limited by quotas of 2% of the foreign-born individuals of each nationality resident in the United States as determined by the census of 1890. After July 1, 1927, the total quota was fixed at 150,000 annually, to be distributed among the different quota nationalities in the proportions according to the number of the original nationality as counted in the census of 1920. Determining national origin and national stock was left to a quota board under the jurisdictions of the secretaries of state, commerce, and labor, assisted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The Immigration Act of 1924 also marked the beginning of the end for Ellis Island, which created American consular offices abroad to issue foreign visas. One of the negative consequences of the hastily passed immigration bill of 1921 and its assignment of quotas was that immigrants would make their passage across the Atlantic only to be denied entry into the United States because a particular quota had been filled. The creation of the visa system in the 1924 act
and the assigning of counting responsibilities to the foreign consular office prevented such tragedies.
Consequences of the National Origins Act The goal of the National Origins Act was to control both the quantity and quality of U.S. immigrants in an effort to prevent further erosion of the ethnic composition of U.S. society. The law accomplished this goal using three mechanisms: capping the overall number of immigrants allowed into the United States in a given month and year; favoring immigrants from certain countries; and screening out otherwise qualified immigrants as unsuitable to the United States during the visa screening process. The sorting mechanism heavily favored northern and western European countries. The temporary formula of 2% of the foreign-born of each nationality in the 1890 census gave 85% of the quotas to northern and western European nations. The national origins system fully implemented in 1929 continued the trend of both overall restriction and nation bias. Indeed, the act virtually halted all immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Thus, European immigration dropped from more than 800,000 in 1921 to less than 150,000 by the end of the decade. In addition to controlling the volume of immigration from Europe, the National Origins Act also allowed a mechanism for selection of immigrants as well. In its creation of consular offices abroad, the act provided a frontline screening mechanism for selecting out those deemed unsuitable for the United States.
Lingering Effects of the National Origins Act The National Origins Act racialized the world and its inhabitants. While the act differentiated Europeans according to nationality and then ranked them along a hierarchy of desirability, the very act of their inclusion for immigration conferred upon them a designation of assimilability and the right to U.S. citizenship. Given that the U.S. Supreme Court had already legally codified citizenship along two racial lines (White and Black), all Europeans—whether from northern, western, southern, or eastern Europe—were thusly categorized as White. In the act’s delineation of groups ineligible for citizenship, these groups were placed into the non-White category and their immigration restricted.
National Rainbow Coalition
The National Origins Act specified that quotas be based on nationalities in proportion to the original nationality of the White population of the United States in 1920. Non-European peoples residing in the country were omitted from the population universe governing the quotas, including (a) all Blacks and mulattoes; (b) residents of groups deemed ineligible for citizenship, including Chinese, Japanese, and South Asians; and (c) populations of Hawai‘i, Puerto Rico, and Alaska. In effect, the National Origins System effectively ignored and indeed excluded all non-White, non-European peoples from the future vision of the United States. In these designations and omissions, the act created variable ethnicities, while at the same time affixing a racial category of White onto European immigrants. For those not White, the law fixed both racial and ethnic designations. To be Asian, for example, is to occupy both the same racial and ethnic category along with the broader categories of “non-White” and “nonassimilable.” Nevertheless, American citizens, including those falling outside the official definition of “American” as conceptualized by the quota board, already had a long and established presence in the United States. Today, the same groups excluded by the Quota Board in the 1920s continue to occupy the second-class status prescribed for them in the National Origins Act. Racial and ethnic categories remain nebulously defined along a continuum between White and Black, with White remaining a fairly fixed and protected category, the benefits conferred by the designation going largely unacknowledged. The significant role the National Origins Act played in demarcating this color line also goes largely unacknowledged. Karen Manges Douglas See also Assimilation; Citizenship; Dillingham Flaw; Immigration, Economic Impact of; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Race; McCarran-Walter Act of 1952; Muslim Americans; Racialization; Xenophobia
Further Readings
Easterlin, Richard A., David Ward, William S. Bernard, and Reed Ueda. 1982. Immigration: Dimensions of Ethnicity. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Fairchild, Henry Pratt. 1917. “The Literacy Test and Its Making.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 31:447–460.
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Fairchild, Henry Pratt. 1924. “The Immigration Law of 1924.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 38:653–665. Hall, Prescott F. 1912. “Book Review of The Immigration Problem by Jeremiah W. Jencks and W. Jett Lauck.” American Economic Review 2:675–667. Hall, Prescott F. 1913. “The Recent History of Immigration and Immigration Restriction.” Journal of Political Economy 21:735–751. Jones, Maldwyn Allen. 1992. American Immigration. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ngai, Mae M. 1999. “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924.” Journal of American History 86:167–192.
NATIONAL RAINBOW COALITION Introduced in 1984 by social and political activist Jesse Jackson, the National Rainbow Coalition (NRC), based in Washington, D.C., was established as “a progressive, Black-led, multiracial, anti-corporate, and anti-imperialist movement that took an electoral form.” As such, it became an informal subgroup within the Democratic Party that served as the vehicle of Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 voter registration drives and presidential bids. In 1983, during a climate of disenfranchisement of the politically underrepresented in the United States, Jackson formed a “rainbow coalition” to encourage millions of potential voters to register for and participate in the upcoming 1984 presidential election. As a result, he formally created the National Rainbow Coalition, which reached out to Blacks, Hispanics, Asian Americans, American Indians, homosexuals, poor Whites, females, those with family-run farms, and those living in poverty. The effort was both a success and a failure. Despite the acquisition of parity for minorities gained with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, during that time there existed only a handful of organizations that represented the national political interests of Blacks, among them the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Congressional Black Caucus. In 1972, the meeting of the National Black Political Convention discussed the formation of an independent political party; also during that year, Black congresswoman Shirley Chisholm ran for president. By 1984, a group of political leaders called the “Black Leadership Family” were again considering the pros
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and cons of affirming another Black presidential candidate. The advantages included national exposure to Black issues and encouraging voter registration in order to build a voting bloc within the Democratic Party; the main disadvantage was seen as the potential splintering of the party down racial lines. Present at the convention was Jackson, who made it clear that he was considering running with or without the group’s endorsement; later that year, Jackson announced his candidacy on national television. As an instrument for voter registration, Jackson’s 1984 efforts were successful in accounting for 1 million new Black voters. In fact, during the primary elections, the increased voter turnout was considerable; the most notable was in New York State, where the Black vote increased by over 125%. Even more impressive, during his 1988 campaign, Jackson’s candidacy encouraged an additional 2 million Blacks to register. What proved most daunting to Jackson was the challenge of actually building a national “rainbow” coalition. First, even though he had recently gained prominence by securing the release of a U.S. serviceman from a Syrian jail as a “civilian diplomat,” Jackson’s lack of national alliances and political experience led some political leaders and the media not to take his candidacy seriously. Second, while the rhetoric of creating a rainbow coalition sounded plausible, Jackson found that his potential constituents were often competing for national attention and for the same scarce social, political, and economic resources. Issues such as housing, poverty, unemployment, wages, bilingual education, desegregation, immigration, affirmative action, welfare, and care for the elderly, when positioned on a race-neutral platform, actually weakened, rather than strengthened, the possibility of coalition building. Moreover, Jackson alienated two groups that might otherwise have joined his coalition: the Jewish community (whom he referred to as “Hymies” in a newspaper interview) and women’s groups (who disagreed sharply with his 1972 antiabortion stance). Finally, Jackson may have underestimated the pervasive racism in the United States. In a 1988 poll, 25% of Whites said that they would automatically vote against any Black candidate; and while 85% and 95% of Blacks voted for Jackson in the 1984 and 1988 primaries, respectively, only 10% and 20% of Whites voted for him during those same two elections. After the 1984 election, Jackson sought to create NRC affiliates throughout the United States; in 1986,
he formally incorporated the organization, but as a result of his dictatorial management style and lack of follow-through, nothing came of it. After the 1988 election, Jackson returned to Chicago and merged the NRC with his previous civil rights organization, Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity), forming the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in 1989. Glynis Christine See Appendix B See also African Americans; Jackson, Jesse, Sr.; Multicultural Social Movements; Operation PUSH; Race; Voting Rights
Further Readings
Smith, Robert Charles. 1996. We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post Civil Rights Era. Albany: State University of New York Press. Walters, Ronald W. and Robert Charles Smith. 1999. African American Leadership. Albany: State University of New York Press. Weir, Margaret. 1998. The Social Divide: Political Parties and the Future of Activist Government. New York: Brookings Institution Press. Wilson, William J. 1999. The Bridge over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE The National Urban League, which traces its roots back to 1910, is the oldest national voluntary organization that seeks to empower African Americans socially and economically. Throughout its long history, its main focus has been on enabling economic self-reliance, parity, power, and civil rights of African Americans through series of community-based movements. This entry recounts its history and activities.
History A series of events at the turn of the 20th century prompted rapid change for United States citizens, particularly for African Americans. Both the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which abolished slavery after the Civil War, and the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision in 1896, which legally recognized
National Urban League
segregation, prompted African Americans to move northward in hopes of finding robust economic opportunities. This period of the Great Migration dramatically shifted the African American population from the southern to northeastern and midwestern United States. Industrial cities like Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Cleveland gained a large African American population in just a few decades. This massive transition was largely assisted by grassroots organizations and movements across many metropolitan areas. The Committee for the Improvement of Industrial Conditions Among Negroes in New York (established in 1906), the National League for the Protection of Colored Women (established in 1905), and the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes merged to form the Urban League in 1910. The Urban League was renamed the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, shortened to the National Urban League in 1920, by which it continues to be known today. The National Urban League is the nation’s oldest and largest community-based organization devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream. Led by George Edmund Haynes, the first African American to earn a PhD from Columbia University, and Ruth Standish Baldwin, a White New York City philanthropist, the Urban League was founded to provide social services, specifically housing and career opportunities, for thousands of African Americans who migrated north with hopes of building better lives for themselves and their families. For the following century, the National Urban League conducted campaigns to enhance education and employment for African Americans, organized marches to protest against racial discrimination, actively participated in the Civil Rights Movement, and initiated alternative educational systems for dropout students. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Urban League, along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), collaborated on many grassroots movements with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Today, the National Urban League, headquartered in New York City, spearheads the nonpartisan efforts of its local affiliates and aims to empower African Americans toward economic self-reliance, parity, power, and civil rights. There are over 100 local affiliates of the National Urban League located in thirty-five states
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and the District of Columbia. Nationally, more than 2 million people receive direct services through programs, advocacy, and research.
Activities To implement the mission of the organization, the Urban League strives to tailor its activities to local needs in five areas: education, health, civic engagement, civil rights, and economic empowerment. The emphasis on education includes youth empowerment through college scholarships, early childhood literacy, and afterschool programs. Health issues are focused on eliminating health disparities by healthy food consumption, encouraging physical fitness, and access to affordable health care for all. Civic engagement encourages an active role in public policy and leadership in the communities through full participation as citizens and voters, as well as active community service. The area of civil rights is intended to promote and ensure equal participation in political, economic, social, educational, and cultural aspects of American life. The Urban League also advocates economic empowerment achieved through job training, well-paying jobs, homeownership, entrepreneurship, and wealth accumulation. To monitor the progress of their mission, the National Urban League has produced annual reports since 1973. Using a measure called the “Equality Index,” the reports compare the disparity between African Americans and Whites in the aforementioned five areas, in addition to the overall evaluation, referred to as “Total Equality.” As of the 2007 report, the economic status of African Americans was 57% of that of Whites, while, in 2006, civic engagement was 5% higher for African Americans than it was for Whites. Focusing on African American men, the report stated that they are more than twice as likely to be unemployed, and those who work earn 75% of the annual income of White males. They are nearly seven times more likely to be incarcerated, and their average jail sentences are 10 months longer than those of White men. In addition, young Black males between the ages of 15 and 34 years are nine times more likely to die of homicide than their White counterparts and nearly seven times as likely to suffer from HIV/AIDS. The National Urban League also has created auxiliary organizations in order to enhance specific areas that are considered deficient in the African American community. National Urban League Young Professionals
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Nation of Islam
(NULYP) was created to develop leadership for the movement through corporate, social, and community activism by the younger generation (ages 21 to 40). The National Council of Urban League Guilds promotes volunteerism through supporting various programs and activities in the National Urban League. Kiljoong Kim and Christina Diaz See also Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); Emancipation Proclamation; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Plessy v. Ferguson; Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Further Readings
Lubka, Lewis. 1973. Toward Effective Citizen Participation in Urban Renewal: A Final Report of the National Urban League Urban Renewal Demonstration Project. New York: National Urban League. Moore, Jesse Thomas. 1981. A Search for Equality: The National Urban League, 1910–1961. College Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press. Parris, Guichard, ed. 1950. National Urban League 40th Anniversary Year Book. New York: National Urban League. Weiss, Nancy. 1974. National Urban League, 1910–40. New York: Oxford University Press.
NATION
OF ISLAM
The Nation of Islam (the Nation) had a very humble beginning but grew into an enormous organization of African Americans, devoted in large part to reconstituting their pride and self-sufficiency. This entry begins with the origin of the Nation, highlights relevant Nation philosophy, and concludes with a discussion of leadership in the Nation.
Origins of the Nation Nation of Islam historians state that Master Wallace Fard Muhammad began teaching about Islam to Black Americans in 1931. The Nation’s founder has been variously referred to as W. D. Fard, Mr. Muhammad, the son of man, the great Mahdi, and Master Fard Muhammad—a name more commonly used by the Nation today. His title, master, as explained by the Nation, refers to his ability to rehabilitate Black men
and women from the wretched and debilitating experience of slavery. Black Americans, according to Mr. Muhammad, had to be reprogrammed about their life, their place in the world, and their place in the universe. Mr. Muhammad’s Islam included the study of biological science, including genetics, mathematics, and actual/factual measurements of the earth, in addition to traditional Islam. Mr. Muhammad’s knowledge became a testament of who he was and why he came to America, according to the Nation. On the last page of every issue of the Final Call, under “What the Muslims Believe,” No. 12 states that they believe that Master Fard Muhammad is God in Person and is the “Messiah” of the Christians and the “Mahdi” of the Muslims. The Nation proclaims that Mr. Muhammad is indeed the one prophesied in the Holy Bible and Holy Koran.
Basic Teachings Mr. Muhammad instructed Elijah on how to use this knowledge to free the Black man’s mind from mental and spiritual death and from the bondage of slavery and White society. Therefore, not only did Mr. Muhammad demonstrate that he possessed knowledge that identified him as superior; he also used his knowledge to bring about the liberation of Black Americans. The Nation considered these works as clear proof that Mr. Muhammad was the Mahdi or Messiah of the Black Americans. In many respects, this brand of Islam was the combination of Black spirituality and liberation theology that entailed powerful philosophical, spiritual, and psychological mechanisms combined with social, political, and economic thrust. Converts learned about traditional Islam, to live for the here and now, self-defense skills, knowledge of God and the devil, and cooperative economics. The Nation reversed the negative tenets of White racism. The Nation claimed that the Black man is God and the White man is the devil. The Nation proposed that the United States give territory to Black Americans. The Nation challenged the racial identification and classification of Black Americans. These teachings attracted many African Americans and demanded that White America pay attention. Furthermore, Nation of Islam historians contend that the Nation is not an offshoot of its predecessors, Noble Drew Ali’s Moorish Science Temple or the Honorable Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The significance of Islam in American history has long been underrated, a not uncommon dilemma. The faith of Islam persisted in
Nation of Islam
African American culture, since many Africans brought Islam with them to the New World and remained faithful to its teachings. Islam has emerged among Africans in America again and again, yet never more permanently and significantly than in the Nation of Islam.
New Leaders Over the course of the 20th century, the Nation of Islam enjoyed the leadership of a number of eloquent and visionary people, among them Elijah Muhammad, his wife Clara, and his son Warith Deen; Malcolm X; and Louis Farrakhan, who remains in charge of the organization. Mother Clara a
Some writers and historians have claimed that it was Clara Muhammad, wife of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who first heard Mr. Muhammad’s teachings and told her husband about them. Ajile’ Rahman’s dissertation “She Stood by His Side and at Times in His Stead: The Life and Legacy of Sister Clara Muhammad First Lady of the Nation of Islam” examines the role and responsibilities of Mother Clara Muhammad during the Nation’s formative years. Rahman concludes that her role was in many instances so pivotal that when the Honorable Elijah Muhammad was incarcerated, Clara Muhammad was responsible for maintaining the Nation’s programs, its school, and its membership. Clara Muhammad’s role in the Nation was very important and crucial to its initial development and maintenance. Her initial responsibility was to teach and train the women their roles and responsibilities in a class called “Muslim Girl Training and General Civilization Class” (MGT-GCC). She also wrote Muhammad Speaks, articles about the role of the woman in Islam. Mr. Muhammad gave clear instructions for womanhood training to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and to Mother Clara Muhammad, as she is affectionately called today. The Honora able Elijah Muhammad
Mr. Muhammad began teaching the man then called Elijah Poole in 1931, one-on-one. Elijah Poole’s name was changed as his study increased, from Poole to Karriem to Muhammad. In 1934, the elder Mr. Muhammad disappeared, approximately 3½ years into the teaching of his successor. From 1934 to 1975, Elijah Muhammad led the Nation, and, eventually, he
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was given the title “Messenger of Allah.” The Nation developed businesses, purchased a home mosque, began schools, and operated a printing press that produced the Muhammad Speaks Newspaper. The Nation experienced its largest period of growth from 1955 to 1965, a phenomenon that some historians attribute in part to the fiery national spokesman Malcolm X. Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965 marked a significant turning point for the Nation’s growth. Members in the Nation were accused of assassinating Malcolm X, and the Nation received harsh criticism from the Black community, which had developed a strong association with the Nation and Malcolm. The Nation withstood this trial and continued to grow. By this time, the Nation was more than a “cult” with a few members; it was a nationally and even internationally known entity for the advancement of Black people in America and people of color in general. The Nation took a powerful stance against White America’s injustices toward Black people and was a major mover in the Civil Rights Movement. Wallace Dea an Muhammad
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, although Nation historians assert that he did not physically die, but departed and is with Master Fard Muhammad. Leadership of the Nation was assumed by Minister Wallace Deen Muhammad (son of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad), whose extensive studies and travels throughout the Islamic world as well as his ability to articulate the ideology of Islam qualified him to take the Nation’s mantle. Heading the Nation from 1975 until 1977, Minister Wallace Muhammad did not initially change the religious and organizational tenets established by his father. Later, he began to reorganize the Nation around orthodox Islam and renamed the Nation “American Muslim Mission.” At the same time, Minister Wallace Muhammad eliminated the manhood and womanhood training and the traditional Muslim style of dress instituted by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He sold most of the Nation’s businesses and placed the responsibility of economic development in the hands of the members. He issued a proclamation about Mr. (Fard) Muhammad’s identity, proclaiming that Master Fard Muhammad was not Allah or the embodiment of God, as the elder man had taught the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Minister Wallace Muhammad declared that the brand of Islam practiced by his father and his father’s teacher was deemed incorrect and unrepresentative of Islam’s true purpose and meaning. Soon, Minister Wallace
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Native American Education
Muhammad changed his name to reflect his embrace of orthodoxy and encouraged the members to do the same. Some members left the Nation, while others stayed. Louiss Farrakhan
In 1977, Minister Louis Farrakhan left the American Muslim Mission. One year later, he began reorganizing the Nation of Islam based on the original teachings of Mr. Muhammad and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. In 1979, Minister Farrakhan began the Final Call newspaper, the only Black newspaper that is distributed across the entire United States. As Minister Farrakhan’s perspectives have evolved, so has the Nation. Farrakhan is considered more mainstream than both the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. Although he was strongly repudiated in the beginning, even his harshest critics acknowledge that Farrakhan is one of the most influential Black men in America and the world today. In 1995, Farrakhan called for a million Black men to march to Washington to atone for their sins to each other and the Black community. The Million Man March is the largest gathering ever recorded in the United States.
and historical contexts that also make Native American tribes in the United States unique ethnically and politically. Formal schools are a relatively new way to educate Native American people. Precolonized Native American nations had, over thousands of years, developed successful means of educating members of their societies—transmitting tribal worldviews, philosophies, histories, knowledge, language, values, and life skills. Education, as defined by contemporary European American culture, was brought to indigenous nations during the process of European colonization. Historically, from a Native American standpoint, schools worked against the interests of the tribal community, with a focus on eliminating distinctive cultural and linguistic traditions. It has only been within the past generation that this has changed. Native American education has paralleled and reflected the political and social realities of Native American nations as colonized people who have now reclaimed sovereign status and self-determination. Thus, in many ways, Native American education has come full circle, from being a tool for systematic cultural extermination and assimilation to a means for preserving tribal worldview histories and culture.
Toni Sims See also African Americans; Back to Africa Movement; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Malcolm X; Muslim Americans; Religion
Further Readings
Diouf, Sylvaine. 1998. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas. New York: New York University Press. Karenga, Maulana. 1993. Introduction to Black Studies. 2nd ed. San Diego, CA: University of Sankore Press. Lincoln, C. Eric. [1961] 1994. The Black Muslims in America. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Muhammad, Elijah. 1965. Message to the Blackman in America. Chicago, IL: Muhammad Mosque of Islam No. 2. Muhammad, Elijah. 1993. History of the Nation of Islam. Atlanta, GA: Secretarius Memps.
NATIVE AMERICAN EDUCATION Native American education is a complex and unique topic, intricately interwoven with the social, political,
Education, Colonialism, and Forced Assimilation Misssio on Sch hools
The formal “education” of Native American people in North America began soon after European contact. Its pace and intensity paralleled the drive to colonize the continent. As early as 1611, formal education began, first, with mission schools opened by French Jesuit missionaries, followed by schools established by Dominicans and the Franciscans. The Spanish Jesuits, who had pioneered the creation of mission schools since 1609, continued their efforts, particularly on the West Coast, well into the 19th century. Often, priests were supported by military troops in removing Native American children from their homes and communities for “schooling,” often for extended periods of time. Later, British Protestants followed much the same course as the Catholics; during the colonial era, conversion of Native Americans to Christianity, Eurocentric civilization, and learning were seen as inseparable and imperative to the goal of supplanting indigenous culture and furthering colonial settlement. Immediately after the Revolutionary War, the newly formed U.S. government began appropriating funds
Native American Education
Carlisle Indian School physical education class. Male Native American students are shown in a physical education class at Carlisle Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania (early 1900s). The goal of the Carlisle School and its founder, U.S. Army officer Richard Henry Pratt, was total assimilation of Native Americans into White culture. The boarding school system, of which Carlisle was just one example, remained in some capacity until the 1950s and 1960s and had a far-reaching negative impact on Native American societies by separating children from their families and culture for extended periods. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-120987.
for the education of American Indians. A high premium was initially placed on the arts of diplomacy and subversion for attaining U.S. objectives, thus creating the need for assimilated Indians educated in European American language and culture. In 1819, Congress established the Civilization Fund, for the purpose of “education of the frontier tribes.” This was followed by acceptance of a proposal that future treaties with American Indian nations incorporate provisions for “education.” For the delivery of these programs, the federal government relied heavily on missionaries. During the reservation era, it became mandatory for children age 6 through 16 to attend the mission day schools that were overseen by government Indian agents. After the creation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), there was a transfer from religious control to civil control of Native American education.
Manual Labor Schoolls
In the early 19th century, Native American educational programs continued to expand and after 1825 included a new model that involved manual labor. The first of these schools was the Choctaw Academy,
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established by the Methodists in 1834. The Methodist Society soon opened a similar facility in Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1839. This “academy” imposed a rigid military-style work regimen, generating the revenues necessary to support itself and profit from the students’ manual labor. This was considered to be so successful by both the church and the government that the Methodists were authorized to open more facilities. The notion of forced labor as a part of Native American education took hold as a means to “develop native character,” and, by 1868, there were 109 manual labor schools, with enrollments of 4,600 students.
Board ding Schools
The manual labor schools eventually developed into government-sponsored boarding schools, the most infamous being the Carlisle Indian School. Despite forbidding the use of Native American languages and the federal law banning Native religious practices, it became apparent to governmental authorities that day schools afforded students too much interaction with their families and communities, and this interfered with the goals of deculturation and assimilation. It was in this context that the boarding school model was developed. After being removed from their families and communities for an extended period of time, often years, students returned to their communities with diffused identities—neither able to reenter their original culture nor able to assimilate into White America. The boarding school system, which remained in some capacity until the 1950s and 1960s, had a far-reaching negative impact on Native American societies. Despite heavy investment in the boarding school system, the federal government was reluctant to commit the resources necessary to create a universal educational system for all Native American students in the United States. Fortunately,
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this lack of funding and commitment prevented Native cultures and languages from being totally obliterated during this era. Fed deral and State e Publicc Schools
By 1906, the government was reluctant to broaden the boarding school system, and many Native American children began to be diverted into public schools. The termination and relocation legislation of the 1950s saw many more children being placed in public schools both off-reservation and in urban areas, where many families were relocating. While not as overtly brutal as the mission, manual labor, and boarding schools, the public school system failed to meet the needs of Native American students. Curricula that emphasized the superiority of the dominant culture and implied the inferiority of Native American people continued to be destructive to students’ identities and development. Reports on the experiences of Native American students as recently as the 1990s indicate that many still attend public schools with Eurocentric curriculums, subtle racism, and climates that fail to promote appropriate academic and social development. These factors may contribute to the high school drop-out rate of 36%, which is the highest of any minority group within the United States. With regard to higher education, a task force found that unsupportive institutional climates, inadequate academic preparation, insufficient financial support, few role models, and unaddressed cultural influences on student adjustment were identified as major causes for disenfranchisement of Native American students.
Resistance and Reform The self-determination era of the 1960s and 1970s proved to be extremely important from the standpoint of both federal Indian policy and Indian educational reform—allowing Native Americans to gain greater control over their school systems and educational processes. In 1969, the Senate Subcommittee on Indian Education issued its final report on the educational status of Native American people in a report, Indian Education: A National Tragedy, A National Challenge. This report documented the significant failure of U.S. public education to address the needs of Native American students. This failure was attributed to the federal government’s policy of assimilation through education and attempts to eradicate indigenous
languages and cultures. Congressional action as a response to this report occurred in 1972, when the Indian Education Act provided a means to meet the special needs of Native American students in public schools and to establish a National Advisory Council on Indian Education to train teachers, prioritize funding, and work with tribal community colleges. In 1969, the first Native American community college was opened, followed by eight more by 1972. Today, there are over thirty tribally controlled colleges. Tribal colleges build important bridges for students seeking a college education. A task force found that students who completed study at a tribal community college and then transferred to a 4-year institution had a completion rate 75% greater than those who attended 4-year colleges or universities after high school. Ren naisssance
Tribally controlled K–12 programs and community colleges are revitalizing Native American culture and philosophy, while facing many challenges, such as funding. In some communities, tribal schools and colleges provide the means for gathering, storing, and preserving language, art, oral history, and distinct aspects of culture. In addition, many academics are in the process of redefining their academic disciplines according to Native American epistemologies. As a result, Native American cultural forms of education contain seeds for new models of education that might serve to enliven education as a whole. As in other areas of contemporary Native American life, a tension exists between preparing current and future generations for the demands of urban life while maintaining tribal values, culture, and traditions. A culturally sensitive and relevant education prepares students for participation in a culturally diverse, technological society. It also addresses the historical context and relationship between Native American cultures and the educational system. Moreover, it helps Native American students understand the nature of cultural identity itself and to identify ways in which educational strategies can build on, rather than destroy, cultural strengths. Arieahn Matamonasa-Bennett See Appendix B See also American Indian Movement; Assimilation; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Higher Education; Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue; Native American Identity; Pipeline; Reservation System
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990
Further Readings
Cajete, Gregory. 1994. Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education. Durango, CO: Kivaki Press. Cajete, Gregory. 2006. “It Is Time for Indian People to Define Indigenous Education on Our Own Terms.” Tribal College 18(2):56–58. Deloria, Vine, Jr. and Daniel R. Wildcat. 2001. Power and Place: Indian Education in America. Golden, CO: Fulcrum. Noriega, Jorge. 1992. “Native American Education in the United States: Indoctrination for Subordination to Colonialism.” Pp. 371–402 in The State of Native America, edited by M. A. Jaimes. Boston, MA: South End Press. Reyhner, John and Jeanne Eder. 2006. Native American Education: A History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Szasz, Margaret. 1974. Education of the Native American: The Road to Self-Determination, 1928–1973. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Szasz, Margaret. 1999. Education and the Native American: The Road to Self-Determination since 1982. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico.
Web Sites
Native American Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) Virtual Library: http://www.aihecvl.org
NATIVE AMERICAN GRAVES PROTECTION AND REPATRIATION ACT OF 1990 On November 16, 1990, the U.S. Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed an act to provide for the protection of Native American graves. The public law was titled the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) (104 Stat. 3048, Public Law 101-601, November 16, 1990). The act was designed not only to protect Native American graves but also to prevent illegal excavations on Federal and tribal lands, prohibit the illegal trafficking of indigenous human remains and cultural items obtained in violation of the act, and establish legal criteria for repatriating Native human remains, associated funerary objects, and artifacts of cultural patrimony. For federally recognized tribes and Native Hawaiian communities, the act represented an attempt to halt the illegal “grave robbing”
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and “pot hunting” related to the lucrative artifact collectors trade, as well as a mechanism to rectify past actions that created a need for a national law. This entry looks at the historical context and subsequent implementation of the law.
Historical Context of NAGPRA Since the colonization of North America and the Hawaiian Islands, Indigenous Peoples have endured the desecration of gravesites and the theft of cultural objects. Initially, indigenous sites were destroyed to obtain natural resources and, later, to fill the cabinets of curiosities among the European elite. Regardless of the motives, European scholars and theologians argued that the Native peoples of the New World were barbaric, unreasoning, sunk in vice, incapable of learning, lacking a sophistication of language and cultural customs, and physically different from Europeans. Hence, Native Americans were viewed as lower on the scale of being, closer to a “natural” or “savage” state of humanness. Indigenous peoples were considered inferior and defective members of the human species. By the 19th century, U.S. nation-building efforts under the policy of Manifest Destiny had led to the active collection of indigenous skeletal remains and artifacts, under the guise of promoting the racial sciences. American society required a science that would faithfully reflect societal inequities and reify the destiny of the nation-state to expand against neighboring “inferior,” “primitive” peoples. This scientific tradition determined the future social and moral progress of the nation for many years. National progress demanded a body of knowledge that would explain and determine the course, nature, and shape of society, including America’s “racial” composition. A hallmark of 19th-century scientific racism was the development of craniometry, the measurement of skulls, to scientifically prove that the varieties of humankind, including Native Americans, were conceived of as separate species or degenerated races that possessed certain characteristics that were deeply rooted in their descent. Soldiers, missionaries, physicians, explorers, Indian agents, and natural historians actively engaged in gathering indigenous remains and cultural objects. Using the largest Native American skull collection in the world, Philadelphia physician Dr. Samuel G. Morton published Crania Americana in 1839.
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Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990
Drawing on the science of phrenology and craniometry, Morton asserted the inferiority of the American Indian, concluding that this race possessed a “deficiency of ‘higher’ mental powers” and an “inaptitude for civilization.” In addition, the structure of an “Indian’s” mind, Morton concluded, was quite different, making it impossible for European Americans and Native Americans to interact socially. Morton’s racial theories lent evidence to the proposition that Indigenous Peoples were a “vanishing race” that would become extinct as civilization progressed. The myth of the “vanishing race” prompted the science of ethnology to collect comparative data about indigenous life before its people disappeared or were radically altered by placement on reservations. Collecting cultural artifacts, along with indigenous remains, promoted the development of museum collections. To enhance the collection of the Army Medical Museum, for example, the surgeon general ordered army personnel in 1868 to collect Indian skulls from the western Indian wars. More than 4,000 skulls were collected under that order. By the turn of the 20th century, after surviving Indigenous Peoples were either placed on reservations or confined to the margins of U.S. society, “salvage ethnology” and craniometry to ascertain racial characteristics had become an ingrained endeavor of the new science of anthropology. Along with members of several other disciplines, anthropologists attempted to gather firsthand data, including material artifacts that would simultaneously record traditional indigenous cultural practices and provide vital information that would assist the Indian Office in its forced assimilation of surviving Indian peoples. It is no coincidence that on March 3, 1879, the Bureau of Ethnology (BAE) was created as an arm of the Smithsonian Institution to collect cultural and biological data about Native Americans, to break up the “habits of a savage” by introducing elements of civilization. Ethnocide, from 1880 to 1934, became officially sanctioned as government policy. With the emergence of tourism and the exotic art market, indigenous remains and artifacts became a commodity. Many items of cultural significance—among them medicine bundles, heraldic poles, altar objects, and mummies—found their way into the hands of private collectors. A large amount of these materials were sold on the international market, leaving Native North America forever. Some of these artifacts were traded
for or bought, sometimes from Native peoples. At the end of the 20th century, staggering amounts of cultural property was possessed by nonindigenous people for scientific or personal reasons. Human remains, grave contents, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony lay stored or on display in museums, tourist attractions, art houses, private collections, and universities.
Implementation and Politics of NAGPRA The passage of NAGPRA established legal mandates requiring museums and federal agencies to inventory improperly acquired human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony and return them to Native American claimants. Once an inventory is completed, submitted, and reviewed, the items must be returned to lineal descendants or culturally affiliated Indian tribes or Native Hawaiian groups under prescribed evidentiary and procedural guidelines. In addition, NAGPRA prohibits trafficking in Native American body parts and the excavation of Native American graves found on federal or tribal land without tribal consent. When remains are accidentally discovered on such lands, affected tribes must be notified and consulted with about the disposition of the remains. Initially, the passage of NAGPRA caused a backlash among segments of the scientific and museum community. A minority of physical anthropologists, museum curators, archaeologists, and private collectors openly opposed the act’s implementation. Fearing a massive loss of valuable data and control, they charged that the law violated the First Amendment and interfered with their professional obligations to care for the past and to use empirical data to construct the truth; some claimed that indigenous people were distorting factual history to fit their present political needs. Native peoples responded to the claims in a variety of ways. Some tribal representatives attempted to quell fears by working closely with the scientific community. Others, however, resorted to outright name-calling and using public forums to heighten tensions. No case exemplified the legal tension concerning NAGPRA better than the Kennewick case. In 1996, on the shores of the Columbia River, human remains were discovered dated 7,000 to 9,000 years old. The
Native American Health Care
find immediately raised legal, cultural, and scientific issues. Section 3 of NAGPRA states that human remains and associated funerary objects must be returned to the living descendants or descendant tribes. The find, however, was early prehistoric and could not be precisely assigned to any living tribal society. Confounding the growing dispute were multiple tribal claims, a unique morphology that does not fit a Native American “skeletal type,” and the desire to thoroughly study the remains before returning them. Through a series of trials, beginning in 1996, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in February 2004 declared that the claimant tribes had demonstrated no direct kinship and the scientists could conduct further research. Since the Kennewick case, the federal government has refined the definitions in NAGPRA and added several technical amendments. NAGPRA is still applied through a case-by-case process. The law will take years to fully implement as tribes, agencies, museums, and the courts clarify and apply the law. By 2004, about 30,261 indigenous human remains, 581,679 associated funerary objects, and 1,222 sacred objects had been repatriated to Native Hawaiian and Native American claimants. The 2007 Midyear Report indicates that there have been 360 Notices of Intent to Repatriate. The notices account for 118,442 funerary objects, 3,585 sacred objects, and 296 objects of cultural patrimony. After nearly 2 decades, the mistrust and fears surrounding the implementation of the law among tribes, scientists, and museum professionals are being replaced with a growing trust and responsibility to do what is best for the materials in question. There is general agreement that the process has not harmed legitimate scientific inquiry but has instead led to a better understanding of Native American cultural history and closer collaboration between Native American tribes and scientists. As is often the case with human and civil rights legislation, changes associated with the application of NAGPRA have not come without strife and challenges. Certainly, the law in the future will be occasionally tested in the legal arena. NAGPRA, however, is beginning to rectify past and present social injustices inflicted on Indigenous Peoples. Gregory R. Campbell See also Deloria, Vine, Jr.; Kennewick Man; Native Americans; Sacred Sites, Native American
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Further Readings
Bieder, Robert E. 1990. A Brief Historical Survey of the Expropriation of American Indian Remains. Boulder, CO: Native American Rights Fund. Reprinted in Hearing before Select Committee on Indian Affairs on S. 1021 and S. 1980, 101 Cong., 2nd Sess. (May 14, 1990), pp. 278–362. Echo-Hawk, Roger C. and Walter R. Echo-Hawk. 1994. Battlefields and Burial Grounds: The Indian Struggle to Protect Ancestral Remains in the United States. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner. Gould, Stephen J. 1978. “Morton’s Ranking of Races by Cranial Capacity: Unconscious Manipulation of the Data May Be the Scientific Norm.” Science 200:503–509. Gould, Stephen J. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton. Hinsley, Charles. 1981. Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and the Development of American Anthropology, 1846–1910. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Hoxie, Fredrick. 1984. The Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Pagden, Anthony. 1982. The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Stuart, Paul. 1979. The Indian Office: Growth and Development of an American Institution, 1865–1900. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Research Press. Trigger, Bruce. 1989. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Trope, Jack F. and Walter R. Echo-Hawk. 1992. “The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act: Background and Legislative History.” Arizona State Law Journal 24(35):45–75.
NATIVE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE From first European contact, the health status of Native American people changed dramatically as European infectious diseases, especially smallpox, ravaged Native communities. Beginning in the early 19th century and more or less continuously since then, the U.S. government has played a role in providing health care to American Indians. Under different names and different leadership, Native American health care has evolved from an organization devoted to missionizing Native American and Alaskan Native people in the “ways of civilization,” through the introduction of Western medicine and a reactionary
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organization trying to control infectious diseases, and finally, into a service devoted to providing comprehensive health care and promoting health equity among Native American and Alaskan Native people. Today, the primary responsibility of providing comprehensive health care for eligible Native Americans and Alaskan Natives is assigned to the Indian Health Service (IHS), one of eight agencies in the U.S. Public Health Service. The mission of the Indian Health Service is to achieve the highest attainable level of health for Native American and Alaskan Native people. The broad goals of the IHS are to ensure equity in health care delivery and to assist Native people in defining their health needs, establishing local health care priorities, and providing management for health programs. During the 20th century, and especially since 1955, the health status of American Indians and Alaskan Natives has improved dramatically. Despite the tremendous gains in the level of health—and IHS efforts that have contributed to this outcome— American Indians and Alaskan Natives have not achieved an equitable level of health parallel to the general population. In a nine-IHS-Service-Area comparison of rates with the 1987 U.S. rates, American Indians and Alaskan Natives experienced a 400% greater rate of tuberculosis, a 663% greater rate for alcoholism, and a 295% greater rate for accidents than the U.S. general population. In addition, American Indians and Alaskan Natives suffer a 268% greater rate for diabetes mellitus, a 134% greater rate for homicide, and a 95% greater rate for suicide. Such statistics reveal how large the gap is in health equity between the non-Native population and our nation’s Indigenous Peoples. This entry reviews the history of federal involvement in Native American health care, describes the operation of the IHS, and looks at the broader issue of Native American health status.
The Evolving Federal Role Despite the rapid and acute periods of mortality among tribes, as well as the deterioration of health status in the early years of contact between American Indians and Whites, it was not until the early 1800s that federal health services for American Indians began under the auspices of the War Department, which administered Indian affairs.
19th h Century y
By 1819, legislation authorized $10,000 annually to instruct Indian people in the “arts of civilization.” The Superintendent of Indian Trade initially distributed the monies, but after 1824, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), under the War Department, allocated the funds, primarily to missionary societies. Some minimal health care was delivered, largely targeting indigenous medical beliefs and practices. Linking health care to the process of “civilizing” American Indian people continued as official BIA policy until 1934. The first legal commitment to provide a specific American Indian nation with health services was in 1832. The federal government negotiated a treaty with the Winnebago tribe stipulating that a physician would be provided as partial payment for ceded lands. Although the federal government had a legal mandate to deliver health care to select American Indian nations, health care remained sporadic and reactionary. With the transfer of the BIA to the newly created Department of the Interior in 1849, a bureaucratic structure emerged to serve the growing health needs of Indian people under governmental control. By 1873, the BIA, under the Division of Education and Medicine, developed a rudimentary structure for health care delivery, the reporting of vital statistics from various Indian agencies, and the distribution of medical supplies. In 1877, the Division of Education and Medicine was abolished and medical services were placed under the Civilization Division (which later evolved into the Education Division). During this period, a civilian corps of physicians was placed at some Indian agencies and reservations. By the 1880s, the permanent settlement of American Indian people on reservations allowed the Indian administration to construct a system of hospital-based care and to establish a nursing staff and a field matron corps in the 1890s. Although the availability of health care improved, inadequate facilities, a lack of medical supplies, transportation problems, and incompetent personnel as well as a general resistance by many Native American people toward Western medicine plagued the delivery of services. The rejection of Western medicine was related to the role of reservation medical practices in destroying Native American healing and religious beliefs.
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Earlly 20th h Century y
The period between 1900 and 1955 saw revolutionary changes in the administration and practice of curative and preventive medicine. With regard to health organization, centralized medical supervision of Native American health care began in 1908, with the creation of the position of Chief Medical Supervisor. The supervisor position was strengthened in 1924 with the creation of the Health Division of the BIA. Two years later, the Indian Medical Service underwent a general reorganization. The country was divided into four medical districts, each with a district medical director and a chief medical director. The reorganization of the Indian Medical Service was a response to the 1921 Snyder Act, which required the federal government to provide routine health care to American Indian people. As these bureaucratic changes took place, the practice of medicine among Native people also changed. These changes were largely prompted by major health surveys conducted by the Public Health Service in 1913 and the Meriam Commission report, published by the Brookings Institute in 1928. The quality of hospital facilities improved greatly. Motivated by a 1922 American Red Cross report, public health nurses were added to the medical staff in 1924. Public health nurses reached a peak of 110 in 1939, but declined to 70 in 1955. Native American participation in the Indian Medical Service began in 1935, with the establishment of the Kiowa School of Practical Nursing. Through a 9-month course of study, Native American women were trained in practical nursing skills. During this same period, BIA health officials instituted a number of specific disease control programs, especially for tuberculosis and trachoma, and health education programs on reservations. In 1911, the Indian Medical Service declared tuberculosis, trachoma, and infant mortality a national health tragedy. In response, the BIA between 1911 and 1940 created a system of boarding school tuberculosis sanatoria as well as a sanatoria system for non-school-age Native people. Concomitant with the expansion of sanatoria, as early as 1909, the BIA launched a medical education program and, by 1935, began a vaccination program. Similarly, trachoma campaigns were carried out by medical doctors, especially at the boarding schools. Prior to 1930, Native American people had to undergo a painful 4- to 6-year procedure, but the discovery of
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sulfanilamide rapidly arrested the trachoma epidemic. Other disease control programs included smallpox vaccinations in 1901 and a 1935 venereal disease program in cooperation with the American Social Hygiene Association. President Taft, in a message before Congress in 1912, declared that Indian mothers had a right to unmaimed births and healthy children. As part of a nationwide campaign, in 1916, the BIA launched the “Save the Babies” program on some Indian reservations. The health education program sent field nurses into homes to instruct women in the arts of proper sanitation and child care. From all indications, the program had little impact on infant mortality, but it demonstrated how health policy was tied still to assimilation. Throughout this period, the Indian Medical Service attempted to improve reservation sanitation, promote health education and nutrition, solicit state and local cooperation on Native American health issues, begin medical social work, and hire more qualified personnel. These changes were reflected in the federal appropriations for Native American health services. In 1911, appropriations for general health care amounted to $40,000. By 1955, $17,754,555 was allocated for health services among Native people. Although the annual appropriations increased dramatically during this period, the success of the Indian Medical Service was marred by a lack of efforts to identify Native American health needs, a lack of qualified personnel, and chronic underfunding. Postw war Changes
As the bureaucratic structure of health care delivery was undergoing changes, so was the makeup of the personnel who staffed the facilities. Health personnel employed by the BIA increased in number, qualifications, and occupational specialization. Beginning in 1926, physician-officers in the medical corps commissioned by the Public Health Service were detailed to hold health positions in the Indian Medical Service. The number of positions grew slowly until the 1950 Doctor-Dentist Draft Law, which permitted members to serve required duty in the Public Health Service. By 1955, over fifty physicians, twelve public health nurses, and a few dentists, pharmacists (organized in 1953), and sanitary engineers were working for the Indian Medical Service.
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After World War II, a lack of qualified medical personnel, combined with a lack of funds, prompted the BIA in 1952 to adopt a policy of closing Native American health facilities and contracting health services to state or local non-Native hospitals. By 1955, the BIA had contracted with sixty-five community hospitals, sixteen tuberculosis sanatoria, and five mental institutions. It was argued that contract care was less expensive and allowed Indian patients to stay closer to home, but the closing of these health facilities paralleled the termination of Indian reservations. Although some of the hospital closings were partially offset by the construction of 24 health centers in local Native communities, the remaining hospitals were inadequate. By the mid-1950s, only sixteen Native American hospitals and sanatoria met accreditation requirements of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals. In 1949, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers, the Governors’ Interstate Council on Indian Affairs, the American Public Health Association, the American Medical Association, the National Tuberculosis Association, the Association on American Indian Affairs, and the 1949 Hoover Commission Task Force on Public Welfare lobbied heavily for the transfer of Native American health care to the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS). The Publicc Heallth h Serrvicce
The transfer of federal responsibility for Native American health care delivery from the BIA to the Public Health Service was accomplished July 1, 1955 (42 U.S.C. 2004a), when the Indian Health Service took its present form. The USPHS Division of Indian Health, it was argued, would provide a firm bureaucratic foundation for direct and contract medical care for Native people. In reality, federal termination policy was behind the transfer. Thousands of American Indian people were denied their rights, including the right to health services, as a result of termination. During the 1960s and into the early 1970s, Native American health care delivery and policy followed the general trajectory of Indian policy in other legal arenas. With regard to Native American health care, by 1962, the USPHS assumed full jurisdiction (Public Law 151; Public Law 121). Under USPHS management, Congress increased health appropriation monies dramatically. The goal was to achieve a level of health and well-being comparable to the general non-Native population. Despite the increase in appropriations,
a report instituted by the Commission on the Rights, Liberties, and Responsibilities of the American Indian stated that a large disparity remained between the health status of American Indians and the general population. Most important, the report concluded that the health status of American Indians would improve only when their economic conditions were raised. The watershed for American Indian health legislation came in the mid-1970s. In 1975, the Indian SelfDetermination and Education Assistance Act (Public Law 93-638) permitted American Indian nations to directly administer programs managed by the BIA or the IHS. The following year, Congress passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (Public Law 94-437). The act clarified and reiterated federal health care responsibilities outlined in the 1921 Snyder Act. An amendment, Public Law 96-537, was passed in 1980 to clarify further federal responsibility in elevating the indigenous health status. The 1980s, especially during the Reagan administration, saw declines in funding social services. With declining resources, new issues arose in health care delivery. The first issue regarded who was eligible for health care services. The Snyder Act includes no express statutory language on who is eligible for IHS services. Since the 1974 decision of Morton v. Ruiz, the IHS has attempted to limit eligibility of American Indians by residence, blood quantum, or other criteria. A second related issue is whether the Indian Health Service is a primary or residual health care provider for American Indian people. In 1986, in McNabb v. Heckler, et al., the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana ruled that the federal government was responsible primarily for health care services. Since that ruling, the IHS has had to ensure reasonable health care for eligible American Indians and Alaskan Natives.
IHS Organization and Service Population On January 4, 1988, the IHS was elevated to agency status, becoming the seventh agency of the Public Health Service. The IHS health delivery system is composed of two major systems: (1) a federal health care delivery system administered by federal personnel and (2) a tribally based health care system administered by American Indian nations. Both systems utilize contract health care services from over 2,000 private providers. In addition, there are thirty-five urban
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Native American health projects located in major urban areas with concentrated Native populations. The IHS comprises twelve regional administrative area offices. IHS headquarters are in Rockville, Maryland, although some headquarters functions are conducted in Phoenix, Tucson, and Albuquerque. The twelve area offices are located in Aberdeen, South Dakota; Anchorage, Alaska; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Bemidji, Minnesota; Billings, Montana; Nashville, Tennessee; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Phoenix, Arizona; Portland, Oregon; Sacramento, California; Tucson, Arizona; and Window Rock, Arizona. In 2006, there were 164 Indian Health Service and tribally managed service units. As the Native American and Alaskan Native population grew, so did the service responsibility of the Indian Health Service. Today, the IHS serves over 1 million eligible Native American and Alaskan Native people. Within the continental United States, the service population comprises 561 federally recognized American Indian nations in thirty states. According to the 2000 census, the potential IHS user population was approximately 4.3 million people, of which approximately 2.4 million individuals reported only American Indian or Alaskan Native as their race. According to statistical data, approximately 1.8 million American Indians and Alaskan Natives are being served on or near reservations, with 600,000 individuals served by urban health facilities.
Current Demographics and Health Status In 1890, there were approximately 273,607 American Indians and Alaskan Natives in the United States. For both groups, this represented a population nadir. Prior to this time, they were exposed to various infectious diseases and an oppressive colonial system. From this demographic nadir, their populations have made a remarkable recovery. To some degree, the health of American Indians and Alaskan Natives has also improved, but they have not as yet achieved the same level of health enjoyed by the majority of the nonNative population. In a comparison of data between American Indians and Alaskan Natives with “U.S., All Races” statistics, the indigenous population was younger, less educated, underrepresented in management and professional positions, and poorer than the general U.S. population. The ratio of American Indians and Alaskan Natives
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living below the poverty level was over twice that reported for the U.S. total population. Although there is considerable variation between services areas, the data indicated a growing population with a wide range of health needs and a population that has not achieved health parity with the general U.S. population. The birthrate for American Indians and Alaskan Natives residing in the IHS service area was 24.1 per 1,000. Although this figure is less than the rate recorded for 1955, it is 1.6 times the 1995 birthrate for the “U.S., All Races” population. In short, the Native American and Alaskan Native populations are growing faster than other segments of our society. Although the birthrate is exceeding the rate of the general population, the 1994 through 1996 ageadjusted mortality rate (all causes) for the IHS Service Area was 699.3 per 100,000. This is 39% higher than the 1995 “U.S., All Races” rate of 503.9 per 100,000. As the IHS worked to control infectious diseases that plagued American Indian and Alaskan Native people well into the 20th century—and as sanitation improved, dietary patterns changed, and minimal economic gains were made—the causes of death shifted radically. In 1951 through 1953, for example, tuberculosis was the fourth leading cause of death. By 1972 through 1974, tuberculosis as an infectious disease had no appreciable impact on American Indian mortality. Chronic diseases and behavioral diseases remain, however, in some instances in epidemic proportions. Compared with specific causes of death in the U.S. general population, death from alcoholism is 627% greater; tuberculosis is 533% greater; diabetes mellitus is 249% greater; and alcoholism, suicide, and homicide are, respectively, 204%, 72%, and 63% greater. Greater than one-third of patient demands at IHS facilities across American Indian country involve alcohol-, substance-abuse-, and mental-health-related issues. A sensitive indicator of the health status of any population is infant mortality rates and life expectancy. Since 1955, the infant mortality rate among Native Americans has dropped considerably, but it remains higher than the rate for the general U.S. population. The infant mortality rate for American Indians and Alaskan Natives was 9.3 per 1,000 live births. This is 22% greater than in “U.S., All Races.” Clearly, American Indian and Alaskan Native infants are dying in greater proportion than those in the general non-Native population. Since 1940, the life expectancy of American Indian and Alaskan Native people has steadily risen,
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although it remains below the national rate. Life expectancy at birth for American Indians and Alaskan Natives, both sexes, is 4.7 years less than the 1994 to 1996 life expectancy for “U.S., All Races.” In short, American Indian and Alaskan Native people remain a population at risk.
Current Issues Despite legislative reinforcement of Public Law 94-437 through Public Law 101-630, surrounding federal responsibility for Native American health care, eligibility, and entitlement to services will remain in the forefront in health policy into the 21st century. Other issues will emerge regarding availability and adequacy of health resources, self-determination and tribal assumption of health services, the extent of congressional control of health care policies for American Indians and Alaskan Natives, and especially the future of urban health programs for these populations. Census data indicate that approximately 64.1% of the Native American population resides outside tribal areas, especially in urban areas. Despite this profound shift in population geography, the appropriation for urban Native American health care has eroded steadily since 1980. The remaining programs emphasize increasing access to existing services funded by private and public sources, rather than the IHS paying for those services directly. Currently, there were programs providing a range of health services, from comprehensive health services to minimal community health and social services. Underlying all of these questions are concerns over increasing health care quality, accessibility, health care funding, and individual eligibility for services. Gregory R. Campbell See also Blood Quantum; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Health Disparities; Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978; Native Americans; Native Americans, Environment and
Further Readings
Brophy, William A. and Sophie D. Aberle, eds. 1966. The Indian, America’s Unfinished Business: Report of the Commission on the Rights, Liberties, and Responsibilities of the American Indian. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Campbell, Gregory R., ed. 1989. “Contemporary Issues in Native American Health.” Special ed. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 1(3/4).
Office of Technology Assessment. 1986. Indian Health Care. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Ogunwole, Stella U. 2006. We the People: American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau. Putney, Diane T. 1980. Fighting the Scourge: American Indian Morbidity and Federal Indian Policy, 1897–1928. Doctoral dissertation, Marquette University. Stuart, Paul. 1987. Nations within a Nation: Historical Statistics of American Indians. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 1991. Indian Health Service: Regional Differences in Indian Health. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2000. Trends in Indian Health, 1998–99. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
NATIVE AMERICAN IDENTITY A simple definition of identity is “the name we call ourselves.” Yet things are inevitably more complicated than that, for identity is both externally imposed and internally ascribed; identity claims involve individual agency yet exist within a larger sociohistorical context. Claiming a Native American identity, as with all racial/ethnic identities, is more contested, complex, and constrained by context than the claiming of a White ethnic identity. An analysis of Native American identity, in particular, emphasizes the role of external ascription in the process of identity construction. This entry reviews various ways in which Native identity claims can be challenged: along the lines of physical appearance or in terms of legal, biological, and cultural authenticity. Such contestation over identities emphasizes that while communities struggle to define their members, they do not always do so under conditions of their own choosing. Sociological research on race and ethnicity has shifted in recent decades from a more structural analysis of race, ethnicity, and racial/ethnic relations to an analysis of racial/ethnic identity. For individuals designated as racial minorities, identity challenges and constraints are even greater than they are for individuals designated as White Americans, as legal proscriptions and physical appearance influence external ascription. For racial minorities, the dominant group exercises its power through government to define who belongs in
Native American Identity
which racial category. Historically, in the case of African Americans, we see the imposition of the socalled one-drop rule, where racially mixed individuals are classified as Black. For Native peoples, this manifests itself in the opposite direction, with the federal government insisting on a specific blood quantum, often inconsistent with tribal membership criteria, for determining whether or not one is Native American. Owing to the elaborate requirements for officially establishing one’s blood quantum, this is a practice that manages to exclude many people of Native heritage from officially being recognized as such. Whites, as the dominant racial group, play a significant role through legal and political maneuvering in determining who is and who is not “Native,” in much the same way they determine who is and who is not “Black.” Interaction between dominant and subordinate groups is an example of asymmetrical power relations, which play themselves out in terms of racial/ethnic identity assessment: In essence, certain groups exercise power over others to define group membership. Despite such structural constraints, it is imperative that we not disregard the notion of agency in claiming a racial/ethnic identity.
Is There a Native American Identity? Questions concerning racial/ethnic identity remain highly contested territory. For Native Americans, one must ask, is there such a thing as a Native American identity? First, it is important to recognize that identities are relational; consequently, there was no such thing as a Native American identity prior to European colonization. Native identity, then, exists in opposition to a White identity. In addition, the vast diversity among Native tribes forces the question: Is there a Native American identity above and beyond a tribal identity? As culturally diverse as Native Americans are, research indicates that there is indeed such a thing as an “Indian” identity; Stephen Cornell refers to this as a “supratribal consciousness.” Additional complexities remain concerning identity construction for Native Americans, particularly regarding questions of legal and biological authenticity, the challenge of physical appearance, and questions surrounding cultural authenticity. Thus, claiming an Indian identity, while always a political act, is very much constrained by both legal and sociohistorical context. There is considerable contestation over who is a “real” American Indian, with self-designated
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“Indian police” enforcing somewhat arbitrary and fluctuating boundaries in efforts to weed out potential “wannabes,” people who claim to be Indian yet have no legitimate claim to Indian culture. Individuals reclaiming an American Indian heritage—those who have spent most of their lives in the White, mainstream society yet choose to embrace this aspect of themselves later in life—are particularly susceptible to facing such identity challenges.
Native Identity and the Blood Quantum Since the 19th century, the notion of “blood quantum” as a gauge of one’s degree of Indianness fluctuates between scientific expertise and a “commonsense” criterion of authentic Indianness. Although the scientific community no longer claims a connection between cultural difference, physical differences, and blood type, blood quantum designations still hold legal significance. The federal government constrains the construction of Native identity by, for instance, establishing one-quarter blood quantum as a minimum requirement for federal recognition. Tribal governments establish their own criteria for membership, often in conflict with the federal blood quantum requirements. There is considerable ambivalence surrounding the notion of blood quantum, for the idea falsely implies some level of racial purity. However, it is still used as a gauge of one’s Indianness, both at the federal level and within Native communities, as the common expressions “full-blood” and “half-breed” make clear. It appears that what begins as a system of identification that works in favor of the federal government is being reinforced through its embrace by Native peoples. Tribes are compelled to accept this faulty authentication procedure because land allotments are tied to tribal enrollments. Individual American Indians embrace this concept because it is erroneously presumed to be an objective measure of Indianness and provides a legitimacy claim. Such legitimacy claims are particularly important for individuals raised outside of Native American communities, whose cultural heritage or physical appearance thus challenges their identity claims. Determination of blood quantum, while offering a seemingly objective measure of Indianness, is often reliant on historical documents that are incomplete at best. Someone wishing to claim Nativeness has to “prove” his or her connection through finding an
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ancestor on tribal rolls. The problem with reliance on such documentation, however, is that not all Native peoples are recorded on these “official” government records. Names can be spelled numerous ways on different documents, whether due to census-taker errors, low levels of literacy, or name changes, in which some tribes routinely engage. Historically, many people intentionally hid their Native American heritage from census takers because of the threat of severe discrimination. Some tribes, such as the Cherokee, kept elaborate records, while others, such as the Apache, never kept records. Some Native people were able to avoid forced relocation; thus, for example, if one’s ancestors did not make it to Oklahoma, they were not included on the official tribal rolls, so that, as a result, their descendants are unable to prove their ancestry, and their authenticity as Native Americans is challenged.
Other Criteria of Native Identity Above and beyond reliance upon legal and biological claims to an authentic Native American identity, external ascription often depends on another rather arbitrary criterion: physical appearance. Research on racial/ethnic identity construction exposes a connection between physical appearance, race, and identity. Appearance plays a significant role in identity construction simply because it presents one’s identity to others in social interaction, and thus it is partially through appearance that others ascribe a racial identity to an individual. Physical appearance is used by both insiders and outsiders to gauge whether or not a person belongs to a particular racial/ethnic group. Certainly not all individuals claiming to be Native American “look Indian,” meaning they may not hold the stereotypical Native features of dark hair, dark complexion, and high cheekbones. Physical appearance is somewhat associated with geographic location, and Native peoples spanned the American continents. Clearly, this alone would account for extreme physical differentiation among American Indians. Yet, despite this understanding, for individuals whose physical appearance contradicts widespread stereotypes of what Indians look like, more identity challenges are experienced. Their racial/ethnic identities are often questioned and are rarely reflected back to them, so that the external ascription aspect of identity construction is lacking. Nativeness is often referred to as being about culture, about a way of being in the world, rather than
simply being associated with physical appearance. Yet due to the aggressive federal termination policies in the 1950s and 1960s, almost half of Native Americans live in urban areas rather than on reservations. Lacking proximity to Native communities, these individuals often lack such cultural authenticity, and their identity claims are less likely to be affirmed. Thus, another measure of Nativeness, cultural knowledge, emphasizes a connection to Native communities, engaging in tribal practices, and exhibiting somewhat of a shared peoplehood and worldview with other Natives. Culture, almost by definition, is a lived experience. Thus, individuals making identity claims and lacking a cultural connection, the lived experience, are often challenged by Native peoples with such cultural capital. Kathleen J. Fitzgerald See also Identity Politics; Internalized Racism; Latin America, Indigenous People; Native American Education; Native American Identity, Legal Background; Native Americans; Pan-Indianism; Sovereignty, Native American
Further Readings
Cornell, Stephen. 1998. Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence. New York: Oxford University Press. Fitzgerald, Kathleen J. 2007. Beyond White Ethnicity: Developing a Sociological Understanding of Native American Reclaiming. Lexington, KY: Rowman & Littlefield. Garroutte, Eva Marie. 2003. Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nagel, Joane. 1996. American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Weaver, Hilary N. 2001. “Indigenous Identity: What It Is and Who Really Has It?” American Indian Quarterly 5:240–255.
NATIVE AMERICAN IDENTITY, LEGAL BACKGROUND Before the European invasion of the Americas in 1492, there were no “Indians” and no “tribes.” Both are terms Europeans imposed on Indigenous Peoples, as a way of translating them, first, into European epistemologies
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and, subsequently, as the balance of power shifted over time in favor of the invaders, into European colonial bureaucracies. Over time, the U.S. legal system and court decisions played a role in identifying who is and who is not a Native American, as discussed in this entry.
Colonial Era The term Indian was coined by Columbus, who, as he wandered about the Caribbean, thought he had arrived on the shores of Asia, or the “Indies.” The European association of the word tribe with Native American social and political organizations has no particular origin. But the earliest usage of the word tribe in English, going back to the 13th century, is associated with the twelve tribes of Israel, ten of which were conceptualized as “lost” after the Assyrians forced them into exile in the 8th century BC. At the beginning of English imperialism in the Americas, one strain of Protestant theological scholarship believed that American Indians were these lost tribes. Beginning more or less at the same time, tribe was also associated with the political divisions of ancient Greece and Rome. Existing within and alongside these associations is the idea of tribe as an expansive patriarchal lineage, composed of various clans— hence the earliest notion of “race” as extended family or kinship; and embedded in this idea is that of the “primitive.” In keeping with these associations, early modern Europeans, contradictorily enough, identified “Indians” with both ancient Western and Asian civilizations and with the “savage.” In fact, outside of Mayan, Aztec, and Incan city-state organizations, which were relatively short-lived because of their vulnerability to Western conquest, the social organizations of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas were by and large formed through extended-family structures, based not in terms of “blood” relationships, but in terms of behavior: a set of cultural “rules” or obligations that one had to one’s kin, which included not only the other human beings of one’s kinship group but also the land and the inhabitants (the other animals and the plants) of the land on which one lived. The Navajo (Diné) creation narratives, for example, describe the formation of this extended-kinship network from its beginnings in the “First World” to the present-day elaboration of it in the “clans” of the “Fifth World.” These kinship-based social organizations could be matrilineal or patrilineal (not to be confused with matriarchal or patriarchal) or matrilocal or patrilocal; they could be organized into fixed
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villages, like the Pueblos, or mobile forms, as was the case with the Navajos. Typically, the governance structure of these groups was decentralized, based in consensual forms of governance, where all the adult members of the kinship community, male and female, were part of the decision-making process. Until the late 18th century, then, when European colonization was well advanced, the Indigenous Peoples north of Mexico did not typically think of themselves as “Indians” or their social organizations as “tribes” or “nations,” another term applied to and adopted by these communities in the United States once the treatymaking process had begun. Rather, they identified themselves according to the name of the kinship group or clan to which they belonged. Writing in 1829, the Pequot activist William Apess testifies in his autobiography, A Son of the Forest, to the alien origin of the word “Indian,” even as he uses it to identify himself: I thought it disgraceful to be called an Indian; it was considered as a slur upon an oppressed and scattered nation, and I have often been led to inquire where the Whites received this word, which they so often threw as an opprobrious epithet at the sons of the forest.
Apess thought that his people should properly be called “Natives.” Today, Indians in the United States have taken up both the words Indian and Native as their own; but, as Apess suggests, this process of translation was slow and painful, based as it is in the genocidal violence of European colonialism. Because the basic indigenous social unit was not founded on biological identification but on complex cultural affiliations, outsiders could be adopted into the community as full-fledged members if they were willing to follow the social and cultural rules of kinship. The history of Europeans and others, including African Americans, being taken captive by or willingly joining Native communities witnesses this process of cultural conversion or adoption. The European American name Jemison, prominent in the Seneca nation today, marks the 1758 capture and adoption of 14-year-old Mary Jemison, whose descendants are full-fledged Senecas.
The Impact of Scientific Racism The idea of race as a biological category begins to emerge in concert with the development of scientific racism in the United States in the first half of the 19th century. In this instance, the emerging science of
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physical anthropology was used to rationalize racial hierarchies grounded in the idea of White supremacy, the driving force behind the U.S. imperial policy of Manifest Destiny. During this period, the idea of Indian as a racial term enters the lexicon of federal Indian law, in the landmark Supreme Court case of U.S. v. Rogers (45 U.S. 567) in 1846. In his decision in Rogers, which involved the killing of one White male citizen of the Cherokee nation by another White male Cherokee, Chief Justice Taney tried to distinguish between the political and social act of conferring membership in a Native community and the generalized notion of Indian as a racial category transcending specific cultural practices of incorporation. It is noteworthy that while Taney did not use the term blood in his definition of Indian and his definition remains ambiguously poised between a biological and a cultural notion of race, his decision has been used as a precedent in determining a modern racial definition of Indian. So, for example, in U.S. v. Broncheau (597 F. 2d 1260), in 1979, a case in which the adequacy of the legal definition of Indian was called into question by the defendant, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals noted as follows: Unlike the term “Indian country,” which has been defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1151, the term “Indian” has not been statutorily defined but instead has been judicially explicated over the years. The test, first suggested in United States v. Rogers . . . and generally followed by the courts, considers (1) the degree of Indian blood; and (2) tribal or governmental recognition as an Indian. (at 1263)
Broncheau points to two salient facts in the legal history of Indian identity. First, there is no single answer to the question, Who is an Indian? Rather, there are federal, state, tribal, and personal definitions (since 1960, the U.S. Census has allowed self-identification). Second, the federal definition of Indian combines a biological (“blood”) and a political (“recognition”) component, with emphasis being placed on one or the other, depending on the context. So, for example, in another landmark case, Morton v. Mancari (417 U.S. 535), in 1974, a class action suit by non-Native employees of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, under the Equal Employment Opportunities Act of 1972, challenging the bureau’s employment preference for qualified Indians, the Supreme Court found that the Equal Employment
Opportunities Act did not apply in this case because “the preference, as applied, is granted to Indians not as a discrete racial group, but, rather, as members of quasi-sovereign tribal entities whose lives and activities are governed by the BIA in a unique fashion” (at 554). Nevertheless, citing the BIA manual on the preference, the Court noted that the political component of federal recognition also entailed a racial component of blood quantum: “To be eligible for preference in appointment, promotion, and training, an individual must be onefourth or more degree Indian blood and be a member of a Federally-recognized tribe” (at 554).
Blood Quantum and Policy From the General Allotment or Dawes Act of 1887 forward, blood quantum became an increasingly important part of the federal policy identifying Indians. The act itself, in which Congress mandated the privatization of Indian communal lands, intensifying Native dispossession and poverty, required that agents of the Interior Department visit the tribes in order to officially determine who was and was not a tribal member. These agents used the legal fiction of “blood” to construct the tribal rolls: In her essay “Urban (Trans)Formations: Changes in the Use and Meaning of American Indian Identity,” Angela Gonzales noted that although enumerators generally relied on their own judgment, self-reports, and the word of neighbors and relatives, their records were still used in decisions about whether a person was part of a tribe and eligible for government services to American Indians. Sometime after 1934, when the Indian Reorganization Act mandated the end of allotment and “encouraged” the tribes to adopt Western-style constitutions, the federal government began to issue Certificates of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIBs), as a formal way of identifying those who had a specific degree of Indian blood in a recognized tribe and were therefore entitled to federal benefits. While under U.S. federal Indian law the tribes themselves have autonomy in determining tribal membership, under the federal pressure of limited resources, they have by and large adopted to one degree or another the colonial apparatus of blood quantum in making these determinations. Needless to say, the colonial system of Indian identification, which creates arbitrary barriers between tribal, federal, state, and self-identified Indian persons, as well as barriers between those tribes that are federally recognized and those that are not, has
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proved divisive, inhibiting Native American communities and persons from organizing across these barriers in politically effective ways. Eric Cheyfitz See also Blood Quantum; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Colonialism; Dawes Act of 1887; Eugenics; Genocide; Identity Politics; Internal Colonialism; Native American Identity; Sovereignty, Native American
Further Readings
Cheyfitz, Eric. 2004. “‘What Is An Indian?’ Identity Politics in United States Federal Indian Law and American Indian Literatures.” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 35(1–2):59–80. Gonzales, Angela A. 2001. “Urban (Trans)Formations: Changes in the Use and Meaning of American Indian Identity.” Pp. 169–185 in American Indians and the Urban Experience, edited by S. Lobo and K. Peters. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press. O’Connell, Barry. 1992. On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, A Pequot. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Sturm, Circe. 2002. Blood Politics: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Berkeley: University of California Press.
NATIVE AMERICANS There is no one single scientific, biological, cultural, or even legal definition for who is identified as an “American Indian” or “Native American” in the United States, although racial categorizations and definitions continue to impact those whose identities and heritages are tied to indigenous cultures. The idea that hundreds of different cultures with enormously diverse ways of life, social organizations, languages, and belief systems could be combined into a single racial or cultural category is an artifact of predominantly European colonization of the North American continent. This entry views American Indians through the lenses of race, nation, culture, and homeland.
Racial Definitions Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the late 15th century, the Native peoples of both North and South
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America identified themselves primarily in relation to the particular people to whom they culturally belonged. European colonizers viewed Native peoples collectively as belonging to a single, inferior “race,” based on the ideology that European cultures represented the pinnacle of social evolution. Particularly long-lasting effects resulted from racial definitions of “Indianness” that argued that the more “Indian blood” or blood quantum a person contained, the more “savage” or “uncivilized” he or she was. Beginning in early U.S. colonial history, Indian blood quantum became a way of differentiating and excluding Native people from social, political, and economic participation in European American society. By the second half of the 19th century, this ideology was buttressed by a growing international body of social and biological sciences that claimed that this inferiority was scientifically demonstrable. This biological racism heavily influenced 19th-century U.S. policies toward Native peoples and its formal adoption into federal Indian policy with the passing of the General Allotment Act in 1887. It was also during this time that the U.S. Census began to count Indians as a separate racial category (beginning in 1870). At that time, it was left up to census takers to determine whether an individual fit into the racial category of Indian. Today, assignment of individuals to the racial categories of American Indian or Alaska Native is based completely on selfidentification at the time of filling out the census form. According to the 2000 census, the number of people who self-reported as only American Indian or Alaska Native was estimated at 2,475,956 people, or 0.9% of the total U.S. population. An additional 1,643,345 people self-reported as American Indian or Alaska Native in combination with one or more other races. Census self-identification is problematic since people can claim American Indian heritage regardless of whether they or their ancestors have ever actively practiced the cultures or been a part of the communities to which they claim their ancestry. These estimates of the number of Native Americans are subject to variation. The 2004 American Community Survey placed the total number of self-reported American Indians or Alaska Natives at 2,151,322. The list of the largest tribal groups is shown in Table 1. While this represents a large difference from the 2000 census data, the table nonetheless offers a fairly accurate presentation of the larger tribal groups, led by the Cherokee and Navajo, both with over 200,000.
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Table 1
American Indian and Alaska Native Household Population by Tribal Group, 2004
Tribal Group
Population
Percentage of American Indian and Alaska Native Alone Population
American Indian and Alaska Native alone1, 2
2,151,322
100
American Indian tribal grouping, specified Apache Blackfeet Cherokee Cheyenne Chickasaw Chippewa Choctaw Creek Iroquois Lumbee Navajo Osage Ottawa Paiute Pima Potawatomi Pueblo Seminole Sioux Tohono O’Odham Yaqui Yuman All other American Indian tribes3 American Indian tribes, not specified Alaska Native tribes, specified Alaska Athabascan Aleut Eskimo Tlingit-Haida All other Alaska Native tribes4 Alaska Native tribes, not specified
1,729,574 66,048 39,508 331,491 15,715 12,773 92,041 55,107 27,243 50,982 59,433 230,401 13,982 12,824 14,944 48,709 14,952 69,203 12,578 67,666 20,577 16,169 10,419 446,809 45,736 89,46 12,370 11,037 35,951 18,677 11,427 11,808
80.4 3.1 1.8 15.4 0.7 0.6 4.3 2.6 1.3 2.4 2.8 10.7 0.6 0.6 0.7 2.3 0.7 3.2 0.6 3.1 1.0 0.8 0.5 20.8 2.1 24.2 0.6 0.5 1.7 0.9 0.5 0.4
274,742
12.8
American Indian tribes or Alaska Native tribes, not specified5
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2004 American Community Survey Report, Selected Population Profiles, p. 2. 1
Data based on sample limited to the household population and exclude the population living in institutions, college dormitories, and other group quarters. 2
This category includes people who reported only American Indian or Alaska Native, either by specifying one or more American Indian or Alaska Native tribes or tribal groupings or by responding with a generic term such as American Indian or Alaska Native. 3
This category includes people who reported one specified American Indian tribe or tribal grouping not shown above, as well as people who reported two or more specified American Indian tribes or tribal groupings but only reported as American Indian or Alaska Native.
4
This category includes people who reported one specified Alaska Native tribe or tribal grouping not shown above, as well as people who reported two or more specified Alaska Native tribes or tribal groupings but reported only as American Indian or Alaska Native.
5
This category includes respondents who checked the American Indian or Alaska Native response category or wrote in the generic term American Indian or Alaska Native or tribal entries not elsewhere classified.
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The racial identification of “Indian” identity continues to negatively impact Native people today. The 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, which ended many abusive assimilationist policies and recognized the right of Native communities to be self-governing entities, forced tribes to continue to use blood quantum as the basis for determining tribal membership, using a standard of one-quarter Indian blood for tribal enrollment. Though the U.S. government has since recognized the right of tribes to define eligibility for enrollment according to their own criteria, nearly all tribes still use blood quantum as one of the requirements. To prove one’s blood quantum is often an enormously time-consuming, expensive, and demoralizing process involving extensive archival research into one’s ancestral lineage. Those who, for a number of reasons, cannot prove the required blood quantum may be denied legal recognition of their identity by the tribe to which they and uncountable generations of their ancestors may have been members. They are also denied access to both tribal and federal services that are provided for enrolled members of federally recognized tribes. Blood quantum requirements also put pressure on Native people to avoid having children with nonNative or nontribal members, since they may lose these rights. Thus, racial definitions of “Indian” identity are deeply problematic. Based historically on non-Native notions of racial inferiority, they reinforce racist ideologies and outside control over the destiny, opportunities, and everyday lives of Native people. They reinforce the colonial idea that Native people are racial minorities rather than members of sovereign nations. And they deny the legitimacy and importance of culture, community, and kinship structures that have been the basis for group identification in Native communities for millennia.
American Indians as Nations A person’s identity is formed and recognized in relation to other people. Most Native Americans define their identities in relation to one or more of the almost 800 tribal nations that exist within the territorial borders of the United States. Of these, 562 are “federally recognized” by the U.S. government to receive federal services, monies, and protections: 335 tribes in the lower forty-eight states and 227 in Alaska. There are at least an additional 220 tribes across thirty states, which have petitioned for but not received this federal
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recognition. Of these, between 45 and 65 (depending on the source) tribal nations are formally recognized by the states in which they are located. The reasons for nonrecognition vary but generally are the result of historical U.S.-tribal relations and the ways in which the U.S. government sought to destroy tribal homelands and cultures. Like the racial definitions and classifications of Native people that continue to affect American Indian identity, the shared experiences of tribes as a result of U.S. policies and interventions in their lives continue to profoundly shape the consciousness, cultures, and material relations of Indian nations today. All tribes have strong oral traditions recording their communities’ histories, going back for hundreds of generations. Nearly all of them trace their people’s origins to particular ancestral homelands on the North American continent. The master narrative taught to most non-Natives claims that Native people migrated to the continent from Asia across the Bering Straight during the last Ice Age. This narrative is substantiated primarily by linguistic and genetic studies that tie Native Americans to Asian and northern Russian ancestry. Well-respected scientists differ greatly on the details that are offered as evidence to support this theory. In addition, there is the issue of effectively denying the validity and cultural significance of Native people’s own narratives about themselves and in implying that Native people are not truly indigenous to the soils of the Americas. Oral histories record the past and lifeways of the thousands of Native communities that inhabited the continent and their interactions prior to European contact. Though there was, as there still is, extensive inter- and intracontinental trade, commerce, warfare, marriage, and movement before colonization, most communities were politically autonomous. Many communities, especially in the interior of the continent, had little contact with non-Native peoples until the middle of the 19th century. Of those groups that did have early contact with European and American colonizers, many were recognized by European nations and the U.S. government as sovereign nations with whom they signed hundreds of treaties. Others were faced with substantial violence, encroachment, and displacement. U.S S. Inte erventio ons
In the 1820s and 1830s, the federal government engaged in numerous wars with southeastern tribes
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and forcibly relocated thousands of Native people west of the Mississippi River to open their lands for settlement. During this same period, the Supreme Court, based on the “right of conquest,” extinguished Indian title to their own lands and turned the property over to the trusteeship of the federal government to manage on their behalf. Tribes were thus officially labeled “domestic dependent nations” and wards of the federal government. By the late 1840s, the U.S. government had consolidated its ocean-to-ocean continental empire, and, by the 1870s, railroads and settlers were penetrating its farthest reaches. Massive western migrations of U.S. settlers led to violence between colonizers and Native people. The U.S. government used its military forces to forcibly relocate Native people to federal lands called “reservations.” In 1849, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was created within the Department of the Interior to oversee Indian affairs and the trusteeship of their lands. By the 1870s, the federal government had abandoned treaty making with American Indian nations and declared unilateral authority to make decisions concerning Native people and their resources. Huge tracts of lands in the West were seized and redistributed to non-Native settlers. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, along with support from congressional acts and executive orders, undertook large-scale attempts at dismantling tribes and assimilating American Indian people into the U.S. “mainstream.” Among the tactics used were land reform and privatization of tribal lands, forced schooling of Native children in European American values and norms, and prohibitions against the practice of Native cultures and languages. Native people were granted U.S. citizenship and voting rights in 1924, but openly assimilationist policies continued into the 1930s. In 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act recognized the right of Native people to continue practicing their own cultures and manage their own affairs. Tribes were given the opportunity to do so by adopting Western-style constitutional governments, which in some cases displaced traditional tribal governance structures and leadership. Despite these reforms, the secretary of the interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs continued to have strong authority as federal trustees to oversee tribal decision making. Federal policies again shifted toward assimilation of Native Americans after World War II in the 1940s. Known as the “Termination” era in federal Indian policy, the U.S. government sought to rapidly and permanently assimilate Native Americans into the
mainstream by terminating federal recognition of tribal sovereignty, removing federal support services and funding for tribes, extending state jurisdiction over tribal lands, opening reservations to economic exploitation by private companies, and relocating over 100,000 Native people to urban areas. Termination policies deepened reservation poverty and helped to galvanize what was already a growing pan-Indian civil rights movement in the late 1950s and 1960s. The Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the 1960s encouraged tribes to undertake economic development to overcome system poverty and provided some federal support to do so. However, it would not be until the 1970s that the federal government would officially end its termination and assimilationist policies. This “self-determination” era beginning in 1970 resulted in a proliferation of legislation and case law that recognized tribal sovereignty and the right to selfgovernment, return of control over tribal affairs and resources to tribes themselves, and efforts to support tribal economic development, as well as support for cultural revitalization and religious freedom. Reccent Rellatiions
This era of tribal self-determination continues today despite cutbacks in federal funding in the 1980s under the Reagan administration and continued federal authority over many tribal decision-making processes. This federal recognition of tribal sovereignty and selfdetermination has allowed many tribes to undertake vitally needed economic development and cultural revitalization programs. Tribes lacking federal recognition, however, have no legal mechanisms with which to leverage the protection, support, and enforcement of federal responsibilities and are unable to exercise true sovereign control over their affairs. They are denied access to federal programs and funding and are subject to often hostile local and state governments. Tribal members are without access to the vital support services that come with tribal membership in a federally recognized tribe. Thus, obtaining federal recognition as a tribal nation remains an extremely important part of obtaining true self-determination for many American Indian nations today. Among the lasting legacies of federal Indian policies, racism, and interventions in Native Americans’ lives is widespread poverty in many Native communities. This is evidenced by alarmingly high rates of poor health and nutrition and, morbidity, suicide, substance
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abuse, and unemployment, as well as poor sanitation, infrastructure, and housing conditions on many reservations. Many tribes hope that the opportunities opened up in the last 20 years to generate income through tribally owned casino gaming enterprises will assist them in overcoming this systemic poverty. Indeed, many tribes are using these revenues to expand and improve health care, education, infrastructure, and other social services. They are also using gaming revenues to gain access to and influence over the political and legal structures that have harmed them in the past in order to restore tribal control and protection over culturally important places and resources. Shifts in the relationship between American Indian nations and European colonizers and the U.S. government continue to impact Native identity and communities, by shaping the constraints on and opportunities that are available to both individuals and their communities. Despite these constraints, tremendous diversity has been sustained among Native peoples in their cultures, their beliefs, and their ways of life. It is impossible to describe or categorize “Native Americans” as one ethnic or racial group, though outsiders have attempted to do so for several hundred years. As we have seen, these racial identifiers are extremely problematic and deeply rooted in racist and colonial ideologies that continue to impact Native people today. On the other hand, a pan-Indian consciousness and identity has emerged as the result of these interventions and has since become an important part of American Indian social life and political mobilization in the United States. Most Native people, however, draw their sense of identity from the ties they maintain with the people, cultural practices, and homelands of their people. These include their sense of responsibility to their extended families, clans, and communities and the perpetuation of their languages and ways of life.
Native Cultures and Diversity For many non-Native people in the United States, the only encounters they have with Native American cultures are through the Native language names given to places they live in or visit, through pop culture and media stereotypes, and through the often brief and misleading histories they learn about Native people in primary and secondary education. Images of painted warriors dressed in buckskins and feathers, riding horses, sleeping in tipis, and wielding bows and arrows and
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tomahawks have dominated contemporary mainstream stereotypes. Stereotypes change with the times, and Native people have variously been typed at different times as “bloodthirsty” or “noble, nature-loving savages,” living in an imagined “traditional” past. Others believe Native people have been fully assimilated into U.S. culture as impoverished racial minorities. In reality, there are a multitude of different Native communities in the United States, which actively practice and identify with hundreds of different Native cultures. Native people in the United States today live in the same modern world as non-Native Americans. Most live in European-American-style homes, dress in the same fashions as members of “mainstream” U.S. society, drive cars and pickup trucks, watch satellite TV, and live and work the same breadth of lifestyles and occupations as others do. Changing Cultu ure
Culture is not a static phenomenon. All people, everywhere on earth, creatively incorporate and reinterpret their inherited “traditional” cultures in the contexts of their contemporary needs, desires, and values. Most American Indian people have adopted many aspects of mainstream U.S. culture, pop culture, and the regional cultures where they are located (southern, southwestern Chicano, and northeastern French cultures, for example). In addition, many Native Americans have also adopted as part of their identities and cultural toolkits aspects of the pan-Indian music, art, imagery, political activism, powwows, and sacred and religious practices that have developed over the past century. The continuing practice and revitalization of local traditional cultural practices specific to one’s own people plays perhaps the largest part in defining the identity of most Native American people. Past U.S. policies and activities that aimed at destroying Native land bases and cultures, along with generations of reservation flight and the influences of U.S. culture, have all contributed to fears that traditional cultures, languages, and practices would disappear. Thus, American Indians struggle to maintain local traditional cultures despite these forces and to revitalize traditional arts, music, languages, healing practices, sacred rituals, and land use practices; this has always been and continues to be of the utmost importance in Native communities.
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Because of the enormous variation among Native American cultures, it is impossible to adequately describe that diversity and complexity in this space. Historically, anthropologists attempted to describe and simplify this diversity in Native cultures by categorizing them into ten regional “culture areas,” which are still used in many texts today. This taxonomy, however, is not meaningful to Native people themselves. Native groups have varied greatly in their subsistence strategies and social organization from small bands of people who ranged seasonally across widely different landscapes as hunters and gatherers, to those who were sedentary agriculturalists or fishermen, to those who maintained their subsistence through trade and commerce. These historic ways of living on the land shaped the particular cultural formations, community structures, and senses of identity that each community formed. Today, subsistence in most communities can be and usually is obtained in part through wage labor and purchase of needs from retail stores. Traditional lifeways, cultural practices, and community structures persist in forms that reinforce local identities and cultures. Native peoples are equally diverse in their cosmological belief systems, religious practices, governance structures, languages, musical and artistic expressions, and myriad material objects that reproduce their cultures. These include foods, clothing, housing, and other objects of daily and ritual use. Among the clearest indications of this diversity is the large number of indigenous languages that are still spoken in the United States today. When Europeans first arrived in the Americas, it is estimated that around 300 Native languages, including 2,000 dialects, were spoken in the United States and Canada. Today, there are about 175 to 200 languages (depending on how dialects are counted) still spoken. A decline in the use of Native languages over the past century has led to renewed efforts in recent decades to revitalize their use through bilingual education programs and the encouragement of their use in tribal offices and homes. The continuation of Native languages is vital to the survival of Native cultures, histories (which are predominantly preserved through oral traditions), and identities. Comm mon Qualitie es
Granted this tremendous diversity among different Native American communities, a few general
observations may be made about similarities between them. In most Native communities, kinship relations continue to dominate social organization. Male-headed, nuclear families are somewhat rare, though past U.S. policies and interventions in Native social life attempted to institute them as social norms. Extended families are common, often with many generations living in a single household or in close contact. Many Native communities are matrilocal, matrilineal, and matriarchal. In these communities, women control decision making, wealth, land use, and inheritance. In most communities, people trace their lineages from and consider as part of their extended families those who belong to their clans. Clan lineage, often traced through one’s mother, is important in the organization of social life and the everyday functioning of many communities. In many, specific clans are responsible for various cultural, religious, and infrastructural maintenance tasks, including such matters as caring for sacred objects, organizing hunting and gathering trips, and looking over the maintenance of the village, agricultural fields, or other important places. In most Native American cultures, “religion” or spirituality is threaded throughout the social organization and everyday lives of people. Many members of a Native community may not explicitly learn the traditional spiritual ways and meanings of their people, though they may play an important role in organizing the ways in which they live and the yearly practices in which they participate. Spiritual and cultural practices are often tied to relationships with particular places and the yearly cycles of seasonal, climatological, and agricultural changes of their homelands. In many cultures, clan kinship and ancestry is also linked to the natural world.
Native Homelands and Reservations Nearly universally, Native American groups’ identities and cultures are tied to particular places. These places include sites of cosmological significance, such as those believed to be the location of their origins (places of emergence and creation); sites of communion with the holy, historic homelands, ancient villages, and burial grounds; places where they have collected foods, medicines, building and cultural materials, and holy objects for generations; and the reservations that their people now occupy. All of these specific places play important parts in
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the religions, cultures, and identities of Native people, and access to them is integral to their perpetuation as a people. Even for the 66% of Native American people who now live away from reservations in urban areas in the United States, these places remain important to the orientation and perpetuation of their group identities. The struggle to maintain access to and control over these places continues today for nearly all tribes. Past U.S. violence and policies have significantly disrupted and fragmented Native homelands. In many cases, whole Native communities were forced from their lands and resettled elsewhere, especially in the 19th century. Many Indian lands were taken by the federal government and then given or leased to private citizens or kept as government lands, and, at various times, recognition of sovereign tribal authority to manage tribal lands and resources was denied. The 2004 American Community Survey indicates that the American Indian and Alaska Native populations are not evenly distributed; just five states account for the majority of their populations: Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, and North Carolina. Their interactions with the U.S. government have resulted in a patchwork of 304 federal
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American Indian reservations and individual American-Indian-owned restricted fee lands, which make up the 55.7 million acres (225,410 km²), or 2.3%, of the area of the United States protected by the federal trust relationship today. The largest reservation in the United States is the Navajo Nation (Diné Bikéyah), which is about the size of West Virginia, with 17 million acres and a resident population of nearly 200,000 people. Reservations vary in size from this extreme to the 100 or less acres of many California tribes, which may be inhabited by only a handful of people. American Indian reservations include all the lands that a tribe reserved for itself and did not specifically cede to or have illegally seized by the U.S. government. These reservations were recognized historically by the United States through treaties, executive orders, administrative acts, and acts of Congress. On federal reservations, tribal governments are recognized by the federal government as having jurisdictional control over the management of those lands and as being responsible for the provisions of infrastructure and services. A small number of individual states have also recognized Indian reservation lands, even when the federal government has failed to do so.
Arizona 12.6
All other states 33.9
Oklahoma 12.4
California 12.2 Montana 2.7 New York 2.8 Washington 3.4 Alaska 3.8 North Carolina 4.0
Figure 1
New Mexico 8.1 Texas 4.0
American Indian and Alaska Native Household Population by State, 2004
Source: U.S. Census, http://factfinder.census.gov Note: Percent distribution of American Indian and Alaska Native population. Data based on sample limited to the household population and exclude the population living in institutions, college dormitories, and other group quarters. For information on confidentiality protection, sampling error, nonsampling error, and definitions, see http://factfinder.census.gov/home/en/datanotes/exp_acs2004.html
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Native Americans, Environment and
Of the reservation lands that have remained with or been restored to federally recognized tribes, many are highly fragmented in a checkerboard pattern of tribal ownership interspersed with non-Native private and government ownership. This makes it incredibly complicated both politically and legally for tribes, states, and the federal government to manage resources, work out jurisdictional disputes, and provide infrastructure and services to these communities. This is further complicated by the fact that many Native landholdings are located far from urban centers and in many cases are underdeveloped in terms of physical infrastructure, such as paved roads; power, water, and waste facilities; housing; and economic opportunities. Maintaining and reclaiming tribal sovereignty over Native lands and supporting sustainable economic development and ecological restoration on them continues to be an ongoing struggle for many tribes. These struggles include regaining access to, ownership of, jurisdictional authority over, and federal trust protection of lands and resources that were taken from tribes in the past. Many tribes have also faced environmental degradation of their homelands due to federal interventions and leases of Native lands, abusive practices by extractive industries, and economic and political restrictions that have made it difficult to effectively manage and regulate pollution. Changes in federal laws and funding available to tribes in the last 4 decades are making it possible for tribes to use their unique political and legal status to protect and restore their important places. In nearly all cases, tribes are working to socially and ecologically protect the places that are sacred and culturally important to them, as these places embody their histories, sense of identity, cultures, and spiritual relationships with nature. Angela Ann Gonzales and Melanie Stansbury See Appendix B See also Aleuts; Black Elk; Blackfeet; Cherokee; Cheyenne; Choctaw; Deloria, Vine, Jr.; Hopi; Menominee; Navajo; Ojibwa; Peletier, Leonard; Pueblos; Sioux; Thorpe, Jim; Tlingit
Further Readings
Bataille, Gretchen M., ed. 1993. Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland. Berkhofer, Robert F., Jr. 1979. The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present. New York: Random House.
Bordewich, Fergus M. 1996. Killing the White Man’s Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the 20th Century. New York: Doubleday. Calloway, Colin G. 2004. First People: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History. 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St.Martin’s Press. Clifton, J. A., ed. 1990. The Invented Indian: Cultural Fictions and Government Policies. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Cohen, Felix. 1971. Handbook of Federal Indian Law. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Deloria, Philip J. 1998. Playing Indian. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deloria, Philip J. 2004. Indians in Unexpected Places. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1988. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Hauptman, Laurence M. 1995. Tribes and Tribulations: Misconceptions about American Indians and Their Histories. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Hirschfelder, Arlene and Martha Kreipe de Montano. 1993. The Native American Almanac: A Portrait of Native America Today. New York: Prentice Hall General Reference. Hoxie, Frederick E., ed. 1988. Indians in American History: An Introduction. Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson. Knack, Martha C. and Alice Littlefield, eds. 1996. Native Americans and Wage Labor: Ethnohistorical Perspectives. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Nabokov, Peter, ed. 1991. Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to the Present, 1492–1992. New York: Penguin Books. O’Neill, Colleen, ed. 2004. Native Pathways: American Indian Culture and Economic Development in the 20th Century. Boulder: University of Colorado Press. Prucha, Francis Paul. 1984. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Riley, Patricia, ed. 1993. Growing Up Native American. New York: Avon Books. U.S. Census Bureau. 2007. The American Community— American Indians and Alaska Natives: 2004. American Community Survey Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Utter, Jack. 1993. American Indians: Answers to Today’s Questions. Lake Ann, MI: National Woodlands.
NATIVE AMERICANS, ENVIRONMENT AND Environmental issues are a central concern for Native North American peoples in several different ways that
Native Americans, Environment and
intertwine with what some have called a history of colonialist racism and genocide. These include the dispossession of land, the degradation of indigenous space, and the marginalization of Native American lifeways, which, it has been argued, are more sustainable than those of modern industrial and expansionist nation-states. Despite the great cultural diversity of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas and around the world who have faced similar experiences, a sustained global indigenous movement has emerged that emphasizes cultural survival and resistance to imperial history, learning, language, religion, and trade. Much of this resistance is embodied in guarding living ecologies where tribes have specific and ancestral bonds.
Tribalism The indigenous people of the Americas have always encompassed a diverse set of cultures and societies, perhaps best understood as distinct tribes organized through kinship rules and institutions. Indeed, tribalism, as Vine Deloria, Jr. wrote in Custer Died for Your Sins, is a quintessential element of American Indian societies. Each tribe has many variations in practices (customs) and social structures (e.g., clans), as well as norms and expectations for tribal society and individuals within the respective tribe. Thus, each tribe has a unique political history and therefore unique relations with the earth, particularly because each tribe is place based: That is, it has developed within a specific ecological space. Because tribes are place based, intimate knowledge about the nature of ecological systems and their dynamics is learned and recorded (usually) in oral histories and ceremonies passed down through elders in the tribes or other designated leaders. This placebased evolution of tribes, in addition to their egalitarian social structures, has limited the ways in which tribes have allowed themselves to change their landscapes and degrade the surrounding ecology. This is not to say that some tribes did not degrade their environments—some did so, which led to their own demise. However, the very fact that many tribes, such as the Yakima or the Hopi, may trace histories of thousands of years of living in a specific place indicates that they were able to maintain the integrity of the large ecological structure (e.g., hydrology, soils, game) without undermining their subsistence needs. Add this to the fact that most tribes saw and continue to see the world around them as a living family and that this worldview guided theocratic governance in
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tribes, and it becomes clear why tribes are considered relatively sustainable compared with Western cultures that have disposed of land as if it were a cog in a machine, much less a part of the family of life.
Dispossession The dispossession of sacred and ancestral place-based tribal land is a critical element in Native American histories and in the histories of colonizing settlers who eventually established the nations of Canada and the United States. Seizure by European-based empires of land that had been under tribal tenure, sometimes for thousands of years, has been a consistent story in the last 500 years of Native American history. This dispossession was based on frankly racist attitudes toward Indigenous Peoples, whose societies were treated and viewed as less evolved than those of Europe. In fact, Europeans considered themselves to be at the center of civilization, which they believed was produced by controlling nature and centralizing political structure in European-type monarchies, and later republics. At the same time, European colonists saw Indigenous Peoples as “savage” and “uncivilized.” Nature was something to be dominated, and Indigenous Peoples were seen as part of that untamed wilderness. Under this premise of constructed racial superiority, partially empowered by church doctrine to convert Native peoples, Europeans and later the U.S. government waged wars against tribes, ostensibly to gain control over Native land. Not all of these wars were won by the government, and, according to the 1978 Indian Claims Commission Report (a federal government body), the U.S. government never attained legitimate title to more than one-third of land controlled by Native Americans in the United States. Thus, legally, this land still belongs to the tribes. Altogether, Native American peoples have been maligned as having a supposedly less developed or less advanced social structure in part because tribes often see themselves as part of an organic and living world that deserves respect and reverence. For this reason, many tribes had strict rules about what kinds of changes to the surrounding environment were acceptable. For example, several tribes had sanctions against cutting into the earth, thereby prohibiting both farming and mining. Other tribes did farm and mine and continue to do so. Europeans and later the colonial U.S. governments would engage in wave after wave of policy initiatives meant to “civilize” the tribes and get them to take up farming (often on land
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that was not fertile or in climates that were inappropriate) or other Western practices, many of which were aimed at dismantling tribalism.
Key Policies In contemporary times, the U.S. federal government has granted itself ultimate control over Native American environments through the doctrines of plenary power and the federal trust. Plenary power means that the U.S. government has complete power to decide the course of action for tribes, and the premise of federal trust is that the federal government is supposed to “take care of” tribes as a guardian would a child. Whereas tribes in the United States are considered “domestic dependent nations,” with mitigated sovereignty to determine their own course of action, the 1902 Supreme Court case of Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock decided that the U.S. government had ultimate control to carry out the federal trust, even when the tribes disagree with the government. Thus, the doctrine asserts that as in ward-guardian relationships, the federal government knows the interest of tribes better than the tribes themselves. This belief stems from a history and practice of continued prejudice against Native people as “less than.” More than that, however, when the Lone Wolf decision was written, it noted that the United States could be held to treaties or treaty promises if it was to carry out the federal trust doctrine. Accordingly, while the United States has kept and honored some treaties or provisions in treaties, some of the most important elements of treaties have not been honored. For example, in many treaties, there is some reference to the permanent control of the reserved land (“reservations”) agreed to in the treaties. These clauses, sometimes employing language such as “as long as the grass is green and the river flows,” indicated that the tribe would control these lands in perpetuity. Nevertheless, the U.S. government has pursued policies such as allotment, as in the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887, which disposed of tribal land, assigning some to individuals of the tribe and selling off the rest to homesteaders. Also, with plenary power, the control of Native lands rests ultimately not in the control of the tribes, but with the Department of the Interior, which can sign off on a lease (e.g., for mining) on tribal lands, in contradiction to tribal demands.
Degradation of Tribal Lands Perhaps this loss of control over tribal lands accounts for some of the severe environmental degradation of tribal reservations over the last 100 years. In part, this degradation has involved deforestation, decline of game and fish populations, and pollution. Among the more profound losses on Native lands, however, has been the mining for radioactive materials on reservations. During the 1970s, all uranium was mined on Native American reservations, even though tribes controlled only about 60%. Thus, the decision to mine the vast majority of materials on Native land raises serious questions—and a lack of accountability for costly damage has been proposed as one reason. For example, the United Nuclear Corporation had a retention dam of radioactive water, which burst on Diné (Navajo) land, contaminating 100 miles of the Rio Puerco. This was the largest nuclear accident in U.S. history. Diné workers in uranium mines were lied to about the effects of radioactive exposure, and to this day there are hundreds of radioactive tailing (waste) piles that sit there unattended to, where children have been known to play.
Native American Lifeways It should be clear from the preceding discussion that tribal lifeways continue to face serious threats. If a social group is land based, then dispossessing that group of its land is more than a disruption of economic subsistence. If a tribal group culturally identifies with a specific place and the ecological elements of that place, such as its wildlife, then undermining that lifeway also undermines an aspect of tribal identity, and some scholars have considered this an aspect of genocide. For example, there are places that are sacred to the Hopi people, but parts of that land are privately owned and currently being mined. Ceremonies tied to that place are now out of the question, and this element of Hopi culture and the aspect of “being in the world” that comes with paying respect through that ceremony are now lost. Indeed, through the erasure of places where ceremonies critical to Native American lifeways are performed and passed down, a part of that tribe is lost. Despite these problems, some tribes have been mobilizing politically to fight for self-determination. Also, it is notable that one environmental policy, “Winter’s Rights,” declares that reservations have the
Nativism
right to enough water for tribal economic and agricultural functions—thereby reserving a powerful resource for tribes. Furthermore, many tribes have been resilient enough to maintain themselves in the face of 500 years of pressure. If Vine Deloria, Jr. is right, tribal structure will continue not only to provide a way for Native Americans but also to serve as an example to others. Peter Jacques See also Deloria, Vine, Jr.; Discrimination, Environmental Hazards; Environmental Justice; Native American Education; Native American Health Care; Native American Identity; Native Americans; Water Rights
Further Readings
Churchill, Ward. 2003. Acts of Rebellion: The Ward Churchill Reader. New York: Routledge. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1969. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. New York: Avon Books. Greymorning, Stephen. 2004. A Will to Survive: Indigenous Essays on the Politics of Culture, Language, and Identity. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill. Johansen, Bruce. 2003. Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Issues: An Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
NATIVISM The term nativism refers to the beliefs and policies favoring native-born citizens over immigrants. Typically, it refers to political actions, but it has also been taken to refer to broader antiforeigner feelings. Virtually all nations that have attracted immigrants have, during different historical periods, developed anti-alien sentiments, especially when the immigrants are culturally different from the host society. This entry, however, focuses on nativism in the United States. Nativism emerged in dramatic fashion in the mid19th century as Europeans arrived in large numbers from countries other than Great Britain. In addition, these later immigrants were less likely to be of the Protestant faith. The relative absence of federal immigration legislation until the 1880s does not mean that all these new arrivals were welcomed. Xenophobia, the fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners, naturally
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led to nativism, which can be viewed as the institutionalization of xenophobia. Roman Catholic settlers in general and the Irish in particular were among the first Europeans to experience nativism. Anti-Catholic feeling originated in Europe and was brought by the early Protestant immigrants. The Catholics of colonial America, although few, were subject to limits on their civil and religious rights. From independence until around 1820, little evidence appeared of the anti-Catholic sentiment of colonial days, but the cry against “popery” grew as the numbers of Irish immigrants, as well as German Catholics, increased. One example of nativism was the political movement called the “American Republican Party,” originating in 1843. Eventually, it became known as the “Know-Nothing Party” because of the semisecret nature of the group. When members were asked about its activities, they were supposed to reply “I know nothing.” Levi Boone was elected mayor of Chicago on the Know-Nothing ticket in 1855. Reflecting nativism, he barred all immigrants from city jobs and created policies that significantly curtailed Germanand Irish-owned taverns within the city. Revivals of anti-Catholicism continued well into the 20th century. The most dramatic outbreak of nativism in the 19th century was aimed at the Chinese. If there had been any doubt by the mid-1800s that the United States could harmoniously accommodate all, debate on the Chinese Exclusion Act would negatively settle the question once and for all. Most Chinese were barred from immigrating; Chinese already in the United States were unable to bring their families to join them; and those who left the country, even if they had been born in the United States, might find reentry difficult or impossible. Still later, nativist sentiment would target Italian and Polish immigrants, Eastern European Jews after World War II, Vietnamese and other South Asian refugees of the 1970s, and the Cuban “Marielito” refugees of the 1980s. While the term nativism has largely been used to describe 19th-century sentiments, anti-immigration views and organized movements have continued into the 21st century. Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington called continuing immigration a “clash of civilizations,” which could only be remedied by significantly reducing legal immigration and closing the border to illegal arrivals. His view, which enjoys support, is that the fundamental world conflicts of the
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new century are cultural in nature rather than ideological or even economic. Beginning in the 1990s and continuing through the present, recent immigrants and their descendants have been characterized by many as being responsible for a variety of social problems, or at least for making them worse. In 1994, Californians passed Proposition 187, which was aimed at denying access of illegal immigrants to social services, public education, and health care. Today’s nativists point to low wages, overcrowded housing, unemployment, crime, overstretched health services, and burdened public schools as justifying their views. Concerns about terrorism have added a new emotional element to nativism in countries such as the United Kingdom and Spain, as well as the United States, which have experienced high-profile terrorist attacks in recent years. Richard T. Schaefer See also Americanization; Dillingham Flaw; Ethnocentrism; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Race; Irish Americans; Prejudice; Proposition 187; Racism; Stereotypes; Terrorism; “Us and Them”; Xenophobia
Further Readings
Billington, Ray A. [1938] 1964. The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism. New York: Quadrangle Books. Duff, John B. 1971. The Irish in the United States. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Gerber, David A. 1993. Nativism, Anti-Catholicism, and AntiSemitism. New York: Scribner’s. Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72(3):22–49. Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster. Morse, Samuel F. B. 1835. Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of United States. New York: Leavitt, Lord. Warner, Sam Bass, Jr. 1968. The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
NAVAJO The Navajo make up the largest single American Indian tribe and occupy the largest and most populated
reservation. The Navajo Nation, or the Diné (meaning “the people”), has been a significant force in the Southwest and occupies a prominent role in most Native American issues and policymaking today. This entry includes an overview of Navajo history, the NavajoHopi dispute, contemporary Navajo education, and the contemporary life focusing on the Navajo reservation.
History The earliest identifiable traces of the Navajo are the 500-year-old remains of hogans, rounded houses of poles and brush covered with earth that were, and still are in contemporary times, distinctively Navajo. Current thinking of archaeologists proposes that the Navajo and other Athapaskan (or Athabascan) people migrated from Canada as hunters and gatherers into what is now the U.S. Southwest by 1100 AD. The Diné themselves describe their history as a series of worlds surviving surging floodwaters to form sacred mountains with holy people. The Navajo world is closely tied to the land, as each event of creation is linked to specific locations revered to this day. When the Spanish entered New Mexico in 1540, the area north of the Pueblos was occupied by bands speaking an Athabascan language; they came to be called “Apaches.” For 200 years, relations with the Pueblos varied from being hostile to more of a hostguest relationship. The Navajo emerged as more strongly influenced by the Pueblos, whereas the Athabascan-speaking Kiowa-Apache experienced a greater Plains influence. The Pueblo influence is seen in the Navajo’s agricultural system, their matrilineal (mother-based) system of descent, and the practices of weaving and sand paintings. Encounters between the Navajo and the United States began with the conclusion of the MexicanAmerican War, with the consequence that the Navajo people as of 1848 resided in U.S. territory. Early agreements with the first military expeditions led to misunderstandings, raids, retaliations, and still more treaties. These early treaties were virtually useless, since the Navajo hold no centralized authority and the federal government never grasped the autonomous nature of Navajo bands. Hostile engagements were numerous, in part because the Navajos raided Anglo settlements to find and free thousands of their people who had been enslaved. Beginning in 1862, Colonel Kit Carson was charged with controlling the Navajos. His troops
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Spicer has observed, there had been significant aspects of Hispanicization, Mexicanization, and Anglicization. The Navajo reservation came to be enlarged several times, from 3.5 million acres in 1868 to 15 million acres in 1934, eventually surrounding the area granted to the Hopi, leading to continuing tensions. Another major controversy developed over the population size of Navajo livestock, especially sheep. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) administrators beginning in 1934 argued that the Navajo had more livestock than the land could support. Most Navajo disagreed, but nonetheless the BIA killed nearly half the livestock, leading to generations of bitter feelings. A celebrated aspect of 20th-century Navajo history is the participation of many Diné in the military. For example, Navajo soldiers served as “code talkers” during World War II. In this unique role, they utilized the Navajo language for coded messages, which Japan’s military found impenetrable. Three Navajo women weaving (1914). The early Navajos were nomadic hunters and gatherers, and Navajo weaving tells a story of their encounters and adaptations with neighboring cultures over 300 years. Weaving continues to be an exciting expression of Navajo culture. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsc-00135.
methodically destroyed fields and killed tribal people who resisted. Thousands were forced out by the threat of starvation and made to take the “Long Walk,” over a 20-day period in 1863, of 300 miles across New Mexico to Fort Sumner in the eastern part of the state. The imprisoned Navajos were vulnerable to disease, especially to smallpox; those who survived were taught new farming techniques, the principles of Christianity, and the building of adobe houses. With the end of the Civil War, and of the perceived need to closely control the Navajos, a relaxation of government policy took place. The Navajos returned in 1868 to their former territory, straddling the Arizona-New Mexico state line, and returned to their accustomed practices of farming and raising small livestock, such as sheep and goats. By the close of the 19th century, the Navajo culture had been influenced by continuing contact with different tribal groups, but particularly with the Pueblo, as already noted. In addition, as anthropologist Edward
Navajo-Hopi Dispute One long-term dispute illustrates the complexity of land claims when the federal government has tried to manage tribal people. In 1882, the United States declared an end to a century-long conflict over which tribe, the Hopi or Navajo, had the right to some lands in northeastern Arizona. The original inhabitants, the Hopi, were granted sole use of a group of mesas. These lands were surrounded by joint-use land to be used by both tribes, which was totally surrounded by the relatively populous Navajo reservation—about nine times the size of the Hopi land. The original conflict was created when the Navajos fled the U.S. Cavalry in New Mexico and entered neighboring Arizona. Even after joint use was declared in the 1930s, the government began issuing grazing permits to Navajos in these areas. In 1993, a new agreement was proposed that would allow some Navajos to remain with their homes and livestock on Hopi land. In exchange, the Hopis would receive land and money from the government to resolve lawsuits. The compromise was attacked by both tribes and by White landowners in the disputed territory. As the dispute continued, Native Americans on these lands experienced extreme stress because their future was in limbo until 2006, when the final demarcation was determined.
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Navajo Education What leads to academic success? Often, the answer is a supportive family, but this has not always been said about Native Americans. Educators rooted in the European education traditions believed that children who were faithful to traditional Native culture could not succeed in schools. This assimilationist view argued that to succeed in the larger, White-dominated society, it was important to begin to shed the “old ways” as soon as possible. Interestingly, research done in the last 10 years questions the assimilationist view, concluding that American Indian students can improve their academic performance through educational programs that are less assimilationist and that use curricula building on what the Native American youth learn in their homes and communities. Representative of this growing research is the study completed by sociologist Angela A. A. Willeto among her fellow Navajo tribal people. She studied a random sample of 451 Navajo high school students from eleven different Navajo Nation schools. She examined the impact on the students’ performance of their orientation toward traditional Navajo culture. Willeto acknowledged that the prevailing view has been that all that is inherently Navajo in a child must be eliminated and replaced with mainstream, White-society beliefs and lifestyles. In Willeto’s study, the Navajo tradition was measured by a number of indicators, such as participating in Navajo dances, consulting a medicine man, entering a sweat bath to cleanse oneself spiritually, weaving rugs, having aspirations to attend a more traditional hogan, and using the Navajo language. School performance was measured by grades, commitment to school, and aspirations to attend college. Willeto found that the students who lived a more traditional life among the Navajo succeeded in school just as well and were just as committed to success in school and college as were high schoolers leading a more assimilated life. These results are important because many Native Americans themselves accept an assimilationist view. Even within the Navajo Nation, where Navajo language (Dinétah) instruction has been mandated in all reservation schools since 1984, many Navajos still equate learning only with the mastery of White society’s subject matter.
Contemporary Patterns In the United States as of 2004, there were 230,401 Navajo, representing 10.7% of the tribal American
Indian and Alaska Native population. According to the 2000 census, the Navajo are a young population, with a median age of 24.4, compared with 28.8 for all American Indians and 35.4 for the total U.S. population. The Navajo household averages 3.66 members, compared with 2.59 for the United States as a whole. Only 6.9% of Navajos have college degrees, which is low even compared with all American Indians (12.1%). The poverty rate for the Navajo in 1999 was 37%, contrasted with 12.4% for the general population. The most striking aspect of contemporary Navajo people is that as of 2000, 67.1% do not speak English at all in the home, compared with 60.4% of the Pueblo people (the next-highest group of non-English-speaking tribal people) and 27.9% of American Indians as a group. As of 2000, the Navajo reservation recorded 174,847 individuals, or about 63% of all Navajo people. Hostilities between Navajo and non-Navajo did not end with the close of encounters with the cavalry or the army. The Navajo Nation Tribal Council (the legislative body of the reservation government) has often spoken out about racial discrimination and prejudice experienced by the Navajo in areas bordering the reservation. Another source of friction is past and future use of natural resources. The reservation has been the site of uranium processing and huge coal-firing plants. Disputes continue through the present about overpayment of past royalties and cleanup of closed facilities. The situation of the Navajo with respect to natural resources is not unusual for reservations, in terms of both non-Natives profiting and the tribal people experiencing environmental degradation. Richard T. Schaefer See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Environmental Justice; Hopi; Native American Education; Native American Health Care; Native Americans; Native Americans, Environment and; Pueblos; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)
Further Readings
Alvord, Lori Arviso and Elizabeth Cohen Van Pelt. 1999. The Scalpel and the Silver Bear. New York: Bantam. Barringer, Felicity. 2007. “Navajos Hope for Millions a Year from Power Plant.” New York Times, July 27, p. A12. Griffin-Pierce, Trady. 2000. Native Peoples of the Southwest. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Kehoe, Alice B. 1992. North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Negro League Baseball
Ogunwole, Stella U. 2006. We the People: American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Powers, Willow Roberts. 2001. Navajo Trading: The End of an Era. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Reyhner, Jon. 2001. “Cultural Survival vs. Forced Assimilation.” Cultural Survival Quarterly 25(2):22–25. Spicer, Edward H. 1981. Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533–1960. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2007. The American Community: American Indians and Alaska Natives 2004. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Wilkins, David E. 2003. The Navajo Political Experience. Rev. ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Willeto, Angela A. A. 1999. “Navajo Culture and Female Influences on Academic Success: Traditional Is Not a Significant Predictor of Achievement among Young Navajos.” Journal of American Indian Education 38(2):1–24.
NEGRO LEAGUE BASEBALL
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The Early Years A number of amateur teams, such as the Colored Union Club of Brooklyn and the Pythian Club of Philadelphia, were formed in the 1860s, and the New York Cuban Giants, the first salaried Black baseball team, was established in 1885. Beginning with this period, barnstorming was the way of life for Black baseball players. These early teams were located where players could find day jobs. Such industrial towns as Portsmouth, Virginia (Firefighters), and Baltimore, Maryland (Stars), were home to players who worked in railroad shops while playing for semipro teams. The Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., area had the “Blue Ribbons” industrial league team, which eventually came to be known as the “Homestead Grays.” The early days of barnstorming also included the “All-American Black Tourists,” who traveled on their own railroad car; each of their games was preceded by an elaborate street parade. While institutional-level measures were established for segregation in baseball, some individual players managed to integrate even in earlier days. For example, Bud Fowler, who is believed to be the first Black professional baseball player, first signed with a White team in New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1872. By 1887,
When major league baseball retired uniform “number 42” in 1997, it was to honor Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Black baseball players had been barred from organized leagues through de facto exclusion from the late 1800s until 1946. At the annual convention in 1867, the National Association of Baseball Players (NABBP), the game’s first league, decided that it was in their best interests to bar any person of African descent or any team that played a person of color. Such exclusion led to de facto segregation of players by race by the end of the century. Nevertheless, Black teams were formed, and they played exhibition games on what was called the “barnstorming” circuit. These teams were particularly prominent starting in the 1890s, as they sometimes played against White teams, and all-Black teams would play in Homestead Grays (1913). The Negro League champion Homestead Grays otherwise all-White leagues. This entry began as an industrial league team located in the mill town of Homestead, chronicles various attempts by Blacks Pennsylvania. This team and others like it produced a number of players and Whites to sustain America’s pastime whose abilities were believed to be comparable to those of the White players according to rapidly changing race rela- in major-league baseball against whom they were prohibited from competing. Source: Public domain. tions in the early part of the 1900s.
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twenty Black players were known to be playing with White teams. These were mostly in small leagues, but they included some historically significant figures. By and large, however, most White players did not feel comfortable playing together with Blacks. At the time, the media praised these Black ballplayers, allowing them to gain some acceptance in organized baseball, while simultaneously blaming their miscues on the color of their skin. Some mainstream sports publications, like the Sporting News, recognized as early as 1889 the injustice in baseball toward Blacks and forecast a rough road ahead. In fact, by 1897, a year after Plessy v. Ferguson made separate-but-equal facilities constitutional, there were no Blacks in White baseball. Most of the Negro ballplayers during this era had middle-class backgrounds, and practically all grew up in the North. Some, like Fleet Walker, attended college. Walker, the first Negro player with the International League, ended his career in 1889, when the league was closing its door to Blacks, and eventually became an author on race, including Our Home Colony: A Treatise on the Past, Present, and Future of the Negro Race in America. He is believed to be an originator of the modern militant Black movement because he rejected racial equality through education, religion, and enhancement of economic positions. Rather, he thought American Black citizens should emigrate to Africa. The most prominent exceptions to the exclusion of Blacks in major-league baseball were Armando Marsans and Rafael Almeida, two light-skinned Cuban players who played for the Cincinnati Reds in 1911. While darker Cubans did not receive the same opportunities, these two players were clearly seen as “not Black,” or “passing,” due to their skin tone. In fact, during their playing days with the Reds, Marsans and Almeida denied that they had “Negro” blood in them, even though racial mixing was quite common in Cuba.
A League of Their Own As the country as a whole experienced an economic boom in the late 1910s, the number of business opportunities for Blacks started to blossom. Andrew “Rube” Foster, who won 44 games in a row as a pitcher in 1902, collaborated with White interests, including John M. Schorling, Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey’s son-in-law, to play games in majorleague ballparks. In exchange for permission to play
in their ballparks, disproportionate amounts of revenue were taken away from Black owners, which eventually made their status meaningless. Gradually, these White owners decided to integrate the booking process and do away with the Black owners entirely. This practice of undercutting profits from Black entrepreneurship was quite common across society at the time. Being frustrated by this exploitation and realizing the increasing interest in Black baseball among Whites, Foster formed the first organized league, the National Negro League, on February 13, 1920, based in Kansas City, Missouri. It included the Homestead Grays and later on the Newark Eagles, the first professional team owned and operated by a woman, Effa Manley. While Foster successfully fended off White stadium owners, he still had to answer to semi-silent White backers. The league produced a number of players whose abilities were believed to be comparable to those of the White players in major-league baseball. Among them was Satchel Paige, who played for eight different teams in the National Negro League, beginning in 1926. He entered major-league baseball at age 42 with the Cleveland Indians, a year after Robinson’s debut and the year the Indians won the American League pennant. Also entering the league was Josh Gibson, a catcher who was often compared to Babe Ruth for his ability to hit home runs, but with more humility and grace. Many National Negro League players were compared with major-league baseball players. In some instances, such a comparison was acknowledged by the players themselves. For example, John Henry Lloyd, a legendary shortstop for the Philadelphia Cuban X Giants, Philadelphia Giants, New York Lincoln Giants, and Chicago American Giants, came to be known as the “Black Wagner,” after legendary Hall-of-Famer Honus Wagner. In fact, Wagner himself was quoted as saying that it was a privilege to have been compared to Lloyd. While Wagner was elected into the baseball Hall of Fame as one of the first inductees in 1936, Lloyd was not recognized until 1977, when the Negro League Committee inducted him. Although the National Negro League had regular schedules, fans often associated them with barnstorming, since promoters kept them busy on their days off with other teams outside the league, so that they routinely played over 200 games a year. These games not only provided opportunities for more exposure but were also financially rewarding for the players, who otherwise had to rely on jobs outside baseball to survive.
Negro League Baseball
In addition to the National Negro League, a number of attempts were made to operate baseball leagues among Blacks in the early to mid-1900s. The formation of the Eastern Colored League in 1923 led to the first Negro World Series in 1924 with the National Negro League. In 1937, the Negro American League was formed in the South and the Midwest. The Negro American League and the National Negro League managed to coexist through the 1948 season. In 1949, the two leagues were merged, and the last Black major league was operated through 1960.
Social and Historical Context Beginning with the Great Migration of Blacks from South to North, beginning in 1915, and despite subsequent race riots in twenty-six American cities, racial segregation continued to be a way of life at the beginning of the 20th century. However, some Whites in baseball spoke out on behalf of Black players who were being shut out. The Baseball Weekly in 1923 called the exclusion of Blacks a “hideous monster.” While some managers and owners expressed interest in adding Black players to their teams, they inevitably ran into resistance from White players. By the late 1920s, the discussion of integration in baseball receded as the nation headed into the Great Depression, and the issue of social justice in general took a backseat to high unemployment rates. Given the circumstances, Foster and his league focused on building a competitive product of their own rather than integration, which created further cleavage. By 1931, the impact of economic hardship was too great for the league to survive. Though the second Negro League was established 2 years later, the league struggled to maintain a consistent number of participating teams, and, by 1936, the National Negro League was operating solely in the East. The reasons for segregation in baseball did not deviate too far from societal reasons: the lack of travel accommodations for Black players, the fear of (White) public resistance, and the general belief that Black players were inferior. However, Robert Peterson, the author of Only the Ball Was White, suggests that the most prominent reason for segregation was the strong tradition in baseball that led many never to question how things have always been. However, as the 1940s approached, more and more White reporters, scouts, and managers who had witnessed players like Paige and Gibson in person were convinced that a number of Negro League
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players belonged in the major leagues. Around the same time, increasing prominence and visibility of Blacks in education, the economy, and World War II military service had made the consideration of Blacks in major-league baseball more than an abstract discussion. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to monitor discriminatory hiring practices. Then, in August 1945, New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia formed a subcommittee on baseball of the Anti-Discrimination Committee. Mounting legal and political pressure was fully recognized by White owners, who already were short of talent due to World War II. In the meantime, after 3 years in the army, UCLA alumnus Jack Roosevelt Robinson joined the Kansas City Monarchs in April 1945. Unaware that he had been carefully selected over other Negro League players and then monitored by Wesley Branch Rickey, president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he was known to be a fierce competitor who did not hesitate to stand up for his rights and against Jim Crow. Upon ferocious negotiation between Rickey and Robinson, Robinson spent the 1946 season in Montreal, the highest minor-league team for the Dodgers. While he readied himself for the majorleague competition and media scrutiny, the Dodgers added six more Black players to its minor-league system, including Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe. Conversely, Eddie Klepp, a White pitcher, joined the Cleveland Buckeyes of the Negro American League in the same year. Just as Robinson’s traveling arrangements were challenging, Klepp often had to be separated from his teammates, depending on local ordinances. Robinson’s arrival in Brooklyn in 1947 was carefully planned ahead for by Rickey and Black community leaders, who informally campaigned to appear subdued without gloating or special treatment, out of fear of resistance. Despite such efforts, Robinson endured hostility and death threats throughout his first year when the Sporting News named him the rookie of the year. With much publicity generated by Robinson’s signing with the major leagues, the Negro Leagues flourished during the same period. However, integration had taken top players out of the leagues and into major-league baseball. And even though the total number of Black players did not rise, the attendance for the 1948 season suggested the eventual demise of the Negro Leagues.
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Newton, Huey (1942–1989)
Recognition Baseball among African Americans in various organized forms, whether local semipro leagues or Negro Leagues, persisted for nearly a half century without much institutional support, but often with a sizable fan base. The notable Negro League All-Star Game in Chicago’s Comiskey Park attracted over 51,000 fans, watching such Hall-of-Famers as Paige and Gibson, names recognized by both Black and White fans. Traces of the Negro League live on in the names of a few minor-league teams, such as the Birmingham Barons and the Chattanooga Lookouts. In 2006, the National Baseball Hall of Fame inducted twelve Negro League players and executives, including Cum Posey, the owner of the Homestead Grays; J. L. Wilkinson, the owner of the Kansas City Monarchs; and Effa Manley, co-owner and business manager of the Newark Eagles and the first woman to have her plaque hung in the Hall of Fame. They joined Rube Foster, who was inducted in 1981. In his induction to the Hall of Fame in 2005, a baseball reporter from the Boston Globe, Peter Gammons, noted that Jackie Robinson was in the major league 7 years before the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that ended school segregation. Baseball’s intimate ties to social and economic structure led those involved in the sport to think beyond societal constraints. During their existence, the Negro Leagues were a reflection of U.S. societal history and still remain very much a part of U.S. history. Though they no longer entertain and empower Blacks, who live under the shadow of White society, and though racial integration was finally achieved in baseball, the leagues provided an outlet to maintain an important tradition in the United States that eventually became a device for recognizing social inequality. Kiljoong Kim and Jack Clarke See also Brown v. Board of Education; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Leisure; Plessy v. Ferguson; Robinson, Jackie; Segregation; Thorpe, Jim
Further Readings
Bak, Richard. 1995. Turkey Stearnes and the Detroit Stars: The Negro Leagues in Detroit, 1919–1933. Ventura, CA: Gospel Light Publications. Hogan, Lawrence D. and Jules Tygiel. 2006. Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of AfricanAmerican Baseball. Washington, DC: National Geographic.
Jacobson, Steve. 2007. Carrying Jackie’s Torch: The Players Who Integrated Baseball—and America. New York: Lawrence Hill Books. Lanctot, Neil. 2004. Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Peterson, Robert. 1970. Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams. New York: Oxford University Press. Ribowsky, Mark. 1996. The Power and the Darkness: The Life of Josh Gibson in the Shadow of the Game. New York: Simon & Schuster. Tygiel, Jules. 1983. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press.
NEWTON, HUEY (1942–1989) Huey Percy Newton is best known for his cofounding in 1966 of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, later known simply as the Black Panther Party (BPP). A complex and controversial figure, twice indicted for felony crimes and acquitted, Newton was a radical grassroots activist, public intellectual, writer, and political candidate who advocated for the rights of African Americans to self-determination and selfdefense. Although critics such as Stanley Crouch, Tom Orloff of the San Francisco Chronicle, and author Hugh Pearson have labeled Newton as a “thug,” “criminal,” and “hoodlum,” others, such as former Black Panther Donald Cox, have spoken of him as a messianic presence whose every word was revered as gospel by his followers and associates. A romantic figure to many on the political Left in the 1960s and 1970s, Newton was anathematized by the Right as an advocate of violent revolution.
Early Years Born in Monroe, Louisiana, and named after the populist Louisiana governor Huey Long, Huey Newton was the seventh and youngest child of Armelia and Walter Newton, a sharecropper and Baptist minister. When he was a year old, his family moved to Oakland, California, where Huey grew up in poverty and later graduated from Oakland Technical High School, although functionally illiterate. He later taught himself to read, he said, by listening to audio recordings of poetry while following the written poems to correlate
Newton, Huey (1942–1989)
the sounds with how the words appeared. Newton attended Merritt College intermittently, ultimately earning an associate of arts degree, and later studied law at Oakland City College and San Francisco Law School. In 1980, he received a PhD degree in the history of consciousness from the University of California at Santa Cruz, where one of his professors was Edwin Meese III, future attorney general of the United States during the Reagan administration. At Merritt and City College, Newton encountered the Black radical tradition. He formed a relationship with members of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) at City College, who soon dismissed him as “bourgeois,” while he dismissed them as “armchair olutionaries.” Newton immersed himself in the racial and class politics of the San Francisco Bay area, joining the Afro-American Association and becoming a member of the African American fraternity Phi Beta Sigma. Newton also worked with others to demand the inclusion of Black History courses at City College. He began to study the life of Malcolm X and gained familiarity with organizations such as Negroes With Guns, the Lowndes County Freedom Party, the Soul Students Advisory Council, and the Deacons for Defense.
Radical Activism and Exile A widely reported incident involving the harassment of motorist Marquette Frye and the beating of her three sons by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in August 1965 sparked what became known as the Watts Riots. It was chiefly in response to such inflammatory events and other incidents of alleged police misconduct and brutality toward Black communities that Newton, in conjunction with fellow activist Bobby Seale, formed the BPP. Both men believed the BPP to be an extension of Malcolm X’s ideology and considered themselves his heirs. Against this background, Newton’s philosophy of race and democracy was becoming solidified. From his earlier study of the law, Newton became versed in the California penal code and the state’s laws concerning weapons. He convinced a number of African Americans to exercise their legal right to openly bear arms (concealed firearms were illegal). The resulting “Panther Patrols” were carloads of armed BPP members who patrolled areas where the Oakland police were alleged or known to have committed abuses against the community’s Black citizens. This program was widely supported in the African American
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community for its efforts to deter racial abuse by local police. In addition to patrolling, Newton and Seale were responsible for writing the BPP platform and program, whose sources included the writings of Chinese premier Mao Tse-tung and the Nation of Islam’s political format. As civil and racial unrest and rioting spread across the United States in the summers of 1966, 1967, and 1968, the BPP mobilized local chapters to politicize the actions as urban rebellions. Grassroots responses included the development of “legal first aid” by Newton—booklets that included texts and explanations of statutes and bylaws to inform readers of their legal rights when confronted by police. In October 1967, Newton and other BPP members were involved in a shootout with the Oakland police. Officer John Frey suffered four gunshot wounds and died shortly thereafter. Newton was also seriously wounded by gunfire; several hours later, he staggered into a hospital, where he was admitted and chained to a gurney. Accused of murdering Frey, Newton was convicted in September 1968 of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 2 to 15 years in prison. In May 1970, the California Appellate Court reversed Newton’s conviction and ordered a new trial. The State of California dropped its case against Newton after two subsequent mistrials. In 1974, Newton was accused of murdering Kathleen Smith, a 17-year-old prostitute. When he failed to make his court appearance, his bail was revoked, a bench warrant was issued, and Newton’s name was added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “Most Wanted” list. Newton jumped bail and escaped to Cuba, where he lived until he returned home in 1977 to face the murder charge. Because the evidence was largely circumstantial, Newton was acquitted after two trials were deadlocked.
Writings: The 1980s As a writer, Newton attempted a synthesis of racial analysis with classic philosophy, merging the theories of Malcolm X with those of Karl Marx and those of Frantz Fanon with those of Thomas Hobbes. In a study of Newton, Judson L. Jefferies explored how the political suppositions of Newton’s Durkheimian theory of “reactionary suicide” are connected to Dostoyevsky’s ideas on poverty and beggary in Crime and Punishment. He also analyzed connections in Newton’s thought to Nietzsche and psychological
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warfare, to Bakunin’s fatalistic view of revolutionaries, to Plato’s “cave” analogy, and to Marx’s theories on existence and social consciousness. Newton’s later writings considered both structural causations and personal responsibility as linchpins in the elimination of racism. Newton’s autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, resembles The Autobiography of Malcolm X in its narrative account of human enlightenment and possibility. Newton’s four other published books; To Die for the People (1972), In Search of Common Ground (1973), Insights and Poems (1975), and War Against the Panthers (his doctoral dissertation published posthumously, in 1996), illustrate his shift from Black Nationalism toward a synthesis he called “intercommunalism,” in which he predicted an upcoming collapse of the nation-state and the rise of universal brotherhood. During the last years of his life, Newton was involved with the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru House, headquartered in Oakland, California. Newton was also involved with the 1983 “Tent City” project for the homeless, the Oakland Summer Project that organized the Community Control of Housing Initiative, and the creation of the Bobby Hutton Freedom Clinic. On August 22, 1989, Newton was fatally shot on an Oakland street, allegedly over a drug deal gone wrong.
Newton, Huey P. 1972. To Die for the People. New York: Writers and Readers Publishing. Newton, Huey P. 1973. Revolutionary Suicide. New York: Writers and Readers Publishing. Newton, Huey P. 1996. War against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America. New York: Harlem River Press. Newton, Huey P. and Erik H. Erikson. 1973. In Search of Common Ground. New York: Norton. Newton, Huey P. and Ericka Huggins. 1975. Insights and Poems. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.
NICARAGUAN AMERICANS Among U.S. society’s large and growing population of immigrants are Nicaraguan Americans. In contemporary literature about immigrants, they often are labeled simply as Hispanics, a social construction that includes Mexicans, the largest and fastestgrowing population, and the smaller and relatively prosperous population of Cubans. Although Nicaraguan Americans share some similarities with other Hispanic groups, they have a unique history of immigration as well as cultural and institutional adaptation. In this entry, the term Nicaraguan Americans refers to those who were born in Nicaragua and live in the
Matthew W. Hughey See also Black Nationalism; Black Panther Party; Black Power; Carmichael, Stokely; Malcolm X; Nation of Islam
United States
Gulf of Mexico
Further Readings
Cleaver, Kathleen and George Katsiaficas, eds. 2001. Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy. New York: Routledge Press. Hilliard, David, with Keith Zimmerman and Kent Zimmerman. 2006. Huey: Spirit of the Panther. New York: Thunder’s Mountain Press. Hilliard, David and Lewis Cole. 1992. This Side of Glory. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Hughey, Matthew W. Forthcoming. “The Pedagogy of Huey P. Newton: Critical Reflections on Education in his Writings and Speeches.” Journal of Black Studies. Jeffries, Judson L. 2002. Huey P. Newton: The Radical Theorist. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Jones, Charles E., ed. 1998. The Black Panther Party Reconsidered. Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press.
The Bahamas
Cuba Mexico
Guatemala
Haiti
Jamaica
Belize Honduras
Caribbean Sea El Salvador
Nicaragua
Costa Rica Panama
Pacific Ocean Colombia
Nicaraguan Americans
United States and also, when so noted, to people who were U.S.-born but whose parents were born in Nicaragua. Nicaragua has an estimated population of 5.6 million as of 2007. According to the 2000 census, there were 228,346 people residing in the United States who came from Nicaragua. (This may be a low estimate. Immigration attorneys estimate, for example, at least 65,000 undocumented Nicaraguans in Miami.) That number represents less than 1% of the total foreign-born population (over 33 million in 2000) and 1.7% of foreign-born peoples from Mexico, Central and South America, and Spanishspeaking Caribbean nations. Although the number of Nicaraguan immigrants in the United States is small relative to all immigrants, they have a visible presence, especially in South Florida, where the majority of Nicaraguans live. Others have settled predominantly in large metropolitan areas, especially in California and Texas.
History of Nicaraguan Immigration to the United States Nicaraguans who migrated to the United States during the last 30 years came initially in reaction to the political upheavals in Nicaragua that started with the Sandinista Revolution in the late 1970s, when the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) seized the home of dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle and established socialist rule. As a result, the first wave of approximately 120,000 Nicaraguans entered the United States. They consisted of upperclass landholders, industrialists, and the exiled dictator and his family, who were among the South Florida elite. The second wave, which began during the early 1980s, was made up of professionals and white-collar workers emigrating because of the civil war, led by U.S.-backed opponents (“contras”) of the FSLN, and because of economic strife in Nicaragua. Another large wave of Nicaraguans entering the United States, consisting primarily of laborers, peaked in a large exodus in early 1989. Many in this third wave of immigrants settled in poor and deteriorating sections of Miami, where Mariel Cuban refugees had previously lived. The influx of Nicaraguans between 1988 and 1990 had significantly diminished by 1991, with the defeat of the Sandinistas in the 1989 elections, and then rose
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again in 1993 because of extremely poor economic conditions in the homeland. Since then, people from Nicaragua have been coming to the United States steadily, seeking better opportunities for their children. Indeed, Nicaragua struggles economically. Figures in 2005 from the World Bank show a per capita income of $830, the lowest in the Western Hemisphere except for Haiti.
Socioeconomic Factors and Barriers Compared with the total U.S. population, Nicaraguan immigrants have disproportionately low levels of education and employment. Of the 155,375 Nicaraguan foreign-born individuals between the ages of 15 and 64, 37% did not graduate from high school. This is slightly more than the percentage for the overall foreign-born population (36%) and significantly more than the percentage of U.S. citizens of the same age who have not completed high school. The median income of Nicaraguan Americans is $19,000 (about $5,000 lower than for the total immigrant population). Their jobs are predominately labor-intensive. Disproportionate socioeconomic status of immigrants is often due to institutional and individual discrimination. Institutionally, Nicaraguan immigrants have faced struggles with legal citizenship. Once democratic elections in Nicaragua were held, the U.S. government classified Nicaraguans as economic, rather than political, refugees and thus refused many of them asylum on political grounds. Changes in immigration policy, like the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), and increased security measures since the attacks on America on September 11, 2001, make it tougher for Nicaraguans to obtain legal status in the United States.
Culture, Language, and Identity While many scholars find that Nicaraguans have assimilated over the years, their homeland culture remains prominent in areas with high concentrations of Nicaraguan immigrants. For example, the MiamiDade County municipality of Sweetwater is called “Little Managua” due to its large and visible presence of Nicaraguan Americans. The area possesses an array of Nicaraguan fritangas, open grills selling popular Nicaragua dishes such as tamales (cornmeal wrapped in banana leaves) and chorizo (a Nicaraguan sausage)
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and markets that sell embroidered cotton shirts and dresses. In December, churches with predominantly Nicaraguan membership (such as Our Lady of Divine Providence) enjoy the festivities of Las Purisima, which celebrates the Virgen de la Asuncion (the patroness of Nicaragua). Most foreign-born Nicaraguan Americans speak Spanish in the home, but their children prefer English at school. Nicaraguan Spanish has several distinguishing characteristics: for example, instead of tú (for “you”), Nicaraguans use vos, which other Latin Americans rarely use. In Miami, Nicaraguan language usage reflects the context among other Hispanic groups. Some Nicaraguans, living and working among Cubans in Miami, have adopted the Cuban Spanish dialect, which locals and scholars refer to as Cubonics. The perceived racial and ethnic identity of Nicaraguan Americans is also unique, as most of the population of Nicaragua is mestizo (a mix of European and indigenous ancestry). A study of Nicaraguan high school students in South Florida showed that secondgeneration Nicaraguans self-identify with panethnic labels more so than Cubans, who identify with their national label, Cuban or Cuban American. The ethnic label Hispanic used in the United States may very well represent self-assertion and a more inclusive solidarity. Over time, Nicaraguan Americans have successfully secured a certain degree of influence and, as a result, embrace their national identity.
Portes, Alejandro and Alex Stepick. 1993. City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami. Berkeley: University of California Press. Suarez-Orozco, Marcelo. 1997. “Becoming Somebody: Central American Immigrants in U.S. Inner-City Schools.” Pp. 115–129 in Beyond Black and White: New Faces and Voices in U.S. Schools, edited by M. Seller and L. Weis. New York: State University of New York Press.
NIGERIA Nigeria is a country in West Africa with an estimated 2007 population of 144.4 million people. It is bordered by Benin on the east; Cameroon on the west; Chad and Niger to the north; and the Gulf of Guinea, the Bight of Benin, and the Bight of Biafra to the south. The country consists of thirty-six states and one capital district. The River Niger, the continent’s third largest river, runs within Nigeria for almost 1,000 miles, terminating in an oil-rich delta providing about 40% of the country’s gross domestic product. Nigeria is rich in natural resources, such as granite, salt, copper, and zinc, and roughly one-quarter of the current African population resides within its borders. This entry looks briefly at the history of Nigeria.
Portugal
Italy
Spain
Greece
Turkey
Lisa Konczal Malta
See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Central Americans in the United States; Hispanics; Hispanic Versus Latino; Immigration, U.S.; “Marielitos”
Further Readings
Fernandez-Kelly, Patricia and Sarah Curran. 2001. “Nicaraguans: Voices Lost, Voices Found.” Pp. 127–156 in Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America, edited by R. G. Rumbaut and A. Portes. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fernandez-Kelly, Patricia and Lisa Konczal. 2005. “Murdering the Alphabet: Identity and Opposition among Second Generation Cubans, West Indians, and Central Americans.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28:1153–1181. Portes, Alejandro and Ruben G. Rumbaut. 2006. Immigrant America: A Portrait. 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tunisia
Mediterranean Sea
Morocco Algeria Libya
Western Sahara
Egypt
Mauritania Niger
Mali
Chad
Senegal
Sudan Burkina Faso
Guinea Sierra Leone
Benin
Côte Ghana Togo Liberia d‘Ivoire
Nigeria
Central African Republic
Cameroon
Equatorial Guinea Gabon
Congo Congo, DRC
Rwanda Burundi
Atlantic Ocean Angola Zambia
Nigeria
Early History and Empires The people of Nigeria share an extensive history that can be traced back to as early as 12,000 BC, as shown by relics of the Stone Age found by archaeologists. Settlement patterns among the early Nigerians were dependent on the surrounding landscape and vegetation. In territories of high forestation, such as those occupied by early Yoruba, Ibibio, Igbo, and Edo tribes, agriculture was the main source of sustenance. In coastal areas inhabited by tribes such as Ijo and the Kalabari, goods such as fish and salt were traded as commerce. Ethnic relations in present-day Nigeria come from a host of historic influences. The Kanem-Borno was an empire that ruled from about the 8th century until the 19th century, when it was subdued by the British. This northern empire became wealthy and powerful due to their familiarity with the trans-Sahara trade routes. These routes secured contact and strong diplomacy with the Middle East and northern African citystates, and, as a result, Islam became heavily practiced within the kingdom. The empire made it possible for other kingdoms to flourish. The Hausa tribes were an ethnic group found in the northern savannas of precolonial Nigeria, located south of the Kanem-Borno Empire. Agriculture and security from their northern neighbors allowed the Hausa kingdoms to prosper. To the south, the tribes of the Yoruba, Nupe, Tiv, and Igala traded and held diplomatic relations with each other. The Niger delta was rich with city-states, such as the Bonny and the Calabar, which established trade with Europeans and controlled the sea and waterways. The Empire of Benin was created by the Edo tribe and was one of the traders that also benefited from the European presence. Coming to power in the 14th century, the Benin Empire borrowed ideas and political tactics from those of the Oyo Empire to further its military ambitions. Contact with the Portuguese in the 15th century provided the empire with guns that were inevitably used to gather land and slaves, which ultimately were sold off in the transatlantic slave trade through the Bight of Benin. The Yoruba, the strongest of the southern tribes, came into power with the Oyo Empire in the early 16th century. Using cavalry and an effectively functioning monarchy, the Oyo Empire dominated its neighbors. The military prowess of the empire continually subdued and conquered, allowing for expansion by the 17th century into one of the most formidable
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empires in Nigeria. The Oyo Empire, with its seat of power in Lagos, became the way of incursion for British trade, missionaries, and the eventual colonialization of the entire country.
European Involvement The British eventually took control of Nigeria through a series of events that began with the annexation of Lagos. As economies changed and the use of slaves became less necessary, a cry in Britain to abolish slavery became more feverish due to Christian and other religious groups. The missionaries were instrumental in downplaying the importance of Islam and indigenous religions. They were also political, vocalizing their displeasure of laws and politicians they deemed “unfit” for ruling a country. Such was the case in 1851, when the British attacked the city of Lagos. The slave trade, although officially abolished in the early part of the century, was still endorsed by King Kosoko of Lagos, who saw his city and empire profit greatly from the trade. Missionaries filed a formal complaint with England, which, in turn, accused Lagos of breaking a slave treaty. The British fleet attacked on December 26, 1851, causing Kosoko to flee. The British government and consul were then able to help install King Akitoye, who, in turn, provided preferential treatment, and granted entrance that would eventually result in Lagos becoming the first British colony of Nigeria. The British then worked to complete the subjugation of the Yoruba, the Igbo, the Kingdom of Benin, and the Hausa and unite them under one national flag. Nigeria would be considered a colony and protectorate from 1914 until 1960, when the country won its independence.
Ethnic Unification Due to the large number of tribes that were united under British rule in the days of colonialism, Nigeria is a multiethnic, multilingual country, with 200 ethnicities speaking over 250 different languages. Of the ethnic languages, Hausa (21%), Yoruba (20%), and Igbo (17%) are the most prominent. English is the official language, spoken in conjunction and sometimes in combination with other languages. Three major political parties focus on the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria, and their struggle for power over
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the others has been the cause of numerous military coups, politically based ethnic massacres, and three republic installations. C. Centae Richards See Appendix A See also Belize; Colonialism; Dominican Republic; Jamaica; Nigerian Americans
Further Readings
Falola, Toyin. 1999. The History of Nigeria. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Rothchild, Donald. 1997. Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Pressures and Incentives for Cooperation. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Wright, Stephen. 1998. Nigeria: The Struggle for Stability and Status. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
NIGERIAN AMERICANS Nigerian Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from Nigeria, a country of 144.4 million as of 2007 estimates. According to the 2000 census, there 134,940 people born in Nigeria resident in the United States, of whom 37.1% were citizens. This entry will look at the background of immigration from Nigeria to the United States and the contemporary picture of Nigerian Americans.
the Diversity Program (part of the 1990 Immigration Act that grants additional visas for immigrants who were underrepresented in the past) as well as family reunification programs.
Contemporary Community In recent years, people from Nigeria have sought permanent residency and refugee status and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2006, about 8,700 Nigerians immigrated to the United States annually. The number of refugees arriving has varied greatly since 1997. One thousand two hundred twenty-four Nigerian refugees arrived from 1997 to 2006, with 625 refugees arriving in 1999 alone. Over 51,000 Nigerian Americans have become naturalized citizens since 1997. Many Nigerian Americans are employed in management or professional occupations. In addition, according to the 2000 census, more than 30% reported working in the educational, health, and social services industry. Their median family income was $52,586, compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, there were 188,076 people of Nigerian national origin in the United States. Nigerian communities can be found in New York City; Newark; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Atlanta; and Los Angeles. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states were Texas, New York, Maryland, California, and New Jersey. Jennifer M. Klein
Immigration Patterns Nigerians have been arriving since about 1926, as students, travelers, or businessmen. Since then, the number of immigrants from Nigeria has slowly increased. Nigeria’s oil boom and bust during the 1970s marked a significant period for Nigerian immigration to the United States. During this decade, the elite, the upwardly mobile working class, and students immigrated to the United States. Reasons included political instability and economic problems. While many return-migrated in the following decade, others obtained citizenship and sponsored their relatives to migrate to the United States. According to Immigration and Naturalization statistics, about 35,000 Nigerians immigrated to the United States between 1981 and 1990. Nigerian immigrants during the 1990s arrived mostly as part of
See Appendix A See also Africans in the United States; Assimilation; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Muslim Americans; Nigeria; Refugees; Return Migration
Further Readings
Aprraku, K. K. 1991. African Emigrés in the United States. New York City: Praeger. Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http:// www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Linton, Cynthia, ed. 1996. The Ethnic Handbook. Schiller Park, IL: Business Press. Offoha, Marcellina Ulunm. 1989. Educated Nigerian Settlers in the United States: The Phenomenon of Brain Drain. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University.
Nikkeijin
U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Nigeria. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/ www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Avaialable from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
NIKKEIJIN The term Nikkeijin refers to Japanese emigrants and their descendants, or “person of Japanese ancestry” in Japanese, although this usually does not include Japanese nationals in Japan. Until the 1990s, this term referred primarily to ethnic Japanese communities abroad, distinguishing between Japanese in Japan and ethnic Japanese outside of Japan. In the early 1990s, however, with the revision of Japan’s Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act, large numbers of ethnic Japanese from Brazil and other South American countries began migrating to Japan. As a result, the Japanese/Nikkeijin distinction is no longer territorially or geographically definable and has begun to take on new meanings in societies such as the United States and Japan.
Usage in the United States Nikkei literally means “of Japanese ancestry” in Japanese. Its meaning and connotations are different inside and outside of Japan. In the United States, the term Nikkei is increasingly used interchangeably with, and sometimes in place of, the term Japanese American. This semantic shift is largely due to the limited connotations of the latter. Japanese American has historically referred to pre–World War II immigrants and their descendants, who were predominantly monoracial. Over the years, however, the population of Japanese Americans has significantly diversified. Now there are also people who trace their family histories to the post–World War II wave of migration. At the same time, the younger generations of Japanese Americans are predominantly of mixed ancestries (i.e., one parent has Japanese ancestry, and one parent does not) and mixed generations (e.g., one parent is Issei, or first generation, and one parent is Sansei, or third generation). Many “Japanese American” community leaders and organizations are identifying as Nikkei in an attempt to acknowledge and reflect this
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growing diversity. So Nikkei is more inclusive of diversity than Japanese American. Within the American context, Nikkei is predominantly used as both a noun and an adjective; one rarely hears Nikkeijin in the United States, unless it is referring to ethnic Japanese populations in other countries or to those who have “return migrated” to Japan. In the United States, people tend to use Nikkei in two different ways: either including the original Japanese migrants along with their descendants or referring only to their American-born descendants. If Japanese migrants are included, they are referred to as “Issei”; if they are differentiated from Nikkei, they are referred to as “Japanese.” This slippage is also common with the term Japanese American.
Usage in Japan Meanwhile, in Japan, Nikkeijin is the more commonly used term. As in the United States, Nikkeijin always refers to the descendants of Japanese migrants, but it may or may not include the original migrants themselves. From a Japanese perspective, those who were born and socialized primarily in Japan, especially if they still have Japanese citizenship, would in most cases be considered “Japanese.” At the same time, however, if these “Japanese” adapted to a different society and developed new communities and worldviews, and especially if they gave up their Japanese citizenship, they could also be seen as having become “Nikkeijin.” The term Nikkeijin is not country-specific: In Japan, it would be similar to saying “the Japanese diaspora.” To be country-specific, one would say either “Brazilian Nikkeijin” or “Nikkei Brazilian.” In Japanese and from a Japanese perspective, Nikkeijin is more commonly used without a country marker, not necessarily referencing people from any particular country. Rather, in Japan, it is more common to define Nikkeijin in contrast to Nihonjin, that is, majority Japanese. In this context, Nikkeijin references those who appear to be Japanese but may not behave like or speak Japanese (because they are the descendants of Japanese emigrants and were raised abroad).
Brazilian and Other Nikkeijin in Japan Since the 1990s, there has been an influx of Nikkeijin from Brazil and other Latin American countries to
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Japan due to the revision of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act. An estimated 280,000 Brazilian Nikkeijin and several thousand other Latin American Nikkeijin now live in Japan. Though Nikkeijin experiences previously referred only to a history of emigration and settlement outside of Japan, they now also include the “return migration” of Nikkeijin individuals from foreign countries who have gone to Japan to live and work. Most Brazilian Nikkeijin work as “unskilled” laborers in Japanese factories, despite their middleclass, educated backgrounds in Brazil. This is because they can earn five to ten times more as unskilled factory workers in Japan than they can as white-collar workers in Brazil. How did this come to be? It all started with the coincidence of the Brazilian economic crisis and the rise of the Japanese “bubble” economy in the late 1980s. The instability of the Brazilian economy was leading many Brazilian residents to emigrate; those who had Japanese citizenship or had parents who were Japanese citizens could easily go to Japan. But many ethnic Japanese in Brazil were Sansei, or third generation, as well, and they could not readily obtain visas to Japan. Meanwhile, the Japanese economy was growing so fast that Japanese companies could not fill their lowpaid labor needs with domestic workers. Restrictive immigration laws, however, made it difficult for them to import unskilled labor; the official stance of the government was that Japanese society was homogeneous and the acceptance of too many foreigners would disrupt the social harmony and integrity of the nation. Recognizing the limits of Japanese immigration policy and wanting to support businesses in their quest for unskilled labor, beginning in the 1990s, the Japanese government decided to revise the immigration law while maintaining the limitation on “foreigners.” Rather than permit all “foreigners” or “unskilled laborers” to enter Japan in larger numbers, the new law included the euphemism of “Nikkeijin,” with Brazilian labor in mind. In this way, the justification for allowing in this new category of migrants was not explicitly as labor—though their visas did allow them to work—but as descendants of Japanese. The justification was cultural, not economic or political; the effect was economic, however, as the labor shortage problem in Japan was solved, while the Japanese government continued to maintain its policy of limiting labor migration. The integrity of the nation was
supposedly maintained because Nikkeijin, though raised abroad, were imagined to be culturally similar enough to Japanese that they would assimilate into Japanese society with relative ease. Through the revision of immigration policy, the Japanese government reconstructed Nikkeijin as extensions of Japanese, emphasizing their shared lineage. From the perspective of policymakers representing Japan as an ancestral homeland, it was in their best interest to redefine Nikkeijin in this way to meet their objectives of accessing foreign labor without officially calling it such. However, the consequence of this policy decision was the institutionalization of a racial definition of Nikkeijin that emphasized their shared ancestry over their foreign citizenships or national identities. No matter where in the world they were, if someone could prove they had a grandparent who was a Japanese national, that person now could apply for a visa to Japan. Recently, however, the Japanese government has suggested that it is changing its perspective. Over the decade since mass Brazilian Nikkeijin migration to Japan began, Nikkeijin communities have been forming, distinct from the Japanese majority. This development of culturally Brazilian communities was unanticipated by Japanese policymakers; most Nikkeijin who have “returned” to Japan do not speak much Japanese and are culturally foreign. As a way of salvaging some of their original intentions, at the end of 2006, government officials announced that they were considering the implementation of language tests to some groups of foreigners to ensure that they were integrating into Japanese society properly. If the foreign migrants were found to have an insufficient level of Japanese, their visas would not be renewed. Over the next decade, policymakers will need to carefully reevaluate the restrictive immigration policy, given that the Japanese population and birthrate continue to decline and increased immigration is one way that this crisis could be mitigated. In addition, many migrants are bringing children to Japan or having children after they arrive. The Japanese school system is not structured to accommodate cultural diversity; thus, there is the added problem of how to educate and raise this younger generation. Despite perceived racial similarity, national and cultural differences between Japanese and Nikkeijin are becoming more and more salient and cannot be ignored any longer.
Nisei
Most scholarly research on Nikkeijin has been conducted on the Brazilian population in Japan. This is because the term Nikkeijin, as mentioned earlier, tends to suggest Japan as a frame of reference, and Brazilians have the largest Nikkeijin presence in Japan. Other Nikkeijin populations in Japan are also becoming subjects of study. In addition, more comparative work on Nikkei communities around the world is also being done. Comparative histories of emigration and settlement in each country help to show what the social conditions were both in Japan and in the countries of settlement, and why migration occurred at the specific times and to the specific places that it did. This type of research reveals how Japanese migrant experiences in different sociopolitical contexts have led to the formation of very different Nikkei communities around the world. Jane H. Yamashiro See also Brazil; Burakumin; Hafu; Issei; Japan; Japanese Americans; Nisei; Return Migration; Sansei
Further Readings
Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo, Akemi Kikumura-Yano, and James A. Hirabayashi. 2002. New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kikumura-Yano, Akemi. 2002. Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas: An Illustrated History of the Nikkei. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira. Lesser, Jeffrey. 2003. Searching for Home Abroad: Japanese Brazilians and Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Roth, Joshua H. 2002. Brokered Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Migrants in Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Tsuda, Takeyuki. 2003. Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective. New York: Columbia University Press.
Web Sites
Discover Nikkei: http://www.discovernikkei.org/en Japanese American National Museum: http://www.janm.org/projects/inrp Kaigai Nikkeijin Kyokai (The Association of Nikkei and Japanese Abroad), 1995–2005: http://www .jadesas.or.jp/EN/index.html
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NISEI The term Nisei (second-generation) refers to American-born children of Japanese immigrants. In the United States, this typically refers to the children of Issei (first-generation) migrants from Japan who entered Hawai‘i and the U.S. mainland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Generations are counted from the people who migrated to the United States (not the first generation born in the United States). The children of post–World War II Japanese migrants to the United States are included as Nisei but are sometimes referred to more specifically as Shin-Nisei, that is, “new (postwar) second generation,” to distinguish between the two major pre- and postwar waves of Japanese migration. Though American citizens by birth, Nisei loyalties to the United States were repeatedly questioned throughout the war era because of their Japanese ancestry. In response, most Nisei emphasized their American identities and discarded or downplayed Japanese ethnic identities. Nisei experiences have been greatly shaped by their shifting racial exclusion and inclusion in different periods.
Americanization as a Response to Racism Before, during, and after World War II, Nisei were confronted with racist doubts about their national loyalties and had to decide how to respond to them. The mass internment of people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast, the administration of a loyalty questionnaire to internees, and the question of whether or not to serve in the U.S. military while their civil rights were being violated sparked debates about what it meant to be an American of Japanese ancestry while the United States was at war with Japan. More specifically, the discussions centered on what rights Japanese Americans were entitled to and how to react once those rights were taken away. Opinions differed, and a spectrum of responses ensued, but the mainstream strategy was to cooperate with the U.S. government to demonstrate loyalty to the United States. Many felt they had no other option and trusted that the government was looking out for their best interests. In this way, most Japanese Americans adopted a tactic of Americanization and assimilation, and those who took on different approaches were often ostracized and marginalized by the larger community.
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The Loyalty Questio onnaire e
In 1943, interned Japanese Americans were required to fill out what is now called the “loyalty questionnaire.” The most infamous questions were #27 and #28, which respectively asked whether the individual was willing to serve in the U.S. armed forces on combat duty “wherever ordered” and whether the individual would swear “unqualified allegiance” to the United States and renounce any form of allegiance to the Japanese emperor or any other foreign group or power. Both the ambiguities of the questions and the insinuations of disloyalty caused much consternation among respondents. Those who rebelliously responded “no” and “no” were deemed “no-no boys” and seen as social outcasts for challenging the mainstream Japanese American tactic of demonstrating loyalty to the United States, regardless of the circumstances. These “no-no boys” were one of several groups who responded in a more confrontational way to the irony of a country illegally imprisoning its citizens based on racial and ethnic classifications and then questioning them about their national loyalties. Nisei and th he U.S S. Millittary
Young Nisei men were faced with the dilemma of whether or not to serve in the U.S. military. Their decisions and rationalizations were highly politicized, and differences in perspectives led to clashes within the community. The majority of young Nisei men served in the U.S. military at some point, whether as volunteers or as draftees. Most volunteers came from Hawai‘i, where Japanese Americans were not interned on a mass scale. Many men also volunteered from the U.S. mainland, while their families remained incarcerated behind barbed wire. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team/100th Battalion is the most famous Nisei combat unit, fighting in Europe, receiving numerous medals, and becoming the most decorated unit in history. Apparently, this segregated unit was sent to Europe because it was thought that if they fought in the Pacific War anywhere that Japanese might be, they might be shot by their own countrymen, who might mistake them for Japanese soldiers because of their phenotype. In this way, even in military uniform, Nisei were still viewed as Japanese; their race was more salient than their uniform.
Meanwhile, some Japanese Americans did participate in the Pacific War, not in combat, but in intelligence, as linguists. Nisei in the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) were directly involved in the war with Japan, serving as interpreters and translators all over the Pacific. In particular, Kibei Nisei, those who had spent some time in Japan (and Okinawa), were able to use those experiences to help the U.S. military better understand their enemy and expedite an American victory. In addition to those who served in the military (both voluntarily and via the draft), there were also some Nisei who resisted the draft, taking a stance that has remained controversial. Rather than aiming to demonstrate and prove their loyalty as Americans through military service, and in contrast to the attitudes of those who fought in the war, these individuals chose to question the premise of their being drafted out of internment camps. They challenged the idea that they should fight for a country that had illegally imprisoned them and violated their constitutional rights. Many of their contemporaries also questioned the appropriateness and legality of the camps but tried to avoid direct confrontation with the government and other authorities. This small yet significant group believed that their incarceration was unconstitutional and that it violated their rights as U.S. citizens. With the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and the government’s acknowledgment that the internment was a violation of civil rights, the draft resisters’ perspective has been validated on a larger scale. At the same time, however, it remains a controversial stance due to its diametric opposition to and invalidation of the military service of the majority of Nisei men, many of whom are now proud war veterans.
The Postwar Period Japanese Americans have been called the “model minority,” but this label overemphasizes culture and ethnicity as explanations for social and economic mobility. A better way to understand how Japanese Americans increased their status, income, and overall life chances in the 1950s and 1960s is to look at the convergence of structural factors, which provided them with new opportunities. According to sociologist Jere Takahashi, Japanese American access to higher education is one major factor that sets them apart from
Nisei
their Black and Latino counterparts. Because Japanese Americans were not excluded from the educational structure in the same ways, they were able to take advantage of opportunities that eventually arose for those with college degrees. On the U.S. mainland, resettlement after leaving the camps meant starting over for most. The majority of families that were interned from the West Coast sold their property and belongings before evacuating and had little to return to. Moreover, the prewar ethnic economy that had provided jobs to many had been destroyed by the internment, and Japanese Americans were racially excluded from a number of professions. The growing postwar economy in the 1950s and 1960s and the need for certain types of white-collar labor nonetheless led to the development of an American middle class. Japanese Americans had been racially excluded from U.S. society in various ways, though not in education. As a result, when the mainstream economy saw an increasing need for whitecollar labor, educated Nisei were able to fill that growing labor niche in the professions that were open to Japanese Americans, professional, technical, clerical, and sales in particular. Many Nisei became a part of this expanding middle class of professionals, though limited to occupations in which they were not in direct competition with White labor. In addition, Nisei politicians emerged at various levels of government, from local to national. The strategy of Americanization continued in the form of political participation. For the first time, Nisei from the U.S. mainland and Hawai‘i became members of the U.S. Congress, as both representatives and senators. The efforts of these politicians at the national level were an indispensable part of the attainment of redress and reparations. Nisei were an integral part of the redress and reparations movement that led to the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. The success of the movement is usually attributed to Sansei activism, including the persistent efforts of young Japanese American lawyers. However, it also depended largely on Nisei participation: Nisei testimonies of their wartime evacuation and internment were fundamental in illustrating how civil liberties were violated. Moreover, Nisei politicians sponsored the legislation and ensured its passage. Finally, on a social level, most Nisei had been silent about their internment experiences until then, and the process of gathering their oral histories
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and passing down those legacies was a crucial part of claiming their history for future generations.
Nisei Populations Kibei Nisei
Kibei, meaning “returned to the United States,” generally refers to American-born Nisei who spent a significant part of their formative years being educated or otherwise living in Japan. In the 1920s and 1930s, many Issei immigrants, especially those with larger families, struggled to make ends meet as they supported children and tried to earn and save money. For those who had the intention of returning to Japan as soon as they saved enough money to take back with them, it made sense to have their children educated in Japan until their eventual return. On the other hand, some who were planting roots in the United States saw that Nisei would face racial discrimination in the United States and believed that a Japanese education would give their children additional options should work and other opportunities in the United States become too limited. As a result, Kibei Nisei often have native or near-native Japanese language skills, in contrast to Nisei, who were raised primarily or entirely in the United States and have more limited Japanese language skills. Kibei rejoined their families in the United States at various times; some returned to the United States before the war began, and others came back after experiencing the war in Japan. Many of those who returned before the war began served in military intelligence as linguists for the United States. Those who were in Japan during the war usually tried to hide their U.S. citizenship, English language skills, and foreign ways of thinking and acting to avoid discrimination in Japan. Some were drafted into the Japanese military. A well-known Kibei Nisei was Iva Toguri D’Aquino, a U.S.-born citizen accused of calling herself “Tokyo Rose” and broadcasting government anti-American propaganda over Japanese radio during World War II. Thus, while many Nisei men and women fought in World War II as part of the U.S. military, some of their relatives who were in Japan when the war started were drafted into the Japanese military or otherwise experienced the war from the Japanese side, for example, in Hiroshima when the nuclear bomb was deployed. The
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case of Kibei Nisei is interesting and significant because, in many ways, they represented the polar opposite of what most Nisei aspired to be in Americanizing—they were more conspicuously Japanese. Shin-N Nissei
Shin-Nisei refers to Nisei whose Issei immigrant parents came to the United States in the postwar period. Specifically, while Nisei usually refers to people who experienced World War II and have been succeeded by Sansei (third generation), Yonsei (fourth generation), and Gosei (fifth generation), Shin-Nisei tends to refer younger Americans of Japanese ancestry whose parents migrated to the United States in more recent years and who have thus been able to maintain stronger ties to Japan because of less expensive transpacific travel and telecommunications and better access to foreign media. The term Shin-Nisei tends to be used more by academics and organizations to make a social cohort distinction than it does by individuals to refer to themselves. This categorization is significant in the U.S. context, to denote the two distinct waves of migration from Japan, but does not necessarily apply to ethnic Japanese populations in other countries. Jane H. Yamashiro See also Americanization; Assimilation; Internment Camps; Issei; Japanese American Citizens League; Japanese Americans; Military and Race; Model Minority; Sansei
Further Readings
Abe, Frank, producer. 2000. Conscience and the Constitution [Motion picture]. Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ: Transit Media. Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 1986. Issei, Nisei, War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Hawaii Nikkei History Editorial Board. 1998. Japanese Eyes, American Heart: Personal Reflections of Hawaii’s World War II Nisei Soldiers. Honolulu, HI: Tendai Educational Foundation. Takahashi, Jere. 1997. Nisei/Sansei: Shifting Japanese American Identities and Politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Tamura, Eileen H. 1994. Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
NORTHERN IRELAND, RACISM
IN
Northern Ireland is commonly portrayed as a society dominated by tensions between the majority Protestant community and the minority Catholic community. This emphasis tends to overshadow the historical relationship between people of color and the Irish (on both sides of the border) for more than a millennium. The Vikings traded North African slaves in Dublin in the 9th century, and later history records Irish peasants traveling with Norman lords on the crusades against Islam. The colonial era had a significant role in the Irish developing a sense of “the Other,” for the British Empire could not have operated without the service of loyal Irish soldiers and administrators, all of whom were implicated directly or otherwise in the task of subjugating, ruling, and, indeed, sometimes slaughtering people of color. The subject of racism in Northern Ireland, however, has only recently become topical, so the history of racism is largely contemporary. Nevertheless, over the past 30 years, it has become increasingly difficult to represent Northern Ireland as a society marked simply by two religiously defined communities. Recent immigrants have supplemented the older “Traveler” (gypsy or Roma) and Jewish populations; consequently, Northern Ireland is now a society with a host of different minority groups. This growing diversity creates challenges to the overwhelmingly White settled population. As a result, an overriding atmosphere of exclusion and a sense of not belonging have become prevalent within the minority ethnic population. This entry examines the various expressions of racism in Northern Ireland, including racist harassment, racial prejudice, and institutional racism.
A Persistent Problem Northern Ireland has often been considered “a place apart,” the product of a historical anomaly, which, at the turn of the 20th century, saw a Protestant majority in favor of union with Great Britain residing in the northeast corner of an overwhelmingly Catholic island that was demanding complete decolonization. This unhappy marriage resulted in the partition of the island and the foundation, in 1920, of Northern Ireland. When the ethnosectarian division and segregation endemic in Northern Irish society finally manifested itself in sustained political violence, from 1969
Northern Ireland, Racism in
on, the outside world looked on in horror at what was perceived to be an aberration in the civilized West— White people fighting other White people. In an era before violent ethnic conflict erupted in the Balkans and long before the sectarian strife of present-day Iraq, the streets of Northern Ireland, and Belfast in particular, provided the most graphic evidence of the power of ethnonationalism. Also evident is a persistent problem of racist harassment and violence toward members of minority ethnic communities. Whereas racism, racial discrimination, and inequality in Northern Ireland are certainly not new phenomena, the existence of minority ethnic communities and racism has received widespread attention only in recent years. The increased media interest in and reporting of racist attacks has led to Belfast’s being dubbed the “Race Hate Capital of Europe.” Racisst Hara assm ment
A growing body of literature on the experiences of minority ethnic people in Northern Ireland makes clear that racist violence is a regular occurrence. All recent published research has acknowledged the ongoing presence of racist harassment in the lives of members of the minority community, and the number of racist attacks reported to the police in Northern Ireland has increased dramatically over the last 10 years. Racist harassment does not manifest merely as verbal abuse at the street level. At the extreme end of direct individualized racism, members of minority ethnic communities have been pipe bombed, gasoline bombed, and brutally physically assaulted and left for dead. Some have been threatened and spat upon while going about their daily business; others have had their homes and workplaces daubed with racist graffiti. This has taken place in schools, housing, and the workplace and also in a range of places, such as in city centers, shops, train stations, buses, and the street. Furthermore, because of victims’ fear of coming forward and their lack of confidence in the police tackling racist violence, the official statistics are likely to significantly underestimate the extent of the problem. Recent harassment has been aimed at Eastern European, Filipino, and Portuguese migrant workers, some of whom have been badly beaten and their homes attacked. This group represents a new Other for the racist discourse, which blames such migrant workers for job losses, lack of housing, and all other problems working-class people are facing. Racial
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harassment continues to be a common experience for many minority ethnic people in Northern Ireland, who are twice as likely to face a racist incident as those in England or Wales. Racisst Prejudice
A number of attitudinal studies concerning race and ethnicity have been conducted in Northern Ireland. The most striking finding to emerge is that racist prejudice appears to be more strongly demonstrated than sectarian prejudice. Bearing in mind that sectarianism and racism are different processes that manifest themselves in very different ways, some authors warn it would be wrong to claim that racism “is worse than” or “more of a problem than” sectarianism in Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, a “suspicion of difference” is entrenched: One in three people were found to state that they would not willingly accept a Chinese or Indian or African Caribbean person as a colleague at work; or one in four would not willingly accept a member of the minority ethnic population as a resident in their local area. Some scholars have found that people who support Unionist (associated with the Protestant population) political parties are more likely to say they were prejudiced than those who supported Nationalist (associated with the Catholic population) political parties. Or, in the case of national identity, people who selfidentified as British or Ulster were more likely to declare they were prejudiced than those who identified themselves as Northern Irish or Irish. Media reports and some scholars have indicated that Loyalist paramilitaries are believed to be behind a significant proportion of the incidents. At the same time, there have been attacks in both Catholic and Protestant areas, usually perpetrated by organized criminals in working-class areas. Furthermore, this is just one type of racism that permeates Northern Irish society; still extant is institutional racism, which involves society as a whole and is not dominated by a particular ethnonational group. Consequently, there is a strong sentiment by many minority ethnic activists not to hold any one community culpable, but to work with all communities in the fight against racist prejudice. Racist prejudice permeates all sections of Northern Irish society, from unashamedly fascist-style racist statements made by several politicians to the disregard by some teachers of racist bullying toward ethnic minority children in schools. Some authors who try to
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explain this sense of intolerance point to the political projects of Unionism and Nationalism. They are both racialized and founded upon a sense of Whiteness, and both continue to encourage a sense of identity that is essentially White and exclusionary. Furthermore, factors unique to the culture and history of Northern Ireland (“the Troubles”) have given rise to a culture of violence.
Institutional Racism It has been argued that as a consequence of “the Troubles,” there has been a tendency to neglect, ignore, or minimize minority ethnic problems such as institutional racism, as the preoccupation with traditional sociopolitical matters has left scant room for other agendas. And although Northern Ireland has a relatively young and growing minority ethnic population, their experiences documented thus far have included marginalization, overt and covert forms of racism, and inequitable treatment. More recently, however, academic and policy research within Northern Ireland appear to lend increasing weight to the existence of institutional racism. This has played an important role in drawing attention to the structure and routine nature of racial discrimination. Cultural diversity in Northern Ireland might not exist on a large scale, but there are diverse cultural and ethnic communities present, however small. By virtue of their small numbers and by making themselves invisible, minority ethnic groups are suffering from the institutional difference, complacency, and racism(s) evident in majority–minority relations. As “invisibles,” minority ethnic groups are devalued as subjects of policy and excluded from the issue of rights. This is most clearly evident, for example, in the fact that antidiscrimination legislation was applied just a decade ago via the implementation of the 1997 Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order. Only since then have issues of racism and ethnicity begun to find their way onto the local political agenda. In addition, through recent legislation stemming from the Belfast Agreement of 1998, an obligation has been placed on all public organizations to address issues of race/ ethnicity, as well as equality. With the introduction of antiracist legislation and the new equality duty, recognition of differences is beginning to occur within various institutions, so that some institutional racism has lessened; however, it
still remains an issue. While many government agencies and organizations have begun to acknowledge the problem of racism or at least begun to think about how they might respond to the problem, there has been little concrete activity that effectively responds to the current situation. This sentiment was reiterated in a report recently published by a local government body, which found a slow response to racism, institutional racism, and issues of inequality by organizations in all sectors of social, political, and economic life in Northern Ireland. Minority ethnic people find themselves constantly struggling against two ethnonational groups for equality against a backdrop of widespread sectarian division and conflict in Northern Ireland. Thus, the more obvious presence of minority groups has presented a challenge to this bicultural status quo, and, as a result, it has become increasingly obvious that different minority groups face considerable discrimination and inequality. The tensions between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland have not gone away, but, since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998, the conflict has stabilized. As confidence in the peace process has grown, the region has experienced a minor economic resurgence, and the number of people immigrating to Northern Ireland has increased substantially. Minority ethnic communities who were rendered invisible during “the Troubles” are becoming more vocal, and antiracism has emerged as a prominent discourse across the political spectrum as antiracist organizations and initiatives have developed in Northern Ireland. The pressure toward homogeneity of contemporary Northern Irish society is slowly beginning to disperse and make way for a more heterogeneous society. Romana Khaoury See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Institutional Discrimination; Ireland; Irish Americans; United Kingdom; United Kingdom, Immigrants and Their Descendants in the United States
Further Readings
BBC News Online. 2004. Race Hate on the Rise in NI. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ northern_ireland/3390249.stm Boal, Frederick W., ed. 2000. Ethnicity and Housing: Accommodating Differences. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Connolly, Paul. 2005. “‘It Goes Without Saying (Well Sometimes)’: Racism, Whiteness, and Identity in Northern
Norwegian Americans
Ireland.” In The New Countryside? Ethnicity, Nation, and Exclusion in Contemporary Rural Britain, edited by J. Agyeman and S. Neal. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Coulter, Colin. 1999. Contemporary Northern Irish Society: An Introduction. London: Pluto Press. Gilligan, Chris and Katrina Lloyd. 2006. Racial Prejudice in Northern Ireland. Available from http://www.ark.ac.uk/ publications/updates/update44.pdf Hainsworth, Paul, ed. 1998. Divided Society: Ethnic Minorities and Racism in Northern Ireland. London: Pluto Press. Macpherson, William. 1999. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. London: The Stationery Office. Retrieved from http:// www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/ cm42/4262/4262.htm McVeigh, Robbie. 2006. The Next Stephen Lawrence: Racist Violence and Criminal Justice in Northern Ireland. Belfast, UK: Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities. Rolston, Bill and Michael Shannon. 2002. Encounters: How Racism Came to Ireland. Belfast, UK: Beyond the Pale.
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when the strong waves of emigration began in the 1860s—it had passed from Danish control to Swedish control in 1814 and would not gain independence from Sweden until 1905. Though the first major emigration from Norway began in 1825, the main waves followed those Sweden experienced in the 1860s, 1880s, and early 1900s and in World War I as a response to German occupation. Peter Munch pointed out that the waves in the 1860s and 1880s were also times of particular strain in the relationship between Norway and Sweden. The reasons the United States was attractive were mostly economical. The promise of steady, well-paying employment was a promise to be fulfilled not in Norway, but in America. The early emigrants wrote letters home to relatives and friends in Norway emphasizing the higher standard of living made available to them through their move. Emigration agents, who arranged passage for the emigrants, further confirmed this perspective of America in their advertisements.
NORWEGIAN AMERICANS Barents Sea
A high percentage of immigrants from Norway in the mid-1800s and afterward made the United States their primary destination, founding settlements that participated in U.S. culture, while contributing their own traditions to that culture. Today, elements of the culture of Norway, a country with an estimated population of 4.7 million people as of 2007, persist in the United States, while many contemporary Norwegian Americans continue to maintain an enthusiastic attachment to the traditions of their homeland. This entry will discuss the history and significance of Norwegian immigrants to the U.S.
Norwegian Sea White Sea Gulf of Bothnia
Finland Sweden Norway Russia
Estonia
Early Immigration Although the reasons for emigration from Norway to the United States are varied and complex, the conditions in Norway were similar to those in Sweden: A dramatic and rapid increase in population strained the economic systems to the maximum; a period of famine exacerbated these effects; and the general lack of potential for social mobility caused many Norwegians to feel discontented with the quality of life in Norway. A lack of good farmland had made rural survival difficult, and overpopulation in the urban areas had made urban survival just as rough. In addition, Norway was as yet not fully independent
North Sea
Latvia
Baltic Sea
Denmark
Lithuania Russia
Belarus Germany
Poland
Early Settlements Norwegians settled chiefly in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota, but they also settled in other areas with water access, such as New York City and Seattle, Washington. In New York and Seattle, the Norwegian men exercised their maritime skills on fishing vessels
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Norwegian Americans
and in the shipyards. In the Midwest, many men found employment in factories and in industrial jobs, and many women and girls became domestic servants. The Lutheran state church continued its influence, and Norwegian Lutheran churches were built in the cities where Norwegians settled. In those communities, services were often conducted in the Norwegian language. This practice was questioned in the wake of World War I, when Americanness was foregrounded, and many churches at this time and in the coming decades ceased to provide services in Norwegian.
Community Developments Norwegian American immigrant newspapers, such as Skandanavien and Nordvesten, encouraged the retention of the Norwegian language in the immigrant communities, particularly in the Chicago region. In addition, groups like the Norwegian American Historical Association (founded in 1925) and local associations and societies created ways for Norwegian Americans to commune and identify with others in similar ethnic positions. The immigrant children gained experiences with U.S. culture in their schooling, which was a controversial issue in the second half of the 1800s. The Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Synod was a powerful organization, with distrust of U.S. schools from the early grades to postsecondary education. Through a series of items called the “Manitowoc Declarations,” after the location of the meeting in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the Synod planned to begin their own curriculum and schools, which presented such major challenges to finances and time that the primary emphasis on U.S. schools was eventually accepted by the 1880s. A further problem arose as the Norwegian immigrants had trouble finding universities and colleges to attend, and, in answer to this call, in 1875, Rasmus Bjørn Anderson became the first professor of Scandinavian at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Norwegian language classes had been offered at the university since 1870, but the hiring of Anderson resulted in the founding of one of the few remaining Scandinavian departments at a public university in the United States. Anderson was a strong proponent of the retention of Norwegian culture in the Norwegian American community and was convinced that this community contributed strongly through its involvement in the U.S. educational system. Though Anderson was instrumental in promoting the academic
study of Scandinavia in America, the first professor of Scandinavian in the United States had been Paul C. Sinding, a Dane hired in 1858 to teach both Danish and Norwegian at New York University. A few other colleges that were founded by Norwegian immigrants or Norwegian American immigrant communities are Concordia College, in Moorhead, Minnesota; Luther College, in Decorah, Iowa; St. Olaf College, in Northfield, Minnesota; Pacific Lutheran College, in Parkland, Washington; and Augustana College, in Rock Island, Illinois. Universities and colleges as these often offer such courses as Norwegian language, the plays of Henrik Ibsen, and the music of Edvard Grieg and are instrumental in encouraging the study not only of Norway, but of the cultural position of Norwegian Americans.
Later Settlements and Festivals Norwegian American communities, because of their desire to become active participants in their adopted country and the pervasiveness of U.S. culture, began to lose their language in favor of assimilation, though they retained many customs practiced by their parents and grandparents. During World War I, the questioning of ethnic heritage and the discouraging of nonAmerican practices exacerbated an already diminishing Norwegian influence. Festivities held in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, in Minnesota, to celebrate the centennial of Norwegian independence in 1914 generated controversy regarding demonstrations of pride and ethnic solidarity in a country other than the United States. In addition, foreign-language newspapers and religious services were strongly discouraged by the U.S. government during this period in favor of a unified U.S. identity. The celebration of the centennial of Norwegian immigration in 1925, also held in Minnesota but at the state fairgrounds, was a more complicated affair, advertising not only Norwegian heritage but also inclusion in U.S. culture. Where large clusters of Norwegian immigrants settled, strong community heritage exists. Such cities as Mount Horeb and Stoughton, Wisconsin, are known for their representations of Norwegian heritage. Mount Horeb proclaims itself the “Troll Capital of the World,” owing to the many statues and carvings around town, not to mention its shops and restaurants with similar references to Norwegian lore. Stoughton famously advertises its May 17 (syttende mai) festival in honor of Norwegian independence. A major industry in
Norwegian Americans
Stoughton was a wagon factory owned by Norwegian immigrant T. G. Mandt, who hired his fellow countrymen and thus supported the growth of Norwegian American heritage in the area. A number of other towns in the vicinity celebrate their Norwegian American heritage, among them Blue Mounds, Springdale, and Blanchardville. In many of these locales, as in many other Norwegian American communities, traditional food such as lutefisk (whitefish, sometimes cod or haddock, soaked in lye) and lefse (potato flatbread) are served regularly. While variations of lefse are available in Norway, the version typically found in Norwegian American areas is a thin version somewhat resembling a tortilla. Some Norwegian Americans have preserved the art of making aquavit (akvavit), potato liquor infused with caraway, or have been able to import the liquor from Norway and enjoy this drink with the lutefisk and lefse. This liquor is served ice-cold and sipped from stemmed glasses.
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in Norwegian American heritage arts groups and is often combined in performance with traditional Norwegian fiddle music. Norwegian American folk art may be viewed at galleries associated with Norwegian American universities and colleges as well as such venues as the Vesterheim Norwegian American Museum in Decorah, Iowa. Rosemaling, decorative folk painting, has enjoyed a nearly constant popularity among Norwegian Americans, who correctly identify this as a main form of folk art from their homeland. Suzanne B. Martin See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Assimilation; Danish Americans; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Ethnic Group; Finnish Americans; Icelandic Americans; Immigrant Communities; Sami; Swedish Americans; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Norwegian American Folk Arts Norwegian American folk arts are a primary means of upholding customs and confirming a sense of community. Music typically includes folk melodies played on the Hardanger fiddle (hardingfele), an instrument that originated in Hardanger province in Norway and consists of bowed strings (the fiddler usually plays two or three at a time) and sympathetic strings that resonate along with the bowed strings, providing a “drone.” The Hardanger Fiddle Association of America, founded in 1983, is the most recent of various fiddling associations that had been founded, and later disbanded, throughout the 20th century. The association also encourages the continuation of traditions in folk dancing and singing, particularly because these art forms were often performed together during festivals and celebrations in the homeland. Folk dancing, particularly the polka, waltz, and schottische, is common
Jonassen, Christen T. 1986. “The Norwegian Heritage in Urban America: Conflict and Cooperation in a Norwegian Immigrant Community.” Norwegian-American Studies 31:73–96. Retrieved from http://www.stolaf.edu/naha/ pubs/nas/volume31/v0131_03.htm Leary, James P., ed. 1998. Wisconsin Folklore. Madison: University of Wisconsin. Nelsen, Frank C. 1974. “The School Controversy among Norwegian Immigrants.” Norwegian-American Studies 26:206–219. Retrieved from http://www.stolaf.edu/naha/ pubs/nas/volume26/v0126_10.htm Web Sites
Hardanger Fiddle Association of America: http://www.hfaa.org Norwegian American Historical Association: http://www.stolaf.edu/naha Vesterheim Norwegian American Museum: http://www.vesterheim.org
O strong ties to their homelands. Within the United States, the Ojibwa are the third most populous indigenous nation, surpassed only by the Navajo and the Cherokee. There is significant variation in the tribal name and also no standardized English spelling for Ojibwa, with variations that include Ojibway and Ojibwe. Chippewa, the name most often used by the U.S. government, is an English corruption of the word Ojibwa. In Canada, the names Salteaux and Bungi also refer to Ojibwa who reside in the Plains regions. The Ojibwa refer to themselves as Aanishinabe, or “first or original people.” The Ojibwa are part of the Algonquian language family and maintain about four different dialects of the Ojibwa language. Regular and first usage of the Ojibwa language is much more common in Canada than in the United States, although the Ojibwa language is enjoying a contemporary renaissance in the United States. Language revitalization programs for children and adults are active on a number of Ojibwa reservations and in urban areas. Traditionally, the Ojibwa have been a people who depended for their subsistence on hunting, fishing, and trading and moved seasonally in accordance with the maple sugar and wild rice harvests, while walleye fishing remained a year-round pursuit. Traditional Ojibwa society is clan based, with each clan named after a specific animal. Clans are inherited from the father, and marriage within clans is prohibited. Ojibwa spirituality centers around the Midewiwin, or Medicine Lodge Society. All of these traditional components of Ojibwa society remain active among Ojibwa people in both Canada and the United States today and often in tandem with Western and Christian practices.
OJIBWA The Ojibwa, also known as the Chippewa and the Aanishanabe, are an indigenous nation located primarily in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and the Canadian province of Ontario. There are also Ojibwa reservations and communities in North Dakota, Montana, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, as well as significant Ojibwa populations in urban areas of both the United States and Canada. The U.S. federal government currently recognizes 23 Ojibwa reservations; the Canadian government recognizes 130 reserves of Ojibwa First Nations. When the population of all United States and Canadian Ojibwa are considered together, the Ojibwa make up one of the most populous indigenous nations in North America. Indigenous populations in both the United States and Canada are difficult to determine because of the variety of definitions, criteria, and data-gathering methods used in both countries, and so wide variation exists in reports on the Ojibwa population. The most recent census figures in both countries place the total Ojibwa population at about 200,000. Some sources report that the Ojibwa population is about evenly divided between the United States and Canada, while others claim that up to two-thirds of the entire Ojibwa population resides in Canada, with about half of Canadian Ojibwa living in Ontario. In both countries, the Ojibwa population is about evenly divided between those who live on reserves (Canada) or reservations (United States) and those who live in urban centers, although those who live off reserves or reservations typically maintain 995
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Ojibwa Indian family in canoe (1913). The Ojibwa are an indigenous nation located primarily in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and the Canadian province of Ontario. Today, the Ojibwa are the third most populous indigenous nation in the United States, surpassed only by the Navajo and the Cherokee. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-101332.
History First contact between the Ojibwa and Europeans occurred in the early 17th century, when French fur trappers and missionaries entered the region. By the end of the 17th century, the Ojibwa were heavily involved in the fur trade. Early relations between the Ojibwa and the fur traders were generally congenial. Many trappers and traders intermarried with the Ojibwa, especially in Canada, where a new Métis culture and identity emerged that blended Native American and European cultures. The fur trade did, however, place pressure on the Ojibwa, who increasingly moved west and south, a scenario that led to occasional conflict with the neighboring tribes the Ojibwa were displacing. Some Ojibwa bands moved far west to the Plains region and adopted elements of the buffalohunting culture of the Dakota and Lakota but also retained many elements of their woodlands culture. The first Ojibwa land cessions to Europeans took place by international nation-to-nation treaties with Great Britain in the late 1700s. After achieving independence from Great Britain, the Americans followed the British lead and also made international sovereign-to-sovereign treaties with the Ojibwa beginning in the early 1800s. In the United States, most treaties with the Ojibwa were signed and ratified between 1820 and 1860, with Ojibwa bands ceding land in return for retained land in reservation trust status, cash or annuity payments, and certain promises, including perpetual hunting, fishing, and gathering
rights in the ceded territories. A number of court rulings during the 1980s and 1990s reaffirmed the perpetuity of Ojibwa rights to hunt, fish, and gather in these ceded lands. In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court in State of Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe firmly upheld Ojibwa hunting and fishing rights in territories ceded in the 1837 treaty between the Ojibwa and the United States. In Canada, the treaty process worked differently. In 1839, Great Britain unilaterally declared that all Indian land in Canada would be Crown land, while Indians living on Indian land were to be given wardship status, since they were considered to be in need of protection by the Crown. During the entire 19th and most of the 20th century, Canada’s Indian policy was one of coercive civilization, and Canada began to experiment with individual land ownership schemes for Natives as a part of their “civilizing” policy. When land surrenders occurred and treaties were signed in Canada, reserves were intentionally small and set up close to White population centers in order to enhance the prospects for assimilation and Christianization of the Indians. By the mid-19th century, the Ojibwa in Canada were largely supportive of treaties, viewing them as a way to protect and retain their lands in the face of Canadian Indian policy. Crown ownership of Native land and the wardship status of the indigenous population produced a dispute in the 1850s, when mineral deposits were discovered on Ojibwa land. Ojibwa leaders pressed the Crown to turn over the lease payments paid by the mining companies, since the deposits were located on Ojibwa land, but these efforts were unsuccessful. The Crown claimed ownership of the land and therefore felt no obligation to turn over any monies from those leases to the Ojibwa. In the United States, the federal government unilaterally ended treaty making with indigenous nations in 1871. Although existing treaties were to remain in force and the treaty making actually continued under the guise of agreements, the 1871 decision nevertheless represented a significant shift in the relationship between indigenous nations and the federal government from nation-to-nation status toward a federally directed policy of assimilation. In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act, which established the allotment policy that eventually led to the allotting of tribal lands in 160-acre parcels to individual Indians in an attempt to break up the reservations and force Indians to assimilate to the European American way
Ojibwa
of life. Unallotted tribal lands were sold off to nonNatives as “surplus.” The result of this policy was massive land loss and fractionation of land throughout Indian country. The Ojibwa in the United States suffered gravely under Dawes Act policies. Nearly all Ojibwa reservations were allotted. The Red Lake Band in Minnesota, however, was one of the few reservations in the region to resist the allotment policy and maintain its own tribal government throughout this period. The remaining Ojibwa reservations suffered such severe land losses as a result of allotment that these reservations are today only a tiny proportion of their original size. Most Ojibwa reservations also remain highly fractionated today, with discontiguous parcels of trust land, allotted land, and non-Native owned land scattered in a checkerboard pattern throughout the reservations. In the 1930s, following reports of the devastation wrought by allotment era policies, the U.S. federal government shifted its policy to one that favored some measure of self-rule for indigenous nations. The Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934 ended land allotment and renewed a government-to-government relationship between indigenous nations and the federal government. Tribes were encouraged to reestablish their own governments via the constitutional process. Historically, the Ojibwa have typically been among the first beneficiaries of any federal policy shift, and the IRA was no exception to this rule. Most Ojibwa reservations quickly adopted IRA constitutions after 1934. In Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Montana, all federally recognized Ojibwa reservations have IRA constitutions. In Minnesota, six bands of Ojibwa (Bois Forte, Fond du Lac, Grand Portage, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs, and White Earth) adopted a single constitution in 1936 as the consolidated Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. The Red Lake Band maintains its own separate tribal government. No Ojibwa reservation experienced termination during the mid-20th century, although the Ojibwa reservations did lose significant population during the post–World War II era as many reservation residents migrated to urban areas both in search of employment and as a result of federal relocation policies.
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AIM also spread into Canada, due in part to Ojibwa connections that traverse the border. In both countries, activists sought land rights, restoration of treaty rights, and increased rights to self-government. As a result of this increased activism, federal policy in the United States shifted once again in the 1970s to one of tribal self-determination. In Canada, certain treaty rights and Aboriginal rights were entrenched with the passage of the Constitution Act of 1982. In the contemporary period, Ojibwa in Canada and the United States struggle with a number of issues that are common among indigenous nations in both countries: poverty, lack of access to adequate health care, lack of quality education and job training, high levels of crime and discrimination in the criminal justice system, and limited economic development opportunities. Ojibwa in both countries also continue to struggle for recognition of their land and treaty rights, along with rights to increased self-government and self-determination. In the United States, Ojibwa reservations were among the first indigenous nations to establish casino gaming enterprises under provisions of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, an initiative intended to enhance reservation economic development and self-determination for tribal governments. While all Ojibwa tribes in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota currently operate casinos, Ojibwa reservations are located in remote areas and, as a result, casino gaming has not been the panacea of economic development for Ojibwa communities as has been the case for some other indigenous nations. Many serious economic and social problems remain present on Ojibwa reservations throughout Canada and the United States Sheryl Lightfoot See Appendix A See also American Indian Movement; Canada, First Nations; Dawes Act of 1887; Gaming, Native American; Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988; Native Americans; Native American Identity, Legal Background; Sovereignty, Native American
Further Readings
Contemporary Issues Indigenous political activism surged in the late 1960s and 1970s, and many Ojibwa were active in the American Indian Movement (AIM) during that era.
Deloria, Vine, Jr., ed. 1985. American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma. Dickason, Olive Patricia. 2006. A Concise History of Canada’s First Nations. Toronto, Canada: Oxford University.
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Johnston, Basil. 1990. The Ojibwe Heritage. Lincoln: University of Nebraska. Tanner, Helen Horbeck. 1992. The Ojibwa. New York: Chelsea House. Vizenor, Gerald. 1984. The People Named the Chippewa: Narrative Histories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Warren, William W. 1984. History of the Ojibwe People. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society. Wilkins, David E. 2006. American Indian Politics and the American Political System. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
The “one-drop rule” as it was applied in the United States dictated that any person with any amount of African ancestry be considered as Black regardless of their percentage of “Black blood.” The standard was not applied to other races, such as Native Americans or Asian Americans. This entry considers the social significance of the one-drop rule, the legal history, the related concept of “passing,” and, finally, multiracial designations and the legacy of the rule in contemporary times.
Act, which endorsed “separate but equal” seating in railroad cars. Because he was only one-eighth Black and appeared White, Homer Plessy was chosen to test the constitutionality of the act by attempting to sit in the White section of a railroad car. He was arrested and charged with violating the act. In the 1896 precedent-setting case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Plessy’s conviction in the lower Louisiana courts. Without ruling directly on the definition of a Negro or a Black, the Supreme Court ruled that the Separate Car Act was constitutional. In the case of Loving vs. Virginia, in 1967, the Supreme Court declared the one-drop rule unconstitutional by overturning state laws that forbid interracial marriages. However, the one-drop rule persisted in law. A law in Louisiana defining anyone with a “trace” of Black ancestry as Black withstood legal challenges during the civil rights era. In 1983, this law was repealed as a result of a legal challenge on behalf of a child who was 1/256 Black, whose parents wanted the option of selecting the race of their newborn as officially declared on the birth certificate. Finally, in 1986, the Supreme Court denied further appeals, establishing the end of the one-drop rule as a legal definition.
Social Significance
“Passing”
The one-drop rule was established during the slavery era in the United States. It had multiple aims or social purposes: to prevent interracial relationships, ensure the purity of the White race, and maintain the slave status of Black children born to White women as well as Black women. This meant children born to White women were considered Black if the father was Black, while all children born to Black women were considered Black even if the father was White. Thus, Black children often inherited their slavery status from their mothers. The one-drop rule was adopted by different states at different periods of time. Both Louisiana and Tennessee adopted the rule in 1910, Texas and Arkansas in 1911, and Mississippi in 1917. By 1925, almost every state had some form of the one-drop rule. Many states maintained that false reporting of one’s racial identity would result in legal penalty. A group of citizens in Louisiana challenged the one-drop rule as applied in the state’s Separate Car
Legitimizing the one-drop rule was intended to prevent or minimize the social practice of “passing.” “Passing as White” is the practice of a person or member of multiracial ancestry, typically including African American heritage, becoming accepted by others as White, which was undertaken by people desperate to escape the low social status of being Black in a racist society. Passing in a multiracial society can be very complex. Gunnar Myrdal noted that Black Americans who were not light skinned enough to pass as White would instead pass for Filipinos, Spaniards, Italians, or Mexicans to escape discrimination. Sometimes passing as White was undertaken for convenience. For example, Walter White, chief executive from 1929 to 1955 of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was a light-skinned African American of mixed race, and he passed as White to investigate lynchings and other hate crimes. White’s life and travels through the United States and abroad highlight the absurdity of
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the one-drop rule in practice. Most telling was the time his father was seriously injured in a traffic accident in Atlanta in 1931. Rushed to the hospital unconscious, he was taken to the nearest White hospital. When Walter White’s brother first arrived on the scene, horrified hospital workers realized the gravely wounded man was in the wrong place. Despite his condition, White’s father was immediately transferred in the rain to the overcrowded, inadequately equipped “colored’ medical facility, where he died 17 days later. Even when one was near death, passing was not tolerated. As noted earlier, the one-drop rule was applied uniquely to Blacks in the United States. For example, historically, a person who was one-fourth Filipino or Cherokee was considered White unless that person chose to openly declare his or her biracial or multiracial ancestry, as occurs frequently in contemporary times. During the Jim Crow era and for much of the 20th century, a person of Black ancestry who passed as White had to sever all family ties to the African American community and any public loyalties to the challenges faced by Black people. In the 21st century, the notion of passing may seem “quaint” to some, while to others it smacks of being a “race traitor”; nonetheless, the act of passing
Table 1
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underscores the historical social, economic, and psychological costs of “being Black” in the United States.
Multiracial Designations The concept of mixed race is not new in the United States. Federal recognition of the category mulatto was used by census enumerators from1840 through 1910, though people classified as such (or quadroon or octoroon) were considered socially and legally as Black. When self-definition of race in the U.S. Census questionnaire began in 1960 (a person was asked to specify his or her race), only one race was to be selected. Even up to the present, efforts to allow biracial or multiracial as a distinct census (and hence legal) category have failed at the federal levels. However, quite in contrast to the legacy of the one-drop rule and practice of passing, as of the 2000 census, people can now publicly and legally identify for themselves or their children two or more racial categories. As shown in the accompanying table, most people were content with identifying themselves in one of five racial categories offered in the 2000 census. Only 4.8% of African Americans identified themselves Black in combination with another racial group. (See Table 1.)
Percent Reporting Two or More Races by Specified Race, 2000
Specified race
Alone or in combination1
Alone2
In combination3
Percent in combination4
White Black or African and American American Indian and Alaska Native Asian Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Some other race
216,930,975 36,419,434 4,119,301 11,898,828 874,414 18,521,486
211,460,626 34,658,190 2,475,956 10,242,998 398,835 15,359,073
5,470,349 1,761,244 1,643,345 1,655,830 475,579 3,162,413
2.5 4.8 39.9 13.9 54.4 17.1
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 Redistricting Data (Public Law 94–171) Summary File, Table PL1. Notes: For information on confidentiality protection, nonsampling error, and definitions, see http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2000/doc/ pl94–171.pdf 1
People who reported only one race, together with those who reported that same race plus one or more other races, are combined to create the race alone or in combination categories.
2
People who reported only one race create the race alone categories.
3
People who reported more than one of the six race categories create the race in combination categories.
4
The “percent in combination” is the proportion that the in combination population represented of the alone or in combination population. This is the equivalent of the percent of people reporting a specified race who reported two or more races.
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The U.S. Census Bureau, in response to the changing racial climate, changed its categorization to reflect more flexible racial categories. For example, in the 2000 census, more than 35,000 people who previously identified themselves as Black were allowed to indicate two or more racial categories. This change reflects the recognition by the federal government of a multiracial society in the United States.
Contemporary Times As golfer Tiger Woods burst on the national scene in the 1990s, much was made of his multiracial heritage: a multiracial father (one-half Black, one-fourth Chinese, and one-fourth Native American) and a multiracial mother (one-half Thai, one-fourth Chinese, and onefourth Dutch). While Woods coined the term Cablinasia to refer to himself, he is most often viewed as a pathbreaker for African Americans in professional golf. In 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama’s racial identification provoked debates on the definition of Blackness. Obama self-identifies as Black. However, since his mother is White, many people consider him as biracial. Thus, the complexity of racial categorization continues in contemporary society in the United States. Shu-Ju Ada Cheng and Richard T. Schaefer See also African Americans; American Dilemma, An; Asian Americans; Blood Quantum; Census, U.S.; Color Line; Cuba; Loving v. Virginia; Multiracial Identity; Plessy v. Ferguson; Racial Formation; Racial Identity; Racial Identity Development; Racism
Further Readings
Davis, F. James. 2001. Who Is Black? One Nation’s Definition. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Gittoes-Singh, Xennia. 2003. One Drop: To Be the Color Black. West Conshohocken, PA: Infinity Publishing. Herring, Cedric, Verna M. Keith, and Hayward Derrick Horton, eds. 2004. Skin Deep: How Race and Complexion Matter in the “Color-Blind” Era. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Jones, Nicholas A. and Amy Symens Smith. 200. The Two or More Races Population: 2000. Census 2000 Brief. C2KBR/01–6. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Priority Office. Myrdal, Gunner. 1944. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York: Harper.
Sweet, Frank W. 2005. Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule. Palm Coast, FL: Backintyme. White, William Francis. 1995. A Man Called White: The Autobiography of William White. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
OPERATION BOOTSTRAP Operation Bootstrap was a development plan implemented in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico in the 1950s. Concerned about the growing independence movement, in 1942, the government established the Puerto Rican Development Corporation (Fomento Industrial y Económico). The idea of transforming the island into an industrial center emerged as part of the government programs of Luis Muñoz Marín to lessen the problems of poverty, unemployment, and underemployment of workers. However, that idea was turned into a program by Teodoro Moscoso. Operation Bootstrap (Operación Manos a la Obra) presented a new economic model different from the previous agroexport model. The main objective of Operation Bootstrap was to promote economic growth by attracting U.S. industries. To do so, the program offered appealing tax exemptions, cheap labor, and low-cost infrastructure for outside investors interested in establishing their manufacturing on the island. For instance, the program offered no tariffs on trade between the United States and Puerto Rico. One of the strongest criticisms of the implementation of Operation Bootstrap is that the agricultural sector was overlooked and no resources were allocated to advance the technology used in producing various agricultural goods. It has been argued that the economic growth experienced in the Caribbean island from 1950 to 1970 was more a consequence of the transformation from an agricultural to an industrial economy than a result of the integration of Puerto Ricans to the workforce. As a consequence of the decline of the agricultural sector, many employment opportunities were lost. The industrial sector was dramatically growing, but the number of jobs generated was not enough to compensate for those lost in agriculture. This has led to a chronic history of unemployment and underemployment. The program experienced many changes over time. For instance, extending the U.S. minimum wage to
Operation PUSH
Puerto Rico increased the cost of labor. More important, Section 936, which offered tax reductions to U.S. industries, was eliminated. The full effects of the elimination of Section 936 are still unclear; however, numerous industries have left the island because of rising production costs. In fact, Mayaguez is among the U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest loss of employment in 2000. Furthermore, economic affairs in the government do not seem very encouraging. Because of the tax exemptions and other benefits granted to attract foreign investment, the government did not develop a tax-based economy. To support the construction and maintenance of the existing infrastructure and public services, the government went heavily into debt. This pattern of economic insolvency and the need to increment jobs in the public sector as a response to the constant decline in industrial jobs presents another problem generated by Operation Bootstrap. As of 1975, the public sector was the main employer in the island. Evidence of the ineffectiveness of this program and a key indicator of the lack of economic resilience among Puerto Rico’s population is the personal savings rate of island residents. Since 1940, the personal savings rate of island residents has reached zero only twice, while remaining most of the time in the negative digits. It is more striking to see how after 3 decades of the implementation of Operation Bootstrap, in 1985, the personal savings rate fell lower than ever. Although it seemed to be recovering in the 1990s, it started falling again and continues its negative pattern. One of the goals of Operation Bootstrap was to increase the amount of jobs and economic integration, but the persistent poverty, heavy reliance on federal nutrition assistance, unemployment, and the fact that the government employs the largest segment of the labor force testify to the problems of this development strategy. Jennifer M. Santos-Hernández See also East Harlem; Puerto Rican Americans; Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN); Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund; Puerto Rico
Further Readings
Bermán-Santana, D. 1996. Kicking off the Bootstraps: Environment, Development, and Community Power in Puerto Rico. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
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Colón-Reyes, L. 2005. Pobreza en Puerto Rico: Radiografía del Proyecto Americano [Poverty in Puerto Rico: Radiography of the American Project]. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Editorial Luna Nueva. Dietz, James L. 2003. Puerto Rico: Negotiating Development and Change. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Maldonado, Alex W. 1997. Teodoro Moscoso and Puerto Rico’s Operation Bootstrap. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Santiago, Carlos E. 1992. Labor in the Puerto Rican Economy: Postwar Development and Stagnation. New York: Praeger. Weisskoff, Richard. 1985. Factories and Food Stamps: The Puerto Rico Model of Development. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.
OPERATION PUSH With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, civil rights leaders redirected their focus on securing economic parity for all minorities. Operation PUSH (People United to Save [later changed to “Serve”] Humanity) was established in Chicago, in 1971, by Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr., after the dissolution of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In Chicago, Jackson worked as national director of Operation Breadbasket. In 1971, the SCLC Board of Directors suspended him for failing to incorporate the annual Black Business Expo in the name of the SCLC. Later that month, Jackson resigned and started Operation PUSH. Jackson’s new group focused on “economic colonialism” by White-owned businesses. Using his “kingdom theory,” he described how Blacks could exert “the authority of kings” to control every aspect of the numerous economies that influence their lives. He argued that once control has been achieved, political involvement is essential if Blacks wish to protect these gains. As a result, he began negotiating “a Marshall Plan for African Americans” that would be financed by U.S. corporations and financial institutions. The success of PUSH was due in large part to three factors. First, when Jackson resigned from the SCLC, all the organization’s resources went with him; the most notable (and profitable) among them was Jackson himself. Because of his tremendous popularity, participants at the weekly meetings—along with their financial contributions—literally followed him to PUSH
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Operation PUSH
headquarters. Second, the “selective patronage” techniques employed by Jackson were effective, though sometimes considered economic intimidation. In an attempt to serve as a “corporate conscience” to large corporations that catered to African American consumers, Jackson would threaten to initiate a boycott if owners refused to adequately invest in the African American community. Finally, PUSH was successful because its goals were consistent with those of the government and corporations anxious to support affirmative action programs.
Corporate Covenants The PUSH Covenant program used local ministers to deliver a “Diversity Questionnaire” to White-owned businesses that catered to the Black community; the purpose was to determine what percentage of their workforce and suppliers was Black. If the percentages were grossly inconsistent, the ministers would again meet with the owner (at a site in a more impoverished area of the Black community) and request that the company employ higher percentages of Blacks, especially in upper management, and transfer a portion of their banking to Black-owned banks. If the business owner refused, Jackson and other members of the clergy would call for a boycott; if the owner agreed and signed a “covenant,” members of the organization would work to educate the owner and staff about the challenges of increased desegregation. Over time, Jackson negotiated covenants with corporations such as Avon, Burger King, Coca-Cola, General Foods, Ford Motors, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Miller Brewing, Quaker Oats, and Revlon. While the covenants demonstrated PUSH’s commitment to achieving economic parity for minorities, one major criticism was that once the covenant was signed, there was no system in place to ensure that the company would keep their promises—and often they did not.
to the disparity in their hiring and supplier practices. Before the second meeting took place, Crider called for a national boycott of the shoemaker. Because the boycott did not obtain open support from political and religious leaders in the Portland, Oregon, area, where Nike’s headquarters were located, or from several noted athletes, it was deemed a failure.
PUSH for Excellence To help minority youth get the most out of their educational experiences, Jackson created the PUSH for Excellence (PUSH/Excel) Program in 1979. The goal of the program was to encourage greater student, parent, and community involvement in schools with high minority populations. The program, while ambitious, was harshly criticized because it was never theoretically articulated; the lack of a theoretical basis made it impossible to operationalize, duplicate, and quantitatively measure the effects of the program. In 1988, possibly because Jackson ran for public office, the U.S. government audited the PUSH/Excel program and found that it failed to articulate its objectives. As a result, PUSH agreed to pay $550,000, or one-half of the $1.1 million that the Justice Department sought in civil claims. Again, Jackson’s dogmatic leadership style and lack of follow-through were given as reasons for the program’s failure. In addition, when the program was introduced to school districts across the country, it met with bureaucratic resistance because it was designed to decentralize the administration of schools.
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition In 1996, Jackson merged Operation PUSH with the National Rainbow Coalition (NRC) to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. The NRC was an organization that Jackson founded in 1984 to serve as the basis for his presidential bids. Glynis Christine
Nike Boycott In July 1990, Jackson (who had stepped down as the head of PUSH to focus on his two presidential bids, in 1984 and 1988) announced that PUSH would target the athletic shoe industry, renowned for generating high profits from its sales to African Americans. During the first meeting with Nike, PUSH Executive Director Reverend Tyrone Crider submitted a questionnaire to the head of Nike, hoping to call attention
See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Boycott; Civil Rights Movement; Discrimination; Jackson, Jesse, Sr.; National Rainbow Coalition; Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Further Readings
Frady, Marshall. 1996. Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson. New York: Random House.
Orientalism
House, Ernest R. 1988. Jesse Jackson and the Politics of Charisma: The Rise and Fall of the PUSH/Excel Program. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Jackson, Janice E. and W. T. Schantz. 1993. “Crisis Management Lessons: When PUSH Shoved Nike: Boycott of Nike by People United to Serve Humanity.” Business Horizons 36(1):27–35. Johnson, Ollie A., III, and Karin L. Stanford, ed. 2002. Black Political Organizations in the Post–Civil Rights Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Timmerman, Kenneth R. 2002. Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson. Washington, DC: Regnery.
Web Sites
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition: http://www.rainbowpush.org
ORIENTALISM Orient, meaning “the East,” is juxtaposed to Occident, “the West.” Orientalism is a system of thoughts, beliefs, theories, and discourses propagated by Western scholars about the East, including Middle East as well as Asia. Orientalism describes the representation and the construction of the East in the imagination of the West. The East is the “other” to the West. As a projection and a reflection of the West, Orientalism reflects the history of colonialism and imperialism. As the object of the Western imagination, the East is seen as “the uncivilized,” “the savage,” “the undeveloped,” “the weak,” and “the feminized,” while the West is considered as “the superior,” “the civilized,” “the strong,” and “the masculine.” In this regard, Orientalism represents a simplistic labeling or stereotyping of people of the East. The simplicity can be seen in the traditional view of the Orient as a relatively unchanging people with few distinctions among them worthy of serious attention. Even today, the general public and some policymakers may be unaware of the complexity of Muslim and Arab peoples of the world. Orientalism dates back to the 19th century, when Orientalists translated the writings of the Orient into
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English. These writings were deemed as necessary knowledge for the domination and the colonization of the East. It was thought that the knowledge about the Orient would assist the imperial and colonial project of the West. In this sense, the Orient was traditionally the passive object for study by Orientalists, while some scholars in the area attempted to offer a different voice. The best-known scholar on this topic is Edward W. Said (1935–2003), whose seminal work, Orientalism, deconstructs the system of orientalism. Said earned a BA from Princeton University and an MA and PhD from Harvard University. He took a position at Columbia University in 1963 and served as a faculty in English and Comparative Literature for several decades. As a pro-Palestinian activist, Said campaigned for a creation of an independent Palestinian state. From 1977 to 1991, Said was an independent member of the Palestinian National Council. He supported a two-state solution. As a public intellectual, his work impacted the younger generations of scholars on colonialism, postcolonialism, cultural studies, and literary studies. In Orientalism, Said argues that Western scholars, with Eurocentric prejudice, misrepresent the Middle East and Islam. Western thought sustained a history of false representation and romanticized the image of Arab-Islamic peoples and their culture. Until recently, this long history of romanticization and misrepresentation of the East justified the colonization and the domination of the East. The concept of Orientalism continues to be important in contemporary neocolonial and postcolonial context. Shu-Ju Ada Cheng See also Colonialism; Ethnocentrism; Islamophobia; Labeling; Stereotypes; “Us and Them”
Further Readings
Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Said, Edward. 1994. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage. Said, Edward, Moustafa Bayoumi, and Andrew Rubin, eds. 2001. The Edward Said Reader. London: Granta Books.
P PACHUCOS/PACHUCAS Pachucos were young Mexican American men and pachucas were young Mexican American women affiliated with pachuquismo, a youth subculture of the 1940s and 1950s. Many pachucos and pachucas were the children of immigrants from Mexico and hailed from the working class. Identifying features of pachuquismo include the zoot suit and a vernacular known as pachuco slang or caló. The masculine version of the zoot suit often consisted of a long coat, billowing trousers that tapered at the ankle, a long watch chain that sometimes extended from the waist to the calves, and a pair of thick-soled shoes. Some pachucos combed their hair in a ducktail and punctuated their ensembles with a broad-brimmed hat. The feminine version of the zoot suit was usually composed of a skirt that fell to or above the knees and a sweater or long coat. Pachucas frequently wore dark lipstick and inserted foam “rats” into their hair to lift it into a high bouffant. Some also lightened their hair with peroxide. In addition, some pachucos and pachucas sported a tattoo between the thumb and index finger depicting a small cross with lines radiating above it. Both the masculine and feminine versions of the zoot look represented a distortion, if not a repudiation, of White and middle-class aesthetics. The geographical origins of pachuquismo are not known precisely. Some claim that the subculture began in El Paso, Texas, and spread as Mexicans and Mexican Americans migrated from, or by way of, Texas to California and other parts of the U.S. Southwest during the first half of the 20th century.
Likewise, the exact origin of the zoot suit is unclear, but the African American jazz vocalist Cab Calloway wore the ensemble at his performances during the 1930s. By the early 1940s, the masculine and feminine versions of the zoot suit were popular among young U.S. residents of various races and ethnicities and were associated with jazz and the jitterbug dance craze. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, French youth known as les zazous adopted a look similar to that of U.S. zoot-suiters. After World War II, the look spread to youth in Britain. During World War II, a period of social homogenization, enforced rationing, and increased class and physical mobility, the zoot suit emerged as a symbol of conspicuous consumption and working-class style in the United States. Its wearers, many of whom were young men and women of color, were accused of being unpatriotic for flaunting their newfound spending power and donning the flamboyant costume. In addition, the zoot suit became a hallmark of juvenile delinquency even though most of its wearers were not criminals or members of formal gangs. In particular, it came to be associated with Mexican American and African American juvenile delinquency. The zoot suit was linked explicitly to Mexican American youth during the Sleepy Lagoon investigation and trial and the Zoot Suit Riots. Although Mexican American youth gangs were identified as a social problem as early as the 1920s, they began to receive national and international attention with these two events. The Sleepy Lagoon incident, which took place in August 1942, involved an alleged gang fight and murder at a swimming hole in Los Angeles. Twenty-one young Mexican American men and one
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Pachucos/Pachucas
young White man were tried and convicted en masse in what at the time was the largest criminal trial in California history. Meanwhile, several of their female companions were sentenced to the Ventura School for Girls, a reformatory. In the police investigation that led to the boys’ trial, Captain Edward Duran Ayres of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department argued that Mexican Americans, by virtue of their Aztec blood, were intrinsically more violent than and, therefore, biologically inferior to White Americans. Ironically, as the United States combated biological racism overseas, the Ayres report blatantly espoused biological determinism. Furthermore, it equated Mexicans with “Orientals” and, by extension, the Japanese enemy. Like Japanese Americans, Mexican Americans transcended the putative Black–White binary of U.S. racial identity. As racial and cultural hybrids, they represented a threatening alien ambiguity during a period of heightened xenophobia, jingoism, and paranoia. The Zoot Suit Riots occurred in Los Angeles in June 1943, nearly a year after the Sleepy Lagoon incident. During the riots, White servicemen hunted and attacked zoot-clad youth and young people of color, often regardless of their attire. When servicemen apprehended zoot-suiters, they sometimes stripped them of their clothing and cut their hair, thereby destroying what some U.S. residents regarded as un-American or even anti-American symbols. Like the zoot suit, pachuco slang is a prominent and identifiable characteristic of pachuquismo and marker of racial and class difference. Some scholars maintain that it originated in medieval Spain among Gypsies. In both the Old World and New World, it has been linked to criminals and the underclass. Pachuco words and expressions are often associated with street smarts and la vida loca (the gang life, literally “the crazy life”). Frequently regarded as pachucos’ and pachucas’ heirs, cholos and cholas were late 20th-century Mexican American street youth or gang members. Well before the 20th century, the pejorative cholo referred to a poor Indian or mestizo, and during World War II mainstream newspapers in Los Angeles disparaged pachucas as cholitas. Although the style of clothing and hair of late 20th-century cholos and cholas differed from that of the pachucos and pachucas of the 1940s and 1950s, some remnants of the zoot look persisted. For example, some cholas teased their hair into high bouffants, lightened it with peroxide, and wore dark lipstick.
By and large, pachucos, pachucas, cholos, and cholas have been denigrated as hoodlums. Pachucas and cholas have also been vilified as both morally and sexually loose. However, during the Chicano movement of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, various writers and artists transformed the pachuco and cholo into icons of Chicano pride and style. The pachuco, in particular, was upheld as a symbol of Chicano resistance, biculturality, and U.S. identity, as evidenced by the subtitle of Luis Valdez’s celebrated 1978 play, Zoot Suit: An American Play. In the arts and social sciences, the pachuca and chola have received far less attention than have their male counterparts. Catherine S. Ramírez See also Deviance and Race; Drug Use; Gangs; Juvenile Justice; Mexican Americans; Zoot Suit Riots
Further Readings
Alvarez, Luis. 2005. “Zoot Violence on the Home Front: Race, Riots, and Youth Culture during World War II.” Pp. 141–175 in Mexican Americans and World War II, edited by Maggie Rivas-Rodríguez. Austin: University of Texas Press. Barajas, Frank. 2006. “The Defense Committees of Sleepy Lagoon: A Convergent Struggle against Fascism, 1942–1944.” Aztlán 31(1):33–62. Escobar, Edward J. 1999. Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fregoso, Rosa Linda. 1999. “Re-imagining Chicana Urban Identities in the Public Sphere, Cool Chuca Style.” Pp. 72–91 in Between Women and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnationalisms, and the State, edited by Caren Kaplan, Norma Alarcón, and Minoo Moallem. Durham; NC: Duke University Press. Kelley, Robin D. G. 1992. “The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black Cultural Politics during World War II.” Pp. 155–182 in Malcolm X: In Our Image, edited by Joe Wood. New York: St. Martin’s. Mazón, Mauricio. 1984. The Zoot Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation. Austin: University of Texas Press. Ramírez, Catherine S. 2002. “Crimes of Fashion: The Pachuca and Chicana Style Politics.” Meridians 2(2):1–35. Ramírez, Catherine S. 2007. “Saying ‘Nothin’: Pachucas and the Languages of Resistance.” Frontiers 27(3). Valdez, Luis. 1992. Zoot Suit and Other Plays. Houston, TX: Arte Público.
Pacific Islanders
Islanders, however, are not doing as well on some of these indicators as are most Asian groups or Americans.
PACIFIC ISLANDERS The term Pacific Islanders includes individuals from a variety of origins. In the 2000 census, a number of racial categories could be checked: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, and several Asian groups, including Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro, and Samoan. The Other Pacific Islanders category also could be checked. In addition, individuals were allowed to select one or more racial categories to indicate their racial identity. Thus, the Pacific Islanders category includes Native Hawaiians, Guamanians or Chamorro, Tongans, Marquesans, Maori, Tahitians, Fijians, and others from the smaller islands of the Pacific—altogether, a diverse grouping of languages and cultures. The largest of these groups, as shown in Table 1, are the Native Hawaiians and Samoans. This entry presents information and a brief review of these groups on both the mainland and Hawaiian Islands of the United States. It also briefly discusses the issues of outmarriage, language retention, and homelands. For many census and governmental purposes, Pacific Islanders are often grouped with the larger Asian groups for analysis. However, they differ greatly from most Asians linguistically, culturally, and in area of origin. Asians as a whole do quite well in standard comparisons with the other residents of the United States—in educational levels, standard of living, occupational status, and poverty status. Pacific
Midway Isands Wake Island
Origins of Pacific Islanders Pacific Islanders trace their ancestry to numerous islands of the Pacific Ocean, an area collectively referred to as Oceania, which also includes Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of Indonesia and New Guinea. The islands east of New Guinea are referred to as Melanesia. Further east are two additional groupings: the Micronesian Islands (meaning small islands) and the Polynesian Islands (meaning many
Table 1
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Household Population by Detailed Group: 2004
Population
Percent of Pacific Islanderalone population
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone
403,832
100.0
Polynesian Native Hawaiian Samoan Tongan Other Polynesian
256,406 154,666 60,520 39,052 2,168
63.5 38.3 15.0 9.7 0.5
Micronesian 101,335 Guamanian or Chomorro 68,336 Other Micronesian 32,999
25.1 16.9 8.2
Detailed Group
Hawaiian Islands
Guam
Palau
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Micronesia
Papua Indonesia New Guinea
Marshall Isands
Kiribati
Nauru
Melanesian Fijian Other Melanesian
22,912 22,840 72
5.7 5.7 —
Other Pacific Islander
23,179
5.7
Jarvis Island Tuvalu Solomon Islands
Tokelau
Vanuatu
Samoa Fiji Niue
New Caledonia
Australia
Tonga
French Polynesia Cook Islands
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. American Community Survey (Detailed Tables, B02007). Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.
Norfolk Island
New Zealand
Pacific Ocean
Notes: Data are based on sample limited to the household population and exclude the population living in institutions, college dormitories, and other group quarters. For information on confidentiality protection, sampling error, nonsampling error, and definitions, see http://factfinder.census.gov/home/en/ datanotes/exp_acs2004.html. In the table, a dash (–) indicates that the figure rounds to 0.0.
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Pacific Islanders
islands). Micronesia includes the Marianas, Guam, Wake Island, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. The Polynesian Islands are generally considered to be those east of New Zealand, stretching to the Hawaiian Islands; they include the Midway Atoll, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, the Cook Islands, French Poloynesia, and Easter Island. Other islands, such as the Philippines, the islands of the South China Sea, and Indonesia, are usually identified with their nearest continent because these islands are not located in any of the three regions of Oceania.
Pacific Islanders in the United States Most Pacific Islanders in the United States are from Polynesia, with the largest group being Native Hawaiians. The Hawaiian Islands were annexed by the United States, without consent of the native peoples and government, over the period from 1893 to 1898. Statehood was granted in 1959. The 2000 U.S. Census listed a total of 874,000 people who reported their “race” as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Pacific Islanders constitute 0.3% of the total population of the United States. The total number includes 398,835 who reported only Pacific Islander and 475,579 who reported Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander as well as one or more other races. Those who reported mixed ancestry were most likely to have Asian (29%), White (24%), or both Asian and White (19%) ancestry. Because of the changes in the way the U.S. Census Bureau classifies race, changes in size of the groups cannot be assessed directly. At a minimum, the census estimates the growth rate of Pacific Islanders to be at least 9% from 1990 to 2000. The growth rate likely is much higher, however, and may be as high as 140%. Pacific Islanders in the United States are relatively young; their median age of 28 years is substantially lower than that of the total U.S. population (35 years). Among the Pacific Islanders, Samoans, Tongans, and Marshall Islanders are the youngest. Compared with the U.S. population as a whole, Pacific Islanders also have larger households (3.6 vs. 2.6 persons in 2000) and are more likely to be married (79% vs. 68%). Although Pacific Islanders are as likely as other U.S. residents to have graduated from high school, they are less likely than others to have completed college (14% vs. 24%). Among Pacific Islanders, Native Hawaiians are most likely to have completed college, and Marshall Islanders are the least likely. Thus,
Pacific Islanders are less likely than the total population to occupy management and professional jobs. Their median family income is approximately $4,100 lower than that of all families in the United States. During the 2002–2004 period, poverty rates for Pacific Islanders were 13.2% as compared with 8.6% for other Asians, 8.6% for non-Hispanic Whites, 21.9% for Hispanics, and 24.7% for Blacks. Although the wage scale of Pacific Islanders is lower than that of the general population, and although the poverty rates for Pacific Islanders are higher, most Pacific Islanders in the United States have a much higher standard of living than do those who live in their native lands. This accounts for the migration to the United States. Nevertheless, more than 80% of Pacific Islanders in the United States were born in the United States. Most Pacific Islanders live in Hawai‘i (282,667 in 2000) and California (221,458 in 2000). Smaller numbers live in Washington, Texas, New York, and Florida, although nearly three-quarters live in the western part of the United States. Hawai‘i has the largest percentage of Pacific Islanders (23.0%, although the percentage there appears to be declining), followed by Utah (1.0%), Alaska (0.9%), Nevada (0.8%), and California and Washington (both 0.7%). The cities with the largest numbers of Pacific Islanders are Honolulu, New York, and Los Angeles. The cities with the highest proportions are Honolulu (15.6%); West Valley City, Utah, a lower-income suburb of Salt Lake City (3.5%); and Hayward, California (3.4%). As numerous groups have done before them, Pacific Islanders appear to practice chain migration, with new immigrants following friends and relatives who moved to the mainland earlier. Two-thirds of Native Hawaiians live in Hawai‘i, and the other third are split among mainland states. Nearly half of the mainland share of the Native Hawaiian population are in California. Native Hawaiians in Hawai‘i fare poorly on most socioeconomic indicators; they have the state’s worst health statistics, highest number of school dropouts, highest unemployment rate, and highest levels of incarceration.
Outmarriage, Language, and Homeland Issues Three additional issues arise for Pacific Islanders: outmarriage, language retention, and homelands. Because the Pacific Islander category as a whole, as well as the specific groups within it, is relatively small, Pacific
Pakistani Americans
Pacific Island census workers taking a break. Special efforts were made to reach Pacific Islanders for the 2000 Census, and similar plans are underway for 2010. In 2000, an estimated 874,000 U.S. residents indicated that they are Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander either alone or in combination with one or more other races. That was roughly onethird of 1% of the total U.S. population. Source: Photo by Norman Shapiro for the U.S. Census Bureau.
Islanders are more likely by chance to meet and marry out of their own group. This is of concern to some Pacific Islanders. Out-marriage has occurred in both Hawai‘i and Guam as other groups have moved there. Furthermore, the contact in these two areas has longer historical roots than for many of the other groups. Racism also likely lowers the intermarriage rates. Nearly 65% of Native Hawaiians report mixed ancestry, as compared with 37% of Guamanians or Chamorroo, 32% of Samoans, 28% of Fijians, and 25% of Tongans. These figures likely reflect the amount of contact each group has had with other populations. Language retention is a concern of many groups within the United States, especially small groups and those who are foreign born. The 2000 census reported that approximately 314,000 people in the United States speak a language from the Pacific Islands. Given that the total population (both mixed and lone Pacific Island ancestry) is more than 874,000, only roughly 36% speak their native language. Most native speakers live in Hawai‘i (90,111) and California (113,432). Although Hawai‘i has the highest percentage of native speakers and the second largest number of Pacific Islanders, fewer there speak their native language than in the nation as a whole. Instead, California has the highest percentage of Pacific Islanders who speak a home language (51%), followed by Utah (42%) and Washington (38%). After California and Hawai‘i, Washington has the third largest number of speakers (more than 16,000). These differences likely reflect
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recency of migration, relative group size, and length of contact with the larger populations. Native Hawaiians are also concerned about homelands within Hawai‘i. Some tracts have been designated homelands as a result of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1920. Less than 2% of the population of Hawai‘i lives on the current homelands, but members of the Hawaiian community have pressed for more lands. Those living on these lands tend to have a higher percentage of Hawaiian ancestry than do other Hawaiians. Native Hawaiians represent 83% of those living on the homelands. A Hawaiian sovereignty movement has emerged during recent decades, with efforts to teach the Hawaiian language and culture and to develop a government of Hawaiians for Hawaiians. Some feel that the islands were stolen from the Native Hawaiians by the United States. Some of the state’s most powerful political leaders support versions of Hawaiian sovereignty. Advocates of sovereignty want Hawaiians to be recognized in the same way as American Indians are recognized on the mainland, that is, as a nation within a nation and with control of disputed lands. Cardell K. Jacobson and Robyn J. Barrus See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Asian Americans; Hawaiians; Hawai‘i, Race in; Peoplehood; Samoan Americans; Tongan Americans
Further Readings
U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www Dougherty, Michael. 1992. To Steal a Kingdom. Waimanalo, Hawai‘i: Island Style Press. Harris, Philil M. and Nicholas A. Jones. 2005. We the People: Pacific Islanders in the United States. Available from http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/censr-26.pdf Tizon, Tomas Alex. 2005. “Rebuilding a Hawaiian Kingdom.” Los Angeles Times, July 21.
PAKISTANI AMERICANS Pakistani Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from Pakistan, a country of 169.3 million,
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Russia
Kazakhstan
Uzbekistan Azerbaijan
Turkmenistan
Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan
China Afghanistan Iran Pakistan Nepal
Arabian Sea
Saudi Arabia
religious refugees. Many of the Pakistani immigrants were students and educated professionals, such as engineers, bankers, scientists, and pharmacists. Additionally, these immigrants came from urban areas; they tended to settle in areas similar to the cities they came from and thus found similar job opportunities. The number of Pakistani immigrants swelled after 1970. This was due in part to the first wave of immigrants, who were now naturalized citizens and could serve as sponsors for the second immigration wave. The following decades continued to bring educated professionals; however, a significant number were less educated, middle-class immigrants.
India
Oman
Contemporary Community Yemen
Somalia
Indian Ocean Sri Lanka
as of 2007 estimates. Pakistani Americans represent the diverse groups of Pakistan, including the different linguistic, political, religious, and ethnic groups. The five major languages in Pakistan are Urdu, Punjabi, Singhi, Pashto (Pushtu), and Baluchi. The majority of Pakistani Americans are either Punjabi- or Urduspeaking. Although a majority of Pakistani Americans are Muslims by religion, others identify themselves as Hindus, Christians, Parsis, Baha’is, or Sikhs. According to the 2000 Census, there were a total of 223,475 people resident in the United States who had been born in Pakistan, of whom 42.3 percent were U.S. citizens. This entry will look at the background of immigration from Pakistan to the United States and the contemporary picture of Pakistani Americans.
Immigration Patterns Recordings of Pakistani immigration to the U.S. began in 1947 when Pakistan became an independent nation. Between the years of 1947 and 1965, about 2,500 Pakistanis immigrants arrived, according to data from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The largest wave of immigrants arrived primarily after 1965, when the national immigration quota was lifted. The expired act allowed for a larger number of nonEuropean immigrants; relatives of U.S. citizens; specialists with needed skills; and political, racial, and/or
Figures from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey indicate that there were 296,982 of Pakistan national origin in the United States in 2005. In terms of geographic distribution, the states with the highest number of Pakistani immigrants were: New York, Texas, California, Illinois, and Virginia. New York City has the largest Pakistani community. Other communities can be found in Chicago, Houston, and Washington, D.C. In recent years, people from Pakistan have sought permanent residency and refugee status and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2006, about 1,400 Pakistanis immigrated to the United States annually. The number of refugees that arrived during these years was quite low, at 67. About 8,000 Pakistani Americans have become naturalized citizens annually, beginning in 1997. While still being culturally distinct, Pakistani immigrants have assimilated to American culture quite easily. This is mainly due to the fact that they have few language barriers (due to the legacy of British colonization, most Pakistani Americans are fluent in English), are usually well educated, and come from a similar multi-ethnic society. A significant segment of Pakistani Americans have achieved success in many fields, including medicine, engineering, finance, and information technology. However, another segment within the Pakistani American community is self-employed business people generating minimal profits in what has been termed the hourglass economy—that is, people engaged in work at either the higher end or lower end of the social class system. Therefore, according to the 2000 Census, the Pakistani American median family
Palestinian Americans
income was $45,590, as compared to $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Like other immigrant groups, Pakistani Americans often organize their social lives around national holidays and religious festivals. Ties with the home country are acknowledged by Pakistan Day (March 23), Independence Day (August 14), and the Birthday of the Founder of the Nation (December 25). For example, August 14, 2007, marked the 60th anniversary of Pakistan’s creation, and it was celebrated with fervor and enthusiasm while residents also recalled the struggle and sacrifices that led up to nationhood. Such ceremonies are characterized by recitation of verses from the Holy Quran and playing the national anthem. Religious festivals are those typical of the followers of Islam. For Pakistani Americans, especially in the post– September 11, 2001, world, being Muslim may serve as just as important an identifier as being of Pakistani ancestry. What, if anything, is different for Pakistani Americans and other Muslims about Islam in the United States as opposed to in an Islamic country? The Muslim population in the United States numbers in the millions and reflects the diversity of the worldwide Islamic faith; it practices its rituals and beliefs, however, in a nation where the expression of Christianity dominates culturally. Some scholars of Islam argue that the experience of democracy and the history of religious diversity and free expression in the United States have facilitated a stronger and even more correct Islamic practice—uninhibited by the more totalitarian regimes many find in their homelands. Certainly there is disagreement over what is correct, but there is little pressure outside the Muslim community in the United States about how to precisely follow the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Other scholars contend that what makes the Pakistani American Muslim experience unique is that followers must place an even stronger focus on Islam in order to survive in a culture that is permissive and, indeed, encourages much behavior that is prohibited by either Islamic law or their cultural traditions. For many Pakistani American Muslims in the United States, pop culture resembles paganism, a cult that celebrates money and sex. In the United States, many Muslims experience both the freedom to be Muslim and the pressure to be Muslim. Among famous Pakistani Americans are Mazhar Ali Khan Malik, professor of economics/engineering and founder of the Pakistan League of America
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(PLA); Dr. Muhammad Akhtar, commissioner of Public Health; Bapsi Sidhwa, novelist/playwright; and Saghir “Saggy” Tahir, politician. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Arab Americans; Asian Americans; Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity, Hourglass Economy; Immigrant Communities, Immigration, U.S.; Islamophobia; Muslim Americans; Rites of Passage; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Associated Press of Pakistan. 2007. Pakistani Americans celebrate Independence Day, Ambassador unfurls flag at ceremony. August 14. Retrieved December 10, 2007, from http://www.app.com.pk/en/index.php?option=com_ content&task=view&id=14811&Itemid=2 Belt, Don. 2002. “The World of Islam.” National Geographic:76–85. Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/ yearbook.shtm Kumar, Avitava. 2005. Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Journey through India, Pakistan, Love and Hate. New York: The New Press. Malik, Salahuddin. 1993. “Pakistanis in Rochester, New York: Establishing Islamic Identity in the American Melting Pot.” Islamic Studies 63:461–475. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Pakistan. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/ www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www Weaver, Mary Anne. 2002. Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
PALESTINIAN AMERICANS Palestinian Americans, a division of Arab Americans who themselves or whose families originate from historic Palestine, constitute the largest Palestinian community outside the Arab world. While sharing many characteristics with other minority and immigrant groups as well as with other Arab communities in the
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United States, the Palestinian American experience remains unique owing to political, historical, cultural, and social reasons. It is distinct in terms of the causes, dates, places, and conditions of Palestinians’ immigration to the United States. Although (as with other immigrants) both push and pull factors have affected Palestinian immigration, the political conditions in Palestine and the subsequent wars in the Middle East region since World War I have played a significant role. Thus, experts tend to divide Palestinian immigration to the United States into three waves, usually discerned as a matter of socioeconomic status of the immigrants and place of immigration but separated mainly by the major political events that befell the Middle East and Palestine: from the middle of the 19th century up to the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, from 1948 until the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, and from 1967 onward. Other political events, such as the 1975–1990 Lebanese civil war, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the 1987–1993 Palestinian Uprising, the 1991 Gulf War, and the 2000 Palestinian Uprising, all contributed to Palestinian immigration and influenced the composition and the variety of immigrants. The Palestinian Territory as defined in 2007 was estimated to have a population of 4 million people, although most Palestinian people live outside this area in Israel and neighboring Arab states. This entry examines their history of immigration, the current U.S. community, and their adaptation to life in the new land.
Waves of Immigration Palestinian immigration to the United States began as early as the second half of the 19th century but intensified after World War I. Early immigrants (the pre-1948 war wave) were mainly poor and rural Palestinians, the majority of whom were Christians due to their contact with Christian missionaries and missionary educational institutions such as Bir Zeit College (now Bir Zeit University) and Society of Friends schools. Nonetheless, immigration from Palestine remained less than that from other neighboring Arab countries until World War I due to the relatively better economic conditions in Palestine. Because immigrants from the Middle East were listed in the U.S. immigration records as “Asian” prior to 1899, and because Arabs generally were listed as “Turks in Asia” (between 1869 and 1898) and later Palestinians were listed as Syrians (between
1899 and 1932), it is difficult to know exactly how many Palestinians immigrated to the United States during the first wave (prior to 1948). It is, however, possible to estimate the number and to consider the reasons for immigration during the period leading up to the 1948 war. Between 1920 and 1930, Palestinian immigrants to the United States constituted nearly one-third of all Arab immigration (2,933 of 8,553 Arabs), which included few Arab countries at that time. Following the famous three-year Great Arab Revolt in Palestine (1936–1939), as well as political disturbances in Palestine leading up to the 1948 war, the number increased to 7,047 during the 1940s, while Arab immigration diminished significantly owing to the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924 and the Johnson–Reed Immigration Act. Unlike the case with other Arab immigrants, economic conditions could not have been the root cause and push factor underlying Palestinian immigration. Historians and political economists document a record high level of economic growth in Palestine during the early 1940s. At that time, Palestine was by far outdistancing neighboring Arab countries in nearly every economic indicator. The political events already mentioned played a significant role in Palestinian immigration. Unskilled workers found peddling— Qasheesh (carrier of wooden or leather cases or qashsha)—as a possible job, thereby attaining a sort of middleman ethnicity. This was also true of many poor and rural Palestinian inhabitants who immigrated to the United States during the interwar period (1948–1967) and thereafter. Following the 1948 war (the wave of 1948–1967) and the expulsion of nearly 800,000 Palestinians by Israel, a second—and more significant—wave of Palestinian immigration to the United States took place. Although the period from 1948 to 1967 remains the only period documented by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service following a separate category for “Palestine,” U.S. immigration statistics show that only 4,385 Palestinian immigrants entered the country between 1948 and 1966. However, tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees entered the United States from the country of their first refuge (Jordan, Syria, or Lebanon). The second wave comprised predominantly Palestinian Muslims and included many professional, educated, and middle-class members in addition to poor and unskilled individuals. The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, which relaxed the quota system established in 1924, enabled greater
Palestinian Americans
Muslim immigration that continued after the 1965 revisions of the immigration law. The third—and most significant—wave that began in the aftermath of the 1967 war and continues today has been fostered by subsequent political events that befell the Middle East (the 1967 Arab–Israeli war, the 1973 War, the 1975–1990 Lebanese civil war, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the 1987–1993 Palestinian Uprising, the 1991 Gulf War, and the 2000 Palestinian Uprising). Throughout this wave, the Immigration and Naturalization Service stopped recognizing the Palestine category, and most Palestinians entering from historic Palestine were listed under Jordan while other Palestinians were listed under the country of their earlier residence or their first or second refuge country (e.g., Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait, Iraq, Latin American countries). This wave included not only the Palestinian refugees of these wars but also many Palestinian students who came to U.S. universities and settled in the United States. This category included many professionals and educated people (e.g., lawyers, university professors, medical doctors, engineers), skilled workers, and investors. During this time, half of all Arab science and engineering PhD holders left the Arab world (the so-called Arab brain drain). Many of them were Palestinians, and a considerable number of them immigrated to the United States.
The Current Community Estimating the number of Palestinian Americans has been a matter of speculation by experts due to the absence of accurate data sources. In addition to the fact that the Immigration and Naturalization Service does not recognize Palestinian nationality, Palestinians immigrate to the United States not only from historic Palestine but also from other countries to which they or their parents have been displaced. Usually, Palestinians emigrating from the West Bank have been listed as Jordanians; other immigrants arriving from the rest of historic Palestine have been listed under Israel, and the rest have been listed under other countries (usually their first country of refuge) from which they might have immigrated to the United States. Beginning with the 1980 census, the first to provide the opportunity to list immigrants’ ancestry, 21,288 individuals listed “Palestinian” as their ancestry; the Statistical Abstract of Palestine estimated the number of Palestinian Americans at 108,045 in
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1983. In the 2000 U.S. Census, 72,112 people in twenty-seven states listed Palestinian as their ancestry; of these, 36,278 were born in the United States. However, given the number of Palestinians entering the country between 1948 and 2003 (133,929 from both Palestine and Jordan), and given the locations and numbers of Palestinian refugees in other parts of the world, experts’ estimates range between 250,000 and 300,000 scattered throughout the country but concentrated, in twenty-seven states, mainly California (San Francisco and Los Angeles), Michigan (Detroit), New York (New York City, Brooklyn), New Jersey, Illinois (Chicago), Ohio (Cleveland and Youngstown), Florida (Jacksonville), Georgia (Atlanta), and Texas (Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth). Economic Sta atu us
Economic data provided by the 2000 U.S Census and estimates by specialists indicate that the Palestinian American median household income was $4,468 higher than that of the total population, the median family income was approximately $500 higher than that of the national average (the difference between the two seems to be due to the larger family size among Palestinians), and the per capita income was approximately $100 higher than the national average. However, the Palestinian community and communities in the United States are sharply bifurcated and fragmented. In 2000, the reported proportion of Palestinian Americans living below the poverty line— approximately 16% or 11,339 individuals—was higher than the national rate of 12%, and some Palestinian communities reported slightly to significantly lower median household income, median family income, and per capita income than the average in eleven states (Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Alabama, Colorado, Massachusetts, and Missouri). In another twenty-seven states covered by the 2000 census, Palestinian communities were either close to the state’s average, slightly higher, or significantly higher in all three economic indicators. Within the Palestinian American communities themselves, economic well-being ranges between quite poor to fairly good, with the most recent immigrants being closer to quite poor. Certain studies presenting the Palestinian experience as a success story seem to focus only on a segment of the Palestinians,
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especially those who immigrated during the second wave or came from historic Palestine and managed to establish successful businesses or self-employment, whereas other studies presenting the negative side of the Palestinian experience seem to focus on a segment of the most recent immigrants. Age and Ed ducatiion
Demographically, the Palestinian American community is relatively young, with a median age of 28 years, as compared with 35 years for the total U.S. population, coupled with a significantly low percentage of approximately 6% of members over 65 years of age. In addition, although both males and females immigrate to the United States, the Palestinian community has a higher percentage of males than females (56% vs. 44%), apparently due to cultural aspects that favor male immigration over female immigration. Moreover, in 2000, the average size of the Palestinian American family, four individuals, was higher than the U.S. average family size of three individuals. Many Palestinians managed to establish selfemployment or businesses that usually employ family members. Moreover, the Palestinian American community is relatively well educated. The percentage of Palestinian Americans with a bachelor’s degree or higher (23%) is above the national average (16%), although the percentage of those identifying as a high school graduate or higher is slightly lower than the national average, apparently due to the relatively larger percentage of those under 5 years of age in the Palestinian communities. Many Palestinian Americans, especially those who came during the first two waves, continue to maintain traditional values and ways of life similar to those dominant in Palestine prior to their immigration despite the significant changes that have taken place in Palestine itself since 1948. Aspects of the Palestinian social structures are visible in the Palestinian American community; there are divisions based on clan, village, region, social class, and even education. Thus, the Palestinian community in the United States tends to be fragmented in spite of the many characteristics such as language, religion, and cultural values that its members share, and they tend to be grouped in one form following the village, town, or region from which they originate (e.g., American Ramallah Federation, Nablus Club).
Politiccs
A more recent aspect of fragmentation within the Palestinian American community has been political and mirrors the political schisms that befell the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestine since the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Thus, social structural factors brought from Palestine and other Palestinian communities outside the United States continue to play a role in the organization of the Palestinian American community and affect the choice of the area of residency, type of work, and even social interaction. Concentrations of Palestinians originating from particular areas in Palestine have settled in certain states or cities in the United States; for example, Paterson, New Jersey, has a high concentration of residents from Beit Anan, a village in the Jerusalem/Ramallah district, and Chicago has a high concentration of residents from Beit Hanina, Sha’afat, and the Jerusalem district as well as from certain villages in the Ramallah district. Alongside community organizations, Palestinian Americans have established several religious (mosques and churches), political, and civil rights organizations (e.g., Palestine Congress of North America) and are active and founding members of many Arab American organizations such as the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA) and the Association of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG), which has had among its members and former presidents a number of nationally and globally prominent Palestinian American scholars such as Edward Said, who contributed greatly to the rise of postcolonial theory, and Hisham Sharabi, a noted Palestinian American sociologist. The AAUG publishes a reputable scholarly journal, Arab Studies Quarterly, that has become an important reference source about the Arab world and the Middle East.
Identity, Adaptation, and Assimilation The adjustment of any immigrant group depends on more than the willingness of its members to integrate into the new society. It also depends on how the host country identifies them, how it treats them, and what it expects from them. This particular issue is at the heart of the Palestinian American uniqueness. Both the underlying political factors driving Palestinian immigration, including the nonneutral
Panamanian Americans
U.S. involvement in the Palestine question, as well as the racial/ethnic conditions of the United States, including the ostensibly negative image that Arabs and Palestinians seem to have in the U.S. popular imagination, distinguish the Palestinian American experience and affect the community’s attempts to adjust. Although many Palestinians thought of their immigration to the United States as merely temporary intended for work, or until the resolution of the question of Palestine, the majority of them remained in the country and started a new life. Thus, the question of integration and assimilation of Palestinian Americans became an issue for both Palestinians and non-Palestinians. Scholarship on Palestinian Americans shows that their adaptation to U.S. society ranges from total assimilation to total alienation, with the latter not being the norm but more likely to be the case with women than with men. Both assimilation and alienation are products of complex cultural, racial, and political conditions facing Palestinian Americans. In addition, the dual identity (Palestinian and American) seems to persist, especially among the most recent and first-generation immigrants. Dual identity does not mean resistance to assimilation or a rejection of the larger society. The best Palestinian nationalists are not by any means the least Americans, nor do the most assimilated lack any sense of being Palestinians, as one expert noted. Thus, many Palestinian Americans have a strong sense of Palestinian nationalism due to the ongoing regional conflict, but it does not seem to affect their sense of Americanism. Many Palestinian Americans, especially the second generation, while maintaining some sense of Palestinianism (perhaps due more to domestic U.S. factors and racial conditions rather than attachment to the ancestral homeland), can hardly be distinguished from other U.S. groups. They eat the most typical U.S. food, join Rotary Clubs, vote on all sides of the political spectrum, serve in the military, and root for their local baseball teams. Palestinian Americans, a small and growing community, contribute to the cultural richness of the nation as do other minority and immigrant communities in the United States. They are active participants in all aspects of U.S. life, from military service to distinguished academic scholarship. Seif Da’Na See Appendix A See also Arab Americans; Islamophobia; Israeli Americans; Muslim Americans; Turkey; Zionism
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Further Readings
Barghouti, Iyad. 1997. “Palestinian Americans: Sociopolitical Attitudes of Palestinian Americans towards the Arab–Israeli Conflict.” Occasional Paper No. 38, Center for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Durham. Christison, Kathleen. 1989. “The American Experience: Palestinians in the U.S.” Journal of Palestine Studies 18(4):18–36. Cohen, Yinon and Andrea Tyree. 1994. “Palestinian and Jewish Israeli-Born Immigrants in the United States.” International Migration Review 28:243–255. Mansur, Riyad. 1980. “The Palestinian Community in the United States: Motives for Immigration and Demographic Conditions.” Palestine Affairs 99:84–106. Orfalea, Gregory. 2006. The Arab Americans. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press. Suleiman, Michael, ed. 1999. Arabs in America: Building a New Future. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
PANAMANIAN AMERICANS Panamanian Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from Panama, a country with an estimated population of 3.3 million people as of 2007. Panama is ethnically diverse but can be divided into three general categories of people. More than twothirds are mestizo, that is, a mix of American Indian and Spanish. Other categories include the Guaymi, Cuna, and Choco Indians and the Afro-Panamanians. According to the 2000 census, there were a total of 105,175 people born in Panama residing in the United States; of these, 58.2% were citizens. This entry looks at the background of immigration from Panama to the United States and at the contemporary picture of Panamanian Americans.
Immigration Patterns Central and South American persons have migrated to the United States since the early 19th century. However, due to Panamanians being categorized with other Central and South American immigrants, early statistics of specifically Panamanian immigration are not available. Data indicate that after the Immigration Quota Act was lifted in 1965, the number of South American immigrants grew rapidly, and by 1970 Panamanians were one of the largest Central
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Pan-Asian Identity
Cuba Dominican Republic
Haiti
Mexico
Cayman Is. Jamaica
Belize Guatemala
Texas, and Georgia. Panamanian Americans’ primary language is Spanish, although approximately 80% are bilingual, speaking English fluently as well. Their median family income was $44,302 as compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole.
Honduras
Jennifer M. Klein
Caribbean Sea El Salvador Aruba
Nicaragua
Costa Rica Panama
Venezuela
See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Central Americans in the United States; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Latin America, Indigenous People
Further Readings Colombia
Pacific Ocean
Ecuador
Peru Brazil
American groups in the United States. During the decades that followed, the number of Panamanian immigrants continued to increase due to family reunification programs. Historically, the building of the Panama Canal led to a special and unique relationship between the United States and Panama. From 1903 to 1979, the territory was controlled by the United States; for the next 20 years, the operations switched to joint U.S.–Panamanian control. Since 1999, the canal has been in Panamanian hands, but the previous U.S.-managed enclave with its significant military presence was the cause of sporadic—and sometimes significant—tensions between the United States and Panama.
Contemporary Community During recent years, people from Panama have sought permanent residency status and have completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2006, approximately 1,700 Panamanians immigrated to the United States annually. At least 19,000 Panamanian Americans have become naturalized citizens since 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2005, there were 129,128 people of Panamanian national origin in the United States. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states were New York, California, Florida,
Anderson, Jon Lee. 1999. “233,000 Acres, Ocean Views” [Letter from Panama]. The New Yorker, November 29, 50–61. Barry, Tom, John Lindsay-Poland, Marco Gandasegui, and Peter Simonson. 1995. Inside Panama. Albuquerque, NM: Resource Center Press. Conniff, Michael L. 1991. Panama and the United States: The Forced Alliance. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/ yearbook.shtm U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Panama. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/ www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
PAN-ASIAN IDENTITY Pan-Asian identity denotes a specific consciousness whereby individuals of Asian background identify primarily as Asian Americans owing to a shared experience of racism in the United States. The formation of pan-Asian identity is complicated by the socially constructed nature of the Asian American category that came into existence with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924. Once consigned to this category, migrants from various Asian nations were indefinitely prohibited from immigrating to the United States. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1965, which removed key barriers on immigration from Asia to the United States, also had the ironic
Pan-Asian Identity
effect of further solidifying the category. Thus, the Asian American category includes various groups of Asian origin whose relationships with each other are in fact not organic. Although the contributions of the Asian American movement of the 1960s to the development of a pan-Asian identity cannot be overlooked, the extent to which this consciousness is shared by all who are classified as Asian American is open to question. This entry highlights the main arguments on both sides of the pan-Asian issue and provides a map to navigate the debate.
Pan-Asianism: Challenges to Its Formation An impediment to the formation of a pan-Asian American identity is created by the divergent cultural and political identities of those groups labeled as Asian American. The cultural and political identities of Filipino Americans, for example, are influenced by their history of U.S. colonization, as are their patterns of immigration to the United States. In contrast, the Japanese American experience has been shaped by Japan’s position as an imperial power in East Asia, a position that led to different types of restrictions on immigration from Japan to the United States during the early 20th century as well as to Japanese Americans’ detainment in internment camps during World War II. South Asian Americans, on the other hand, feel excluded from Asian America because their relationship with the United States has been qualitatively different from that of East Asians and Southeast Asians. The case of the Vietnamese refugee movement further illustrates the disparate experiences and interests that inform the lives of individuals defined as Asian American. Consequently, the development of a pan-Asian American identity is difficult because each Asian group is likely to differ according to the type of racism it has experienced in the United States. During World War II, Japanese Americans, unlike other Asian American groups, were sent to internment camps because they were seen as a national security threat. Similarly, South Asian Americans are alone in their experience of hate crimes and racial profiling as terrorists following the events of September 11, 2001. The “Dotbusters” incident is another illustration; in this case, Indian Americans were subject to a series of hate crimes perpetrated against them in Jersey City, New Jersey.
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In addition, hardships faced by Asian groups entering the United States as refugees are likely to be distinctive as well. Such experiences and the respective position of each Asian group vis-à-vis the U.S. nationstate produce different interests and, in turn, limit the possibility of a pan-Asian racial identity. In fact, some Asian groups have distanced themselves from those Asian groups who are subject to racism so as to avoid a similar fate: During the early 20th century, Japanese American leaders condoned the exclusion laws that prohibited Chinese immigration to the United States. Later, during World War II, Chinese Americans desired a distance from Japanese Americans so as to avert internment. Increasing diversification since the 1970s in the socioeconomic backgrounds of immigrants from the various Asian nations is yet another obstacle to panAsianism. This diversity inevitably fractures the lived experiences of Asian Americans along class lines. Besides issues of economic survival, how each group chooses to express its struggle against racism can also vary with its socioeconomic position. When Indian Americans were the victims of the so-called Dotbusters during the mid-1980s, the middle-class organizations, unlike the working-class organizations, invoked the “model minority” stereotype of Asian Americans to assert their demands for justice—a strategy unavailable to working-class immigrants of the same group owing to their lower socioeconomic status. Research has also demonstrated that middle-class Asian Americans, given their economic success, are largely able to ignore racism. In general, such intraAsian American differences only serve to divide Asian American interests and impede the formation of a pan-Asian consciousness. Other factors have created fissures among Asian Americans, including gender divisions; intraregional differences in language, custom, and culture within a specific Asian nationality group; religious differences; and language diversity.
Pan-Asianism: The Possibilities Some scholars remain optimistic about the possibility of pan-Asian American racial identity formation despite their recognition of issues that tend to fragment the community. One such possibility, as Yen Le Espiritu argued, lies in the development of a critical transnational framework that identifies the commonalities among various Asian American groups and
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facilitates pan-Asianism. According to Espiritu, this critical transnational framework must examine the history of U.S. involvement in various Asian countries that creates the conditions for emigration. Thus, the evolution of pan-Asianism is possible by way of the analysis of a shared history of imperialism among Asian Americans. Furthermore, the development of pan-Asianism may be encouraged through the experiences shared by different Asian American groups in the United States. Because they are commonly racialized, all Asian American groups are subject to being perceived as “foreigners” who harm “American” interests. This inherently racist logic was present when Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps and again with the recent racial profiling of South Asian Americans as terrorists in the post-9/11 United States. Such patterns of bias direct Asian Americans’ attention to shared experiences of racism as “foreigners” that has helped to establish the foundations of pan-Asianism. In fact, pan-Asian goals have been expressed by the second and subsequent generations of Asian Americans born in the United States. It is this cohort who spearheaded the Asian American movement of the 1960s that, in turn, planted the seeds of pan-Asianism. As Asian Americans whose identities are influenced by the U.S. context, they seek to mobilize a broader Asian American identity so as to combat racism. Moreover, Asian American advocacy-based organizations that operate as interest groups are an important space where pan-Asianism actually exists. Two examples of such organizations are the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which advocates for all taxi drivers’ rights (not just those for Asian Americans) in the New York metropolitan area, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which resists racist legal practices that limit opportunities for Asian Americans. Empirical evidence also shows that new immigrants from Asia have partnered with those born in the United States to form business organizations designed to collectively challenge the economic barriers faced by Asian Americans. Although relationships among the various Asian American groups might not be spontaneous because the category is a socially constructed one, organizations have formed and movements have developed to oppose the subordination of Asian Americans as a group. Those scholars who are optimistic about panAsianism have argued that pan-Asianism is not necessarily where all Asian Americans present a united front toward all experiences of racial subordination.
Rather, the optimists are in agreement with the skeptics, who question that kind of unity on the grounds that the experience of racism is not identical for all Asian American groups. The optimists maintain, however, that pan-Asian identity and subsequent mobilization around that identity can be issue specific. For example, whereas one group of Asian Americans may mobilize around worker rights, another may mobilize around refugee movements from Asia. Other Asian American groups may mobilize around racism experienced in the criminal justice system, and still other pan-Asian groups may form along generational lines. Researchers have in fact documented such types of pan-Asianism over time. Hence, the optimists envision a pan-Asianism that is plural. Thus, although a pan-Asian American identity that is all-encompassing is perhaps unattainable because groups converge on certain issues and diverge on others, a more realistic possibility is the formation of pan-Asian American identities that are multiple and varied. Such patterns of pan-Asianism are evident in the extant literature on the topic. Diditi Mitra See also Asian Americans; Asian American Studies, MixedHeritage; Cambodian Americans; Chin, Vincent; Filipino Americans; Hate Crimes; Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; Indian Americans; Internment Camps; Japanese Americans; Model Minority; Panethnic Identity Further Readings
Dhingra, Pawan. 2003. “The Second Generation in Big D: Korean American and Indian American Organizations in Dallas, Texas.” Sociological Spectrum 23:247–279. Espiritu, Yen Le. 1992. Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Espiritu, Yen Le. 1996. “Crossroads and Possibilities: Asian Americans on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century.” Amerasia Journal 22(2):vii–xii. Espiritu, Yen Le. 2004. “Asian American Panethnicity: Contemporary National and Transnational Possibilities.” Pp. 217–234 in Not Just Black and White: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States, edited by Nancy Foner and George M. Fredrickson. New York: Russell Sage. Espiritu, Yen Le. 2005. “Asian American Panethnicity: Contemporary National and Transnational Possibilities.” Presented at the meeting of the American Sociological Association, Philadelphia, PA.
Panethnic Identity
Kar, S. B., K. Campbell, A. Jimenez, and S. R. Gupta. 1996. “Invisible Americans: An Exploration of Indo-American Quality of Life.” Amerasia Journal 21(3):25–52. Kibria, Nazli. 1996. “Not Asian, Black, or White? Reflections on South Asian American Racial Identity.” Amerasia Journal 22:77–86. Kibria, Nazli. 1998. “The Contested Meanings of ‘Asian American’: Racial Dilemma in the Contemporary U.S.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21:939–958. Misir, Deborah. 1996. “The Murder of Navroze Mody: Race, Violence, and the Search for Order.” Amerasia Journal 22:55–76.
PANETHNIC IDENTITY The development of panethnic identities is an increasingly important phenomenon in the multicultural and multiethnic context of the United States because it represents a new form of integration into U.S. society that immigration scholars did not predict. In addition, when ethnic group members are able to shift their ethnic identities upward to construct a new broader identity around which to organize collectively and create new institutions and organizations, this can translate into political power and social change. This entry deals with the factors that generate panethnic identities, the different types of panethnic identities, and the future of panethnicity.
Development of Panethnic Identities Since the passage of the liberalized Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1965 and a consequent increase in immigration from Asia—as well as from Latin America and Africa—immigrants to the United States are experiencing new forms of adaptation. Immigration scholars once believed that the newcomers would assimilate into mainstream society over generations, much like European immigrants did at the turn of the 20th century, becoming fully integrated into the dominant society such that no distinct ethnic groups remained. However, new immigrants and the second generation have not yet assimilated into mainstream society; ethnic or national origin identities remain salient, and patterns of behavior and identification suggest that new panethnic identities have emerged. These broad identities, which transcend
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ethnic or national origin boundaries, have developed in response to the larger society’s racialized view of immigrants and ethnic minorities and are often expressed as part of a larger social movement for change. For example, tribes in different regions of the United States formed a pan-Indian social movement and adopted a pantribal identity to organize for collective goods. Scholars have also documented how diverse groups such as Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Cubans have acted on a shared Latino identity to strengthen their communities. In addition, research has found that Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, and South Asian Americans developed panethnic institutions and identities to form a cohesive Asian American community. Ethnic groups tend to be distinct in terms of national origin, language, culture, religion, and collective history, so it has been a puzzle for scholars to understand how and why panethnic identities form. Even though panethnic identities are based on a shared culture and experience, scholars suggest that structural commonalities such as race are more likely to provide a basis for panethnic organizing and the development of panethnic identities. Most scholars agree that racialization, or the process through which ethnic groups are viewed and treated as racial categories, has led to the emergence of panethnic identities. Stephen Cornell pointed out that when societies are organized on the basis of race—when classification schemes, political and economic systems, and the public culture adopt racial boundaries as real—this provides the logic for the construction of panethnic identities. The process of racialization reinforces the belief that racial categories are significant. In a society where race is an important organizing principle, group members may respond to the constraints of racial boundaries by reasserting and reconstructing their identities to be based on a shared history and culture. This shared history is often characterized by common experiences of racial discrimination, stereotyping, and profiling, and the shared culture is composed of common experiences in terms of language use, values, norms, and family expectations. Panethnic identities are formed through the interaction between ascription by others in the larger society and assertions about a shared history made by the groups themselves. Such an understanding of panethnic identities recognizes the agency of ethnic groups and how racial categories are transformed and imbued with new meanings.
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Panethnic Identity
As already suggested, racialization can take many forms to influence group formation and identity. Scholars have documented how public policies and government programs use racial categories to distribute scarce resources, and this has led national origin groups to adopt panethnic identities. In particular, studies have demonstrated how the creation of civil rights laws, equal employment opportunities, and affirmative action increased the symbolic and material value of panethnic identities and facilitated organizing along a panethnic boundary. Even though many ethnic groups who belong to the same racial category have very different histories of immigration and patterns of adaptation that shape their group interests, they still have been able to come together to make claims for the larger collective. Organizing on such a basis not only allows for ethnic groups to benefit from race-based policies but also provides a visible platform for panethnic groups to publicize their concerns. Scholars report that the success of organizing on a panethnic basis often contributes to a panethnic political and personal consciousness among individual participants. External threats, such as racial violence and discrimination, are another manifestation of racialization that can lead individuals to organize across cultural, linguistic, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. Scholars have found that if diverse ethnic groups experience racial threats, this can lead to the development of panethnic identities and organizing. Yen Le Espiritu explained how anti-Asian violence during the 1980s galvanized the Asian American community. Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man, was mistaken for a Japanese national and blamed for the auto industry layoffs in Detroit by two unemployed auto workers, who beat him to death with a baseball bat. Given that these perpetrators lumped all Asians together, making no distinctions based on ethnicity or nativity, this led the Asian American community to band together because all ethnic groups were under threat. In addition, given that the U.S. court system failed—the perpetrators received probation and a monetary fine for their crime—the Asian American community had a common enemy to fight against, engaged in public demonstrations to protest the verdict, and formed organizations to monitor and report anti-Asian violence. It is clear that the structural commonality of race contributes to the development of panethnic identities. Scholars have suggested that other structural commonalities such as class, generation, and geography are important in facilitating the emergence of
panethnicity. One study found that when Asians shared a geographic space segregated from other racial groups, this led to higher rates of collective action along panethnic lines. Conversely, the spatial separation of Asian ethnic groups from one another contributed to lower rates of panethnic collective activity, suggesting that shared race and geography are necessary for the emergence of panethnicity. Another study showed that preferences for affiliating with other ethnic group members within the same racial category differed by social class; middle-class ethnics were often tied into panethnic networks on college campuses and held preferences for dating and marrying ethnic others, whereas working-class ethnics did not have access to such networks and actually preferred to create intimate relationships across racial boundaries. These studies indicate that structural commonalities are important in understanding the conditions under which panethnic identities develop.
Political and Sociocultural Dimensions Studies on panethnic identities focus primarily on organizing around a panethnic identity as an effective strategy in a political context where numbers and resources are essential in securing collective goods. In these instances, panethnic identities are formed and acted on because of common interests and political or material benefits. The formation of organizations, voting patterns, and instances of protests and demonstrations are examples of ethnic groups coming together and participating in panethnic behavior in the name of political and collective gain. Given the political basis of these identities, they are often viewed as short term, strategic, and even instrumental. As noted by many scholars, panethnicity as a political strategy can be fleeting once the external threat has been neutralized or once the resources have been secured. Group members no longer “need” one another, and panethnic associations, networks, and behavior may dissipate over time. Scholars also focus on panethnic identity as personal—an identity that organizes daily life and is used when making important personal choices. Studies of individual panethnic identities are often based on interviews with the sons and daughters of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. These data reveal that panethnic identities represent a shared culture, worldview, and life experiences across ethnic or national origin boundaries. For these respondents, commonality
Panethnic Identity
with ethnic others in the same racial category is expressed in sociocultural terms rather than political terms. For some, the boundaries of the panethnic community include only second- and later-generation others given that there is a clear divide between nativeand foreign-born individuals in terms of shared culture. This divide is heightened by the fact that panethnic identities are made in the United States. Using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, scholars found that the second generation adopted panethnic identities with greater frequency over time and that those who were native born were more likely to choose panethnic identities rather than ethnic identities. These findings strongly suggest that panethnic identities develop among those who spend more time in the United States and who, in turn, are more likely to have experiences with race and racism. Research also shows that ethnic group members not only choose panethnic identities to signify who they are but also adopt identities to indicate who they are not. For example, scholars have found that ethnic group members identify in panethnic terms as Latino or Latina to actively reject the labels of Black and White. The respondents chose to identity as Latino or Latino because they viewed their experiences as separate from either racial category. Blacks are also considered to be a panethnic group; similar to Latinos, new immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean often choose their identities to indicate who they are not. Instead of adopting a panethnic Black identity, new immigrants often choose ethnic identities to distance themselves from Black Americans owing to the negative attitudes and stereotyping associated with nativeborn Blacks. Other ethnic group members also reject panethnic identities in favor of ethnic or national origin identities such as Mexican, Cuban, Pakistani, Vietnamese, and Korean. Studies suggest that some individuals view panethnic labels as artificial and unable to capture the complexity of those who fall under such labels. These individuals also tend to see panethnic labels as reifying racial categories and the system of race in the United States. Panethnic identities may also be problematic in the sense that not all ethnic groups are included in the larger panethnic community, nor do they have equal influence regarding the shared goals and interests that define the larger collective. Differences based on national origin, citizenship status, generation, and social class complicate the construction of an all-encompassing group where all group members have equal weight.
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Scholars have suggested that to understand the uneven formation of panethnic identities, we must take a transnational approach that emphasizes global structures of inequality. Such structures are critical for understanding immigration and refugee flows because they produce different historical and material conditions that, in turn, affect whether and how different ethnic groups are incorporated, accepted, ignored, and resisted as part of a larger panethnic community. For example, U.S. military intervention in Vietnam during the mid-1970s led directly to the out-migration of more than 500,000 refugees who generally had low levels of education and lacked skills that could translate well into the U.S. economy. Even though panethnic identities are made in the U.S. context, U.S. engagement in foreign countries influences migration flows, indirectly affecting the process of group formation and the uneven adoption of panethnic identities among different ethnic groups.
The Future of Panethnic Identities As institutions continue to adopt race as a central organizing principle, panethnic identities will likely continue to flourish. For the Latino community, the media are an important site for promoting panethnic identities. Newspapers, radio shows, television programs, and products directed at Latinos as a group are creating a new market, and this will likely result in the maintenance of a Latino or Latina identity. Other institutions, such as churches, schools, and foundations, have adopted and promoted panethnic labels that will influence how ethnic groups organize and come to see themselves. However, continuing waves of immigration from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean will challenge the viability of panethnic identities. With increasing diversity among immigrants, it will be of interest to find out how and whether panethnic identities will remain salient and whether organizing around such identities will continue to be an effective strategy for collective claims. For many scholars, the option of panethnic identification is viewed as a widening of choices. Instead of simply identifying along village, regional, or ethnic lines, panethnic identities represent another basis on which groups can identify and organize. However, a number of scholars have argued that panethnic identities do not provide additional meaningful ethnic options for groups such as Latinos and Asians. In
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other words, Asians and Latinos do not have the same kind of ethnic options, nor do they have the same assimilation process as European immigrants, who eventually became part of the dominant group. Even though Italian and Polish immigrants who came to the United States between 1850 and 1920 were racialized by the larger society, their positioning changed during the post-1965 era; they not only became European Americans but also became White—part of the dominant group. Scholars suggest that the boundaries of the dominant group weakened to allow European Americans at a time when there were increasing numbers of immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The expansion of dominant group boundaries was in response to these new populations; group boundaries were erected against the newer groups to ensure their differences. The question remains as to whether, how, and when the racial boundaries signifying Asians, Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans, and Whites will decline. Dina G. Okamoto See also Asian Americans; Assimilation; Caribbean; Civil Rights Movement; Discrimination; Hispanics; Immigration, U.S.; Pan-Asian Identity; Pan-Indianism; People of Color; Racialization; Segregation Further Readings
Cornell, Stephen and Douglas Hartmann. 1998. Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge. Espiritu, Yen Le. 1992. Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Foner, Nancy and George M. Frederickson, eds. 2004. Not Just Black and White: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States. New York: Russell Sage. Kibria, Nazli. 2002. Becoming Asian American: SecondGeneration Chinese and Korean American Identities. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lao-Montes, Agustin and Arlene Davila, eds. 2001. Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York. New York: Columbia University Press. Nagel, Joane. 1996. American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture. Cambridge, UK: Oxford University Press. Okamoto, Dina G. 2003. “Toward a Theory of Panethnicity: Explaining Collective Action among Asian Americans.” American Sociological Review 68:811–842.
Padilla, Felix M. 1985. Latino Ethnic Consciousness: The Case of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Rodriguez, Clara. 2000. Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History of Ethnicity in the United States. New York: New York University Press. Waters, Mary. 1999. Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
PAN-INDIANISM Pan-Indianism and supratribalism, a social movement that began during the mid-20th century and found widespread acceptance among Native Americans during the decades that followed, emphasizes the commonalities among the many indigenous North American peoples rather than the cultural and ethnic distinctiveness of each tribe. In so doing, the movement has created an ideological and political tool for understanding “Indian” identity, one in contrast to an earlier notion of identity based on specific tribal cultures and customs (e.g., Choctaw, Atakapa, Creek, Sioux). It has also served a useful purpose in connecting displaced urban Indians of many tribes into a social, political, cultural, and economic entity, creating a basis for the revitalization and restoration of indigenous people’s experiences in both urban and rural reservation settings. According to its critics, however, supratribal identity tends to reduce Indian ethnicity to a static, often stereotypic, and essentialist construction.
Racism and Response Historically, White racism has excluded Americans of color, including Indigenous Peoples, from full participation in the U.S. economy, polity, and society. Although the legal framework supporting this centuriesold system has largely been dismantled, racial prejudices and ideologies still undergird and rationalize widespread racial discrimination. American Indians’ response to such societal racism has been doubly challenged—not only by Indians’ physical isolation on rural reservations but also by U.S. policies that, over time, have resulted in virtually the removal and erasure of indigenous people from the U.S. imagination. During the early centuries of European colonization, Native Americans had their lands taken from them,
Pan-Indianism
sometimes by chicanery and sometimes by force. Subsequently, most Native Americans were not incorporated into the dominant culture but instead were driven westward, beyond the boundaries of White interest, and eventually were restricted to segregated enclaves known as “Indian reservations.” Moreover, a great many Native Americans died, directly or indirectly, as a result of government actions and policies that many scholars have described as genocidal. Furthermore, the process by which people in the United States are categorized according to race has not allowed for an accurate count of Native Americans; according to Jack Forbes, thousands of Indians have been “lost” within other ethnic communities because of their misdesignation as Black, White, Latino, or some other race that excludes Indian in the definition or possible ethnic classification of the group. From the 1960s to the 1990s, American Indian activism increased to an all-time high, especially between 1965 and 1980. Federal government policies during the 1940s and 1950s had led to the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Indians from rural reservations to urban areas, where they later organized important acts of resistance such as the occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco from November 1969 to 1971; the occupation and takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building in Washington, D.C., in 1972; and the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. The American Indian Movement (AIM), in particular, was highly successful in restoring public attention to the plight of Indians living on reservations and in urban areas with little economic, educational, or social support for the many disenfranchised individuals and communities. Moreover, AIM sought to reassert specific aspects of Indian identity that were common to most tribes. The occupation of Alcatraz Island and the protest activism that spread across the country in its wake stirred more than Indian ethnic pride. The multithread, urban membership of many Red Power organizations, including AIM, the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), and Indians of All Tribes, and the Indian nationalist agenda of the movement, which emphasized the rights of all tribes and all Indians, combined to legitimize and empower supratribal Indianness as an identity, a source of pride, and a basis for activism. An issue of concern with the rise of supratribal identity, however, is that it may lead to deeper misunderstandings, both within the U.S. mainstream and among Native Americans themselves, about the diversity of
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Indian identities, especially with regard to cultural versus racial identity. Thus, the ethnic distinctiveness of, for example, the Apache, Navajo, and Seminole becomes conflated to simply “Indian.” Although the construction of urban, diasporic, pan-Indian ethnic enclaves did much to restore the American Indian presence for both Indians and non-Indians around the world, the reemergence also fostered the notion that there was “one Indian community” rather than many communities and tribes with different looks, traditions, degrees of ancestry, and spiritual beliefs. For example, an “Indian tradition” of sweat lodges was in fact not common historically to every tribe in the nation. Under supratribal consciousness, however, this articulation of “Indian identity and tradition” gets normalized for all American Indians, thereby excluding those Natives who do not participate in this cultural ritual. In this way, the formation of “new Indians” and “new Indian identities” can lead to other stereotypes about indigenous people in North America. Moreover, AIM itself, through the media, tended to focus on the stereotypical physical traits of American Indians, especially those from the Plains area— another example of how pan-Indian constructions placed limits on who could fit into the American Indian community (at least on a social level). Thus, important and useful as it has been as a catalyst for changes in government policies and funding for Indians, this form of political organization has also created a pan-Indian paradigm that, critics say, reduces Indian ethnicity to a static, often stereotypic, and essentialist construction. It has also been pointed out that, especially in the case of Native people of mixed descent, the all-encompassing Indian label does not always fit, hence the importance of retaining an emphasis on tribal or community/regionally specific cultural practices and affiliations. The coming decades will witness the ongoing evolution of the relationship between an emergent supratribal identity and the tribal identities that preceded it within both the American Indian community and the society at large. Increased funding of the new Indian programs during the 1960s and 1970s, like the funding of assimilationist policies during an earlier era, inadvertently contributed to an American Indian ethnic resurgence in three ways. First, increased funding directly provided a material incentive for Indian self-identification as the number of programs, benefits, and opportunities available to Native Americans expanded. Second, the expansion of new, non-BIA sources of
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funding undermined the BIA’s near total control over Indian tribes and its unchallenged neglect of urban Indian programs, creating alternative non-BIA resource bases on reservations and new urban Indian programs. Third, as Joane Nagel noted, increased funding promoted organizational formation and growth in cities and on reservations. These new economic benefits, however, were not necessarily directly beneficial to all mixed-race Indian populations because of historic misrepresentation and legal classification of American Indian people. Andrew Jolivette See also National Congress of American Indians; National Indian Youth Council; Native Americans; Panethnic Identity; Red Power; Reservation System; Trail of Broken Treaties; Water Rights; Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973)
Further Readings
Cornell, Stephen. 1988. The Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence. New York: Oxford University Press. Deloria, Vine. 1988. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Forbes, Jack D. 1993. Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red–Black Peoples. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Johnson, Troy, Joane Nagel, and Duane Champagne. 1997. American Indian Activism: Alcatraz to the Longest Walk. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Johnson, Troy. 1994. Alcatraz: Indian Land Forever. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jolivette, Andrew. 2006. Cultural Representation in Native America. Lanham, MD: AltaMira. Josephy, Alvin, Troy Johnson, and Joane Nagel. 1999. Red Power: The American Indians’ Fight for Freedom. Norman, OK: Bison Books. Nagel, Joane. 1996. American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Snipp, Matthew. 1989. American Indians: First of This Land. New York: Russell Sage.
PARENTING Parenting behaviors involve hundreds of activities that caregivers engage in either with or for their
children. Although conditional on age of the children and outcome, parenting behaviors influence children’s well-being, including their cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development. This entry addresses how researchers typically define and measure parenting, the universality of these behaviors, and how these behaviors affect children’s well-being.
Dimensions of Parenting Although parenting has been conceptualized in many ways and there is not always an agreement on how to define various dimensions, some consensus does exist on the general contours of parenting. Many researchers agree that parenting consists of three main roles: nurturer, teacher, and manager. How these roles are defined and operationalized, however, depends on many factors. Traditionally, parenting behaviors have been assessed by measures that are representative of middle-class families in the United States. Consequently, some parenting behaviors are probably not measured or, if so, are not measured well. Much of the research that investigates parenting relies on schemes such as those developed by E. E. Maccoby and others that often distinguish between authoritative parenting (warm firm control) and authoritarian parenting (negative harsh control). Authoritative parenting is typically considered to be optimal. Psychologists such as Cynthia Garcia-Coll are beginning to examine how traditional theories of parenting and socialization “fit” when applied to research on immigrant families and families of color. It has been posited that the effect of parenting on child outcomes may differ across groups because parenting strategies are influenced by ethnic socioeconomic background and community characteristics. For example, Laurence Steinberg and Amanda S. Morris found that European American parents are more likely to engage in authoritative parenting emphasizing the growth of separation and autonomy, whereas Latino, Asian American, and African Americans are more likely to engage in authoritarian parenting with a greater emphasis on obedience and conformity.
Universal and Culturally Situated Behaviors Researchers tend to agree that the domains of parenting are universal, meaning that many aspects of parenting are exhibited by parents in many societies. All
Parenting
parents have ways of nurturing, teaching, and managing children. Variation exists, however, in how these behaviors are expressed, what behaviors are emphasized, and what the actual functions of certain behaviors are. Differences in parenting may be a factor of what is valued in a given culture. For example, according to Sara Harkness and Charles M. Super, parents in eastern Africa focus on developing their toddlers’ motor skills; not surprisingly, their children’s motor skills are more advanced than those of U.S. children. Cross-cultural differences in parenting behaviors may also influence the actual meaning of certain behaviors by culture. For example, recent research examining parenting behaviors among immigrant groups in the United States has suggested that parenting typologies need to be expanded because the general authoritative and authoritarian parenting types do not transfer neatly in cross-cultural research. To illustrate, Nancy E. Hill and colleagues examined the relationship between harsh parenting and negative child outcomes in Mexican American and European American mothers and their children and found that, among Spanish-speaking parents, hostile control cooccurred with acceptance—a result that is generally inconsistent with the traditional European American model of parenting. Similarly, Ruth K. Chao argued that the traditional view of Chinese parents as authoritarian, restrictive, and controlling is misleading because these parenting behaviors are not relevant for describing the socialization styles of Chinese parents. Instead, the type of parenting style used by Chinese American mothers is better understood as chiao shun, a training orientation performed by parents who are deeply concerned with and involved in the lives of their children. Recent research using African American mothers also found that the traditional parenting style might not account for the fact that parental control may have different meaning for different ethnic groups. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and colleagues identified a “tough love” group of mothers who were high in both warm firm control and negative harsh control. The tough love group was composed of mostly older African American mothers with at least a high school education. Children of mothers in the tough love group had higher IQ and vocabulary scores than did children in the classic authoritarian group or in a “detached” group. Cultural similarities and differences are also found in parent attachment research. Mary D. S. Ainsworth and colleagues studied the impact of early infant–mother
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attachments (secure or insecure) on children’s development. She found that all children across cultures have a basic need for attachment and that the level of attachment (secure, insecure, or detached) is associated with a type of maternal care (e.g., affectionate). However, culture-related differences can be found in terms of how mothers express affection. In terms of parenting and gender roles, Beatrice Blyth Whiting and Carolyn P. Edwards investigated “masculine” and “feminine” behavior in young children across six different cultures. They found that although there are some universal sex differences in the behaviors of these children (e.g., aggressiveness in boys), how children are socialized affects how children behave.
Racial/Ethnic Variations Parenting behaviors also differ within groups. A prime example of this difference is language use. Language use is the parenting behavior most associated with children’s academic success and cognitive development. Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, after examining transcriptions of naturally occurring mother–child conversations, suggested that children’s exposure to language and conversation varies significantly across social class groups. As these differences accumulate over the first years of life, children in families from high socioeconomic backgrounds engage in literally thousands more conversations than do children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The higher socioeconomic status children have larger vocabularies than do the children from middle and lower socioeconomic status families. This is evident as soon as the children start to talk, and this difference accelerates over time. In addition to quantity of language, the quality of language is also a factor. Catherine E. Snow and other researchers found that the educated middle to upper middle classes use language differently. These parents tend to provide more language, more varied language, more language topics, more questions, and more conversation. They also vary in how they read to their children. These parents tend to engage in more nonimmediate talk (going beyond information in the story) and provide more contextual information to the reading experience. All of these behaviors are linked with toddlers’ and preschoolers’ vocabulary as well as to their speed of language acquisition. Another example of how parenting behaviors can differ within a group was illustrated in Susan A. Brunelli
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and colleagues’ study of adolescent mothers in New York City. These African American, Dominican, and Puerto Rican adolescent mothers were compared on measures of child-rearing attitudes. Although all of the women were urban minority mothers, the Hispanic mothers reported more negative child-rearing attitudes than did the African American mothers. Moreover, within the group of Hispanic mothers, those from the Dominican Republic were more likely than those from Puerto Rico to endorse attitudes reflecting strictness and irritation. The degree of acculturation also highlights withingroup differences. For example, a study looking at the differential influence of collectivist and individualist orientations among Asian American, Mexican American, and European American adolescents found a greater endorsement of familial obligation among youth in more collective cultures. Thus, Andrew J. Fuligni and others found that Asian American and Mexican American adolescents were more likely than their European American peers to believe that they should assist parents and siblings throughout the life span and should be willing to make sacrifices for the family. In addition, Susan E. Keefe and Amado M. Padilla found that this collectivist orientation is still evident in acculturated third-generation Mexican Americans, who do not have a direct parental link to Mexico and might not speak Spanish.
Influence on Child Well-Being Literally thousands of studies show an association between parenting behavior and child well-being. Because many of these studies tend not to take selection into account, researchers typically look to animal and adoption studies to try to decipher the actual impact of parenting. The temperament of rhesus monkey mothers (high reactive or calm) affects their parenting behavior, which in turn influences how reactive macaque monkey offspring are (even when using a cross-fostering design where “reactive” mothers raise babies from a “calm” mothers and vice versa). In addition, adoption studies show a link between parenting and behavior. These studies tend to look at children who were born “at risk” (where biological parents have a history of criminality, schizophrenia, alcoholism, and/or cocaine or other drug use) and who were adopted early in life. Results have found that when children are placed in adoptive homes with parents who are middle class, they are less likely to manifest
certain antisocial behaviors even though they may have a genetic predisposition for certain behaviors. Lisa B. Markman, R. Gabriela Barajas, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn See also Assimilation; Child Development; Domestic Violence; Family; Immigration, U.S.; Testing
Further Readings
Ainsworth, Mary D. S., Mary C. Blehar, Everett Waters, and Sally Wall. 1978. Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bornstein, Marc H. 2002. Handbook in Parenting. Vols. 1–5. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bornstein, Marc H. and Linda R. Cote. 2006. Acculturation and Parent–Child Relationships. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Brooks-Gunn, Jeanne and Lisa B. Markman. 2005. “The Contribution of Parenting to Ethnic and Racial Gaps in School Readiness.” Future of Children 15(1):139–168. Brunelli, Susan A., Gail A. Wasserman, Virginia A. Rauh, Luz E. Alvarado, and L. R. Caraballo. 1995. “Mothers’ Reports of Paternal Support: Associations with Maternal ChildRearing Attitudes.” Merrill–Palmer Quarterly 41:152–171. Chao, Ruth K. 2001. “Extending Research on the Consequences of Parenting Style for Chinese Americans and European Americans.” Child Development 72:1832–1843. Collins, W. Andrew, Eleanor E. Maccoby, Laurence Steinberg, E. Mavis Hetherington, and Marc H. Bornstein. 2000. “Contemporary Research on Parenting: The Case for Nature and Nurture.” American Psychologist 55:218–232. Fuligni, Andrew J. 1997. “The Academic Achievement of Adolescents from Immigrant Families: The Roles of Family Background, Attitudes, and Behavior.” Child Development 68:351–363. Harkness, Sara and Charles M. Super. 1987. “Fertility Change, Child Survival, and Child Development: Observations on a Rural Kenyan Community.” Pp. 59–70 in Child Treatment and Child Survival: Culture, Society, and the Value of Children, edited by N. Scheper-Hughes. Boston, MA: D. Reidel. Hart, Betty and Todd R. Risley. 1995. Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. Baltimore, MD: Brookes. Hill, Nancy E., Kevin R. Bush, and Mark W. Roosa. 2003. “Parenting and Family Socialization Strategies and Children’s Mental Health: Low-Income MexicanAmerican and Euro-American Mothers and Children.” Child Development 74:189–204.
Park, Robert E. (1864–1944)
Keefe, Susan E. and Amado M. Padilla. 1987. Chicano Ethnicity. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Maccoby, Eym M. and John A. Martin. 1983. “Socialization in the Context of the Family: Parent–Child Interaction.” Pp. 1–102 in Handbook of Child Psychology, vol. 4: Socialization, Personality, and Social Development, 4th ed., edited by E. Mavis Hetherington. New York: John Wiley. Snow, Catherine E. 1972. “Mothers’ Speech to Children Learning Language.” Child Development 43:549–565. Steinberg, Laurence and Amanda S. Morris. 2001. “Adolescent Development.” Annual Review of Psychology 52:83–110. Weizman, Zehava and Catherine E. Snow. 2001. “Lexical Input as Related to Children’s Vocabulary Acquisition: Effects of Sophisticated Exposure and Support for Meaning.” Developmental Psychology 37:265–279. Whiting, Beatrice Blyth and Carolyn P. Edwards. 1988. Children of Different Worlds: The Formation of Social Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
PARK, ROBERT E. (1864–1944) Robert E. Park is considered to be one of the most influential academics of early U.S. sociology. Throughout his life, Park was concerned with social issues, especially racial problems in urban settings. He is widely known for his focus on the city as a laboratory for social investigation and for his involvement in the development of the “Chicago School” of sociology. Park served as president of both the American Sociological Society and the Chicago Urban League. He was also a member of the Social Science Research Council.
Early Years Park was born February 14, 1864, in rural Pennsylvania. His mother, Theodosia Warner, was a schoolteacher, and his father, Hiram Asa Park, fought as a soldier for the Union army. When the U.S. Civil War ended, the Parks moved to Red Wing, Minnesota, where Robert Park lived for the next 18 years. He did not excel in school, although he took an interest in the personal histories of his townspeople and studied the immigrant community of the family’s household helper, Litza. Park graduated from high school in 1882 and left home against his father’s wishes to begin college at the University of Minnesota. Hiram Park initially opposed the idea of Robert going to college but decided to finance his son’s education after Robert passed all of his first-year courses. The elder
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Park even convinced Robert to enroll in the more reputable University of Michigan, where he studied under professors Calvin Thomas and John Dewey. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in philology in 1887, Park turned down a position as a schoolteacher in Red Wing, Minnesota, and instead moved to Minneapolis in the hopes of landing a job as a reporter. Inspired by Goethe’s Faust, Park wanted to see the world. He found work as a reporter and held positions in several metropolitan areas, including Detroit, Denver, and New York. At this time, Park continued to gain insight into the functioning of newspapers and made the acquaintance of Franklin Ford, a Wall Street reporter. Under Ford’s guidance, Park came to believe that better reporting would revolutionize the progressive historical process and, in turn, would lead to the demise of depression and violence. Ford and Park began planning an experimental newspaper, The Thought News, that would unite scholarship and journalism, but the newspaper was never published. While working on the project, Park met an artist named Clara Cahill, whom he married in 1894 and with whom he eventually had four children. Park’s interest in reporting led him to study philosophy at Harvard University. He wanted to describe the behavior of society in scientific language, which he considered to be precise and universal. After a year at Harvard, he went abroad to study at Friederich Wilhelm University in Germany, where he took his one and only formal class in sociology from Georg Simmel. Park later described Simmel as “the greatest of all sociologists.” While in Berlin, Park also discovered a book on the logic of the social sciences written by Bogdan Kistiakowski, a student of Wilhelm Windelband. Park soon left Berlin to study under Windelband and eventually followed him to Heidelberg, where Windelband was chair of the philosophy department. Park wrote most of his dissertation, “Masse und Publikum” (Crowd and Public), in Heidelberg and presented it to the faculty there, but he did not finish it until he returned to Harvard in 1903.
Professional Career Although Park secured a job as an assistant in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard, he had grown weary of the academic world and, still inspired by Faust, longed to know human nature widely and intimately. He worked as a newspaper editor and as
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secretary of the Congo Reform Association. The latter job motivated Park to study inequality in the Congo. Believing that inequality was inherent in colonialism, Park decided to travel to Africa to study the effects of colonialism firsthand. Before leaving for Africa, Park sought the advice of Booker T. Washington, who invited him to visit the Tuskegee Institute to begin his study of Africa in the southern states. Park never made it to Africa; instead, he accepted a job as publicity handler for the Institute. Over the next seven years, Park worked for Washington, did field research, and took courses. In 1910, he traveled to Europe with Washington to compare European poverty with U.S. poverty. Following that trip, Washington wrote The Man Farthest Down (1913) with the collaboration of Park. Later, Park claimed to have learned more about human nature and society while in the South working under Washington than he had in all of his previous studies. Park’s primary interest was in the system that had evolved to define Black–White relations in the South. In 1914, Park accepted a job at the University of Chicago, where he taught until 1932. During that time, he continued to study race relations and to advance his theory of human ecology. To further his study of race relations on the Pacific Coast, Park traveled to Hawai‘i, Japan, and China, and in 1921 he and Ernest W. Burgess coauthored Introduction to the Science of Sociology, which became the standard textbook for the study of the discipline. After retiring from the University of Chicago, Park and his wife took a trip around the world and then settled in Nashville, Tennessee, where he taught at Fisk University until his death in 1944. Park claimed that his biggest contribution to sociology was in giving it working concepts and a systematic basis. Park is better known today for his theories of assimilation, community structure, human ecology, natural areas, and racial mobility. Duke W. Austin See also Assimilation; Chicago School of Race Relations; Colonialism; Culture of Poverty; Immigration, U.S.; Social Mobility
Park, Robert E. 1925. The City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Park, Robert E. 1950. Race and Culture. New York: Free Press. Park, Robert E. 1952. Human Communities: The City and Human Ecology. New York: Free Press.
PARKS, ROSA (1913–2005) Rosa Parks died October 24, 2005, at 92 years of age, just a little more than a month before the fiftieth anniversary of the event that came to define her life and make her the stuff of myth—her quiet refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a White man in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955. Her arrest triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott and led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down Jim Crow segregation laws in the South. The Montgomery Bus Boycott propelled Martin Luther King, Jr., into a leadership position in the Civil Rights Movement, but Parks is often represented as the “mother” of the movement with King as the “father.” Her arrest is reenacted again and again on elementary school stages and in classrooms across the country, most often during African American History Month. One of the reasons why Parks’s story has received so much attention is that it can be condensed down to very basic elements of time (the afternoon of December 1, 1955), space (a bus in Montgomery), and affirmation of rights (Parks’s refusal to give up her seat). In 1999, Parks received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton. In introducing Parks, the president said, “For most of us alive today, in a very real sense the journey began 43 years ago.” Parks has been transformed into a national hero for everyone, a member of the canon of heroes inaugurated into the newly revised multicultural history of the nation. The phrases “a seat on the bus” and “the back of the bus” have become metaphors used again and again by many social groups—from women, to gays and lesbians, to the physically challenged—as part of their struggle for equal rights.
Further Readings
Lyman, Stanford M. 1992. Militarism, Imperialism, and Racial Accommodation: An Analysis and Interpretation of the Early Writings of Robert E. Park. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.
Role in Civil Rights At the time of her arrest, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and
Parks, Rosa (1913–2005)
Rosa Parks. In this often reproduced photograph, civil rights hero Rosa Parks is shown defying de jure segregation by sitting in the White section of the bus that launched the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott in 1955. Actually, while the event was very real, there were no journalists present at the time and this iconic photography was a re-creation with an Associated Press reporter seated behind Rosa Parks. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-109643.
had been active in the Civil Rights Movement in the city for more than a decade. By the early 1950s, the NAACP became committed to overthrowing Jim Crow segregation laws in the city through a combination of civil disobedience and legal challenges, and public busing was selected as a primary scene of the battle. Not only were Blacks required to sit in a special section in the back of the bus, they also were required to give up their seats to Whites when buses were crowded and there were not enough seats for everyone to sit. During the summer of 1955, Parks, along with King, visited Highlander Academy in Monteagle, Tennessee, where they met with both Black and White political activists under the leadership of Myles Horton to plan for civil disobedience. Although Parks’s arrest and the subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott stirred the conscience of many White Americans, political leadership in the United States at the time was also motivated by less altruistic reasons to end segregation laws. A growing number of influential Whites came to believe that the images of Parks’s arrest and other images of violent confrontations between Black protesters and Whites in the South, beamed by the mass media around the world, were adversely affecting the nation’s image in the developing world. For example, the first editorial in The New York Times to mention Parks’s arrest—on February 24,
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1956—noted, “All over the world the communists, who hate democracy, will have this tragically true story to add to their existing assortment of lies.” Among social and political conservatives such as William Bennett, who included Parks’s story in his Book of Virtues, the early Civil Rights Movement is associated with the establishment of a “color-blind” law in the United States—the realization of the “American dream” of equality of opportunity. From this perspective, affirmative action is an unfortunate subversion of what Parks stood for. From a liberal or progressive perspective, Parks’s story is generally treated as one more small victory on a long road to freedom and justice for African Americans where the battle must be waged on a number of educational and cultural fronts as well as through law and the courts. In both liberal and conservative narratives of the Civil Rights Movement, tolerance of those who are different is presented as a primary democratic virtue, and Parks spent much of her later life promoting tolerance. Most notably, she lent her name to a “Wall of Tolerance” monument in a museum in Montgomery sponsored the Southern Poverty Law Center. People visiting the monument are encouraged to make a “declaration of tolerance” that concludes, “I pledge to have respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity, or other characteristics are different from my own.”
Later Accomplishments Also during her later years, Parks began to assume more of a role in speaking to Black youth about “positive” values and lifestyles. In two books she wrote during the 1990s, Quiet Strength (1994) and Dear Mrs. Parks (1996), she wrote to Black youth in particular, and the message was clearly that for African American youth to succeed, they will need to avoid “bad” influences and role models and to keep on the straight and narrow path of “good” behavior. In Quiet Strength, she quoted from the Bible (Titus 2:7–8) to support her argument that to be a role model one must “show integrity, seriousness, and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned.” The aims of Black Americans, she argued, should be to make White people ashamed because they have “nothing bad to say about us.” This emphasis on positive values and role models was consistent with Parks’s story. Certainly, there is
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evidence that the NAACP in Montgomery decided to use Parks to test the city’s segregated bus laws because she fit the White community’s image of a “good” Black person. It is perhaps understandable, then, that as Parks was transformed into a symbol of self-discipline and “good manners,” she began to lose favor with some Black Americans, including those identified with hip-hop culture. This tension was exacerbated by Parks’s much publicized lawsuit against the rap group Outkast during the last few years of her life, where she claimed that the group’s song Rosa Parks defamed her good name. The group claimed that the song actually honored Parks by introducing her to a new generation of Black youth. But it also can be interpreted as suggesting that an older generation of timid and meek Black leaders, symbolized by Parks, needs to “move to the back of the bus” and let a younger, more assertive generation take over. As the stuff of legend, Parks has become a cultural icon open to different and even competing meanings. But as a person, she will be remembered for what she did on that fateful day she got on a bus in Montgomery and the events that followed. Dennis Carlson See also Boycott; Civil Rights Movement; Civil Rights Movement, Women and; Hip-Hop; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Further Readings
Bennett, William. 1993. The Book of Virtues: A Treasure of Great Moral Stories. New York: Simon & Schuster. Carlson, Dennis. 2003. “Troubling Heroes: Of Rosa Parks, Multicultural Education, and Critical Pedagogy.” Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies 3(1):44–61. Carlson, Dennis. 2004. “Narrating the Multicultural Nation: Rosa Parks and the White Mythology of the Civil Rights Movement.” Pp. 302–314 in Off White: Readings on Power, Privilege, and Resistance, 2nd ed., edited by M. Fine, L. Weis, L. Pruitt, and A. Burns. New York: Routledge. Kohl, Herbert. 1991. “The Politics of Children’s Literature: The Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.” Journal of Education 173:35–50. Parks, Rosa. 1994. Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope, and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation. New York: Zondervan. Parks, Rosa with Gregory Reed. 1996. Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue with Today’s Youth. New York: Lee & Low.
Parks, Rosa with Jim Haskins. 1992. Rosa Parks: My Story. New York: Dial Books. Phillips, W. 1956. “Montgomery Is Stage for a Tense Drama.” The New York Times, March 4, E6.
PATRIOT ACT
OF
2001
Commonly referred to as the USA PATRIOT Act or simply the PATRIOT Act, the law signed on October 26, 2001, is titled the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (or Public Law 107–56). In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, there was little congressional debate regarding many controversial provisions that expanded law enforcement authority and limited the civil liberties of citizens and noncitizens involved in terrorism investigations. Over time, considerable debate has arisen related to its implementation, but surveys suggest that most U.S. residents continue to support the act. This entry looks at the controversial provisions and enforcement strategies, the actual impact on prosecutions, and current differences of opinion as to whether it should be modified.
What the Act Does The most controversial provisions increased access to all forms of electronic and nonelectronic communication and records, eliminated a need for probable cause in “sneak and peak” searches, gave the secretary of the treasury the authority to regulate financial transactions linked to terrorism, and gave the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (in concert with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE]) broad discretion in questioning, detaining, and deporting immigrants relative to terrorism investigations. The most negative racial/ethnic impact was the profiling and severe curtailment of the rights of certain temporary visitors, permanent resident aliens, and visa overstayers in the United States. The Department of Justice classified young male immigrants of certain national origins and Islamic religious affiliation as targets for interviews and special registration. National origins targeted included Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, United
PATRIOT Act of 2001
Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The FBI set out to interview 5,000 men between 18 and 33 years of age who had entered the United States from countries thought to harbor cells of Al Qaeda, the group responsible for the 9/11 attacks. These interviews were “voluntary,” but if noncitizens did not appear it became an immigration violation and they could be deported. The PATRIOT Act gives the attorney general unilateral authority regarding detainment. Detainees are not allowed to appeal any charge related to suspicion of terrorism. The law defined terrorist suspect so broadly that even a very remote contact or transaction could result in detention. Some suspects had connections to a humanitarian organization that the government believes had passed money for terrorists. ICE is allowed to keep a noncitizen suspect in detention even if an immigration judge orders that person to be released. ICE is routinely allowed to appeal a release order without any need to provide evidence that would change a judicial decision. The PATRIOT Act may have been used for, or may have resulted in, a sweep to remove immigrants as a result of their national origin and religion. Visa overstayers who were “out of status” were identified and ordered to be deported regardless of any ties to terrorists. In addition, ICE detained many noncitizen men secretly with no access to their families or lawyers under the provision for “special interest cases” of the PATRIOT Act. Many became subject to indefinite detention during these lengthy investigations. Previously, the U.S. Supreme Court had found indefinite detention to be unconstitutional, but the PATRIOT Act again authorized it. In 2006, its use to combat terrorism was authorized by the Court. The wives and children of detained and deported men suffered both emotionally and financially. Immigrant advocates tried to provide legal assistance for detainees, but the ICE practice of moving them between detention facilities made this difficult.
Arrests and Prosecutions It is known that 1,200 noncitizens were detained before the Department of Justice stopped the practice of providing an accounting of detainees. Zacarias Moussaoui, a French-born entrant, is the only person to be found guilty as a terrorist in relation to the 9/11 attacks but is not thought to be the 20th hijacker. Nonetheless, the federal government has repeatedly searched for terrorists among the immigrant and foreign entrant populations.
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Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data collection organization affiliated with Syracuse University, indicates that 6,472 individuals were classified as “terrorists” or “antiterrorists” since the 9/11 attacks. Most of these cases were referred during the two years following the attacks. Four of five of these individuals have been considered for trial or tried, and the outcomes have been made known under the Freedom of Information Act. Prosecutors declined prosecution in 64% of these cases on the basis of insufficient evidence. For an additional 9% of individuals, the cases were dismissed or they were declared not guilty. Approximately one of four cases (27%) resulted in convictions. The charges and sentencing of these individuals is also of interest. Among convicted individuals (1,329), 1% (14) received a sentence of 20 years or more, 5% (67) received a sentence of 5 years or more, 53% (704) received no prison time, and 25% (327) received sentences ranging from 1 day to 1 year. TRAC pointed out that convictions are seldom for terrorist activities. The top four charges were fraud or making false statements (14.5%), terrorism with criminal penalties (14.4%), providing material support to terrorists (11.6%), and release or detention of material witnesses. In looking at convictions, fraud and false statements accounted for more than one-half (56.8%); other convictions were based on fraud and related activity–ID documents (5.6%), fraud and misuse of visas or permits (4.7%), providing material support for terrorists (3.8%), and release or detention of material witnesses (3.3%). Two-thirds of all convictions for suspects in terrorism investigations involved a fraud or fraud-related charge. Approximately twothirds of these arrests were made by the FBI (931, with 18% of the cases being prosecuted), whereas Customs and Border Protection and ICE made 161 arrests (with 49.3% of the cases being prosecuted). The Social Security Administration referrals had the highest conviction rate (84 arrests, with 92% of the cases being prosecuted). The help of the affected immigrant communities might have been useful in combating terrorism, but the climate of suspicion seems to have encouraged alienation rather than cooperation. The national origin and religious profiling of immigrants has produced only 14 terrorist-related sentences of 20 years or more. It could be argued, then, that this surveillance has tended to exonerate the immigrant community at a significantly large cost in terms of taxpayers’
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money. TRAC pointed out that prosecutions have declined sharply during the years subsequent to 9/11, although some political leaders still talk about a substantial terrorist threat. During recent years, the turndown rate for referrals has been nine of ten. Finally, the low rate of cases with substantial sentences suggests that national origin and religion profiling of noncitizens in certain immigrant communities was unproductive, especially the use of FBI resources. Some argue that the PATRIOT Act’s deprivation of civil liberties might not be justified by the results.
Continuing Debate Although the most severe provisions of the act were due to end in 2005, it was reauthorized with few changes on March 2, 2006. In the interim, the PATRIOT Act has been strongly criticized for weakening civil liberties. The most strongly contested elements were renewal of indefinite detention of immigrants, sneak and peak searches without owner or occupant knowledge, FBI use of “national security letters” to search any type of communication or records, and increased access of law enforcement to government records, including library and financial ones. The provision for search of records was challenged successfully by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the law has been changed to require more judicial oversight. Other provisions related to access to records, sneak and peek searches, and use of roving wiretaps were subject to twentyseven new provisions providing for more judicial oversight of their use. A 2006 national survey showed that most U.S. residents support the erosion of civil liberties caused by the PATRIOT Act because they consider fighting terrorism to be more important. The public believes that the act did not go too far, but it does object to the government’s amassing a huge database of previously private records. Impacts have varied in kind and degree between citizens and noncitizens. Loss of privacy is a big concern to citizens because they can see that their records have been put in view of law enforcement. Noncitizens, including permanent resident aliens, have been much more affected by counterterrorist scrutiny. Only watchdog organizations such as the ACLU, Amnesty International, and immigrant organizations have reacted by filing lawsuits or protesting the immigrant profiling used in the “War on Terror” that were authorized by this act.
Another negative consequence of the PATRIOT Act is that it creates a two-tier society of citizens and noncitizens. A key issue is that immigrants who are not naturalized citizens are more likely to have lost civil and human rights, in practice, under the secrecy provision for special interest cases of the act. The Supreme Court has ruled that indefinite detention by ICE is unconstitutional, but even immigrants with paperwork in compliance with the law have been subject to indefinite detainment if they were profiled in the War on Terror. Given the absence of terrorist incidents since 9/11, U.S. citizens may assume that the PATRIOT Act is a key component in this outcome. The law enforcement record, however, indicates that few substantial convictions have resulted from the harassment of profiled immigrants and foreign entrants. Judith Ann Warner See also Discrimination; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Race; London Bombings (July 7, 2005); Muslim Americans; Police; Racial Profiling; Refugees; Terrorism
Further Readings
Cole, David. 2003. Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism. New York: New Press. Dow, Mark. 2004. American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gallup Poll. 2006. Gallup’s Pulse of Democracy: The Patriot Act and Civil Liberties. Retrieved from http://www .galluppoll.com/content/?ci=5263 TRAC Report. 2006. Criminal Terrorism Enforcement in the United States in the Five Years since the 9/11/01 Attacks. Retrieved from http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/terrorism/169
PELTIER, LEONARD (1944– ) Leonard Peltier, a leading Native American activist and prominent member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), is currently serving two life sentences for the murder of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. The case that led to his incarceration remains highly controversial. For many, Peltier is a symbol of the history of the violation of human rights of Indigenous Peoples, and he has been called the Nelson Mandela of the American Indian
Peltier, Leonard (1944– )
people. To others, he is a murderer who has been erroneously turned into a martyr. This entry looks at his life and impact.
Early Years Peltier was born September 12, 1944, on the Anishinabe/Chippewa Turtle Mountain Reservation in Grand Forks, North Dakota, to Leo and Alvina Peltier. His bloodline is predominantly Ojibway (Chippewa) and Dakota Sioux. He was also adopted in the traditional Indian way by the Lakota Sioux. His parents separated when he was four years old, and he then lived with his paternal grandparents. From 1953 to 1956, he was forced to attend the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA) Wahpeton Indian Boarding School. He returned to the Turtle Mountain Reservation in 1957. While on the reservation in 1958, Peltier observed his first Sun Dance and attended a political meeting regarding the government’s plans to “terminate” the reservation—ending its recognition of the tribe’s sovereignty and withdrawing services. These two events inspired Peltier to work for justice on behalf of his people, to work toward eliminating the extreme poverty he saw among Indian peoples, and to preserve tribal customs. During the 1960s, he joined the fight for civil, human, and Indian rights. Peltier became involved in Indian fishing rights, which was a key impetus leading to the establishment of AIM, as were the government’s termination and relocation programs.
The American Indian Movement AIM was established in Minneapolis in 1968. The movement concentrated on achieving justice for American Indians by demanding that the U.S. government honor previously signed treaties. In 1969, AIM activists occupied the abandoned federal prison on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay area from November 1969 through June 1971 to bring attention to their plight. Although Peltier was not involved in this action, it inspired him and acted as a model for his future activism. Earlly Experien nces
Peltier’s first experience involving AIM-style militancy was the 1970 occupation of the abandoned Fort Lawton military base outside of Seattle. Like Alcatraz, this was on “surplus” federal land; hence,
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the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation (UIATF) used this takeover to test an old federal law that gives Indians first rights to lands abandoned by federal agencies. As a result of this takeover, people were arrested, beaten, taken into custody, and beaten again in the stockade cells. When Peltier was released, he refused to leave until all of the others were released, encouraging the others to also refuse to leave until all had been freed. Peltier’s insistence on the importance of solidarity led to his emergence as a leader in the fight for Indian rights. Peltier traveled to Arizona and then on to Colorado, following the activities of AIM through media reports. He went to the AIM office in Denver, where he met Vernon Bellecourt, who took Peltier to an AIM meeting in Minnesota. Dennis Banks, one of the cofounders of AIM, spoke at this meeting, impressing on Peltier the importance of AIM and its actions in the fight for Native rights. In 1972, Peltier joined AIM and worked with Banks and other AIM leaders and activists. In 1972, Peltier traveled with Banks to Hollywood to raise support for Indian causes among people involved in the movie industry, hoping to achieve positive media attention. Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda are perhaps the most famous Hollywood insiders who publicly supported Indian causes. Peltier, however, did not like Los Angeles, claiming that it seemed like a jungle to him. Consequently, he moved to Milwaukee to work with the local AIM office, working specifically on alcohol problems in the Indian community. Tra ail of Bro oken n Treatie es
During the fall of 1972, Peltier helped to organize the “Trail of Broken Treaties” caravan to the White House. Along with Stanley Moore, Peltier was chosen to direct security in Washington, D.C. The caravan arrived just days before the presidential election, having notified the authorities of plans to bring a list of twenty grievances and a proposal to improve Indian relations with the U.S. government. It was the intent of AIM to set up a series of meetings with government agencies to discuss the grievances. Specifically, AIM wanted to put the BIA under Indian control and to establish a commission for the purpose of examining treaty violations. What had been planned as a meeting turned into an impromptu sit-in when government officials refused to meet and discuss AIM’s grievances. The sit-in escalated into a takeover of the BIA building just a few
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blocks from the White House. All employees were allowed to leave, and AIM occupied the BIA building for five days, causing substantial damage and taking a number of documents that it declared confirmed the biased position of the government against Indians. The leaders on the Trail of Broken Treaties were added to the FBI’s list of “key extremists.” Because Peltier was a security chief during the BIA takeover, he once again drew the attention of the FBI as an agitator who already had been arrested during the Fort Lawton takeover. Peltier returned to Milwaukee, and a few weeks later he was arrested and charged with attempted murder. A fight broke out in a restaurant between Peltier, along with two of his Indian friends, and two plainclothes policemen. The police maintained that Peltier threatened them by firing a gun twice. Peltier denied this accusation, claiming that he had been set up by the police. Peltier spent five months in jail. During this time, AIM activists occupied Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota during a 71-day standoff beginning February 27, 1973. In April, Peltier was released on bail and went underground, assuming that he would not get a fair trial. Eventually, in 1978, Peltier was acquitted following the state crime lab’s conclusion that his gun was incapable of firing. While still a fugitive from trial dates, Peltier joined the fishing rights struggle in Washington State and later took part in AIM protests in Arizona and Wisconsin. In March 1975, Peltier responded to a request from the Elders of the Oglala Pine Ridge Reservation summoning AIM for protection, and he moved there as a security expert for AIM. The Pine Rid dge Shooto out
During the preceding months of the Wounded Knee occupation, tensions escalated between traditional Lakota, who wanted independence from the federal government, and the tribal government, which supported the actions of the federal government. The tribal government augmented the BIA police force by funding a private police force, known for its brutality, whose members referred to themselves as the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs). Violent confrontations between the two groups continued as an everyday occurrence during the three years following the siege at Wounded Knee. This was the atmosphere that Peltier encountered when he and other
AIM members set up a “tent city” on the Jumping Bull compound near Oglala to protect the traditional Lakota from attacks by the GOONs. On June 26, 1975, FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, in unmarked cars, chased a red pickup truck onto the Jumping Bull property. Gunfire erupted among the agents, other law enforcement officers, GOONs, and AIM members. The firefight resulted in the deaths of Coler and Williams along with the death of AIM member Joe Stuntz. Peltier and more than two dozen others fled the property, leading to a massive FBI manhunt. On September 10, 1975, a car driven by Bob Robideau, who had also escaped Jumping Bull, exploded. The FBI recovered an AR-15 rifle and declared that it was the weapon that killed the agents and that it belonged to Peltier. FBI lab reports, not revealed until years later, disclosed that the pin in the AR-15 rifle was different from the pin in the rifle used at Jumping Bull. On November 25, 1975, Peltier, Robideau, Dino Butler, and James Eagle were indicted in the deaths of the FBI agents. Robideau and Butler pleaded innocent by reason of self-defense and were given a full acquittal, and the charges were dropped against Eagle. Peltier, who had fled to Canada, was arrested by the Canadian police and was held in custody in Vancouver, British Columbia. In December 1976, Peltier was extradited to the United States.
Murderer or Martyr? Peltier’s trial on double murder charges began March 16, 1977, in Fargo, North Dakota. From the Indian perspective, this region was notorious for anti-Indian sentiment. Peltier was not allowed to claim selfdefense or to introduce the evidence that led to the acquittal of Robideau and Butler by reason of selfdefense. Essentially, the defense argued that all exculpatory evidence was ruled inadmissible. On April 18, 1977, Peltier was convicted of the murder of the two FBI agents, and on June 2 he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in federal prison. Although there have been several appeals for a new trial, all appeals have been denied. Several human rights organizations, most notably Amnesty International and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, have called for executive clemency and a pardon from the president of the United States. President Bill Clinton’s failure to pardon Peltier is seen by many Indians as characteristic
Peoplehood
bias against Indians. Peltier’s case has attracted national and international attention and continues to be controversial. Diane Sandage See also American Indian Movement; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Discrimination; Native Americans; Sioux; Trail of Broken Treaties
Further Readings
Matthiessen, Peter. 1991. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. New York: Viking Penguin. Page, Jake. 2003. In the Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000-Year History of American Indians. New York: Free Press. Peltier, Leonard. 1999. Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
PEOPLEHOOD Peoplehood refers to the inclusionary and involuntary identity of a territorially based group with a putatively distinct way of life. A general concept, it encompasses groups usually classified separately under the categories “race,” “ethnicity,” and “nation,” thereby implying a grouping larger than kinship but smaller than humanity. Peoplehood is characterized by both common descent—a shared sense of genealogy and geography—and contemporary commonality such as language, religion, culture, and/or consciousness. As a self-reflexive identity or internal conviction of a group, it is distinct from a population, which connotes an aggregate or an analytical category with externally defined attributes. Peoplehood often supersedes religious, class, and local identity to become a fundamental mode of identity in modern life. The term appears in the work of several scholars working independently, including Immanuel Wallerstein, Rogers Smith, and John Lie. Most discussions of race, ethnicity, and nation dispense considerable effort in analytically distinguishing among the three. Racial categorization frequently appeals to biological distinction (or perceptions to that effect), and ethnic differentiation often depends on social or cultural difference. Yet in fact, the dividing line between the natural and the social turns out to be spurious; racial groups rely on achieved characteristics,
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and ethnic groups rely on ascriptive features. Furthermore, racial characteristics are frequently conflated with both the national and the ethnic. These categorical distinctions also fail to make adequate sense of the historically contingent definitions and developments. The concept of peoplehood seeks to supersede these conceptual confusions by asserting unifying elements in the classification of humans. Thus, peoplehood is at once rooted in both the natural and the social. The concept of peoplehood is fundamentally a modern phenomenon. In the premodern world, the major categories of social distinction were not racial, ethnic, or national; rather, status, religion, and locality (e.g., village, region) were the major modes of distinction and identification. For example, one identified as a peasant, a Christian, or a villager rather than as a White person or a French person. The classification of humans in terms of peoplehood arose in early modern Europe and spread to the rest of the world.
The Rise of Modern Peoplehood Identity does not arise naturally; rather, it usually arises from institutional identification. Identity is learned, and institution has the capacity and the will to inculcate it. Most powerful identities in early modern Europe, therefore, followed from the most powerful institutions of the time such as status hierarchy and religious organization. With their decline arose the expansion and intensification of state power. Modern peoplehood is ultimately a product of the modern state. Modern state formation achieved two forms of integration that made modern peoplehood possible. Horizontal (or cultural) integration incorporated and integrated disparate local and regional identifications. The growing infrastructural and institutional spread of the state inculcated state-based identity. That is, national education, mass conscription, and national systems of communication and transportation culturally transmitted the idea of modern peoplehood as personal identity. Outside of the state, war and international competition sealed the identification of “us”—our people—against “them.” Whereas horizontal integration geographically expanded the spread of peoplehood as a form of identity, vertical (or status) integration weakened the formal barriers of status hierarchy within a polity. Premodern distinctions between lords and peasants were often racialized as biological distinctions between, for example, “blue-blooded” aristocrats and “dark”
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peasants. The advances of political liberty and industrialization made possible the theoretical equality of citizenry or people. These twin processes of integration reconfigured group identities on a much larger scale than had been possible previously; once stabilized, the boundaries separating these peoplehood identities became increasingly impermeable. Spurred by warfare and national industrialization, the modern state was the fundamental motor driving the emergence of peoplehood identity in delineating clear lines between “us” and “them.” Premodern modes of identification declined; linguistic, religious, and cultural integration occurred in tandem with the rise of peoplehood identity within national boundaries. The rise of the modern state is responsible not only for peoplehood identity but also for the ontology of modern scientific understanding of the nation-state itself and of society. Horizontal and vertical modes of integration were in fact preconditions of the modern social sciences’ use of the nation-state or society as a principal unit of analysis. Symptomatically, the modern European terminology for society as a modern, liberal, inclusive, and equal polity (Gesellschaft and société) became popular during the 18th century. The premodern equivalents (Sozietät and monde) referred to an earlier meaning of “society” that implied the elite stratum rather than people at large. The infrastructure of the modern state made the ideas of modern society and modern peoplehood largely coeval. Finally, the particular trajectories of national development generated distinct articulations of peoplehood. Some countries valorized citizenship, emphasizing the voluntary nature of peoplehood belonging. Others stressed birth and descent, stressing the hereditary characteristic of identity. Nonetheless, this distinction is far from fixed. Just as the United States, a country of immigrant citizenship par excellence, has often stressed racial and biological grounding of “Americanness” (whiteness), Germany and Japan, countries that have emphasized “blood” transmission, make possible “naturalization” into the ambit of German and Japanese peoplehood.
Racism and Genocide Racism, according to Lie, is a consequence of incomplete integration of peoplehood. The making of modern peoplehood may remain incomplete in terms of both horizontal and vertical integration. That is, some
regions or religious groups, or newly arrived immigrants, remain outside of the ambit of peoplehood identity (e.g., Irish in England, Jews in Germany). Simultaneously, low-status groups might not be adequately integrated into the body politic (e.g., Burakumin minority group in Japan). Political racism identifies the incompletely integrated groups so as to mobilize identification with and support for the majority group. Economic racism, in contrast, occurs in the labor market, whether to protect the privileges of the majority group or to disband the solidarity of the working class by dividing workers and co-opting their interests. These distinctions, to be sure, are frequently elided, and racism is most powerful when the two dimensions overlap. Thus, the strength of racism against African Americans in the early 20th-century United States depended on both horizontally and vertically incomplete integration. Genocide is the extreme manifestation of racism. Just as the modern state contributed to the construction of modern peoplehood, its bureaucratic and technological centralization also has made possible categorical destruction of a minority peoplehood identified as an enemy within. In this line of thinking, it is not so much racism that generates genocide as the development of the apparatus of state power that accounts in large part for both racism and genocide.
The Future of Peoplehood If the modern state is the proximate institutional factor behind modern peoplehood, a relative decline of the state should lead to the waning impact of peoplehood identity. However, one of the reasons why peoplehood identity is at once proliferating and ostensibly strengthening is the fracturing and fractal nature of peoplehood identity. Nonetheless, the waning of structural inequality (or greater horizontal and vertical integration) may leave symbolic racism intact. Countermobilization by excluded groups may, therefore, lead to a greater assertion of minority peoplehood. Nonetheless, recent major trends around the world point to the decline of peoplehood identity. On the one hand, globalization and its attendant processes—with transnational migration being most important—are vitiating cultural integration. On the other hand, the weakening welfare state and neoliberal economic policies are generating greater inequalities that threaten vertical integration. Thus, the unraveling of modern peoplehood identities may very well occur as
People of Color
other modes of social classification and identification come to the fore. Julia Chuang and John Lie See also Citizenship; Ethnic Groups; Genocide; Race; Racism
Further Readings
Lie, John. 2004. Modern Peoplehood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Smith, Rogers. 2003. Stories of Peoplehood: The Politics and Morals of Political Membership. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1987. “The Construction of Peoplehood: Racism, Nationalism, Ethnicity.” Sociological Forum 2:373–388.
PEOPLE
OF
COLOR
The phrase people of color (and person of color) refers to racial and ethnic minority groups. Although historically the term has been used elsewhere, the notion of people of color is much more localized in contemporary popular, activist, and academic debates, mostly in the United States. People of color explicitly suggests a social relationship among racial and ethnic minority groups. The use of the term also expands on and challenges empirical uses of categories such as “race,” “(pan)ethnicity,” and “national identity.” People of color is a term most often used outside of traditional academic circles, often infused by activist frameworks, but it is slowly replacing terms such as racial and ethnic minorities. First examined in this entry are the origins of the term people of color, how it has been used recently, and the debates surrounding its meaning by various groups. The first section includes a brief discussion on the politics of skin color, whiteness, and racialization discussions. Next, the coalitional uses and possibilities of this term and its potentially productive use in academia (especially when linked to sociological discussions on race and racialization, panethnicity, and national identity) are addressed. The final main section offers details about some significant changes in the term by newer racialization processes. Thus, the entry moves from biological notions of race to discussions of racism and racialization to best illustrate the notion of people of color.
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Historical Use In the past, the phrase free people of color was used to encode the experience of non-Whites after the abolition of slavery throughout Latin America and the United States. In some cases, however, the phrase did not imply all non-White people, for example, when Native Americans and other free people of color were portrayed as having owned their own slaves. In such instances, the term was a more stratified term that regulated the colonization of the seemingly less enslaved people, creating a buffer of sorts between (Black) slaves and (White) colonizers. In the United States in particular, there is a trajectory to the term—from more derogatory terms such as negroes, to colored, to people of color. (The term colored, however, has a different meaning in other countries such as South Africa, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this entry.) Although in this genealogy the term refers predominantly to Blacks, at certain historical moments and in various regions Mexicans, among some of the oldest “immigrants,” were excluded from “White”-only spaces under the nomenclature of “colored” along with Blacks. One of the developments of the term people of color is precisely its flexibility in accommodating various groups similarly disadvantaged, even if their disadvantages are based on different variables (e.g., access to education, housing, employment, immigration status, English proficiency). Furthermore, a comparative view of the United States with another country, such as Canada, can show that however the term people of color is conceptualized there (e.g., through the language of aboriginal peoples), there are similarities in crucial aspects of inequality such as the high percentage of people of color in prisons. Because of its development, the term has a strong association to phenotype, skin color, and eye/hair/other physiological aspects that often defined Blacks in the United States. As a result, at times African Americans use people of color to refer only to those individuals who “look Black.” Yet Black scholars in the humanities and social sciences have also underscored how the notion of “feeling Black” is as much an imposition of outside group definitions of Black communities. Similarly, the use of the terms Brown, Yellow, and Red, while having various connotations depending on who is talking (sometimes their use is perceived as offensive), have been used politically to mobilize communities of color throughout the United States during the latter part of the 20th century and the early 21st century.
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People of Color
The social construction debates about race during the past couple of decades have challenged a notion of seemingly distinctive “races.” Centuries after the uses of Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid as terms through which the sciences attempted to reify racial difference, recent research illustrates that genetic commonalities between so-called racial groups may exceed commonalities within a group. For instance, two Asian individuals or two Black individuals may have less genetic makeup in common than each of them would have with a person considered to be “White.” Thus, the politics of naming a person solely based on how that person is perceived, a significant part of the revolutionary Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s, is being reshaped by discussions that are not limited to skin color privilege and “colorism.” The term people of color should be understood in the context of racialization, which offers a range of shifts and changes throughout modern history on how various racialized ethnoracial minority groups are conceived and treated by the state. The term people of color has been contested because of its seemingly oppositional definition to Whites. Many people, notably U.S. Whites, critique the use of the term because it presumes that Whites have no color, effectively missing the point that whiteness studies has tried to bring forth during the past decade or so—that the invisibility of whiteness is marked, even if in very subtle ways, by the politicized use of the term people of color. The affect solicited in these accounts makes the production and effects of whiteness noticeable; that which has “no color” is made visible by such uttering. All in all, one of the ways in which these uses of color (or even the Black, Brown, Yellow, and Red terms) have formed and solidified the term people of color has been in its opposition to White, but an equally important way has been the recognition that a racial/social hierarchy continues to both privilege whiteness (and White supremacy) and degrade various groups of people of color.
Coalitional and Contemporary Uses People of color can self-identify by their country of origin or their panethnic label (e.g., Asian or Latino or even all-encompassing labels such as Native Americans that effectively erase tribal differences) and can also identify as people of color. In this sense, the term people of color offers individuals a certain range of identity choices from the regional/tribal/national, panethnic, and coalitional. People of color is, however it is viewed, a political term, but it is also a term that
allows for a more complex set of identity for the individual—a relational one that is in constant flux. Immigration, travel, and racial constructs—in general, people’s social world—all have an impact on how changing these identifications may be. It is perhaps because of the flexibility in identification that the term has become significant in biracial and multiracial writings (and for individuals) as a term that better helps to identify people with multiple national origins, panethnic backgrounds, or so-called racial makeup. Academically, the term people of color has yet to supplant racial and ethnic minorities. Critics of the latter term insist that the word minorities carries a charged connotation that pathologizes the various groups perceived to be members. Minority, in some people’s view, implies the “putting down” of a group of people by self-categorization as “less than”—or so the argument goes. This critique is often based on the faulty assumption that the use of minorities literally implies numbers; in the historical–political sense, the term ethnoracial minorities has implied people without resources or institutional power—elements often missing for people of color even when people of color are the numerical majority in a given state or region. Political or coalitional categories such as the term people of color tend to offer much room for commonalities, just as other (often unexplored) categories such as panethnicity do as well. Although people of color is an all-inclusive term that incorporates African Americans, Latinas/os, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans, the term has possibilities of moving outside of the census-defined (and institutionally bound) racial and ethnic categories imposed by the state. It is here, in the dissolution of panethnic and top-down imposed categories, where the U.S.–“Third World” boundaries can be blurred. Likewise, where country of origin, region, or language commonalities are put aside for more political economic issues that affect these groups similarly (colonialism, militarization, and imposition of economic development demands), intraethnic relations are more easily visible against the panethnic impositions of the state. Among the terms linked to or derived from people of color are women of color, Third World women, and queer people of color. Feminist theorizing has linked Third World women and women of color in their discussions as a way to develop coalitions and solidarity among various groups of people. Similarly, the term queer people of color has been developed as an identity refusing (in sociological language) a single “master status”; in so doing, it has privileged both sexual and racial marginalization
Peru
as the core of such identity. Theoretically, a most recent “queer of color critique” loops back into the feminist of color critiques of the 1980s and a burgeoning queer theory that used whiteness as a normative (invisible) referent in its theorizing (like much of the 1970s–1980s feminisms critiqued by feminists of color).
Changes in U.S. Racialization Racialization moves beyond the notion of “race” as biological traits. At the same time, racialization does not leave behind discussions about racism; it conceptualizes racism differently. Racial formations, and the racialization in these, imply the marking of groups of people previously unmarked; in so doing, racialization is not static. Historically, discussions of who immigrates to the United States and how they are perceived once they arrive have depended on elements such as notions of whiteness and blackness as well as panethnicity impositions. Political–economic issues have been significantly implicated in the attacks on the United States, most notably the one on September 11, 2001. With the increasing demonization of Arabs, Middle Easterners, South Asians, and people who are Muslim (regardless of their country of origin), these groups are being racialized in ways that regroup Arabs, Middle Easterners, and South Asians—some previously labeled as White in the U.S. Census and some thought of as “model minorities”—on the bottom rungs of a racial ladder in U.S. society. In one report, Latinos and African Americans were portrayed in mainstream media as being “OK” with infringing on Middle Easterners’ rights after 9/11, effectively showing that racialization takes place from more than the positions of power. Arabs, Muslims, Middle Easterners, and South Asians are continuously reracialized as terrorists and deficient citizens regardless of their political or religious belief system. Thus, the process of racialization of subgroups that could be considered as people of color by activist and popular standards, as well as by academic standards, is ongoing. This is a significant example of racialization as a process that continues to determine and redefine what people of color means in contemporary U.S. society.
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Further Readings
Ahmad, Muneer. 2002. “Homeland Insecurities: Racial Violence the day after September 11.” Social Text 72:101–115. Alexander, Bryant K. 2004. “Racializing Identity: Performance, Pedagogy, and Regret.” Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies 4(1):12–27. Almaguer, Tomás. 1994. Racial Faultlines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California. Berkeley: University of California Press. Anzaldúa, Gloria and Cherríe Moraga, eds. 1983. This Bridge Called My Back: Radical Writings by Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table Press. Ferguson, Roderick A. 2004. Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Glenn, Evelyn N. 2002. Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1986. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s. New York: Routledge. Vidal-Ortiz, Salvador. 2004. “On Being a White Person of Color: Using Autoethnography to Understand Puerto Ricans’ Racialization.” Qualitative Sociology 27:178–202.
PERU Racial/Ethnic relations in Peru, a country with an estimated population of 27.9 million people in 2007, have experienced tremendous changes during the past 500 years but have always remained central to social and political life. Indigenous Peoples, while making up more than 40% of the current population, have been continually “othered,” even as large-scale demographic and governing changes have altered the country. Whites (criollos) have always struggled (overtly and covertly) to maintain their privileged position at the top of the racial hierarchy. A small population of Blacks continue to suffer from obscurity. But the mestizo population has demonstrated the greatest flux, emerging out of marginality to both pioneer some of the greatest historical changes and reproduce some of the most repressive social relations.
Salvador Vidal-Ortiz
Spanish Invasion See also Critical Race Theory; Deviance and Race; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Identity Politics; Immigration and Race; Military and Race; Minority/Majority; Panethnic Identity; Racialization
As with most of the Americas, contemporary race relations in Peru were born in the early 16th century with the Spanish invasion of the New World. In 1532,
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Haiti
Mexico
Dominican Republic
Jamaica
Belize
Guadeloupe
Guatemala Honduras El Salvador Nicaragua
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Martinique Barbados Trinidad & Tobago
Costa Rica Venezuela
Panama
Guyana
Colombia
Ecuador
Peru Brazil
Bolivia
Par agu ay
Chile
Pacific Ocean
Throughout the next four centuries, as the European population grew, the central authorities created various means to extract more native labor. For example, the Toledo Reforms at the end of the 16th century relocated a large portion of the native populations onto small areas of marginal lands called reducciones, thereby heavily limiting native alternatives and concentrating the populations in more manageable areas. As the crown hauled the fantastic fortunes from the mines of Potosí in Upper Peru (contemporary Bolivia), demand for labor accelerated in the mining sector and the vast array of supporting services. Europeans even imported African slaves for the mines, adding another distinct racial group to the country.
Insurrection, Repression, and Reform Argentina
Uru
gua y
Francisco Pizarro, seeking the riches and fame discovered by Hernando Cortez in Mexico, led a small team of Spaniards, battle ready from the recent Iberian wars with the Moors, into the Tawantinsuyo or Incan Empire. A recently ended civil war, most likely precipitated by the death of the last king (Inca) by smallpox, made the “Empire of the Sun” particularly vulnerable, with many Incan nobles greeting the Spaniards as liberators. After quickly capturing the current Inca (Atahualpa), holding him for ransom of a room full of gold, and eventually executing him, the gold-hungry Europeans soon established an “economy of plunder” through which the newly servile native populations supplied their new Spanish overlords with a tremendous flow of goods and labor. A strict racial division between the Europeans and native groups fueled this system of exploitation. Yet at the same time, Spanish rule weakened the multiple Incan-wrought ties between the myriad indigenous groups, resulting in populations reforming their previous, much more highly localized ethnic identities, although now largely dependent on the beneficence of a new Spanish overlord for protection against rivals and enemies in other areas. A class of noble elites, called curacas, served as intermediaries between the Spanish and natives, capitalizing on their privileged position while also attempting to soften Spanish demands and native unrest.
The draconian policies of the colonial period proved to be genocidal, with this “great dying” reducing native populations by at least 95%, a demographic collapse from which the country did not recover until the 1980s. Although indigenous groups sporadically acted against Spanish rule, the 18th century truly became known as the age of Andean insurrection, culminating in the rebellion led by the curaca José Gabriel Condorcanqui (a.k.a. Tupac Amaru, assuming the name of the last Inca). Inspired by Enlightenment ideals and a glorification of the Incan past, this rebellion encompassed much of the southern highlands and thousands of indigenous and other individuals until it was brutally put down and its leaders were executed in 1781. Postinsurrection, the colonial authorities intensified their rapacious policies, including eliminating the native aristocracy and executing every fifth male of sympathetic communities. Throughout this period, colonial authorities had also attempted to maintain a strict racial hierarchy through means such as the Caste Law, which enumerated more than fifty different racial categories and their corresponding privileges and obligations. Miscegenation, however, made enforcement difficult, and the official categorization scheme did not survive independence in 1824. Nevertheless, a strong tripartite system emerged, with Whites maintaining the highest stratum, Indigenous Peoples maintaining the lowest stratum, and the vast majority of in-between categories collapsing into the rubric of mestizo. The Black category also survived independence, with its populations generally concentrated in coastal cities
Peru
(particularly Lima). Blacks actually lost social standing from earlier assimilationist gains and have largely become landless laborers with few social connections or prospects of upward economic mobility. Although Peruvian elites reluctantly accepted independence from Spain, the governing racial hierarchy actually became more acute in key ways. Elites generally accepted the new ideas about individual liberty, particularly when this applied to property regimes, but also reproduced the paternalistic aristocratic order in regard to native peoples, particularly the colonial Indian head tax (contribución indígena), which made up 40% of the national budget. Through “independence,” then, native Andeans lost protections against land appropriation while still needing to pay taxes. Because of these changes, Whites who could successfully control large land areas—and consequently the native populations and their labor—became the major power holders, ushering in the era of the rural landlords, otherwise known as hacendados or gamonales. Population recovery in Peru, however, occurred primarily through the ever-expanding numbers of mestizos. Although this term literally means “mixed,” mestizos have enjoyed a rich and diverse cultural heritage for centuries. The hybridized label testifies significantly to their strength; nearly all peoples of the world are cultural hybrids, but only such mixed groups can successfully operate in multiple venues. By the beginning of the 20th century, mestizos began to successfully challenge the aristocratic order of White Peruvians, attempting to apply more universal notions of citizenship and thereby bring about Peruvian state formation. Both ideologically and institutionally, however, mestizo inclusion depended on continued indigenous disenfranchisement. Indians represented the marginalized “other” against whom mestizos successfully contrasted themselves. Simultaneously, White discontent was allayed by leaving indigenous clientelism in place, with many mestizos increasingly inheriting the lucrative position of patron. The long-resisted inclusive project of nation building, then, shifted control of the countryside from the criollo Whites to the now enfranchised mestizos. But the native Andean populations remained caught in networks of patronage that alienated them from the larger political system. The 1969 Agrarian Reform allegedly put an end to native dependence by redistributing the resource that fueled rural overlord power. A combination of factors, however, caused indigenous marginalization to
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continue. First, gamonales occupied crucial offices in the new government and other key links to the countryside, thereby retaining tight control over these areas. Second, the new progressive military government did not alter the clientelistic relations of the countryside but instead insinuated itself as the new patron. Despite the agrarian reform, then, from this point onward the government remained highly racialized, generally providing mestizo privilege at the cost of indigenous marginalization. As occurred in other countries such as the United States, most of the projects of this new “development” era were controlled by mestizos and used to further entrench their privileged positions.
Current Conditions and Trends Development policies aimed at industrialization also spawned massive urbanization, particularly in Lima, which now contains a third of the national population. The White population generally lives behind high walls in exclusive neighborhoods such as Miraflores and San Isidro. Indigenous Peoples have also moved to the city in large numbers, mostly living in the shanties (barrios jóvenes) surrounding the city, making Lima the largest Quechua-speaking city in the world. As indigenous people proved to be the prime target of the horrible violence of the recent civil (or “internal”) war, their movement to the cities accelerated. To migrate, indigenous people rely greatly on networks from their villages and largely reproduce the inequality of those home areas. But cities mostly represent a mestizo crucible, reproducing and redefining this culture through a multitude of inputs from Peru’s principal geographic areas of coast, sierra, and jungle. Here terms such as indigenous mestizos emerge, emphasizing a connection to Peru’s rich cultural heritage but largely stripped of the terrible subjugation readily associated with Indian. Some pro-indigenous mobilizations, attempting to remove the derogatory connotations associated with Indian and assert indigenous enfranchisement in their place, exist to some degree in Peru but have never achieved a countrywide scale as they have in other Latin American countries such as neighboring Ecuador and Bolivia. In those other countries, a cultural negotiation facilitated the imposition of regressive neoliberal economic policies. Peru relied much more on a military authoritarianism that squelched most popular movements. It still relies on the 1993
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Peruvian Americans
constitution written by the authoritarian neoliberal government of Alberto Fujimori. A strong current of “Andean Utopia,” which informed the Tupac Amaru rebellion as well as movements behind state formation, still charges the national imagination and is called on by diverse groups, including radical mestizo nationalists (Caceristas), coca growers, nongovernmental organizations, and internationally linked indigenous groups. In addition, many locally based groups concerned with resource extraction, environmental destruction, or even education have found some success through appealing to indigenous patrimonial rights. Arthur Scarritt See Appendix A See also Latin America, Indigenous People; Peruvian Americans; South Americans in the United States
Further Readings
Cotler, Julio, ed. 1995. Peru 1964–1994. Lima, Peru: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. De la Cadena, Marisol. 2000. Indigenous Mestizos. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. García, María Elena. 2005. Making Indigenous Citizens. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Klarén, Peter Flindell. 2000. Peru: Society and Nationhood in the Andes. New York: Oxford University Press. Mallon, Florencia. 1995. Peasant and Nation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wade, Peter. 1997. Race and Ethnicity in Latin America. Chicago, IL: Pluto.
PERUVIAN AMERICANS The historical and contemporary experience of Peruvians in the United States is perhaps among the least known or documented of the Latina/o populations in the United States. Although most Peruvians arriving in the United States speak Spanish and are mestizos (of mixed indigenous and European descent), the Peruvian community in the country also includes those who, given their indigenous heritages and backgrounds, speak one of a number of indigenous languages such as Quechua and Aymara. Peruvian immigrants also include Afro-Peruvians, descendants of enslaved Africans, many of whom live
in the coastal regions of Peru, accounting for 5% of Peru’s total population of 27 million. Moreover, Asian Peruvians have also migrated to the United States and include not only Chinese Peruvians but also Peruvians of Japanese descent who, during World War II, were forcefully brought from Peru to internment camps in the United States and who chose to remain at the end of the war.
Peruvians in the United States: A Brief Historical Overview Like other South Americans, Peruvians have been coming to the United States since the early 1800s as immigrants, exiles, refugees, temporary visitors, or permanent settlers. During the 1849 gold rush, for example, hundreds of Peruvians, primarily sailors and merchants, joined Mexicans and others in the gold mines of California, eventually marrying and settling permanently in the United States. The largest waves of Peruvians, however, began to arrive during the post–World War II period, when U.S. foreign policy, reinforcing the Peruvian governing elites’ economic policies, played a significant role in shaping distinct waves of Peruvian immigration to the United States. The first significant wave of Peruvian immigration began during the mid-1950s and lasted into the early 1970s. This wave, popularly known as the “brain drain,” was a by-product of President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress program and included a significant number of highly skilled middle- and upper-class professionals. The modernization of the Peruvian economy also pushed many other Peruvians, particularly youth from the lower social and economic sectors, to immigrate to the United States. A second significant wave of Peruvians arrived during the 1980s, largely due to the country’s economic turmoil as well as to the devastation of the 1980–1992 civil war waged between the Peruvian state and the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), first in Peru’s Andean region and later in the capital city of Lima. Indeed, a 1989 article in The New York Times, describing the emigration from various Latin American countries to the United States, singled out the Peruvian case as the “most dramatic.” The article title—“Starting Over, the Ex-Peruvian Way”— poignantly captured the despair and loss of a sense of national belonging that resulted from the downward
Peruvian Americans
spiral of poverty for growing numbers of people. Indeed, by the end of the 1980s, abandoning Peru was no longer limited to those who could afford it; rather, it came to be seen as a rational solution by whoever could find the barest means for doing so. By 1990, there were officially 175,035 Peruvians in the United States. Since the mid-1990s, another significant wave of immigration has increased Peruvians’ official numbers by 41.5% to 247,600. (Because of undocumented migration, the actual figure is likely much higher.) Made up chiefly, albeit not exclusively, of highly educated and wealthy professionals and upper-class Peruvians, these immigrants have settled primarily in South Florida. Indeed, although concentrated primarily in the New York/New Jersey area, Peruvians today can be found throughout the United States, including California, Florida, Illinois, Texas, Georgia, Utah, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C. What accounts for the differences between Peruvians arriving in the United States during the early 21st century and those who arrived during earlier waves is a marked change in the immigrants’ relationship with Peru and their corresponding attitudes toward their host society. Peruvians arriving today are increasingly looking to the United States as a potential home. The expectation of returning to live in Peru one day is no longer the forgone conclusion that it once was. Moreover, the fact that the Peruvian government has recognized dual citizenship since 1980 has also contributed toward many Peruvians’ decisions to establish permanent residence in the United States without forfeiting Peruvian nationality. A number of Peruvian writers have been documenting the past and present experiences of Peruvians in the United States through autobiographical memoirs, poetry, novels, and documentary-style narratives. In 2001, Marie Arana explored the meaning of hybrid belonging in both the United States and the highlands of Peru in her autobiography American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood. Eduardo González Viaña described the experience of Peruvians and other Latinos in the United States in short story collections such as American Dreams (2005). Other Peruvian writers and poets living and writing in the United States include the award-winning Jewish Peruvian writer Isaac Goldenberg, Daniel Alarcón, Julio Ortega, Cecilia Bustamante, and Fredy Amilcar Roncalla.
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Social, Cultural, and Economic Integration in U.S. Society Peruvians are currently found at all occupational levels, both white- and blue-collar, in the United States. The time of arrival and the particular socioracial and class demographics of each immigrant wave have significantly affected the kinds of organizations Peruvians have created in the United States. Notwithstanding obstacles to community building such as the immigrants’ anticipation of return, class differences, and overriding local and regional (rather than national) loyalties, the Peruvian anthropologist Teofilo Altamirano recorded at least forty registered Peruvian associations in various states during the late 1980s, particularly in California, Chicago, the New York/New Jersey area, and Washington, D.C. Events sponsored by Peruvian associations include religious processions such as the Señor de los Milagros procession, Independence Day celebrations, and other festivities. Peruvian food, crafts, music, and dance are always part of these events. During the 1980s, wealthier Peruvians began to organize national conventions around the United States to discuss Peruvian national issues and matters related to the Peruvian community’s experience in the country. Peruvian indigenous immigrants in the United States have also been creating associations to bridge the gap between the country and their homeland communities. They often re-create their traditional religious celebrations and festivities in various parts of the Northeast, and these events sometimes have included bringing religious icons from their villages in the Peruvian Andes. More recently, Quechua Indians have also begun to forge stronger ties with various Native American nations in the United States, such as the Iroquois, Lakota, and Cheyenne, adopting a pan-American Indian identity and contributing toward the growing dialogue among Indians in the western hemisphere. Thus, while working toward integrating themselves in their new U.S. society, Peruvians of all ethnic and class backgrounds have also found various means of maintaining links to local, regional, and national Peruvian society. Suzanne Oboler See Appendix A See also Hispanics; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Latin America, Indigenous People; Native Americans; Peru; South Americans in the United States; Transnational People
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Further Readings
Altamirano, Teófilo. 1990. Los que se fueron: Peruanos en Estados Unidos. Lima, Peru: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Berg, Ulla D. and Carla Tamagno. 2006. “El Quinto Suyo: Conceptualizing the ‘Peruvian Diaspora’ from above and below.” Latino Studies 4(3):258. Bourricaud, Francois. 1975. “Indian, Mestizo, and Cholo as Symbols in the Peruvian System of Stratification.” Pp. 350–387 in Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, edited by Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Higashide, Seiichi. 2000. Adiós to Tears: The Memoirs of a Japanese-Peruvian Internee in U.S. Concentration Camps 2000 (with a foreword by C. Harvey Gardiner). Seattle: University of Washington Press. Oboler, Suzanne. “South Americans.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, vol. 4, edited by Suzanne Oboler and Deena J. Gonzalez. New York: Oxford University Press. Riding, Alan. 1989. “Starting Over, the Ex-Peruvian Way.” The New York Times, January 19, A4. Roncalla. Fredy Amilcar. “Indians, South American.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, vol. 2, edited by Suzanne Oboler and Deena J. Gonzalez. New York: Oxford University Press. Sabogal, Elena. 2005. “Viviendo en la Sombra: The Immigration of Peruvian Professionals to South Florida.” Latino Studies 3(1):113–131.
PEYOTE Peyote is the name given to a small cactus that grows in the southwestern United States and the northern and central reaches of Mexico. The plant, which contains natural hallucinogenic substances, the most well known of which is mescaline, is very slow growing and is in danger of extinction in the wild because of demand caused by its growing use among Native American Church groups and natives in Mexico. This entry looks at its use and related legal issues.
Historical Background When Spaniards first came to the New World, they found peyote being used by native groups throughout what is now central Mexico. Some scholars now think, based on archaeological evidence from Mexican and Texas sites, that peyote has been used in
religious rituals for up to 3,000 years in the region. After the Europeans arrived, peyote use by natives became a major controversy in Spanish-occupied territories as the Catholic Church fought to suppress its use. However, given the strong traditions surrounding peyote use in native groups and its status as a sacrament, these efforts usually succeeded only in driving practitioners underground. Use of peyote in religious rituals spread north from Mexico well over 100 years ago, with its use diffusing first to the Kiowa and Comanche tribes in the southwestern United States and later to other Native American groups in the United States and Canada. The spread of peyote use across North America led to considerable opposition from religious groups attempting to proselytize among Native Americans as well as from local government authorities. The liquor industry also opposed use of peyote, apparently preferring that natives use its product instead of naturally occurring peyote. The opposition to peyote use prompted some Native American groups to formally organize the Native American Church so that their peyote rituals could gain some protection usually afforded religious groups in U.S. society. The church was organized in 1885, grew slowly, and now claims more than 250,000 participants from many different tribes across North America. Practitioners in North America seldom do their own gathering of peyote because of problems of distance and the increasing scarcity of the plant in the wild. Instead, peyote is now being cultivated by some individuals who sell it to church groups and do so legally given protections that have developed for its use by Native American Church groups over the years.
Legal Issues Peyote use has played a significant role in defining the meaning of religious freedom in the United States, particularly for those participating in minority faiths. As it became increasingly used in religious rituals across North America beginning in the mid-1800s, a “crazy quilt” pattern developed where peyote use was legal among Native American Church members in some states but not in others. The problematic nature of this pattern was demonstrated in 1990 by the famous Employment Division, State of Oregon v. Smith decision deriving from developments in Oregon.
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In Smith, two members of the Native American Church who worked as drug counselors for the State of Oregon were fired from their jobs for using peyote, which was illegal under Oregon’s drug statutes. The two sought unemployment benefits and were denied by the state. They then sued and won at the trial court and Oregon Supreme Court levels on due process grounds because the law had never been enforced against members of the church. However, the State of Oregon appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which unexpectedly ruled against the plaintiffs and, in so doing, overturned decades of jurisprudence dealing with unemployment claims and religious freedom in the United States. This controversial decision resulted in the formation of a massive coalition of religious groups to regain the privileged position for religion in U.S. society, and this in turn led to the eventual passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which sought to reinstate the “compelling interest” test that had prevailed before Smith. However, this act was itself declared unconstitutional in City of Boerne v. Flores, a 1998 case that dealt with land use, at least as applied to local and state governmental entities. Congress again reacted and eventually passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2001 (RLUIPA). This act reinstated the compelling interest test in situations where religious groups were involved in land use disputes with governmental authorities, and the act also offered protections for the religious freedom of incarcerated persons. The religious freedom of prisoners gained considerably, as demonstrated in Cutter v. Wilkerson, a 2005 case that upheld RLUIPA as it pertains to prisoners and thereby granted considerable religious freedom to prisoners in the United States in both federal and state facilities. The Supreme Court found that a prison providing religious paraphernalia and access to religious leaders does not privilege religious practitioners over other prisoners and that prisons’ accommodation of religious practice does not constitute a federal establishment of religion. However, it is worth noting that this decision does not allow use of peyote in prisons. After the Smith decision, the State of Oregon amended its statutes in the area of drug use, legalizing the use of peyote in rituals of the Native American Church. Another development after Smith was the rapid passage of an amendment to the federal American Indian Religious Freedom Act that was originally passed in 1978. The 1994 amendment made
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it clear that federal law would allow the use of peyote in genuine religious ceremonies. Congress noted that “for many Indian people, the traditional ceremonial use of the peyote cactus as a religious sacrament has for centuries been integral to a way of life.” Pointing out that state laws and Supreme Court decisions do not adequately protect this practice, Congress stated that “the use, possession, or transportation of peyote by an Indian for bona fide traditional ceremonial purposes in connection with the practice of a traditional Indian religion is lawful.” Thus, the use of peyote is now accepted by the federal government, and the states must abide by this statute as well. The use of peyote has changed and spread over the centuries in North America, but now its use seems secure for Native Americans engaged in the practice of their relatively new trans-Indian religion. James T. Richardson See also Native American Identity, Legal Background; Native Americans; Religion, Minority; Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993
Further Readings
Evans, Richard and Albert Hoffman. 1992. Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press. Irwin, Lee. 2006. “Walking the Line: Pipe and Sweat Ceremonies in Prison.” Nova Religion 3:39–60. Slotkin, James S. 1975. “The Peyote Way.” Pp. 96–103 in Teachings from the Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy, edited by D. Tedlock and B. Tedlock. New York: Liveright Press. Stewart, Omer Call. 1987. Peyote Religion: A History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
PIPELINE The term pipeline has been used over the past several decades in the education and career domain, and especially in higher education, to describe the process of training and preparing workers, professionals, and leaders in varied fields and industries. Pipeline refers to the route students follow from early childhood through postsecondary education and involves educational and socialization processes where intellectual potential and skills are maximized to provide
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Pipeline
career-building opportunities to future generations of experts in a particular field. The term can refer to all students and workers, but today it is often used in discussions of increasing opportunities for traditionally underrepresented groups, which during recent decades have included both women and members of racial/ ethnic minority groups. This entry examines the pipeline in that context.
“Leaks” in the Pipeline It is not always clear how to measure pipeline success, particularly for members of underrepresented racial/ ethnic groups, and timely and accurate data collection and analysis can be challenging. Data are usually available on recruitment numbers such as new admissions, graduation or degree completion rates, attrition rates prior to completion, and (eventually) professional positions attained. Studies of pipeline success or failure generally also involve discussions of higher education expectations and/or aspirations on the part of individual students, levels of educational attainment, academic self-concept, and environmental factors that influence them such as family, school, and neighborhood resources. Because these factors are mitigated by class, race, and gender in the United States, the pipeline discussion involves a complex web of issues of interest to sociologists and other social scientists. Race and ethnicity have been a common focus with regard to both building and reinforcing pipelines and overcoming historical barriers related to discrimination. There is little doubt that individuals most at risk for “leaking” from the pipeline are those from lowincome households and racial/ethnic minority groups. Among the issues these students must address are financial constraints and family pressures, discrimination, and social isolation as well as documented gaps in expectations of academic achievement as well as the perceived adequacy of preparation for the next steps in education. Other common barriers to advancement and success for minority students and workers include stereotypes about roles and abilities, the development of talent and experience through formal processes, and a scarcity of mentors and personal networks. Leakages, or cracks, in the educational and professional pipeline occur at every stage, beginning as early as primary education and continuing through high school, college, graduate school, and the hiring process for jobs. As the level of education goes up, the number of individuals who hold degrees decreases
because of the requirements for entry, and the percentage of underrepresented minorities who finish with those degrees also drops.
Challenges to Success Efforts to address leakages in the pipeline have sometimes been a source of controversy and political debate, particularly those involving affirmative action and other strategies that involve preferences for underrepresented people. Many of the affirmative action programs that addressed diversity in educational and employment opportunities initially took hold during the 1970s on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s and increased public attention to past barriers. In the field of education, those interested in greater representation of underrepresented groups and supporters of affirmative action believe that access to education has traditionally been the means for people to improve their life chances. They often focus on opportunities for racial/ethnic minorities in graduate school, although high school completion and college access and enrollment are obvious prerequisites to graduate study. Opponents of race-based programs argue that enough progress has been made over the past 30 years that special efforts at producing and maintaining diversity in the pipeline are no longer needed. Some also argue that remaining inequalities of opportunity are based on broader factors, such as family income and geography, and that these factors must be addressed first. In recent related cases, the U.S. Supreme Court decided on two separate but parallel cases at the University of Michigan. At the university’s law school, in 2003 the justices ruled in Grutter v. Bollinger that it is, in fact, admissible for academic institutions to use race as a criterion for admissions. This was seen as a victory for efforts to have numbers in fields and industries more accurately reflect the demographics of the nation at large. However, at the same time, in Gratz v. Bollinger, the justices struck down the affirmative action policy for undergraduate admissions that awarded extra points for being a member of a minority group on a larger rating scale used for student selection. Overall, there continue to be a number of structural and individual challenges and barriers to pipeline success. On the legal front, statewide constitutional amendments opposing affirmative action, such as
Pipeline
Proposition 209 in California during the late 1990s and (more recently) Proposal 2 in Michigan, have won a majority of votes in their respective states and have added to the debate about the need for programs that preference race as a factor in school admissions on the grounds that such programs maintain a critical mass of minority students and, therefore, a fully diverse educational environment. Another significant debate in pipeline discussions deals with issues of maintaining standards of entry and perceived qualifications necessary for success, such as test scores and other performance metrics, versus addressing the larger overall need to diversify fields and industries to keep pace with congruent demographic changes with regard to race and ethnicity in the U.S. population. According to projections from the 1996 U.S. Census, the White population, the largest of the five racial/ethnic groups, is projected to be the slowest growing during the 1995 to 2025 projection period, with the Black population being the second slowest growing, followed by the Native American population, the Hispanic population, and the Asian population.
Renewed Efforts in Educational Settings Much of the attention to pipeline issues has focused on science and engineering (including computer science and medicine) along with the professoriate (particularly in the humanities and social sciences), teacher training, health care training, law education, and business schools (to address diversity and representation in corporate leadership). The National Science Foundation’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program is intended to significantly increase the number of students receiving doctoral degrees in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), with special emphasis on underrepresented populations. Its specific objectives are to develop and implement innovative models for recruiting, mentoring, and retaining minority students in STEM doctoral programs and to develop effective strategies for identifying and supporting underrepresented minorities who want to pursue academic careers. At the graduate school level, the Council of Graduate Schools, with financial support from the Pew Charitable Trusts, introduced the Preparing Future Faculty program during the 1990s to address preparedness for the range of
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academic careers—at research universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges. In teacher education, schools are becoming more diverse, but there is concern that overall the teaching workforce is moving in the opposite direction. Some suggest opening the pipeline to students of color by introducing teaching as a career choice as early as possible. The academy and professoriate are unique settings in some ways because once someone has earned a terminal degree, the issues of success and retention may start to take on different meanings. Tenure and promotion become the eventual career goals, and although the official mechanisms take place at an arguably higher level, the challenges of discrimination, isolation, and other pressures remain. In health care, increasing the number of minority health care providers is commonly proposed as one solution for eliminating health disparities between minority groups and the mainstream population. Increasing minority nursing research opportunities, for example, is seen as a possible way to increase patient–provider concordance and to improve the quality of care and level of patient satisfaction. Particular efforts have been made by disciplinary associations, federal agencies, colleges and universities, individual workplaces, and higher education groups to address pipeline barriers for historically underrepresented groups. At the high school to college transition level, the Sloan Foundation, Ronald McNair Scholars, and Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows Program all have provided not only financial support but also mentoring and network-building opportunities to talented minority college students at institutions of higher learning across the United States. In addition, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), and Native American tribal colleges have played an important role since their inception in providing a unique environment for minority students where issues of inclusion and isolation are not as important as they would be in mainstream higher education settings. Although equality of (especially state-level) funding and equality of other institutional resources remain as challenges, there is little doubt that without these institutions a substantial number of minority students would not have had access to higher education historically and would not have access today. Other federal agencies, such as those that comprise the National Institutes of Health, have developed pilot
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Ple essy v. Ferguson
programs that support predoctoral and postdoctoral minority students in fields such as psychology, sociology, social work, nursing, and psychiatry. These programs house fellowships that provide both research training and mentorship from prominent researchers in the field and provide exposure to and an expanded awareness of research-intensive environments. Fellows also get exposed to successful minority researchers and scholars who can guide and help them to understand personal work patterns, career paths, and the importance of networks. As the debate over the need for diversity-related programs continues into the 21st century, more careful attention will certainly be paid to federal legislation and the concept of affirmative action in political, legal, and educational circles. As the population of the United States grows and traditional definitions of race and ethnicity become challenged, this debate promises to manifest itself in a multitude of settings. Jean H. Shin and Karina J. Havrilla See also Affirmative Action in Education; Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Bell Curve, The; Discrimination; Educational Performance and Attainment; Educational Stratification; Glass Ceiling; Grutter v. Bollinger; Higher Education; Institutional Discrimination; Science Faculties, Women of Color on; Tracking
Further Readings
Allen, Walter R., Marguerite Bonous-Hammarth, and Robert Teranishi, eds. 2006. Higher Education in a Global Society, vol. 5: Achieving Diversity, Equity, and Excellence. San Diego, CA: Elsevier JAI. Burgess, Robert G., ed. 1998. Beyond the First Degree: Graduate Education, Lifelong Learning, and Careers. Bristol, PA: Open University Press. Glazer-Raymo, Judith. 2001. Shattering Myths: Women in Academe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Jones, Lee, ed. 2001. Retaining African Americans in Higher Education: Challenging Paradigms for Retaining Students, Faculty, and Administrators. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Kolodny, Annette. 2000. Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the 21st Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lindsay, Beverly and Manuel J. Justiz, eds. 2001. The Quest for Equity in Higher Education: Toward New Paradigms in an Evolving Affirmative Action Era. Albany: State University of New York Press.
PLESSY V. FERGUSON Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) is the notorious “separate but equal” case in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Jim Crow segregation laws as constitutional. Although the phrase “separate but equal” does not appear in the decision itself, the doctrine it represents gave legal sanction to legalized segregation. In fact, “separate but equal” equals “Jim Crow affirmed.” In Plessy, the Court held that “the enforced separation of the races, as applied to the internal commerce of the State, neither abridges the privileges or immunities of the colored man, deprives him of his property without due process of law, nor denies him the equal protection of the laws, within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.” In plain English—in black and white— Justice Henry Billings Brown kept Black from White. This bad result was “good law” for nearly six decades. It would take the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) to overrule Justice Brown. To appreciate Brown, one must understand Plessy. If, as Justice John Marshall Harlan indicated in his dissent, Plessy is the worst Supreme Court ruling ever handed down (except for the Dred Scott decision), the Brown decision may rank as the greatest Supreme Court decision. This entry looks at the original facts of the Plessy case, traces its progress through the courts, and discusses its impact on U.S. society.
The Color Line Although mollified by democratic language and reasoning, Plessy can be seen as an antidemocratic reaction to the democratic reforms of Reconstruction during the period from 1865 to 1877. As the nation’s first experiment in economic emancipation and interracial democracy, Reconstruction produced three amendments to the U.S. Constitution—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments (in 1865, 1868, and 1870, respectively)—which established (legally but not factually) civil rights for all U.S. residents. But the experiment failed—or, rather, the United States failed the experiment. Reconstruction was progressive, whereas Plessy was regressive. Plessy, in fact, was the ultimate deconstruction of Reconstruction. Far worse were its social and historical consequences. By reconciling White supremacy with the Reconstruction amendments of the 1860s, Plessy was a pact with the devil of Jim Crow, legitimizing the U.S. apartheid of systemic segregation.
Ple essy v. Fe erguson
The Railroad Line In September 1891, the local activist Citizens Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law (Comité de Citoyens) decided to challenge the constitutionality of the Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890, which commanded that “all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this State, shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the White, and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations.” Violation of this act triggered a fine of $25 or imprisonment of not more than twenty days. On June 7, 1892, Homer Adolph Plessy (1863–1925), a shoemaker in his late twenties, bought a first-class ticket at the Press Street Depot in New Orleans for passage on the East Louisiana Railroad to the city of Covington, which was in St. Tammany Parish in Louisiana. His ticket was for a seat in the first-class carriage on a train scheduled to depart at 4:15 PM. The trip was to have taken approximately two hours in its traverse to Covington, which was thirty miles to the north, on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain, near the Mississippi border. Plessy never reached his physical destination because he had a legal destination in mind. A dignified gentleman donning a suit and hat, this “Creole of color” quietly took his seat in a compartment reserved for Whites only. According to a story in the weekly Crusader, “As the train was moving out of the station, the conductor came up and asked if he was a White man. Plessy, who is as White as the average White Southerner, replied that he was a colored man. Then, said the conductor, ‘you must go in the coach reserved for colored people.’” In effect, this scenario was staged; it was planned in advance. Plessy could easily have passed as White. Phenotypically, Plessy exhibited none of the physical features associated with his race. Although there are no extant photographs of Plessy, the record is clear: “the mixture of colored blood was not discernible in him,” as the Supreme Court acknowledged in its decision. To use the slang of the day, Plessy was an “octoroon” (a person of one-eighth Black blood)—an accident of “hypodescent” (a peculiar U.S. doctrine that classifies anyone with the least trace of African ancestry as “colored,” with all of the legal and social stigmas that would attach to that classification). Facially, Plessy was White; racially, he was Black by the standards of that day. He was the perfect man to
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challenge the constitutionality of the Louisiana Separate Car Act. Plessy’s racial ambiguity was useful as a legal strategy, providing a more poignant critique of White supremacy. Conductor J. J. Dowling, pursuant to Louisiana law, informed Plessy that he needed to move from the “White car” to the “colored car.” Typically hitched right behind the locomotive, this Jim Crow car would reek of soot and smoke. Whereas first-class seats were cushioned, colored seats were wooden. With dignified equipoise, Plessy refused. Law enforcement was summoned, and Detective Chris C. Cain asked Plessy to disembark from the train. Plessy complied with the officer of the law so as to challenge the law itself.
Drawing the Line In Plessy’s October 13 arraignment, John H. Ferguson, judge of Section A of the Criminal District Court, Parish of Orleans, presided. In the case filed as State of Louisiana v. Homer Adolph Plessy, Ferguson heard arguments by 55-year-old James Campbell Walker, a local Creole attorney, and Assistant District Attorney Lionel Adams, reputed to be a “crack trial lawyer.” Walker agreed to defend Plessy for $1,000. Ironically, Plessy (“White as the average White Southerner”) and Ferguson had the very same skin color. After failing in his motion to have the case dismissed, Walker filed a motion to stay the proceedings so that arguments on the constitutionality of the Separate Car Act could be heard. Judge Ferguson then set a date for October 28. Meanwhile, in his October 14 brief, Walker argued that the Louisiana statute violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments. By requiring Plessy to sit in a Jim Crow car, the state was branding him with a “badge of slavery,” which is proscribed by the Thirteenth Amendment (1865). The Separate Car Act also offended the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), which forbade any state’s abridging the “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” The judge then congratulated Walker for the “great research, learning, and ability” that was evident in his brief. On November 18, Ferguson rendered his decision: “There is no pretense that he [Plessy] was not provided with equal accommodations with the White passengers. He was simply deprived of the liberty of doing as he pleased, and [is accused] of violating a penal statute with impunity.” On November 22, Plessy appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court.
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Ple essy v. Ferguson
Although Walker remained as part of Plessy’s legal team, Albion Winegar Tourgée (1838–1905) took over as Plessy’s lead attorney. After reviewing the statutory language of the Separate Car Act, the Louisiana Supreme Court in Ex Parte Homer A. Plessy (1893) noted a recent decision regarding the act’s constitutionality: “We have had occasion very recently to consider the constitutionality of this act as applicable to interstate passengers and held that, if so applied, it would be unconstitutional because [it is] in violation of the exclusive right vested in Congress to regulate commerce between the States.” However, because Plessy’s destination was intrastate, the commerce clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution) was not implicated: “It thus appears that the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States is not involved.” With Plessy’s Thirteenth Amendment claim having failed, the Supreme Court then addressed his alternative pleading—his challenge of the Separate Car Act as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court conceded that “no one has yet undertaken to submit the question to the final arbitrament of the Supreme Court of the United States.” Then, in a prescient, almost prophetic pronouncement, the Court went on to say, “To hold that the requirement of separate, though equal, accommodations in public conveyances violated the [Fourteenth] Amendment would, on the same principles, necessarily entail the nullity of statutes establishing separate schools and of others existing in many States prohibiting intermarriage between the races. All are regulations based upon difference of race, and if such difference cannot furnish a basis for such legislation in one of these cases, it cannot in any.”
The Bright Line Three years later, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on April 13, 1896, and handed down its decision on May 18. Tourgée continued to represent Plessy, with former Solicitor General Samuel F. Phillips serving as cocounsel. “The gist of our case,” Tourgée declared in his opening statement, “is the unconstitutionality of the assortment [racial discrimination], not the question of equal accommodation.” Space does not permit a detailed analysis of Tourgée’s and Walker’s constitutional arguments as laid out in their briefs. In a 7 to 1 decision, Justice Brown delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court, which dismissed Plessy’s Thirteenth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment
arguments in short order. On the issue of racial prejudice and the role of the law in promoting social equality beyond legal equality, Justice Brown stated, “Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.” A lone voice would beg to differ. Justice Harlan, in one of the most celebrated dissents in Supreme Court history, eloquently took his fellow justices to task for a fundamentally flawed decision: “But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.” This dissent is all the more remarkable considering the fact that Justice Harlan was “a former slaveholder” from Kentucky. It is a littleknown fact that he borrowed the metaphor of “color blindness” from the legal brief submitted by Plessy’s lead counsel, Tourgée, who had first used the legal metaphor of color blindness as a Superior Court judge in North Carolina years earlier. Converging racial and legal status, Plessy’s “separate but equal” doctrine was a “bright line” rule. First, the rule of hypodescence—that anyone with ancestry of color is automatically assigned to that color classification—sustains a binary opposition between Black and White and defines anyone with a perceptible trace of African ancestry as Black. On this basis, all Blacks must be segregated from Whites where Jim Crow laws demand it. Thus, Plessy was the perfect man to put the Separate Car Act to the test, for he exposed the absurdity of hypodescent biocentrism and its legal consequences. Although Plessy was Black by legal fiat, his skin color was as White as that of Judge Ferguson, who sat in initial judgment of him.
Hardening the Color Line On January 11, 1897, more than four and a half years after his arrest, Plessy found himself before Orleans Parish Criminal District Court once more. On the charge of having violated Section 2 of Act 111 of the Separate Car Act, Plessy pleaded guilty. He duly paid
Pluralism
his fine of $25. Nationally, his case was met with apathy; privately, Plessy faded into obscurity. On March 1, 1925, Plessy died. A local newspaper reported a twoline notice of his death. But Plessy is immortal as a symbol of the struggle for equality and racial justice. In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.” The color line was drawn in bold by Plessy v. Ferguson. As Mark Elliott pointed out, Plessy marked the final effort by radical Republicans of the Civil War generation to establish an interracial democratic republic. By keeping the Jim Crow status quo, Plessy deepened the racial divide. Although the Louisiana courts differentiated between racial segregation and racial discrimination, the bottom line remains the same—race segregation is race subordination. Like cracks in glass, the “separate but equal” doctrine spread throughout the Jim Crow states as transportation segregation reinforced education segregation. Thus, it took 58 years before the Brown decision overruled Justice Brown’s 1896 ruling to erase the color line legally, although not socially. Democracy is a process of progressive equalizing. This process is nowhere better illustrated than by the overturning of Plessy by Brown. Christopher George Buck See also African Americans; Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District; Discrimination; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Minority Rights; People of Color; Pluralism; Racism; Segregation
Further Readings
Aleinikoff, T. Alexander. 1992. “Symposium on Race Consciousness and Legal Scholarship: Re-reading Justice Harlan’s Dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson—Freedom, Antiracism, and Citizenship.” University of Illinois Law Review 1992:961–977. Boxill, Bernard R. 1997. “Washington, Du Bois, and Plessy v. Ferguson.” Law and Philosophy 16:299–330. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857). Elliott, Mark. 2001. “Race, Color Blindness, and the Democratic Public: Albion W. Tourgée’s Radical Principles in Plessy v. Ferguson.” Journal of Southern History 67:287–330. Ex Parte Homer A. Plessy, 11 So. 948 (La. 1893). Fireside, Harvey. 2004. Separate and Unequal: Homer Plessy and the Supreme Court Decision that Legalized Racism. New York: Carroll & Graf.
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Golub, Mark. 2005. “Plessy as ‘Passing’: Judicial Responses to Ambiguously Raced Bodies in Plessy v. Ferguson.” Law and Society Review 39:563–600. Harris, Cheryl I. 2004. “The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson: The Death and Resurrection of Racial Formalism.” Pp. 181–222 in Constitutional Law Stories, edited by Michael C. Dorf. New York: Foundation Press. Lofgren, Charles A. 1987. The Plessy Case: A Legal–Historical Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press. Medley, Keith Weldon. 2003. We as Freedmen: Plessy v. Ferguson. Gretna, LA: Pelican. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Roback, Jennifer. 1986. “The Political Economy of Segregation: The Case of Segregated Streetcars.” Journal of Economic History 46:893–917. Wisdom, John Minor. 1996. “Plessy v. Ferguson—100 Years Later.” Washington and Lee Law Review 53(1):9–20.
PLURALISM Pluralism often implies the acceptance of social diversity as a positive cultural influence. Whereas diversity is a demographic fact, pluralism is more often an attitude about the positive value of diversity in a society that is informed by a democratic ideology of egalitarianism. Significantly, there are those who oppose it—some within the dominant culture because of fears of contamination and others within traditionally marginalized communities because of fears about the hegemonic power of the dominant culture in assimilating all peoples and eliminating cultural distinctiveness. This entry looks at the history and current status of pluralism in the United States.
Beginning With Religion In the United States, pluralism was originally understood in religious terms and implied an acceptance of the variety of Protestant denominations. Even though the population of the early states was not homogeneous, that diversity had little impact on notions of pluralism; those from beyond the dominant culture were considered to be inferior and were excluded from society. This meant that nascent concepts of pluralism were informed by the diversity within a mostly Protestant male-dominant culture of European descent. Early political arrangements reinforced the status quo regardless of legal rhetoric and served as the gatekeepers of the right to participate in public culture.
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Pluralism
Nonetheless, expanding religious diversity before and after the American Revolution—first and most noticeably within Protestantism, but later including Roman Catholicism and Judaism—led to increased demands for inclusion in the public sphere and the eventual transformation in the laws limiting participation. Religious diversity expanded dramatically during the two revival periods often identified as the Great Awakening (roughly the 1730s to the 1750s) and the Second Great Awakening (roughly the 1810s to the 1830s). The second revival period, in particular, coincided roughly with the presidency of Andrew Jackson and contributed significantly to the populist nature of U.S. religious diversity. Not surprisingly, this expansion represented a challenge to the dominant Protestant establishment that had been in place since before the American Revolution. The period only barely preceded a period of significant Roman Catholic immigration, and by the 1840s, although there were more Protestants than Catholics in the United States, the Roman Catholic Church had become the single largest religious denomination in the country. The middle decades of the 19th century also marked a period of increased resistance to both diversity and pluralism on several fronts. Even before the Civil War, anti-immigration advocates sought to limit the ethnic definition of American to those of AngloSaxon descent and to increase restrictions on immigrants from other parts of the world. Initially, much of the energy was directed toward Irish immigrants, but by the end of the 19th century, the opposition would expand to include immigrants from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, resulting in a near cessation of immigration during the early years of the 20th century. After the Civil War, segregation advocates fought to protect the privilege of Americans of European descent through “Jim Crow” laws such as gerrymandering and voting restrictions. Still others sought to protect the religious definition of American as Protestant, placing legal and then social restrictions on non-Protestants, particularly Catholics (who were kept out of elected office in some states into the 1890s) and Jews (who were barred from some hotels and other accommodations well into the 20th century).
An Expanded Scope The acceptability of pluralism advanced significantly since the middle decades of the 20th century.
The expanded scope of the First Amendment (made possible by broadened interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment) meant that individuals could expect federal protection while pursuing their right to free speech, press, and association as well as religious liberty, bringing greater diversity (of identity as well as ideology) into the public sphere. Military service during World War II not only integrated soldiers from different ethnic and religious neighborhoods—often for the first time, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish soldiers encountered each other in training or in combat—but also integrated those from different racial communities, thanks in large part to the integration of the army—de jure by President Harry S. Truman in 1948 and de facto by the early 1950s. On the “homefront,” the massive relocation of African Americans during the war—from southern rural areas to the northern and midwestern industrialized areas—and of the White American middle class after the war—from ethnic neighborhoods in the cities to generally economically determined suburbs— increased diversity and, with it, notions of pluralism in the country’s metropolitan areas. By the 1970s, the various civil rights movements (for African Americans, gay men and lesbians, Latinas/os, Native Americans, and women) and the ubiquitous media (particularly television and film) increased the visibility of historically marginalized communities, slowly bringing them into the lives of the dominant culture. The reorganization of U.S. religion—first during the ecumenical period of the 1950s and 1960s and then into the ideologically polarized period since— facilitated increased interaction across traditional religious boundaries, enabling some Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews to build coalitions to oppose abortion rights, for example, or to support federal funding for parochial schooling. Changes in immigration policy also increased diversity as it broadened the pool of countries of origin for those coming to the United States, with a noticeable shift from Western Europe (which had been the dominant source through most of the 19th century) through Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe (which had become a significant contributor before immigration shut down during the early decades of the 20th century) to South and East Asia (which became significant sources after 1965). By the 1990s, Los Angeles was home to more than 100 foreign language newspapers and contained ethnic populations larger than all but the capital cities of the countries of origin; that is,
Police
the only city in the world that had more Filipinos than Los Angeles was Manila, the only city that had more Israelis than Los Angeles was Tel Aviv, and so forth. Large urban areas, although often the sites of intercultural tension, continued to be the most fertile ground for intercultural dialogue and interaction into the 21st century and provided the strongest engines for expanded notions of pluralism. Not all of those who resisted pluralism represented the dominant culture. Elements of various marginalized groups have often viewed pluralism as cultural hegemony and resisted it as a way of preserving community distinctiveness. Religious communities (e.g., Orthodox Jews, Fundamentalist Protestants, the Nation of Islam), as well as immigrant communities, have used this strategy to define the boundaries between their own particularistic worldviews and the universalizing worldviews of the dominant culture. Eric Michael Mazur See also Assimilation; Gerrymandering; Immigration, U.S.; Intergroup Relations, Surveying; Melting Pot; Multicultural Social Movements
Further Readings
Handy, Robert T. 1984. A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Hatch, Nathan O. 1989. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Moore, R. Laurence. 1986. Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans. New York: Oxford University Press. Wuthnow, Robert. 1988. The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith since World War II. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
POLICE The police have the unique authority to detain, arrest, employ physical force, and use deadly force in the commission of their jobs. As agents of social control, police are commonly associated with the motto “to protect and serve” in the communities where they work. From the origin of policing in the United States, themes of ethnicity/race have been dynamically intertwined with, and continue to shape, policing. Different racial/ethnic groups have different
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experiences with police that are shaped by the economic, political, and social conditions in particular historical periods. In considering police and racial/ethnic group relations, the important questions to ask are “Who are the police?” and “Who are policed?”
Colonial America Through the 19th Century Some scholars have argued that policing in the United States was rooted in the slave patrols of Colonial America. As enslaved African labor became more indispensable to the colonial economy, the landed wealthy slave owners, primarily of English descent, sought to monitor and control enslaved African labor. Slave patrols were used to guard against slave revolts, capture runaway slaves, and deter runaways. As this system grew and became institutionalized, it came to resemble the modern police force. One example is the Charleston, South Carolina, police force, which became one of the nation’s largest by the early 1800s. Socially prominent Americans of English descent shaped the formation of major U.S. institutions, often turning to England for inspiration. Historians note that the model for the modern police force in the United States was the London Metropolitan Police, which was formed in 1829. The economic and social conditions of U.S. cities during the mid-19th century were frequently chaotic. Native-born Protestants, European immigrant groups (mostly from Ireland), and free African Americans battled for their place in the U.S. social and economic system. Northern cities experienced increased urban turmoil and draft riots just prior to and during the Civil War. The formation of police forces in many U.S. cities during the mid-1800s was demanded by powerful citizens to maintain public order and stop the rioting. During the draft riots, the racial/ethnic makeup of the police officers often determined which racial/ethnic groups received police protection. Members of African American communities, for example, could not rely on the police to protect them from violent attacks by members of “White” ethnic groups. The United States expanded its territorial boundaries throughout the 19th century and absorbed members of multiple indigenous groups as well as Mexican citizens. Raw materials essential for industrial expansion were discovered on these lands, and immigrants from Asia and Europe worked in mining, the building
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Police
of communication and transportation infrastructure, and industry. Policing agencies were seen as essential to supervise and control these groups. The Texas Rangers, one of the first statewide policing agencies, was created in 1835 in large part to police the border with Mexico. Chinese immigrants experienced disproportionate surveillance and control by police enforcing discriminatory laws. In both instances, officers from White ethnic groups policed members from “minority” ethnic groups—those without economic and political power. However, “tribal” police on reservations were often composed of members from both the indigenous ethnic groups and White groups. In industrialized areas, workers from White ethnic and African American groups fought for labor rights against the owners of industry and their private police forces such as the Pinkerton Agency and the Coal and Iron Police. Local police often were sympathetic to the workers from their racial/ethnic group but not to other workers. For example, although Irish policemen were generally sympathetic to Irish workers, they were hostile to African Americans and other competing groups. Political machines were a force in numerous cities during the latter decades of the 19th century. Members of White ethnic groups used a variety of legal and illegal means to achieve political power and meet the economic and social needs of their constituents. Political patronage became part of this strategy as political leaders appointed loyal police officers from their ethnic group. The police who owed their jobs to political patronage were more sympathetic to members of their own racial/ethnic group. However, many racial/ethnic groups were denied access to political power and could not effectively shape the agencies that policed their communities.
The 20th Century During the early decades of the 20th century, business leaders and public policymakers, mostly of English descent, argued that police who were sympathetic to labor or who owed their jobs to political patronage were impediments to the expansion of business and industry. Police reform was a component of the Progressive movement, which sought social justice and the elimination of corruption in government. The goal of police professionalism was to create a politically neutral police force and eliminate patronage. Police agencies were to be nonpolitical and serve
the entire public with better educated supervisors and officers trained to fight crime with the latest techniques and tools. The ideal police officer was to be a professional who enforced the law, fought crime, and served all members of the public. Some scholars argue, however, that because economic inequalities and differences between racial/ ethnic groups persisted, the police represented the ethnic group with economic and political power and reflected their prejudices. Because laws were not neutral and tended to uphold the existing system of stratification, they argue, police officers could not be neutral and their actions advantaged the dominant White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) group. As the 20th century progressed, members of minority racial/ethnic groups increasingly became the objects of police authority and were unable to rely on the police for protection. Furthermore, members of these groups were unable to become police officers and provide safety and security for their communities. African Americans in the South, for example, were largely prohibited from becoming police officers, were denied police protection from attacks by White mobs and criminals, and became (disproportionately) the targets of police activities. Moreover, it has been pointed out that those who terrorized African Americans were police or those who were allowed to act by the police. Similarly, indigenous ethnic group members have generally encountered high crime rates but have been historically underserved by inadequate numbers of poorly organized and underfunded police agencies. Latino ethnic groups are historically reluctant to call the police because of historically poor relations with them. Minority ethnic group members clashed with police at various times throughout the 20th century, and many major riots, such as those during the 1910s and the 1940s, were in response to police actions. The late 1950s and 1960s were a time of great social upheaval as minority racial/ethnic groups fought for civil rights. Police agencies at various levels of government were used to quell social discontent through the use of force. Images of police attacking African American, Chicano, and other group activists became ingrained in the cultural imagination of the time. As more and more U.S. residents witnessed violent actions by police, government commissions were organized to study and solve the problem. All concluded that police actions were indeed the cause of many riots and that most minority racial/ethnic group members regarded the police as an occupying force
Polish Americans
rather than as a neutral professional agency that protected and served them. Major changes had an impact on policing between the 1960s and the 1980s. The U.S. Supreme Court issued multiple rulings that shaped the daily activities of police officers, and politically appointed commissions recommended many solutions, including better training of officers and citizen oversight of agencies. The hiring of minority racial/ethnic group members by policing agencies was also recommended and was seen as vital to break the domination of White racial/ethnic groups over police agencies and reduce minority group distrust of the police. Affirmative action and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines were put in place to ensure that police departments became statistically representative of the communities they served. Despite some early growth, African Americans are still underrepresented on police forces, and the hiring of Latino and Asian ethnic group officers has been extremely slow. Many of the changes during earlier decades have been offset by crime control public policy since the 1980s, best exemplified by the so-called “War on Drugs” that has increased tensions between police and minority racial/ethnic group members.
Current Issues During the first decade of the 21st century, two issues affecting relations between the police and racial/ ethnic groups are illegal immigration and the socalled “War on Terror.” Data from several recent studies demonstrated that minority racial/ethnic group members are disproportionately targeted for police stops. Continued police profiling of African Americans has been linked to the War on Drugs, and the expression “driving while Black” refers to profiling in traffic stops. Latino ethnics are profiled, stopped, and detained by police as a tactic to combat illegal immigration, and Arab and Muslim ethnic groups are profiled as part of antiterrorist activity. Some research indicates that members of minority ethnic groups are more likely to be arrested or to encounter disproportionate use of physical or deadly force by police officers. Members of these groups further continue to encounter resistance to their inclusion in police agencies and, therefore, have a limited ability to shape the future direction of policing. Many scholars argue that until racial/ethnic group inequalities and
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tensions are addressed nationally, they will continue to affect and shape policing. Kenneth Bolton, Jr. See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Civil Rights Movement; Crime and Race; Ethnic Group; Immigration and Race; Minority/Majority; PATRIOT Act of 2001; Racial Profiling; Urban Riots; WASP
Further Readings
Bolton, Kenneth, Jr. and Joe Feagin. 2004. Black in Blue: African-American Police Officers and Racism. New York: Routledge. Dulaney, W. Marvin. 1996. Black Police in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mann, Coramae Richey. 1993. Unequal Justice: A Question of Color. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Walker, Samuel and Charles M. Katz. 2004. The Police in America: An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill. Walker, Samuel, Cassia Spohn, and Miriam DeLone. 2006. The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
POLISH AMERICANS Polish Americans, numbering nearly 9 million in the 2000 census, are one of the largest ethnic groups in the United States. Immigrants from Poland, a country with an estimated population of 38.1 million people in 2007, have had experiences similar to those of the Irish and Italians, but unlike these groups, Poles have immigrated to the United States primarily since World War II. Polish migrants needed to overcome economic problems and personal hardships just to make the journey. Once in the United States, they often found themselves assigned to the jobs many citizens did not want to do. They needed to adjust to a new language and a familiar yet different culture. And they always were looking back to the family members left behind who either wanted to join them in the United States or, in contrast, never wanted them to leave in the first place. Like other arrivals, many Poles sought improvement in their lives, the Za Chlebem (for bread) migration. The Poles who came were, at different times, more likely than many other European immigrants to see themselves as forced immigrants and were often described by, and often themselves adopted, the
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Polish Americans
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terminology directly reflecting this social role— exiles, refugees, displaced persons, or émigrés. The primary force for this exodus was the changing political status of Poland itself through most the 19th and 20th centuries, a period that was as turbulent as were the lives of the new arrivals. This entry reviews their history in the United States.
Early Immigration Polish immigrants were among the settlers at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608 to help develop the colony’s timber industry, but it was the Poles who came later in that century who made a lasting mark. The successful exploits of Polish immigrants such as cavalry officer Casimir Pulaski and military engineer Thaddeus Kosciuszko are still commemorated today in communities with large Polish American populations. Polish immigration did not become significant in comparison with the arrival of European American nationals until much later. Admittedly, it is difficult to document the exact size of this immigration because at various historical periods Poland, or parts of the country, became part of Austria–Hungary, Germany (Prussia), and the Soviet Union, and so the migrants were not officially coming from a nation called “Poland.” Many of the Polish immigrants were adjusting not only to a new culture but also to a more urban way of
life. Sociologists William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, in their classic study The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, traced the path to the United States from rural Poland to urban America. Many of the peasants did not necessarily come directly to the United States but instead had traveled through other European countries. This pattern is not unique and reminds us that, even today, many immigrants have crossed several countries, sometimes establishing themselves for a period of time before finally settling in the United States. Like other White ethnic groups, such as the Italians and Irish, Polish immigrants arrived at the large port cities of the East Coast, but unlike these other groups, Polish immigrants were more likely to settle in cities farther inland or to work in mines in Pennsylvania. In such areas, they would join kinfolk or acquaintances through the process of chain migration, a potent factor contributing to immigration anywhere in the world. In chain migration, one immigrant sponsors several other immigrants who, on their arrival, may sponsor still more immigrants. Immigration law in the United States favors people desiring to enter who already have relatives in the country; having others who can vouch for them financially may facilitate this sponsorship. But probably the most important aspect of chain migration is that it means the Polish arrivals anticipate knowing others already in the country who can help them to adjust to their new surroundings and find jobs, find places to live, and even find the kind of foods with which they are familiar. The reference to coal mining as an occupation reflects the continuing tendency of immigrants to work in jobs avoided by U.S. citizens because they paid too little, were dangerous, or both. For example, in September 1897, a group of miners in Lattimer, Pennsylvania, marched to demand safer working conditions and an end to special taxes placed only on foreign-born workers. In the ensuing confrontation with local officials, police officers shot at the protesters, killing 19, most of whom were Polish; the others were Lithuanians and Slovaks.
Polonia With growing numbers, the emergence of Polonia (meaning Polish America) communities became more common in cities throughout the Midwest. Male immigrants who came alone often took shelter through a system of inexpensive boarding houses called tryzmanie bortnków (meaning brother keeping) that allowed the new arrivals to save and send money back
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subgroups such as the Kashubes, the Górali, and the Mazurians have often carried great significance. Some Poles emigrated from areas where German actually was the language of origin. Feelings about Poland and its future have served to unify Polonia and at time reflect the political, economic, and cultural divisions of the ancestral homeland that they are able to follow through the dozens of Polish language local and national newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and cable television news shows. Like other immigrant groups, Polish Americans could make use of a rich structure of self-help voluntary associations that were already well Polish family working in the fields near Baltimore, Maryland (1909). Once in the established by the 1890s. Besides proUnited States, Polish migrants often assigned found themselves assigned to jobs viding economic assistance and social that many U.S. citizens did not want to do. Today, Polish Americans are one of the networks, they also directed attention largest ethnic groups in the United States. to political and ideological controverSource: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-nclc-05421. sies that swirled around back in Poland. Groups such as the Polish to Poland to support their families and eventually National Alliance and the Polish Roman Catholic provide the financial means necessary to bring them Union, both based in Chicago, had well over 100,000 over. This added to the size of Polonia in cities such as members for most of the 20th century. Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Polish Americans were not distant bystanders to the and (above all) Chicago, where the population of Poles rise of the Solidarity union and democratic opposition was second only to that of Warsaw, Poland. in Soviet-dominated Poland during the 1980s. Religion has played an important role among the Individual Polish Americans and U.S.-based organizaPolish immigrants and their descendants. Most of the tions provided a variety of support. This included Polish immigrants who came to the United States prior financial support to the independent movement, to World War I were Roman Catholic. They quickly humanitarian assistance, lobbying efforts to influence established their own parishes, where new arrivals the U.S. government’s foreign policy, and economic could feel welcomed. Although religious services at support to open up the world market for Poland’s that time were in the Latin language, as they had been exports. Poland-oriented actions were not coordinated in Poland, the many service organizations around the and sometimes even worked at cross-purposes; parish, not to mention the Catholic schools, kept the nonetheless, Polonia’s efforts were felt back in Poland. immigrants steeped in the Polish language and the latLike many other newcomers, Poles coming to the est happenings back home. Jewish Poles began immiUnited States have been stigmatized as outsiders but grating during the first part of the 20th century to also stereotyped as simple and uncultured—the typiescape the growing hostility they faced in Europe, cal biased view of working-class White ethnics. Their culminating with the Holocaust. Their numbers struggles in manual occupations placed them in direct swelled greatly until movement from Poland stopped competition with other White ethnics and African with the invasion of Poland by Germany in 1939, and Americans, occasionally leading to labor disputes and then immigration resumed again after the war. longer term tense emotional rivalries. “Polish jokes” Although the Jewish–Catholic distinction may be have had a remarkable shelf life in casual conversathe most obvious distinguishing factor among Polish tion well into the 21st century. Jewish Poles suffer the Americans, there are other divisions as well. Regional added indignities of anti-Semitism.
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Polish Americans
The Contemporary Picture Today, Polonia numbers approximately 9 million. Although this might not seem significant in a country of more than 300 million, one should consider that Poland itself has a population of only approximately 39 million. The largest urban concentration is in metropolitan Chicago, with nearly 900,000 Americans of Polish ancestry. New York State actually outnumbers Illinois in total number of Polish Americans, but Wisconsin has the highest proportion at 9.3%. Whether to support the efforts of Lech Walesa, the Solidarity movement leader, in confronting the Soviet Union during the 1980s, or to celebrate the elevation of Karol Józef Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II in 1978, Polish Americans are a central part of the global Polish community. A small interesting segment of more recent arrivals in the United States from Poland are young men training to be priests. Unlike in the United States, in Poland there is a surplus of young men wishing to become priests. Programs have developed to attract these young priests or seminarians to the United States to function in dioceses in North America. Because Poland today is 96% Roman Catholic, most of these young men have never interacted with Protestants, much less with Jews or Muslims, and because of their long religious schooling and training in Poland, they have had little informal contact with women. The programs developed by the Roman Catholic Church help the immigrants to adjust both to Catholicism and to everyday life in the United States. Aging Polish American communities have received an influx of new arrivals since 1989 as elections in Poland marked the end of Soviet dominance, allowing Poles to join their relatives and facilitating immigration of entire households. Poland’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1999 and into the European Union in 2004 further smoothed the way for Poles to migrate westward to Western Europe and on to the United States. Many Polish Americans have retained little of their rich cultural traditions and may barely acknowledge even symbolic ethnicity. Others are still immersed in the Polonia, and their lives still revolve around many of the same religious and social institutions that were the center of Polonia a century ago. For example, as of 2006, fifty-four Roman Catholic churches in the metropolitan Chicago area still offered Polish language masses. Although in many of these parishes
there may be only one service in Polish serving a declining number of celebrants, a few traditional “Polish” churches actually still have Polish-speaking priests in residence. Polish core neighborhoods and strips of stores proudly proclaiming their Polish connections still abound, but Polish Americans increasingly have moved into suburban communities—first to inner-ring suburbs and then out to further reaches of metropolitan centers. This migration outward from the traditional ethnic enclaves is certain evidence of upward mobility but also of growing diversity in occupations and leisure time pursuits. During the latter part of the 20th century, some of the voluntary associations relocated or built satellite centers to serve the outlying Polish American populations. These social organizations also reached out of central cities to tap into the financial resources of suburban Poles to sustain their activities financially. Yet people of Polish descent increasingly have now made their way into the same social networks populated by Irish, Italian, and other ethnic Americans. Among the many Polish Americans well known or remembered today are actor Adrien Brody, home designer Martha (Kostyra) Stewart, comedian Jack Benny (Benjamin Kubelsky), guitarist Richie Sambora of the rock group Bon Jovi, actress Jane Kaczmarek of Malcolm in the Middle, entertainer Liberace, Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak, baseball star Stan Musial, football star Mike Ditka, Senator Barbara Mikulski, singer Bobby Vinton (Stanley Ventula, Jr.), polio vaccine pioneer Albert Sabin, and director Stanley Kubrick. Richard T. Schaefer See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Holocaust; Immigration, U.S.; Jewish Americans; Labor Unions; Lithuanian Americans; Roman Catholics; Slovak Americans; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Bukowcyk, John J. 1996. Polish Americans and Their History: Community, Culture, and Politics. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Duszak, Thomas. 1997. “Lattimer Massacre Centennial Commemoration.” Polish American Journal, August. Erdmans, Mary Patrice. 1998. Opposite Poles: Immigrants and Ethnics in Polish Chicago, 1976–1990. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Political Economy
Erdmans, Mary Patrice. 2004. The Grasinski Girls: The Choices They Had and the Choices They Made. Athens: Ohio University Press. Erdmans, Mary Patrice. 2006. “New Chicago Polonia: Urban and Suburban.” Pp. 115–127 in The New Chicago: A Social and Cultural Analysis, edited by John Koval, Larry Bennett, Michael Bennett, Fassil Demissie, Roberta Garner, and Kiljoong Kim. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Jaroszynska-Kirchman, Anna D. 1996. “Displaced Persons, Émigrés, Refugees, and Other Polish Immigrants: World War II through the Solidarity Era.” Pp. 152–179 in Polish Americans and Their History: Community, Culture, and Politics, edited by John J. Bukowcyk. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Lopata, Helena Znaniecki with Mary Patrice Erdmans. 1994. Polish Americans. 2nd rev. ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. Mocha, Frank, ed. 1998. American “Polonia” and Poland. New York: Columbia University Press. Polzin, Theresita. 1973. The Polish Americans: Whence and Whither. Pulaski, WI: Franciscan Publishers. Radzilowski, John. 2005. Poles in Minnesota (foreword by Bill Holm). St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Press. Thomas, William I. and Florian Znaniecki. [1918–1920] 1996. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, edited by Eli Zaretsky. 5 vols. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
POLITICAL ECONOMY The term economy originates from the ancient Greek words oikos (house) and nomos (law). Political economy as an independent discipline is a modern phenomenon, although some ideas may be traced back to Aristotle in antiquity and to Thomas Aquinas during the Middle Ages. It is said that Antoine de Montchrétien was the first one to use the term political economy in the title of a book. In his book Traité de l’Œeconomie politique (1615), he defined the object of political economy as the management of society. Jean-Jacques Rousseau followed this tradition in his classical essay on political economy in the French Encyclopédie (1755). But it was with James Steuart’s book An Inquiry Into the Principles of Political Economy (1767) and more than so with Adam Smith’s book Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of Nations (1776) that political economy became an independent discipline asking the question: What is the best way to manage a society?
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Important Theorists Rousseau suggested that the grand object of political economy is to show the best way to administer property in a society. He thought that the aim of a government is to protect property. The right to property is the most sacred right, and it is even more important than freedom, he held. But government should also not allow a division of population into the rich and the poor, Rousseau said, and it must do this not taking away people’s property. It should also take measures to fight against the symptoms of poverty not by building hospitals for the poor, for example, but rather by securing the citizens from becoming poor. And this can be achieved, according to Rousseau, only by keeping all humans from accumulating wealth. The issues and problems that Rousseau raised in his article draw more or less accurately the framework of the object of political economy. What is wealth? How does it come into existence? Does the accumulation of wealth necessarily involve the division of society into the poor and the rich? What is the best way to manage the wealth of a given society? How does the distribution of wealth take place in a capitalist society? What is the best way to distribute wealth? What is property? What are the forms of property? One may differentiate among various schools in political economy by looking at how they respond to these questions. There are two classical proposals to draw a demarcation line between various schools, both of which are still relevant. The first proposal is Smith’s system of political economy, which he distinguishes from the mercantile system and Physiocratic theory. The second proposal came from Karl Marx, distinguishing between classical political economy and vulgar economy. Smith made his distinction based on the question of how various schools reply to the question of what is wealth. Smith defined wealth in terms of the annual production of a given society produced by productive labor as distinct from unproductive labor. Smith’s complicated concept defined as productive all sorts of labor that are involved immediately in the production of material wealth. But this is not to say that other sorts of labor are useless or not necessary. According to Smith, the work of a doctor or a teacher, for example, may be unproductive but necessary. He also saw some modes of labor as unproductive and not necessary, for example, the work of landlords. Following this line of thought, Marx and Frederich Engels defined the work of capitalists as unproductive and unnecessary labor.
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Popular Culture, Racism and
Smith differentiated between his system and the mercantile system, which was the dominating theory of political economy between the 16th and 18th centuries in Europe. Unlike Smith, mercantilists define wealth in terms of the accumulation of precious metals and other forms of money. Smith’s distinction of his system from Physiocrats referred to the question what is the cause of wealth. Smith pointed to annually employed productive labor in all areas of society. So, according to Smith, productive labor as such is the cause of wealth. Differing from this assessment, Physiocrats defined only one sort of labor as productive, namely that which is related to agriculture. In Marx’s distinction between classical political economy and vulgar economy, these questions play a central role as well. But his emphasis was on whether systems of political economy are scientific or not. According to Marx, classical political economy is scientific because its proponents, primarily Smith and David Ricardo, are interested in explaining economic phenomena. Vulgar economic thought, on the contrary, is merely interested in justifying capitalism. So, as Marx saw it, John Stuart Mill was a vulgar economist because, unlike classical political economists, he regarded production and distribution as entirely separate spheres and thought that distribution of wealth takes place in the market. In agreement with classical political economists, however, Marx thought that the question of distribution of wealth is already decided in the sphere of production in the sense that the owner of the means of production (capitalist) appropriates surplus value produced by laborers. From Marx’s point of view, to come to contemporary schools of political economy, monetarism, Keynesianism, and neoclassical schools are vulgar as well. Monetarism sees wealth as being produced in the exchange process rather than in the sphere of production. Keynesianism is concerned not so much with the production of wealth as with its redistribution by markets and by the state to correct some of the symptoms arising from the gap in the distribution of wealth between the rich and the poor. Neoclassical political economy is the critique of monetarism and Keynesianism. It aims to combine classical political economy with some elements of Marx’s system of political economy.
Poverty and Racism There is a close relationship between the political economy of poverty and the conceptual development of
racism. Traditionally and generally subordinated classes and poor people (and foreign nations) are thought to be inferior races of humanity. The idea that subordinated classes and foreign people were lower classes of humankind by nature was formulated by Aristotle. He suggested, for example, that slaves were slaves by nature and that people other than Greeks were barbarians. Similar ideas were formulated in modern times in relation to the poor and cultures other than European. T. R. Malthus’s Social Darwinist population theory, for example, may be qualified as a modern version of the Aristotelian approach. Similarly, all sorts of social Darwinist approaches to poverty and international relations, used to justify colonialism and imperialism, are now seen to be racist—taking for granted that there are inferior and superior people and cultures. Contemporary racist theories about society and humanity refer to cultural differences more than to nature or biology. This is to say that the relationship between contemporary racist theories and the political economy of poverty is no longer as direct as it used to be. Nonetheless, there is still a close connection. Theories of the clash of civilizations may be placed within the cultural racists’ theories. Dog˘an Göçmen See also Marxism and Racism; Social Darwinism; Wealth Distribution
Further Readings
Dennis, Rutledge and John Stone, eds. 2003. Race and Ethnicity: Comparative and Theoretical Approaches. London: Blackwell. Meek, Ronald L. 1967. Economics and Ideology and Other Essays: Studies in the Development of Economic Thought. London: Chapman & Hall. Meek, Ronald L. 1977. Smith, Marx, and after: Ten Essays in the Development of Economic Thought. London: Chapman & Hall. Williams, Raymond. 2005. “Social Darwinism.” Pp. 87–102 in Culture and Materialism, edited by Raymond Williams. London: Verso.
POPULAR CULTURE, RACISM AND Race has taken on significant meaning in recent history. Beginning particularly during the eras of
Popular Culture, Racism and
European colonialism and imperialism, an ideology of White superiority was spread to rationalize Western conquest, exploitation, and domination over supposedly inferior-raced peoples. Since that time, popular culture has been one of the most important tools that Whites have used to communicate racist representations of “blackness” and “otherness,” particularly in the United States. In this sense, and as research has documented, popular culture is more than entertainment; it is pedagogical. Through film, television, mass media, literature, and advertising, popular culture distorts, shapes, and socially constructs a racialized “reality.” Although racial stereotypes are constructed, and thus not intrinsically “real,” scholars demonstrate that they exact very real consequences, not only in terms of personal attitudes toward other races but also in the material structural inequalities they support and reproduce. From hyperviolent Black thugs and Asian Indian convenience store owners to amorous “Latin lovers” and Arab terrorists, society is replete with examples— both past and present—as this entry indicates.
Black Americans Due to the centuries-old legacy of Black enslavement and segregation in the United States, anti-Black representations in popular culture are among the most numerous and deep-rooted. Indeed, as much research documents, popular culture was critical in spreading and reinforcing the racial ideology of White superiority and Black inferiority that undergirded both oppressive systems; some of this continues to circulate today. Minstrel shows, often credited as the earliest form of U.S. popular culture, were wildly popular during the 19th century. The typical performance was put on by a troupe of White men in burnt cork blackface makeup acting out song, dance, and comedy claiming to be authentically “Negro.” Such minstrels created extreme caricatures through heavy mocking dialect, bulging eyes, and gaping lips, easily reinforcing and popularizing beliefs among their almost exclusively White audiences that Blacks were inherently lazy, happy-go-lucky, dim-witted, and subhuman. Aside from minstrel portrayals, blackfaced caricatures such as the “mammy,” “coon,” and “pickaninny” were mass produced on consumer goods, including postcards, lawn ornaments, kitchen items, and children’s toys (e.g., noisemakers, dolls, costumes). Similarly, manufacturers plastered the insidious iconography on virtually every type of household
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product available, from coffee to detergents. Indeed, the wealth of research on the topic demonstrates that such images were truly ubiquitous and have not entirely left the U.S. consciousness even today. Consider the best-known “mammy” image, Aunt Jemima, who—although “updated”—continues to happily oversee pancakes and waffles today. Birth of a Nation (1915) was a popular anti-Black, pro-Ku Klux Klan film that received unprecedented acclaim. Through the end of the 20th century, old racial stereotypes have occasionally resurfaced among contemporary characters in film and television, even in the face of seeming progress. Black women continue to be portrayed as “welfare queens,” matriarchs, or jezebels in popular culture. In mass media, Black men are often portrayed as criminals or the “gangsta” figures in popular culture and music, only slightly updated from the older image of the “buck”—the supposed big, violent, and oversexed stereotype of Black men from the past. Overall, studies document that the recycling of anti-Black images has reached new heights of global commodification, circulating problematic ideas about race, class, gender, and sexuality not just domestically but also to a global audience.
American Indians Popular images and film have reflected and fueled the fascination of White Americans with American Indians. Historical images of American Indians include essentializing portrayals that are often contradictory— the “noble savage” versus the bloodthirsty savage. As scholars note, mythical symbols, such as feathered headdresses, tepees, and tomahawks, have homogenized American Indian groups in the White mind, erasing nuances of individuality and group-specific cultures. During U.S. western “expansion,” images of American Indian men reflected White hysteria and racial fear as Whites attempted to obtain greater parcels of Indian land. During this time, the noble savage image found in newspapers was transformed into one of a brute red man who would sexually violate White women captives. In early films, common themes included Indian duplicity, the perils of miscegenation, and the impossibility of assimilation. Formulaic “Indian revenge” plots portrayed American Indians as dog-eating savages ready to attack “pioneers” unprovoked at any given time. Similar to blackface minstrelsy, for decades Indian roles were often played by Whites donning war paint.
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Contemporary struggles have centered on the use of American Indian imagery for athletic team mascots such as football’s Washington Redskins and baseball’s Cleveland Indians. Some scholars have argued that Whites’ stubborn refusal to give up such mythologized images reflects an “imperialist nostalgia”—a sense of entitlement to define and profit from their continued use. In addition, such images deny contemporary American Indians a meaningful sociopolitical identity, relegating them instead to the “mascot slot.” Struggles against the mascots have been some of the most visible and successful examples of American Indian activism, suggesting the political importance of controlling popular cultural imagery.
Asians and Asian Americans Anti-Asian sentiment abounded during the 19th century with the mass immigration of Chinese men hired to build the transcontinental railroad. “Yellow peril” stereotypes of cunning “Orientals” and “heathen Chinee,” stealing jobs and White women, flourished in radio, theater, film, and books. One sinister fictional character introduced in 1913, Dr. Fu Manchu (“the yellow peril incarnate in one man”), excited readers for half a century with diabolical plots of world domination. Asian men’s portrayals began to shift during the later 19th century, from sexually violent, often “militarized” villains toward the weak, emasculated, more comedic characters that persist today. This has stood in particular contrast to the “dragon lady/lotus blossom dichotomy” film roles reserved for Asian women who are exotically portrayed and “fetishized” as submissive, childlike, and eager for sex. Today, researchers have directed their attention toward the “model minority” myth, which is supported by roles for both Asian women and men as overachieving students (often “nerds”) who excel in technical fields in film and television. Also common are stereotypical images of dim-witted South Asian food mart or gas station owners.
Latino and Hispanic Americans Despite being the largest ethnic minority group in the United States, Latinos are vastly underrepresented in film and television. When cast, their roles are quite similar to the stereotypical portrayals found in early Hollywood. Similar to Asian and Asian American
representations, which emphasize supposed “alien” characteristics, research documents that Latino and Hispanic Americans also have been targeted in popular culture representations as threatening to AngloAmerican culture and society. Gendered stereotypes of el bandido (the clichéd Mexican bandit in countless westerns) and harlots (“hot mamas” lusty for Anglo men) continue today in a variety of forms—in both fictional portrayals and reality shows such as Cops as drug-related criminals. One common reformulation, which took hold during the 1970s and continues today, is that of los bandidos transformed into modern-day criminal gang thugs and drug lords. The ever-popular movie Scarface, featuring (ironically) the White actor, Al Pacino, as a Cuban refugee-turned-cocaine lord, is one prominent example of this phenomenon. Other contemporary Latino caricatures include the stereotypical “Latin Lover”—seductive and sensuous, he adds a touch of danger to love—and the “doméstica,” a Latina or Chicana housekeeper or caregiver, as portrayed most recently and famously in the television comedy Will & Grace via the character of Karen’s maid, Rosario.
White Americans It is significant in an analysis of popular culture and racism not only to underscore the racial themes common to portrayals of people of color but also to position the roles of Whites, particularly when they relate to people of color in popular culture. Research documents the many ways in which White-produced products of popular culture, particularly those of film and television, often selectively represent or even rewrite oppressive racial history as a way of both reifying White goodness and misrepresenting or minimizing the racial divide. Indeed, even contemporary portrayals that attempt to expose ugly racial history (e.g., Glory, Mississippi Burning) typically feature White messianic protagonists. Here, the pedagogical lesson is that protagonists represent White goodness, with which White audience members identify, and create a contrasting distance from the accompanying portrayals of racist Whites, represented as anomalies and individual “bad apples.” Also prevalent in contemporary popular culture created by Whites are interracial “buddy” portrayals. Films such as Men in Black and the Lethal Weapon series feature idealized partnerships between Blacks
Portuguese Americans
and Whites where racism never intrudes. Such formulations reinforce the idea that the United States has appropriately achieved the color-blind ideal during the post–civil rights era—what some scholars have termed “virtual integration”—while simultaneously masking the reality of persistent systemic racism.
Conclusion Through increasing globalization, Western popular culture, complete with its racist iconography and ideology, has helped to shape beliefs about different racial groups throughout much of the world. As argued elsewhere, although popular media cannot necessarily be implicated as the “cause” of racism, neither is it “value free”; rather, it influences the real life chances of individuals and groups. Segregation, domestically and globally, has limited real interpersonal experiences between racial groups, allowing popular culture to step in and dictate the way the populace “knows” people of color—as essentialized stereotypical “characters.” And although most people can recognize the overt racism of past images, many are blind to the subtle yet equally egregious forms today. Indeed, contemporary images are often simply reformations of deeply rooted racist ideologies, making a historically contextual understanding of popular culture and racism crucial.
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Noriega, Chon A. 2000. Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. 1992. White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Vera, Hernán and Andrew M. Gordon. 2003. Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
PORTUGUESE AMERICANS Portuguese Americans are immigrants and their descendants from Portugal, a country with an estimated population of 10.7 million people in 2007. Portugal is officially called the Portugal Republic and includes the Azores and Madeira Islands as well as Macao, a small territory on the coast of China. Portuguese Americans identify themselves with the terms Portuguese Americans (Azoreans, Maderians, continental Portuguese, and all of their descendants) and Luso-Americans (which serves to identify and differentiate the American-born descendants of the pre1950 immigrants from the post-1950 immigrants). According to the 2000 census, there were a total of
Danielle Dirks and Jennifer C. Mueller Norway Denmark
See also African Americans; American Indian Movement; Asian Americans; Birth of a Nation, The; Black Cinema; Color Blindness; Film, Latino; Lee, Spike; Leisure; Media and Race; Racetalk; Racism; Whiteness; White Racism
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands Belgium Germany
Jersey France Italy
Further Readings
Bogle, Donald. [1973] 2005. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Continuum. Guerrero, Ed. 1993. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. hooks, bell. 1996. Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies. New York: Routledge. King, C. Richard and Charles F. Springwood. 2001. Team Spirits: The Native American Mascots Controversy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Marchetti, Gina. 1994. Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Atlantic Ocean
Portugal
Spain
Tunisia Morocco Algeria Western Sahara
Mauritania Mali Niger Senegal
Guinea
Burkina Faso Benin
Nigeria
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203,120 people born in Portugal residing in the United States; of these, 59.3% were citizens. This entry looks at the background of immigration from Portugal to the United States and the contemporary picture of Portuguese Americans.
Immigration Patterns The Portuguese have a long history in the United States. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) data beginning in the 19th century indicate that approximately 5,200 Portuguese arrived between 1820 and 1860. A chain migration of Azorean families occurred between 1870 and 1900, bringing an estimated 63,000. This number rose significantly to 158,881 between 1900 and 1920. Many Portuguese immigrants came to United States to escape poverty and avoid military service. These immigrants settled in California and New England. Many immigrants also settled on sugar plantations in Hawai‘i. They were brought by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association to work as contract laborers on the sugar plantations. In 1884, 11,000 Portuguese were in Hawai‘i, making up 10% of the Hawaiian territorial population. After work contracts ended, many returned home, moved to California, or migrated to the cities to make their permanent homes. After 1914, immigration to Hawai‘i ceased as the sugar planters recruited other immigrant groups for their source of labor. The institution of a literacy test in 1917, the quota system of 1924, and the Great Depression slowed immigration between 1917 and 1958. However, in 1958 more than 4,800 refugees arrived in the United States because of natural disasters on the island of Faial. After the abolishment of the quota system in 1965, between 11,000 and 12,000 arrived annually until the 1980s.
Portuguese national origin in the United States in 2005. In terms of geographic distribution, the top five states were Massachusetts, California, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Florida. According to the 2000 census, 52.6% spoke English less than “very well.” Their median family income was $53,500, as compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Among famous Americans with Portuguese heritage are the actor Tom Hanks, the chef Emeril Lagasse, the writer Danielle Steel, and singer/songwriter/producer Teena Marie or “Lady T” (born Mary Christine Brockert). Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees
Further Readings
Anderson, James Maxwell. 2000. The History of Portugal. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs.gov/ ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Ionnis, Maria and Benis Beganha. 1990. Portuguese Emigration to the United States, 1820–1930. New York: Garland. Pap, Leo. 1981. The Portuguese-Americans. Boston, MA: Twayne. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Portugal. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/ www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
Contemporary Community During recent years, people from Portugal have sought permanent residency and refugee status and have completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 to 2006, approximately 1,300 Portuguese immigrated to the United States annually. At least 3,300 Portuguese Americans have become naturalized citizens annually beginning with 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, there were 1,023,313 people of
PREJUDICE Prejudice is a negative attitude toward an entire category of people. The two important components in this definition are attitude and entire category. Prejudice involves attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs—not actions. This entry provides an overview of elements of prejudice, a consideration of how prejudice relates to discrimination, a summary of theories that have been
Prejudice
advanced to explain prejudice, and a description of the ways in which prejudice is measured.
Overview A prejudiced belief leads to categorical rejection. Prejudice does not mean disliking a person one meets because one finds that person’s behavior to be objectionable. It means disliking an entire racial/ethnic group even if one has had little or no contact with that group. A college student who requests a room change after three weeks of enduring his roommate’s sleeping all day, playing loud music all night, and piling garbage on his desk is not prejudiced. However, he is displaying prejudice if he requests a change on arriving at school and learning that his new roommate is of a different nationality. Prejudice often is expressed through the use of ethnophaulisms, or ethnic slurs, which include derisive nicknames such as “honky,” “gook,” and “wetback.” Ethnophaulisms also include speaking about or to members of a particular group in a condescending way (e.g., “José does well in school for a Mexican American”) or referring to a middle-aged woman as “one of the girls.”
Prejudice and Discrimination Prejudice and discrimination are related concepts but are not the same. Prejudice is a belief or an attitude, whereas discrimination is action. Discrimination involves behavior that excludes all members of a group from certain rights, opportunities, or privileges. Like prejudice, it must be categorical. If an employer refuses to hire as a typist an Italian American who is illiterate, it is not discrimination. If she refuses to hire any Italian Americans because she thinks that they are incompetent and does not make the effort to see whether an Italian American applicant is qualified, it is discrimination. In exploring the relationship between negative attitudes (prejudice) and negative behavior (discrimination), sociologist Robert Merton identified four major categories. The label added to each of Merton’s categories may more readily identify the type of person being described: 1. The unprejudiced nondiscriminator: all-weather liberal 2. The unprejudiced discriminator: reluctant liberal
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3. The prejudiced nondiscriminator: timid bigot 4. The prejudiced discriminator: all-weather bigot
As the term is used in types 1 and 2, liberals are committed to equality among people. The all-weather liberal believes in equality and practices it. Merton was quick to observe that all-weather liberals may be far removed from any real competition with subordinate groups such as African Americans and women. Furthermore, such people may be content with their own behavior and may do little to change themselves. The reluctant liberal is not so committed to equality between groups. Social pressure may cause such a person to discriminate. Fear of losing employees may lead a manager to avoid promoting women to supervisory capacities. Equal opportunity legislation may be the best way to influence the reluctant liberal. Types 3 and 4 do not believe in equal treatment for racial/ethnic groups, but they vary in their willingness to act. The timid bigot will not discriminate if discrimination costs money or reduces profits or if he or she is pressured not to discriminate by peers or the government. The all-weather bigot acts without hesitation on the prejudiced beliefs that he or she holds. Merton’s typology points out that prejudicial attitudes should not be confused with discriminatory behavior. People do not always act as they believe. More than 70 years ago, Richard LaPiere exposed the relationship between racial attitudes and social conduct. From 1930 to 1932, LaPiere traveled throughout the United States with a Chinese couple. Despite an alleged climate of intolerance of Asians, LaPiere observed that the couple was treated courteously at hotels, motels, and restaurants. He was puzzled by the good reception they received given that all of the conventional attitude surveys showed extreme prejudice by Whites toward Chinese. Was it possible that LaPiere had been fortunate during his travels and consistently stopped at places operated by the tolerant members of the dominant group? To test this possibility, he sent questionnaires asking the very establishments at which they had been served whether each owner would “accept members of the Chinese race as guests in your establishment.” More than 90% responded “no” even though LaPiere’s Chinese couple had been treated politely at all of the establishments. How can this inconsistency be explained? People who returned questionnaires reflecting prejudice were unwilling to act based on those asserted beliefs; they were timid bigots.
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The LaPiere study is not without flaws. First, he had no way of knowing whether each respondent to the questionnaire was the same person who had served him and the Chinese couple. Second, he accompanied the Chinese couple, but the questionnaire suggested that the arrival would be unescorted (and, in the minds of some, uncontrolled) and perhaps would consist of many Chinese people. Third, personnel may have changed between the time of the visit and the mailing of the questionnaire. The LaPiere technique has been replicated with similar results. This technique raises the question of whether attitudes are important if they are not completely reflected in behavior. But even if attitudes are not important in small matters, they are important in other ways: Lawmakers legislate and courts may reach decisions based on what the public thinks. This is not just a hypothetical possibility. Legislators in the United States often are persuaded to vote in a certain way, for example, by what they perceive as changed attitudes toward immigration, affirmative action, and prayer in public schools. Sociologists have enumerated some of prejudice’s functions. For the majority group, it serves to maintain privileged occupations and more power for its members.
Theories of Prejudice Prejudice is learned. Friends, relatives, newspapers, books, movies, television, and the Internet all teach it. At an early age, people become aware that there are differences between people that society judges to be important. Several theories have been advanced to explain the rejection of certain groups in a society, and four of them are examined here. The first two, scapegoating and authoritarian personality, tend to be psychological, emphasizing why a particular person harbors ill feelings. The second two theories, exploitation and normative, are more sociological, viewing prejudice in the context of people’s interaction in a larger society. Scapegoatin ng Theory
Scapegoating theory states that prejudiced people believe they are society’s victims. The term scapegoat comes from a biblical injunction telling the Hebrews to send a goat into the wilderness to symbolically carry away the people’s sins. Similarly, the theory of scapegoating suggests that, rather than accepting guilt
for some failure, a person transfers the responsibility for failure to some vulnerable group. In the major tragic 20th-century example, Adolf Hitler used the Jews as the scapegoat for all German social and economic ills during the 1930s. This premise led to the passage of laws restricting Jewish life in pre-World War II Germany and eventually escalated into the mass extermination of Europe’s Jews. Today in the United States, immigrants—whether legal or illegal—often are blamed by “real Americans” for their failure to get jobs or secure desirable housing. The immigrants become the scapegoat for people’s own lack of skills, planning, and/or motivation. It is so much easier to blame someone else. Like exploitation theory (discussed later), scapegoating theory enhances understanding of why prejudice exists but does not explain all of its facets. For example, scapegoating theory offers little explanation of why a specific group is selected or why frustration is not taken out on the real culprit whenever possible. Also, both the exploitation and scapegoating theories suggest that every person sharing the same general experiences in society would be equally prejudiced, but that is not the case. Prejudice varies between individuals who seem to benefit equally from the exploitation of a subordinate group or who have experienced equal frustration. In an effort to explain these personality differences, social scientists developed the concept of the authoritarian personality. Authorita arian Perssonallity y Theo ory y
A number of social scientists do not see prejudice as an isolated trait that anyone can have. Several efforts have been made to detail the prejudiced personality, but the most comprehensive effort culminated in a volume titled The Authoritarian Personality. Using a variety of tests and relying on more than 2,000 respondents ranging from middle-class Whites to inmates at San Quentin (California) State Prison, the authors claimed that they had isolated the characteristics of the authoritarian personality. In these authors’ view, the basic characteristics of the authoritarian personality are adherence to conventional values, uncritical acceptance of authority, and concern with power and toughness. With obvious relevance to the development of intolerance, the authoritarian personality was also characterized by aggressiveness toward people who did not conform to conventional norms or obey authority. According to
Prejudice
the researchers, this personality type developed from an early childhood of harsh discipline. A child with an authoritarian upbringing obeyed and then later treated others as he or she had been raised. Exploita atio on Theo ory
Racial prejudice often is used to justify keeping a group in a subordinate position such as a lower social class. Conflict theorists, in particular, stress the role of racial/ethnic hostility as a way for the dominant group to keep its position of status and power intact. Indeed, this approach maintains that even the less affluent White working class uses prejudice to minimize competition from upwardly mobile minorities. Exploitation theory is clearly part of the Marxist tradition in sociological thought. Karl Marx emphasized exploitation of the lower class as an integral part of capitalism. Similarly, the exploitation or conflict approach explains how racism can stigmatize a group as inferior so that the exploitation of that group can be justified. As developed by Oliver Cox, exploitation theory saw prejudice against Blacks as an extension of the inequality faced by the entire lower class. The exploitation theory of prejudice is persuasive. Japanese Americans were the object of little prejudice until they began to enter occupations that brought them into competition with Whites. The movement to keep Chinese out of the United States became strongest during the late 19th century when Chinese immigrants and Whites fought over dwindling numbers of jobs. Both the enslavement of African Americans and the removal westward of Native Americans were, to a significant degree, economically motivated. Although many cases support the exploitation theory, it is too limited to explain prejudice in all of its forms. First, not all minority groups are exploited economically to the same extent. Second, many groups that have been the victims of prejudice have not been persecuted for economic reasons, including the Quakers and gays and lesbians. Nevertheless, as social psychologist Gordon Allport concluded, the exploitation theory correctly points a finger at one of the factors in prejudice, namely, the rationalized selfinterest of the privileged. Norma atiive Appro oach
Although personality factors are important contributors to prejudice, normative or situational factors
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must also be given serious consideration. The normative approach takes the view that prejudice is influenced by societal norms and situations that encourage or discourage the tolerance of minorities. Analysis reveals how societal influences shape a climate for tolerance or intolerance. Societies develop social norms that dictate not only what foods are desirable (or forbidden) but also what racial/ethnic groups are to be favored (or despised). Social forces operate in a society to encourage or discourage tolerance. The force may be widespread such as the pressure on White southerners to oppose racial equality while there was slavery or segregation. The influence of social norms may be limited such as when one man finds himself becoming more sexist as he competes with three women for a position in a prestigious law firm. The four approaches to prejudice need not be mutually exclusive. Social circumstances provide cues for a person’s attitudes; personality determines the extent to which people follow social cues and the likelihood that they will encourage others to do the same. Societal norms may promote or deter tolerance; personality traits suggest the degree to which people will conform to norms of intolerance. To understand prejudice, all four approaches are useful.
Measuring Prejudice Prejudice is measured by identifying the stereotypes people use, levels of prejudice using the concept of social distance, trends in prejudice, and expressions of prejudice by members of the subordinate group. Ste ere eoty ypes
Stereotypes are unreliable generalizations about all members of a group that do not take individual differences into account. Numerous scientific studies have been made of these exaggerated images. This research has shown the willingness of people to assign positive and negative traits to entire groups of people and, in turn, to apply them to particular individuals. Stereotyping causes people to view Blacks as superstitious, Whites as uncaring, and Jews as shrewd. Over the past 70 years of such research, social scientists have found that people have become less willing to express such views openly, but prejudice persists. If stereotypes are exaggerated generalizations, why are they so widely held and why are some traits more
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often assigned than others? Evidence for traits may arise out of real conditions. For example, more Puerto Ricans live in poverty than do Whites, and so the prejudiced mind associates Puerto Ricans with laziness. According to the New Testament, some Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, and so the prejudiced mind views all Jews as Christ killers. Some activists in the women’s movement are lesbians, and so the prejudiced mind sees all feminists as lesbians. From a kernel of fact, faulty generalization creates a stereotype. Labels take on such strong significance that people often ignore facts that contradict their previously held beliefs. People who believe many Italian Americans to be members of the Mafia disregard law-abiding Italian Americans. Muslims are regularly portrayed in a violent, offensive manner that contributes to their being misunderstood and distrusted. Do all stereotypes involve a dominant group holding ideas about subordinate groups? The answer is clearly no. White Americans even believe generalizations about themselves, although admittedly these are usually positive. Subordinate groups also hold exaggerated images of themselves. Studies before World War II showed a tendency for Blacks to assign to themselves many of the same negative traits assigned to them by Whites. Today, African Americans, Jews, Asians, and other minority groups largely reject stereotypes of themselves. The Socia al Disstance e Scale
Robert Park and Ernest Burgess first defined social distance as the tendency to approach or withdraw from a racial group. Emory Bogardus conceptualized a scale that could measure social distance empirically. His social distance scale is so widely used that it is often called the Bogardus scale. The scale asks people how willing they would be to interact with various racial/ethnic groups in specified social situations. The situations describe different degrees of social contact or social distance. The items used, with their corresponding distance scores, follow. People are asked whether they would be willing to work alongside, be a neighbor of, and (showing the least amount of social distance) be related through marriage. Over the 70-year period in which the tests were administered, certain patterns emerge. In the top third of the hierarchy are White Americans and Northern Europeans, held at greater social distance
are Eastern and Southern Europeans, and generally near the bottom are racial minorities. More recently, the concept of social distance has been applied to how people actually function—for example, with whom do they hang out? In 2004, sociologists Grace Kao and Kara Joyner released a study that considered the responses of more than 90,000 adolescents nationwide on an in-school survey. Among many questions, adolescents were asked to identify their best friend and later to identify that person’s race and ethnicity. Most people have as their primary friendships someone of the same race or ethnicity. Whites are the numerical majority nationwide, and more than 81% of White respondents named as their best friend someone who was also White. Other racial/ethnic group members are more likely to venture outside of their groups’ boundaries. In general, the researchers also found that among the respondents whose best friend was of a different racial/ethnic origin, they were more likely to show greater social distance; that is, they were less likely to have been in each other’s homes, shared in fewer activities, and were less likely to talk about their problems with each other. Tren nds in n Pre ejudicce
People hold certain images or stereotypes of each other, and they also may be more prejudiced toward some groups of people than toward others. However, is there less prejudice than there used to be? The evidence is mixed, with some indications of willingness to give up some old prejudices while new negative attitudes emerge. Over the years, nationwide surveys have consistently shown growing support by Whites for integration, even during the southern resistance and the northern turmoil of the 1960s. National opinion surveys conducted from the 1950s and into the 21st century, with few exceptions, show an increase in the number of Whites responding positively to hypothetical situations of increased contact with African Americans. For example, 30% of the Whites sampled in 1942 believed that Blacks should not attend separate schools, but 74% supported integrated schools by 1970—and fully 93% responded in that manner in 1991. Attitudes are still important. A change of attitude may create a context in which legislative or behavioral change can occur. Such attitude changes leading to behavior changes did occur in some areas during
Prejudice
the 1960s. Changes in intergroup behavior mandated by laws in housing, schools, public places of accommodation, and workplaces appear to be responsible for making some new kinds of interracial contact a social reality. Attitudes translate into votes, peer pressure, and political clout, each of which can facilitate efforts to undo racial inequality. However, attitudes can work in the opposite direction. Surveys continue to show White Americans’ resistance to affirmative action and aspects of immigration policy, including procedures that would allow illegal immigrants to become legal residents. Policymakers, while mindful of the support that such policies have for most African Americans and Latinos, are reluctant to alienate White American voters. Looking at White attitudes toward African Americans, two conclusions are inescapable. First, attitudes are subject to change, and dramatic shifts can occur within one generation during periods of dramatic social upheaval. Second, less progress was made during the late 20th century than was made during the 1950s and 1960s. Researchers have variously called these subtle forms of prejudice color-blind racism, modern racism, or laissez-faire racism. People today might not be as openly racist or prejudiced as in the past in expressing the notion that they are inherently superior to others, yet much of the opposition to policies related to eradicating poverty or immigration is a smokescreen for those who dislike entire groups of racial/ethnic minorities. The Mood of th he Oppressed
Sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois related an experience from his childhood in a largely White community in Massachusetts. He described how, on one occasion, the boys and girls were exchanging cards and everyone was having a lot of fun. One girl, a newcomer, refused his card as soon as she saw that Du Bois was Black. He wrote of feeling as if he were shut out from the Whites’ world by a vast veil. In using the image of a veil, Du Bois described how members of subordinate groups learn that they are being treated differently. In his case, and in the cases of many others, this leads to feelings of contempt toward all Whites that continues for a lifetime. Opinion pollsters have been interested in White attitudes on racial issues longer than they have measured the views of subordinate groups. This neglect of minority attitudes reflects, in part, the bias of the White researchers. It also stems from the contention
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that the dominant group is more important to study because it is in a better position to act on its beliefs. National opinion surveys conducted during the 21st century have typically shown that African Americans are much less satisfied with the current situation than are White Americans and Hispanics. The focus so far has been on one group hating another group, but there is another form of prejudice— a group may come to hate itself. Members of groups held in low esteem by society may, as a result, have low self-esteem themselves. Many social scientists once believed that members of subordinate groups hated themselves or at least had low self-esteem. Similarly, they argued that Whites had high selfesteem. High self-esteem means that individuals have fundamental respect for themselves, appreciates their own merits, and are aware of their personal faults and will strive to overcome them. The research literature of the 1940s through the 1960s emphasized the low self-esteem of minorities. Usually, the subject was African Americans, but the argument has also been generalized to include any subordinate racial, ethnic, or nationality group. This view is no longer accepted. It should not be assumed that minority status influences personality traits in either a good way or a bad way. First, such assumptions may create a stereotype. A Black personality cannot be described any more accurately than can a White personality. Second, characteristics of minority group members are not entirely the result of subordinate racial status; they are also influenced by low incomes, poor neighborhoods, and so forth. Third, many studies of personality imply that certain values are normal or preferable, but the values chosen are those of dominant groups. If assessments of a subordinate group’s personality are so prone to misjudgments, why has the belief in low self-esteem been so widely held? Much of the research rests on studies with preschool-age Blacks who are asked to express preferences among dolls with different facial colors. Indeed, one such study, by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark, was cited in the arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education. The Clarks’ study showed that Black children preferred White dolls, a finding suggesting that the children had developed a negative self-image. Although subsequent doll studies have sometimes shown Black children’s preference for white-faced dolls, other social scientists contend that this shows a
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realization of what most commercially sold dolls look like rather than documenting low self-esteem. Because African American children, as well as children from other subordinate groups, can realistically see that Whites have more power and resources and so rate them higher does not mean that they personally feel inferior. Indeed, studies—even with children—show that when the self-images of middleclass or affluent African Americans are measured, their feelings of self-esteem are more positive than those of comparable Whites. Because discrimination deals with actual efforts to deprive people of opportunities, it understandably receives more attention from policymakers. Reducing prejudice is important because it can lead to support for policy change. Richard T. Schaefer See Appendix B See also Anti-Semitism: Authoritarian Personality; Brown v. Board of Education; Color Blindness; Contact Hypothesis; Discrimination; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Eugenics; Intergroup Relations; Surveying Islamophobia; Labeling; Race, UNESCO Statements on; Racetalk; Racial Profiling; Racism; Racism, Aversive; Racism, Types of; Racism, Unintentional; Robbers Cave Experiment; Scapegoats; Social Distance; Stereotypes; Stereotype Threat; Sundown Towns; Victim Discounting; White Racism
Further Readings
Adorno, T. W., Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: John Wiley. Allport, Gordon W. 1979. The Nature of Prejudice. 25th anniversary ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Bloom, Leonard. 1971. The Social Psychology of Race Relations. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman. Bogardus, Emory. 1968. “Comparing Racial Distance in Ethiopia, South Africa, and the United States.” Sociology and Social Research 52:149–156. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 1996. “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation.” American Sociological Review 62:465–480. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2006. Racism without Racists. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Clark, Kenneth B. and Mamie P. Clark. 1947. “Racial Identification and Preferences in Negro Children.” Pp. 169–178 in Readings in Social Psychology, edited by Theodore M. Newcomb and Eugene L. Hartley. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Cox, Oliver C. 1942. “The Modern Caste School of Social Relations.” Social Forces 21:218–226. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] 1961. The Souls of Black Folks: Essays and Sketches. New York: Facade. Kao, Grace and Kara Joyner. 2004. “Do Race and Ethnicity Matter among Friends?” Sociological Quarterly 45:557–573. LaPiere, Richard T. 1934. “Attitudes vs. Actions.” Social Forces 13:230–237. LaPiere, Richard T. 1969. “Comment of Irwin Deutscher’s Looking Backward.” American Sociologist 4:41–42. MacRae, Neil C., Charles Stangor, and Miles Hewstone. 1996. Stereotypes and Stereotyping. New York: Guilford. Merton, Robert. 1949. “Discrimination and the American Creed.” Pp. 99–126 in Discrimination and National Welfare, edited by Robert M. MacIver. New York: Harper & Row. Merton, Robert. 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press. Park, Robert E. and Ernest W. Burgess. 1921. Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Powell-Hopson, Darlene and Derek Hopson. 1988. “Implications of Doll Color Preferences among Black Preschool Children and White Preschool Children.” Journal of Black Psychology 14:57–63. Schaefer, Richard T. 1986. “Racial Prejudice in a Capitalist State: What Has Happened to the American Creed?” Phylon 47:192–198. Schaefer, Richard T. 1996. “Education and Prejudice: Unraveling the Relationship.” Sociological Quarterly 37:1–16. Schaefer, Richard T. 2008. Racial and Ethnic Groups. 11th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
PRISONS By the turn of the 21st century, the United States had the highest incarceration rate of any industrialized nation in the world. Equally troublesome was the overrepresentation of Blacks and Hispanics in U.S. prisons. These concerns, as well as others, induced heated debate among scholars and politicians across a range of social problems associated with the U.S. criminal justice system. This entry briefly introduces some of most pressing dilemmas emerging from the U.S. penile system. In particular, it discusses the aims and effectiveness of prisons, demographic distinctions within the prison population, competing explanations
Prisons
of the sources of racial disparities in criminality, and policy prescriptions for reducing racial differences in imprisonment.
The Purpose of Prisons The U.S. criminal justice system is an interacting system composed of law enforcement, criminal courts, and correctional facilities. Whereas these institutions and organizations all serve particular purposes, prisons seek to realize four specific goals: to act as a deterrent among individuals considering delinquent activity, to isolate/incapacitate offenders from the general public, to rehabilitate offenders so as to prevent future transgressions, and to punish offenders for prior offenses. Research regarding the effectiveness of these goals has been beset by conceptual and methodological complications. For example, studies are inhibited by federal and state variations in criminal laws and procedures as well as by the fact that many crimes go unreported or do not lead to arrests. Moreover, the void of diverse data sources and measurement problems limit researchers’ ability to assess motivations among nonoffenders, one-time offenders, and career offenders as well as other important assumptions about the sources of delinquent activity. Nevertheless, existing studies provide limited support for the success of deterrence techniques. In particular, these approaches appear to be most successful when the certainty of arrest and incarceration is high. Rehabilitation techniques include mental health treatment (e.g., psychotherapy, psychotropic medication, vocational/educational training) and specific offender programs (e.g., violent, gang, sexual). In addition to variation in the quality and availability of such programs, studies are unable to determine why certain treatments are more or less effective for certain offenders than for others. The death penalty is the most severe punishment used in the criminal justice system. Currently, more than two-thirds of all states have capital punishment statutes. Lethal injection is the most common method of execution, followed by electrocution and lethal gas. Hanging and firing squads remain permissible in some states. Overall, studies have shown that the death penalty fails to deter criminal activity; however, its supporters emphasize its effectiveness as a form of punishment and retribution.
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The Prison Population Data from the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics and U.S. Bureau of Prisons indicates that the total estimated corrections population is approaching 7 million. This number includes offenders in prisons (state and federal) and jails as well as those on probation or parole. In 2006, the racial composition of federal prisons was as follows: Whites (56.4%), Blacks (40.2%), Hispanics (31.5%, which can be of any race), Asians (1.7%), and Native Americans (1.7%). Women represented 6.7% of incarcerated offenders. It is important to note that the distribution of offenders in state prisons and local jails closely matched this distribution, although there are fewer Hispanics (15.0%) and more women (12.7%) in jails. In 2006, drug offenders represented 53.6% of all federal prisoners, followed by offenders incarcerated for weapons/explosives/arson (14.1%) and immigration-related crimes (10.7%). Contrary to public opinion, offenders incarcerated for robbery (5.6%) and other violent offenses (including murder, assault, and sex) represent a relatively small percentage of the total prison population. So far as recidivism is concerned, in 1994 (this year contains the most recent and comprehensive data concerning this topic), many offenders with a prior arrest (93.1%), conviction (81.4%), or prison term (43.6%) completed their sentences in correctional facilities; of offenders released during this same year, 18.6% were likely to return to prison within 3 years. There are high percentages of inmates with substance use and mental illness in the criminal justice system. In 2002, 66.0% of incarcerated offenders reported regular alcohol use and 34.5% reported drinking at the time of their offense. Approximately 57.6% reported using marijuana at least once a week for a month prior to their arrest, and 13.6% reported using it at the time of their offense. Approximately 30.5% of inmates reported using crack or powder cocaine regularly, and 10.6% reported using it at the time of their offense. Regarding mental illness, in 2000, one in eight inmates in state prisons was enrolled in mental health therapy or counseling, and one in ten inmates in such facilities received psychotropic medications. For many criminal justice officials, these findings provide at least provisional support for the possibility that many inmates are improperly diagnosed or mistreated for mental health symptoms.
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Racial Disproportionality As stated earlier, Blacks and Hispanics are overrepresented across various aspects of the criminal justice system. Whereas some researchers maintain that racial discrimination explains these disparities, others conclude that differential offending patterns justify why minorities are disproportionately imprisoned. For example, in 2004, Blacks were involved in 53.6% of aggravated robberies, 47.7% of murders and nonnegligent manslaughters, and 32.2% of forcible rapes. (The U.S. Census Bureau does not keep data on Hispanics because this group is considered to be an ethnic group rather than a racial group.) For many scholars and politicians, these statistics suggest that the criminal justice system, irrespective of race, is correctly identifying and imprisoning the most dangerous criminals in our society. Moreover, a majority of studies indicate that racial differences in offending disappear after statistical models account for an offender’s previous criminal record. This finding suggests that racial discrimination does not drive the disparity in racial/ethnic incarceration rates. Consequently, many researchers have begun to question whether racism affects racial differences more indirectly in the criminal justice system. For example, by the early 1980s, shifts in federal drug enforcement policy enacted a “War on Drugs” that affected minorities unevenly. In particular, the concerted attempt to purge crack cocaine from the country’s central cities unduly focused on inner-city Black communities while largely overlooking drug use in predominantly White suburbs. This concentration on narcotics and street crimes was buttressed by the perception that government officials needed to be “tough on crime.” Thus, during this time, there was an increase in state and federal funds for building prisons. The funds were necessary for accommodating the growing number of inmates receiving harsher penalties as well as the increasing number of juveniles being tried as adults. For many researchers, these events (as well as others) explain how racial discrimination fostered the differential enforcement of law that more circuitously explains why Blacks and Hispanics are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. The implications of this racial discrepancy are severe. Blacks in particular are more likely to be arrested, charged, and convicted of capital crimes. Moreover, Blacks who murder Whites are more likely to be sentenced to death than are Blacks who murder other Blacks. Finally, because Blacks are less likely
than Whites to have their death sentences commuted to life in prison, they are also overrepresented in both death sentences and executions.
Policy Prescriptions Advocacy groups seeking to ameliorate these disparities advance a range of policies for reducing racial differences in the criminal justice system. First, many pundits call for racially balanced law enforcement. Examples consistent with this approach include the abolition of racial profiling and the establishment of national guidelines for establishing bail, criminal charges, jury selection, and sentencing. Second, social scientists in particular call for government policies aimed at reducing socioeconomic inequality. The results of many studies have demonstrated the link between criminality and low socioeconomic position. Thus, because Blacks and Hispanics suffer disproportionately from poverty, many scholars contend that access to viable employment, for example, can reduce delinquency among racial/ethnic minorities. Other reforms include supporting inmates’ transition back into society (subsequent to their release) through placement in substance abuse, mental health, employment, and/or housing-related programs. Jason Eugene Shelton and Sarah Spain See also Crime and Race; Criminal Processing; Drug Use; Incarcerated Parents; Victimization
Further Readings
Beck, Allen and Laura Maruschak. 2001. Mental Health Treatment in State Prisons, 2000. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs. Pastore, Ann and Kathleen Maguire, eds. n.d. Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. 31st ed. Retrieved from http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook Reiman, Jeffrey. 2004. The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Sampson, Robert and Janet Lauritsen. 1997. “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Crime and Criminal Justice in the United States.” Pp. 311–374 in Ethnicity, Crime, and Immigration, vol. 21, edited by Michael Tonry. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Tonry, Michael. 1995. Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Wilbanks, William. 1987. The Myth of a Racist Criminal Justice System. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Privilege
Web Sites
Federal Bureau of Prisons: http://www.bop.gov/news/quick.jsp
PRIVILEGE In common parlance, privilege is defined as rights or immunities granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor. Although it retains that meaning, privilege has a more specific use in the recent literature, where it denotes the advantages held by a dominant group in society. In this view, privilege is the flip side of oppression. Whereas oppression confines and limits one’s opportunities, privilege confers power, dominance, resources, and rewards. Contemporary scholarship argues that everyone is shaped by some combination of interacting social categories (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation), and everyone experiences (on both the individual and collective levels) varying degrees of privilege and oppression depending on her or his social location or place in society. These scholars argue that examining oppression reveals only half of the picture; privilege and oppression operate hand in hand, and one cannot exist without the other. This entry reviews this area of research. Although individuals benefit from privilege, some scholars say that the privilege is based on the person’s group membership or social location rather than on anything he or she has done as an individual. In this view, privilege is not about people’s qualities as individuals but instead about the ways in which social systems shape their lives regardless of their intentions. Privilege is systemic and systematic, they say, so even the most committed White antiracist activist receives privilege based on race; it is not something one can choose to relinquish. Although the United States is often assumed to be a meritocracy, this perspective challenges the idea that privilege is a reward for merit or achievement. Rather, it sees privilege as revealing that U.S. society has not achieved a level playing field and that inequality is still widespread.
Looking at White Privilege Historically, most research on race has focused on the victims of racism. Courses on race have taken minority groups as their focus, and the field of ethnic studies arose to bring the lives of people of color out of the margins and to counter their exclusion from the disciplines
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of literature, history, and other fields. During recent years, the study of race and ethnicity has expanded, and there is now a growing field of research that examines whiteness and racial privilege. Just as men’s lives are shaped by gender, White people’s lives are shaped by their race. In one of the first examinations of White privilege, Peggy McIntosh offered a long list of examples of the White privilege she experiences. She noted, for example, that White privilege includes being able to assume that most of the people one studies in school, or one’s children study in school, will be of the same race; being able to go shopping without being followed; and never being called a credit to one’s race or needing to represent one’s entire race. It also includes simple details such as finding flesh-colored bandages to match one’s skin color. Other scholars have followed this lead and documented privileges based on gender, sexual orientation, and ability. For example, Allan Johnson observed that heterosexuals have the privilege to marry, to be openly intimate with their partners, and to know they will not be fired from their jobs based on their sexual orientation. Gender privilege ensures that men can assume their failures will not be attributed to their gender; that if they work hard and follow the rules, their merit will be rewarded; and that they will not be held to a higher standard on the job. The able-bodied can assume that they can travel freely without needing to worry about access and mobility issues and do not need to deal with others treating them like children. McIntosh distinguished between two different forms of privilege. The first form is “unearned advantages”— things that everyone should have such as feeling valued and being safe. These are entitlements that should be extended to all but that are transformed into a form of privilege when some have them and others do not. The second form is “conferred dominance.” This form of privilege contributes to giving one group power over another. These are privileges that no one should have in a society that values social justice and equity.
The Invisibility of Privilege One of the most significant features of privilege, according to scholars in this area, is that those who experience privilege do not need to think about their race or other social location. They have the privilege of obliviousness. Although those who experience racism are faced with racism and racial inequality on a daily basis, those who experience racial privilege
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are often unaware of the workings of oppression and privilege and do not see how it affects their own lives. It is common for those with privilege to be associated with the cultural norm. Our schools may teach about “Black inventors,” but White inventors are simply referred to as “inventors.” Their race becomes both invisible and assumed as the norm. Whites are seen as the average, normal, universal human. Because privilege is invisible, privileged people often become angry when confronted by this perspective on social organization, having been taught to see their own accomplishments as based on their own efforts and hard work alone. Thus, whereas the oppressed quite often recognize the conditions of their oppression, the privileged rarely see the way privilege operates in their daily lives. Historically, it has been easier to talk about racism than to talk about privilege. Looking at privilege brings White people into the picture and expands the discussion of racism and racial inequality beyond the actions of “racists.” Because of the invisibility of privilege, these scholars would say, people of privilege often do not realize the extent to which inequality is still pervasive. Many scholars view color blindness as the predominant ideology of race today—one that sustains and justifies privilege. A color-blind perspective sees people only as individuals and assumes that institutionalized racism has been eliminated. According to the colorblind perspective, legal changes have already been made, discriminatory practices are now against the law, and all people have equal opportunity to succeed. Discrimination is seen as a thing of the past. Therefore, if anyone is not successful, it is a result of his or her own poor choices. Racial inequality is justified as naturally occurring rather than as the product of social forces. From this perspective, people simply choose to live near, work with, and marry people of the same race rather than doing so as a result of institutional discrimination. To avoid responsibility, privileged people employ a number of strategies, according to Johnson. They deny that privilege exists or minimize its impact, they blame the victim, they call it something else or rationalize it as acceptable and natural, they excuse it because it is not purposeful, or they blame it on the actions of certain “racist” individuals.
A Theory of Domination Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins has developed the concept of the matrix of domination to examine the ways in
which race and other social statuses, such as gender and class, interact and intersect as part of a matrix of privilege and oppression. Because everyone is positioned by a number of intersecting social locations, individuals may experience privilege based on one status but experience oppression based on other aspects of one’s identity. Thus, those who experience racial or gender oppression may nevertheless experience some form of privilege (perhaps based on class, ability, or sexual orientation). Examining privilege through an intersectional lens makes visible everyone’s place in systems of inequality. Understanding that everyone plays a role in the dynamics of privilege and oppression is a step toward beginning to work toward solutions, many scholars believe. To promote social change and social justice, individuals can work to create change in the ways in which systems are organized to perpetuate privilege. Once people begin to examine their own social locations and place within the matrix of domination, these scholars argue, they can begin to understand how their own individual actions and behavior can affect society as a whole in both positive and negative ways. This perspective enables people to see that everyone experiences varying degrees of privilege in some way or another. Exploring the ways in which each one is privileged potentially connects individuals and brings them together to work toward equality. Abby L. Ferber See also Collins, Patricia Hill; Whiteness; Whiteness and Masculinity; White Privilege; White Supremacy Movement
Further Readings
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2003. Racism without Racists: ColorBlind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Feagin, Joe and Eileen O’Brien. 2003. White Men on Race: Power, Privilege, and the Shaping of Cultural Consciousness. Boston, MA: Beacon. Johnson, Allan G. 2006. Privilege, Power, and Difference. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Kimmel, Michael S. and Abby L. Ferber, eds. 2003. Privilege: A Reader. Boulder, CO: Westview. McIntosh, Peggy. 1988. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies.” Working Paper 189, Center for Research on Women, Wellesley College.
Proposition 187
PROPOSITION 187 Proposition 187 was a ballot initiative, introduced in the 1994 California statewide elections, aimed at denying access to social services, public education, and health care for undocumented aliens or illegal immigrants. It was subtitled “Save Our State” and was seen by many as targeting California’s burgeoning Latino population (and especially recent immigrants from Mexico). The campaign emerged mainly in the suburbs of Los Angeles and Orange counties and won a majority of voters (nearly 59%) in the entire state. The proposition was later overturned by federal courts, which deemed it unconstitutional. Since 1994, Proposition 187 has in many ways served as a benchmark for proposed legislation in other states aimed at limiting both legal and illegal immigration and at reducing the overall cost of social services for taxpayers. This entry describes Proposition 187, the legal battle it triggered, and its impact on similar efforts.
The Campaign The worlds of immigration and politics have historically merged in the United States, and this was especially true as the face of immigration changed dramatically after around 1950. Although immigration has been part of the United States from its inception, the sources of this immigration after 1950 were primarily countries in Latin America and Asia, whereas prior to World War II these sources were primarily countries in Western and Eastern Europe. Thus, California was an environment ripe for such legislation in some ways. Bordering Mexico and home to arguably the greatest melting pot of ethnicities and recent immigrants in the United States, California has the largest immigrant population of any state. During the early 1990s, economic conditions in California worsened and illegal immigrants became a target for Californians who believed they were paying too much in taxes for social services programs that were benefiting an everincreasing number of these immigrants. These concerns were addressed by the five major sections of Proposition 187. The first barred illegal aliens from the state’s public education systems from kindergarten through college and required public educational institutions to begin verifying the legal status of both students and their parents. The second section
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required all providers of publicly paid, nonemergency health care services to verify the legal status of persons seeking services to be reimbursed by the state. The third section required that all persons seeking cash assistance and other benefits verify their legal status before receiving such benefits. The fourth section required all service providers to report suspected illegal aliens to the California attorney general and to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Finally, the fifth section made it a state felony to manufacture, distribute, or use false documents to obtain public benefits or employment by concealing one’s legal status. Public opinion on Proposition 187, not surprisingly, included vehement voices on both sides. Supporters of Proposition 187 backed their arguments by saying that the state would save a great deal of money and other resources on public services if these were not offered to illegal immigrants. However, opponents derided the legislation as racist and xenophobic and pointed out that it would cost more money to establish programs that would help to verify the residency status of all immigrants. In addition, health officials and doctors who opposed Proposition 187 feared that there would be a rise in health epidemics if illegal immigrants would not be permitted to receive immunizations or treatment for diseases or illnesses. One special characteristic of Proposition 187 was that it offered incentives for public servants such as teachers, social workers, law enforcement officials, and health care workers to help curb illegal immigration by turning over suspected undocumented aliens to the police or other authorities such as the INS. This led to a fear of deportation among many undocumented aliens, fueled by the perception that any public servant they came into contact with could potentially turn them over to the INS.
The Legal Battle and Other Reactions Once Proposition 187 passed its initial voter test in 1994, a bitter legal battle ensued between proponents of Proposition 187, many of whom were White and conservative, and its opponents, many of whom were Latino (and recently immigrated to the United States) and liberal. Legal action was almost immediate on the part of groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the League of United Latin American Citizens. President Bill Clinton argued strongly against Proposition 187, urging citizens of
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California to put the responsibility of dealing with illegal immigration on the federal government instead of on their own shoulders as state voters. Ultimately, Proposition 187 was deemed unconstitutional by federal courts via interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which contains an equal protection clause that protects everyone within a state’s borders regardless of immigration status. The first blow against Proposition 187 was a temporary restraining order issued on November 11, 1994, and this was followed by a permanent injunction using the Plyler v. Doe (1982) Supreme Court case as evidence. After nearly an entire year of hearings and filings from both sides, protests against the legislation culminated in a protest march by between 70,000 and 250,000 people in downtown Los Angeles on October 15, 1995. Two of California’s governors, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis, were centrally involved in the Proposition 187 legal battle—on opposite sides. Wilson was the Republican governor of the state who backed the legislation while in office and was reelected with 55% of the vote in 1994. He remained a supporter throughout the aftermath of Proposition 187’s introduction and worked with California Attorney General Dan Lungren (also reelected in 1994) to implement the legislation immediately. Wilson’s logic was that denying public services to undocumented aliens would discourage them from coming to the United States and also encourage some of those already in the United States to leave. Davis, who was elected in 1998, opposed Proposition 187 and the policy changes it contained. However, as the lengthy appeals process continued into his term as California governor, he eventually brought the issue before mediation and dropped the appeals process altogether. The only language stemming from Proposition 187 still in effect today makes it illegal to manufacture, distribute, or use false documents to obtain employment or public benefits.
Residual Effects More than a decade later, the impact of Proposition 187 certainly remains alive and well. It was seen by many as the first significant attempt by state voters to “fight back” against the financial cost of providing social services to those deemed not to be contributing to the state tax base. Immigration reform proponents have used the language found in Proposition 187 to offer other
arguments illustrating the financial burden on state and local government budgets brought about by large numbers of illegal immigrants. They have argued that stricter border controls are necessary to stem the tide of people coming to the United States, contending that immigrants will lower wages and produce crime in addition to being a burden on state and local social service agencies, hospitals, and public schools. However, opponents of both Proposition 187 and immigration policy reform have used the movements against the legislation to branch out their protests within and beyond California. These protests have involved battling the continued use of racial/ethnic identity as a means of discrimination and the issue of “looking illegal” among Latinos and Asian Americans. This last issue highlights the visibility of physical trait differences as opposed to earlier immigrants from Europe and how this visibility allows for myths and assumptions to exist about particular groups. These myths and assumptions may cause problems for legal immigrants and native-born citizens from both ethnic groups if they become targets for the same kind of treatment as that directed toward illegal immigrants. For some opponents of Proposition 187, it is simply a question of human rights; they believe that the right of anyone living in the United States to an education and health care is beyond question. Scholars studying race and ethnicity as well as immigration continue to debate the legacy of Proposition 187. It is seen as a significant effort to reduce both legal and illegal immigration but also as a largely symbolic (albeit controversial) expression of frustration with illegal immigration and the financial costs associated with it. Although it was unsuccessful at the federal level, the media attention surrounding it has continued to grow. Recently, a new surge of attention has been given to the issue of social services in California and other states, particularly border states such as Texas and Arizona. Elections in those states, as well as in other states with a significant number of recent immigrants, have highlighted this issue. Although border states do not necessarily make up the entire slate of states with large numbers of illegal immigrants (New York, Illinois, Florida, and New Jersey join the other three as the seven states with the largest numbers of illegal immigrants), they often serve as the most visible battlegrounds because of their proximity to Mexico in particular. The issue of illegal immigration promises to cause further political debate during the years to come, even within the
Public Housing
Latino population in the United States, as Latinos become the largest minority group. Jean H. Shin and Karina J. Havrilla See also Bilingual Education; Border Patrol; Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District; Health, Immigrant; Hispanics; Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act of 1996; Immigration, Economic Impact of; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS); Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF); Mexican Americans; Nativism
Further Readings
Andreas, Peter. 2001. Border Games: Policing the U.S.–Mexico Divide. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Gibbs, Jewelle Taylor and Teiahsha Bankhead. 2001. Preserving Privilege: California Politics, Propositions, and People of Color. Westport, CT: Praeger. Long, Robert Emmet, ed. 1996. Immigration. New York: H. W. Wilson. Nevins, Joseph. 2001. Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Remaking of the U.S.–Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge. Nicholson, Stephen P. 1995. Voting the Election: Candidates, Elections, and Ballot Propositions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ono, Kent A. and John M. Sloop. 2002. Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California’s Proposition 187. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
PUBLIC HOUSING Public housing in the United States may be thought to include a range of types of housing assistance. This entry focuses on dwellings that are funded by the national government and are owned and operated by local housing authorities. Public housing is a meanstested, non-cash transfer program available to households with incomes below specified levels. Although public housing has always been a controversial program, it provides low-cost housing to some 1.3 million needy households. Much of the bad reputation of public housing has been the result of problems that have emerged during recent decades, including increasingly high proportions of extremely poor residents due to changes in legislation, deteriorating buildings due to a cut in
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annual appropriations for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by nearly two-thirds between 1980 and 1998, a rapidly aging public housing stock with more than five-sixths of all units built before 1980, and the devastation wrought by the crack cocaine epidemic beginning in the mid-1980s. The problems of public housing disproportionately affect racial minority households, who comprise roughly two-thirds of the public housing population today.
Historical Background Public housing in the United States was initially authorized by the (Wagner–Steagall) Housing Act of 1937. It was created in reaction to the economic crises of the Depression with the goals of creating employment opportunities and stimulating the economy while providing short-term housing for families who were temporarily poor as a result of the economy. The Housing Act of 1949 declared the goal of “a decent home and suitable living environment for every American family”—a goal that remains unrealized today. It also established the urban renewal slum clearance program, which disproportionately displaced Black households and concentrated them in public housing projects accompanied by extreme poverty and social isolation. During the following decades, the U.S. commitment to public housing declined steadily. During the Reagan and (George H.) Bush administrations, Congress appropriated funds for fewer than 5,000 new public housing units per year. Beginning in 1993, the Clinton administration significantly changed public housing with the HOPE VI program. To date, Congress has appropriated nearly $5 billion to this program to demolish large distressed projects and replace them with mixed-income, mixed-finance developments that, in keeping with the tenets of welfare reform, often require tenants to be employed. The majority of the low-income households displaced by this redevelopment are moved to other projects or given rent vouchers to use in the private market.
Characteristics of Units and Residents There are approximately 1.3 million public housing units in the United States, with these units housing approximately 3.3 million people. More than threequarters of these households are headed by single adults, typically elderly persons living alone, or single
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parents with children. Welfare is the largest source of income for half of all public housing tenants, with another 25% depending on social security or disability payments. For decades, public housing has largely been a “last resort” for the very poorest households. As of 2003, 76% of public housing residents earned less than 30% of the area median income. During recent years, average incomes of public housing residents have risen somewhat because of welfare reform and federal efforts to expand the range of incomes in public housing. Although the stereotype of the public housing “project” in the United States is that of a superblock of high-density, low-quality, high-rise buildings, in fact only 28% of public housing developments have four or more stories, a share that is further receding under the HOPE VI program. In 1992, the National Commission for Severely Distressed Public Housing estimated that only 6% of public housing units were “severely distressed.” Nonetheless, in the course of redeveloping these sites for mixed-income use, tens of thousands of subsidized units have been lost.
Patterns of Racial Discrimination in Public Housing The structure of the public housing program, coupled with decades of lax federal oversight, often allowed racial discrimination to dictate the development of public housing projects. For example, municipal control over the location of public housing, granted by the Housing Act of 1937, often resulted in large projects being placed in poor and minority neighborhoods with weak political power. It was not until 1980 that HUD implemented “Site and Neighborhood Standards” to prevent negative economic and racial impacts from public housing location. However, 83% of the current public housing stock was already built by the time these standards were enacted. In 1990, the typical African American public housing resident lived in a project where 85% of the residents were also African American. The typical White public housing resident, on the other hand, lived in a project where only 27% of the residents were Black and 60% were White. The decade-long lawsuit that culminated in the 1976 Hills v. Gautreaux decision by the U.S. Supreme Court established that specific aspects of public housing legislation had been racially discriminatory and led to unequal racial impacts. In 1966, a group of Black tenants filed a federal class action suit charging that the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) racially segregated
public housing projects and deliberately located them in Black neighborhoods. In September 1971, the U.S. Court of Appeals declared that HUD was “guilty of aiding and abetting racial segregation” in Chicago. The ultimate result of the lawsuit was that the CHA granted subsidy vouchers to 7,100 Black public housing residents over the next decade to enable them to move to other neighborhoods of their choice. Although the recent focus of public housing has been on redevelopment of existing projects through HOPE VI, racial minorities have been disproportionately affected by that program’s sweeping changes. For example, in fiscal year 2001, 95% of the families displaced by HOPE VI were minorities, of whom 79% were African American. These displaced households are both less likely to qualify to return to the redeveloped sites and more likely to face discrimination when they attempt to use housing vouchers in the private market. These outcomes violate the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits intentional discrimination as well as actions that have the effect of discriminating. Despite its problems, public housing remains a critical source of shelter for millions of people who lack other options. Current trends toward scattered-site and mixed-income development, privatization of management and tenure, and demand-side subsidies rather than site-built projects are controversial attempts to rectify its previous inequities and deficiencies. Willem van Vliet See also African Americans; Discrimination; Discrimination in Housing; Gautreaux Decision; Housing Audits; Wealth Distribution
Further Readings
Carter, William H., Michael H. Schill, and Susan M. Wachter. 1998. “Polarisation, Public Housing, and Racial Minorities in U.S. Cities.” Urban Studies 35:1889–1911. Crump, Jeff. 2002. “Deconcentration by Demolition: Public Housing, Poverty, and Urban Policy.” Environment and Planning D 20:581–596. Goering, John, Ali Kamely, and Todd Richardson. 1994. The Location and Composition of Public Housing in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Keating, Larry. 2000. “Redeveloping Public Housing: Relearning Urban Renewal’s Immutable Lessons.” Journal of the American Planning Association 66:384–397.
Pueblos
Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. National Housing Law Project. 1999. “HUD’s Fair Housing Duties and the Loss of Public and Assisted Housing.” Housing Law Bulletin, January. Retrieved from http://www.nhlp.org/html/hlb/199/index.htm Polikoff, Alexander. 2006. Waiting for Gautreaux: A Story of Segregation, Housing, and the Black Ghetto. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Rainwater, Lee. 1970. Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Families in a Federal Slum. Chicago, IL: Aldine. Schill, Michael H. and Susan M. Wachter. 1995. “The Spatial Bias of Federal Housing Law and Policy: Concentrated Poverty in Urban America.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 143:1285–1342. Schnapper, Morris B., ed. 1939. Public Housing in America. New York: H. W. Wilson.
PUEBLOS The term Pueblo refers both to a group of culturally related, but autonomous, Indian villages in the U.S. Southwest and to the people who live in these villages. When Spanish conquistadors entered the Rio Grande Valley during the 16th century, they found thousands of Indians living in compact villages along the river and westward into the mesa country of northeastern Arizona. They called these tribes Indios de Pueblos (literally village Indians) to distinguish them from their nomadic neighbors—hunters and gatherers such as the Apache and Navajo. Spanish settlers adopted the term as they developed different relations with their Puebloan and Apachean neighbors. The distinction was a legal one as Pueblo Indians were subject to being taxed, conscripted, and incorporated into the imperial system of Spain. When Americans entered the Santa Fe trade, they found the term Pueblo entrenched and embraced it. The most conspicuous feature of Pueblo Indians’ villages is the unique architecture. Their compact adobe villages have been described as “apartmentlike” for the way in which the walls of one building abut the walls of the next building. Each subsequent story can be set back to create a terrace workspace. The room blocks surround a plaza that has a socioreligious role in the life of the village. Pueblo villages also have distinctive structures called kivas for the sacred activities of the religious societies. These
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secret ceremonies occur in conjunction with religious dances in the plazas. Kivas are often round or underground, but not always; they can be built into the room blocks or left freestanding. Although all Pueblo villages were originally built in this classic style, many modern pueblos are a simple single story; however, all maintain at least one plaza and one kiva for village use. Pueblo Indians are an often misunderstood group in U.S. history. At one time, U.S. culture considered Pueblos to be Mexicans, not Indians at all. At another time, Pueblos were considered to be pagans, and at another time, they were romanticized as noble and peaceful. The reason for this waffling is that Pueblo Indians have been sedentary tribes with long established traditions since pre-Columbian times—traditions that are very different from those of the stereotypical “Indian.” This entry, which uses the lowercase pueblo for the villages and the uppercase Pueblo, Pueblo Indian, or Puebloan for the various peoples, recalls the history of both as well as their presence in today’s Southwest.
The Ancestral Puebloans Although Puebloan peoples have different origin stories, archaeologists believe that they began as a nomadic people in the Southwest some 5,000 years ago. As big game grew scarce, they increasingly turned to smaller game and a wide variety of plants for sustenance. After corn found its way north from Mexico, the ancestral Puebloans added it to their lifestyle. The ability to grow corn provided a more secure subsistence, and as growing populations intensified pressure on the environment, they cached extra food in the dry alcoves of the canyons. Still, it was not until they began making pottery, which allowed them to use beans, that their agriculture led to a more settled lifestyle. Puebloans’ earliest villages were not pueblos but rather were composed of several pithouse structures. These were single-room semisubterranean homes with earthen roofs. They accessed these warm habitations by ladders through the roof or through an antechamber that served as a storeroom. Around 600 AD, when they began cultivating beans, domesticating turkeys, and using the bow and arrow, they replaced their pithouses with above-ground masonry rows of adjoining rooms. These surrounded a plaza with a stylized pithouse, or proto-kiva, which was probably
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built for ceremonies, meetings, and lodging during the winter months. By 800 AD, a large population of Puebloan people occupied the Four Corners region. Scientific dating shows that by around 1000 AD, the pueblos had grown immense and achieved the configuration now associated with the term. At Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, Canyon de Chelly, and elsewhere, the population grew and the culture flourished. An elaborate ceremonial life based on true kivas appeared as systems of trade tied the people together over hundreds of miles and redistributed food throughout a land of unpredictable rainfall. Trade with Mexico and impressive scientific skills were other hallmarks of this “classic phase.” The sandstone masonry was superb, and the architecture reached its zenith with the five-story, D-shaped, 800-room village of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. By the end of the 13th century, the ancestral Puebloans abandoned these centers and moved from the Four Corners region. Drought, depletion of resources, population growth, and cultural change probably precipitated the migration. Puebloan oral traditions state that each group needed to find its “Center Place”—the place where the spirit world meant them to live—and this contributed to a willingness to move on when these difficulties loomed. The ancestral Puebloans moved to the south and southwest, to the Little Colorado and Zuni valleys, and to the southeast, to the valley of the Rio Grande. There they mixed with other Puebloan peoples, and as the population soared they established upward of 100 pueblo villages. Some of these villages, such as those at Bandelier National Monument, were subsequently abandoned, but most were occupied when Spanish explorers entered the region. The rich pueblo ceremonial life added a deep philosophical quality to the lives of Pueblo Indians, but the conquistadores did not understand it this way.
The Pueblo Indians and New Spain Francisco Vasquez de Coronado’s march from Mexico in 1540 effectively ended the isolation of the Puebloan world from the changes sweeping over Europe. The Spaniards came north in search of the fabled golden cities of Cibola—mythical cities reputed to rival those of the Aztecs. Coronado had dispatched a reconnaissance party the year before under Fray Marcos de Niza. He was guided by Estevanico, a Moor who wandered the Southwest with the Spanish
party that first heard rumors of Cibola. De Niza and Estevanico made it to Zuni, but there Estevanico’s indiscretions led the Zuni to kill him, and a terrified de Niza returned to Mexico. Claiming that the reports of gold in New Mexico were true, de Niza led Coronado’s army northward. There, Coronado waged war against the Zuni and sent expeditions to Hopi, Acoma, and the Rio Grande but found none of the riches that de Niza had reported. With winter approaching, Coronado settled among the Tiguex (or Tiwa) pueblos at the base of Sandia Mountain. Spanish demands for food and clothing, combined with their callous treatment of the tribes, led to a war that terrorized the Tiguex and compelled many to abandon their homes. Because the conquistadores could not accept the legitimacy of Pueblo religion, they sought to Christianize New Spain and believed that the Pueblo Indians should supply all of their needs in gratitude for bringing them the true faith. The Indians did not understand the need to change religions, although their traditions of generosity mandated that they help strangers. However, they did not believe that they should supply the Spanish army by risking their own families’ starving or freezing. The resulting war devastated the realm and served as a warning to other Pueblos. Therefore, the northern Pueblos plotted to escape the clutches of the Spanish army by leading them on a ruse of a richer city to the east called Quivira. When Coronado failed to find Quivira, his men convinced him to abandon their quest and return to Mexico. Although Coronado did not stay long, he left a lasting legacy in the valley. His exotic nature and high-handed behavior left Pueblo Indians with contradictory feelings. His men had destroyed dozens of villages and killed hundreds of people. Yet the horses, sheep, and other Spanish goods left a desire for further trade. Their exposure to Christianity would be a future source of both conflict and solace. The Spaniards also brought new diseases, such as smallpox, that decimated the population, forcing the Pueblos to consolidate into fewer, more defensible villages. In 1598, Juan de Oñate came to establish a permanent Spanish colony on the northern frontier of New Spain and built his capital near Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. Oñate proved to be ruthless in demanding obedience and put down revolts among the Tompiro pueblos and at Taos. However, it was his destruction of Acoma and his judgment that every man over 25 years of age should have a foot cut off that won him eternal
Pueblos
infamy. After his dismissal in 1608, the next governor established a new administrative center among the Tewa pueblos that was called Santa Fe. Settling among the pueblos, the Spanish governors ingratiated themselves with other Spaniards by awarding encomiendas (tributes in food) and repartimientos (conscripted labor) to prestigious men— tributes that the Pueblo Indians resented being required to provide. At the same time, the Catholic Church claimed the same tribute to support its missions. The Franciscan priests who accompanied the Spanish army baptized many Puebloans, but the Indians continued to practice their traditional religion as well. This worried the missionaries and leaders of the Inquisition who came north with the governors. Although the church had troubles with the Spanish military and civil authorities, the army supported the missionary efforts to suppress native religion; officials filled kivas with sand, destroyed sacred objects, and antagonized Pueblo leaders. The missionaries encouraged the consolidation of smaller pueblos into larger pueblos. As the number of pueblos diminished, the Tompiro pueblos were abandoned. Finally, in 1680, the Pueblo Indians had endured enough. United under the leadership of Po’pay from Ohkay Owingeh, they forced the Spaniards out in the Pueblo Revolt. It was the first successful native rebellion in the Americas against a European power. The Spanish army retreated to El Paso, taking along some Puebloan slaves. Fearing reprisal, consolidation continued. The Spanish army returned 12 years later under the direction of Diego de Vargas to secure the frontier and make the colony profitable. Some Pueblos possibly welcomed the Spanish return, seeking their help to defend their towns against Apache and Comanche raids and desiring the renewal of trade. Others resented the Spanish return, believing that repression would begin anew. Many Indians recognized that they needed to reach an accord; the Spanish army was not going away. When de Vargas treated them more fairly than had earlier governors, many Puebloans changed their stance. The Spanish king had commissioned de Vargas to present land grants to the Pueblos, guaranteeing them their lands and nullifying the encomiendas and repartimientos. De Vargas showed greater tolerance for native religious beliefs, and the Spanish Inquisition did not return. Still, there was resistance, and it was not until 1696 that all of the Rio Grande Pueblos had reconciled themselves to the Spanish presence. However, the
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Hopi in northeastern Arizona never accepted the Spaniards’ return and were too far away for the governor to control. As it was, his control over the Zuni on the western boundary of New Mexico was tenuous. With time, many of the Rio Grande Pueblos adopted Catholicism—at least outwardly—and incorporated their dances into Spanish religious celebrations. During the Mexican–American War, the Pueblo Indians were wary of the American forces, but resistance was curtailed until the main American army left. Then, during the winter of 1846–1847, the Taos Revolt alerted the Americans that they were seizing the territory of a semiautonomous people. The revolt ended with a siege of the pueblo, and in 1848 Mexico transferred the Rio Grande Valley to American control. The new government recognized the pueblo land grants and kept many of the Spanish compromises, preventing further war between Americans and Puebloans.
The Modern Pueblos Whereas the Pueblos originally subsisted with fields of corn, beans, and squash, domesticated turkeys, game, and other wild foods, the Spaniards introduced wheat, peaches, sheep, and other commodities—leading to a cornucopia of agricultural produce. This improved the Puebloan lifestyle, and Spanish hornos (ovens) became commonplace in most pueblos. The Spanish also introduced a new administrative system that the Pueblos judged to be useful. Each pueblo originally governed itself through a village chief who was assisted by a village council. Spain created another layer of government by requiring the pueblos to choose a governor, a lieutenant governor, and other officials to serve as intermediaries with the colonial government. This government has continued among the eastern pueblos because it has proven to be beneficial in keeping the White world at bay. The Pueblos to the west, who resisted the Spanish reconquest, have strong matrilineal clans, whereas those to the east organize their villages with welldeveloped moiety systems that divide the pueblos into two parts, with everyone belonging to either moiety for ceremonial duties. Traditionally, each village is highly autonomous, although historically they formed strong intervillage alliances. Today, the New Mexico pueblos are confederated in the All Indian Pueblo Council, which coordinates responses to threats to their communities. The Hopi tribal council plays a similar role among the Hopi villages in Arizona.
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Puerto Rican Americans
When conflicts erupted with the state or federal government during the 20th century, these alliances fought for their rights through the U.S. legal system. The distinctive pueblo architecture has remained intact in most villages, but in some villages government housing projects have added another dimension along with the U.S. educational system. Although Protestant missionaries have attempted to make inroads into the traditional life of the villages, most people retain their native religion while participating in Catholic traditions. Today, there are nineteen pueblos in New Mexico and a dozen Hopi villages in Arizona, speaking four major languages: Tanoan, Keres, Hopi, and Zuni. The Tewa speak a Tanoan language and live in the villages of Ohkay Owingeh, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Pojoaque, Tesuque, and Nambe—all north of Santa Fe. The Tiwa speak a related language and live at Picuris and Taos, north of the Tewa, and at Sandia and Isleta, near Albuquerque. The Jemez Pueblo northwest of Albuquerque speak another variant, Towa. Between Santa Fe and Albuquerque are the five Keresan pueblos of Cochiti, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, Zia, and Tamaya. Between Albuquerque and Gallup are the two Keres villages of Acoma and Laguna as well as the Zuni. All nineteen pueblos are vibrant centers of Puebloan culture today. Taos and Acoma maintain their original architecture and are often visited by tourists. The twelve Hopi villages are in northeastern Arizona. Because they have the least Spanish influence among the Puebloan tribes, they sometimes prefer to be identified as simply Hopi rather than as Pueblo. Finally, the Pueblo Indians who survived the trip to El Paso in 1680 established another village there known as Yselta del Sur. All of the modern pueblos still have their kivas and perform traditional dances during the year. Although the cities entice many Pueblo Indians into the wage economy each year, the villages still maintain the agricultural lifestyle of their ancestors. Joseph Owen Weixelman See Appendix A See also Hispanics; Hopi; Mexican Americans; Native Americans; Navajo
Forbes, Jack D. 1960. Apache, Navajo, and Spaniard. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Ortiz, Alfonso. 1969. The Tewa World: Space, Time, Being, and Becoming in a Pueblo Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ortiz, Alfonso. 1972. New Perspectives on the Pueblos. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Ortiz, Alfonso and William C. Sturtevant, eds. 1979. Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 9: Southwest. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Sando, Joe S. 1992. Pueblo Nations: Eight Centuries of Pueblo Indian History. Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light. Stuart, David. 2000. Anasazi America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Talayesva, Don. 1942. Sun Chief: The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian, edited by Leo Simmons. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
PUERTO RICAN AMERICANS As of 2003, there were more Puerto Ricans living in the United States than on the island of Puerto Rico— 3.8 million on the mainland and 3.6 million in Puerto Rico—creating an unusual condition where the diaspora is greater than the country of origin’s population. In addition, Puerto Ricans often migrate back and forth between the island and the mainland, giving them a foot in both places. This “divided nation” situation has been produced by the status of Puerto Rico as a “commonwealth,” with its residents sharing some—but not all—of the benefits of U.S. citizens and its homeland economy dependent on the United States. The sense of nationalism is strong among Puerto Ricans living in the United States. One sign of this is the fact that few Puerto Ricans living in the United States would refer to themselves as Puerto Rican Americans. Most would simply identify as Puerto Rican or Boricua, which is a variation of the indigenous (Taino) word for the island of Puerto Rico, Borinquen. Latinos are now the largest minority population in the United States, and the Puerto Rican community accounts for 9% of that population—18% if island Puerto Ricans are included— making them the second largest national origin group among Latinos behind the Mexican origin population.
Further Readings
Courlander, Harold. 1971. The Fourth World of the Hopis. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Dozier, Edward P. 1970. The Pueblo Indians of North America. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.
Migration to the United States Puerto Ricans have been coming to the United States since the late 19th century, especially following the U.S. colonization of Puerto Rico in 1898. Puerto
Puerto Rican Americans
Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917, and this greatly facilitated their ability to migrate to the country. However, the greatest migration of Puerto Ricans to the United States took place during the 1950s and 1960s. The governments of both the United States and Puerto Rico encouraged Puerto Ricans to come to the United States to ease unemployment on the island. To encourage and manage the emigration of Puerto Ricans to the United States, in 1947 the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments founded the Migration Division (or the Commonwealth Office), which eventually had offices in 115 U.S. cities and towns. By 1970, 1.5 million Puerto Ricans lived in the United States. Between 1990 and 2000, the Puerto Rican population in the United States grew by 24.9%—from 3.2 million to 3.6 million. At first, most Puerto Ricans migrated to New York City or elsewhere on the East Coast. Now, Puerto Ricans are found across the nation. Once home to 80% of all stateside Puerto Ricans, New York City was home to only 23% of stateside Puerto Ricans by 2000. The states with the largest Puerto Rican populations in 2000 were New York, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. During the past 30 years, there has also been significant population growth in Connecticut, Illinois, California, Ohio, and Texas as well as in areas of the Midwest. Puerto Ricans are now found in most states, and a large community has migrated to Florida, where the population rose by 57.7% from 1990 to 2000. Although the cities that house the majority of Puerto Ricans continue to be located on the East Coast and in the Midwest (e.g., New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Newark, Hartford), the cities experiencing the fastest growth among Puerto Ricans from 1990 to 2000 were Orlando, Florida (142%); Allentown, Pennsylvania (83%); Tampa, Florida (78%); Reading, Pennsylvania (64%); and New Britain, Connecticut (52%). Migration to the United States is affected by economic factors such as recessions and job booms on the island and in the United States. As U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans have been able to migrate at will to and from the United States, and a circulatory migration pattern has emerged. For example, because of recession in the United States during the early 1970s, more Puerto Ricans returned to Puerto Rico than migrated to the country. Because of this transnational connection, Puerto Ricans have been referred to as a “commuter nation.” Studies have shown that two of every three of Puerto Ricans who migrate to the United States have lived there previously and that most of
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those who move to Puerto Rico from the United States have also already lived on the island previously.
Discrimination and Resistance Despite their U.S. citizenship, Puerto Ricans have experienced racial tensions, housing discrimination, linguistic barriers, police brutality, and other problems in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities where they have settled. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Puerto Rican community became the site of many sociological studies that stigmatized it and blamed the Puerto Rican community, rather than racism and discrimination, for its poverty. Sociologists such as Oscar Lewis used a “culture of poverty” thesis and “blame the victim” paradigm to explain the situation of the community. In New York City and Chicago, young people organized to defend and transform their communities. The Young Lords, a group that modeled itself after the Black Panther Party, emerged during the 1960s. The Young Lords had started out as a gang, but Cha Cha Jimenez and his associates in Chicago transformed the group into a direct action activist organization. A second Young Lords chapter followed in New York, and chapters in other cities were formed. The organization developed a Thirteen Point Manifesto stating its program; among other points, it advocated an end to discrimination toward Puerto Ricans and other people of color in the United States. Members also lobbied for the independence of Puerto Rico and declared their belief that capitalism was wrong and that sexism must be eliminated. At first, the group focused on educating the community, providing health services, and staging actions such as cleaning the streets neglected by the city. Gradually, as the response to the group’s actions become more aggressive, its strategies also escalated. The Young Lords fought to secure the rights and needs of the Puerto Rican community that were being ignored by the city and state agencies. As a result of police infiltration, repression, and infighting, the group ceased to exist by 1976. Puerto Ricans have created a series of important institutions to serve the community. These include ASPIRA, dedicated to promoting youth education and leadership, and Boricua College and the Center for Puerto Rican Studies of the City University of New York at Hunter College, focused on securing higher education for Puerto Ricans and other Latinos. Other organizations that concentrate on political issues include the National Puerto Rican Coalition, the
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Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN)
National Puerto Rican Forum, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the National Conference of Puerto Rican Women.
Literary Contributions Puerto Ricans have made important contributions to the literary world. Jesus Colón, who came to the United States in 1917, wrote expressive vignettes about the life and struggles of Puerto Ricans in New York during the first half of the 20th century. His sketches and articles were collected in a book, A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches, published in 1961. It is the first English language book by a Puerto Rican describing the experiences of Puerto Ricans in New York City. Another important writer is Piri Thomas. In Down These Mean Streets (1969), he chronicled his life growing up in New York as a young Black Puerto Rican. The autobiographical work vividly captures life in the ghetto and the saga of a young man caught within the Black–White U.S. racial paradigm and trying to discover where he fits. Nicholasa Mohr, in a series of novels and short story collections (Nilda, Felita, and Going Home), portrayed the lives of traditional Puerto Rican girls. The 1970s saw the rise of a very strong Nuyorican poetry movement. Writers such as Pedro Pietri, Tato Laviera, Sandra Esteves, and Victor Cruz experimented with bilingual lyrical verses that captured the life of a bilingual and bicultural community. They documented the struggles with racism, poverty, and discrimination as well as the strength that the community derives from its culture. More recent authors, such as Esmeralda Santiago and Judith Ortiz Cofer, continue to describe the evolving situation of Puerto Ricans in the United States. Lourdes Torres See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Culture of Poverty; Discrimination; East Harlem; Hispanics; Latina/o Studies; Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN); Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund; Puerto Rico
Further Readings
Acosta-Belén, Edna and Carlos Santiago. 2006. Puerto Ricans in the United States: A Contemporary Portrait. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Duany, Jorge. 2002. The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Lewis, Oscar. 1966. La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York. New York: Random House. Ramos-Zayas, Ana Y. 2003. National Performances: The Politics of Class, Race, and Space in Puerto Rican Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rodriguez, Clara E. 1989. Puerto Ricans: Born in the U.S.A. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman. Torres, Andrés and José E. Velázquez, eds. 1998. The Puerto Rican Movement: Voices from the Diaspora. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Whalen Carmen Teresa and Victor Vazquez-Hernandez. 2005. The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
PUERTO RICAN ARMED FORCES OF NATIONAL LIBERATION (FALN) The Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation—in Spanish, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (FALN)—was a clandestine political organization and movement that emerged in Chicago and Spanish Harlem, well known as El Barrio, in New York City. The FALN demanded independence for the island and the liberation of Puerto Rican political prisoners Oscar Collazo-López, Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel-Miranda, Andres Figueroa-Cordero, and Irving Flores-Rodríguez. The organization believed in the need for an armed struggle and in the education of the masses as the means through which political revolution and social justice could be accomplished. Furthermore, the organization believed that bringing about a social revolution would lead to the formation of an anti-imperialist Marxist–Leninist political party. The movement was launched on October 26, 1974, when the FALN claimed responsibility for five attacks on banks and corporations in New York City resulting in approximately $1 million in damage. From 1974 to 1982, the organization claimed responsibility for more than 100 attacks in New York, Chicago, and Puerto Rico. However, the actions of this organization were concentrated in the United States, and the actions in Puerto Rico were organized by an analogous clandestine political organization, the Boricua Popular Army, well known as Los Macheteros. Filiberto Ojeda Ríos,
Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund
the leader of the Boricua Popular Army, cofounder of the FALN, and one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) most wanted fugitives, died in a confrontation with the FBI on September 23, 2005, the date on which independence supporters commemorate the 1868 Puerto Rican revolt against Spain. The confrontation took place in his residence in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, where the 72-year-old nationalist leader lived underground under the name of Don Luis. His death and the actions of the FBI in this case are currently under local and federal investigation. The violent acts of the FALN were directed at law enforcement agencies, financial depositories, corporations, and individuals favoring or promoting capitalism or statehood for Puerto Rico. The organization’s main argument was that before the Spanish–American War, Puerto Rico had obtained its autonomy through a bilateral pact signed by Spain and Puerto Rico. As a consequence, the Treaty of Paris through which Spain conceded Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States in 1898 constituted a violation of the aforementioned pact, the FALN argues. In addition, the movement denounced as racism the excessive use of force and abuses of the mostly White New York Police Department and the precarious living conditions of Puerto Ricans in urban areas of the United States. The modus operandi of this leftist movement was to place homemade powder devices in the target sites and claim responsibility for the attacks using the mainstream media, leaving communiqués on the sites attacked, or mailing the communiqués to federal agencies. In fact, one member of the FALN, William Guillermo Morales, lost both hands and an eye as he fabricated a bomb. He was arrested and imprisoned and then later escaped from Bellevue Hospital, where he was receiving poor treatment for his injuries, the organization claimed. Morales currently resides in Cuba. Several members of FALN were apprehended and imprisoned for criminal activities and their linkages with the Puerto Rican armed forces. In 1999, President Bill Clinton granted clemency to sixteen members of the organization; two of them, Oscar López-Rivera and Antonio Camacho-Negrón, rejected the offer. Two other prisoners, Carlos Alberto Torres and Marie Haydeé Beltrán-Torres, were not considered for clemency. Those who were freed continue to support and promote independence for Puerto Rico but have discontinued the use of violence in the quest for their ideals. Jenniffer M. Santos-Hernández
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See also Colonialism; Puerto Rican Americans; Puerto Rico
Further Readings
Gonzalez-Cruz, Michael. 2006. Nacionalismo revolucionario puertorriqueño: Lucha armada, intelectuales y prisioneros políticos y de guerra (Puerto Rican revolutionary nationalism: Armed struggle, intellectuals, and political and war prisoners). San Juan, Puerto Rico: Isla Negra Editores. Latin American Studies Program. n.d. Puerto Rican Separatists Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (FALN). Bloomington: Indiana University. Retrieved from http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/faln.htm Maldonado-Denis, Manuel. 1976. “Prospects for Latin American Nationalism: The Case of Puerto Rico.” Latin American Perspectives 3(3):36–45. Ojeda-Ríos, Filiberto and Alicia Del Campo. 2002. “The Boricua Macheteros Popular Army: Origins, Program, and Struggle.” Latin American Perspectives 29(6):104–116.
PUERTO RICAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATION FUND More than three decades of struggle to ensure and safeguard the civil and human rights of millions of Puerto Ricans and other Latinos has made the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund one of the most valuable resources for Latinos in the United States. This entry describes the context in which the organization was formed and reviews some of its achievements. Since the U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico in 1898, emigration to the U.S. mainland has been used as a mechanism to deal with the high unemployment and widespread poverty on the island and has produced economic dependency on the United States. Between 1945 and 1970, roughly a third of the population of Puerto Rico migrated to the United States— mostly to the Northeast—because of the high demand for cheap industrial labor and government intervention to promote and facilitate emigration. In the United States, many Puerto Ricans continued to face poverty, poor housing conditions, inadequate health care, lack of access to quality education, abusive working conditions, lack of political power, and marginalization. In this context, the pioneer lawyers Cesar A. Perales, Jorge Batista, and Victor Marrero founded the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund to
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empower Puerto Ricans and serve as a tool to end inequalities. The organization is distinguished by its accomplishments in several areas of legal practice such as constitutional law, labor and employment law, immigration law, and education law. A few years after its founding in 1972, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund achieved one of its biggest victories by representing ASPIRA, an organization dedicated to promoting youth education and leadership, in a lawsuit against the New York City Board of Education. As a result, hundreds of nonEnglish-speaking children, residents of the city, were allowed to receive education in Spanish through the state school system. The organization also played an important role in the litigation against discriminatory hiring and employment policies. The role of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund in granting access to symbolic forms of power to minority groups is also evident in its success in securing the voting rights of linguistic minorities, their housing rights, and the rights of undocumented immigrants. Furthermore, its solid commitment to the development and education of Latinos provides the foundation for an education division. Since its inception, the organization has advocated for the diversification of the legal system and has prepared numerous students for their law school admission tests, developed a variety of workshops, and provided funding for a number of law school minority students.
PUERTO RICO Puerto Rico, a commonwealth or colony of the United States depending on one’s political perspective, consists of the island of Puerto Rico plus the smaller islands of Vieques, Culebra, and Mona. Situated 1,000 miles southeast of Florida, the land area is 3,421 square miles. Puerto Rico’s estimated population was more than 3.7 million people as of 2007; more Puerto Ricans live in the United States—3.9 million according to a 2004 estimate. Both Spanish and English are the official languages of Puerto Rico; Spanish is the primary spoken language, and English is taught as a second language in the schools. Most Puerto Ricans are Catholics, although Protestantism is increasing. Once a Spanish colony, Puerto Rico has been part of the United States since 1898. Economically, socially, and politically, it is a hybrid creation dependent on the United States. This entry looks at its history and current situation.
Atlantic Ocean Turks & Caicos Is.
The Bahamas Cuba Haiti Dominican Puerto Rico
Republic
Anguilla Virgin Is. St. Kitts & Nevis
Jenniffer M. Santos-Hernández
Antigua & Barbuda Guadeloupe
See Appendix B See also Hispanics; Puerto Rican Americans; Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN); Puerto Rico
Dominica
Caribbean Sea
Martinique St. Lucia St. Vincent & the Grenadines Aruba Grenada
Further Readings
Acosta-Belén, Edna and Carlos E. Santiago. 2006. Puerto Ricans in the United States: A Contemporary Portrait. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Pérez y González, María E. 2000. The New Americans: Puerto Ricans in the United States. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Rodríguez, Clara E. 1989. Puerto Ricans: Born in the U.S.A. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman.
Web Sites
Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund: http://www.prldef.org
Trinidad & Tobago
Colombia
Venezuela
Guyana
A History of Colonialism To understand Puerto Rico’s current situation, it is vital to examine its past. The history of Puerto Rico’s colonial status predates the U.S. invasion in 1898. After 400 years as a colony of Spain, on November 25,
Puerto Rico
1897, the island of Puerto Rico achieved a measure of autonomy from a weakened Spanish crown. Puerto Ricans were granted an insular parliament that had vast powers over the laws concerning the business of the island. Although Spain retained power over most foreign matters, Puerto Ricans had the right to negotiate commercial treaties and import and export duties. The measure of self-government that Puerto Rico achieved was noteworthy and short-lived. On April 25, 1898, the United States declared war on Spain. A few months later on July 25, 1898, the United States invaded Puerto Rico and soon established a military government on the island. Spain ceded Puerto Rico, along with Cuba and the Philippines and other territories, to the United States as part of the Treaty of Paris. Since that time, the status of Puerto Rico and its relationship to the United States has been unresolved. Although the terms of the relationship have shifted over the years, since 1898 Puerto Rico has been a territory of the United States. Two organic laws determined the terms of this relationship. The Foraker Act of 1900 decreed that a governor appointed by the president of the United States would manage Puerto Rico. Presidential appointees would also head most established departments as well as the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico. All applicable U.S. laws were now enforceable in Puerto Rico. In essence, Puerto Rico lost many of the rights it had gained under the Spanish Autonomy Charter. The second organic law, the Jones Act of 1917, decreed that Puerto Ricans were citizens of the United States. They also gained a legislature elected by Puerto Ricans. However, this was a secondclass citizenship given that the president of the United States and the U.S. Congress continued to have control of most important positions of power in the government. In addition, they had veto power over any laws enacted by the Puerto Rican legislative branch. Puerto Ricans have continually lobbied for more rights from the United States. In 1947, Puerto Ricans were granted the right to elect their own governor. In 1952, Puerto Rico achieved commonwealth status. As part of this arrangement, Public Law 600 decreed that Puerto Rico could write and adopt its own constitution. However, the constitution was subject to approval by the U.S. Congress, which maintained sovereignty over the island. Today, Puerto Rico has a locally elected governor who serves a four-year term. There is a bicameral legislature consisting of a Senate (twenty-seven members) and a House of Representatives (fifty-one members). However, the U.S. Congress has the power to determine the constitutionality of the laws.
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An Unusual Relationship Although they are U.S. citizens, residents of Puerto Rico do not vote in national elections and have only a nonvoting representative in Congress. Residents of Puerto Rico do not pay federal income tax on their earnings, but they are eligible to receive social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Puerto Ricans can be drafted into the military service of the United States. Puerto Ricans have fought for the United States in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War as well as in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The United States controls the borders of Puerto Rico. The government of Puerto Rico cannot enter into commercial arrangements or any treaties or agreements with other countries. Therefore, Puerto Rico cannot independently develop economically and is a captive market to U.S. goods. The U.S. minimum wage system applies on the island. The United States controls all trade. It establishes restrictions to the market of Puerto Rican products to the mainland. The balance has always been that there are more goods imported than exported. U.S. maritime laws dictate that all goods traveling between ports within U.S. territory must be transported in ships of the U.S. merchant marine. Puerto Rico must abide by this law and, therefore, cannot avail itself of cheaper transportation costs that could be negotiated with other countries. The United States has power over the monetary system, nationality and citizenship, the legal system, and the communication system. Resistance to U.S. control has always existed. Puerto Rican revolutionary actions have included an attempt to assassinate President Harry S. Truman on November 1, 1950, and an attack on the U.S. Capitol that wounded five congressmen on March 1, 1954. Between 1980 and 1983, fourteen alleged members of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) were arrested, accused of seditious conspiracy, and sentenced to prison terms of between 50 and 90 years for organizing to gain independence for their country. President Bill Clinton granted eleven Puerto Rican political prisoners clemency in 1999.
The Economy Over the years following U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico, what was basically a rural agricultural society was transformed into an industrial society. In 1950, some 40% of the island’s labor force worked on farms; today, the figure is less than 3%. This drastic transformation was enhanced greatly through Operation Bootstrap
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on the mainland United States to escape unemployment. In time, with the elimination of tax incentives, many industries have left the island. Personal income per capita in Puerto Rico in 2000 was $10,204. This was less than half that in Mississippi, the poorest state in the United States. Per capita income on the island was 34% of the U.S. national average. Officially, the unemployment rate was 12%; however, in 2004 only 66% of the working-age population was employed or actively looking for work. Puerto Rico’s economy has been incapable of providing enough job opportunities for its working-age population, and so for decades many Puerto Ricans have migrated to the United States.
Education and Language Education during that early U.S. occupation was focused primarily on turning Puerto Ricans into loyal U.S. subjects. English was the tool that Workers hoeing a tobacco slope in Puerto Rico (1938). Puerto Rico’s manufacturing sector has shifted from the original labor-intensive industries, such as the manuU.S. leaders thought would lead most facturing of tobacco, food, and leather, to more capital-intensive industries, such as effectively to this desired imperative. pharmaceuticals, chemicals, machinery, and electronics. In 1950, some 40% of the When the United States arrived in island’s labor force worked on farms; today, the figure is less than 3%. This drastic Puerto Rico, less than 10% of all transformation was enhanced greatly through Operation Bootstrap (Operación people were literate; therefore, policyManos a la Obra), an industrialization project that began during the 1940s. U.S. makers decided that it would be approcompanies were encouraged to invest in Puerto Rico by the promise of cheap labor, access to U.S. markets without import duties, and other tax exemptions. priate to educate the few people who would have access to education using Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-fsa-8b30540. English rather than the Spanish vernacular of the population. Although this Americanization meant that more (Operación Manos a la Obra), an industrialization projPuerto Ricans were being educated then ever before, ect that began during the 1940s. U.S. companies were the education these children received was inadequate encouraged to invest in Puerto Rico by the promise of because it focused mainly on the acquisition of the cheap labor, access to U.S. markets without import English language. duties, and other tax exemptions. The program resulted Over the first 40 years of colonization, at least in a major shift from agriculture to manufacturing and five U.S. and Puerto Rican administrators tinkered tourism. Capital-intensive industries, such as pharmawith the educational system without any informed ceuticals, chemical plants, and electronics factories, pedagogical insight on language acquisition and its transferred operations to Puerto Rico in large numbers. connection to learning other content areas; the sinAlthough Operation Bootstrap was initially progle-minded goal was the delivery of English as soon moted as an economic miracle, by the 1960s it was as possible. This unstable system, combined with a clear that the project failed to create enough jobs to lack of qualified teachers and textbooks chosen more meet the demand. Many islanders moved to the urban for ideological content than for appropriate content, areas in search of these opportunities. However, the doomed generations of students in the public schools demand for jobs greatly exceeded the availability of to an inadequate education. jobs, and many Puerto Ricans migrated to large cities
Puerto Rico
The first elected Puerto Rican governor, Luis ~ Munoz Marin, named Mariano Villaronga as secretary of education. Villaronga decreed in 1949 that all education from kindergarten to twelfth grade would be in Spanish. English would be taught in all grades as a second language every day for fifty minutes. This was an important milestone that put an end to the uniform use of English as the language of instruction; however, public education in Puerto Rico remains weak, and only those who can access private schools secure a quality education.
Contemporary Politics Although other territories acquired by the United States, such as Hawai‘i and Alaska, have achieved statehood, that has not happened for Puerto Rico. The three largest political parties continue to debate the island’s relationship with the United States, with each party representing a different solution to the status question. The New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico (Partido Nuevo Progresista de Puerto Rico [PNP]) advocates for statehood for the island. The Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico (Partido Popular Democrático de Puerto Rico [PPD]) advocates for enhancement of the current commonwealth status. The Puerto Rican Independence Party (Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño [PIP]) advocates for the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States. Since 1948 when Puerto Ricans began voting for governor, power has gone back and forth between the PNP and the PPD. The PIP has never won more than 5% of the vote. Although it is the U.S. Congress that will determine the fate of the island, residents of Puerto Rico have twice voted in nonbinding plebiscites to determine their political status. In 1967, the outcome was commonwealth 60%, statehood 39%, and independence 1%. In 1993, 48.6% of the population voted for commonwealth, 46.3% preferred statehood, and 4.4% voted for independence. Another source of much debate on the island has been the presence of the U.S. Navy on the island of Vieques. After a struggle lasting more than six decades, the navy withdrew its base from the island in May 2003. The navy had been using the island as a bombing range since the 1940s. Residents of Vieques voted overwhelmingly to close the base in a referendum in 2001. Protests against the military presence grew after David Sanes, a resident of Vieques, was accidentally killed and four other people were injured during navy practice exercises on the island. Protests included civilians’ occupying the bases.
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Toxic pollution caused by explosives and radioactivedepleted uranium shells remain on the island. The people of Vieques have been found to have a cancer rate 26% higher than Puerto Rico’s average. Many believe that this is another result of the navy’s presence on the island. Activists continue to lobby for the cleanup of Vieques. On December 14, 1960, the United Nations approved Resolution 1514-XV (Resolution on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples), which condemned colonialism and recommended that superpowers liberate their colonies. Every year since the early 1970s, the Special Committee on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, which oversees the process of decolonization of the world’s remaining colonies, issues resolutions calling for Puerto Rico’s self-determination and independence. During the past 10 years, there has been renewed lobbying for a final resolution to the status question. In 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that called for binding elections in Puerto Rico to decide the island’s permanent political status. Since then, various presidential task forces under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have studied the status question without resolution. In 2005, Bush’s task force on Puerto Rico’s status concluded that another vote by Puerto Ricans was the best next step. As of 2007, no progress had been made on this issue and Puerto Rico’s future remained unresolved. Lourdes Torres See Appendix A See also Americanization; Caribbean; Caribbean Americans; Colonialism; Culture of Poverty; Hispanics; Operation Bootstrap; Puerto Rican Americans; Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN); Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund Further Readings
Briggs, Laura. 2002. Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico. Berkeley: University of California Press. Duany, Jorge. 2002. The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Morris, Nancy. 1995. Puerto Rico: Culture, Politics, and Identity. Westport, CT: Praeger. Trías Monge, José. 1997. Puerto Rico: The Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
R RACE A race is a social grouping of people who have similar physical or social characteristics that are generally considered by society as forming a distinct group. In contemporary scholarship, four main concepts characterize race. First, race is socially constructed, in that humans use symbols to create meaning from their social environment. This means that race is not an intrinsic part of a human being or the environment but, rather, an identity created using symbols to establish meaning in a culture or society. Second, race is partially characterized by physical similarities such as skin color, facial features, or hair texture. Although physical characteristics constitute a portion of the concept of race, this is a social rather than biological distinction. That is, human beings create categories of race based on physical characteristics rather than the physical characteristics having intrinsic biological meaning. Third, race is partially characterized by general social similarities such as shared history, speech patterns, or traditions. For example, Black English vernacular is a complex and expressive language spoken by many African Americans, particularly in racially segregated areas of the United States. Although social similarities develop because of racial groupings, racial similarities are not exclusive to an entire race, nor does every member of a race share social similarities. Such artificial distinctions lead to the injurious practice of stereotyping. Fourth and finally, race is characterized by the formation of distinct racial groupings in society that self-identify as such. Race is not an inherent biological grouping, so racial categories emerge from historical processes and often gain legitimacy in society though political action.
Often, the formation or reformation of racial categories is accomplished by dominant racial groupings exerting authority over minority or subordinate racial groupings. For example, the U.S. Constitution required an enumeration or census, which fostered the development of racial classifications. By 1890, these racial classifications, formed largely by White men, included “White,” “Black,” “mulatto,” “quadroon,” and “octoroon” to describe the amount of known African ancestry of African Americans. The 1890 racial classification is indicative of the “one-drop rule,” whereby any African ancestry constituted exclusion from the dominant White racial grouping into a subordinate racial grouping; a hierarchy among races is a common theme throughout the history of race. This entry looks at the development of the concept of race and discusses related myths.
History of Race The word race emerged in the 16th century in English from the Italian razza and the French race; it referred to a group of persons, plants, or animals connected by common descent or origin. The concept soon became an important organizing principle for the English, who claimed to be superior through blood ties from the Saxon and Germanic race. Claims of racial ancestry gained increasing legitimacy during the 18th and 19th centuries as Europeans such as François Bernier, Carolus Linnaeus, and Johann Blumenbach attempted to use rational and scientific concepts to create objective classification systems of nature and humans. Although Bernier was among the first to attempt a system of classification, Linnaeus’s classification system provided a framework for others to use race as
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an inherent biological organizing principle for humans. In addition, the work of Blumenbach and his assertion that the Caucasian race was the original perfect race from which all other races had degenerated was highly influential on 18th- and 19th-century philosophy and theology because it provided a rational scientific explanation for the rise of colonial expansion and subsequent domination of the “inferior races” of Africa, Near East Asia, and North and South America. Thus, through the work of Linnaeus and Blumenbach, race was articulated into a concept emphasizing biological heritability consisting of hierarchies of dominant and subordinate groups that could be studied through rational scientific means. These claims of biological racial superiority were furthered by Thomas Malthus, Herbert Spencer, and Charles Darwin, who in one form or another emphasized ties between biological survival and social classification, a trend that continued with the eugenics movement. In the 1920s, a number of biologists, anthropologists, and psychologists began to challenge the hereditary underpinnings of race as new evidence suggested that race might be more closely related to culture than to biology. Despite these challenges, not until after the genocide committed by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany during World War II were eugenics and biological racial superiority excluded as viable concepts within the domain of mainstream science. Today, it is generally recognized that although there are biological differences among people and groups, these variations are not organized around concepts of race. Despite this knowledge, a number of myths persist regarding the biological characteristics of race.
Myths of Race The race and civilization myth asserts that the biological inferiority of some races is evidenced by their “backward,” “primitive,” or “underdeveloped” culture. However, many of the people and cultures of “inferior” races had developed more complex and sophisticated societies earlier than the supposed “superior” White Europeans. Furthermore, these societies’ apparent lack of modern technological development is more indicative of European colonialism and exploitation than of purported racial inferiority. The race conquest and disease myth asserts that one race may be genetically superior to another race because of members’ ability to resist infectious disease.
However, the overwhelmingly disproportionate mortality of Native Americans and Mesoamericans from smallpox relative to Europeans was likely the result of a lack of immunity and purposive transmission through infected blankets by Europeans rather than because of any racial predisposition. Finally, the race and intelligence myth asserts that intelligence is based on racial heredity, and intelligence tests can measure racial dominance. However, considerable empirical evidence has demonstrated that differences in racial groupings on standardized tests are the result of a variety of cultural factors ranging from test bias to a lack of equitable education. These and other biological racial myths have lost power, and many people now believe that race is no longer a meaningful social concept: They “do not see race.” Because race persists as a social concept in society and continues to stratify people by providing barriers for some and privilege for others, race remains an important but contentious concept within the social sciences. John Barnshaw See also Apartheid; Blood Quantum; Census, U.S.; Double Consciousness; Ethnic Conflict; Eugenics; One-Drop Rule; Race, Social Construction of; Racial Formation; Racial Identity; Racialization; Social Darwinism Further Readings
American Sociological Association. 2003. The Importance of Collecting Data and Doing Social Scientific Research on Race. Washington, DC: Author. Bohme, Frederick. 1989. 200 Years of United States Census Taking: Population and Housing Questions, 1790–1990. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Calhoun, Craig. 2002. “Race.” Pp. 397–398 in Dictionary of the Social Sciences, edited by C. Calhoun. New York: Oxford University Press. Ember, Carol, Melvin Ember, and Peter Peregrine. 2002. Anthropology. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Jencks, Christopher and Meredith Phillips. 1998. The BlackWhite Test Score Gap. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Labov, William and Wendell Harris. 1986. “De Facto Segregation of Black and White Vernaculars.” Pp. 1–24 in Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, edited by D. Sankoff. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. McKee, James. 1993. Sociology and the Race Problem: The Failure of a Perspective. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Race, Comparative Perspectives
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Schnapper, Dominique. 2001. “Race: History of the Concept.” Pp. 12700–12703 in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 13. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier. Simpson, John and Edmund Weiner. 1989. “Race.” Pp. 67–71 in Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 13. 2nd ed. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
RACE, COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES The idea that human societies can be divided into distinct and genetically different racial groups has a long pedigree. Although this assumption has been discredited by scientific evidence for many decades, the concept of race lives on in much of the popular imagination. One of the best approaches to demonstrate that racial groups are socially constructed is to view the many ways in which the categorization of such groups takes place and the many forms that the dynamics of racial conflict exhibit. This entry considers race relations from a comparative perspective— analyzing them both from a historical and a cross-cultural vantage point—which soon reveals the limited plausibility of a biological explanation of race relations.
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genetic forces. It was understandable, he observed, that societies that possessed far greater political and economic power might feel that they consisted of individuals who were completely different from members of less powerful and subordinated groups. Thus, to use Tocqueville’s illustration, “Julius Caesar, had he had the time, would have willingly written a book to prove that the savages he had met in Britain did not belong to the same race as the Romans, and that the latter were destined thus by nature to rule the world while the former were destined to vegetate in one of its corners!” The irony of this case was precisely the global power and influence of the British Empire in the middle of the 19th century, almost 2,000 years after Caesar’s time, and the beliefs of many of the descendants of these former savages that the “British race” was superior to almost every other group on the planet. Thus, a comparative historical perspective on racial thinking suggests that it is little more than a system to legitimize group power and domination. Such a conclusion was subsequently echoed by the Italian social scientist, Vilfredo Pareto, after a wide survey of world history in the second decade of the 20th century. Pareto noted, “The right claimed by people who bestow on themselves the title of ‘civilized’ to conquer other peoples whom it pleases them to call ‘uncivilized’ is altogether ridiculous, or rather, this right is nothing other than force.”
Historical Comparisons
The Social Construction of Racial Categories
A classic illustration of the historical analysis of race can be found in the mid-19th-century debates between Alexis de Tocqueville and Arthur de Gobineau concerning the latter’s contention about the central role of racial struggles in human history. At the time of the publication of Gobineau’s Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853), a work that earned its author the title of “The Father of European Racism,” his friend and senior colleague Tocqueville made a powerful attack on the idea that there were permanent and immutable differences between human groups based on biological inheritance. Tocqueville, the famous author of Democracy in America and the Ancien Regime and the Revolution, applied a simple set of observations concerning the rise and fall of different peoples to undermine the plausibility that such changes were the result of
Another use of the comparative perspective to demonstrate the social construction of racial categories can be seen in the highly variable way in which different societies draw boundaries between groups consisting of individuals possessing some superficially similar characteristic. The “one-drop rule” in the United States, whereby any trace of African ancestry relegates an individual to the subordinate racial category, contrasts markedly with much of the world influenced by a Dutch colonial legacy, or, indeed, with Latin American societies such as Brazil. In the Dutch East Indies, a “one-drop rule” existed, but it worked in the opposite manner from the North American system of racial stratification. As van Amersfoort has pointed out, the Dutch believed that their “racial” influence was so strong that any admixture would raise an individual into the dominant racial category.
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Race, Comparative Perspectives
A different system developed from South Africa’s history of colonial conquest, followed by the 4 decades of apartheid. In this case, a set of four categories defined the place in the hierarchy of the dominant “Whites,” consisting of a mixture of Dutch, German, French, and English settlers; an intermediate mixed race group, the Cape Coloreds; a separate Indian community living largely in Natal; and the subordinate African majority. Under the apartheid ideology, the Africans, who made up approximately three-quarters of the population, were broken into separate tribal entities—Zulus or Xhosas, for example—but this was merely a pretext to deny the more numerous African population its right to full political participation and inevitable control over the state. That development had to await the collapse of apartheid and the transition to majority rule, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress, in the early 1990s.
“Racial Democracy” Across the South Atlantic, an even more intricate and complex pattern of race relations emerged in Brazil, whose system of racial stratification consisted of many levels of social status linked to a continuum of color gradations and affected, too, by a particular individual’s wealth and access to political power. To understand the manner in which this system arose involves a careful analysis and comparison between the types of colonial conquest that took place in different parts of the world. Other important factors that helped to generate this unique pattern included the numerical and gender ratios of the different racial groups involved in social interaction during different periods and the cultural and economic pressures produced by the intertwining of economic forces and diverse religious values. This unusual social, political, and economic legacy combined to generate the myth of racial democracy in Latin America’s largest state. The consensus that Brazilian race relations were quite different from the racial hierarchies found in North America and South Africa began to break down at the end of the 20th century. As a result of the forces provoked by global movements concerned with human rights, the comfortable assumption that a society characterized by large-scale and socially approved miscegenation cannot be racist have been increasingly challenged.
What Telles has called the universalist mantra has been attacked, and policies that employ race-based affirmative action have been introduced to try to reduce Brazil’s racial inequality. The complexity of such policies, given the particular nature of Brazilian race relations, can best be seen in a comparative perspective. This is because the basis of group definition, including such fundamental issues as who is eligible for such preferential treatment, is considerably more problematic in Brazil than in societies like the United States or South Africa.
Globalization and Transnationalism Comparative perspectives on race relations have become even more crucial in recent decades as a result of such major forces as globalization, transnationalism, and the attendant new forms of racial interaction and mixture resulting from enhanced geographical mobility and the relative ease of international communications. Although such forces have been in operation for centuries—the slave trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas being one example—the sheer speed and volatility of such global networks raises new issues that can only be fully understood by a detailed analysis of the racial patterns and cultures of two, three, or even more societies. Thus, the “twice migrants” (as described by Parminder Bhachu) Sikhs, leaving India and then fleeing the turmoil of the postcolonial regimes in East Africa to live in Britain, or the “thrice migrants” of Oxfeld’s Chinese community—moving from Guangdong to Calcutta and then on to Toronto—demonstrate the continuous adjustments that one group has to make when confronted by different societies, consisting of a variety of racial and ethnic patterns, sometimes during a single lifetime. Such nomadic lifestyles have ceased to be the rare experience of a few unique groups, like Bedouins or Gypsies (the Roma people), and have become much more normal features prevalent among the highly educated, professional elites of many societies around the world who seek to enhance their careers in the global market place. Thus, the increasing geographical mobility of individuals possessing considerable amounts of human capital, combined with the more familiar mass migration of the rural poor in the developing world toward the employment opportunities in the economies of the developed world, makes comparative research a vital component of
Race, Comparative Perspectives
understanding the nature of contemporary racial and ethnic interaction.
Comparative Affirmative Action Much the same can be argued for studies that aim to assess the relevance and effectiveness of policy measures designed to address questions of racial justice or resolve situations of racial and ethnic conflict. Any attempt to appreciate the longer-run consequences of affirmative action policies can be better appreciated by contrasting the experience of a number of different societies as they implement these measures. Thus, while recognizing that each society has its own unique history and balance of group power, nonetheless, the effectiveness of such measures in one state, like the United States, can be better understood in relation to similar programs enacted in other states, such as India or Malaysia. The same is true for new efforts to employ affirmative action as a policy to promote reparations in South Africa after the end of the racial injustices of apartheid or, more recently, in response to the color bias in Brazilian society. This does not mean that such an analysis will produce any definitive answers, but it does help to generate a wider set of possible questions and more fully explore some of the implications that may flow from such a strategy of racial and ethnic engineering.
Conflict Resolution and Justice in Comparative Perspective A further illustration of the practical utility of comparative perspectives can be found with respect to the issue of racial and ethnic conflict resolution. Looking at such diverse cases as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa or the varying attempts to balance accountability and punishment after the communal massacres between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda or the sectarian violence among Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, Avruch demonstrates the cultural variability of such situations. Effective intervention exposes the need to translate measures designed to regulate and reduce destructive conflicts in a manner that relates meaningfully to the worldviews and the beliefs systems held by the various actors involved in the conflicts. The alltoo-easy assumption that the participants at the negotiating table share the same values and priorities is
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a common mistake. In practice, these can be highly variable, just as the conflicts themselves differ in their origin and dynamics, ranging from traditional patterns of ethnic and racial oppression to systematic genocidal massacres. Once again, to separate the general factors from the unique features of each particular situation demonstrates the power and necessity of the comparative imagination. These contrasting racial systems provide conclusive evidence that biological difference has little or nothing to do with racial patterns of interaction, racial hierarchies, or racial conflicts. Explanations for these variations can be found only in the interplay between other historical and social forces that help determine the rise and fall of social groups and collectivities throughout human history. John Stone and Polly Rizova See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Apartheid; Brazil; Globalization; One-Drop Rule; Race; Race, Social Construction of; Race, UNESCO Statements of; Racial Profiling; Roma; South Africa, Republic of; Transnational People; United Kingdom Further Readings
Amersfoort, Hans van. 1982. Immigration and Minority Group Formation: The Dutch Experience. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Avruch, Kevin. 1998. Culture and Conflict Resolution. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press. Bhachu, Parminder. 1985. Twice Migrants: East African Sikh Settlers in Britain. London: Tavistock. Fredrickson, George. 1997. The Comparative Imagination: On the History of Racism, Nationalism, and Social Movements. Berkeley: University of California Press. Marx, Anthony W. 1998. Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa, and Brazil. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Oxfeld, Ellen. 1993. Blood, Sweat, and Mahjong: Family and Enterprise in an Overseas Chinese Community. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Sowell, Thomas. 2004. Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Stone, John and Rutledge Dennis, eds. 2003. Race and Ethnicity: Comparative and Theoretical Approaches. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Telles, Edward. 2004. Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Race, Social Construction of
RACE, DECLINING SIGNIFICANCE
OF
See DECLINING SIGNIFICANCE OF RACE, THE
RACE, SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
OF
The social construction of race refers to the establishment by society of distinct groupings of people who have generally similar physical or other characteristics. Following contemporary thought, race is seen as being socially constructed as humans use symbols to create meaning from their social environment. In this view, race is not an intrinsic part of a human being or the environment, but an identity created using symbols to establish meaning in a culture or society. This entry discusses the development of racial groupings, how race is constructed differently in different nations, and intrarace variations.
Development of Racial Groupings Although race is partially characterized by physical similarities such as skin color, facial features, or hair texture, contemporary scholars hold that human beings create categories of race based on physical characteristics rather than that the physical characteristics have intrinsic biological meaning. In addition to the social construction of the meaning of race, humans also construct the racial groupings. Frequently, these racial categories emerge from historical processes and often gain legitimacy in society though political action. The formation or reformation of racial categories is accomplished by dominant racial groupings exerting power over minority or subordinate racial groupings. For example, the U.S. Constitution required an enumeration or census, which fostered the development of racial classifications. By 1890, these racial classifications, formed largely by White men, included “Black,” “mulatto,” “quadroon,” and “octoroon” to describe the amount of known African ancestry of African Americans. The 1890 racial classification is indicative of the “one-drop rule” whereby any African ancestry constituted exclusion from the dominant White racial grouping into a subordinate racial grouping; hierarchy among races is a common theme throughout the history of race.
In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that it was lawful to provide “separate but equal” facilities for Blacks and for Whites. As such, the U.S. Census Bureau collapsed the more “objective” racial categories of “mulatto,” “quadroon,” and “octoroon” into “Black.” If race had been an inherently biological construction used for the classification of a group of individuals within a species, as many scientists of the period contended, the emergence and decline of the “quadroon” and “octoroon” races might have drawn considerable scientific interest. The historical record indicates that cultural and legal factors significantly contributed to the social formation of racial groupings; there was little public discussion in the reclassification of individuals and races, a trend that continues.
Constructing Race in Different Nations There is considerable variation in how different nations construe race. For example, in many parts of Latin America, racial groupings are based less on the biological physical features and more on an intersection between physical features and social features such as economic class, dress, education, and context. Thus, a more fluid treatment allows for the construction of race as an achieved status rather than an ascribed status as is the case in the United States. The variation of racial groupings between nations is at least partially explained by an unstable coupling between historical patterns of colonization and miscegenation. First, divergent patterns of colonization may account for differences in the construction of racial groupings, as evidenced in Latin America, which was colonized primarily by the Spanish. The Spanish colonials had a longer history of tolerance of non-White racial groupings through their interactions with the Moors and North African social groups, as well as a different understanding of the rights of colonized subjects and a different pattern of economic development. In the United States, which was colonized primarily by the English, there was less interaction with nonWhite racial groupings, an assumption that colonized subjects were considered property rather than subjects, and a heavy reliance on African slaves for economic development. Second, the social acceptability of miscegenation may have influenced the construction of racial groupings. In Brazil, with the possible exception of elites, miscegenation is a long accepted practice, whereas in
Race, Social Construction of
the United States miscegenation was strictly prohibited and criminalized until as late as 1967. Despite these divergent constructions of race, it appears that throughout history and the world, almost every racial system has Whites or light-skinned persons as the dominant group.
Intra-Race Variation The power to establish racial groupings has led to the realization that often there is as much variation within a race as there is between races. For example, in the United States, Asians rarely construct themselves as being a single coherent racial grouping. In many respects, there is more diversity within the Asian “race” than there is between members of any other racial grouping; Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and other ethnic groups have fostered their own culture, traditions, and practices for thousands of years in Asia. Often these cultures were pluralistic and interacted with one another, but on occasion, they were in conflict with one another. Similarly, the Native American “race” is less a product of a coherent historical identity than the independent development of hundreds of small nations, which also fostered their own unique traditions and beliefs across a few thousand years before any racial construction. Thus, contemporary scholars think of races and racial groupings as fluid and dynamic across time and space. Scholars conceptualize race as a series of racial projects, which are ongoing interpretations, representations, and explanations of racial dynamics by society in an effort to reorganize or redistribute resources along particular racial lines. When race is viewed as racial projects, it becomes clear that race is not simply a construct without social meaning but, rather, represents significant barriers or privilege to members throughout a society. For example, in the United States, African Americans are less likely to have access to equitable education, transportation, economic opportunity, health care, or political and legal recourse than are Whites. The persistence of race as a social construction remains a significant source of stratification for people in the United States and throughout the world. As such, understanding of race and how race is socially constructed remains an important line of social scientific inquiry for a variety of reasons. First, exploring the social construction of race allows for the
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understanding of social, historical, and political processes that explain a great deal of the current levels of stratification and inequality within society. Second, exploring the social construction of race provides researchers with an understanding of how power and privilege are established, maintained, and preserved throughout society by dominant racial groupings. Often, this privilege is not manifest, especially for members of the dominant racial grouping. For example, in the United States when Whites are asked to speak about being White, they often have difficulty in expressing their experiences and rarely mention any negative aspects of whiteness. Third, exploring race offers the potential to understand what can be done to ameliorate barriers produced by persistent racial disparities of subordinate racial groupings. In the United States, many minority or subordinate racial groupings, in contrast with Whites, have little difficulty in discussing their experience with barriers associated with racial identity or social grouping. Finally, studying the social construction of race forces society to acknowledge that race continues to serve as a stratifying force throughout society. Thus, by studying race, individuals and society are confronted with the realization that inequality is established and maintained through social processes and that it is folly to believe that one “does not see race” or lives in a “color-blind society.” John Barnshaw See also Brazil; Census, U.S.; Color Blindness; Deviance and Race; Labeling; One-Drop Rule; Plessy v. Ferguson; Privilege; Race; Racial Formation; Racial Identity; Racial Identity Development; Whiteness; White Privilege
Further Readings
Denton, Nancy A. and Douglas S. Massey. 1989. “Racial Identity Among Caribbean Hispanics: The Effect of Double Minority Status on Residential Segregation.” American Sociological Review 54:790–808. Feagin, Joe, Hernán Vera, and Pinar Batur. 2001. White Racism: The Basics. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Rodriguez, Clara and Hector Cordero-Guzman. 1999. “Placing Race in Context.” Pp. 57–63 in Rethinking the Color Line: Readings in Race and Ethnicity, edited by C. A. Gallagher. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
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Telles, Edward. 2004. Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. U.S. Supreme Court. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967). U.S. Supreme Court. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Winant, Howard. 2001. The World Is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy since World War II. New York: Basic Books.
RACE, UNESCO STATEMENTS
ON
Four statements of expert opinion about race were sponsored and published by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) between 1950 and 1967. Widely distributed, they were regarded as authoritative rebuttals of outdated theories. The four statements bore on one of UNESCO’s central concerns, because its constitution, dating from 1945, had declared, “The great and terrible war which now has ended was made possible by the denial of the democratic principles of the dignity, equality and mutual respect of men, and by the propagation, in their place, through ignorance and prejudice, of the doctrine of the inequality of men and races.” This entry summarizes the UNESCO statements.
Scientific Facts The UN’s Economic and Social Council asked UNESCO in 1951 to develop effective educational programs in the fields of prevention of discrimination and protection of minorities and to undertake “a programme of disseminating scientific facts designed to remove what is commonly known as racial prejudice.” UNESCO had already started work on this by assembling an international committee of experts, representing both the biological and the social sciences. The committee had prepared a fifteen-paragraph “Statement on Race” that was published in 1950. Among other things, it stated, “A race, from the biological standpoint, may therefore be defined as one of the group of populations constituting the species Homo sapiens.” It went on to explain, “When most people use the term ‘race’ they do not do so in the sense above defined” so that “the biological fact of race and the myth of ‘race’ should be distinguished” and that “it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term ‘race’ altogether and speak of ethnic groups.”
According to present knowledge there is no proof that the groups of mankind differ in their innate mental characteristics . . . biological studies lend support to the ethic of universal brotherhood; for man is born with drives towards co-operation, and unless those drives are satisfied, men and nations alike fall ill.
The statement was primarily concerned with the use of race in the sense of species, but in referring to “the biological fact of race,” it touched on the use of the word to signify inheritance. Because of last-minute withdrawals, biological science was not adequately represented in the committee. Many biologists, though not rejecting the statement’s general spirit or its main conclusions, believed that it went beyond the scientific facts (e.g., in the reference to “drives towards co-operation”) and that it confused the biological and social uses of the word race. To clear up any possible misunderstanding, UNESCO assembled another group, this time including physical anthropologists and geneticists who had expressed disagreement with the first statement. This group drew up the 1951 Statement on the Nature of Race and Race Differences. UNESCO considered it important to avoid any suggestion that it was issuing an authoritative manifesto as the last word on the race question, so it sent out the draft to a further ninety-six scientists. In a booklet titled The Race Concept, UNESCO then published the statement, a selection of observations and comments, three alternative suggested statements, and a reformulation of the 1951 statement prepared by L. C. Dunn of Columbia University, the rapporteur of the 1951 meeting. The 1951 statement declared, “The concept of race is unanimously regarded by anthropologists as a classificatory device providing a zoological frame within which the various groups of mankind may be arranged and by means of which studies of evolutionary processes can be facilitated.” The new statement summarized the factors influencing hereditary differences among populations, stating, “Existing races are merely the result, considered at a particular moment in time, of the total effect of such processes on the human species”; there were “processes of race formation and race extinction.” The statement outlined the problem of deciding on which characteristics a classification should be based and emphasized that “equality of opportunity and equality in law in no way depend, as ethical principles, upon the assertion that human beings are in fact equal in endowment.”
Race, UNESCO Statements on
Dunn’s reformulation began by acknowledging that in common usage the word race had so many meanings that confusion resulted. He addressed one prime confusion by writing “Race is determined by biological heredity, by descent from particular parents and, thus, cannot be properly be used to describe groups whose association is political (national), religious, or due to a community of language, or to other cultural or social factors, since these are not biologically inherited.” The author went on to imply that some of the difficulty in agreeing on a statement arose because geneticists thought of race as heredity, whereas anthropologists were concerned with race, if not as species, then as a class resembling a species. Dunn wrote, For those most closely concerned with the races of man, the physical anthropologists, races are categories required for the classification of the varieties of mankind, and for arranging them in an order which may reveal their relationship and descent. . . . For students of heredity, geneticists, race has a double significance: first for classifying groups of men according to their hereditary characters and, second, as a stage in the process by which populations become different from each other and adapted or fitted to the different environments in which they live.
The 1950 statement was inspired by a political intervention within the United Nations of an unprecedented kind, and its text attracted widespread attention. UNESCO sought to maintain the momentum by sponsoring a third statement, “Proposals on the Biological Aspects of Race” in 1964. This, more clearly than its predecessor, broke with the raceas-species conception by stating that smaller units, groups of populations or single populations within major stocks, could be called races. The statement declared that the human capacity for intellectual development depended on genes that had a universal biological value for the survival of the whole species, irrespective of environment, and that human evolution, over many thousands of years, appeared to have been based on the transmission of cultural achievements rather than on genetic endowment. The proposals concluded, “The biological data given above stand in open contradiction to the tenets of racism. Racist theories can in no way pretend to have any scientific foundation . . . ,” but it offered no criteria for deciding whether a theory was racist.
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Social, Ethical, and Philosophical Aspects The 1950 statement appeared to assume that once the erroneous nature of racist doctrines had been exposed, the structure of racial prejudice and discrimination would collapse. The eminent scholars who composed the document did not consider explicitly the other sources of racial hostility. Because of the circumstances of the time, the group was primarily concerned with the equal potential of different racial groups and did not refer to the social consequences of contact between groups. Therefore, in 1967, a fourth panel of experts— including sociologists, lawyers, a social psychologist, an ethnographer, a historian, and two geneticists—was asked to prepare a statement “covering the social, ethical and philosophical aspects of the problem.” They had one week for what some would consider an impossible task. Is there one single, distinctive problem, or are there many problems? Any person’s view of the three aspects must be saturated with political preconceptions that cannot always be reconciled, so was this not a task for a political body rather than a panel of experts? Social scientists, and sociologists especially, were then, as now, deeply divided on the question of whether they should cultivate a detachment from political issues. Some believe that, if they are to make a distinctive contribution, they must limit themselves to what can be established as factually undeniable. Others believe that they have special insights into the overcoming of conflicts and that they should seek, through political involvement, to apply them. Sometimes they claim that it is better to follow the model of the medical scientist and to regard certain features (like racism) as diseases that have to be fought. To have followed the course of detachment would have entailed grappling with issues that a heterogeneous panel could not resolve in a week. The committee accepted the assumption that there was a single problem and preferred the course of engagement to that of detachment. Their statement comprises a diagnosis, a warning, and a series of recommendations. It differs from its three predecessors in starting from a description of the political threat of “racism, namely, antisocial beliefs and acts which are based upon the fallacy that discriminatory intergroup relations are justifiable on biological grounds,” and declares “Racism continues to haunt the world”; it “stultifies the development of those who suffer from it”; “it
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seeks to make existing differences appear inviolable”; it “finds ever new stratagems for justifying the inequality of groups”; and so on. In 1978, the General Conference of UNESCO, a political body consisting of representatives of all member states, adopted by acclamation a Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice. This considered the four earlier statements on the race question issued by UNESCO and went on to note, “racism, racial discrimination, colonialism and apartheid continue to afflict the world in ever-changing forms.” In Article 1, the declaration proclaimed All human beings belong to a single species. All individuals and groups have the right to be different, to be considered as different, and to be regarded as such. The differences between the achievements of the different peoples are entirely attributable to geographical, historical, political, economic, social and cultural factors.
Article 2 stated that there was no scientific foundation for theories of racial or ethnic superiority; it listed components of racism and declared that racial prejudice was without justification. Further articles covered the incompatibility of discrimination with an international order guaranteeing respect for human rights, apartheid as a crime against humanity, the responsibility of educational and mass media institutions to combat racism, legislation, the encouragement of natural and social scientists to undertake objective research, the restructuring of the international economy, and the contribution of international organizations. Michael Banton See also Apartheid; Minority Rights; Race; Race, Social Construction of; Racism
Further Readings
Banton, Michael. 2002. The International Politics of Race. Oxford, UK: Polity Press. UNESCO. 1952. The Race Concept. Paris, France: Author. Also available from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/ 0007/000733/073351eo.pdf UNESCO. 1969. Four Statements on the Race Question. Paris, France: Author. Also available from http://unesdoc .unesco.org/images/0012/001229/122962eo.pdf UNESCO. 1978. Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice. Retrived from http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/ d_prejud.htm
RACETALK Racetalk consists of the shared vocabularies and conceptual frameworks used to denigrate different racial and ethnic groups in everyday life. Although the open expression of overtly negative racist attitudes, stereotypes, and derogatory ethnic labels was once more socially acceptable in media outlets and in everyday conversation, some argue that newer forms of racial discourse exist in the contemporary post–civil rights era. Indeed, some argue that Whites’ racist speech has not diminished but merely transformed toward a more private, codified, and sophisticated way of speaking derogatorily about racial and ethnic groups in nonracist—even nonracial ways. This entry focuses on how racetalk has been conceptualized recently in the academic literature on racial discourse, particularly as a feature of the color-blind, post–civil rights era.
Historical Background Historical examinations of the slave trade, plantation life, and “expansion” into the West reveal that Whites had no qualms about their use of derogatory language and ethnic labels—Black Americans were property, not humans; American Indians were red-devils and so forth. Hence, there were no reasons for concern about their usage or effects. Opprobrious words such as the term “nigger” entered the U.S. lexicon in the late 1700s, only to be later joined by “wop,” “kike,” “chink,” and “spic.” Today their open use is seen as immoral. The Civil Rights Movement marked a new era of racial discourse—one in which saying racist things or even hinting at racist talk is dimly viewed. Indeed, there has been a dramatic climate change since the Jim Crow era. Survey research during the past several decades indicates that White Americans may be becoming more liberal on their views on race— the rates of those who publicly profess adherence to the most denigrating racial stereotypes are on the decline. However, these survey data have been criticized for systematically underestimating prejudice among White Americans today. Given social pressures toward so-called political correctness, several authors argue that survey data reflect Whites’ reluctance to openly express racist sentiment to researchers. More implicit psychological measures of racial attitudes do reveal that racial prejudice is alive and well among White Americans. Several scholars illustrate that the most offensive racetalk has moved
Racetalk
underground—into “backstage” areas to be shared only among family, friends, and others with similar racialized worldviews.
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The transformation of racetalk is characterized by what some scholars called modern racism— anti-Black attitudes disguised with an abating acceptance of negatively expressed attitudes. Egalitarian self-presentational styles or public “frontstage” appearances conceal more racist or stereotypical notions about racial relations or groups of color, which are expressed in private or “backstage” settings among White Americans, according to this view. Studies that have gained access to Whites’ everyday private settings demonstrate how racetalk operates today. Whites’ casual discourse reveals that racist speech and sentiment—for many Whites—has moved out of sight. Although most Whites would never say racial epithets among strangers or people of color, among all-White circles of friends and family, they are more common. One study noted a college student who heard the term “nigger” twenty-seven times in one day among friends and family. These ethnographic and participant observation studies have shown that racial jokes, stereotypes, and disparaging beliefs are still common in Whites’ everyday conversation. However, this racetalk is downplayed as harmless joking. Racetalk helps to maintain the racial hierarchy as groups of color continue to be targets of prejudice and discrimination through everyday speech.
“to be blackmailed,” “to blackball someone,” or “to tell a black lie.” Contrast these phrases with those that use white: “to be a white knight,” “to be the white hope,” “to tell a little white lie,” or “that’s mighty white of you” in appreciation or admiration. More directly, phrases such as “to be an Indian-giver” highlight an anti-Black ideology, one that disparages other groups of color in not-so-subtle ways through everyday language. Some argue that terms and phrases such as these have snuck into the English language, and the racial implications often go undetected by both users and listeners. Another example of codified racetalk includes a language that allows speakers to implicitly refer to blackness or otherness without having to make explicit reference to racial or ethnic minority groups. Several scholars discuss terms that invoke a detrimental image of certain groups of color while evading any charges of possible racism. One example, attributed to many Whites, is the use of words such as ghetto, criminal, drug dealers, the poor, welfare recipients, or the economically disadvantaged to publicly talk about race without explicitly invoking race or groups of color at all. Other scholars point to contemporary immigration debates in the United States, which refer to illegal aliens, illegal immigrants, or undocumented workers without directly addressing those whom most have in mind: persons of Mexican origin. Finally, some have noted that since September 11, 2001, the term terrorist has come to symbolize persons of Arab or Middle Eastern descent.
Racetalk as Codified Discourse
Racetalk as Color-Blind Discourse
In more public discourse, racetalk has come to be understood as a codified language. In this sense, racetalk can be understood as a collection of words that negatively connote blackness or words that are intentionally used to veil references to groups of color. Anti-Black language is deeply imbedded throughout the English language; as such, it often goes unnoted in everyday speech. For example, the words black and white in English dictionaries have vastly different meanings that reinforce anti-Black ideology, despite not being racial in origin. In addition to being a color, black also means being dirty, soiled, grim, or wicked. White, in addition to being a color, means to be innocent, free of blemish, and marked by upright fairness. Indeed, these differences in meaning become more obvious in everyday phrases such as “to be blacklisted,”
In understanding contemporary racetalk, several scholars have paid attention to the strategic forms of racial discourse used by Whites today. Early work in this area indicated that dominant racial group members in both Europe and the United States would place themselves in the role of victims of “threatening” out-groups—welfare cheats, criminals, or immigrants— within the racial hierarchy when discussing matters of race. In doing so, scholars found that Whites would present themselves in a positive light—communicating racial tolerance while conveying problematic views on race and groups of color to justify their prejudicial views and discrimination. Today, this style of racetalk has become known as the language of color blindness. In simple terms, this language allows Whites to “talk nasty” about Blacks without appearing racist.
Racetalk as Private Discourse
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By understanding racetalk as a tool of color-blind racism, researchers highlight the rhetorical techniques used by Whites to deny being racist while saying things that are just that. Given that it is rare for interview respondents to use racial epithets or express derogatory ethnic labels or sentiments to researchers, this body of research has worked to unveil the strategically enacted discourse forms employed by Whites when talking about race matters in the post–civil rights era. This work has unveiled various forms of contemporary styles of racetalk (e.g., racial incoherence, color blindness) in addition to understanding the racial stories recycled by Whites that place them in the victim role within the racial hierarchy. For example, when some Whites are asked to discuss topics such as affirmative action or interracial marriage, their hedging, pausing, and stuttering borders on racial incoherence. However, others are much clearer in their assertions about racial groups yet qualify their statements and position themselves as clearly nonracist. For example, some Whites will say “I’m not a racist, but . . .” before inserting harsh criticism of a certain racial group. This work reveals that Whites’ racial stories have increasingly involved charges of “reverse discrimination.” Casting Whites as victims, these stories often involve distant family members or friends who have allegedly lost the opportunity for job placement as a result of affirmative action hiring practices. These examinations of the racial frames, styles of racetalk, racial stories, and the all-White habitus in which they almost always occur, reveal many White Americans’ sophisticated ability to discuss racial matters in ways that avoid sounding racist in the colorblind, post–civil rights era.
help bolster an ideology that is central to the preservation of White privilege and supremacy in the United States. Understanding racetalk requires that scholars pay attention to the effects of racetalk on targets of prejudice and discrimination and on those who use racetalk in their everyday speech and language. Danielle Dirks See also Color Blindness; Intercultural Communication; Intergroup Relations, Surveying; Popular Culture, Racism and; Racism; Whiteness; White Privilege; White Racism Further Readings
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2003. Racism without Racists: ColorBlind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Dirks, Danielle and Stephen K. Rice. 2004. “Dining While Black: Racial Rituals and the Black American Restaurant Experience.” Pp. 255–277 in Race and Ethnicity: Across Time, Space, and Discipline, edited by R. D. Coates. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Feagin, Joe R. 2000. Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations. New York: Routledge. Morrison, Toni. 1992, December 2. “On the Back of Blacks.” Time Magazine, p. 57. Myers, Kristen. 2005. Racetalk: Racism Hiding in Plain Sight. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Picca, Leslie Houts and Joe R. Feagin. 2007. Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage. New York: Routledge. Van Dijk, Teun. 1987. Communicating Racism: Ethnic Prejudice in Cognition and Conversation. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Conclusion A long-standing area of research views language as a tool of elites in maintaining dominance within the social hierarchy. In this framework, racetalk can be understood as reproducing the racial hierarchy that keeps White Americans supreme while oppressing groups of color in the United States. The ideology of color blindness that reigns in the post–civil rights era, from this perspective, has only pushed the most degrading forms of racetalk into more private settings. Public racetalk, however, has shifted in its ability to allow dominant group members to speak about racial matters in ways that allow the maintenance of a nonracist selfpresentational style. These forms of racetalk, although they appear as jokes and other innocuous forms, may
RACIAL FORMATION In the United States, race and racial categories have long been at the focus of numerous social, academic, and political debates. Historically, race was studied through the paradigm of biology; physiological differences (color, hair, and bone) were the basis for racial categorization. This biological grounding of racial difference gave way to three new conceptualizations of racial difference in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one based on the concept of ethnicity, the second on class, and the third on the concept of nation. During the 1970s and 1980s, issues of class, country, and multiculturalism became highly contested terrains.
Racial Formation
In response to these socio-politico-economic trends, Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s argued that all of these trends reduced race to ethnicity, class, or nation. These reductionstic models became proxies for race, but race as an analytically distinct category was ignored, according to Omi and Winant. Against these dominant models, Omi and Winant put forth their theory of racial formation: that race was not a by-product of some other category but, rather, a sociohistorical process, both structural and representative, by which racial categories are formed, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed. By recognizing the racial dimension to social structures (macrolevel) and the meanings that racial groups (microlevel) take on within those structures, Omi and Winant offer a theory of race as a point of struggle and contestation analytically distinct and irreducible to ethnicity, class, and nation. The authors consider race as a social construct, unstable and constantly transforming because of historical pressure and political struggle. Understanding true dynamics and ramification of race is particularly important in the United States where the concept has varied greatly over time without ever leaving the center stage. This entry looks at previous theories of race and discusses the creation of racial formation theory.
Critique of Prevailing Theories Omi and Winant review and analyze three perspectives on race relations within the United States: ethnicity theory, class-based theory, and nation-based theory. They argue that all three of these theoretical approaches depend on one another to capture the nuances of racial dynamics and fail to emphasize the autonomous nature of race within social, political, and cultural spheres. Eth hniccitty Theory y
Starting out as a means to destabilize the prevalent biologically based racial arguments made at the beginning of the 20th century, the theory of ethnicity suggested that race was a social category. Ethnicity was determined by an individual’s culture and heritage and was used to categorize people into various ethnic groups. Beginning as a challenge to the status quo of racial theory, ethnicity theory came to represent the commonsense perspective on race within the U.S. cultural and social context.
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By the 1960s and 1970s, ethnicity theory symbolized the conservative model that measured all ethnic groups in relation to White ethnic groups, that is, Irish, Germans, Jews, and Poles. Omi and Winant argue that this conflation neglects the significance of race in shaping ethnic minorities’ experiences of racist institutions and social structures. When a given minority fails to climb the social mobility ladder, Omi and Winant said, people look to the values of the ethnic minority group for an explanation rather than giving more scrutiny to the unequal and racist organizing institutional structures: government, education system, and the labor force. Classs-B Based d Theory
Principally explaining racial differences via their relation to economic processes, class-based theory, as Omi and Winant discuss it, is broken into three approaches: market relations approach, stratification theory, and class conflict theory. The market relations approach assumes that if there were no interference with the economic market, racial discrimination would not exist. When the market becomes unstable because of the irrationality of prejudice, however, exclusive practices that favor specific networks of people or the state’s interference produce racial differences. Stratification theory places more emphasis on the unequal distribution of economic and noneconomic resources. In this theoretical approach, political dynamics play a more central role in explaining the lack of social mobility that racial minority groups experience. Class conflict theory is rooted in the Marxist tradition and posits that racial groups are nestled within dominant and crucial existing class relations, and racial discrimination is an outcome of the overarching goal of maximizing profits, expressed, for example, in the White laborer’s efforts to minimize the competition from underpaid minority workers. Omi and Winant criticized all three of these classbased theoretical approaches for failing to account for race as not merely an outcome from economic exchanges, processes, or markets but, rather, as a determining force in economic and class relationships. Nattion n-B Based Theo ory y
Finally, nation-based theory is primarily concerned with exploring colonialism as the producing force for modern racial dynamics in the United States. PanAfricanism, Black Nationalism (or cultural nationalism),
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the nation within a Marxist paradigm, and internal colonialism are all tenets Omi and Winant identify within this perspective. They analyze this general approach for its failure to connect the internally colonized racial nations that exist within the United States. Of the three theoretical approaches to racial theory, however, Omi and Winant regard the nation-based theory as being the most helpful in establishing the micro- and macro-interrelation of race and racial categories that informs their own theory of racial formation.
Omi and Winant’s Theory In the theory of racial formation, race is treated as an organizing principle or a classification for grouping individuals. At the microlevel, race forms identity through meanings and awareness of personal practices. At the macrolevel, race represents collective action across individuals who share economical, political, cultural, or ideological commonalities. Through this process, racial categories are created, altered, destroyed, and transformed. In everyday life, these two levels are constantly intertwined, affect each other, and form social movements. Racial discrimination, for example, may occur at the macrolevel, where institutional practices deny access of subordinate groups or people, but the consequences are at the microlevel, where the experiences and identities are affected. According to this theory, such interactions are supported by the racial state, the institution of government that created laws, court decisions, and policies to determine the course of racial relations. Although the racial state can be seen as a good mediator between conflicting interests, it also controls those in a subordinate position through measures in education, law enforcement, and public and economic policies. Historically, the category of “Black” was derived from consolidating African identities related to slavery. As a result, a color line was established and maintained where being White was formed for such initial terms as Christian, English, and free. This category of White was challenged in the 19th century when nonAnglo-Saxon immigrants started arriving in large numbers. The Irish and Jews were among the “nonWhites” who met resistance until they were allowed to assimilate after the Civil War. For these non-Whites, class struggles against other racial minorities were the way to validate their sense of belonging with Whites. Omi and Winant provide an example of the Irish in California, who actively engaged in anti-Chinese assaults when organizing unions.
Once the racial state establishes racial hegemony— the dominance of one group over other groups typically through laws—a popular movement is built to oppose those laws, Omi and Winant thought. If the movement gains support, then the state reacts by absorbing, slighting, or inhibiting the movement. The state’s response, through the aforementioned patterns of conflict or accommodation, leads to a compromise and reshaping of the racial hegemony to appease the movement. This process of reshaping racial hegemony results in racial formation. Omi and Winant suggest that the most prominent example of racial formation is the Civil Rights Movement. The nonviolent protest against racial hegemony by the Black community grew large enough to gain massive mobilization across the country, and the racial state responded with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which gave legal recognition to demands made by the movement (racial formation). Some have argued, however, that such re-articulation occurred without making any substantial changes in the actual conditions of racial minorities. By the 1970s, Omi and Winant note that division along economic and political lines and the vast amount of diversity brought on after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 weakened the strength of the movement, and a unified representation for racial minorities in politics disappeared. Such a symbolic response led to so-called color-blind policies during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, when race was once again reduced to epiphenomenal status. In the early 1980s, the state of Louisiana successfully upheld a state law prescribing that anyone with at least one-thirty-second “Negro blood” is Black by pointing out that racial classification is necessary. This decision prevented Susie Guillory Phipps from changing her racial classification of Black on her birth certificate to White. This case shows how the racial state establishes racial hegemony and then screens individuals based on predefined criteria. Assuming that race is neither biological nor an illusion, racial formation provides the means to understand a process that creates and manipulates sociohistorical designations of race. Race does not simply organize individuals into groups, but it is interpreted, represented, and explained under various contexts, and these activities lead to the ways in which resources are reorganized and redistributed. Kiljoong Kim and Casey Oberlin
Racial Identity
See also Black Nationalism; Color Line; Declining Significance of Race, The; Irish Americans; Marxism and Racism; Race; Race, Social Construction of; Racial Identity; Racial Identity Development
Further Readings
Alba, Richard and Victor Nee. 2003. Remaking the American Mainstream. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Almaguer, Tomas. 1994. Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo and Karen S. Glover. 2004. “‘We are All Americans’: The Latin Americanization of Race Relations in the U.S.” Pp. 149–183 in The Changing Terrain of Race and Ethnicity, edited by M. Krysan and A. E. Lewis. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Cornell, Stephen. 1988. The Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence. New York: Oxford University Press. Gans, Herbert. 1979. “Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 2:1–20. Lamont, Michele. 2000. The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McKee, James B. 1993. Sociology and the Race Problem: The Failure of a Perspective. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. 1965. The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of Labor (Office of Policy Planning and Research). Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Roediger, David. 1991. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. New York: Verso. Waters, Mary C. 1990. Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wilson, William J. 1979. The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
RACIAL IDENTITY The term racial identity is often conflated and used interchangeably with race itself, but it is actually a more distinctive concept. Racial identity is the set of meanings and the overall salience that an individual
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places on self-identification with a particular racial group (reference group orientation), or that is ascribed to the individual on the basis of particular racial group membership (social identity). The study of racial identity provides a unique and nuanced viewpoint on race, focusing not on racial groups per se but, rather, on various understandings that individuals have of their racial group membership and on the processes by which these understandings develop. This entry reviews the thinking in this area, which focuses primarily on Black and White American racial identity.
Fundamental Concepts Although most perspectives on race and ethnicity derive from sociology, anthropology, or history, racial identity, when considered fundamentally, is rooted in psychology: Theories of racial identity derive from social, developmental, and clinical psychology. However, proper consideration of racial identity requires understanding various conceptual and disciplinary perspectives. Racial groups themselves are products of social, historical, and political context, varying in their scope and definition by time and space across the world. Consequently, the meanings that individuals place on racial group identification also vary with context. Some general trends are apparent: For example, racial identity is often more immediately salient for minority group members within a society. Nevertheless, the general, unifying themes in racial identity derive from psychosocial theories of identity development; the application of these theories to racial group membership requires greater specificity and differentiation. It is also necessary to clarify the application of terms such as race and ethnicity, which have different meanings but are sometimes used interchangeably. As generally understood, the term race refers to categories derived from perceptions and social meanings related to observable physical characteristics. Ethnicity, on the other hand, corresponds to categorization based on cultural background and characteristics. Sometimes it is useful to distinguish between these two: for example, within U.S. society, African Americans and AfroCaribbean immigrants may be classified within the same racial group but have different understandings of their ethnic backgrounds. Often, however, individuals define and understand their racial and ethnic identities in concert; thus, at times, it is also useful to combine the two. Whether racial and ethnic identity should be treated together or separately depends on the groups
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and issues being considered and on the particular social and historical context. A thorough and nuanced analysis will invariably necessitate transitioning between these two modes.
of one’s identity; during this stage, many small or large identity crises are encountered. Finally, achievement denotes the growth and understanding that occur through exploration.
The Development of Identity Theories
The Nigrescence Model
Psychological theories of self and identity, generally considered, are a key starting point in understanding racial identity. In his 19th-century work on the self, Harvard psychologist William James introduced the distinction between the private self, which he described as the “I”—the inner, reflective part of one’s psyche—and the public self, which he called the “me”—the social roles that one plays in society. The renowned African American scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, was a student of James at Harvard and drew on these ideas with his notion of “doubleconsciousness”—the profound sense of ambivalence that Black Americans feel with respect to their experiences and history in the United States. Du Bois described double-consciousness most famously in his classic work, The Souls of Black Folk, and this, along with his later writings, was an important precursor to theories of racial identity and of race more generally. Erik Erikson’s work built on the ideas of James and others: Erikson’s epigenetic model of development allowed identity formation to be understood across the life span. Racial identity, like other psychological traits, is not static, he thought; individuals’ understanding of their racial group membership changes over time, through the new experiences they encounter and through historical events such as the Civil Rights Movement or the Black Power Movement. Erikson’s notion of “identity crisis” captures the difficulty of such transitions. During a “crisis,” individuals may be disillusioned about the meaning of their group membership and consequently may experience psychological distress. However, an identity crisis is not altogether a negative event; person growth occurs by resolving the crisis and developing a new understanding of self. James Marcia built upon Erikson’s theory by delineating four stages or statuses of identity formation: diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement. Diffusion denotes the period before identity crises are encountered, usually during an individual’s childhood and early adolescence. If foreclosure occurs, the individual makes a particular identity commitment without any exploration or crisis. Conversely, moratorium involves exploration
In the late 1960s, against this theoretical backdrop, William E. Cross developed the Nigrescence model of Black racial identity, the pioneering theory in this field. Cross’s work was a reaction to theories of Black self-hatred, which dominated mainstream thought on the psychology of African Americans. Influenced by both Black Nationalism and the Black Power Movement and incorporating the ideas discussed earlier, the original Nigrescence model described four stages of racial identity for African Americans: preencounter, encounter, immersion-emersion, and internalization. During the first stage, pre-encounter, Black individuals hold a White, Eurocentric frame of reference: They consciously or unconsciously espouse proWhite and anti-Black attitudes. This occurs because the normative biases of U.S. society favor whiteness and devalue blackness. During the pre-encounter phase, there is an implicit desire to assimilate into the mainstream White American society. However, Black individuals eventually encounter an event or series of events by which they recognize that such assimilation is not fully possible: Blackness is an immutable feature with negative meanings in this society. This realization is the encounter phase, which is a “crisis” in the Eriksonian sense. The encounter phase can be distressing, but also forces the individual to confront his or her racial identity in a more meaningful way. The third phase, immersion-emersion represents this confrontation. Here, individuals become more immersed in their blackness, by showing greater awareness of racism and renewed, more focused interest in Black cultural practices (which themselves vary across time and space), and a greater desire to associate, perhaps exclusively, with Black people. AntiWhite attitudes are also common during this phase, which involves an exploration of racial identity consistent with Marcia’s notion of moratorium. Finally, internalization occurs when individuals achieve a secure Black identity, integrated with a pluralistic appreciation of others. African Americans are now the primary reference group, but the individual does not espouse anti-White attitudes. The Nigrescence framework has been modified since its initial development, incorporating more
Racial Identity
dynamic and recursive views of racial identity. For example, individuals can recycle through stages, and they need not begin in the pre-encounter stage because pro-Black attitudes can be taught during childhood. In later Nigrescence models, Cross and others added a fifth stage, known as “internalization-commitment,” to denote a more stable internalization phase that occurs after recycling. Other researchers have developed slightly different models of Black racial identity.
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Marcia’s framework specifically to ethnic identity exploration and commitment, is the most well-known model to date to apply to these groups. Phinney’s Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) is a psychological survey instrument designed to examine ethnic identity development across diverse groups. However, as U.S. society continues to diversify, the changing and complex nature of racial and ethnic identity will require continued elaboration and research. Vinay Harpalani
Other Racial Identities Another major trend in racial identity theory has been the study of White racial identity. Although White individuals tend not to think about race or to place as much salience on racial identity as African Americans, White racial identity is also central to understanding the psychology of race and ethnicity. The most notable work in this area has been conducted by Janet Helms. Her model of White racial identity development includes six ego statuses, organized in two phases. Abandonment of racism, the first phase, includes three statuses. During contact, the first status, the individual tacitly accepts White dominance. With disintegration, White individuals realize their dominant status in society, which creates a period of dissonance—a “crisis” in the Eriksonian sense. This is followed by reintegration, during which White people acknowledge their dominant status and the privileges that go along with it. The second phase of Helms’s model, known as defining a nonracist White identity, begins with the pseudo-independent status. Here, White individuals start questioning White dominance and have a strong desire to change or help African Americans and other people of color. Subsequently, in the immersion/emersion status (not to be confused with the same status in the Nigrescence framework), the focus shifts to changing the attitudes of White people rather than of African Americans. Finally, with the autonomy status, White individuals achieve a more stable, positive racial identity that is not rooted in privilege. Other models of White racial identity have been proposed, all of which require further study. Indeed, it is questionable how many people actually reach the later statuses in Helms’s model. Racial identity models for other groups, such as Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans, are not as well developed. Each of these groups has a unique history, and the substantial within-group diversity must also be considered. Jean Phinney’s general model of ethnic identity development, which applies
See also Afrocentricity; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Blood Quantum; Double Consciousness; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Hafu; Identity Politics; Multiracial Identity; Race; Racial Identity Development; Racialization; Whiteness
Further Readings
Cross, William E. 1991. Shades of Black: Diversity in African American Identity. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1903] 1989. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Bantam Books. Erikson, Erik. 1969. Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: Norton. Helms, Janet E., ed. 1990. Black and White Racial Identity: Theory, Research, and Practice. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Marcia, James E. 1980. “Identity in Adolescence.” In Handbook of Adolescent Psychology, edited by J. Adelson. New York: Wiley. Phinney, Jean. 1992. “The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure: A New Scale for Use with Adolescents and Young Adults from Diverse Groups.” Journal of Adolescent Research 7:156–176. Phinney, Jean. 1992. The Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM). Available from http://www.calstatela.edu/ academic/psych/html/phinney.htm#research_interest Spencer, Margaret Beale, Vinay Harpalani, Suzanne Fegley, Tabitha Dell’Angelo, and Gregory Seaton. 2003. “Identity, Self, and Peers in Context: A Culturally Sensitive, Developmental Framework for Analysis.” Pp. 123–142 in Handbook of Applied Developmental Science: Promoting Positive Child, Adolescent, and Family Development through Research, Policies, and Programs, vol. 1, edited by R. M. Lerner, F. Jacobs, and D. Wertlieb. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Tatum, Beverly Daniel. 1997. Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? New York: Basic Books.
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Racial Identity Development
RACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT During the middle of the 20th century, social scientists began to reassess many mainstream assumptions about race and race relations. Scholars in the area of psychology started to investigate the relationship between race and racial identity development. Studies of and theories about the racial identity development process have become central to the study of race relations during the latter 20th century. This entry provides an overview of the key assumptions and leading frameworks associated with theories of racial identity development.
Racial Identity Development Process Racial identity theorists argue that one’s level of racial identity development shapes an individual’s worldview. The racial identity development process has been characterized as a stagewise, sinuous socialpsychological process. This lifelong developmental process comprises a number of psychological stages or statuses that coincide with distinct attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors regarding race and racism. The process associated with one’s racial identity development is not always cumulative, nor is it static. Racial identity theorists contend that the racial identity development process varies across diverse racialethnic groups. Emerging from scholarship on Black identity development, theories and models of racial identity development address a myriad of racialethnic groups. The Black Identity Development theory and the White (Racial) Identity Development theory exemplify the range of this scholarship.
Black Identity Development Theory: An Overview The conceptual framework for a Black Identity Development (BID) theory was influenced by a burgeoning theoretical tradition and the racial politics and unrest of the middle 20th century. The intellectual roots of BID theory are grounded in Erik Erikson’s scholarship on the stages of personality development and the early accounts of Black racial identity formation. The racial and cultural politics of the 1960s are at the core of theorizing about BID. William Cross and Bailey Jackson—two leading BID theorists— advanced respective theories and models of BID that
outline how the racial identity development of Black people is influenced by the extent to which a Black person feels connected to his or her blackness and how the development of this racial connectivity constantly shifts and changes relative to larger societal and group forces. Cross published his Nigrescence Model in 1971 and Jackson later published the BID theory in 1976. At its core, BID theory was concerned with understanding the different stages of Black consciousness and the sequencing of BID. The BID theorists assumed that the progression through each of the stages of BID and the subsequent emergence of a racialized worldview was a linear and cumulative life-course process. For Jackson, a healthy BID did not allow one to regress in his or her racial identity development; however, it was likely that an individual could become stagnant in a given stage of his or her BID. Five stages of development or consciousness are associated with the BID theory. The naïve stage is the initial stage in a Black person’s racial identity development. This stage, which is largely associated with early childhood, is marked by the absence of any awareness about the social implications of race. Often, Black individuals at the naïve stage are incapable of either identifying or articulating how their discriminate treatment is linked to both their race and the larger systems of racism. The acceptance stage of BID theory is seen as a point when a Black person privileges whiteness and White culture. This stage of BID often manifests itself through behaviors and attitudes that are accepting of and conforming to the social, cultural, and institutional standards of whiteness, which spawns a negative and irrational perception of blackness and Black people. This form of racial self-hatred gives way to the resistance stage in a Black person’s BID. As a Black person begins to question the hegemony and normalcy of whiteness and White supremacy, a newfound awareness and appreciation of blackness emerges for a Black person at this stage. As an outgrowth of this resistance to the dominant ideology and culture, a Black individual at the redefinition stage begins to discover and develop a positive Black identity. The internalization stage is the last stage in a Black individual’s BID, whereby he or she progresses beyond merely cultivating a Blackcentered identity and worldview to a deliberate attempt at integrating his or her positive Black identity into every aspect of his or her lived experience and social interactions.
Racial Identity Development
White Racial Identity Development: An Overview The scholarship on BID during the early 1970s established a framework and discourse for conceptualizing the process of White (racial) identity development (WRID). Beginning in the early 1980s, racial identity theorists such as Janet Helms began to assess the racial identity development of Whites. To paraphrase Hardiman, one cannot ignore the process by which White people develop their racial identity given the pernicious and omnipresent nature of racism and White supremacy. As WRID theorists began to hone and implement the WRID theory for training and evaluating individuals in various counseling, clinical, and social service professions, WRID theory became centered on assessing the process by which White individuals transition from a social-psychological state of race neutrality and individual White racism toward a recognition and eagerness to challenge their individual racism, whiteness and White supremacy. This conceptual framework is articulated by Helms, whose WRID theory comprises six statuses of racial identity development (formerly identified as stages of racial identity development) that are compartmentalized into two distinct yet interrelated phases: (1) the abandonment of individual White racism and (2) the construction of a nonracist or positive White racial identity. Abandonment of Indiv vid dual White e Racissm
The initial status in a White individual’s racial identity development is the contact status. At this status of WRID theory, a White person possesses a worldview and view of himself or herself that is deemed “color-blind,” which often results in a White person lacking sustained interactions with non-White people, failing to acknowledge his or her White privilege and whiteness, and often rejecting racial classifications or being labeled a racist. The disintegration status of the WRID theory is marked by White guilt. This discomfort, on the one hand, is the result of the increased anxiety or tension between a White person’s meritocratic view of the world with, on the other hand, his or her growing awareness of White privilege and society’s inherent racial disadvantages. As a means of bringing resolution to his or her guilt, a White person transitions into the reintegration status, whereby he or she rationalizes away this psychological unease by reassuring himself or herself of the natural supremacy of White people and, conversely, the
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innate inferiority of persons of color. The pseudoindependent status is underscored by a White person’s intentional efforts to forge relationships with nonWhites that might allow them to understand inequities from a racially cognizant standpoint. The Con nstru uction n of a Nonracist White e Identity y
The transition into the immersion/emersion status of the WRID theory is highlighted by a White person wanting to identify with and articulate what it means to be White—especially in a White supremacist society. The final status in Helms’s WRID theory is referred to as the autonomy status. The defining elements of this status are a White person’s ability to transcend White guilt and begin to deconstruct his or her White privilege, to overcome his or her reluctance to engage race and begin developing a nonracist White identity, and to go beyond his or her symbolic conceptualizations of diversity and fully embrace or celebrate diversity as a sociocultural imperative.
Conclusion The process of racial identity development is both multifaceted and race-ethnicity specific. Though rooted in the conceptual and analytical models of BID theory, theories of racial identity development have evolved to include a breadth of racial identities and racially lived experiences. Although these processes of racial identity development are distinct, the relationship between one’s level of racial identity awareness and social actions is the overarching framework for all theories and models of racial identity development. Gary Kinte Perry See also Afrocentricity; Asian American Studies, MixedHeritage; Black Nationalism; Blood Quantum; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Hafu; Multiracial Identity; Native American Identity; One-Drop Rule; Privilege; Racial Formation; Racial Identity; Stereotypes; Transracial Adoption; Whiteness; Whiteness, Measuring; White Racism
Further Readings
Cross, William. 1991. Shades of Black: Diversity in African American Identity. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
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Racialization
Erikson, Erik. 1969. Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: Norton. Helms, Janet. 1990. Black and White Racial Identity: Theory, Research, and Practice. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Jackson, Bailey. 1976. “Black Identity Development.” Pp. 158–164 in Urban, Social, and Educational Issues, edited by L. Golubchick and B. Persky. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Wijeyesinghe, Charmaine and Bailey Jackson, eds. 2001. New Perspectives on Racial Identity Development: A Theoretical and Practical Anthology. New York: New York University Press.
RACIALIZATION The concept of racialization refers to the processes by which a group of people is defined by their “race.” Typically, this is a negative process, for example, in the 19th century the Irish immigrants came to be regarded as a race independent of and inferior to White people. Understanding how and why processes of racialization are used is necessary to understanding the pattern of singling out a particular group of people based primarily on their racial identity. Many kinds of theories exist about the racialization of various groups of people. This entry discusses the processes of racialization. Processes of racialization do not apply only to Aboriginal people and other non-Caucasian people. For instance, groups may become “White” people, as Irish Americans did in the early 1900s, and are racialized into a place of privilege and dominance, that is, only their norms and values are universalized and naturalized as the way things are and ought to be in society. Furthermore, this whitening can occur only if there is the simultaneous existence of the racialization of “others,” that is, the racialization of non-White people into a place of subordination and exclusion from equal participation in society. Processes of racialization begin by attributing racial meaning to people’s identity and, in particular, as they relate to social structures and institutional systems, such as housing, employment, and education. In societies in which “White” people have economic, political, and social power, processes of racialization have emerged from the creation of a hierarchy in social structures and systems based on “race.” The visible effects of processes of racialization are the racial inequalities embedded within social structures
and systems. The racial inequalities are visible only when outcomes are examined based on race and the concept of racialization is used in the analysis. Yet, in day-to-day life experiences, processes of racialization are often unnoticed because of the tendency to exclude the concept of race from the analyses. In summary, processes of racialization can determine the way in which structures operate by influencing the actions and decisions made within social systems. The concept of racialization can be used to explain how particular racial outcomes are determined. For example, when people are racialized into a place of subordination—for example, when “Black” people experience social exclusion from equal participation in the labor market—this outcome can be seen as a result of the actions and decisions made within social systems that may intentionally or unintentionally not include “Black” people’s equal participation in the workplace. Another example would be the racialization of “Black” people by neighborhood, as when they are segregated in poor neighborhoods. A further example would be the concept of racialization of poverty. The racialization of poverty refers to the process by which a group of people based on race can become relegated to experiences of poverty. An analysis of the processes of racialization would examine the ways in which this system of racialized exploitation is structurally and historically rooted in the history of immigration, capitalism, and exploitation. Many writers would argue that processes of racialization often happen in the context of class struggles, when those who benefit from the exploitation of the labor of a group of people use a group characteristic as a justification to exploit them. To exploit a particular group of people, that group must be constructed as a minority, but the construction can be based not just on race, but also on gender, citizenship, and ethnicity. Much research and analysis exist on the processes of racialization that are imposed on groups of people who are relegated to low-paying, low-status, and precarious jobs. In this way, the concept of racialization plays an important role in the social stratification of society. These processes of racialization are historically and structurally rooted in a capitalist society. Further, they are processes that are produced and reproduced in society without people being aware of it occurring. However, we must be careful to emphasize the racialization not only of minority groups, but also of people in dominant positions, that is, the creation and
Racial Profiling
maintenance of “White” spaces. To examine the racialization of “White” spaces is complex and controversial. For instance, examples of racializing “White” people would be research on the processes of racialization in Irish studies. Specifically, there is the examination of how the Irish became “White” in the United States, while looking historically at their inferior position within racial hierarchies of Great Britain. Comparisons are often drawn between the inferior status of the Irish in Britain and the inferior status and racialization of non-“White” people. The social construction of people’s racial identity through processes of racialization can also be exemplified in the case of Jewish people. Eric Goldstein has argued that Jewish Americans have insisted on maintaining their own racial identity or on being considered “White.” Although in this case, the process of racialization may be partly the choice of the racialized group, racial categories and meanings may also be imposed onto people’s identities by the larger society.
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an officer to react with suspicion. Although the extent to which racial profiling actually exists is still being debated in the criminological literature, national media accounts, along with racial profiling litigation throughout the United States and empirical studies, suggest that the targeting of African American citizens is quite real and has substantial consequences on their perceptions of the police. The practice of racial profiling has raised questions about police legitimacy because even in the absence of criminal involvement African Americans are placed under close police scrutiny. These experiences along with a historical legacy of conflict between the police and the African American community has led to poor police relations, which further increases the social distance between African Americans and the police. The purpose of this entry is to examine both the context and history of racial profiling in the United States while assessing its consequences on the relationship between African Americans and the police.
June Ying Yee
Criminal Justice Context See also Irish Americans; Jewish Americans; Labeling; People of Color; Privilege; Race; Race, Social Construction of; Racial Identity; Racism; Whiteness Further Readings
Galabuzi, Grace-Edward. 2006. Canada’s Economic Apartheid: The Social Exclusion of Racialized Groups in the New Century. Toronto, ON: Canada’s Scholars’ Press. Goldstein, Eric L. 2006. The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race and American Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Martinot, Steve. 2003. The Rule of Racialization: Class, Identity, Governance. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2003. Miles, Robert. 1989. Racism. London: Routledge. Reitman, Meredith. 2006. “Uncovering the White Place: Whitewashing at Work.” Social & Cultural Geography 7(2):267–282.
RACIAL PROFILING The term racial profiling is used to describe police organizations using race as a factor in deciding whom to place under suspicion or surveillance. Some suggest it occurs when police routinely use race as a negative signal that, along with other signals, causes
Minority citizens, particularly African Americans, have consistently argued that racial discrimination is an important and prevalent phenomenon in every phase of their lives, including education, housing, and employment. Davis argues that during the 21st century, no other problem will have more deleterious effects on the African American community than the discrimination that they face in the criminal justice system. In recent years, the problem of discrimination in the justice system has garnered both public outcry and sustained scholarly attention. Much of the scholarly research has focused on the impact that race has on both law enforcement and sentencing outcomes. In general, this research has found that African Americans are disproportionately stopped, arrested, and incarcerated relative to their representation in the population. Although some argue that the overrepresentation is a reflection of their actual involvement in crime, others suggest that the disproportionate representation results from racial discrimination in the criminal justice system. These purported discriminatory experiences have since become the explanation for the high levels of distrust that African Americans hold toward the criminal justice system. Prior research on attitudes toward the criminal justice system has primarily focused on perceptions of
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the police. This research has consistently demonstrated that African American citizens are more likely to hold negative perceptions of police compared with White and Hispanic citizens. Racially biased policing, excessive use of force, and unjustified stops have all been shown to account for the negative perceptions.
History of Racial Profiling Some scholars credit the start of racial profiling to the War on Drugs in the 1980s when the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) developed and encouraged the use of drug courier profiles. Drug courier profiles are characteristics or behaviors that were thought to be associated with drug couriers. The DEA introduced a program known as Operation Pipeline, which trained patrol officers in the use of drug courier profiles that either implicitly or explicitly encouraged the targeting of citizens using race, along with other extralegal factors, to apprehend drug traffickers. Operation Pipeline was supported by the U.S. Justice Department, which maintained that using race as an explicit profile characteristic produced more efficient crime control than did random stops. Opponents to this policy have challenged the use of racial profiles, arguing that using race as a signal for making stops (i.e., using some legal pretext, such as illegal lane change, to stop and interrogate citizens with certain characteristics) leads to a disproportionate number of minority drivers being stopped and searched. Prior research has found that stops and searches among minority citizens have not led to more drug seizures than stops and searches among White citizens.
Table 1
Racial Profiling and Perceptions of the Police It seems reasonable to expect that citizens who believe that police use race in determining whom to place under suspicion will be more likely to hold unfavorable attitudes toward police. For example, Weitzer and Tuch reported that in 1999, 82% of African Americans believed that racial profiling is a widespread phenomenon, whereas 60% of Whites shared this belief. In North Carolina, the North Carolina traffic stop study found that 76% of African Americans, and 34% of Whites thought that racial profiling was widespread. Table 1 reports the results from the North Carolina Highway Traffic Study assessing racial differences in perceptions of police profiling. In general, African Americans are more likely to report that police profile older cars, men, young people, African American, and Latino citizens. Ultimately, the politicization of racial profiling has become another source of contention between African American citizens and law enforcement, resulting in more negative stories about police behavior. These stories further influence skepticism of the police. Although the belief in racial profiling is likely to undermine trust in the police among all citizens, it is likely to have a stronger effect on the African American community given their negative historical and sometimes contemporary experiences with the police.
Summary Racial profiling is particularly destructive to the police-citizen relationship. As the media cover stories about police abusing or mistreating minority citizens,
Race Differences in Perceptions of Profiling African American
African Americans are profiled Latinos are profiled Run-down cars are profiled Flashy cars are profiled Men are profiled Young people are profiled
76% 69.3% 44% 78% 67% 82%
White
Significant Difference
34% 36.8% 42% 61% 30% 67%
Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Source: Data taken from the 2000 North Carolina Highway Traffic Study (Smith et al., 2003).
Racism
they reinforce the idea of police bias, thus increasing the tension between minority communities and the police. For example, the stories in the media about racial profiling or police misconduct in the Rodney King and Amadou Diallo cases became major sources of discontent with the police, particularly within the African American community. Police forces interested in better community relations must pay attention to these behaviors to reduce the social distance between them and the African American community. Patricia Y. Warren and Thomas Calhoun See also African Americans; Discrimination; Marginalization; Muslims in Canada; Prejudice; Stereotypes; “Welfare Queen”
Further Readings
Allen-Bell, Angela. Anita. 1997. “The Birth of the Crime: Driving While Black (DWB).” Southern University Law Review 25:195–225. American Civil Liberties Union. 1999. Driving While Black: Racial Profiling on our Nation’s Highways. New York: ACLU. Available from http://www.aclu.org Brunson, Rodney K. and Jody Miller. 2005. “Young Black Men and Urban Policing in the United States.” British Journal of Criminology 46:613–640. Davis, Angela J. 1997. “Race, Place, and Traffic Stops.” University of Miami Law Review 51(2):425–443. Engel, Robin Shepard, Jennifer M. Calnon, and Thomas J. Bernard. 2002. “Theory and Racial Profiling: Shortcomings and Future Directions in Research.” Justice Quarterly 19(2, June):249–273. Feagin, Joe. 1991. “The Continuing Significance of Race: Anti-Black Discrimination in Public Places.” American Sociological Review 56:101–116. Gaines, Larry K. 2002. An Analysis of Traffic Stop Data in the City of Riverside. Riverside, CA: City of Riverside. Hagan, John and Celesta Albonetti. 1982. “Race, Class and the Perception of Criminal Injustice in America.” American Journal of Sociology 88:329–355. Harris, David A. 2002. Profiles in Injustice: Why Police Profiling Cannot Work. New York: New Press. Kennedy, Randall L. 1999. “Suspect Policy.” New Republic: 30–35. Lamberth, John. 1996. “A Report to the ACLU.” New York: ACLU. Smith, William R., Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Matthew Zingraff, H. Marcinda Mason, Patricia Y. Warren, Cynthia
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Pfaff Wright, Harvey McMurray, and C. Robert Felon. 2003. The North Carolina Highway Traffic Study. Final Report. Rockville, MD: National Institute of Justice. Warren, Patricia, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Marcinda Mason, William Smith, and Matthew Zingraff. 2006. “Driving While Black: Bias Processes and Racial Disparity in Police Stops.” Criminology 44(3):709–738. Weitzer, Ronald and Steven Tuch. 2002. “Perceptions of Racial Profiling: Race, Class and Personal Experience.” Criminology 40(2):435–457. Weitzer, Ronald and Steven Tuch. 2006. Race and Policing in America: Conflict and Reform. New York: Cambridge University Press.
RACISM Racism generally means believing that a person’s behavior is determined by stable inherited characteristics deriving from separate racial stocks; each of these distinctive attributes is then evaluated in relation to ideas of superiority and inferiority. This implies that there is a social construction in which certain groups of people are superior to others. This social construction is the result of social, economic, and political factors that have ascribed power to some groups, while leaving others powerless. In a world of increased global migration, racism is at the core of contemporary debates in countries with multicultural societies. Most people in the United States agree that racism is bad, and many acknowledge that economic, political, and cultural institutions help to maintain the system of racial and ethnic oppression. Similarly in Europe, racism is a driving factor in the electoral process and has drawn considerable public attention. This entry looks at the role of racism in Western society, historical perspectives, the current situation, and the future.
Role of Racism Racism both in the United States and Europe deals with the dimension of power, especially when it is related to dominant and minority social groups. This dimension of power leads to a variety of attitudes and behaviors toward certain groups, which often take the form of racism in a multicultural society. Many scholars argue that power is established and exercised only
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Racism
by being vested with the force of discrimination, exclusion, and enforcement; it contributes to the development of a system in which the majority group dominates the minority group. Giving a broader perspective to this definition, other scholars note that power is a crucial factor but also argue that power is not the sole factor underlying racism. According to these scholars, power is sought because there is an economic gain in it. Scholars further add that because of inadequate socialization and cultural factors, racism becomes an early tool of exploitation and oppression where both economics and social factors play a major part.
Racism in Sociohistorical Discourse In their studies of racism, some scholars argue that racism had its origins in Europe during the 16th century with the rise of nationalism and that it was applied first to class conflicts and then to national conflicts. Other researchers have dated racism’s appearance to the age of colonialism and expansionism, when White Europeans confronted non-Whites in situations of conquest and exploitation. In the United States, without this history of far-flung colonies, White supremacy attained its fullest ideological and institutional development in the southern United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The past few decades saw a new dimension in the history of racism. Contemporary European and U.S. societies have become increasingly multiethnic and multicultural and have undergone a massive transformation at an unprecedented speed during the last 2 decades. This transformation, which greatly widened the range of cultural diversity within these societies, was accompanied by a marked increase in racial tensions in cities and other social infrastructures. Although public officials emphasize the great strides that have been made, many scholars assert what most minorities seem to believe: that racism is on the rise in both the United States and Europe.
Increasing Racism Until recently, incidents of racial hatred appear to have been rare in Scandinavian countries. However, a rather different picture has developed in recent years as racism has emerged in these societies as well. A report from the Norwegian national newspaper Aftenposten Web site reveals that the Swedish police
arrested several hundred youths when violence broke out after a neo-Nazi rock concert in the suburb of Stockholm in December 1997. Those arrested included Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Germans, and U.S. citizens. The concert was organized by White supremacist groups, bearing swastikas and compact discs of rock music “boasting the supremacy of the White race.” According to this report, the U.S.-based nationalist band Max Resist was the main attraction of the concert. Another instance of the increasing salience of racism can be found in the wave of political mobilization against immigration during the triumph of democracy in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, which continues into the 21st century. The consequences of this democratization over totalitarianism and the population movements that followed threaten further to escalate racism in these societies. The enlargement of the European Union has also left open to public view concerns about greater migration of a variety of ethnic and religious groups across borders that had been closed for generations. Added to this concern is also the resurgence of anti-immigrant prejudice after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the 2005 London transport bombings. Based on both incidents, immigration and the possibility of homegrown terrorists are often viewed as threats to national security. In the United States and the United Kingdom, public opinion was openly expressed against persons of Arab and Muslim descent, whom many people in the United States believed have a connection with the terrorists. Many Arabs and Muslims in both Great Britain and the United States denounced terrorism, but this did little to reduce public anxiety. Racism today has its roots in the form associated with modern European imperialism, and although slavery and colonialism are products of history, antiSemitism and ethnic nationalism have from time to time flourished in Europe and elsewhere. Since the events of September 11th, there has been an increase in the number of Islamophobic incidents, both in Europe and the United States, such as difficulties faced by Muslim women wearing the hijab, and more general difficulty in finding employment, harassment in public places, and telephone threats to mosques and public figures. In the United States, there have been incidents where “suspicious-looking” foreigners came under the scrutiny of government agencies.
Racism, Aversive
Finally, the social and economic factors, along with power dimension are important for understanding the aspects of racism. If racism is related to these concepts and to the existence of ethnic groups and minorities, and if this perception of racism is widely accepted, then the struggle against racism has to be continued in the political, cultural, and socioeconomic fields for years to come.
Outlook Racism and its related issues are likely to be a growing challenge for Western democracies. Racism creates elements of prejudice and discrimination and if not controlled it can undermine human relationships. Most Europeans and U.S. residents do not think of themselves as racist. However, because of socioeconomic concerns, these same people might opt for harsher and stricter immigrant policies and will often not support full integration and social cohesion of minority groups in the society. This attitude is exemplified by strict immigration control and policies. Although not racially explicit, the strict immigration policies of the Western industrialized countries will prohibit the entry of anyone deemed to be “unsuitable,” or not fulfilling certain entry requirements, thus, effectively limiting the entry of “undesirable” ethnic groups. It would be neither accurate nor constructive to portray European and North American societies as purely negative in combating racism. Europeans’ consciousness has also developed a deep antiracist impulse, because of political doctrines such as liberalism and socialism. To dampen anxieties and to show solidarity toward Muslims in the United States, federal, state, and local elected leaders have declared that the acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. In the 21st century, globalization and information technology have brought the nations of the world closer. In this world of interdependence, it is important that people of different races acknowledge their common characteristics, even while embracing their different ways of life. Navid Ghani See also Anti-Semitism; Civil Rights Movement; Discrimination; Europe; Globalization; International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; Islamophobia; London Bombings;
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Minority/Majority; Racial Profiling; Racism; Refugees; Swedish Americans; United Kingdom
Further Readings
Banton, Michael. 1987. Racial Theories. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Cole, Johnnetta B. 1994. Conversations: Straight Talk with America’s Sister President. New York: Anchor Books Dunbar, Leslie. 1984. Minority Report: What Has Happened to Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, and Other Minorities in the Eighties. New York: Pantheon Books. ECRI. 2004. Third Report on Norway. 2004. Strasbourg, France: European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance, Council of Europe. Available from http://www.coe.int/T/E/human%5Frights/Ecri/1-ECRI/ 2-Country-by-country_approach Essed, Philomena. 1991. Understanding Everyday Racism. An Interdisciplinary Theory. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Fernandez, John P. (1981). Racism and Sexism in Corporate Life. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Foucault, Michel, ed. 1984. The Foucault Reader, edited by P. Rainbow. New York: Pantheon Books. Klineberg, Otto (1968). “Prejudice: The Concept.” Pp. 439–448 in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 12, edited by D. L. Sills. New York: Macmillan. Marger, Martin. 2006. Race and Ethnic Relations. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Schwartz, Stephen. 2002. The Two Faces of Islam. New York: Doubleday. UNESCO. 1967. The Fourth UNESCO Statement on Racism. Paris, France: Author. www.Aftenposten.No. 1997. “Rising Fear for Foreigners in Denmark.” Retrieved November 21, 1997, from http://www.aftenposten.no
RACISM, AVERSIVE In contrast to the traditional form of racism, which is expressed openly and directly, aversive racism is a contemporary form of racism that operates in subtle and indirect ways. Aversive racists, who are often well educated and liberal, support the principle of racial equality and regard themselves as nonprejudiced but, at the same time, possess unconscious negative feelings and beliefs about particular minority groups. These
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Racism, Aversive
negative orientations develop from normal cognitive (e.g., social categorization), motivational (needs for status), and sociocultural (e.g., social transmission of stereotypes) processes. Recent research in social cognition has yielded new techniques for assessing unconscious (implicit), as well as conscious (explicit), prejudice and stereotypes, techniques that provide direct evidence of the dissociated, often ambivalent, attitudes that characterize aversive racism. This entry summarizes that research.
The Aversive Racism Framework The negative feelings that aversive racists experience do not reflect open hostility or hatred. Instead, aversive racists’ reactions may involve discomfort, uneasiness, disgust, and sometimes fear. That is, they find minority group members “aversive,” while they find any suggestion that they might be prejudiced “aversive” as well. Thus, aversive racism may often reflect a pro-in-group rather than an anti-out-group orientation, thereby avoiding the stigma of overt bigotry and protecting a nonprejudiced self-image. The aversive racism framework also helps identify when discrimination against minority groups will or will not occur. Whereas traditional racists exhibit a direct and overt pattern of discrimination, aversive racists’ actions may appear more variable and inconsistent. Sometimes they do not discriminate, reflecting their egalitarian beliefs; other times, they do discriminate, manifesting their negative feelings. Because aversive racists consciously recognize and endorse egalitarian values and because they truly aspire to be nonprejudiced, they will not discriminate in situations with strong social norms when discrimination would be obvious to others and to themselves. In these contexts, aversive racists will be especially motivated to avoid feelings, beliefs, and behaviors that could be associated with racist intent. However, because aversive racists still possess feelings of uneasiness, these feelings will eventually be expressed, but they will be expressed in subtle, indirect, and rationalizable ways. For instance, discrimination will occur in situations in which normative structure is weak, when the guidelines for appropriate behavior are vague, or when the basis for social judgment is ambiguous. In addition, discrimination will be manifested when an aversive racist can justify or rationalize a negative response on the basis of some factor other than race. Much of the research on aversive racism has focused on orientations toward African Americans in
the United States, but similar processes have been found for the attitudes of members of dominant groups in other countries with strong contemporary egalitarian values but discriminatory histories or policies. Despite its subtle expression, the consequences of aversive racism are as significant and pernicious as those of the traditional, overt form (e.g., the restriction of economic opportunity).
Evidence and Antidotes Evidence in support of the aversive racism framework comes from a range of paradigms. For instance, in personnel selection decisions in the United States and Puerto Rico, aversive racists do not discriminate on the basis of race when candidates have strong or weak qualifications, some studies show. Nevertheless, they do discriminate against African Americans when the candidates have moderate qualifications. In these circumstances, aversive racists weigh the positive qualities of European American applicants and the negative qualities of African American applicants more heavily in their evaluations, which provides justification for their decisions. Analogously, in the United States and England, aversive racists have more difficulty discounting incriminating evidence that is declared inadmissible when evaluating the guilt or innocence of African American relative to European American defendants in studies of jury decision making. Aversive racism also contributes to opposition to policies designed to benefit African Americans, such as affirmative action, but also primarily in rationalizable ways. European Americans generally support the principle of affirmative action more than specific policy implementations, which contain elements that allow them to rationalize opposition on the basis of factors other than race (e.g., unfairness). In addition, to the extent that minority group members detect expressions of aversive racists’ negative attitudes in subtle interaction behaviors (e.g., nonverbal behavior) and attribute the consequences of aversive racism to blatant racism, aversive racism also contributes substantially to intergroup distrust, miscommunication, and conflict. Because of its pervasiveness, subtlety, and complexity, the traditional techniques for eliminating bias through antiracist education that emphasized the immorality of prejudice and illegality of discrimination are not effective for combating aversive racism. Aversive racists understand that prejudice is bad, but they do not recognize that they are prejudiced.
Racism, Cultural
Nevertheless, aversive racism can be addressed with techniques aimed at its roots at both individual and collective levels. At the individual level, strategies to combat aversive racism can be directed at unconscious attitudes. For example, extensive training to create new, counterstereotypic associations with social categories (e.g., African Americans) can inhibit the unconscious activation of stereotypes, an element of aversive racists’ negative attitudes. At the intergroup level, interventions may be targeted at processes that support aversive racism, such as in-group favoritism. One such approach involves changing the basis of categorization from race to an alternative dimension that can alter who “we” and “they” are. In particular, members of different groups are induced to conceive of themselves more as a single, superordinate group rather than as two separate groups. Attitudes toward former out-group members will become more positive through processes involving pro-in-group bias. This strategy thus redirects a contributing force to contemporary forms of racism, social categorization, to reduce bias toward members of another specific group. John F. Dovidio and Samuel L. Gaertner See also Affirmative Action in Education; Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Antiracist Education; Discrimination; Intercultural Communication; Prejudice; Racism; Stereotypes
Further Readings
Dovidio, John F. and Samuel L. Gaertner. 2004. “Aversive Racism.” Pp. 1–51 in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 36, edited by M. P. Zanna. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Gaertner, Samuel L. and John F. Dovidio. 2000. Reducing Intergroup Bias: The Common Ingroup Identity Model. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.
RACISM, CULTURAL The term cultural racism is widely used to draw attention to the fact that prejudice and discrimination often have more to do with the culture of the victims than with their physical appearance and skin color. In other words, cultural racism focuses on intolerance relating to socially constructed characteristics such as social customs, manners and behavior, religious and moral
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beliefs and practices, language, aesthetic values, and leisure activities. In its most extreme forms, cultural racism may be the motivation for ethnic cleansing and sectarian murder, but it also manifests itself in a wide range of less extreme forms of threatening and intimidating behavior, including the exclusion of people from minority cultures and the avoidance of social contact with them; the strengthening of boundaries between one’s own group and others; the stereotyping, dehumanizing, or demonizing of others; and the justification of continued domination and oppression. Cultural racism may also lie behind demands for cultural conformity when this is neither necessary nor perhaps even desirable. A society may expect its minorities to turn their back on their own culture and penalize them if they fail to assimilate or at least to conform to the cultural norms of the majority. This entry discusses the various forms of cultural racism and its effects. Like other forms of racism, cultural racism may have deep psychological roots in two widespread human tendencies: (1) feelings of insecurity and suspicion in the presence of anyone perceived as strange or unfamiliar; and (2) the need to dominate, to snub, to belittle, or to feel superior to, others. From such roots, cultural prejudice can easily grow and be rationalized into the belief that the culture of others is flawed in some way and thus standing in the way of their progress. Assumptions about the cultural superiority of Europeans (or Westerners in general) provide the most common justification for cultural racism. Some may consider non-European cultures less rational, more tied to tradition, less culturally evolved, less open to new ideas, and less motivated to succeed than are the Europeans and their heirs. Such people may claim that the non-Europeans need a program of modernization (meaning taking on Western values) if they are to thrive and achieve their full potential. Particularly in schools, the children of immigrants may be encouraged to accept Western cultural values and expectations and are rewarded if they do so with higher examination scores and enhanced career prospects, but those who insist on retaining their cultural differences are treated with corresponding hostility. Insisting on cultural conformity where such an insistence is not justified is a form of cultural domination and oppression. However, because cultural racism denies the relevance of “race” and claims that all races have an equal potential for achievement, the question arises whether it is appropriate to call it racism at all. Indeed, some have preferred to use the
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Racism, Types of
term culturalism, and others have argued that race equality legislation should be expanded to refer to both racial and cultural groups. However, the situation is complex: It is not easy in practice to distinguish between unjustified hostility toward Arabs (which is racism) and unjustified hostility toward Muslims (which is cultural racism or Islamophobia). Perhaps the word racism in the phrase cultural racism is best understood as a metaphor, implying that the experience of racism and the experience of cultural hostility are similar. Opposition to cultural racism does not require the belief that there is no need for any shared values in society, for without respect for law and agreed procedures for resolving conflicts society would soon disintegrate. Nor does cultural racism involve the belief that different cultures are equally good or that one should never criticize other cultures. It does, however, involve the claim that unjustified cultural domination is oppressive. For example, if children from minority groups see only White, Western faces in the illustrations in their textbooks, the implicit undervaluing of their own culture may damage their sense of identity and self-awareness. Ultimately, cultural racism is best countered by an open, positive approach to minority cultures, involving an attempt to understand them in their own terms, to develop a sympathetic and sensitive understanding of them, and to appreciate the enrichment they bring to the broader society. J. Mark Halstead See also Cultural Relativism; Discrimination; Islamophobia; Prejudice; “Us and Them”
Further Readings
Barndt, Joseph. 1991. Dismantling Racism: The Continuing Challenge to White America. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Press. Modood, Tariq. 2005. Multicultural Politics: Racism, Ethnicity and Muslims in Britain. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press. Parekh, Bhikhu. 2002. Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Powell, Rebecca. 2000. “Overcoming Cultural Racism: The Promise of Multicultural Education.” Multicultural Perspectives 2(3):8–14.
RACISM, TYPES
OF
Racism is a belief that race is the primary determinant of traits and capacities and that racial difference produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. As scholars have studied the concept, they have found it useful to make distinctions about how this manifests itself in today’s world; this entry summarizes those categories. Racism can be distinguished by whether it deals with individual manifestations of beliefs of inherent inferiority versus societywide racism. Racism, on the individual level, is sometimes difficult to confirm because its existence may be based on one’s perception of an interaction or situation. For example, the term reverse racism (or reverse discrimination) has been coined to describe situations where typically advantaged people are relegated to inferior positions or denied social opportunities to benefit racial and ethnic minorities, or, in some instances, women. However, scholars argue that a critical component of racism is the broad exercise of authority and power and that isolated instances of favoring the disadvantaged over the privileged cannot be seen as constituting racism. Racism is often presented as operating on a societalwide basis. Carmichael and Hamilton argue that racism is about attitudes, beliefs, and ideologies that are embedded in everyday social action and structures. This view, as expressed in such terms as institutional racism or institutional discrimination, argues that racism has become embedded and represented within the culture and structure of institutions. For example, by accepting typical standards of credentials or experience, one ignores considering many otherwise qualified people. Regardless of the approach scholars have taken of racism, there is consensus that race represents a social construct, and that the operation of racism has created the categories on which racism operated so that race carries meaning in modern society. Race as a modern concept has influenced the ways in which people have interpreted and defined the term. Definitions of race and racist actions are often based on skin color (Blacks versus Whites), culture (Arab peoples or Jews or indigenous tribal groups), nationality (“Orientals”), and even religion (“Muslim”). Racism may exist as an ideological effect of social relationships that have become racialized—for example, slavery becoming
Racism, Unintentional
defined such that “if African, then slaves”—even though exceptions emerged—for example, slaves granted their freedom or the offspring of slaves with their owner. The class-based analysis of racism suggests that “non-White” people are racialized for the economic benefit of the dominant White group. Alternative explanations about racism have focused on the process of false consciousness used by dominant group interests, and therefore, the analysis does not come from any class-based analyses. Instead, racism is created and produced through the knowledge production created by a dominant group about an inferior group. June Ying Yee See also Anti-Semitism; Institutional Discrimination; Islamophobia; One-Drop Rule; Orientalism; Race; Race, Social Construction of; Racial Formation; Racialization; Racial Profiling; Racism, Aversive; Racism, Cultural; Racism, Unintentional; Reverse Discrimination; White Racism
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They may also be discriminated against because of poverty, or low social class, or low levels of education, or religion, or language ability, or sexual orientation, or a wide range of other factors, and they may sometimes share these experiences of discrimination with disadvantaged White groups in society, though the discrimination in their own cases may be exacerbated by the simultaneous experience of racism. One of the advantages of defining racism by outcome, however, is that it draws attention to the fact that racism can sometimes be unintentional. The intentions of the perpetrators do not necessarily affect the degree of suffering of the victims, and it is clear that unintended racism can be just as devastating for those who experience it as that which is intended. Unintended racism can be found in some forms of institutional practice, in paternalistic decision making by Whites on behalf of Blacks, and in a color-blind approach to policy in a multiracial context, all of which are discussed in this entry.
Institutional Racism Further Readings
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 1997. “Rethinking Racism: Towards a Structural Interpretation.” American Sociological Review 62(3):465–480. Carmichael, Stokely and Charles Hamilton. 1967. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. New York: Vintage Books. Dovidio, John F. and Samuel L. Gaertner, eds. 1986. “Racism Among the Well Intentioned.” Prejudice, Discrimination and Racism. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Miles, Robert. 1989. Racism. London: Routledge. Omi, Michael and Winant, Howard. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
RACISM, UNINTENTIONAL Some claim that racism is best defined by outcome: In other words, racism occurs when racial or ethnic minorities experience discrimination or other forms of injustice. The problem with this definition is that not all the discrimination experienced by racial or ethnic minorities necessarily falls into the category of racism.
In an institutional context, unintentional racism can occur where long-established practices originally designed to meet the needs of a homogeneous society damage the interests of minority racial groups. Institutional racism (or discrimination) refers to such practices inherent in social structures or organizations that consistently work against certain racial, ethnic, or gender groups. Examples might be the continued use of exclusively White faces in the illustrations in school textbooks (which might affect the self-image of Black children), or the policy of giving priority in job applications to the children of existing employees (which might disadvantage the job prospects of immigrants). The practices may have been well-intentioned when first established, but unreflective adherence to them as society becomes more multiracial means that racial minorities are denied access to the full range of opportunities taken for granted by the White majority.
Paternalistic Decision Making Another form of unintentional racism occurs when the freedom of racial or ethnic minorities is defined or restricted by generally well-intentioned regulations that are drawn up by the White majority working for the
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minorities rather than with them. This has sometimes been called “paternalistic racism,” implying that White people think they have the right to interfere in the lives of Blacks for their own good and the power to define that good. Paternalistic racism differs from institutional racism in that it involves the initiation of new practices and procedures in response to the presence of racial and ethnic minorities, whereas institutional racism involves the failure to adapt long-standing practices and procedures to new needs. Paternalistic racism can be seen in some forms of positive discrimination and tokenism, particularly where these are intended as a way of defusing protest without tackling the underlying causes of racial injustice in society. It may sometimes be benign, as in the case of special funding that is set aside to meet the needs of underachieving children from minority groups. Whether the paternalism has a harmful outcome, however, and whether it is consciously used by White people to reinforce their own privilege, paternalistic racism can be viewed as oppressing racial minorities in two ways: It denies them the freedom to determine for themselves the pattern of their own future lives, and it implies (sometimes in a rather subtle way) the superiority of the White people who make the decisions.
Color-Blind Approach Another manifestation of unintentional racism sometimes arises in the self-conscious attempt to play down the significance of race known as color blindness. Color blindness involves a refusal to recognize differences between racial groups on the grounds that such recognition is itself racially divisive. It involves an attempt to treat all people equally, irrespective of race, and is thus grounded in one of the fundamental values of Western societies, equality. There are two problems with this approach, however. The first is that it denies the validity of what may be an important aspect of any individual—his or her racial identity. Second, because treating racial groups equally without distinction is usually understood as treating them the same, everyone usually ends up being treated in accordance with implicit assumptions based on accumulated White experience. In this sense, equal treatment can unintentionally become a vehicle for White domination. Whether color blindness is actually a form of racism rather than merely a misguided form of action
is a matter of debate. But color blindness leads to undesirable outcomes (the disadvantaging of Black people by ignoring or marginalizing their distinctive needs, experiences, and identity) and involves racial injustice. Aristotle pointed out that there can be just as much injustice in treating people the same when in relevant respects they are different as there can be in treating them differently when in relevant respects they are the same. The color-blind approach denies the relevance of the distinctive experiences of minority groups, such as the fact that they are on the receiving end of racial abuse and harassment, or that they are surrounded by subtle messages that constantly reinforce the superiority of Whites. Color blindness unintentionally works against the interests of minorities because it is based on an idealistic principle (that all people are equal), which may be valid sub specie aeternitatis, but fails to consider the contingent facts of racial inequality and disadvantage in present-day Western societies. J. Mark Halstead See also Color Blindness; Discrimination; Institutional Discrimination; Internalized Racism; Racism, Cultural
Further Readings
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2003. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Goldberg, David Theo, ed. 1990. Anatomy of Racism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lall, Marie and David Gillborn. 2004. Beyond a ColourBlind Approach: Addressing Black and Minority Ethnic Inclusion in the Education Strand of New Deals for Communities. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Hallam University. Meyers, Marian. 2004. “Crack Mothers in the News: A Narrative of Paternalistic Racism.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 28:194–216. Penketh, Laura. 2001. Tackling Institutional Racism. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.
RAINBOW COALITION See NATIONAL RAINBOW COALITION
Rap: The Genre
RAP: THE GENRE Rap music first gained commercial visibility with the SugarHill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” (1979), but it had been circulating locally in private tapes and public performances since the early 1970s. Currently the music genre arguably most widely associated with African American performers, it owes its origins to practices of the African diaspora, though not all of them, strictly speaking, African American: toasts (from both the United States and Jamaica), disc jockey incantations, and earlier artists such as the Last Poets all contributed to some strands of early rap music. This entry looks at the history of the musical genre.
Origins of Rap Rap proved innovative in featuring both new techniques of DJ-ing (especially sampling) and a new kind of vocal delivery (emceeing). The music’s origins in the South Bronx, New York City, paired with that neighborhood’s notorious media image after U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s (1977) visit, immediately tagged it as quintessentially “urban” music—meaning, essentially, associated publicly with inner-city African Americans. Indeed, early hip-hop musical artists (as opposed to break-dancers and graffiti artists) were for some time almost uniformly African American (with rare and marked exceptions such as the Beastie Boys), though audiences were from the beginning more mixed. Generally easy-going, upbeat entertainment that reflected its origins in outdoor block parties, early rap music drew samples largely from funk, Philly soul, and disco of the 1970s; rhyming styles for then-popular groups such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and Whodini, remained fairly regular (with mainly end rhymes), with lyrical topics addressing partying, socializing, and the foibles of everyday life. With Grandmaster Flash’s 1982 hit “The Message,” however, semantic content turned toward specifically urban (i.e., Black ghetto) conditions, with profound influence on later artists. Starting in 1984, Run-DMC introduced sparser, more stripped-down beats, samples from heavy metal, and a more inflected, aggressive vocal delivery—establishing a new idea of “hardcore” style that henceforth divided itself from “softer,” or more pop-oriented, styles within rap’s still-new genre system. With its crossover single “Walk This Way,”
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featuring Joe Perry and Steven Tyler from Aerosmith, Run-DMC also helped to mainstream their hardcore style, establishing its first wave. With the new sound, and correspondingly aggressive stage gestures, intact, the ground was prepared for rap music to absorb many of the hoary traditions of African American musical performance in the United States. The old stables of aggressiveness, hyper-sexuality, menace, and “cool”—familiar from blues, jazz, rock ’n’ roll, and stage traditions like minstrelsy before them—attached themselves to rap music. The genre was also influenced by the social context: Historically segregated neighborhoods in U.S. cities were becoming full-fledged impacted ghettoes, and the crack epidemic was about to descend on these same places with its spectacular violence. With all these factors firmly in place, hardcore rap could be taken to project all these traditional representations of Black masculinity, along with the ghetto itself, while the smoother, more radio-friendly styles crossed over into pop charts, generally sidelining both the edgier notes of Black masculinity and the emphasis on “ghetto” realities. For rap purists, the latter styles betrayed the “authentic” spirit of hip-hop.
Gangsta Rap What would come to be called “gangsta rap” has often been traced to Philadelphia MC Schoolly D or Boogie Down Production’s (BDP) 1987 album Criminal Minded, but its commercial hold on the record industry arrived with Niggaz With Attitude’s (NWA) Straight Outta Compton (1988), which thrust the gangsta figure fully into the U.S. media spotlight and touched off a number of moral panics. With its open embrace of the presumed Los Angeles gangsta point of view, the album managed, depending on whose account is considered, either to litter rap music with violence, misogyny, and nihilism or to dramatize the desperate condition of U.S. urban life. Both views, of course, play down the continuity of the 1980 and 1990s gangsta figure with earlier figures of “transgressive” Black masculinity like Stack ’O Lee. In any case, the success of Straight Outta Compton inspired a rapid proliferation of gangsta rap that transformed the industry. For much of the 1990s, the hardcore gangsta figure dominated the imagery, with a dominating, menacing stance, frequent boasts and threats of violence, coupled with the attendant gestures of misogyny and homophobia. Such (arguably venerable)
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figures of Black masculinity dovetailed well with wider media culture, which was by then in full panic concerning urban crime; the mixture of fascination and revulsion projected by such images and personae found an uglier complement in North American cities’ increasingly aggressive measures to segregate their recently formed impacted ghettoes. Musically, gangsta rap mirrored the aggressive stances with an increasingly jagged, complex, and percussive flow, and the musical beats in early gangsta rap often mirrored the slow funk flow pioneered by NWA’s Dr. Dre. For several years, the most commercially prominent gangsta rap followed along roughly these same lines, vastly increasing the audiences for a music previously considered something of a niche taste. According to the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA), for instance, rap increased its share of the total U.S. phonogram market, between 1989 and 1991, from 6.4% to 10.0%, to become the fourth best-selling genre (after rock, country, and pop). In the wake of the Wu-Tang Clan and its pioneering producer, the RZA (beginning with their 1993 debut of Enter the Wu-Tang Clan [36 Chambers]), many East Coast producers formed their own alternative hardcore sound, with dense layering techniques (partially inherited from Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad production unit), “dirty” mixes employing much noise, and detuned pitch relations that offered a complex, menacing sound. Flows of the Wu-Tang Clan, and the hardcore rap artists that flourished in their wake, were analogously built, with frequent enjambment, internal rhymes, and hard-attacked syllables creating polyrhythmic music of staggering complexity.
Versatility With rap music quickly changing, innovating, and adapting new market trends, by 1994, media, fans, and artists alike were speaking of East Coast rap, West Coast rap, and coastal rivalry (which, however, had truly existed since Straight Outta Compton). The association of hardcore rap music with images of transgressive, violent, and sexually threatening young Black males had now come to characterize, centrally, rap’s commercial presence. Some factors complicated the situation, while helping rap music to stay versatile. The Fresh Prince (a.k.a. Will Smith), half of the already commercially successful duo Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, parlayed his upbeat, radio-friendly party-rap style into a hit
television sitcom with NBC that showed a wider public a more palatable face of the music. Beginning in 1990 and lasting six seasons, The Fresh Prince of BelAir offered, so to speak, the Bill Cosby to gangsta rap’s Richard Pryor. Appearing roughly contemporaneously to gangsta rap, and helping to publicize a style of rap music more attractive to audiences offended by the sound and ethos of hardcore styles, the program helped to ensure the longevity of rap as a multifaceted phenomenon. Other successful nonhardcore artists in the early 1990s, such as LL Cool J (who, however, adopted the new hardcore style to some extent), helped maintain multiple audiences for the music. And the other major strand of hardcore rap that—“pimp” rap, in the personages of artists like Too $hort—did not follow gangsta stylistic rules nevertheless both prompted and then later borrowed much of its transgressive stance. Continuing and modifying the African American tradition of toasts and pimp fiction like that of Iceberg Slim, “pimp” rap nevertheless remained a niche taste. Finding something of an intermediate position, from an audience standpoint, was what might be called “jazz/bohemian” rap, which used sampling from jazz, more “conscious,” often politically oriented subjects and less aggressive flows to project a more “critical” attitude toward rap music and the world at large. Artists such as De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and Common offer just three prominent examples. By the mid-1990s, rap music had developed into a multistyle, commercially formidable presence in the United States, and throughout most of the world into which U.S. music was exported. Because many nonrap artists (especially rhythm and blues singers) were collaborating with rap artists, and the music itself was finding ever more commercial success, rap music started to change after the mid1990s. More dance-friendly beats allowed rap danceclub and more radio exposure, and the most successful emcees adapted smoother, more rhythmically regular flows; by the end of the 1990s, rap music’s most publicly visible face had tamed considerably, and the more shocking caricatures of African American men had settled to the more ambiguous stances familiar from blues, jazz, and other Black musical forms. Still, some successful artists (such as 50 Cent) maintain images lifted wholesale from gangsta rap, but—significantly—even 50 Cent sports beats much closer to “in the club” styles, but his flow is even and sing-songy. At the same time, earlier genres of rap music continue alongside their more commercially
Rap: The Movement
successful counterparts, and hybrid forms continue to emerge constantly, both in the United States and abroad. From Dutch Nederhop to Senegalese Mbalax, rap music continues to develop and thrive, always seeming to develop associations with socially marginalized groups. Adam Krims See also Hip-Hop; Hip-Hop and Rap, Women and; Rap: The Movement Further Readings
Krims, Adam. 2000. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Quinn, Eithne. 2005. Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap. New York: Columbia University Press. Record Industry Association of America. Consumer Trends. Retrieved from http://www.riaa.com/keystatistics.php? content_selector=consumertrends Rose, Tricia. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Schloss, Joseph G. 2004. Making Beats: The Art of SampleBased Hip-Hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
RAP: THE MOVEMENT Rap music is one of the few truly original U.S. cultural forms. Rap music emerged from Black American oral traditions and developed into the rhyming storytelling of urban life. Rap music is a significant part of U.S. music history that has affected all facets of society and continues to have a tremendous influence on U.S. popular culture. This entry looks at that social context over time and the social impact of the music.
Changing Social Contexts The Begin nnin ngs
Rap is a musical subculture ofthe African diaspora that fused Black American, Afro-Latino, and Black Caribbean oral and musical traditions with Japanesemade technology. Rap and hip-hop developed in the mid-1970s in the South Bronx in New York City, in the context of poverty and community destabilization
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through urban renewal programs and expansion of the suburbs. In the midst of abandonment and blighted neighborhoods, Black and Latino youth wanted to have fun and express themselves. They played music, rapped, danced, and painted. Jamaican toasting (a practice of making elaborate toasts over music), the dozens (a Black American form of competitive humor), and other aspects of the Black oral and literary traditions are rap’s precursors. Rappers began speaking about fun and parties as well as the poverty, crime, and social injustices they saw around them. Sylvia Robinson and Sugar Hill Records’ recording of The SugarHill Gang’s, “Rapper’s Delight” (1979), propelled rap from a local pastime into the mainstream because now audiences far removed from the Bronx could purchase the song or hear it on the radio. The 1980 0s
Once record companies began releasing rap records, its sound and style sold fast. By the 1980s, rap and hip-hop had traveled to urban areas throughout the United States, and kids far removed from the Black and Latino boroughs of New York City began hearing rap. In 1984, the rap group Run-DMC recorded Run DMC, which became the first gold rap record. Radio stations started adopting rap formats in the mid-1980s as stars like LL Cool J, Kool Moe Dee, Big Daddy Kane, Whodini, and the Fat Boyz began selling tens of thousands of records, despite a lack of radio airplay and little promotion. In the late 1980s, rap music became popular and spread internationally with MTV’s launch of the first music show dedicated to rap, “Yo! MTV Raps.” Hosted by Doctor Dré, Ed Lover, and Fab 5 Freddy and airing from August 1988 to August 1995, “Yo! MTV Raps” was the primary media outlet that fostered rap music permanently into U.S. and global popular culture. Although there was a hip-hop scene on the East Coast that involved emcee (rappers) battling, graffiti writing, breakdancing, fashion, and DJ-ing, many communities in Los Angeles were experiencing a gang scene. Rappers on the West Coast were rapping about what they were experiencing living in or near gang territory. West Coast raps told about gang life, violence, drugs, and abusive police tactics. Schoolly D (from Philadelphia), along with the Rappers Ice-T (from Compton, California) and Too $hort (from Oakland) are credited with creating the gangsta style of rap, however rap group Niggaz With
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Attitude (NWA) popularized “gangsta rap.” The highselling album Straight Outta Compton (1988), earned them notoriety and attacks by law enforcement agencies and their sympathizers. In many ghettos and barrios of the United States, the young Black and Brown victims of urban decay and racism identified with the words and attitude of NWA. Gangsta rap developed quickly, and by the early 1990s, it became the dominant force in rap with the likes of superstars including Tupac Shakur, Ice Cube, Warren G, Dr. Dre, Tha Dogg Pound, and Snoop Doggy Dogg all selling millions of records. While gangsta rap music grew in popularity with youth across the United States, authorities and moral gatekeepers scrutinized the music and sometimes fought for its eradication. C. Delores Tucker (of the National Political Congress of Black Women), William Bennett (former Secretary of Education), and Reverend Calvin Butts (pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem) claimed that gangsta rap infested the youth with violence, meanness, sexism, and irresponsibility. Primary among their concerns was the influence that the violent imagery and misogynist lyrics were having on youths’ attitudes. Artists defended their content: Murder and mayhem were the way of life on the street, they said, and sexist rap lyrics reflect the street culture and accurately describe some women. Opponents of sexism and explicit lyrics in rap music have been unsuccessful in banning the music; however, they were able to pass legislation that requires lyric advisory warning labels on this type of music. In this climate of what some viewed as censorship, rappers such as Shakur were publicly denounced, Ice-T removed the song “Cop Killer” from his album, and 2 Live Crew was banned from playing in many cities. Meantime, other movements in rap were flourishing. Chief among the popular subgenres of rap was political or conscious rap. Although rappers had been commenting on the political and social environment since recorded rap began, groups like Boogie Down Productions, X-Clan, Poor Righteous Teachers, and Public Enemy focused their lyrics on telling political stories about the effects of racism and capitalism on Black communities. Conscious rap argued for creating a unified Black culture and society based on various versions of Black Nationalism, Nation of Islam teachings, and Afrocentrism. The most innovative and successful political rap group, Public Enemy, led the movement, and the group’s hit song, “Fight the
Power,” spread the message of Black self-determination and control over resources. The 1990s
The gangsta rap sound had its heyday in the early 1990s. It began to lose influence in the late 1990s, however, with the much-hyped “East Coast/West Coast” rap wars involving a number of fist fights and verbal bouts that culminated in the deaths of Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. With the decline of gangsta rap and the ascendance of other styles, rap was more popular than ever. Rap had matured and spread to such a degree that new cities and regions gained national attention for the unique rap sounds and artists they produced. The Midwest produced successful rappers such as Da Brat, Bone Thugs-NHarmony, and Crucial Conflict. The South had several different popular rap scenes during this era. Houston served as a vibrant rap center in the 1990s that included the work of The Geto Boyz, 5th Ward Boyz, Lil’ Keke, and artists associated with Swishahouse Records and Rap-A-Lot Records. Atlanta-based artists including Goodie Mob, OutKast, Jermaine Dupri, and Ghetto Mafia developed a unique sound that became known as Crunk in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Luther “Luke” Campbell of 2 Live Crew fame helped popularize the Miami Bass sound. Later, artists like Trick Daddy and Trina (late 1990s) and Cuban American rapper PitBull (2000s) developed their own Miami sounds. New Orleans also developed a unique style dominated by the rise of Master P and No Limit Records. Cities such as Philadelphia created a hip-hop scene that produced a unique sound exemplified by the work of rappers, The Roots, and singer Jill Scott. The Milllen nniu um
Rap music in the 21st century has maintained its popularity among the youth. Although many artists of this time continue to be conscious rappers, much of the music reflects the material culture of the time. Rap artists such as Eminem, Kanye West, Outkast, Lil Jon, 50 Cent, The Roots, Common, and Nelly have defined the hip-hop sound of this era. New styles of rap continue to develop. Crunk, reggaetón, snap, hyphy, old school/true school, and rap-rock fusions are among the newer subgenres of rap.
Rap: The Movement
Social Impacts Chicano Rap
Rap music’s influence can be seen in the dress, body posture, language, art, and attitude of millions of teens and young adults in the United States and throughout the globe. In the United States, White and Latina/o youth listened to rap and created their own hip-hop scenes. Chicano youth had been participating in rap since it first migrated to Los Angeles in the early 1980s. By the late 1980s, Chicanos throughout the Southwest were heavily involved in hip-hop scenes. In 1990, the first Chicano rap song to become widely available was Kid Frost’s anthem, “La Raza.” Soon after Kid Frost released Hispanic Causing Panic, other Chicano rappers released full-length compact discs. Early Chicano rap recording artists include Proper Dos, Lighter Shade of Brown, and A.L.T. (Another Latin Timebomb, born as Al Trivette). During the 1990s, hip-hop and rap in Chicano communities expanded, and today hundreds of artists can be found in record stores, in concerts, and online. Women in n Hip-H Hop
The role of women in rap and hip-hop culture is significant. More than just the background video dancers and decoration for male artists, female culture has been highly influential in the music. Girls’ playground rhymes and rope twirling songs have been adapted and adopted by male rappers from the beginning of the genre. However, because of the relative lack of female voices in popular rap music and women’s limited power in the music industry, the role that women have played in creating rap has been minimized. Female rappers begin early with Funky Four Plus One More, Roxanne Shanté, Queen Latifah, Salt-n-Pepa, Mia X, MC Lyte, Lady of Rage, Da Brat, Lauryn Hill, Eve, Lil’ Kim, and Foxy Brown. The themes found with female emcees are as diverse as the artists themselves. To get a reputation as a rapper, many female artists reinforced the patriarchal structure of the rap genre through sexist lyrics and masculine styles of dress. In contrast, many female rappers gained their reputation by defining their own sexuality and rapping about female empowerment, while bringing femininity to the style of hip-hop.
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Sty yle
Hip-hop fashion is the material companion to the lyric and the music. The hip-hop style exists in the clothes, jewelry, hairstyles, language, and dance. All of these components are expressions of the complexities of rap music. Hip-hop style and materialism function as a cultural expression for artists and consumers of the rap genre. Hip-hop fashions are unique, bold, and often constructed in defiance of the dominant social structure. In the 1980s, hip-hop style was exemplified by leisure sweat suits, parachute pants, and airbrush painted jeans, Adidas shell-toed sneakers with thick “phat” shoe laces, large thick rope gold chains, gold door-knocker earrings, Jheri curls, high-top fades, and isometric hairstyles. Afrocentric rap style included dreadlocks, Africa chains, and red-black-green colored clothing. In the 1990s, hip-hop style consisted of “hooded” sweatshirts, triple-down coats (large, puffy, and featherfilled), Timberlands (boots that come in a variety of colors, traditionally a construction work-boot), and gold teeth fronts. West Coast gangsta rap ushered in the prison influence of baggy jeans, tattoos, and bandanas. The end of the 1990s and the start of the 21st century hip-hop style brought in large platinum chains, diamond studs (called “bling”), cornrows, and do-rags (the do-rag has transitioned from a head scarf worn by men to enhance the hairs’ wave pattern to a fashion trend in hip-hop culture). Female hip-hop style is as diverse as the female rap artists and ranges from baggy jeans and boots to traditional high fashion glamour. Hip-hop style has evolved beyond the inner-city streets to mainstream fashion. In the beginning hiphop fashion in many ways served as a medium that affirmed one’s identity and reinforced street credibility. Today, many rap artists have their own clothing labels and have shaped hip-hop fashion into a U.S. institution. Pancho McFarland and Leslie Baker Kimmons See also Hip-Hop; Hip-Hop and Rap, Women and; Rap: The Genre
Further Readings
Chang, Jeff. 2005. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: The History of the Hip-Hop Generation. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
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Redlining
Cross, Brian. 1993. It’s Not about a Salary: Rap, Race and Resistance in Los Angeles. New York: Verso. Gaunt, Kyra. 2006. The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double Dutch to Hip-Hop. New York: New York University Press. Kitwana, Bakari. 2005. Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wangstas, Wiggers, Wannabes and the New Reality of Race in America. New York: Basic Civitas Books. Light, Alan. 1999. The VIBE: History of Hip-Hop. New York: Three Rivers Press. McFarland, L. Pancho. 2006. “Chicano Rap Roots: BlackBrown Cultural Exchange and the Making of a Genre.” Callaloo 29(3):939–955. Perkins, William Eric. 1996. Droppin’ Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Rose, Tricia. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Spirer, Peter (director). 1997. Rhyme and Reason. Asian Productions.
REDLINING The term redlining was coined in the late 1960s, but the practice of redlining has been in existence since the 1930s. Whether de facto or de jure, redlining is a form of place-based social exclusion. Historically, redlining has referred to withholding mortgage credit from an entire neighborhood, most often based on race. Recently, however, the definition of redlining has expanded to include discriminatory actions of insurance agencies. Debate has ensued about how prevalent redlining practices are across the United States; however, redlining has had a significant impact on the social structure and landscape of urban environments, as described in this entry.
History and Process of Redlining The practice of redlining dates back to 1930, when the Federal Home Loan Bank Board established high-risk areas in urban centers. High-risk areas pertained to neighborhoods that were occupied by racial and ethnic minorities, who were assumed to be bad risks for loans. Neighborhoods were then color-coded on residential security maps, and those areas that had a high concentration of minority residents were shaded in red. Such areas were then marked as high risk, and
policies were not to be written by financial institutions. In particular, redlining disadvantaged older, low-income, and ethnic-minority neighborhoods. In a number of instances, redlining practices by lenders wrote off an entire neighborhood that would have otherwise been stable and viable. Redlining discrimination can be defined by the deviation from cost-based pricing for a given borrower group. A nondiscriminatory lender will extend a loan to a borrower based solely on creditworthiness rather than by characteristics such as race, gender, or age of the potential homeowner. In the case of lowincome and minority borrowers, lending institutions frequently deny mortgages and loans based on subjective reasons rather than creditworthiness. The deterioration of an entire neighborhood can occur when potential homeowners are consistently denied mortgage credit because of redlining; the practice can be considered a disinvestment in an urban community. Sources of discrimination can vary from a personal prejudice of the lender to a prejudice of the residents in a particular neighborhood to statistical discrimination where lenders use demographic characteristics. A variety of factors influence the loan-granting process: the applicant’s creditworthiness and other characteristics, such as race; the structural quality of the property; the composition of the neighborhood, including race and value of other properties; and the market demand for the type of mortgage the applicant is seeking. A potential homeowner can experience redlining at various stages of the home-buying process. Throughout metropolitan areas, both covert and overt practices of redlining have occurred, including higher down payments, higher interest rates, shorter loan maturity terms, and lower loan-to-value rates than required for properties in comparable neighborhoods. Thus, even if the borrower is granted a loan, discrimination can still transpire. Blame is often placed on financial institutions, yet this discounts the many players involved in redlining, notably homeowners, speculators, developers, property owners, and realtors. A financial institution may decide whether or not to grant a mortgage on the basis of neighborhood conditions. Likewise, a lending institution may withdraw funds from a neighborhood its officers feel is declining. The denial of a loan or mortgage repeatedly in a given area leads to a change in the momentum of applicants, the quality of the neighborhood, and fluctuations in property value that
Redlining
exacerbate risks associated with purchasing a home and approving mortgage credit.
Insurance Practices The insurance industry in recent years has been charged with redlining by community organizers and public officials. Insurance redlining refers to denying insurance to a potential homeowner because of location in an urban area or personal characteristics of the applicant. There is no question of the significance of the consistent availability of property insurance, which has been linked to the stability and betterment of community development. Additionally, insurers’ decisions to write policies have a direct effect on the practices of lending institutions. That is, if an agency refuses to write a policy, lenders will not extend a mortgage or home loan because there is no insurance to secure the loan. The process of underwriting a policy involves a decision by the insurer to determine if the applicant is eligible for insurance and under what terms. Studies that have tested the effects of underwriting decisions have found the industry’s marketing practices restrict availability of insurance, particularly in older urban communities. These practices can range from placement of the agency’s office, refusing to insure a particular property on the basis of age of the building, inconsistent pricing of insurance as determined by the area, or outright refusal to insure on the basis of geographical location. The controversy surrounding insurance redlining can be examined from two sides. First, the insurance industry claims underwriting practices are solely based on potential economic loss of individual risks and argue that “fair discrimination” is a standard practice in business. On the flip side, critics of the industry allege insurers do not market their services or products in certain urban areas. Empirical research conducted by fair housing councils, academics, and others have shown a systematic process of property insurance discrimination, whereby insurers are more likely to write policies for White and upper-income areas compared with minority and lower-income neighborhoods. Although not a federal mandate, disclosure laws enacted by certain states now permit researchers to examine underwriting practices of insurance companies by neighborhoods in cities. This can be advantageous for public officials as well as for social scientists.
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Consequences of Redlining The debate about the consequences and reality of redlining remains controversial. Despite agreement that redlining has negative social consequences, empirical data on the issue varies greatly. Various approaches have been used to determine the prevalence of discrimination on the basis of race, age, gender, and property location. Certain studies have tested foreclosure and loss rates as they vary by demographic characteristics. Others have examined the abundance of mortgage funds in relation to neighborhood characteristics. A third approach has tested the terms of the loan and the relationship between the borrower and various property characteristics. Finally, other studies have focused on the probability of a loan rejection as it relates to the borrower and property characteristics. Although findings from some studies show a definite relationship between spatial distribution of mortgages and composition of the neighborhood, other research has shown no correlation. Empirical research has been inconclusive and limited because often only the relationship between the borrower and lender is tested. This leaves out significant variables, such as the prescreening process and applicants who do not apply because of anticipated treatment. Practices of redlining are not limited to housing property. Many have argued that geographical redlining and credit discrimination have limited access to credit for minority-owned businesses and businesses in low-income neighborhoods. Like potential homeowners, small business owners may encounter discrimination at various stages of the lending-borrowing process. Certain geographic areas may be off-limits to lenders for marketing their products. Lenders may also reject loans sought by minority-owned businesses or those in low-income neighborhoods outright. If lenders do extend credit, they may do so at higher rates or demand more financial equity compared with other companies with comparable creditworthiness.
Anti-Redlining Laws Numerous federal and state laws have been enacted to ameliorate the detrimental effects of redlining. The Fair Housing Act (FHA) of 1968 was enacted to eradicate overt forms of racially based housing discrimination. The act’s language was vague, prohibiting various forms of discrimination and “to otherwise
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make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person” on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. Originally, the FHA was intended to apply to mortgage redlining, discriminatory zoning practices, and discrimination in home appraisals. The Fair Housing Act was intended to curtail racially segregated housing patterns, and Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act explicitly prohibits discrimination of dwelling based on race, gender, color, religion, or national origin. Title VIII also mandates that federal agencies take affirmative action against such discrimination. Despite the FHA’s attempt to curb redlining, the law never expressly included insurance discrimination. An amendment to FHA and HUD regulations that prohibited redlining for homeowner’s insurance was not passed until 20 years later in 1988. By raising the cost of mortgage credit to particular borrowers, potential homeowners have limited options, if any, for purchasing a home. Because of this, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was enacted in 1974. The act was designed to protect consumers through regulating practices of credit discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and age of the borrower. Racially based housing discrimination has the added consequence of lowering property values in a given neighborhood where segregation exists. Such changes in property value can exacerbate risks connected with purchasing a home and supplying mortgage credit. In 1975, Congress established the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), which required lending institutions to report public loan data that can be identified at the scale of census tracts or zip codes in metropolitan areas. The implementation of the HMDA was intended to determine whether financial institutions were serving the needs of the community and to identify discriminatory lending patterns. Although the act discloses where funds are being invested, it does not provide information about which neighborhoods were denied loans and the reason for such denials. Though not entirely successful, the HMDA was adept at demanding disclosure from lenders and acknowledging redlining as problematic across the United States. The HMDA led legislators to pass the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977, which made redlining illegal. The CRA required federally insured depository institutions to meet the credit needs of the community it served, including low- and moderateincome neighborhoods. The goal of the CRA is for banks and community organizations to work together to promote availability of credit to underserved communities. However, the Community Reinvestment Act
remains controversial, largely because of the debate regarding its effectiveness. The primary criticism of these major housing acts has not been the written law itself but, rather, the lack of regulation. Community residents, scholars, and public officials have accused the government of being apathetic rather than proactive in enforcing antidiscriminatory practices.
The Future of Redlining Although disinvestment in a particular neighborhood may be unintended, it nevertheless occurs when loans are geographically concentrated in certain neighborhoods at the expense of other neighborhoods. Even more, when inappropriate characteristics of the applicant are used in the loan- or insurance-granting process, discrimination, concentrated poverty, and racially segregated housing all come together to expedite the deterioration of a neighborhood and cheat individuals out of homeownership. Residents are locked out of housing markets on the basis of demographics, and urban revitalization efforts are thwarted. Although lenders and insurers may have stopped practicing blatant discrimination, racial and class biases remain that continue to shape the social structure of the housing market. A myriad of policy proposals have been made by analysts, public officials, and urban researchers as a means to eliminate redlining. These include more comprehensive disclosure requirements, stricter enforcement of current housing acts and laws, and challenging investment practices. AnneMarie Cesario See also American Apartheid; Discrimination in Housing; Gerrymandering; Minority Rights; Prejudice; Racial Profiling; Racism; Social Inequality
Further Readings
Equal Credit Opportunity Act, 15 U.S.C. 1691 et. seq. (1974). Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601, et seq; 24 CFR Parts 100, 103, 104. Goering, John and Ronald E. Wienk, eds. 1996. Mortgage Lending, Racial Discrimination, and Federal Policy. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press. Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975, 12 U.S.C. 2801. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Ross, Stephen L. and John Yinger. 2002. The Color of Credit: Mortgage Discrimination, Research Methodology, and Fair-Lending Enforcement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Squires, Gregory D. 1997. Insurance Redlining: Disinvestment, Reinvestment, and the Evolving Role of Financial Institutions. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press. Stuart, Guy. 2003. Discriminating Risk: The U.S. Mortgage Lending Industry in the Twentieth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Title VIII of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1977 (Community Reinvestment Act of 1977). Public Law 95–128, 12 U.S.C. 2901.
RED POWER Between 1969 and 1978, American Indians from urban and rural areas engaged in a series of highly visible protest events that brought national attention to the poverty, discrimination, and feelings of powerlessness and alienation experienced by tribal people as a result of centuries of military, political, and cultural domination by the U.S. government. This period, known as the Red Power era, is distinguishable from other episodes of American Indian political activism by its focus on pan-Indian issues rather than local, tribally based concerns, and its use of dynamic, visible, and highly symbolic protest events to gain pubic and media attention. Examples of such events include the seizure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) headquarters and the occupation of Alcatraz Island. Although most protest events that occurred during the Red Power era were peaceful, there were a couple of notable exceptions, including the highly publicized 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee by members and supporters of the American Indian Movement (AIM). At the end of this 71-day standoff between the occupiers and a force of tribal police and federal lawenforcement officials, two AIM members were dead and several others were wounded on both sides of the conflict. Although this event opened the Red Power Movement and its leaders up to criticism, it could not overshadow the tremendous advances gained by American Indian people as a result of Red Power activism. The decades after Red Power brought about a resurgence in American Indian identities and cultures, and provided tribes with the tools needed to secure greater political, economic, and cultural selfdetermination. This entry summarizes the major events in the Red Power era and their impact.
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The Beginnings of Red Power The decades before the 1960s were particularly difficult for Native Americans. In the early part of the 20th century, tribes struggled to adjust to reservation life and the rampant poverty and cultural alienation that accompanied it. The despair was exacerbated by the U.S. government’s attempts to assimilate Native Americans into the mainstream culture through the imposition of U.S. styles of government, the forced removal of tribal children into off-reservation boarding schools, the establishment of mass relocation programs aimed at luring young native peoples off the reservations and into large urban centers, and the termination of dozens of tribes’ federally recognized status. Such tactics resulted in the loss of land, political power, and cultural knowledge and created rifts between tribal members who viewed assimilation positively and those who saw it is a direct attack on tribal sovereignty and Native American cultures in general. Ironically, these same tactics also provided the material and psychic resources that helped galvanize the Red Power Movement. For one, the boardingschool era cultivated the growth of a pan-Indian identity among students and produced a cadre of young, educated American Indians with the intellectual tools and social resources necessary for successful political mobilization. Many of the leading organizations in the Red Power Movement, such as the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), United Native Americans (UNA), and the AIM were launched in large cities, bringing together dislocated American Indians who shared similar dissatisfaction with urban life. Before long, their efforts became more outwardly focused and activist oriented. Although their tactics were clearly influenced by the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, their objectives were primarily motivated by shared experiences of discrimination, political disempowerment, and cultural alienation that were unique to Native Americans. Before the mid-1960s, tribal interests were predominantly advanced through direct lobbying of the U.S. government. Along these lines, the National Conference of American Indians (NCAI) was formed in 1944 to promote a pan-Indian agenda at the national level using institutional means. Public protests started to spring up in Indian Country in the 1950s, and these early demonstrations tended to be local in scope, targeting tribal-level, rather than pan-Indian, issues. Things started to change, however, in the mid-1960s when fisherpeople from
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various tribes in the Pacific Northwest engaged in “fish-ins” to protest the Washington state’s disregard of their treaty-guaranteed fishing rights. The symbolic nature of these protests, and the oftenviolent responses they provoked, quickly attracted the attention of mainstream media outlets as well as urban-based American Indian organizations, such as the NIYC, which quickly became involved in the struggle. Until this point, the NIYC had predominantly concerned itself with issues particular to urban American Indians, even though its overarching objectives—the protection of Native American cultures, the empowerment of tribal governments and the improvement of individual American Indian lives—resonated much more broadly. The Pacific Northwest fish-ins marked the beginning of a more unified alliance between urban and rural American Indians in the struggle for Native American selfdetermination. The fish-ins also influenced the more widespread use of highly publicized, symbolic protest events as means of getting messages about Native American rights across. For these reasons, the fish-ins set the stage for the Red Power activism that was to come.
Red Power Activism The tactics and objectives of the Red Power Movement differed in several ways from those employed by earlier Native American activists and by other ethnic identity movements. First, unlike their Civil Rights Movement counterparts, Red Power activists did not mobilize to secure greater inclusion into U.S. society. Instead, their chief concerns were promoting tribal self-determination and fostering the cultural diversity of American Indian people. Second, unlike earlier Native American activists, Red Power activists were motivated by a pan-Indian agenda that sought federal recognition of tribal political rights on the national, rather than local, level. To accomplish these goals, American Indian activists engaged in symbolic, public protest events to gain widespread media attention. The most visible and consequential protest events of the Red Power Movement took place between 1969 and 1978, starting with the 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island and culminating with the Longest Walk.
Sioux tribesmen on Alcatraz. The takeover of Alcatraz Prison Island (1969–1970) was one of the most successful American Indian protest actions of the 20th century. Although the activists’ objectives were not met, the effects of the occupation on future Red Power activism were significant. For one, the tactics used at Alcatraz inspired Red Power activists to continue using property seizures as a primary strategy for attracting public attention. Perhaps more importantly, Alcatraz rekindled a sense of dignity and hope among Native American people and inspired a generation of young activists to join the struggle for political and cultural self-determination. Source: Time & Life Pictures.
Alcatra az Island
On November 20, 1969, eighty-nine members of the intertribal organization, Indians of All Tribes, landed on Alcatraz and claimed the island “by right of discovery.” Relying on an obscure clause in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which required all unused federal property that was once tribal land to revert to the possession of tribal peoples, the activists demanded that the federal government use the land to build an American Indian cultural center and museum.
Red Power
These institutions would be used to improve the lives of American Indian people through education and traditional spirituality, the activists said. They would also inform non-Indians about the tragedies and triumphs of Native American history. During the 19-month occupation, an intertribal community emerged that was both outwardly focused on affecting political change and inwardly focused on instilling a lost sense of pride in American Indian people and engendering an activist identities based on supratribal objectives and values. For its part, the federal government was fairly relaxed in its dealings with the occupiers. In June 1971, however, after negotiations between activists and the government fell apart, federal agents removed the remaining protestors from Alcatraz. Although the activists’ objectives were not met, the effects of the occupation on future Red Power activism were significant. For one, the tactics used at Alcatraz inspired Red Power activists to continue using property seizures as a primary strategy for attracting public attention. Perhaps more importantly, Alcatraz rekindled a sense of dignity and hope among Native American people and inspired a generation of young activists to join the struggle for political and cultural self-determination. The Tra aill of Broken Trea atiies
In the autumn of 1972, a caravan of Native American activists set off on a journey from California to Washington, D.C., known as the Trail of Broken Treaties. One purpose of the journey was to capitalize on the enthusiasm created by the Alcatraz occupation to mobilize support for the Red Power Movement in Indian Country. Another purpose was to present the activists’ demands on the national stage. Among the demands laid out in the group’s comprehensive “20 Point Proposal,” were the restoration of treaty-making between tribes and the federal government, the return of 110 million acres of tribal land, the reversal of federal termination policies, the abolition of the BIA, the protection of Native American religious and cultural freedoms, and the return of tribal control over local housing, health care services, education, and economic development. Although the plan was to deliver the 20 Point Proposal to the government upon the caravan’s arrival
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in D.C., this did not occur. Logistical problems left the 400 caravan members with nowhere to stay in Washington, D.C. After attempts to secure BIA assistance failed, the activists barricaded themselves into several offices at the BIA headquarters and stayed there for a week. During the occupation, the activists ransacked the building, causing $2.2 million worth of damage. Although the federal government ultimately agreed to examine the 20 Point Proposal, the events at the BIA headquarters tarnished the reputation of the Red Power Movement and followed the activists to their next major protest event. Wou unded d Knee e II
In February 1973, more than 250 American Indian Movement members and their supporters seized control of the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre to protest the alleged malfeasance of BIA-supported tribal chairman, Dick Wilson. Once there, the group symbolically declared itself the Independent Oglala Nation. The occupiers were lightly armed; the combined force of tribal, state, and federal officers that descended on the compound had vast amounts of firepower. Skirmishes erupted during several days of the 71-day standoff, killing two AIM members and wounding several on each side. In the end, hundreds of AIM members were arrested, although less than 10% were ultimately convicted for their participation at Wounded Knee. Because this event was more confrontational and violent than previous demonstrations, it opened the Red Power Movement to increasing criticism from those who questioned its tactics. The public attention garnered by Wounded Knee II further raised awareness about the plight of American Indian people and the need for tribal governments to enjoy greater selfdetermination. The Longesst Walk
Given the escalating hostility evidenced in both the Trail of Broken Treaties and Wounded Knee II, one might expect the final protest event of the Red Power Era to be similarly confrontational. This was not the case. The Longest Walk began in San Francisco in the spring of 1978. By marching from California to Washington, D.C., the participants of the Longest Walk
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hoped to symbolically represent the forced removal of American Indian people from their tribal homelands while drawing attention to legislative attempts to reverse the trend of self-determination that was beginning to shape federal Indian policy. Unlike some of the more recent Red Power demonstrations, the Longest Walk ended as a peaceful expression of solidarity and commitment by American Indian people to continue the struggle for Native American rights.
Impacts of Red Power In the decades since the end of Red Power, Native American tribes have experienced significant political empowerment and cultural revitalization. As a direct response to the demands of American Indian activists, President Richard Nixon advocated the American Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, which was enacted in 1975, thereby ending termination policies and assigning greater control to tribes over crucial reservation services. As a result, tribal education and health care has improved, tribal courts have been strengthened, and important cultural and natural resources have been protected. In addition to these material gains, the Red Power Movement further promoted a revitalization of tribal cultures and spirituality that, in turn, further engendered pride and well being among American Indian people. Finally, the Red Power Movement changed the consciousness of the U.S. public about Native American Tribes and how they fit into the multicultural landscape of U.S. society. Julia Miller Cantzler See also American Indian Movement; Bureau of Indian Affairs; National Congress of American Indians; National Indian Youth Council; Pan-Indianism; Trail of Broken Treaties; Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973)
Further Readings
Cornell, Stephen. 1988. Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence. New York: Oxford University Press. Johnson, Troy, Joane Nagel, and Duane Champagne, eds. 1997. American Indian Activism: Alcatraz to the Longest Walk. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Josephy, Alvin M., Jr., Joane Nagel, and Troy Johnson, eds. 1999. Red Power: The American Indians’ Fight for Freedom. 2nd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Nagel, Joane. 1997. American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, Paul Chaat and Robert Allen Warrior. 1996. Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee. New York: Free Press. Wilkinson, Charles. 2005. Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations. New York: Norton.
REFUGEES A plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty reads, Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! This spirit of unquestioning hospitality—and the promise of freedom and prosperity—have for many years characterized the United States as the ultimate place of refuge for oppressed masses throughout the world. But the 20th century proved to be a testing time for U.S. hospitality, as social and political tempests ravaged Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa, sending millions of people of diverse racial and ethnic origins abroad in search of the proverbial golden door. A perennial and often-perplexing question that the guardians of that door had to address was which of these newcomers deserved refuge in the United States. The answer to this question has been notoriously inconsistent. This entry discusses historical and legal perspectives regarding refugees and the changes that have occurred after the cold war.
Historical and Legal Perspectives Although the United States has a long history of immigration—U.S. President John F. Kennedy famously called it “a nation of immigrants”—the U.S. Congress did not recognize refugees as a distinct group of immigrants, whose situation demanded special attention, until 1965. The need for this special consideration first arose during World War I but grew more urgent during World War II and its aftermath, as millions of people were forced to flee their countries
Refugees
of origin. In response to this crisis, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established in December 1950 by the UN General Assembly, with the mandate to “coordinate international action to protect refugees.” UNHCR held its first convention in 1951 to determine who would be considered a refugee. The charter stated, “The Convention is to be applied without discrimination as to race, religion, or country of origin. . . . No Contracting State shall expel or return a refugee, against his or her will, . . . to a territory where he or she fears persecution.” In practice, however, the determination of an individual’s “well-founded fear” of persecution and the attendant protections afforded refugees have remained largely at the discretion of receiving countries. Although the United States was a signatory to the 1951 convention, and to its subsequent amendment in 1967, well into the 1980s, the United States continued to enforce measures that contradicted the substance of the universal UNHCR agreement. The disparate treatment of Cuban and Haitian refugees by the United States since the 1970s is perhaps the most glaring example of double-standards used in evaluating asylum claims. According to Article 33 of the amended 1967 UNHCR Convention, a refugee is any person who, “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.” The United States did not formally recognize the status of some immigrants as refugees until 1965, although the government had taken ad hoc measures as early as 1938 to shelter European refugees fleeing the impending World War. Other cursory legislation in which the United States recognized its moral obligation to help victims of war and unrest, included the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, the Hungarian Refugee Act of 1958, and the Fair Share Refugee Act of 1960. Collectively, these provisions allowed more than 400,000 Eastern European refugees into the United States. Although the provisions were subject to strict country quotas, special parole powers allowed the attorney general to disregard refugee quotas for certain countries if doing so was deemed to be in U.S. interests. These measures, which underscored the increasing politicization of immigration policy, included
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the Cuban Refugee Program beginning in 1960, the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, the Indochinese Refugee Act of 1977, and the Refugee-Parolee Act of 1978. In the amended Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the United States defined as a refugee any person “fleeing communist or communist-dominated countries or the Middle East.” By basing eligibility for refugee status on narrow, political, and geographic terms, the United States made it clear that its immigration policies would be shaped by its geopolitical priorities. Thus, during the Cold War, the United States began to accept unprecedented numbers of refugees from communist countries in an attempt to destabilize those countries. Even immigration restrictions generally favored the special treatment afforded Eastern European refugees. As a result, nearly all Cubans who arrived in the United States between the early 1960s and the early 1990s were systematically granted asylum, whereas individuals from non-communist countries who were also escaping life-threatening conditions or repressive governments were customarily denied refugee status. For example, during the 1980s, virtually all Salvadorans and Guatemalans applying for asylum were denied, but most applicants from the Soviet Union and from China were approved. The apparent bias against individuals fleeing noncommunist countries prompted the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. This legislation sought to bring the U.S. definition of “refugee” in line with that of UNHCR, and thus make the asylum process equitable for all applicants. Nevertheless, it took many years for immigration agencies to shed their bias toward refugees from communist countries. Indeed, in a 1980 class-action lawsuit brought against the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) by Haitian refugees, the Justice Department concluded that Haitians who came to the United States seeking freedom and justice did not find it. Similarly, the INS was mired in controversy during the 1980s and early 1990s as Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees sought legal redress of the unfair denial of their asylum applications.
After the Cold War After the Soviet era ended in 1991, U.S. policymakers could no longer garner unyielding public support for the unconditional acceptance of refugees from communist countries. The public, however, had already
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begun to withdraw such support starting in the late 1970s. For instance, the 130,000 Vietnamese refugees who arrived in the United States after the Vietnam War received a far cooler welcome than had the greater number of Cuban refugees before them. But even Cuban refugees fell out of favor with the U.S. public after 125,000 Cubans converged on South Florida during the highly publicized Mariel boatlift of 1980. At the same time, an increasing number of Haitians were landing in Florida on makeshift boats and demanding the same treatment as Cubans. Rarely had so many refugees converged on the United States in such a short period. That these Vietnamese, Cuban, and Haitian refugees were poorer and less well educated than their predecessors led some to view them as economic liabilities. As a result, an overwhelmed public, particularly in Florida, Texas, and New York, began pressing for more restrictive immigration policies. The fall of the Soviet Union meant the removal of many restrictions on emigration from socialist countries. Although the West had often loudly criticized the “iron curtain” that had kept people in these countries, the specter of a mass exodus of refugees flooding the United States in a post-Soviet era led many “free” countries to begin constructing a “steel ring” of laws to keep refugees out. Although a variety of restrictive measures taken in the first half of the 1990s helped curb asylum applications from Central America and the Caribbean, renewed ethnic violence in Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans in the second half of the decade caused the number of refugee arrivals to drop steadily rather than precipitously. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) expanded the definition of “political opinion,” as found in the 1967 UNHCR Convention, to include “resistance to a coercive population control program” in reference to China’s single-child policy. The Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, signed in 1988 but not ratified until October 21, 1994, made female genital mutilation—a practice found predominantly in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia—a credible fear of persecution. Thus, in less than 20 years, the United States expanded its asylee protection from a niche of refugees to a wide cross-section of people. Asylum applicants now have to demonstrate a “credible fear of persecution.” Yet, the term persecution is still not defined by treaty, statute, or regulation,
and there remains no universally accepted definition of persecution. There are only guidelines from various sources, including the UNHCR handbook, precedent decisions, and international human rights law. This absence of clear definitions has made it increasingly difficult for immigration agents to evaluate asylum claims. In addition, an increasing number of asylum seekers are coming from countries with cultures, customs, and social structures wildly different from those of the United States, which represents fresh challenges for immigration agencies. To help public officials face these new challenges, the U.S. Asylum Officer Corps was established in 1990 to provide asylum officers information on country conditions needed to make acceptable asylum adjudications. Even with these resources, the definitive meaning of what constitutes a “credible fear of persecution”—the crucial element in determining refugee status— remains a contentious topic among public officials, special interest groups, and asylum seekers. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress amended the Immigration and Nationality Act with new provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, expanding retroactively the grounds of inadmissibility based on terrorism, and also broadened the definitions of terrorist activity, and terrorist organization. As a result of the PATRIOT Act and the heightened security requirements for all immigrants since September 11th, the number of individuals granted refugee status in the United States dropped precipitously from an average of 91,211 annually between 1992 and 2001 to just 27,000 in 2002 and 28,000 in 2003. Admissions for 2004 and 2005 rebounded with more than 50,000 refugees admitted each year.
Conclusion In the United States, between the 1930s and the late 1970s, refugee status was granted almost exclusively to people fleeing communist regimes. However, a confluence of events between the end of the Vietnam War and the collapse of the Soviet Union placed new pressure on the United States to redesign its refugee policies to better cope with the rising number of asylum seekers. The Refugee Act of 1980 was a milestone in that the United States shifted from a political definition of the term refugee to one that was neutral, universal, and based on merit. Subsequent reforms extended refugee protection to a wider range of
Religion
persecuted people. Other legislation introduced between 1996 and 2002 sought to screen out individuals who were considered potential threats to U.S. interests, a practice that has existed in one form or another since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. In consequence, adjudicating refugee claims has become a complex decision-making process that sometimes takes several years. Nevertheless, the United States has come a long way in recognizing its moral obligation to assist refugees from all parts of the world indiscriminately, although experience shows that the extent to which the United States is willing to provide sanctuary to refugees hinges tenuously on the social, economic, and political context at home and abroad. Mohamed Wann and Ted Henken See Appendix A See also Asylum; “Boat People”; Cuban Americans; Europe; Haiti; Haitian Americans; Haitian and Cuban Immigration: A Comparison; Hungarian Americans; Immigration, U.S.; “Marielitos”; PATRIOT Act of 2001; Russia; Salvadoran Americans; Vietnamese Americans
Further Readings
Barnhill, John H. 2001. “Political, Ethnic, Religious and Gender Persecution.” Encyclopedia of American Immigration. 4 vols. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Department of Homeland Security 2006. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2005. Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs.gov/ ximgtn/statistics Golden, Renny and Michael McConnell. 1986. Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad. New York: Orbis Books. Mitchell, Christopher. 1992. Western Hemisphere Immigration and United States Foreign Policy. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Peters, Philip and Chantal Agarwal. 2003. “U.S. Refugee Admissions: Time to Return to Pre-9/11 Levels.” Washington, DC: Lexington Institute, September 12, 2003. Available from http://lexingtoninstitute.org/docs/ 479.pdf UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 1996. Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. Available from http://www.unhcr.org/protect/ PROTECTION/3b66c2aa10.pdf U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). 2006. History of the United States Asylum Officer Corps. Available from http://www.uscis.gov Zolberg, Aristide. 1988. “The Roots of American Refugee Policy.” Social Research 55(4):649–678.
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Zolberg, Aristide, Astri Suhrke, and Sergio Aguayo. 1989. Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World. New York: Oxford University Press.
RELIGION Given the growing diversity of the advanced industrial nations, sociologists have once again become interested in exploring the intersections of ethnicity and religion in an era of globalization. The relationship between these two modes of identity and communal affiliation is not a new topic in the field, and as a result, today’s researchers are able to build on a tradition of empirical inquiry and conceptual developments deriving both from the sociology of religion and from ethnic and immigration studies. This is particularly the case in the United States, where considerable attention in the past has been devoted to the religion of immigrants during the last great migratory wave, as well as to the religion of the Black descendants of slaves. This entry examines some different approaches to studying the relationship.
Categorizing the Links A number of researchers have tried to categorize the varied ways that ethnicity and religion can be related to each other. Sociologists have long referred to some groups as “religio-ethnic.” To fall into this category, a group would be defined in such a manner that its members’ religious identity and ethnic affiliation are deeply embedded in each other, and in combination, they define the group. Whereas German immigrants to the United States would not be defined as a religioethnic group, Jews are often considered the paradigmatic instance of such a group. This is a more complicated relationship than the term might suggest, however, as the Jewish case attests. Does being a Jew depend on being religiously observant, or can an atheist, freethinker, or convert to Christianity be a Jew? What about individuals who convert to Judaism? Harold Abramson, in the most widely cited typology in the field, postulates four types of relationship between religion and ethnicity. In the first type, religion serves as the principal foundation of ethnicity, exemplified by Jews, Hutterites, and the Amish. In the
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second type, there is generally a historical connection between a particular religion and a national identity. Examples would include Dutch Reformed, the Church of England, the Serbian Orthodox, and Scottish Presbyterianism. Implied in the effort to distinguish this type from the preceding one is the assumption that the relationship between religion and national identity is more historically circumstantial than is the relationship between religion and ethnicity. In other words, the linkage is somewhat looser and more subject to change, particularly to erosion. The third type is, according to Abramson, the most common. It refers to a situation in which a number of distinct ethnic groups share a common religious tradition. This would include the Nordic groups and Germans who shaped U.S. Lutheranism; the Irish, Polish, Italian, Mexican, and other groups that are major constituent components of Roman Catholicism in the United States; Black and White Baptists; and more recently the many nations that together form the composite Islamic population. The final type is considered to represent the most inconsequential of the four. Here the relationship is loose, as religion plays an insignificant part in the definition of an ethnic identity. The examples pointed to include the Romany, a tiny group in the United States, and American Indians. The latter can be debated, but it is not clear if what is meant is the traditional religions of tribal units or the fact that a sizable segment of the Native American population has over time converted to Christianity.
Accounting for Change Typologies are designed to offer a snapshot at a particular point in time. As such, there is a static quality to this schema. It is not capable of capturing the changes that have occurred over time. The derivation of the types from concrete examples located in a particular place at a particular time sometimes results in a failure to appreciate that such ideal types are necessarily historically variable. Religious change during the last half of the past century calls into question whether specific groups should continue to be located in one cell of the schema or relocated into another. Take, for instance, Lutherans. Although almost all Lutherans in the United States up to the first half of the 20th century could trace their origins to one of the Nordic countries or to Germany, and even today, one can detect the significance of the linkage between
ethnic background and Lutheranism, much has changed. First, outreach efforts to both African Americans and Hispanic and Asian immigrants have resulted in increasing the ethnic diversity of the denomination. However, far more significant has been the impact of intermarriage between Nordics or Germans and others of European ancestry. Thus, the typical Lutheran congregation today looks considerably more pan-European than in the past. The task today is to move from typologies to a theoretical understanding of a dynamic relationship between religion and ethnicity. This entails making sense not only of the differing structural features of the religion-ethnicity nexus, but also locating their interrelationship in terms of process—or in other words introducing the impact of historical change. This would invariably require an effort to bring existing theoretical positions on ethnicity and religion into dialogue, a rather daunting task given that in both areas of inquiry there is currently a lively debate about the most appropriate theoretical approach. Not long ago, there was a rather widespread consensus in ethnic studies that assimilation was a virtually universal process, whereas in religious studies, the same was thought of secularization. Since then, both positions have been seriously challenged. In ethnic studies, this has resulted in a situation where different modes of incorporation appear possible, given the context and intentions of the social actors involved, including assimilation, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, and fragmentation. Meanwhile, in religious studies, secularization has been abandoned by some but seen as one of a number of options leading to a situation where in any complex modern society one can simultaneously find evidence of erosion, maintenance, and intensification of religious belief and practice. The challenge is to bring these two contested theoretical fields into fruitful encounter. An important starting point would be the social constructionist insight that any religio-ethnic label amounts to an ongoing accomplishment requiring persistent efforts aimed at maintaining the connection between religion and ethnicity. In other words, any label is always historically contingent. The expanding body of empirical research concerned with the new immigrants and religion can provide a particular significant empirical grounding for such theoretical efforts. Peter Kivisto
Religion, African Americans
See also Amish; Assimilation; Civil Religion; Father Divine Peace Mission Movement; Hutterites; Jewish Americans; Jewry, Black American; Mennonites; Mormons, Race and; Muslim Americans; Religion, African Americans; Religion, Minority; Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993; Religious Movements, New; Roman Catholics; Sacred Sites, Native American; Sacred Versus Secular; Santería; Schmiedeleut
Further Readings
Abramson, Harold. 1980. “Religion.” Pp. 869–875 in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, edited by S. Thernstrom, A. Orlov, and O. Handlin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hammond, Phillip E. and Kee Warner. 1993. “Religion and Ethnicity in Late-Twentieth Century America.” Annals 527(May):55–66. Kivisto, Peter. 2007. “Reconceptualizing the Relationship between Ethnicity and Religion.” In Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, edited by J. A. Beckford and J. Demerath. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
RELIGION, AFRICAN AMERICANS Religion has historically been central to the lives of African Americans. Consistent evidence indicates that African Americans are more likely to attend church and actively participate in religious activities than are Whites in the United States. African Americans are also particularly inclined to draw on religious space as a social, civic, and political resource. Indeed, religion has been the core of the African American community from slavery to contemporary times. This entry discusses the role of religion in African American life, highlighting the history of the Black Church (an institution that includes a loose network of several African American–controlled denominations), civic and political involvement, gender roles, and the contemporary Black Church.
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and deaconesses, trustees, church mothers, and pastors. The Church was a haven from a harsh, oppressive society. Scholars have consistently regarded the Black Church as the heart of the African American community. African Americans’ mass conversion to Christianity is primarily attributable to revivalist religion. Some argue that revivalist religion was appealing to African Americans because it embraced hope and freedom. As a subordinate people, African Americans could connect with a personal and accessible God in the man Jesus who also experienced suffering, yet was ultimately victorious in overcoming his oppressors. Others propose that the effusive, fervent religious practices of revivalist religion were amenable to traditional African religious culture, and were therefore appealing to African Americans. Despite African Americans’ conversion to Christianity, however, African American Christians, those enslaved or free, were not subsumed as equal with their White counterparts. African American church participation was limited to worship service attendance. Occupational or social mobility within religious organizations was rare. White males filled the leadership and pastoral positions in these spaces. Religious meetings and services attended by African Americans and Whites were racially segregated. African Americans were relegated to separate pews, usually in the back rows or
History of the Black Church The Black Church has historically been the most important institution in the religious lives of African Americans, as well as in their social, economic, and civic lives. The Black Church provided a place where African Americans, regardless of their formal skills or education, could achieve upward mobility, as deacons
Mass at an African American Catholic Church on the South Side of Chicago (1942). Religion has been the core of the African American community from slavery to contemporary times. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USW38-000138-D.
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galleries. Slaves were usually not allowed to attend services with Whites. Under these conditions, slave owners permitted slaves to congregate, but only under their supervision and the leadership of White clergy. In response to exclusion from full participation in White-controlled religious institutions, African Americans began to carve out religious spaces where they were relatively free from White control. Slaves, who were forbidden to organize, developed plantation churches, also known as the “invisible institutions.” Secret worship services, usually led by male slaves with at least some Bible knowledge, were held in slave quarters or other clandestine places. Free African Americans founded their own formal Christian institutions. For example, Richard Allen, a preacher in the Methodist denomination, and other free African Americans created the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1787 after being physically removed from an unsanctioned section of a church during a crowded worship service. After the Civil War, these formal and informal organizations forged a loosely tied network of African American denominations commonly referred to as the Black Church—the first African American– owned and controlled institution within the African American community.
African Americans, Religion, and Social Reform Unlike other religious institutions that separate the secular and the religious, religion is integral to the secular endeavors of the African American community. Religion is so embedded in African American culture that church culture is employed to mobilize people toward political and civic action. The most poignant example of religion’s role in the secular endeavors of African Americans is the Civil Rights Movement. The success of the Civil Rights Movement pivoted around the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a church-based movement organization. The SCLC organized freedom marches and sit-ins to protest legalized racial segregation in cities across the South during the 1950s and 1960s. These efforts, in conjunction with those of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), facilitated the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregation in all U.S. facilities that served the general public and banned discrimination in employment and public education. While Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the
president of SCLC, the SCLC depended on a network of young, activist African American pastors and religious leaders who organized local initiatives that sparked a national movement. Indeed, the SCLC would not have existed without their institutions’ resources. Subsequent generations of African American pastors and religious organizations after the Civil Rights and Black Consciousness movements have continued the legacy of social, civic, and political activism. African American churches are consistently more inclined than White congregations to participate in such activities as educating congregants about voting and discussing politics, community revitalization, social justice, and educational advancement. Although these activities have a largely local focus, a loose network of African American pastors and congregations, similar to that which formed the basis of the SCLC, is still accessed to mobilize constituents during national level sociopolitical efforts.
Gender Roles in African American Religious Organizations Similar to most religious institutions, African American churches are patriarchal organizations. Men generally hold the key leadership positions, namely the pastorate. However, African American churches are disproportionately female. In some cases, the female composition reaches more than 90% of congregations. In many respects, the survival of African American churches has rested on the physical, religious, and financial commitment of female congregants. Research has shown that women’s economic and social power in religious organizations translated into an increased independence from male authority structures. Women used their economic and human resources to wield considerable power and influence on the churches’ structural and decision-making processes. Although women were largely prohibited from becoming elders, bishops, and pastors, they developed parallel mobility structures in the form of women-centered organizations where women could aspire to become church mothers, evangelists, or missionaries. In some churches, the actual duties of women in these positions varied little from those of their male counterparts. Women-centered organizations also independently determined the content and character of women’s roles in churches, controlled the written and oral records of significant women in the
Religion, Minority
church, trained Bible and academic teachers, influenced church doctrine and policy, and participated in electing male church leadership. Women-centered organizations within African American churches and denominations also acted as primary vehicles through which African American women participated in the Civil Rights Movement. One such organization was the Women’s Political Council (WPC), an organization of professional African American women. The primary purpose of the WPC was to mobilize the Black female vote; however, it also organized bus boycotts, negotiated for the eradication of segregation policies with city commissions, and used its network to disseminate protest information.
The Contemporary Black Church Since the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Church has undergone significant changes. A strong Black consciousness that emphasizes economic equality and social justice issues has continued to be a central theme in African American churches. This theme connects African Americans with one another across socioeconomic lines. Additionally, the Black Church, unlike mainline Protestant churches, has grown. As African Americans migrated North and to urban areas, they have flocked to churches as a source of community, cultural expression, and opportunity for activism within a Christian faith context. Furthermore, the institutional changes resulting from the Civil Rights Movement helped to more than double the size of the African American middle class, and consequently the proportion of middle-class members in African American churches has increased. Finally, both the laity and church leaders are more educated and professionalized than their pre–civil rights counterparts. Scholars of religion and African Americans are continuing to explore changes in the role of religion among African Americans. Scholars are addressing issues of activism among African American pastors and churches, the phenomenon of African American megachurches, politics and religious African Americans, and increasing class and religious plurality within the African American community. Korie L. Edwards See also African Americans; African American Studies; Civil Rights Movement; Civil Rights Movement, Women and; Father Divine Peace Mission Movement; Feminism,
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Black; Jewish-Black Relations: A Historical Perspective; Jewish-Black Relations: The Contemporary Period; Jewry, Black American; Nation of Islam; Religion; Slavery
Further Readings
Du Bois, W. E. B. 2003. The Negro Church. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Emerson, Michael O. and Christian Smith. 2000. Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Gilkes, Cheryl Townsend. 1985. “‘Together and in Harness’: Women’s Traditions in the Sanctified Church.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 10(4):678–699. Gilkes, Cheryl Townsend. 1998. “Plenty Good Room: Adaptation in a Changing Black Church.” Pp. 101–121 in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: American and Religions in the Twenty-First Century, edited by W. C. Roof. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Lincoln, C. Eric and Lawrence H. Mamiya. 1990. The Black Church in the African American Experience. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Morris, Aldon. 1984. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change. New York: Free Press. Raboteau, Alfred J. 1995. A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African American Religious History. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Reimers, David M. 1965. White Protestantism and the Negro. New York: Oxford University Press.
RELIGION, MINORITY The term minority religion usually refers to a situation in which a segment of the population of a society practices a religious faith different from the majority of the population, which practices what would be called the dominant faith or faiths. But the term minority religion is also a reference to power: In some situations, a minority faith in terms of number of adherents is dominant politically and thus is not considered a “minority religion.” Sometimes most of the population is one faith but has little political power. The domination of Iraq’s Shiite population by Sunnis during the time of Saddam Hussein or Northern Ireland Catholics being a majority in a society politically dominated by Protestants illustrates such possibilities. This entry looks at different examples of minority religions and their reception by the host societies.
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Religion, Minority
The Usual Case In the most frequent situation, a society is populated mostly by adherents of one or more major faiths, with all other smaller or newer religions being considered minority in both numbers and political power. Catholic countries in Central and South America during the past several centuries illustrate this pattern, although in the early stages of colonization, the Catholic faith, a minority in numbers, dominated politically over a much larger Indigenous population practicing Native religions. European nations also usually exemplify this pattern of one dominant faith as well, as in the case of Catholic Italy or even officially secular but thoroughly Catholic France, although some nations have more than one major faith. Germany sanctions both Lutheran and Catholic faiths; Hungary officially approves of both Catholic and Protestant faiths and allows and encourages them to be heavily involved in the public life of the society, while allowing minority religions to operate openly. The Netherlands also has more than one dominant religion with three separate, partially tax-supported institutional structures that dominate the society, one Protestant, one Catholic, and one Jewish. In these societies with one or more dominant and officially sanctioned religions, other faiths are by definition minority in both numbers and political power. Such societies may develop a hierarchy of religions, with one or more officially sanctioned faiths that have many special privileges relative to taxes and access to the institutional structures of society, through secondtier religious groups with some privileges, to unacceptable religions that are allowed to exist but with no privileges or that are even openly repressed. Many nations have such hierarchies of acceptable and unacceptable religions, as well as governmental ministries that enforce the hierarchies, making sure that minority faiths know their place in society and remain in it. Such arrangements may also include special agreements between the state and the privileged religion, as is the case in many Catholic countries, or even constitutional protections for the favored faith.
Pluralistic Societies If there are many minority faiths in a society, and if the dominant faith is relatively weak in political power and numbers, then that society is more pluralistic in nature, and religious groups may share access
to the public arena. If the pluralism is normatively and legally sanctioned, as in nations such as Australia or the United States, then the term minority religion does not necessarily or usually carry a significant stigma. However, if a minority faith is perceived to hold beliefs and practices that vary greatly from those of the general society, or if it is viewed as a political threat, it may be stigmatized and even repressed by actions of the institutional and political structures of the society, including even the dominant religious institutions. Such repression can be severe, as is the case with the Bahia in Islamic Iran or the Falun Gong in China. Less deadly repressive efforts can nevertheless lead to major restrictions of freedom and opportunities for members of negatively viewed minority faiths, as is the case with the Church of Scientology in Germany and Jehovah’s Witnesses in Greece. In Russia, minority faiths were initially welcomed in the early 1990s, but the situation changed dramatically, with a number of them being treated to regulation and even dissolution efforts in the later 1990s and into the 21st century. Minority religions are often associated with ethnic or racial minorities, with the religion simply being a part of the cultural identity of such social groups. If there is a status hierarchy of racial and ethnic groups within a society, then those groups on the lower rungs of society, by definition, practice a minority religion. There are innumerable examples of this situation around the world, as noted in the previous examples. However, the status of ethnic and racial groups can change over time in a society. Catholics were at one time a much-persecuted religious minority in the United States, and Catholicism was associated strongly with ethnic minorities from Southern and Eastern Europe. But now Catholics have become a dominant force in numbers and political power in the United States. Whereas 150 years ago, convents were being burned in Boston, now a majority of members of the U.S. Supreme Court are Catholic, and the beliefs of Catholics influence public policy considerably.
New Religious Movements An important modern variant of the concept of minority religion is the term New Religious Movement (NRM), made popular by scholars studying new religious phenomena occurring during the past several decades in Western nations. NRMs are smaller faiths that, starting in the 1960s in the United States, became
Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993
attractive to a number of young people who chose to participate while rejecting the churches and cultural values of their parents. These NRMs were almost immediately controversial because they were recruiting youth from relatively affluent and influential families, thus leading to political debate and to the charge that they were “breaking up families.” Adding to the controversy was that a number of the NRMs were from cultures and ethnic groups different from those of the dominant society in the United States. Eastern-derived groups included the Hare Krishna, Transcendental Meditation, the followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and the Unification Church led by Korean Sun Myung Moon. The negatively connoted term cult became associated with these NRMs and was used to justify attempts to control the spread of these groups. These NRMs and others, such as the Jesus Movement groups and Scientology, became the focus of much negative attention and efforts at control and regulation, particularly in the United States and in Western Europe. These groups became known as “high demand” religions, which changed the lifestyles and career plans of many of the young people they were recruiting. Simplistic and unscientific explanations of why so many youth would join these groups developed around concepts such as “brainwashing” and “mind control,” which in turn became weapons in political and legal battles over these new religious groups. Occasional episodes of violence associated with some of the NRMs or other groups, such as the Peoples Temple mass murder–suicides in Guyana in 1978, fueled the controversy about them. More recent events such as the Branch Davidian episode in Waco, Texas, in 1993, along with several episodes of suicide by Solar Temple groups in France, Switzerland, and Quebec contributed to the outcry about NRMs in the West. In the United States, the government could not take effective direct action against NRMs because of the force of constitutional protections for religion, although many less visible and formal ways were found to exert governmental control over NRMs. Thus, the preferred method of social control in the United States became self-help civil law suits brought by parents and former NRM members, and these flourished for years based largely on theories such as “brainwashing.” In Western Europe, where governments regulate religion as a matter of course, the NRMs quickly became the focus of governmental attention. This led to direct efforts at social control
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and considerable regulation, with some groups actually being designated as undesirable or illegal in countries such as France, Germany, and Belgium. In former communist countries, the efforts at social control of minority faiths, including some NRMs, sometimes became violent, as governments either took action themselves or sanctioned actions by citizens against groups such as the Hare Krishna, the Mormons, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Thus, the term minority religion has many meanings, depending on the social context. In pluralistic societies where religious variation is positively sanctioned, minority faiths can flourish and participate in public life. But, in other societies where pluralism is rejected, the experience of minority religions and their adherents can be vastly different and difficult. James T. Richardson See also Ireland; Islamophobia; Minority Rights; Mormons, Race and; Religion; Religion, African Americans; Religious Movement, New
Further Readings
Barker, Eileen. 1989. New Religious Movements. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Beckford, James. 1985. Cult Controversies. London: Tavistock. Melton, Gordon. 1992. Encyclopedia of American Religions. 7th ed. New York: Thomson Gale. Richardson, James T. 2004. Regulating Religion. New York: Kluwer.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RESTORATION ACT OF 1993 The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) was adopted in 1993 to spell out what the government could do and not do with relation to restricting religious freedoms, especially those of minority religions and underrepresented minorities. The act was prompted by a coalition of religious groups and others, responding to a controversial court case that overturned decades of law concerning the place of religious freedom in the United States. Ruled unconstitutional after 4 years, the act nevertheless has had an ongoing influence on issues related to conflicts between
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Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993
religious freedom and government rules and regulations. This entry discusses the law, its history, and the current situation.
scholarly criticism and public concern about the seeming denigration of religious freedom rights, eventually succeeded in gaining passage of RFRA.
The Smitth Decision
The Logic and History of the Law
Employment Division, Dept. of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith concerned the use of peyote by two employees of the state of Oregon who were also members of the Native American Church, which uses peyote ceremonially as a sacrament. The two were terminated from their state positions as drug counselors, and they applied for unemployment compensation. The state had used their peyote usage to deny the two employees benefits, and the latter brought suit to overturn the decision. Many observers assumed that because unemployment compensation was the main area where the compelling interest and least restrictive tests had been successfully applied in the past, this would be a straightforward case, with the plaintiffs prevailing. However, Native American groups have seldom prevailed in legal actions attempting to defend their religious practices or sacred lands, so the stage was set for a major confrontation. The plaintiffs prevailed at the state trial court level and at the Oregon Supreme Court, based on the fact that, although use of peyote was illegal in Oregon, the state had not enforced the law against practitioners of the Native American Church in the past. However, the state of Oregon appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which, surprisingly to many, accepted the case and then, in a stunning ruling, overturned the Oregon Supreme Court’s decision and tossed out the compelling interest and least restrictive means tests. Instead, the Court promulgated a “facially neutral” test, which means a law can be applied against religious practices, no matter the impact, if the law is neutral toward religion in how it is written. The Smith case had many repercussions. The state of Oregon moved rapidly to criminalize the ceremonial use of peyote by the Native American Church. On the national level, there was great consternation regarding the Smith decision, which was seen as the “final blow” in a series of similar rulings. This led to the formation of a coalition of religious groups of all types, including some that were often at odds on some issues, such as abortion. Also, there was an outpouring of commentary about the decision, with many scholars such as Douglas Laycock, offering severe criticisms of the decision. The coalition, fueled by
RFRA was passed nearly unanimously by Congress and signed with great ceremony by President Bill Clinton in 1993. Section 1 of RFRA (H.R. 1308, 103rd Congress, 1st session) set forth the key provisions: (a) in general, the “government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability,” with the exception (b) that “government may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person (1) furthers a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” RFRA was controversial from the outset because of the grounding of its authority in Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which gives Congress the authority to “enforce by appropriate legislation” the Amendment’s guarantee of the due process and equal protection provisions. This section has served as the basis for Congress’s passage of civil rights legislation, including voting rights for minorities, but extending the section’s reach to cover religious freedom was viewed by some as unwarranted. Also, a last-minute but unsuccessful battle was waged to limit RFRA’s application so that it did not apply to prisoners, with some claiming that RFRA would cause chaos in the nation’s prisons. An amendment to omit prisoners from inclusion was defeated 56 to 41 in the U.S. Senate, after then-Attorney General Janet Reno wrote a letter indicating that such concerns were groundless. RFRA was ruled unconstitutional in 1997 by the U.S. Supreme Court in City of Boerne v. Flores, which involved an effort by a Catholic Church in Boerne, Texas, to rebuild larger facilities to house its growing congregation and its social programs. Notably, this major decision involved a dominant religious group and a seemingly simple zoning dispute. Part of the church was in a historic district, and the city refused to allow the structure to be replaced, even though the façade was to remain. The church sued in federal district court, which ruled against the church and stated that RFRA was unconstitutional. The church appealed and gained a victory in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993
The City of Boerne appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled on June 25, 1997, that RFRA was unconstitutional. The Court stated that Congress had usurped the Court’s powers to determine what was constitutional and that the Fourteenth Amendment could not be used to justify Congress’s action. The Court also stated that religious discrimination in the United States did not rise to the level of the problems associated with racial discrimination, which warranted use of the Fourteenth Amendment to justify federal civil rights legislation. RFRA did have some impact during its 4-plus years in operation. Scholars noted that the RFRA threshold was high and seldom reached unless there was a combination of legal coercion clashing with religious duty. Scholars also noted that about half the RFRA cases filed were by prisoners, and some of them were successful. Thus, a major impact of RFRA was to protect the religious rights of prisoners, many of whom are from minority racial and ethnic groups. Religious groups themselves won few cases under RFRA, however, extending the pre-Smith pattern mentioned previously. The pattern of trial and appeal court decisions concerning RFRA claims before Boerne was decidedly mixed, and, until the Boerne case, the Supreme Court refused several RFRA cases. But with Boerne, the Court spoke plainly, indicating that it would not allow such a direct challenge to its authority as RFRA offered.
The Revival of RFRA After Boerne, there was great hue and cry by proponents of strong religious freedom provisions and interpretations. At the federal level, efforts were made to pass RFRA-like statutes that were more narrowly focused and grounded in constitutional provisions other than the Fourteenth Amendment. In 2000, Congress passed by unanimous consent in both houses the Religious Land Use and Institutional Persons Act (RLUIPA), which was focused only on zoning matters and people incarcerated in mental hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons. The latter provisions are potentially of assistance to ethnic and racial minority members, who are vastly overrepresented in U.S. prisons. The new act was grounded mainly in the commerce and spending clauses of the Constitution for its legal basis. RLUIPA has since been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court as it applies to prisoners, and lower courts have generally upheld it in claims concerning land use.
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The Supreme Court also has unanimously upheld the original RFRA as it applies to federal agencies, ruling in Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal in favor of a small (130 members) Brazilian religion sect in New Mexico that had been precluded by federal customs agents from importing hoasca, a hallucinogenic tea used in its religious rituals. The Roberts Court, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing, stated, among other things, that if peyote use for religious purposes by the Native American Church was exempted from drug laws, then the substance used by the Brazilian sect should be as well. Thus, RFRA is alive and well as it applies to federal agencies. Also, at least eleven states have passed state-level RFRA laws in an effort to overcome the Boerne ruling that the Congress could not dictate what nonfederal public entities do concerning religious freedom claims. Thus, it seems that there is still strong momentum for granting more religious freedom in U.S. society, including for minority religions and populations such as prisoners that have a high proportion of minorities. This movement is controversial, as demonstrated by a number of scholarly publications; Marci Hamilton, for example, argued that the demand for religious freedom has gone too far and is not in the public interest. However, given the make-up of the Roberts Supreme Court, and the indication of its posture on these issues as shown in the Gonzales case, it seems that religious freedom rights, including those of minorities, are gaining some support at this time in U.S. society. James T. Richardson See also Religion; Religion, Minority; Sacred Versus Secular
Further Readings
City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997). Employment Division, Dept. of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 1990. Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418 (2006). Hamilton, Marci. 2005. God vs. Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law. New York: Cambridge University Press. Laycock, Douglas. 1991. The Remnants of Free Exercise. Supreme Court Review. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lupa, Ira. 1995. “Of Time and RFRA: A Lawyer’s Guide to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” Montana Law Review 56:171–225.
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Religious Movements, New
Richardson, James T. 1999. “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act: A Short-Lived Experiment in Religious Freedom.” Pp. 143–164 in Religion and Law in the Global Village, edited by D. E. Guinn, C. Barrigar, and K. K. Young. Montreal, Quebec: McGill University Press.
RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS, NEW New religious movements have been a controversial part of the social scene for more than 4 decades in Western societies. These movements have often been referred to as “cults” in media treatments and public discourse, a clear sign that they rather quickly achieved a notorious status in societies where they developed or were imported from elsewhere. Some scholars estimated that there were as many as 2,500 new religious movements of various types operating in the United States in the 1960s through the 1970s, and that several hundred thousand young people had participated in one or more of them, even if only for a short time. This entry looks at some of the movements and their impact.
Initial Interest When significant numbers of young people began to show an interest in unusual religious movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many were surprised because the rise of such groups seemed counter to the predominate secularization thesis that assumed the demise of religion. Many of those who were interested in new religious movements were from the most affluent and well-educated groups in society, which added to the controversy, as did the origin and character of some of the groups themselves. Some of the more controversial movements were of foreign origin and were headed by Asian or Indian religious figures. Groups such as the Unification Church headed by Sun Myung Moon, the Hare Krishna, the Rajneesh group in Oregon, and the Divine Light Mission gained considerable notoriety, in no small part because foreign gurus were attracting some of the “brightest and best” of U.S. youth. Other new religious movements, such as Jesus Movement groups, were derived from the basic Christian culture but were also of concern because of their demanding lifestyle and in some cases, as with the Children of God, because they flouted conventional sexual mores. Other movements
such as Scientology were accused of being organized mainly to gather funds from unwitting youth. The rise of new religious movements led to efforts to explain why, in a supposedly secular age, so many youth would consider participating. Some viewed the new movements as clear evidence that the secularization hypothesis was dead and that religion was still a vibrant concern among modern citizens, including youth. Others thought the rise of new religious movements demonstrated that religion had been turned into just another consumer good and that the interest was better characterized as a fad or fashion among youth. More sophisticated analyses focused on possible rejection of Western and, more particularly, U.S. cultural values and political postures. The Vietnam War had caused many youth to question U.S. values and politics, as had the Civil Rights Movement and other movements, such as those supporting equal treatment for women and for other minorities. Religious movements seemed to offer alternatives to the chaos of the 1960s in the United States for many youth, who flocked in impressive numbers into some of the movements. Many were communal and thus offered something similar to a surrogate family for participants, many of whom were estranged from their own families. Initially, new religious movements were viewed benignly and treated more positively by mass media and societal leaders, if only for a short time. The movements seemed a preferable alternative to antiwar and civil rights demonstrations that were taking place across the land and involving many young people. Soon, however, the mood shifted, as the “high demand” nature of some of the new religious movements became known, along with some of their unconventional lifestyles and practices, including street fundraising for some of the groups such as the Unification Church and similar activities of the Hare Krishna in airports around the country.
Increasing Controversy Although considerable research has shown that these youth were joining new religious movements because they wanted to, it was difficult for some to accept that young people might choose to participate of their own volition. That explanation implied a dramatic rejection of cultural values and parental guidance by these young people, a view that many in society were unwilling to accept. Therefore, more appealing “accounts” of what was happening were sought, and
Remittances
one was readily available within U.S. culture. “Brainwashing” and “mind control” became the preferred explanation of the success of the new religious movements, and quickly became hegemonic in its spread. These concepts were borrowed from popular understandings of why some prisoners of war chose to remain in Korea after the war and what happened after the Chinese communists took over China in the late 1940s. This explanation was made more acceptable because several of the best-known new religious movements were headed by foreigners, with the Unification Church and Reverend Moon being the most notorious. Supposedly Moon and some other gurus had developed psychotechnologies that left potential recruits unable to refuse entreaties to join the group and powerless to leave once they had joined. It was not well known initially how small most of the new religious movements were, which suggested that the allegedly powerful psychotechnologies were not effective; such groups also had high attrition rates, which belied notions of “mind control,” and enforced explanations that were more volitional in nature.
Spread and Evolution Most of the new religious movements that became well known in the 1960s and 1970s gained most of their impetus on the U.S. West Coast, then spread eastward across the country and into other nations. A few developed elsewhere and then came to the United States, with the Rajneesh group being one such import that flourished for a time in India and then Europe before developing a significant presence in the state of Oregon. Some of the groups became quite international in scope. These included the Hare Krishna, the Unification Church, the Children of God, and Scientology, all of which developed a presence in dozens of other countries, including former communist countries, Western Europe, and even in South America and Africa. As some of the major groups were spreading, they were also changing. Many of the hundreds of new religious movements simply disbanded, but others managed to maintain an organization, even as they were changing. Some evolved into what are in effect new denominations, changing character dramatically from the communal youth-oriented movements of previous decades. Some encountered severe problems with agents of social control in the United States
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and other nations and changed as a result of these challenges. All new religious movements that did not disappear had to deal with changing demographic make-up, as members aged, established families, and had children, sometimes in large numbers. The presence of families forced new religious movements to change and to focus more resources on maintaining their families instead of on proselytizing around the world. Also, social and demographic conditions were changing, making it more difficult to recruit. Thus, new religious movements faded somewhat from the public consciousness, especially in the aftermath of the World Trade Center bombings, the war on terrorism, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. James T. Richardson See also Religion; Religion, Minority; Sacred Versus Secular
Further Readings
Barker, Eileen. 1984. The Making of a “Moonie.” Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Beckford, James. 1985. Cult Controversies. London: Tavistock. Lucas, Phillip and Thomas Robbins. 2004. New Religious Movements in the 21st Century. New York: Routledge. Richardson, James T. 1979. Conversion Careers: In and Out of the New Religions. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Richardson, James T. 2004. Regulating Religion: Case Studies from Around the Globe. New York: Kluwer. Robbins, Thomas. 1988. Cults, Converts, and Charisma: The Sociology of New Religious Movements. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Tipton, Steve. 1982. Getting Saved from the Sixties. Berkeley: University of California Press.
REMITTANCES A remittance is a monetary transfer sent by an international migrant to relatives in the home country. Currently, the globalization of economic connections has permitted the formation of migratory circuits in which both men and women live abroad to send remittances back home. This entry looks at the remittances and the workers who send them home, focusing on their current role in linking developed and developing nations.
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Remittances
Background and Magnitude Remittances have been historically important in sojourner migration to the United States. A sojourner is a person who does not plan to stay permanently in a receiving society but, instead, hopes to send money to his or her family in the homeland. In the 19th century, Chinese men came to the United States to earn money to buy land and enter into marriage in their homeland. More recently, the 1942–1964 Bracero Program brought Mexican men to the United States as guest workers in agriculture for the purpose of sending money back home to their families. Men predominated in 19th century and early 20th century sojourner migration and were invited to work in the Bracero agricultural program. Currently, women are approximately 50% of immigrants because work opportunities and fast transit have changed the global circuits of migration. Remittances have become the largest source of income for many developing countries, exceeding that from products sent abroad or international aid. Many developing countries receive their largest incoming income flow from remittances. The World Bank estimates that in 2006, $250 billion in U.S. dollars was sent from developed countries to developing countries. The rate of increase of remittances is approximately 30% per year. This money represents a large capital transfer to impoverished people that is less subject to graft and actually reaches them to help improve their lives. After centuries of social exclusion, the low-income populations of developing countries are being socially included in the global circuits of capital. The World Bank is aware that this money can be used to promote economic development and is promoting plans to motivate remittance receivers to join formal financial markets, further integrating the economies of middleincome and low-income nations. Meanwhile, the ability of families and children in low- and middle-income countries to thrive has become dependent on the receipt of remittances from workers who have gone abroad to high-income countries. To understand the role of remittances in economic development, it is necessary to distinguish between high-, middle-, and low-income countries using the World Bank classification. In 2005, high-income nations had a gross national income average of $10,726 or more per person; upper-middle income nations ranged from $10,725 to $3,466; lower-middle
income ranges from $3,465 to $876; and low-income countries averaged $875 or less per person. To grasp the degree of inequality, consider that high-income country wage levels are five times that of low-income countries. All countries not classified as high income are considered developing economies and have large impoverished populations. This income differential promotes international migration from low- and middle-to-high income countries. In addition, when remittances at an industrial country salary level are spent in developing countries, where the price of goods is lower, the economic impact is increased. The United Nations and the World Bank are increasingly aware of the positive impact of remittances on developing country economies. In many countries, particularly low-income nation-states, there is a trend toward investing the money, including in microenterprises. In this way, immigration contributes to reducing global inequality.
Impact in Mexico Mexico is an example of a high middle-income country that does not have a favorable balance of trade in the world market. Globally, it ranks among the top three receiving countries for remittances. On its own, it is unable to raise its lower socioeconomic class, most of its population, out of subsistence poverty or even to prevent life-threatening lack of income. Mexico’s per capita income is $5,910 a year, the highest in Latin America, but low compared with the United States and other high-income nations. The 2000 Mexican Census indicates that 53% of the population was poor, living on less than $2 per day. Twenty-four percent lived in extreme poverty on earnings of less than $1 a day. Mexico has a deep divide in its social stratification system between the wealthiest tenth of the population, earning 40% of total societal income, and the poorest tenth, earning 1.1% of all societal income. Mexico is supported from falling into an economic depression by the remittances sent home by workers abroad. Remittances play a significant role in Mexico’s economic growth, with migrants investing through credit, insurance, and mortgage projects established by Mexican banks. In 2006, remittances from migrants to Mexico reached $23 billion, a 15% increase over 2005. The money sent to Mexico exceeds that earned through trade, tourism, and foreign direct investment.
Remittances
Without remittances from abroad, Mexican families would not gain income to build homes or to acquire appliances and other modern technology. Remittances allow family households to try to improve their lives, although there are controversial aspects to the global money circuit that has been created. The Inter-American Development Bank conducted a poll that indicated that one in every five adults in Mexico receives remittances from relatives. Remittance recipients are no poorer or richer than the rest of the Mexican population: Their monthly income is equivalent to the rest of the Mexican population. The households and communities that receive remittances are participating in economic globalization. Transnational linkages between migrant communities in the United States and Mexico are fostered by individuals and through hometown associations. Hometown associations raise money for both Mexican and U.S. communities of residence by funding public works and social projects. For example, the Mexican community in Chicago presents fundraisers such as dances, cultural events, and raffles. The money raised is a “collective remittance” rather than an individual remittance sent personally to a relative. In the case of the United States and Mexico, large portions of remittances come from undocumented workers in agriculture, services, and many types of lower paid work. The U.S. public has a history of nativistic response to immigrants. As a result, while Mexican households can well use or may need remittances to survive, the “illegal immigration” issue has again become a dominant issue in U.S. politics. Because Mexican immigrants are the largest component of the U.S. undocumented population, they are often the focus of public hostility, especially from groups that feel threatened that their wages will be undercut or that cultural diversity will change the United States they know. To better control immigration, President George W. Bush has repeatedly pushed for a temporary guest worker program. Foreign workers would be allowed to work at jobs that employers cannot fill with citizen workers. Migrants would be given temporary 3-year permits that could be renewed and, as an incentive to return to their homeland, a set percentage of money would be deposited into a retirement account accessible there. The temporary nature of the program and the expectation of return indicates that the monies realized are intended for Mexicans and Mexico. The
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program institutionalizes remittances while providing workers to fill primarily low-waged jobs.
National and Personal Impact Increasingly, the high-income nations of Europe and South Asia are experiencing legal and undocumented immigration with the new arrivals sending remittances back to societies struggling to overcome extreme inequality. India receives the most remittances of any country. This is a global issue, and migrants gravitate to opportunity. Remittances are a survival currency in a world of transnational linkages. In the absence of equal economic exchange between high-income and middle- and low-income nations, there is a strong need for families to send men and women to provide income for survival or improving life chances. Sojourners, often admitted as guest workers, create economic linkages between nations as they establish permanent bases in two countries, promoting the impact referred to as transnationalism. In addition, the Bracero Program in the United States and the various guest worker programs of European nations such as West Germany have resulted in permanent immigrant populations from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds linked to families in other countries. Although remittances help relatives in a sending country, chain migration and establishment of a base in the receiving countries often occurs. This raises questions about the temporary nature of any guest worker program. Nevertheless, remittances have individual drawbacks. Psychological stress and abuse and victimization affect those who cross borders without documents. As control is tightened at world borders, especially in the United States, the fees charged by human smugglers have increased. Given the cost of being undocumented, the individual sending the remittances can be at a net loss. Single migrants are forced to part from their families, and mothers may leave their children behind to be raised by relatives. They all miss their families. Conservatives argue that remittances actually interfere with economic development. Mexico and other countries, according to this view, can become dependent on remittances and fail to increase foreign investment or develop new antipoverty programs. This is a controversial view, given the massive foreign debt owed by Mexico, which already deters foreign investment and makes it hard to provide social services for the poor.
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Reparations, Slavery
Migrants seek both to survive and to improve the life chances of their families by sending remittances. To do this, they make personal sacrifices. Evidence indicates that remittances help alleviate poverty. World financial leaders and government officials are seeking to integrate remittances as a factor in the global economy fostering capital development in middle- and low-income countries. The U.S. temporary guest worker program and legalization process proposed in 2007 could have a potential positive impact on the U.S.–Mexico economic circuit that would help Mexico develop. In the meantime, the public is opposed to undocumented immigration, making it difficult to find a way to resolve the question of integrating transnational families into economic circuits between societies in a way that all affected groups will accept. Judith Ann Warner See also Bracero Program; Chinese Americans; Globalization; Haitian Americans; Immigration, Economic Impact of; Immigration, U.S.; Mexico Further Readings
Associated Press. 2007. “U.S. Treasurer Says Mexico’s Growth Is Driven by Remittances.” International Herald Tribune: Americas. Available from http://www .lexisnexis.com Garcia y Griego, Manuel. 1996. “The Importation of Mexican Contract Laborers to the United States, 1942–1964.” In Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in the United States, edited by D. G. Gutierrez. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. Hernandez-Coss, Raul. 2005. The U.S.-Mexico Remittance Corridor: Lessons on Shifting from Formal to Informal Transfer Systems: World Bank Working Paper. Washington, DC: World Bank. Malkin, Elisabeth. 2005. “Study Challenges Assumptions about Money Remitted to Mexico.” New York Times, July 7, C2. Suro, Robert. 2003. “Latino Remittances Swell Despite U.S. Economic Slump.” Migration Information Source. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. February. Retrieved from http://www.migrationinformation .org/USfocus/display.cfm?ID=89 Takaki, Ronald. 1998. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. New York: Back Bay Books. Thompson, Ginger. 2003. “Remittances to Mexico Exceed Investment as Source of Income.” New York Times, October 28.
World Bank. 2004. World Bank: Mexico Country Brief. Available from http://web.worldbank.org World Bank. 2005. Global Economic Prospects 2006: Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration. Washington, DC: World Bank. Available from http://go.worldbank.org/CGW1GG3AV1
REPARATIONS, SLAVERY The idea of slavery reparations has been a topic of considerable debate. The premise is that the federal government should provide some form of restitution for the centuries in which the United States benefited during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Those in support of reparations generally argue that the current economic and social disparities between Blacks and Whites are direct results of the racist legacy of slavery and segregation. This is manifested in problems that African Americans have experienced in acquiring property and income and accumulating wealth, they argue. Supporters of reparations assert that reparations will be a first step toward erasing the existing inequality between Whites and Blacks. Since 1989, Congressman John Conyers, Jr. has introduced a bill each year to study slavery reparations; each year, the bill has failed to garner enough support. Those against reparations generally maintain that because no African Americans currently living in the United States personally experienced slavery, they are not entitled to such benefits. Furthermore, those against reparations argue that slavery was legal at the time it existed. Thus, although it is evident in retrospect that slavery was morally wrong, there is no legal basis for slavery reparations to be administered. Moreover, they argue that corporations that were involved in the economic exploitation of slave labor have long since mended their ways and should no longer be held liable for the current status of African Americans. Those against reparations also contend that paying reparations would increase racial tensions in this country. This entry discusses the two perspectives and their historical background.
What Supporters Say Some supporters justify slavery reparations with arguments pertaining to promises of land for the newly freed slaves shortly after the Civil War. General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field
Reparations, Slavery
Order No. 15, which set aside land in the South for the freedmen. Forty acres were to be distributed to each head of a former slave family. The term Forty Acres and a Mule, which is a rallying slogan for reparations supporters, originates from Sherman’s order. Even though Sherman never specifically mentioned mules, some believe that the army may have distributed them to help the freedmen till the land. However, after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson became president, the order was reversed and the land was redirected to Whites. After emancipation, the lives of the former slaves did not change that much. Although the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments were passed to provide equal rights and protection under the law for the newly freed slaves as U.S. citizens, equality was not the reality. Black Codes and Jim Crow laws were instituted so that options were limited for Blacks. Many continued working on the plantations for White landowners. Blacks and Whites were segregated socially and legally. Moreover, violence against Blacks did not stop with emancipation. The lynching and murder of Blacks also continued, and race riots in Chicago, Illinois (1919); Tulsa, Oklahoma (1921); and Rosewood, Florida (1923), left many Blacks dead or victimized by White rioters. In addition, even though there has been ample opportunity to do so, the U.S. government still has not formally apologized for slavery, and recent legislative proposals by Congress to do so have not been supported either. Even though slavery has been abolished, reparations supporters point out that disparities and inequality between Blacks and Whites still exist. One of the main points of contention is that the wealth gap between Blacks and Whites is pronounced. Because of laws that prevented slaves from owning property, the legacy of slavery has produced adverse generational effects on the descendants of slaves. Thus, although White families were able to pass on wealth and assets from generation to generation, Black families were not able to do so. The current racial wealth gap is best manifested in that home equity disparities between Blacks and Whites are enormous. Some scholars estimate that today’s generation of Black families are missing out on billions of dollars in home equity. This is primarily because of the legacy of slavery, supporters of reparations say, but also because of discriminatory housing practices such as restrictive covenants, steering, and redlining.
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The concept of issuing reparations to atone for the mistreatment of a particular group is not new. Following World War II, Germany paid $822 million to Holocaust survivors and heirs. The United States has paid reparations to Alaskan Natives and various Native American tribes such as the Klamaths, Lakota, Seminoles, Chippewas, and Ottawas. More recently, in 1990, $1.2 billion in reparations, or $20,000 per person, was paid to living Japanese American internees of World War II. The Japanese American Redress Movement, which began in Seattle, successfully argued that because Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes against their will, their property was confiscated or stolen, and their children were taken from schools and also interned, reparations should be issued to rectify the federal government’s wrongdoing. Supporters of slavery reparations have argued that the compensation paid to these groups have been legitimate and rightly deserved; likewise, reparations for slavery are also as just as, if not more, deserving and long overdue, they say.
What Opponents Say Opponents of slavery reparations claim that the circumstances of African Americans are different from those of groups that have received compensation. Reparations in previous cases were paid to living survivors who were directly affected, opponents argue. Because no living survivors of slavery exist, reparations should not be distributed to descendants who did not directly undergo the suffering and hardships of slavery, opponents say. Opponents also maintain that identifying descendants of slaves to receive reparations would be difficult. Also, according to the onedrop rule (which classified as Black anyone with “one drop” of African blood), many in the United States could start to claim Black ancestry for the sole purpose of receiving reparations. Furthermore, reparations opponents argue that that recent immigrants to the United States who had nothing to do with slavery and did not benefit whatsoever from it would unfairly be obligated to help pay for reparations. Those against reparations also assert that the United States was not the only country engaged in the slave trade and that because slavery was legal at the time, no laws were broken and the government should not be held accountable. Opponents also argue that corporations such as banks and insurers that profited
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Repatriation of Mexican Americans
from financing the slave trade or insuring slaves have long since changed their ways. A few of these corporations have apologized for their involvement and now actively recruit potential Black employees. Antireparations advocates maintain that targeting these firms with lawsuits may financially cripple these companies and lead to disastrous economic outcomes for many individuals and communities. Reparations opponents assert that issuing slavery reparations will increase racial tensions in this country. They maintain that because most present-day U.S. residents could state, “My family never owned slaves,” reparations will only further divide the racial and ethnic groups in the United States by fostering resentment among those that believe they are paying for what happened long ago. In sum, the issue of slavery reparations is quite contentious, with many having strong, passionate feelings of support for or opposition to slavery reparations. In addition, not all Blacks support reparations and not all Whites are against reparations. Some opposition may be based on the popular misconception that reparations would be distributed in the form of individual checks to African Americans; however, the issuance of individual checks is only one proposed manner of doling out slavery reparations. Other proposals include apportioning a percentage of the tax dollars paid by Blacks into an allotted pool. This money would then go to a reparations fund that would be reinvested into Black communities to increase social services, educational opportunities, housing loans, health care, and jobs. In this manner, many reparations supporters claim that society as a whole would benefit. Andrew Cho See also Abolitionism: The Movement; Abolitionism: The People; African Americans; Internment Camps; Jim Crow; Plessy v. Ferguson; Redlining; Restrictive Covenants; Segregation; Slavery
Further Readings
Allen, Robert L. 1998. “Past Due: The African American Quest for Reparations.” Black Scholar 28(2):2–16. Campo, Shelly, Teresa Mastin, and M. Frazer. 2004. “Predicting and Explaining Public Opinion Regarding U.S. Slavery Reparations.” Howard Journal of Communications 15(2):115–130.
Cha-Jua, Sundiata K. 2001. “Slavery, Racist Violence, American Apartheid: The Case for Reparations.” New Politics 7(3):46–64. Darrity, William, Jr. and Dania Frank. 2003. “The Economics of Reparations.” The American Economic Review 93(2):326–329. Dawson, Michael and Rovana Popoff. 2004. “Reparations: Justice and Greed in Black and White.” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 1(1):47–91. Howard-Hassmann, Rhoda. 2004. “Getting to Reparations: Japanese Americans and African Americans.” Social Forces 83(2):823–840. Oubre, C. F. 1978. Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen’s Bureau and Black Land Ownership. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Robinson, Randall. 2000. The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks. New York: Plume. Shapiro, Thomas M. 2004. The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press. Winbush, Raymond A., ed. 2003. Should America Pay? Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations. New York: HarperCollins.
REPATRIATION OF MEXICAN AMERICANS Repatriation literally means returning to one’s country of origin. In the United States, this term often refers to a nationwide repatriation program of Mexican nationals during the 1930s. The stock market crash in the fall of 1929 and the resultant Great Depression in the United States provided its ideological impetus. Both local welfare agencies and the federal government blamed Mexican aliens for taking scarce jobs from workers in the United States and for draining public resources by being on relief rolls. Although Mexican officials feared that the massive return would add to an already existing labor surplus in Mexico, the government assisted the returnees by subsidizing transportation costs from the border to the interior of Mexico. By the end of the 1930s, an estimated half million Mexican nationals and U.S. citizens of Mexican descent—people for whom the United States, not Mexico, was homeland—were compelled to leave for Mexico. This entry describes this complex and troublesome era in U.S. history.
Repatriation of Mexican Americans
Background Situation In the decades preceding the repatriation, the demand for reliable labor increased with rapid development in the U.S. Southwest. For instance, the leading Western railroad companies employed Mexicans by the thousands. In 1909, approximately 6,000 Mexicans were on railroad payrolls, about 17% of the total railroad workforce. By 1929, the number jumped to some 23,000, or 59.5% of the workforce. Mexicans also proved to be indispensable workers in steel mills, meatpacking plants, canneries, mines, and other related industries. The agricultural sector represented perhaps the area of greatest labor need, albeit seasonal. Especially in California and Texas, a significant proportion of Mexican workers dominated work related to specific crops, those that required stoop labor, the especially hard work involved in planting and harvesting plants such as lettuce and beets. Despite the apparent need for steady labor resources, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1917, which made it difficult for Mexicans to officially gain entrance to the United States. In particular, the United States imposed an English literacy test and applied an $8 tax on every immigrant. The U.S. consul who issued the visas had tremendous latitude in interpreting another provision, “LPC” or “liable to become a public charge.” Because of the policy changes, Mexican immigration had significantly dropped during the years between the two world wars, especially during the Depression years. When the stock market crashed, Mexicans and other racial minorities bore the brunt of diminishing economic opportunities. Other state laws severely curtailed Mexicans and other minorities from obtaining jobs in the public and private sectors. Mexicans’ and minorities’ needs, in turn, added pressure on the already overburdened charity and relief organizations.
A Political Turn of Events The repatriation of Mexicans occurred in the context of growing political backlash in the Southwest against an increasing racial minority population in times of economic deprivation. However, Mexicans were treated differently than were other minorities because of Mexico’s unique geopolitical and economic ties with the United States. In California, for instance, a significant number of Japanese, Filipino, and Asian Indians worked alongside the Mexicans in agriculture.
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Each of these groups experienced social and economic discrimination, compounded by a series of immigration exclusions. That Mexico shares its border with the United States enabled Mexicans to be a flexible source of labor. In hard economic times, Mexican workers were more easily repatriated or deported than were other populations, and when labor shortages became acute, the U.S. government counted on Mexican workers to meet the demand. The Mexican repatriation policy during the Great Depression should be understood in this broader economic, political, and historical context. Resentment toward Mexicans spread widely with the official pronouncement about the repatriation policy by U.S. President Herbert Hoover, who claimed that Mexican aliens were taking jobs away from U.S. citizens. Both local and federal officials collaborated in setting the repatriation in motion. Secretary of Labor William Doak charged the Immigration Bureau, which was then a division of the Labor Department, to coordinate with local and federal unemployment relief organizations in identifying deportable aliens. Officials raided private homes and public plazas, but only about 300 Mexicans were actually deported in the initial phase of the deportation campaign. However, the news of forcible deportation created an atmosphere of fear and caused a great deal of confusion. In Los Angeles, county officials came up with a plan to pay one-way train fares to the border for Mexicans on relief rolls. Between 1930 and 1932, the largest number of repatriates, about 133,000, came from Texas, followed by California (53,000), and Arizona (19,000).
Mexico’s Response In response, the Mexican government welcomed the return of its expatriates because the earlier massive emigration had deleterious effects on the northern states. Thousands signed up for voluntary departures facilitated by officials on both sides of the border. The returnees often had difficulty adjusting to a new life in Mexico, and U.S.-born children especially struggled to adapt and dreamed of returning to the United States. The growing disenchantment with life in Mexico among the returnees quickly reached the ears of those who remained in the United States. The popular Los Angeles Spanish-language newspaper, La Opinion, often wrote about the difficulties of those who returned to
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Resegregation
Mexico and encouraged others to stay. The inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 also brought optimism about their future. The changes in the federal relief programs to the state and county reflected a more progressive stance of the administration, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of national status. However, local officials continued to offer financial incentives to Mexicans who would leave voluntarily. The repatriation experience profoundly changed the lives of that generation of immigrants and substantially transformed the demographic composition of the Mexican American community from mostly foreign-born population to native-born Chicanos. Although the repatriation had silenced the Mexican immigrant generation, the second- and third-generation Mexican Americans redefined their place in U.S. society by demanding inclusion. Joon K. Kim See also Borderlands; Bracero Program; Discrimination; Immigrant Communities; Mexican Americans; Nativism; Scapegoats
Further Readings
Balderrama, Francisco E. and Raymond Rodriguez. 2006. Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Bogardus, Emory S. 1933. “Mexican Repatriates.” Sociology and Social Research 18:169–176. Hoffman, Abraham. 1974. Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures 1929–1939. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Sanchez, George J. 1993. Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900–1945. New York: Oxford University Press.
RESEGREGATION The term resegregation refers to the phenomena in which social institutions and neighborhoods undergo a reverse in racial integration. Coined by social researchers, the term is most often used to describe Black and White segregation, although recent investigations have also focused on White resegregation from all racial minorities, including Latinos and other immigrant groups. Resegregation is also used to
describe the process of racial turnover in a neighborhood, which is closely tied to segregation patterns in public schools. This entry describes the history of resegregation in schools and neighborhoods, as well as the larger social impact.
A Reversal of School Desegregation Since the 1954 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that ordered desegregation of public schools (Brown v. Board of Education), there have been government-sponsored efforts to desegregate public facilities, especially in the heavily racially segregated South. Despite a period of some public school desegregation since 1954, most public schools in the United States are racially segregated once again, with White students attending majority White schools, and Black and Latino students attending majority Black and Latino schools. Although there has been an increase in racial minorities in suburban schools, and in schools that have multiple races represented within a single institution, Whites continue to attend largely White segregated schools. There are a number of reasons for resegregation in educational facilities. Central cities have experienced a significant amount of residential White flight since the 1950s. Whites living physically apart from minorities (especially Blacks and Latinos) are unlikely to attend the same neighborhood schools. Class and race are deeply connected, and many of the urban schools that the Whites left deteriorated in physical facilities and academic curriculum (and many have been closed altogether), because of a lack of local funding. Thus, even when White students live in school districts with a significant proportion of minority students at certain schools, many Whites attend private, parochial, or public magnet schools instead. In addition, a number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions since Brown v. Board of Education have blocked efforts to desegregate suburban and urban schools through busing programs. Although earlier court cases (Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education [1971] and Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1 [1973]) allowed for interdistrict remedies to de facto segregation, in Milliken v. Bradley (1974), the Court ruled that large metropolitan areas (in this case, Detroit) did not have to combine school districts to desegregate, which would have mixed the largely White suburban public school students with the largely Black Detroit city students. In Milliken v. Bradley II
Reservation System
(1977), authorization was given to provide compensatory funding for inner city schools, thus installing a return to “separate but equal” in U.S. public schools. Desegregation efforts were further hampered by later court decisions holding that desegregation rulings were temporary and that public schools could legally resegregate (Board of Education v. Dowell [1991] and Missouri v. Jenkins [1995]).
Neighborhoods The term resegregation also refers to the result of a neighborhood that has undergone racial turnover. In the United States, this was especially prevalent in the post–World War II era, where previously all-White segregated neighborhoods were transformed into all-Black segregated neighborhoods, sometimes within a period of just a few years. Whites—especially in northern and midwestern cities—retreated from neighborhoods that were being integrated by Black newcomers. Through suburban expansion, racially biased federally backed mortgage loans, real estate practices that manipulated White fears of an encroaching Black ghetto (such as blockbusting), and White racism, thousands of Whites left central city neighborhoods in the 1950s and 1960s for new all-White suburban enclaves. This resegregation process repeated itself in neighborhoods across the United States, raising the question of whether racially integrated neighborhoods were sustainable or merely one stage in the inevitable racial turnover from White to Black. Recent research has focused on the “new White flight” that is resegregating the older inner-ring suburbs of many metropolitan regions. Census data from 2000 reveal a number of segregation trends for cities, such as overall population loss (of White, Black, and other minority groups), a growth in concentrated segregated minority high-poverty neighborhoods, and a huge loss of middle-income residents of all races. Many middle-income Blacks and Latinos have left the inner city for the suburbs since the 1968 Fair Housing Act, integrating suburban communities, while Whites continue their outward flight to less congested, newer communities in the exurbs. The physical distance between Whites and immigrant and racial minority groups is increasing, as more Whites migrate to nonmetropolitan areas—the reversal of a trend that has persisted for decades. It is predicted that as Whites move further out from urban areas and toward the growing Sun Belt communities in the South and West,
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older suburbs and public suburban school systems of the North and Midwest may further deteriorate, as once did the inner city. Resegregation is seen as one of the major social problems of our time. As the civil rights legislation of the past is unenforced or reversed in subsequent court cases, de facto segregation continues. Race and class are intertwined, with segregated minority areas more likely to have higher poverty levels than White segregated areas have. Social scientists do not view racial segregation as merely the result of individual decisions about where to live or send one’s children to school. It is argued that through historical and continued social inequality, major social institutions are racially segregated. In turn, the resegregation of neighborhoods, metropolitan regions, and educational institutions, contributes to continued racial inequality for the future. Meghan Ashlin Rich See also American Apartheid; Brown v. Board of Education; School Desegregation; School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning; Segregation; Sundown Towns; White Flight
Further Readings
Frey, William H. 2002. “Escaping the City—And the Suburbs.” American Demographics 24(6):21–23. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Orfield, Gary, Susan E. Easton, and the Harvard Project on School Desegregation. 1996. Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: New Press. Orfield, Gary and John T. Yun. 1999. Resegregation in American Schools. Cambridge, MA: Civil Rights Project, Harvard University.
RESERVATION SYSTEM Reservations were small areas of unwanted land on which Indigenous Peoples were forced to live after the United States seized their original homelands. The conditions of their confinement are another ugly chapter in U.S. history because they lived in poverty with virtually no human rights granted by the government. Some Native Americans continue to live on reservations
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Reservation System
today though the system that once kept them there has largely ended. This entry looks at the reservation system and its impact on Native Americans.
A Policy of Expansion Almost as soon as the thirteen British colonies became the United States, the new nation began to spread out across the North American land mass. Through a process of conquest that lasted until about 1900, the United States seized most of the lands and wealth that once belonged to Indigenous Peoples. To support its actions, the U.S. government constructed a complex philosophy of conquest that became a national myth called “Manifest Destiny.” White Americans who adopted this view believed that God meant them to take over all the lands and wealth of the Indigenous Peoples. Supporting this policy was the then-prevailing worldview among European Americans, which classified non-Whites as inherently inferior. This view was then codified into the legal and juridical system of the United States. Using this foundation, Indigenous People who could not militarily defeat the United States were forced to sign treaties in which they ceded land in exchange for their lives. Treaties with Native Americans made it appear that these enormous cessions of land were legitimate market transactions between equals, when in reality these agreements were largely coerced or dictated by the United States. Indeed, treaty negotiators sometimes used fraud, corruption, threats of extermination, liquor, and outright lies to obtain a signed treaty. As part of each treaty, the United States offered to deliver goods and services, as well as a piece of land—a reservation—on which the indigenous nation had to reside. Having confined Indigenous People on reservations, the federal government refused to recognize their human rights. The Bill of Rights and Constitution were viewed as not applying to Native people, who were not even considered human beings under U.S. law until 1879. A government agent was appointed for each reservation, and this person had almost absolute power over the lives of its residents. Thus, Native people were virtual prisoners on reservations for most of the 19th century. They needed the agent’s permission to leave the reservation, and if they went without it, they could be hunted down and executed or returned to the reservation by the U.S. military. In September 1878, the Northern Cheyenne fled their Oklahoma reservation, and many died in an
attempt to return to their traditional homelands in the Powder River country of Montana and Wyoming. They were pursued by more than 15,000 U.S. troops. One band of women, children, and old people, and a handful of men were captured and held in an unheated guardhouse in the dead of winter at Camp Robinson, Nebraska. The captives declared that they would rather die than return to the reservation. In an attempt to force their compliance, the officer in charge deprived them of proper clothing, blankets, fuel for fires, and food for five days. On the fifth night, the captives escaped—men, women, and children fled for their lives into the cold, dark prairie. Mounted U.S. troops chased them and shot and killed more than forty of the American Indians. Six days later, the troops surrounded the survivors and opened fire. Without ammunition, the Indigenous People could defend themselves only with a few camp knives, and all but nine were slaughtered. Those nine were sent back to the reservation.
Life on the Reservation The U.S. Indian agent controlled all aspects of reservation life. Native Americans were not allowed freedom of speech or freedom of assembly, and they could be searched and their property seized at any time the agent ordered such action. Native Americans had no right to bear arms and could be deprived of life, liberty, and property at any time. They had no freedom of religion and were specifically prohibited from any manifestation of indigenous spiritual beliefs. They had no right to trial by jury and no recourse under the law. If they failed to obey the U.S. agent, they were punished in any way the agent saw fit. Most often, this took the form of deprivation of all food for the offender and his family. The children of indigenous parents could be taken away at any time. The basic freedoms and inalienable rights granted in the Constitution to U.S. citizens were not extended to Indigenous Peoples. Until about 1870, U.S. Indian agents were political appointees who frequently used their offices for personal aggrandizement. The government sent annuities each year, which were supposed to compensate the indigenes for ceding their homelands, but in practice, the U.S. Indian agent controlled the funds. This system led to massive corruption; cash might be turned to other purposes or food and other supplies sold at discounted prices to neighboring Whites instead of being delivered to the indigenes.
Reservation System
Agents often worked in league with traders, who cheated the indigenes and charged them grossly inflated prices for supplies. Underweight cattle and condemned food supplies were delivered, and the agent and contractor split the difference in cost. Worst of all, annuities often simply never came. The land chosen for reservations was often agriculturally poor, so that crops frequently failed; hunting also yielded little food. Some historians view the reservations as death camps where Indigenous Peoples had brief lives characterized by poverty and ill health.
Attacks on Native Culture In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant tried to address the horrors of the reservation system by instituting a new program he called the “Peace Policy.” He sought the assistance of several Christian denominations, which divided the reservations and appointed religious men as U.S. Indian agents. The change did not end corruption, however, and many of the new agents were Christian zealots, determined to eradicate indigenous culture and belief systems and to force indigenes to become Christians. The aim of these agents was to “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.” Religious groups promoted the separation of children from their homes and families in boarding schools; children were forcibly removed and often not allowed to see their parents again for years. In the last quarter of the 19th century, numerous White philanthropists and do-gooders concerned with the plight of the indigenes developed formidable influence on U.S. Indian policy. Even though they were unfamiliar with Native Americans and their culture, these philanthropists attempted to determine the direction of U.S. Indian policy. They came to believe that tribal relations had kept Indigenous Peoples from assimilating to White ways, and the blamed the reservation system for sustaining a sense of community among Native Americans, despite their poverty. These agents believed that the United States should break up the reservations and force Indigenous Peoples to live separately, “independent” of their communities. White culture and its economic relations were based on the premise that individuals should accumulate and hold wealth as individuals. Thus, the alleged benefactors decided that the communally owned lands of the indigenes—the reservations—should be broken up into individual plots of land that would be owned by individual indigenes. Each indigenous family was
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given about 160 acres; the remainder of the reservation lands was released for purchase by White settlers, thus bringing the last domains of the indigenes into the market. In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act, which called for the allotment of all reservation lands and the end of all tribal relations. Indigenous nations demanded the United States honor its treaty obligations and leave their lands alone. However, in 1903, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress had the power to repudiate treaties. By 1920, almost all indigenous lands had passed into the hands of nonIndigenous Peoples.
Modern Improvements In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration began to change U.S. Indian policy dramatically by restoring some basic human rights to Indigenous Peoples. Allotment of reservations was ended as a policy, although by then most of the reservations had already been broken up and sold off. AntiIndian policies at the American Indian schools were modified. Today, reservations have become home to many Indigenous People. Most, however, have migrated to urban areas. In many cases, conditions on the reservations have continued, resulting in poverty, disease, reduced life expectancy, and increased infant mortality rates and unemployment. In a few cases, casinos or other business enterprises have begun to lead some indigenous nations out of poverty. Donna L. Akers See also Blood Quantum; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Colonialism; Dawes Act of 1887; Hopi; Native American Health Care; Native Americans; Navajo; Racism; Sacred Sites, Native American; Trail of Broken Treaties; Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973)
Further Readings
Franz, Klaus. 1999. Indian Reservations in the United States: Territory, Sovereignty, and Socioeconomic Change. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Jefferson, N.C. 1986. Indian Reservations: A State and Federal Handbook. New York: McFarland. Washburn, Wilcomb E. and William C. Sturtevant. 1989. Handbook of the North American Indian, “Indian-White Relations.” vol. 4. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
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Restrictive Covenants
RESTRICTIVE COVENANTS Restrictive covenants were provisions attached to real estate deeds or sales contracts throughout specified neighborhoods, which prohibited the future sale or rental of the property to members of specified minority groups. If, during a specified time in the future, the property were ever sold, rented, or leased to a member of a group forbidden by the restrictive covenant, legal action could be taken to prevent that person or persons from taking possession or to evict them if they already had. In some cases, it was specified that ownership of the property would revert to the original owner if an attempt were made by a later owner or heir to sell it to a member of a forbidden group. Most often, restrictive covenants were used to exclude African Americans, but other groups, including Jewish, Asian, and Hispanic Americans, were frequently included. In some cases, restrictive covenants forbade sale or rental of the property to members of two or more minority groups, and in some cases, they forbade sales to “anyone not of the Caucasian race.” This entry describes the operation of racial covenants operated, the legal cases against them, and the current situation.
How They Worked In general, restrictive covenants were created by neighborhood associations and attached to properties throughout the geographic area governed by the neighborhood association, once a required percentage of the property owners, often 75%, had signed on. Given widespread racial prejudices and fears in U.S. cities in the early to mid-20th century, and the all-White population of the neighborhoods where restrictive covenants were proposed, it was often quite easy to get the required percentage of property owners to sign on. Restrictive covenants covering entire neighborhood areas did not exist before the 20th century, though individual deed restrictions forbidding sales of properties to members of specified groups did. However, these earlier deed restrictions did not have the same impact as the restrictive covenants that came later because they applied only to individual properties, rather than entire neighborhoods. With the restrictive covenant, which began to come into common use after 1910, minority groups could be excluded from entire neighborhoods, not just individual properties. The adoption
in the early 20th century of restrictive covenants excluding African Americans and other minorities from entire neighborhoods is one important reason why U.S. cities experienced a substantial increase in racial housing segregation between about 1910 and 1940, by which time most cities were much more segregated than they had been a half-century earlier. Restrictive covenants were effective in restricting the housing opportunities of minority group members for one reason: Until 1948, they were recognized as legally enforceable and were backed up by the courts. In both the North and the South, state courts enforced restrictive covenants by ordering buyers or renters in groups banned by the covenants to surrender ownership or occupancy of their property. Without this legal backing, restrictive covenants would have been meaningless; with it, they were an important mechanism of housing discrimination, backed by the full legal force of the state. In addition to this critical legal support, the U.S. government encouraged the use of restrictive covenants in other ways. The Federal Housing Administration, for example, discouraged the “infiltration of inharmonious racial and national groups” and “the presence of incompatible racial elements” in neighborhoods in its policy manuals from 1935 to 1950—and, for a time, it backed this up by including a sample restrictive covenant with a blank to fill in the name of the unwanted group or groups. In fact, even as many as 2 years after racial restrictive covenants were ruled unenforceable by the Supreme Court, the FHA continued to use a recommendation developed in the late 1940s encouraging the use of restrictive covenants as way of protecting neighborhood security. More than the government encouraged the use of restrictive covenants. Local real estate boards (similar to what are known today as associations of realtors) also encouraged its use in a number of cities. For example, in Chicago, the real estate board developed a model restrictive covenant for neighborhood associations to adopt, then actively encouraged neighborhood associations to do so. Restrictive covenants were most commonly found in predominantly White areas surrounding areas where African American or other minority populations were growing. In some cases, the amount of land covered by them was quite substantial—as much as eleven square miles in Chicago and five and a half square miles in St. Louis in 1944, for example. Restrictive covenants were also often attached to vacant land
Restrictive Covenants
where new housing subdivisions would be built, if developers believed that minorities could attempt to move into the area in the future. In Chicago and Los Angeles, as much as 80% of vacant land at one point was covered by restrictive covenants.
Court Rulings Oppose In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled in the Shelley v. Kraemer decision that restrictive covenants were unenforceable. The case arose in St. Louis, Missouri, when an African American couple, J. D. and Ethyl Lee Shelley, purchased a two-family home in an area that was covered by a restrictive covenant. Their plan was to live with their children in one of the units and rent out the other one. However, they were sued by Jack Kraemer, who sought enforcement of the restrictive covenant, which had been in place since 1911 and forbade the sales of homes in the neighborhood to either Blacks or Asians for a period of 50 years beginning in 1911. The lower court initially found the covenant unenforceable because not all the property owners in the affected subdivision had signed it, but on appeal, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled the covenant enforceable and ordered the Shelleys evicted and the ownership returned to a previous owner. The case was then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which combined the case with a similar one in which the Michigan Supreme Court had also supported enforcement of a racial restrictive covenant. The U.S. Supreme Court (by a margin of 6–0, with three justices abstaining for various reasons) found that state enforcement of racial restrictive covenants violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Hence, it ordered the reversal of the Missouri and Michigan Supreme Court rulings. The decision did not ban the writing of restrictive covenants, but it did render them ineffective by eliminating their only legal means of enforcement. Hence, the Shelleys were able to remain in the house they had purchased, and other people of color seeking to purchase homes covered by restrictive covenants could no longer be legally prevented from doing so.
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a number of prominent public figures suffered embarrassment when it was discovered that they were living in homes covered by restrictive covenants. In 1986, confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate for Supreme Court Chief Justice designate William Rehnquist revealed that Rehnquist owned a home in Vermont that was covered by a restrictive covenant banning the sale of the house to “any member of the Hebrew race.” Rehnquist was nonetheless confirmed. The hearings also revealed that several U.S. Senators lived in homes that were covered by restrictive covenants. Although the covenants had been unenforceable for nearly 40 years, they remained in place. Restrictive covenants were in the news again in 1999, when it was revealed that Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush had, from 1988 to 1995, owned a home in Dallas that was covered by a restrictive covenant limiting ownership of the home to Whites. This covenant remained in place despite not only the Shelley v. Kraemer ruling, but also the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which forbids discrimination in the sale and rental of housing, and despite a 1984 Texas law banning racial restrictive covenants. A significant amount of property even today remains covered by restrictive covenants, even though they have been unenforceable for nearly 60 years and illegal for nearly 40 years. Recently, several states have made efforts to legislate the removal of all racial restrictive covenants and racial deed restrictions. Although most owners of homes having restrictive covenants do not know the covenants exist, some do, and some may feel morally obligated to honor them, despite their illegality and unenforceability. In a 2002 Virginia case, for example, a White homeowner who had openly refused to sell to a Black person testified that he believed that a clause in his deed forbade him to sell to anyone but a Caucasian. John E. Farley See also American Apartheid; Blockbusting; Color Line; Discrimination in Housing; Ghetto; Redlining; Segregation; White Flight
Further Readings
An Ongoing Phenomenon Although the Shelley v. Kraemer decision rendered the restrictive covenants unenforceable, the covenants themselves did not disappear. In fact, decades later,
Irons, Peter. 1990. “J. D. Shelley v. Louis Kraemer.” Chapter 3 in The Courage of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court. New York: Penguin.
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Return Migration
Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948). Opinion by Chief Justice Vinson. Retrieved September 13, 2006, from http://www.nationalcenter.org/shelley.html
RETURN MIGRATION Emigrants who return to their home country are typically considered return migrants. Typically excluded in this definition are circular or cyclical migrants who routinely move back and forth between two countries for work, such as the case of short-term guest workers. Also excluded are repatriated refugees. Migrants return for many possible reasons. For example, labor migrants may return home to settle or retire. Foreign-born scientists, doctors, computerengineers, and other high-skilled professionals may return to their native countries once better job opportunities develop and standards of living increase. Most important to the study of all types of return migration is the realization that the individual who relocates to a new country continues to maintain transnational ties, dual residency, or even dual citizenship in the homeland. Theses ties influence the possibility of return migration. This entry looks at the scope of return migration, different rationales for it, and affects on the home country.
Studying the Phenomenon Estimates of the rate of return have varied, with some reports as high as 25% to 35%. Few governments track the movements of individual migrants from home to destination and back. Thus, a variety of approaches must be used to study returnees. Techniques have included statistical analysis of data compiled from census and other governmental sources and official population registries; examination of historical passenger lists; the study of biographies, letters, and diaries of migrants who returned to their homeland; and inperson interviews with returnees. One of the most ambitious studies of emigrants and returnees is the Mexican Migration Project (MMP). This collaborative research project, based at Princeton University and the University of Guadalajara, has surveyed thousands of households in communities in
Mexico and in the United States. Demographic and socioeconomic information has been collected, along with number and duration of trips to the United States, legal status, wages earned, occupations, and use of funds upon return to Mexico. A typology of return migration may be constructed from studies of returnees. The typology, formulated by Italian Sociologist Francesco Cerase, distinguishes between the temporary or permanent settlement plans of the migrant, the reasons for return, and the duration of the stay in the destination country. According to this typology, migrants are classified as “failed” migrants, “conservative” returnees, “innovative” returnees, and retired returnees. “Failed” migrants are those who are unable to find work or to adjust to the social conditions of the receiving country. This typically occurs in the first few months or years of the migration experience. “Conservative” returnees are those whose original intention was to work toward a target savings or for a given period and then to return to their homelands. This classification may also include those who migrate for education or training purposes. “Innovative” returnees include long-term migrants whose goal may have been to settle in the destination country but return because of changing political, economic, or social conditions in the receiving or native countries. A “reverse brain drain” of high-tech workers, scientists, and engineers would be an example. These “innovators” see themselves as catalysts for change in their home countries. The final category corresponds to successful long-term migrants who find that return to the native country will help maximize their retirement savings. Returned retirees take advantage of wage differences in their working years and cost-of-living differences in their retirement. Motives for return have included strong family ties in the home country, dissatisfaction with the social status or condition in the receiving country, obligation to relatives, feelings of loyalty or patriotism, perception of better opportunities in the homeland and nostalgia. Factors that reduce the likelihood of return include marriage while in the destination country, having children abroad, and changes in the social or political conditions in the homeland (such as a recession or political changes). Migrants who left to take advantage of better wages, more liberal social policies, or for political reasons are more likely to return when the conditions have changed sufficiently in the homeland to induce return migration. Similarly, the
Reverse Discrimination
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conditions of reception in the immigration country may change (i.e., economic downturn, a new political regime, social policies against immigration), causing the migrants to find more benefit in return.
from their parents because care has passed to the extended family. Family members remaining in the homeland have become dependent upon remittances.
Impact of Return Migrants
See also Globalization; Guest Workers; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees; Remittances; Repatriation of Mexican Americans; Transnational People
Returnees have been shown to have significant social, economic, and political impact on the native country. Economic analysis of monetary remittances and return savings made by migrants to family or friends in the homeland has been an important element in studying returnees. The theory is that as long as migrants envision that they may return, they will continue to take part in the daily lives of those left in the homeland. Remittances can be quite significant to the economic health of the sending country. For example, according to the Banco de México, estimated remittances to Mexico exceeded $20 billion in 2005, or about 3% of the GDP. Returnees also introduce new cultural practices that affect both the economic and political framework of the homeland. The Theory of Cumulative Causation links sustained migration flows with the migrant’s adoption of consumer practices and development of tastes for the goods and services of the “advanced” consumer host society. As migrants return with these new tastes, they impart them to others. The cultural shift that occurs in the community leads others to seek opportunities abroad. Some countries have begun to recognize the role that return migrants play in the development of their nations. These countries have adopted policies to encourage the migrants to remit funds, to bring their skills back, and even allow them dual citizenship and rights. The reverse brain drain of high-skilled engineers and scientists has benefited China, Taiwan, India, and other rapidly developing countries. The impact of return migrants on the homeland is not always positive or beneficial for further development. Failed return migrants do not necessarily bring new skills. Remittances may not lead to fundamental economic changes because most foreign earnings are spent on consumable goods rather than invested in land or other businesses. In the Philippines, women are commonly spending years abroad as domestic servants, nurses, and factory workers. The impact on gender relations, child rearing, the extended family, marriage, and other social structures has been widely discussed. Many children have become estranged
Stephen J. Sills
Further Readings
Cassarino, Jean-Pierre. 2004. “Theorising Return Migration: The Conceptual Approach to Return Migrants Revisited.” IJMS: International Journal on Multicultural Societies 6(2):253–279. UNESCO. Cerase, F. P. 1974. “Expectations and Reality: A Case Study of Return Migration from the United States to Southern Italy.” International Migration Review 8(2):245–262. Gmelch, G. 1983. “Who Returns and Why: Return Migration Behavior in Two Atlantic Societies.” Human Organization 42(1):46–54. King, Russell, ed. 1986. Return Migration and Regional Economic Problems. Dover, NH: Croom Helm. Lindstrom, David P. 1996. “Economic Opportunity in Mexico and Return Migration from the United States.” Demography 33(3):357–374. Ong, Paul M., Lucie Cheng, and Leslie Evans. 1992. “Migration of Highly Educated Asians and Global Dynamics.” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 1(3–4):543–567. Stalker, Peter. 1994. The Work of Strangers: A Survey of International Labour Migration. Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Organization.
Web Sites
Mexican Migration Project: http://mmp.opr.princeton.edu
REVERSE DISCRIMINATION The concept of reverse discrimination has at least two different, but related, meanings. In the broadest sense, it refers to discrimination against Whites or males in employment, education, or any other area of life. In its narrower sense, reverse discrimination refers to the negative impact Whites or males may experience because of affirmative action policies. Unfortunately, these two meanings are often conflated, which leads
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Reverse Discrimination
to a great deal of confusion and misinformation. This entry examines perceptions about the situation of Whites and males, contrasts them with the apparent realities, and looks at the underlying political and philosophical points of view.
Discrimination Perceived Most people would agree that the term discrimination applies to a situation where a qualified White male is denied a promotion because a Black female supervisor is prejudiced against White men. However, what about a situation where a legal, court-ordered consent decree means that a qualified Hispanic with 2 years of experience will be promoted over an equally qualified White male with 3 years of experience. In this instance, the White male did not get the promotion because normal seniority criteria were modified. The hypothetical White male has less opportunity than he would have without affirmative action, but has he been discriminated against? Conservative critics of affirmative action say “yes,” and they make extensive use of the concept of reverse discrimination. Political scientist Frederick Lynch has written extensively about what he believes to be the mistreatment of White men in the labor market because of affirmative action. Legal foundations such as the Center for Individual Rights have published pamphlets about problems with affirmative action in higher education and defended Whites who claim to be victims. Several Internet sites provide sounding boards for those who feel victimized. These affirmative action critics argue that reverse discrimination against Whites and men is a widespread and serious problem. As a result of this public discussion, which is often aired in the mainstream media, there is a widespread belief that discrimination against Whites and males is a big problem in the United States. When asked broad questions like “Do unqualified minorities get hired over qualified Whites,” between two-thirds and threequarters of White national samples tend to say “yes.” Similar findings occur when college admission is the subject of the question.
Actual Experience Other evidence suggests that the empirical reality is quite different. When national samples of Whites are asked whether they personally have experienced the
loss of a job, promotion, or college admission because of their race, only 2% to 13% say yes. General perceptions seem to be quite different than individual experience. There have also been several studies of employment discrimination complaints submitted to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and of employment discrimination cases argued in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Less than 10% of the race-related EEOC complaints and court cases were filed by Whites; most were filed by Blacks and other people of color. Only 18% of the gender-related EEOC complaints and 4% of the court cases were filed by men; almost all were filed by women. These findings, along with the results of public opinion polls, would seem to indicate that it isn’t common for Whites or men to believe that they have been discriminated against or to take legal action. Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to determine how many of the EEOC complaints filed by Whites and males involved affirmative action rather than other allegations of discrimination. In the court cases filed by Whites and males, on the other hand, just over onethird involved affirmative action. Most of the cases filed by Whites and men involved already-employed workers alleging unfair treatment in firing and promotions. Allegations of White men not being hired is not a major issue in either the court cases or EEOC complaints. If the evidence doesn’t suggest that discrimination against Whites and males is a major problem, why is it perceived as such a big issue? And why has the term discrimination been used to describe the negative effects that a small group of Whites and men may experience? The answers to these questions depend mainly on one’s political and philosophical perspectives.
Why Is Reverse Discrimination an Issue? On the one hand, conservative critics of affirmative action believe that race- and gender-based discrimination is no longer a major problem and that criteria for employment and college admission should be raceand gender-neutral. Affirmative action is seen as both unnecessary and immoral. According to this logic, considering race or gender for affirmative action purposes is just as discriminatory as when a bigoted White boss refuses to hire a person of color; that is, it is reverse discrimination.
Rites of Passage
Supporters of affirmative action believe that discrimination against people of color and women is still a serious problem and that the effects of historical discrimination still have negative impacts. Because raceand gender-neutral criteria are not enough to ensure equal opportunity, they say, affirmative action is necessary. The tiny group of Whites and men that may be negatively impacted by affirmative action are experiencing reduced opportunity, in part, because their unearned privilege is being reduced, they would argue. This is fundamentally different than traditional race and gender discrimination, they say. The controversy over reverse discrimination is largely about people looking at the same issue through different cultural and political lenses. On the one hand, conservatives see reverse discrimination as a harmful by-product of an immoral social policy. Affirmative action supporters, on the other hand, see reverse discrimination as a socially constructed concept that is used to by conservatives to perpetuate illegitimate White and male privilege. Fred L. Pincus See also Affirmative Action in Education; Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Antiracist Education; Color Blindness; Discrimination; Institutional Discrimination; Privilege
Further Readings
Lynch, Frederick R. 1989. Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Pincus, Fred L. 2003. Reverse Discrimination: Dismantling the Myth. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Wise, Tim. 2002. “Honky Wanna Cracker? A Look at the Myth of ‘Reverse Discrimination.’” Black World Today, July 19. Available from http://www.tbwt.org
RITES
OF
PASSAGE
Rites of passage are sacred rituals and ceremonies that mark the transition from one life stage to another and assist in the acculturation and secondary socialization of individual community members. For many racial and ethnic groups in the United States, the rituals and traditions of their ancestral roots have remained salient in contemporary rites and life-cycle rituals. These rituals link generations, showing reverence for
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the traditions of Chinese, Latino, African, Palestinian, and Indian Americans. This entry begins with a quick look at scholarship on rites of passage, then reviews some rituals specific to particular ethnic communities.
Theoretical Views Arnold Van Gennep’s theoretical model of rites of passage highlights the ceremonial act that accompanies the progression from one age or occupational group to the next. In this model, rites of passage have a common tripartite structure that can be observed in all cultures and can be broken into three phases: separation, when the individual or the group is distanced from former identities; liminality, the phase between two conditions (the one from which the individuals depart and the one into which they will enter); and incorporation, the final stage in which the individual or group reenters society and adopts new roles. In a critique, Nsenga Warfield-Coppock posits that, although Van Gennep’s rites classifications are useful, there is an inherent flaw and a cultural disconnect, creating misconceptions of cultural narrative and interaction. In this view, a culturally relevant perspective provides more communal knowledge and depth to interpret the rites process in every culture. The rites involve an individual or collective learning experience in which a member grows in character and community, accepting responsibilities to both self and society. Common themes and bodies of knowledge are presented, introduced, and internalized throughout the process, advancing the necessary learning of individual members to take on societal roles. The passing on of this knowledge reifies certain sociocultural values that can be observed through both internal development and external manifestations (behavior). For example, African U.S. rites of passage reinforce the values of unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, faith, cooperative economics, purpose, and creativity. According to Warfield-Coppock, rituals are transformative because they allow the individual to incorporate new learning, and the collective grows as well. Alternatively, ceremonies are confirmative, that is, a public display and celebration of changes in status.
Life-Cycle Rites Birth h
Birth rites are common entry rituals for both mothers and babies. Five days after the birth of a child,
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African Americans who follow the Akan religion from Ghana conduct a baby-naming ceremony. During the first 7 days, mother and baby stay inside. The ceremony is performed by an Akan priest or priestess who blesses the child with ancestral libation and sacred beads. The name is given by the elders and affirmed by the godparents. The child is then introduced to the community in celebration and presented with gifts symbolizing “good life.” A similar tradition is held in the Chinese American community. According to traditional Chinese beliefs, the mother and child are extremely vulnerable during the month after birth, and therefore must remain inside during that time. This affords the mother time to restore the balance of yin (female, dark, cold) and yang (male, bright, hot) in her body. After childbirth, the mother has an excess of yin. Thus, throughout the one-month period, she is to increase her warming energy by avoiding showers and eating warm foods. Once this period is over, the family hosts the “full month” (mahn yueh, or mun yut) celebration to integrate the mother back into regular life and welcome the baby into the family and the world. The celebration consists of an egg-rolling ritual, symbolizing good looks and fertility; presentation of new clothes or other items with colors that symbolize happiness, good luck, long life, health, and wealth; and a family feast of noodles, which symbolizes long life. The ceremony culminates as red eggs are presented to guests announcing the birth of the new baby. Puberty y
The puberty rite is a transition ritual revered by Indigenous People. For Apache women, one such ritual is the Sunrise Ceremony, which marks the transition into womanhood and occurs the summer after a girl’s first menses. Traditionally, the ceremony lasts for a 4-day period. During this time, the girl symbolically takes on the role of Changing Woman, the first woman on Earth and the mother of all Apache women. Latin Americans celebrate the Quinceañera. This celebration, at 15 years of age, represents a girl’s entrance into womanhood and her eligibility for marriage. In the African American community, youth rites of passage programs have been created for teens, using curricula based on Afrocentric principles and rituals in which the youth are initiated into adulthood. In a more generic rite of adulthood, there is the time-honored “Sweet Sixteen” celebration in the
United States, which recognizes the coming of age of young adults. These celebrations were symbolic and relatively simple, consisting of a small party, gift of a corsage made of sixteen sugar cubes, or being entrusted with use of the family car. In recent years, the celebration has become a pop culture phenomenon with extravagant celebrations, especially among wealthy White Americans. Wed ddin ngs
For the contemporary Indian or Pakistani woman in the United States, once a wedding date has been arranged, a celebration is held in which the bride is adorned in the style of mehendi, the traditional art of decorating women’s hands and feet with henna. In this tradition, the bridal body is covered with cloth or with Mehendi designs. A mehendiwalli or female mehendi artist prepares the ground henna powder for the party. There is a 24-hour application and drying process. During this time, the bride cannot feed herself, and her male relatives often take care of household tasks. The adornment of mehendi on the bride is the cause for celebration. In the United States, many youth go through unsupervised initiations, whether to the streets, a gang, the penal system, or some other unloving environment, and not all rites of passage retain a sacred aspect. Reinforcing the essential purpose and outcome of the rites of passage process as constructive socialization, reflecting specific sociocultural values, can have the positive impact of cultivating mature adulthood and a balanced mind. Shaconna Marie Haley See also Acculturation; Ethnic Group; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Familism; Family; Kinship
Further Readings
Freed, Ruth Stanley and S. A. Freed. 1980. “Rites of Passage in Shanti Nager.” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 56, part 3. Goggins, Lathardus, II. 1998. Bringing the Light into a New Day: African Centered Rites of Passage. Akron, OH: Saint Rest. Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and AntiStructure. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Van Gennep, Arnold. [1909] 1960. The Rites of Passage, translated by M. B. Vizdon and G. L. Caffee. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Robbers Cave Experiment
Warfield-Coppock, Nsenga. 1990. Afrocentric Theory and Applications, vol. 1, Adolescent Rites of Passage. Washington, DC: Baobab Associates.
ROBBERS CAVE EXPERIMENT Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment, by Muzafer Sherif, O. J. Harvey, B. Jack White, William R. Hood, and Carolyn W. Sherif, is arguably the most significant book in the social psychological study of intergroup conflict. Sherif and his colleagues have created a monograph that stands as a description of the life of preadolescents, as a field experiment of group dynamics, as a depiction of the power and the control of social conflict, and as a claim for social policy. Despite its methodological innovations, theoretical significance, and the fame of the lead author, this classic work was for many years almost impossible to obtain. Originally published through a university bookstore, the University of Oklahoma Book Exchange, the work existed as a printed typescript for more than a quarter-century before being reprinted by Wesleyan University Press in 1988. The entry describes the experiment and its effects, both on the subjects and on the field.
The Study For 3 weeks in 1954, Sherif and his colleagues at the University of Oklahoma selected a group of twenty boys, divided them in two groups (the Eagles and the Rattlers), bused them to a state park, and watched as group structures developed and as idiocultures, or group cultures, were created. Eventually the Eagles and the Rattlers entered into conflict, and then, through a set of experimental interventions, overcame their hostility by solving tasks together. Sherif’s contention, based on a series of elaborate research studies in the late 1940s and early 1950s, was that groups naturally develop status structures and group cultures, and then establish boundaries, providing for the opportunity of intergroup conflict, particularly where resources need to be shared. The question becomes—for theory and for policy—how to overcome this intergroup hostility. Sherif believed that the egocentric orientation of group members could be overcome through the involvement of members of rival groups in achieving superordinate goals: goals
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that neither group by itself had the resources to achieve. Although it might be an overstatement to suggest that such a claim had any direct bearing on entrenched intergroup prejudice, much less on international relations, the idea that groups sometimes require others for the desired ends is surely accurate and behaviors may alter as a consequence. Sherif’s point is valid in its focus about how groups defined their boundaries and in its conclusion that this definition results from group goals and resources. As much as for the substance of the findings, the Robbers Cave study is notable for its methodology. Muzafer Sherif (1906–1988) received his PhD in psychology at Columbia University and taught during his career in both psychology (University of Oklahoma) and sociology (Pennsylvania State University). During his academic life, he wrote and published twodozen books. Sherif insisted that the understanding of the dynamics of group life was to be found not only in the laboratory. Early in his career, Sherif became known for his research on what is labeled the autokinetic effect. This refers to a physiological process: When an individual views a point of light within a darkened room, that point of light appears to move, as a function of the natural and uncontrolled movement of the person’s eyes. This, in itself, is not a sociological phenomenon. Sherif’s concern was to explain the social construction of norms. By bringing groups of individuals into a darkened room and having them estimate publicly the movement of the light, Sherif discovered that individual groups created their own norms for movement— their own culture that affected how members perceived the world. Sherif found that when groups developed a consensus, the perceptions of group members were altered. The establishment of group norms had powerful effects on individuals.
The Study’s Impact These laboratory experiments provided a thin basis on which to examine the creation of group standards. Examining the dynamics of preadolescent group formation provides the richness of detail from which cultural dynamics is evident. Sherif’s approach countered the standard methodological models of controlled laboratory experimentation that characterized experimental social psychology, then and now. Even though the Robbers Cave study is fundamentally grounded on ethnographic data, its structure is also based on the
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rigorous testing of hypotheses. Sherif and his colleagues present a set of experimental hypotheses, which they proceed to evaluate, sometimes through observation over time and sometimes as the result of providing the preadolescents with challenges, such as a “broken” truck, which required the aid of all the boys to push, or a cut-off in the water supply to the camp, which required both groups to fix. As with any approach that represents a blend, one must determine whether one has achieved the best of two worlds or the worst. The inexactitude, manipulation, systematic control, and richness abut each other, and each reader is forced to weigh the benefits and weaknesses of a study that is, at the least, an innovative blend of qualitative and quantitative analysis. For experimental methods, that one is watching subjects actually interact with one other in real time and in a naturalistic environment carries power. The Robbers Cave Experiment reminds us that groups really do matter. No matter how exquisite an experimental manipulation, we are not merely watching individuals who have become convinced through a set of experimental manipulations that they are in the same scene with others, but instead, we are observing those who know that their ties and their conflict are continuing and are consequential. This is interaction with all its rawness and humor—and when one is dealing with preadolescent boys, there are plenty of each. A need exists for the rebirth of research on conflict within the small group, and there is no better legitimating text than Sherif’s Robbers Cave Study with its close attention to culture, interaction, and structure. These scholars understood that the content of group discussion (jokes, nicknames, collective symbols) is revealed through interpersonal behavior and is inextricably linked to a set of larger social processes. Issues with beneficial or maligned effects on individuals operate on the group level, and changes in the orientation of groups affect these outcomes, for better or for worse. Within the group is a microcosm of the larger society—demanding the ability to see social structure in light of the locations of action. In Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation, this critical nexus between structure, interaction, and culture can be discovered. Gary Alan Fine See also Contact Hypothesis; Intergroup Relations, Surveying; Prejudice; Social Distance
Further Readings
Muzafer Sherif, O. J. Harvey, B. Jack White, William R. Hood, and Carolyn W. Sherif. 1988. Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
ROBINSON, CEDRIC (1940– ) Cedric Robinson is a political scientist who has delineated an extensively revised look at slavery, its origins, and its impact on modern society as a counter to traditional Western perspectives. His most prominent work, Black Marxism, is revolutionary in its scope and its historical and analytical sweep, a 500-year historical and political narrative about the emergence of the Black radical tradition, grounded in the struggle against both racism and racialized capital that materialized as a negation of western civilization. Among his contributions is a new view of slavery that traces its roots into the social and political organization of medieval Europe and a more detailed history of resistance among African Americans that focuses on what they brought with them from Africa. This entry looks at his work.
Terms of Order Robinson laid the foundation for his work in Terms of Order: Political Science and the Myth of Leadership, published in 1980. In this text, he sought to remove the veils of legend, myth, and belief—-a kind of hidden folklore—-in which authority and order in the West are cloaked and which form the Western political sensibility. Terms of Order examines many of the key elements that constitute political authority and order, including traditional, rational, and charismatic authority, tracing the latter back to the concept of a messiah. Robinson views anarchism not merely as the antonym of state power, but as a reaction to the different manifestations of the character of the state, drawing its power from a response to the organizing ideas of bourgeois society. What he calls Western Anarchism, Robinson states, is the residue of dialectic with the most familiar of “authorities,” the political. The idea of anarchism was pointless without authority being understood as political power. Anarchism represented a revolt against authority of the emerging
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secular order that was forged on the architecture of authority’s ideological weaponry. According to Robinson, racism can be traced to medieval Europe, where nobles sustained themselves with fictional narratives that posited distinct racial origins for rulers and the ruled. A social convention initiated by the feudal ruling class was retained and practiced by the bourgeoisies of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. Then, with the expansion of slavery (already present in Europe from the earliest times), came the application of racism as an organizing platform for non-European peoples. From the 17th century onward, English merchant capital incorporated African labor on precisely these terms. Racial capitalism was the “terms of order” in which Africans were integrated into the capitalist system, just as earlier, the Irish had been absorbed. Moreover, a new element was added to the mix. Islamic domination occurred between the first era of intra-European racism and the predatory era of African enslavement, providing a source of European renewal and cultural revitalization. Nevertheless, this domination also left other marks on Western consciousness: Fear and hatred of the “Black Moors,” the demonization of Islam, and the prophet as the antiChrist. Europe, or “Christendom,” still experiences recurrences of antipathy toward what became their shared phantasmagoria.
Black Marxism Building on this framework in Black Marxism, Robinson posits that classes and social categories are social creations and that, from the beginning, European civilization created racial, tribal, linguistic, and regional categories arising out of antagonistic differences. These were the terms of order. Black Marxism represents a major departure from identifying the origins of racism with the introduction of slavery and the slave trade to the Black Atlantic world. Robinson, in this text, situates racism’s genesis in the intraEuropean relations between the ruling classes and the ruled. Fou ur Phases of Racia alism
With great precision, Robinson conceptualizes four separate phases in the growth of European racialism, two arising from within the trajectory of Europe’s
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development and two from outside that trajectory: (1) the racial ordering that characterized society from its formative period; (2) Islamic domination of the Mediterranean and its consequences; (3) the incorporation of African, Asian, and New World peoples into the world system; and (4) the dialectic of colonialism slavery and the formation of industrial labor reserves. Robinson observes that typical analyses of racism begin with the third moment, ignore the first two, and only partially consider the fourth. He believes that this approach limits an understanding of racism by mistaking symptoms for causes and conflating individuals and systems. Recent scholarship has continued this tradition of ignoring the establishment and functioning of racism as integral to the racial capitalism rooted in Western civilization. The Black Radiccal Tra adittion
Robinson’s narrative of the Black radical tradition foregrounds the incessant waves of resistance from Africa and the diaspora, countering the myth of nonresistance and nonconfrontation. African labor became necessary only after Native American labor had been exhausted and European indentured servants proved inadequate. Marx assigned slavery to an earlier stage of economic development, primitive accumulation. He and other scholars, however, failed to recognize that these “cargoes” of laborers also carried with them their African cultures, languages, ways of thinking, metaphysics, habits, beliefs, and morality. The transport of African labor to the mines and plantations of the Caribbean and what became known as the Black Atlantic world also entailed the transport of African ontological systems, theories of organizations and social structures, and African ideological and behavioral explanations for the resolution of inevitable conflicts between the actual and the normative. Such was the crucible that shaped the response of the enslaved to the slave system. Robinson argues that history confirms these social processes: The outcome can be seen in the papaloi of the Haitian Revolution; the Obeah men and women who crowded the trials of slave rebellions in the Caribbean; the Muslim revolts in Brazil; and the rebel preachers who appear at the center of resistance in Jamaica, Suriname, and North America. His revision of Eurocentric historical assumptions to create a theorized history of the Black radical
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tradition includes an exhaustive examination of the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Richard Wright. Robinson identifies the real genius—-in both senses of the word—as residing in the hearts and spirits of the people whom these thinkers sought to represent, explain, and analyze. With the introduction of the capital mode of production, a new economic and political order evolved alongside a worldwide racial order that coincided with a global hierarchy of wealth and power. The racialized nature of this system has been masked by such concepts as modernity, development, interdependence, economic and political integration, dependency, and more recently, the magic of the marketplace and globalization.
Black Movements in the United States In Black Movements in America, Robinson outlines the emergence of two divergent political cultures in the United States. Drawing on a huge historical archive, from the slave insurrections in the 16th century through the U.S. Civil War with its significant involvement of Black Americans, down to the modern Civil Rights Movement, he contends that Black Americans constructed political cultures of resistance and accommodation based on the radically different experiences of enslaved and free Blacks. Examining this stratum in the contemporary era, he chronicles its growth, including the development of a conservative sector that saw to the weakening of the Civil Rights Commission and the challenges to continuance of affirmative action policies. In contrast stands the leadership displayed through African American Christianity, which survived during slavery and emerged in its aftermath to revitalize the moral and ethical creed of deliverance. In this, Black women fashioned a gospel and theology of community that still influences Black political culture. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina provided evidence that a large sector of the African American population, often poor, are unlikely to experience the American dream. Indeed, the resulting nightmare reinforces Robinson’s basic thesis that racism remains endemic to U.S. and Western civilization.
An Anthropology of Marxism A careful reading of Terms of Order, Black Marxism (2000), Black Movements in America, and An
Anthropology of Marxism (2001) reveals that Robinson’s discourse on socialism has a much deeper foundation than an exchange of ideas revolving around Marxism-Leninism and the former Soviet Union. Robinson’s work is of inestimable importance in unearthing, restoring, and reinterpreting the Black radical tradition, and it is built on deep, solidly conceptualized philosophical foundations. He deals not just with the philosophical underpinnings of Marxian thought, but with the formative political and material experiences that structured the patterns of that thought. Robinson has made a huge contribution to freeing socialist thinking from Eurocentrism. Darryl Clark Thomas See also Affirmative Action in Education; Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Afrocentricity; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Caribbean; Colonialism; Diaspora; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Hurricane Katrina; Marxism and Racism; Slavery
Further Readings
Cox, Oliver C. 1948. Caste, Class, and Race. New York: Modern Reader. Cox, Oliver C. 1964. Capitalism as a System. New York: Monthly Review Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1935. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. New York: Athenaeum. James, C. L. R. 1963. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage Books. Robinson, Cedric J. 1980. The Terms of Order: Political Science and the Myth of Leadership. Albany: State University of New York Press. Robinson, Cedric J. 1997. Black Movements in America. New York: Routledge. Robinson, Cedric J. 2000. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Robinson, Cedric J. 2001. An Anthropology of Marxism. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
ROBINSON, JACKIE (1919–1972) Jackie Robinson is widely credited with breaking the color line in professional team sports in the United States when he signed a contract with the Brooklyn
Robinson, Jackie (1919–1972)
Dodgers in 1945. Although this is not entirely true, as this entry records, Robinson’s accomplishment was nevertheless monumental. He was the first African American in the 20th century to play in the major leagues. As the U.S. pastime, baseball was more important at the time than any other professional sport including basketball, football, or hockey. Robinson broke the ground for African Americans in professional sports and established the basis for their current dominance in some sports.
Before Robinson Professional “White” baseball had Black players on its rosters before Robinson’s signing, but that was before the turn of the 20th century. The career of Bud Fowler—the first Black professional baseball player—began in 1872. During the 1880s, the Walker Brothers—Moses “Fleetwood” and Welday—were among 20 Blacks in the League. By the latter part of the decade, Black baseball players were banned from White professional baseball. Shortly after the blackout in baseball, Louis Sockalexis signed with the Cleveland Spiders. He was followed by other Native American standouts such as John Meyer and Baseball Hall of Famer Charles Bender before Robinson began his professional baseball career. In addition, professional football had a few, although not more than five, African Americans on team rosters in the 1920s. Although it appears there was no organized blackout, some teams objected to playing against African Americans. By 1933, professional football had drawn the color line.
Robinson and Rickey For more than a decade, African Americans had not appeared on the rosters of any of the most elite professional sports teams. This was attributed, variously and contradictorily, to a lack of talent among Black ballplayers, an unwillingness by White southerners to accept Black players as teammates, team owners’ aversion to White players, and owners’ (unfounded) concerns about fans’ reaction to Black ballplayers. Branch Rickey, considered the architect of baseball’s integration, was widely acknowledged to be an innovator. Before he brought Black ballplayers to the game, he had introduced the use of batting cages and pitching machines to professional baseball. In 1945, 3 years after he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers as General
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Manager, he signed Robinson to a contract. Robinson was a talented all-around athlete, but Rickey was intrigued with more than Robinson’s talent. He felt that Robinson had the perfect “combination” of characteristics for the premier Black player in the White majors. Robinson was a veteran of predominantly White teams. He had earned a varsity letter in four sports at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he was a star in football, baseball, basketball, and track. In addition, Robinson was college-educated and had served as a second lieutenant in the Army during World War II. While in the Army, Robinson had demonstrated his willingness to fight for his rights on numerous occasions, including attempting to integrate facilities at military bases. Rickey saw in Robinson a courageous and talented man who would suppress his feelings and emotions in the face of White insults for the good of Rickey’s “experiment.” Or, as Buck Leonard, one of the Negro League stars saw it (according to D. Rogosin), “We had a whole lot better ballplayers than Jackie, but Jackie was chosen ’cause he had played with the White boys.”
Robinson’s Achievements As his accomplishments indicate, Robinson did not disappoint Rickey or others who had hoped to benefit from baseball’s desegregation. During his first year with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson was named the National League Rookie of the Year. Two years later, in 1949, he led the league in batting and stolen bases and was named the National League Most Valuable Player. A six-time all-star who helped his team to six league pennants (league championships), Robinson ushered in an era of Black dominance in professional team sports. In addition, Robinson led the way for African Americans who had aspirations of playing on professional team sports. Shortly after Robinson signed with the Dodgers, four other Black players were added to the roster. Although some teams lagged behind, by 1959, every major league baseball team had at least one Black player. Robinson’s signing, and later performance, reverberated throughout team sports. Professional football re-integrated in 1946, when Robinson’s former UCLA backfield mate, Kenny Washington, signed with the Los Angeles Rams. Woody Strode, another former UCLA teammate of Robinson, was also signed by the Rams that same year, to begin pro
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football’s desegregation. Nearly 4 years later, Chuck Cooper and Earl Lloyd became the first Black players in the National Basketball Association. An important obstacle had been conquered in sports during the 1940s and 1950s. Black athletes would soon come to dominate these same sports that had, for years, ignored their performances. However, the next decade would bring restlessness and rebellion as they witnessed White America’s ambivalence toward them: They were accepted on the field only.
Challenging Discrimination African Americans found much more acceptance in team sports (on the field, at least), in part, because of the abhorrent behavior endured by their predecessors, especially Robinson. Robinson was encouraged to emulate the behavior of Joe Louis—appease rather than offend Whites—but Robinson was not like Louis. He was not accustomed to suffering indignities; he took pride in retaliation. Yet, he was convinced by Rickey that any retaliation would have tragic consequences for himself and other African Americans who hoped to play professional White baseball. For 2 years, Robinson endured racist taunts by baseball fans and opponents, hate-mail, segregated accommodations and restaurants, and an attempt by his prospective teammates—and later by the St. Louis Cardinals—to boycott games if he was included in the lineup, all without retribution. He continually made sacrifices to avoid jeopardizing the chances of other African American ballplayers. However, when Black players were firmly established in the league, Robinson was free to express himself like other ballplayers; he was free to respond, as he deemed appropriate, to attempts to humiliate him. Thereafter, many who had admired him for submissive and nonretaliatory public behavior began to view him as an ungrateful insurgent. Robinson felt he had done his job—he had nullified all the White reasons for excluding African Americans from baseball. The influx of African Americans into baseball and other professional team sports following Robinson’s accomplishment indicate that Robinson had, indeed, done his job. In one generation, many went from believing that African Americans lacked the requisite talent to play professional team sports to arguing, erroneously, that African Americans were better suited (innately) for team sports than were Whites.
Robinson’s play was, no doubt, a major factor in these discussions. Othello Harris See also African Americans; Color Line; Discrimination; Leisure; Negro League Baseball; Thorpe, Jim Further Readings
Carroll, John M. 1992. Fritz Pollard: Pioneer in Racial Advancement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Harris, O. 2004. “Louis Sockalexis.” In Native Americans in Sports, edited by C. R. King. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Peterson, Robert. 1970. Only the Ball Was White. New York: McGraw-Hill. Robinson, Jackie. 1995. I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press. Rogosin, Donn. 1983. Invisible Men: Life in Baseball’s Negro Leagues. New York: Atheneum. Strode, Woody. 1990. Goal Dust: The Warm and Candid Memoirs of a Pioneer Black Athlete and Actor. Lanham, MD: Madison Books. Tygiel, Jules. 1997. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press.
ROMA The Roma people (also referred to as Gypsies, Tsigani, Tzigane, Cigano, Cigani, Zigeuner) are members of a minority group that is dispersed around the world, encompassing more than 12 million people located in many countries. Their origins can be traced to an initial migration from India about 1,000 years ago. The second great migration was from southwest Asia into Europe in the 14th century, and the third migration was from Europe to the Americas in the 19th and early 20th centuries. From a linguistic perspective, it is also possible to link Roma back to their origin, the Sind area of India (today’s southern-central Pakistan). Nowadays, three identifiable linguistic populations are traceable: the Eastern Gypsy (Domari) in Egypt and the Middle East, the Central Gypsy (Lomavren) in Armenia and eastern Turkey, and the Western Gypsy (Romani) in Europe. This last group is the one most widely dealt with in reference works and literature and, therefore, the object of interest in this entry.
Roma
Migration to Europe Anthropologists suggest that the nomadic lifestyle of the Roma developed as a response to constant fighting, pushing them westward. Originally refugees from India, the Roma may have once thought they would return to their homeland. They fled during a war at the start of the 11th century in which the Muslim general Mahmud of Ghazni attempted to push Islam eastward into India, which was then mainly Hindu territory. Refugees often remain ready to return to their point of origin for many years, once they have been pushed out of their native lands. Whatever the reason, instead of returning, Roma were either kept in slavery in what is today Romania or moved on to the rest of Europe, reaching every northern and western country by about 1500. Over time, as a result of having interacted with various European populations and being fragmented into widely separated groups, Roma emerged as a collection of distinct ethnic groups within a larger whole. Consequently, the so-called Roma problem (general problems of the minority in Europe, usually connected to housing problems, unemployment, and low education levels) is a serious challenge facing European countries. The Roma minority is seen as the victims of prejudice and discrimination, being the most disadvantaged social group in all of these countries. Members of the Roma minority were the first to lose their jobs: They had lower education levels, lived in economically disadvantaged regions of countries, and were discriminated against by the non-Roma population. Social insecurity, growing poverty, dependence on social assistance, extremely high unemployment rates, exploitation in the Black economy, discrimination in education, and housing problems are factors seen in every country in the region and make the social integration of Roma difficult. Because Roma in Europe are a minority that extends beyond the boundaries and responsibilities of any single country, a common practice for dealing with the “Romani problem” would be a positive step. Especially since the European Union’s enlargement, it has become obvious that Roma are neither a small population, nor are they facing the usual minority problems. Although the actual size of the Roma population in Europe is unknown, it is estimated to include as many as 10 million people. Estimates made by eleven European countries individually result in totals between 2.7 and 5.6 million. However, the
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Roma population in Europe has grown considerably since the accession of new EU member countries in May 2004, when the European Roma minority was estimated to have grown by an additional 1.5 million, thereby representing the biggest ethnic minority in the EU. An accurate or at least a more precise estimate of the size of the Roma population would facilitate further regulation of socioeconomic and legislative fields to ensure the Roma levels of protection that are comparable to those provided for other minorities. For the Roma minority, this is especially important because differences in history and historical conditions have caused extreme differences between individual Roma communities resulting from their traditions, specific ways of life, and levels of socialization and integration in the environment. This makes implementing common policies at the European and national levels difficult and supports the tendency to regulate the Roma question at the local level. However, certain parallels can be drawn that suggest common features in all local Roma communities. The Roma are a poorly educated population with low employment levels, poor housing conditions, and an underdeveloped adjacent infrastructure. Their difficulties can be divided into the following main problem complexes: upbringing and education problems, employment, housing and infrastructure, and participation in the formulation of public policies of local significance.
Addressing Concerns Perhaps most crucial to the success and legitimacy of initiatives to alleviate the concerns of Romani communities is involving the Roma themselves in developing, implementing, and evaluating policies and programs. Such an approach is supported by pragmatic considerations, as well as the basic democratic principle that individuals should have a say in how they are governed. The importance of minority participation in public affairs is specifically provided in the Copenhagen Document, the 1990 agreement adopted by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) which requires participating states to “respect the right of persons belonging to national minorities to effective participation in public affairs, including participation in the affairs relating to the protection and promotion of the identity of such minorities.”
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In addition, directives of the OSCE dictate that its members should strenuously and conscientiously ensure the exercising of the rights of Roma. In its reports, the OSCE is especially aware of the importance of including Roma in policymaking processes at the local level. The roles of local government and civil organizations are important in this respect; some of the most impressive programs launched in recent years have been undertaken at local levels, frequently on the initiative of nongovernmental organizations. But local governments have also blocked promising initiatives; some have even sought to institutionalize anti-Roma discrimination through exclusionary policies. Thus, it falls to state authorities to ensure that Roma enjoy the fundamental right to equality in both law and in fact, irrespective of the division of jurisdiction within the state. Although the principle of equality requires protection against discrimination, it also entails proactive policies and special measures to ensure equality of opportunity. This is particularly relevant for Roma, who have been excluded from opportunities and are otherwise disadvantaged for generations. Political challenges include an acknowledgment of the Roma minority, an adequate census of the Roma population, the appropriate inclusion of Roma in political decision making, the accessibility of financial resources, and cooperation of local communities. Especially important for the position of Roma in Europe are international legal documents that contribute to improving their position and preserving their identity. Therefore, the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and the Central European Initiatives have adopted some antidiscrimination directives and recommendations. The umbrella European document against discrimination and racism (including discrimination against the Roma minority) is Article 13 of the Treaty Establishing the European Community and the ensuing directives that are binding on all members. Particularly significant for the Roma minority is Directive 2000/43/EC, “Implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin” (the “Race Directive”). Many member countries—but not all—had codified antiracist and antidiscrimination mechanisms and sanctions before the so-called race directive was adopted. Among important documents regulating the Roma’s status are the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of the Council of Europe, the European
Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and Council of Europe references and resolutions on the position of Roma in Europe. The inclusion of minorities (also the Roma) in decision-making processes in the European space is extremely important for creating an international environment that will represent the interests of all residents of Europe. Miro Hacek See also Cross-Frontier Contacts; Ethnic Group; Europe; India; Minority/Majority; Minority Rights; Racism, Cultural; Segregation
Further Readings
Acton, Thomas and Gary Mundy, eds. 1997. Romani Culture and Gypsy Identity. Hatfield: UK: University of Hertfordshire Press. Guy, Will, ed. 2001. Between Past and Future: The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe. Hatfield, UK: University of Hartfordshire Press. Liegeois, Jean-Pierre and Nicolae Gheorghe. 1995. Roma/Gypsies: A European Minority. London: Minority Rights Group. Mirga, Andrzej and Nicolae Gheorghe. 1997. The Roma in the Twenty-First Century: A Policy Paper. Princeton, NJ: Project on Ethnic Relations. Retrieved from http://www .per-usa.org/21st_c.htm Ringold, Dena, Mitchell A. Orenstein, and Erika Wilken. 2003. Roma in an Expanding Europe: Breaking the Poverty Cycle. Washington, DC: World Bank.
ROMAN CATHOLICS Roman Catholicism is a foundational structure of Christianity with its beliefs, scripture, and hierarchy forming the bedrock of a significant form of the Christian religion. The term itself dates from the time of the Reformation, when it began to be used to differentiate the religious structure of the Catholic Church from emerging Protestant groups, but the cultural significance of Rome has been an integral feature of this group almost from the moment of its inception. The head of the Roman Catholic Church is the pope, and the politically autonomous papal seat, called the Vatican, has long been set in Rome. The
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Near East. The creation of these conditions of diaspora drove further political and social divisions between Christians and others (particularly Jews and the Roman imperial authorities), yet contributed mightily to the formation of the Church structure. A Christian and Jewish diaspora set social patterns in motion that have been particularly useful to successive generations of exiled and dispersed ethnic groups. The apex of the hieratic structure of the early Christian community was concentrated in the role of bishop. The long struggle of the Roman Catholic Church and its leadership Consecration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (1910). St. Patrick’s Cathedral is the with the Roman Empire ended in the largest Gothic-style Catholic cathedral in the United States and has been recog- 4th century CE, under the emperor nized throughout its history as a preeminent center of Catholic life in the counConstantine, when Christianity was try. Immigrating ethnic groups of Catholics depended on, and still depend on, the recognized as the empire’s official structures of the Roman Church for stability and survival. The hierarchical structure of Roman Catholicism often made the transition from one place to another a religion, with the bishop of Rome at its head. matter of much less severe social dislocation than it otherwise might be. This legitimation of what were, in Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-08497. essence, scattered bands of Jewish heretics galvanized the forces of instiorigins of the papacy go back to the earliest tutional creation. Before long, the Church structure Christians, and Roman Catholicism’s unique instituthat still exists (albeit with some adjustments) was tional structure has enabled it to survive more than 2 nominally in place. That form, and its startling millennia and to function as a stable social base for longevity, owes quite a bit (historians still debate how many ethnic groups across the world. Many immimuch exactly) to the new Church’s amalgamation of grants to North America, particularly the Irish, its Judaic base of covenantal law with the authoritarian depended on the constancy of Roman Catholic precepts of Roman law. The enormous geographical structure and meaning for their survival in the new boundaries of Alexander’s conquest coupled with the land. This entry discusses the historical context, vastness of imperial Roman holdings provided optimal politics, and institutional structure of Roman conditions for the spread of the Christian gospel mesCatholicism and the roles these play with Roman sage after 70 CE. The destruction of Jerusalem removed Catholics immigrating. the physical and symbolic center of Judaism and incipient Christianity, opening the way for its eventual replacement by Rome. Early Structure and Politics Jesus, who was both a religious and a historical figure, died around 30 CE. From that time until the destruction of Jerusalem, and the Jewish Temple, by the Romans (70 CE), the fledgling Christian movement lacked an institutional structure. Evidence indicates that Christians worshipped in the Temple with their Jewish brethren until its destruction. After that time, both Jews and Christians were dispersed across and beyond the extensive lands of the
PostImperial Development and Change The disintegration of imperial governance in the 4th and 5th centuries did not weaken the power of the Christian Church, which was actually strengthened and transformed. Constantinople had replaced Rome as the imperial center in 330 CE, but the rampant political and social chaos created by destruction of the
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empire in the next century opened the way for a new center of ultimate authority, and the Church ably filled this breach. With steady and inexorable speed, it became the moral, political, social, and cultural arbiter of culture and society in the areas controlled by the former empire. The Church split into a western and eastern structural base in the early Middle Ages, but the bishopric of Rome had developed its supreme papal prerogatives centuries earlier. The institutional structure of what became known as Catholicism depended on a gospel-driven theology attentive to the needs and interests of diverse peoples across the former empire. In the 5th century, Augustine of Hippo’s systematic theology brought a level of philosophical order to the Church just as it was faced with the necessity of filling the political vacuum left by the decline of Roman authority in the West. The resilience of the Church’s structure is as much a result of this perfectly timed infusion of theological form as it is of the institution’s internal functionality.
linked to a phase of the human life cycle and conferred through special ritual, bound Church members to it from birth to death. The ancient history of these sacraments is found in the Hebrew scriptures, and given particular form by the earliest Christian communities and their apostolic leadership. At the Council of Trent in 1551, the seven sacraments were legitimated and made a formal part of the institutional structure of the Church. The seven Catholic sacraments are Baptism, Penance, Holy Communion, Confirmation, Matrimony, Holy Orders, and Extreme Unction. With the exception of Holy Orders and Matrimony, all Roman Catholics participate in each one. The cohesiveness of the Roman Catholic community rests in the sacraments, their theological premises, and their institutionalized conferral by the Church.
Salvation Theology and Social Cohesion
The social system of the Roman Catholic Church with its formalized rituals allowed it to function as a point of cultural unification for church members experiencing the panhistorical impact of migration. Roman Catholicism facilitated Americanization and assimilation. Migrating ethnic groups to the United States of Catholics depended on, and still depend on, the structures of the Roman Church for stability and survival. The hierarchical structure of Roman Catholicism often made the transition from one place to another (often on the other side of the world) a matter of much less severe social dislocation than it otherwise might be. The journey of Catholic immigrants to a new life in the United States or other industrialized Western nations was often made easier by the intervention of the parish priest or bishop; letters of introduction and other means of practical assistance came from the parish and its personalized governance. For ethnic groups such as Irish and Italians, Roman Catholic structure helped mediate the competing social forces of assimilation and retention of national or cultural identity. Roman Catholic rituals and structure provided a stable and familiar base of experience with which to engage the apparent chaos of the new land successfully. To maintain a stable social position, the Roman Catholic Church embraced a strongly hierarchical and authoritarian structure. Its complex form flows
The central theological premise of Roman Catholicism lies in the scriptural depiction of eternal salvation through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. All Church rituals and ceremonies are instantiations of this premise, particularly the celebration of the Eucharist. Catholics call this ritual celebration the “Mass.” According to Catholic belief, during the ritual of the Mass, wine and bread are transformed through prayer and sacred priestly power into the blood and body of the Christ. Although other Christian denominations view this ritual from a symbolic perspective, Roman Catholics receive the wine and bread as the transubstantiated blood and body of the savior, Jesus Christ. The strength of form and meaning accruing to them allows all Roman Catholics to participate in a common religious identity regardless of cultural and ethnic background.
Social Unification The clearly delineated internal structure of the Church, with its center of political and moral gravity in Rome, facilitated the development of its singular rituals and ceremonies. Catholicism’s formal acceptance and dissemination of the seven sacraments, each
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downward from the pope to the parish priest. The parish structure provides the context for Catholic community and feeds upward through the priestly stratum into the highest levels of Church authority. A single Catholic parishioner is connected through the parish structure to the bishops, cardinals, and even to the pope. Because the pope represents the symbolic power of the monotheistic Jewish God here on earth, each individual Catholic is tied in worship and ritual to the Church’s upper reaches. The potential and actual abuses of such an authoritarian system notwithstanding, this structure provided different ethnic and cultural groups a sense of continuity and community. Corinne Lally Benedetto See Appendix B See also Americanization; Assimilation; Black Elk; Immigrant Communities; Irish Americans; Italian Americans; Religion; Rites of Passage; Social Support
Further Readings
Campbell, Debra. 1993. “The Catholic Parish as a Way-Station of Ethnicity and Americanization: Chicago’s Germans and Italians, 1903–1939.” Church History 62:147–148. Kung, Hans. 2001. The Catholic Church: A Short History. New York: Modern Library, Random House. McBrien, Richard P. 1994. Catholicism: New Study Edition. San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins. Odem, Mary E. 2004. “Our Lady of Guadalupe in the New South: Latino Immigrants and the Politics of Immigration in the Catholic Church.” Journal of American Ethnic History 24(1):26–57. Tarnas, Richard. 1991. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our Worldview. New York: Harmony Books.
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Immigration Patterns Little documentation of Romanian immigrants existed before 1870, although there is a record of some taking part in the California Gold Rush and fighting in the Civil War. The first significant wave of Romanian immigration occurred between 1895 and 1920, bringing an estimated 145,000 Romanians to the United States. However, early census figures were misleading and inaccurate because people from adjacent countries were included in those figures. The diverse ethnic and religious groups of Romania thus included those from Austria, Hungary, Russia, and Turkey, as well as Jews, the Roma (Gypsies), Ukrainians, Serbs, and Croats. The first immigrant wave included skilled and educated men and their families, as well as many single men (and married men who left without their families) with little or no skills and education. Many did not plan to make the United States their new home. Their main goal was to make money and return home, or “mia si drumul”—the Romanian expression meant “$1,000 and return home.” About 20% of the Romanian population remigrated between 1906 and 1920. While some immigrants returned home, many were still arriving. About 67,000 Romanians came to the United States between 1921 and 1930. Most arrived early in the decade, because a national quota system Latvia
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ROMANIAN AMERICANS Romanian Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from Romania, a country of 21.6 million, by 2007 estimates. According to the 2000 census, there were 135,965 people born in Romania residing in the United States, of whom 58.6% were citizens. This entry will look at the background of immigration from Romania to the United States and the contemporary picture of Romanian Americans.
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put in place in 1924 allowed only 603 immigrants from Romania each year. The Depression halted most, if not all, immigration during that time. World War II also stalled immigration; however, many immigrants arrived in the years following the war under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. Because of the Romanian government’s tight restrictions and steep penalties (monetary fines, job loss, prison time), many Romanians were discouraged from migrating during the 1970s. The overthrow of the Ceaucescu regime in 1989 gave birth to a new wave of immigration. Many were reuniting with family and friends, and immigrants included professionals, political prisoners, and those who were dissatisfied with the new leadership. In 1990, there were approximately 365,500 Romanians living in the United States.
Contemporary Community In recent years, people from Romania have sought permanent residency, refugee status, and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2002, about 5,700 Romanians immigrated to the United States annually. About 37,000 Romanian Americans have become naturalized citizens since 1997. According to the 2000 census, 40.6% speak English less than “very well.” Their median family income was $51,628 compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, there were 332,034 of Romanian national origin in the United States in 2005. In geographic distribution, the top five states were California, New York, Illinois, Florida, and Washington. Among famous Romanian Americans (including both native-born U.S. residents of Romanian heritage and Romanian immigrants) are Lauren Bacall, actor; Franz Kneisel, violinist; Fred Lebow, founder of the New York City marathon; Alexandra Nechita, painter; Jean Negulesco, film director; and Saviana Stanescu, poet and playwright.
Further Readings
Brubaker, Rogers, Margarit Feischmidt, John Fox, and Liana Grancea. 2006. Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvania Town. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www .dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Linton, Cynthia, ed. 1996. The Ethnic Handbook. Schiller Park, IL: Business Press. Roman, Denise. 2003. Fragmented Identities: Popular Culture, Sex, and Everyday Life in Postcommunist Romania. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Siani-Davies, Peter. 2005. The Romanian Revolution of December 1989. New York: Cornell University Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Romania. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/ socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
RUSSIA Russia and the earlier Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) are among the societies with the largest number of ethnocultural groups in the modern world. The Soviets claimed more than 150 ethnic peoples, many with distinct languages, cultures, and territorial homelands. Immense size and the historical expansion of the Tsarist Empires account for the startling range of identifiable ethnic groups in modern Russia. Today, the number of labeled groups with distinct linguistic characteristics exceeds 90 and is said to account for 20% of the population. Many of these are remote northern and Asian peoples in sparsely populated regions. This entry discusses the recent history of ethnic relationships in the Soviet Union and present-day Russia, a nation with an estimated population of 141.7 million people in 2007.
Jennifer M. Klein
The Transition From Communism See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Balkans; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration U.S.; Refugees; Roma; Symbolic Ethnicity
Education, science, military service, and professional placement during the Soviet period created sharply varying levels of integration. In the Soviet period, the
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official political posture was that nationalisms were threatening to political unity and the pursuit of the revolution’s goals, including socialist power. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin used mass deportations and ethnic repression on impulse. In reality, the communist system was unwilling or unable to confront Russian nationalism with its characteristic sense of political entitlement and ethnic arrogance. Postcommunist Russia faced two immediate problems: Because Soviets had discredited ethnonational groups, many assumed that they should be a credible part of a postcommunist environment. In essence, if communists said they were bad, they must be good. This atmosphere, in a political environment where the public had to set about seeking a new set of political and cultural values, produced a default psychology that brought comfort to the Russian ethnic majority. Global patterns suggest that in the face of a collapsed value system, virulent nationalism often fills the void with its claims to natural identity and legitimacy premised on selective visions of the ethnic past. What passed for democratization in Russia and its emphasis on the wisdom of the majority also comforted ethnic Russians and disquieted non-Russians. Ethnic group legitimacy continues to be an amorphous concept not expressly addressed in the political or cultural design of the new Russia. Political change brought nationalist groups into the new mainstream competitive environment for political groups. In this new, scrutinized political and cultural atmosphere, many
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groups found their ideas too extreme for the centristseeking Russian citizenry. Framing a meaningful place for ethnic identity somewhere short of emotionally charged nationalism remains a challenge for the system.
Ethnic Tensions The mid- and late 1990s saw problems related to economic and personal transition that invited political scapegoating and cultivated ethnic fear and discrimination. Weak, populist-style legislation framed assorted advantages for ethnic Russians while attributing mounting problems of violence, crime, corruption, privatization excesses, and threats of Russian disintegration to ethnic minorities. Massaging this political trend was the meteoric rise of Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his ultra-nationalist movement with the unlikely name: Liberal Democratic Party. Chechnya, one of the eighty-nine political parts of the Russian Federation, exploded with independence sentiment. The predominantly Muslim area in the Transcaucasus is just one of many regions where people have historical grievances and see little genuine opportunity to embrace meaningful political representation for non-Russian groups in the new Russia. Following two episodes of open civil war in Chechnya and the highly visible terrorist campaigns accompanying them, the Russian political establishment believed that fundamental issues of federalism and the decentralization of authority had not been
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effectively addressed in the postcommunist Russian political design. With different textures and focus, more than ten regions with distinct ethnic characteristics have communicated their desire to distance themselves from central Moscow authority. In most cases, ethnic justice and financial autonomy were and are the central justifications. The Russian Federation has eighty-nine political subsystems, thirty-two of which are ethnically defined territorial units, including twenty-one republics, one autonomous region, and ten autonomous areas. These are the people most aware of the resource imbalance supporting their regions, but the discrimination is most apparent at a personal level when minorities find themselves in cosmopolitan, urban Russian cities. Not all ethnic tensions pit local interests in opposition to the central government. Some Russian studies suggest a phenomenon they call “matrioska nationalisms.” Like the famous nesting “mother” dolls of Russia, more localized identities and nationalisms often confront the authorities in local and regional venues. The abrupt disintegration of the Soviet Union also left new minorities strewn about the territory of the old Soviet Union. Russian ethnics became the single largest minority in the fourteen new countries (other than the Russian Federation) following the breakup in 1992. Their sense of victimization, sometimes real, sometimes imagined, and always enhanced by their special standing in the USSR, hardened the approach of nationalists in Russia. Russian policies were generated with tacit obligations to protect or rescue Russians suddenly living in neighboring states.
The Putin Era The Putin years (2000–2008) were marked by an ambiguous approach to ethnic issues. Russia struggles with its commitment to developing democracy. Its impulses toward centralization are often rationalized by perceived terrorist threats promulgated by Muslim minorities and incited by external Muslim fundamentalists. The global political milieu has made these more salable themes. Inclusion and tolerance are alien notions in the contemporary political culture. The Orthodox Church has done little to dilute such attitudes and most often takes the position that it is morally superior to other Christian, Jewish, or Muslim faiths. The ethnic tension has been magnified by shrinking opportunities for advanced education and uneven governmental support for basic education in predominantly non-Russian regions.
Street politics in Moscow under the personal direction of its mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, has further highlighted the patterns of discrimination by introducing restrictions and persecution of non-Russians and nonMoscovites. Police in Moscow routinely hassle and extort obvious members of ethnic and other minorities. St. Petersburg and other Russian cities reflect similar patterns. Russian President Vladimir Putin managed to remain in a positive position and above the fray. He and his United Russia Party introduced a measure in the Duma, which has been called an “anti-extremism” charter. Designed as a pledge for all societal leaders, it requires them to curb their language and promise not to incite racism or violence; it holds them responsible for the actions of those they mentor or lead. In so doing, the charter has raised doubts about its actual motivation. Some believe it is a vehicle to stifle opposition. Putin also called for a retreat from extremism. He warned against xenophobia and appealed to leaders to ensure that future elections are “non-acrimonious.” Clearly, each seeming step toward generic tolerance is counterweighted with advantages for the political establishment. Discrim min natio on and Prejudice
A pattern of ethnic discrimination and mistreatment in the Soviet military has perpetuated itself in the current Russian military. The compulsory draft brings rural and provincial ethnics into a realm of strict discipline and ethnic-based abuse. Often less technologically prepared or educated, these basic soldiers have become the target of suspicion and have been used to explain military failures, especially in Chechnya. Harsh treatment was not the exclusive domain of ethnic minorities, but their experiences both within and after military service in mainstream urban Russia has reified their second-class status. The most recent phenomenon that has validated criticisms of the Putin administration is the tacit endorsement of the Nashi (“Ours”). This is a shadowy youth organization officially committed to support the current regime; it focuses on identifying and exposing enemies of the Russian people. It claims to be an “antifascist,” “anti-American,” and “anti-Ukrainian” youth organization that represents the new Russian intellectual elite capable of uniting the Russian people. The texture is ultranationalist, and the behaviors are marginally criminal and intimidating. Journalists and foreign diplomats who do not share Nashi’s visions are
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regularly harassed. Nashi explicitly asserts that it has the responsibility to define who in Russian society is Russian and who is an enemy of the Russian people. In its second decade of postcommunist reality, ethnic identities tend to define these categories. Public anxiety and prejudice grows in the absence of explicit government efforts to forge integrative and tolerant attitudes. The uneasiness is promoted by fear of terrorist violence and mounting awareness of a demographic reality, which sees the Russian ethnic urban population shrinking at dramatic rates while public perception of minority family growth is exaggerated. Russia in the 21st century is losing on average more than three-quarters of a million people annually. Male life expectancy has been declining at unprecedented rates. This atmosphere sharpens the rhetoric of those who use ethnic differences and conflict as their basic political themes. Maneuvering around the important and negative implications of the notion of “self-determination of peoples” is a pressing short-term challenge to the Russian system. Delineating how that concept and democratization meld is perhaps the long-term manifestation of this challenge. Russia will find no remedy or model in its past. Both government and ethnic groups will need to face their futures and examine
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alternatives in that context to reverse a critically threatening mode of ethnic tension and violence in Russia. Richard P. Farkas See Appendix A See also Estonian Americans; Ethnic Conflict; Ethnocentrism; Ethnonational Minorities; Georgian Americans; Latvian Americans; Lithuanian Americans; Military and Race; Terrorism; Ukrainian Americans
Further Readings
Aklaev, Airat. Causes and Prevention of Ethnic Conflict: An Overview of Post-Soviet Russian Language Literature. Moscow, Russia: Russian Academy of Sciences. Retrieved from http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/aklaev/1.htm Alexseev, Mikhail, ed. 1999. Center-Periphery Conflict in Post-Soviet Russia: Federalism Imperiled. New York: Palgrave. Stoner-Weiss, Kathryn. 1997. Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Trenin, Dmitri and Aleksei Malashenko. 2004. Russia’s Restless Frontier. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
S SACRED SITES, NATIVE AMERICAN Sacred and cultural geography is a universal feature of Indigenous religious practices across Native North America. Traditional religious and ceremonial practices of Native peoples are inseparably bound to land and natural formations. Sacred places are locales where Indigenous Peoples interact with the environment to carry out their religious practices or exercise beliefs. For centuries, religious practices of Native peoples have either been denigrated or actively oppressed. However, the rise of Native American political activism during the late 1960s and early 1970s sparked an ethnic resurgence that demanded self-determination and renewed resolve to actively practice cultural and religious traditions. Sacred lands or sites emerged as an issue during this period of social and political struggle. An evolving body of law has provided limited but not complete protection for these important places, as this entry describes.
Religious Beliefs and Sacred Land To comprehend religious beliefs and practices associated with sacred landscapes, it is necessary to examine indigenous conceptions of the sacred. Most religions of Native North Americans are cosmotheistic. Within such a worldview, humans, animals, plants, natural objects, and natural phenomena are animated by spiritual power. These sacred beings are interrelated through kinship and reciprocal obligations. Through reciprocal kin relations, spirit beings interact with each other and with humans. Those interactions involve transferring power and establishing a
dialogue that must be maintained by ceremonial and ritual prescriptions that require an intimate interaction with a particular landscape. For traditional people, there exists a complex web of relationships, if not a unity between the ecology, humanity, and supernatural beings. Those relationships require sustained reciprocity and moral acknowledgment that are fully integrated into all aspects of social, cultural, and environmental activity. A cosmotheistic view of the universe encompasses the entire landscape, including all the conceptual levels and elements of that ecological system. Within religious ideologies, a basic frame of reference is sacred power. Traditional religions, as articulated and practiced, conceive of sacred power as a quality that pervades the universe and all the beings that inhabit the world. Sacred power is a force that gives life and movement to the universe and the “beings” inhabiting it. In their creation and placement on the landscape, all “beings” are endowed with a specific sacred power. All animals and animated natural objects possess sacred power. “Humans” also can possess it through ceremony, ritual, prayer, and sacrifice. These religious actions require interaction with the landscape because it is the source of those powers or “medicines.” Sacred power therefore requires a landscape that is intact, alive, and filled with animation. These qualities are as important today as they were in the past. Each indigenous society embeds “portals” to the sacred within the unique context of its own worldviews—the symbolic and social processes that structure an interpretation about a particular society’s identity. A society’s worldview organizes the conceptualization and expression of time, space, causation,
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and cultural being. For Native Americans, especially among those still practicing aspects of their indigenous religions, there exists a dynamic relationship between their society’s worldview and their social construction as a people. Despite the centrality of landscape and its qualities to the continuation of indigenous religious practices, sacred sites on public and private lands across Native North America continue to be under siege by lumbering, mining, recreational, and development interests. During U.S. nation building, numerable locations have been either destroyed outright or altered to the point of rendering them useless for the continuation of indigenous religious use.
Governmental Policies White people began to place limits on the free exercise of Native religious beliefs and practices during the colonization of Native North America. The early colonists perceived Indigenous Peoples to be living in a state of “savagery.” One defining feature of existing in a savage state—living outside of the grace of God—was demonstrated by what White colonists perceived as “heathenish” dances and religious practices. Once the United States was formed, and during every phase of nation building, the federal government denigrated almost everything indigenous, including religious and cultural practices, to justify the appropriation of Native American lands and resources. From 1776 until the placement of surviving Native Americans on reservations, their cultural practices and beliefs increasingly were viewed as impediments to any movement toward “civilization.” As part of the reservation experience, indigenous life ways faced overt persecution as governmental officials engineered the “Indian’s” progress toward “civilization.” Secretary of Interior Henry M. Teller in 1883 created the Court of Indian Offenses to quell, by force if necessary, the “continuance of old heathenish dances,” ceremonies, and the enduring influence of Aboriginal priests that are a “hindrance to civilization.” For Aboriginal peoples, reservation life meant the active oppression of traditional rituals and ceremonies. By threat of imprisonment or the withholding of their rations, the Sun Dance, sweat lodge, indigenous medical practices, and other aspects of religious life were either suppressed or forced underground. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas J. Morgan encapsulated American Indian policy after the establishment of reservations in 1889 when he wrote that the
“Indian must conform to the White man’s ways, peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must.” Moreover, Native American religious and medical authorities could no longer travel freely to sacred locations that lay off-reservation. During this era, Native American people found off-reservation without the agent’s permission could be jailed for their transgressions. Open suppression of Native American religious practices continued officially until the passage of the 1934 Wheeler-Howard Act. One tenet of that law guaranteed Native Americans the right to practice their Native religions, ending nearly a half-century of overt attempts to erase any vestiges of their religions. To that end, Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier directed all Indian Bureau field workers to halt any interference with American Indian religious life. The law, however, did not alter many discriminatory behaviors of Anglo-Americans or halt determined Christian denominations from their conversion efforts among tribal peoples. Native religions and practices continued to be targets of suppression, if not outright oppression. During the next 3 decades, Native American religious leaders and their respective traditional communities struggled to maintain their religions. This was not an easy task. The loss of indigenous religious knowledge under the forced assimilation era, combined with the continued social oppression of indigenous religious practices, made “free” religious expression a tenuous affair across “Indian Country.”
Self-Determination, Religious Freedom, and Sacred Sites Greater religious tolerance began to evolve only with the advent of the civil rights era. Amid the shifting political and sociological landscape of that period, the federal government issued a number of reports about the deplorable conditions of Native American life. Those reports, along with the emergence of American Indian activism, culminated eventually in the policy of self-determination. On January 4, 1975, Congress passed the Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act. Although the act addressed health, social, and political issues, it said nothing about Native American religious practices, which remained under attack. For example, a year later, federal authorities arrested Cheyenne and Arapaho for possession of eagle feathers under the 1976 Bald Eagle Protection Act. State authorities continued to arrest Native American Church members for peyote transportation and use.
Sacred Sites, Native American
Across the country, tribal peoples also routinely were denied access to sacred lands by federal and state agencies as well as private landowners. Responding to these actions, Native Americans lobbied for a bill to protect Native American religious rights. On December 15, 1977, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA, Public Law 95–341, August 11, 1978) was introduced into the Senate. Approximately 8 months later, President Jimmy Carter signed the bill into law. The act makes it U.S. policy to “protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions of the American Indian, Eskimo, and Native Hawaiians.” The law covered access to sacred sites, use, and possession of sacred objects, and freedom to worship through ceremonials and traditional rites. Framing a policy around inherent rights to exercise “traditional religions” did extend federal trust responsibilities and, in principle, aspects of tribal sovereignty to public lands. The federal mandate to consider tribal religious practices on public lands was implicitly outlined in section 2 of the act. That section stipulates that various federal agencies, departments, and other entities should evaluate their current policies and procedures in consultation with Native American leaders to determine what changes are necessary to preserve cultural rights and practices. To discover any discriminatory practices embedded in federal policies, a task force examined the extant cultural differences between Native Americans and Anglo-Americans under the belief that this “cultural gulf” generated most discriminatory practices by federal agencies. The AIRFA report, delivered to Congress in 1979, made several key suggestions that federal agencies “could” implement. But as President Carter acknowledged from the outset, the law would “protect and preserve” the inherent right of the American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiian people to believe, express, and exercise their traditional religion, but it was not intended to “override existing law.” Even before the task force finished its report, AIRFA was tested in a number of arenas. In most instances, especially with regard to land development involving federal and state agencies, the law failed to protect indigenous religious practices. One of the most important Supreme Court decisions was the 1988 Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association. The case involved a challenge by three Northern California tribal nations that believed that
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the intent of the U.S. Forest Service to construct a road and conduct developmental activities in the Six Rivers National Forest through a sacred area would destroy the core of their religious beliefs and practices. Critical ethnographic data were collected from Yurok, Karok, and Tolowa religious authorities by a U.S. Forest Service anthropologist, who conceded that if Native Americans could not conduct their ceremonies as prescribed, the consequences for both land and people would be negative. The Court majority in Lyng, however, concluded that to accept these claims would take away from the government’s rights to its land. The Lyng decision set a number of precedents for the future protection of sacred sites on public lands and Native American access to them. Foremost was that the tribes’ lack of title to the lands in question precluded a right to advance First Amendment claims. Also, the Court said federal agencies have the final decision in the disposition of any lands under their charge, regardless of indigenous concerns or claims. Such limitations related to indigenous religious practices are at odds with an evolving body of laws concerning the preservation of our national heritage. Section 106 of the National Preservation Act of 1966 specified that sites can be nominated for the National Register of Historic Places if those with an interest in the sites can link them to significant historical events or traditions. In a 1990 National Park Service Bulletin, the label traditional cultural property (TCP) was assigned to such places. Following questions from federal agencies, Congress amended the National Preservation Act of 1966 to explain the criteria that should be used in deciding with sites could be included as TCPs in the National Register. Despite these laws crafted to strengthen indigenous concerns, however, some Native Americans continue to distrust government and historic preservation officials as they attempt to get government protections of physical places that have spiritual value.
Current Outlook Today, various Indigenous Peoples continue to fight to preserve the sacred sites of their ancestors and to assert sovereign rights to exercise their religious freedom. The Black Hills, a sacred landscape for several tribes, continues to be threatened by ongoing mining, logging, housing sprawl, and tourist development. In 2004, the Ohio Historical Society gave a 70-year lease for the Octagon Mounds in Ohio to the Moundbuilders
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Country Club, which converted the site into a golf course. Black Mesa (Arizona), Medicine Lake (California), Trafficway (Kansas), Black Creek (New Jersey), the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Alaska), Devils Tower (Wyoming), and Mauna Kea (Hawai‘i), to name a few sacred sites, also face an uncertain future. Under current policy guidelines, federal agencies may be required to consult with Native Americans, but they don’t necessarily have to reflect indigenous concerns in the decisions they make. The body of law reflects the stark contrasts between indigenous cultural beliefs about the land and Anglo-America’s vision of land use. In an essay titled, “Sacred Lands and Religious Freedom,” the noted Native American scholar, Vine Deloria, Jr. writes about the fundamental differences between indigenous conceptions of lands, especially sacred lands, and those held in general by non-Indians. Those differences, he argues, are encapsulated in the current body of environmental and resource management laws that argue for multiple uses and result in compromises to ecological integrity for exploitation and development. In recognition of how policies are being implemented and the inability of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act to protect indigenous religious rights, on May 24, 1996, President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order No. 13007, which requires federal land managers to allow Native Americans to use sites they hold sacred for ceremonies, unless doing so is clearly at odds with the law or the agency’s mandate. The law also requires managers to avoid adverse effects to the physical integrity of sacred sites, but subject to the same caveats. Sacred sites were defined as specific, discrete, and narrowly delineated locations on federal land. The 1996 Executive Order, though moving toward the full incorporation of indigenous religions into the fabric of policy about public lands, is somewhat antithetical to traditionalist indigenous conceptions of sacred sites as integrated, boundless, and interactive with the surrounding landscape and their worldview. Clinton’s Executive Order was intended to strengthen protections afforded under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act and 1994 American Indian Religious Freedom Act amendments, while avoiding any acrimonious legislative debate. Despite efforts to strengthen and enhance legal protection for indigenous sacred places, the current body of laws does not offer full protection for sacred
sites and indigenous access to them. During the height of the Big Horn Medicine Wheel controversy, for example, the Big Horn National Forest’s federal archaeologist correctly proclaimed that law would fail to protect a sacred site from a federal agency’s destructive decisions, even if it was given landmark status. His contention remains legally correct today. Gregory R. Campbell See also Deloria, Vine, Jr.; Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990; Native Americans Further Readings
Barsh, Russel L. 1986. “The Illusion of Religious Freedom for Indigenous Americans,” Oregon Law Review 65:363–412. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1991. “Sacred Lands and Religious Freedom.” P. 11 in American Indian Religious Freedom Coalition. New York: Association of American Indian Affairs, Inc. Guillford, Andrew. 2000. Sacred Objects and Sacred Places. Preserving Tribal Traditions. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. King, Thomas F. 2002. Thinking about Cultural Resource Management. Essays from the Edge. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Parker, Patricia L. and Thomas F. King, 1990. Guidelines for Evaluating and Documenting Traditional Cultural Properties. National Register Bulletin 38, National Register of Historic Places. Washington, DC: National Park Service. Sewell, Ellen M. W. 1983. “The American Indian Religious Freedom Act.” Arizona Law Review 25:429–472. U.S. Government, Federal Agencies Task Force. 1979 (August). American Indian Religious Freedom Act Report (Public Law 95–341). Washington, DC: Author. Vecsey, Christopher 1991. Handbook of American Indian Religious Freedom, edited by C. Vecsey. New York: Crossroad.
SACRED VERSUS SECULAR In common usage, the terms sacred and secular are often set in opposition—sacred referring to anything related to or in contact with the Divine, and secular referring to that which is not Divine—the temporal, earthly, or common. However, the two concepts have
Sacred Versus Secular
slightly different meanings for scholars engaged in the academic study of religion; they are similarly expressed in oppositional terms—but not to each other. In the academic context, both terms defy efforts to define them accurately, which has led to their decline as organizational concepts. This entry looks at this academic discussion.
Sacred Versus Profane Among scholars, the sacred is understood either as (a) a sui generis quality of transcendence considered by religious adherents to be inherent in the way of things (that is, sacred as a foundational and irreducible quality of an experience or object), or (b) as a dynamic process or reaction expressed by religious adherents toward particular items, places, or times. It is often defined by its relationship to the profane, or that which is not sacred, and is marked or bounded in space and time and protected from the profane, which threatens its purity or power (be it process of product). Thus, the opposite of the sacred as understood by scholars is not the secular, but the profane. Although the profane threatens the purity of the sacred even as it defines it, the secular challenges the concept of the sacred. In chronological terms, as long as there has been something sacred, there has been something profane, for the two are intimately related and, some scholars would argue, have no meaning each without the other. The concept of secular is not as old, and although the term may date back to the Middle Ages, its current conceptualization can be traced to the European Enlightenment and its roots in the scientific revolution of the Renaissance. In their scholarly context, both terms represent the emergence of the academic and comparative study of religion as a humanistic pursuit separate from theology. Although all religions retain some aspect or element that might be readily identified as sacred, as a term used in the comparative study of religions, it is often traced to 19th-century European missionaries encountering non-Mediterranean-based religions in Africa and Australia, and their descriptions of the powers considered to emanate from items or spaces by adherents of local, small-scale religious traditions.
Describing the Sacred The two main schools of thought that emerged in the conceptualization of the sacred are often traced to
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Rudolf Otto and Émile Durkheim. Otto, writing in the early decades of the 20th century, postulated that an experience with the sacred (he used the term holy) was both real and yet ineffable (“wholly other”). In his classic work, Das Heilige (translated as The Idea of the Holy), after analyzing a typical religious adherent’s encounter with the sacred (creeping flesh, fear, amazement), he even cautions readers who have not had such an experience to read no further, dramatizing the point that the experience is so unique that those who have not had it will be unable to comprehend his discussion that follows. One of Otto’s important intellectual descendants in this phenomenological school of the sacred, Mircea Eliade, writing in the middle of the 20th century, explored the sacred not as an individual psychospiritual experience of specific (and limited) duration, but as an entire worldview that defined and demarcated the social and cosmic worlds of the religious adherent (for Eliade, “homo religiosus”) into sacred and profane space and time. In this view, sacred spaces are those in which contact (of some sort) with the transcendent has occurred, and sacred times are those in which the contacts have occurred. Ritual becomes the way in which “homo religiosus” participates in the societal manipulation of time and space to return to those foundational experiences with the transcendent. On the other hand, Durkheim, a contemporary of Otto and considered to be the founder of modern sociology, identified the sacred as a process of human social production, the powerful (at times overwhelming) feelings of subordination of individual identity to group identity that come from social experience (a “group effervescence”); the group celebrating itself as a group. The sacred, therefore, is not a thing the religious adherent encounters but a process in which the religious adherent engages, the by-product of human social interaction that emerges from group experience. These two schools of thought related to the nature and meaning of the sacred reflected a larger phenomenon identified as secularization, which was increasingly considered to be part of the natural maturation of society by 19th- and 20th-century scholars.
The Secularization Thesis Drawing from the data of the European colonial experience and the pseudo-Darwinian notion of the superiority of Christian Europe, what would come to be known as the “secularization thesis” argued that societies
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evolved from simple to more complex social organization. For many, levels of complexity were associated with particular attitudes toward religion; the religious practices of small-scale (also called “indigenous,” “native,” and “primitive”) religious societies were considered to be magic (a system of direct manipulation of the forces of the cosmos for immediate results; ironically, also an accusation against Roman Catholics made by early Protestants) and were thus identified as less complex, whereas the religious practices of large-scale (also known as “global” and “world”) religious societies were considered to be religion (a system of indirect interaction with the forces of the cosmos for delayed—or unknowable— results) and were identified as more complex. At the pinnacle of social evolution was the nominally religious or completely a-religious post-Enlightenment, rational, scientific society (not so coincidentally) represented by Protestant Europe. The secularization thesis sustained the evolutionary model of society well into the second half of the 20th century, enabling scholars to compare entirely unrelated worldview systems along supposed evolutionary models, from the most simplistic, least developed practitioners of magic to the slightly more sophisticated practitioners of religion, to the most sophisticated rational minds. Because secularization was identified not only with complexity but also with decreasing religiosity, the scientific rationalism of post-Enlightenment Europe was presumed to be the farthest logical step in the evolution of human society.
The U.S. Challenge Eventually, however, the secularization thesis faced its greatest challenge in the United States, where the increased public visibility and growth of conservative (primarily evangelical, but also fundamentalist) Protestantism in the 1970s suggested either that the United States was not a secular society or that the theory was not adequate to accurately explain circumstances on the ground. The initial response favored the latter, and secularization was redefined not as the process of advancing beyond the need for religion but, rather, as the ability (for the individual, but more so for society) to compartmentalize religiosity and religious authority, removing its monopolistic position in the construction of meaning and authority in society. This more neatly fit into the U.S. cultural context, where demographics and the resulting pluralism of
U.S. public culture were replacing the historical Protestant cultural monopoly with a society (identified now as secular) where religion was important but subordinated to the larger, more diverse symbol system used in public rhetoric and institutions. By the end of the 20th century, many scholars had accepted the notion that the concept “secular”—like the concept “sacred”—was not a particularly helpful tool for scholarly investigation, particularly in the social sciences. Some no longer considered the United States a secular society, not suggesting that it had returned to the “Christian nation” that had dominated U.S. religious history until the 1960s, but instead reevaluating what might be presumed in the term religious. Sociologists of religion in particular debated the meaning of secular and the future of the secularization thesis. Some, following the lead of earlier scholars, argued that secularization meant compartmentalization of religious identity and ideology, enabling people to be affiliated with religious communities and retain religious identities while shuffling those identities and others that might fill their more complex lives. Others argued that the concept secular had no meaning and that U.S. residents were just as religious as they ever had been (if not more); such religiosity could be more easily identified, these people said, if scholars only recalibrated their conceptual tools, shifting from institution- and tradition-based notions of religion to individual- and improvisation-based notions of spirituality. Not coincidentally, as one by-product of the reevaluation of the meaning of religion in society, secularism came to be identified by segments of the public as a religious phenomenon and was part of a number of law suits brought by conservative Christians, who lamented what they considered to be the aggressive removal of religion from the public arena, most notably in public school curricula. Charging that, by using texts books that downplayed the role of religion in U.S. history, for example, the public school system was “establishing the religion of secular humanism” and therefore violating the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, these litigants sought to reestablish tradition-based religion in school curricula. In the process, however, they unintentionally exposed the challenge of defining religion, the sacred, and the secular, in modern society. Eric Michael Mazur See also Civil Religion; Colonialism; Orientalism; Pluralism; Religion; Religion, Minority; Religious Movements, New; Social Darwinism
Salvadoran Americans
Further Readings
Durkheim, Émile. 1965. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain. New York: Free Press. Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Otto, Rudolf. 1958. The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey. New York: Oxford University Press. Wuthnow, Robert. 1998. After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950s. Berkeley: University of California Press.
SALVADORAN AMERICANS The people from El Salvador have long been domestic and international migrants, but Salvadorans in the United States have become increasingly visible since the early 1980s. The concentration of land tenure, foreign domination, and market demands shaped migrations within rural areas of El Salvador and from rural to urban areas. The resulting unequal economic distribution prompted revolts, a civil war, and further migrations. About 20% of the Salvadoran population lives abroad, primarily in the United States.
United States
Gulf of Mexico
The Bahamas Cuba
Mexico Cayman Is. Jamaica Belize Guatemala
Honduras
Caribbean Sea El Salvador
Nicaragua
Costa Rica
Pacific Ocean
Panama
Colombia
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Salvadorans have become an integral part of their host countries while continuing to play a pivotal role in their homeland, as described in this entry.
Internal Migrations Most Salvadorans are descendents of the Pipils, a subgroup of the Nahuas that migrated to Central America about 3000 BC. In 1523, the Spanish conquered Cuzcatlán, a region they dubbed El Salvador, or the savior. The scarce precious metals in the new colony made land and labor the main exploitable resources. In the late 15th and mid-16th centuries, the Spanish crown distributed appropriated lands through the systems of encomienda and repartimiento. These systems vested grantees with the right of collecting tribute from the native inhabitants and regulating their work and treatment. The appropriation of land and its distribution among the Spanish and their descendents became the basis of the country’s economic and social structure. In the process, settlers displaced natives from their traditional communal land production systems to colonial enclaves and made them laborers. Concentration of land tenure and available laborers facilitated the cultivation of a single export commodity; cacao in the 16th century and indigo in the 18th. As El Salvador achieved independence from Spain in 1821, the production of synthetic dyes forced the new state to adopt an alternative monoculture export commodity, coffee. In the late 1800s, laws permitting the seizure of land further concentrated land ownership among a few families. Eight of the fourteen provinces that compose El Salvador became engaged in profitable coffee production. Landowners and the state used some of the coffee earnings to develop the capital city, San Salvador. Other agricultural regional towns became small industrial bases and commercial and service establishments. A small middle class emerged from participation in municipal services, communications, and the transportation infrastructures that had been established to support the agricultural export trade. A large number of people migrated to coffee plantations and the newly developing cities. Some of the dispossessed peasants initiated the yearly ritual of searching for seasonal work in the central coffee regions. San Salvador attracted more than 90% of those migrating to urban areas, which offered greater employment opportunities in the construction and service industries. Reliance on coffee as an export
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agricultural product de-emphasized cultivation for subsistence and economic diversification, making the country’s economy vulnerable. The coffee panacea was shattered by the 1930s economic depression, making living conditions progressively poorer among agricultural and urban workers. In 1932, Farabundo Martí led a peasant insurrection aimed at replacing the government and improving living conditions. In response to the insurrection, the government killed tens of thousands of people. As a result, about 7% of Salvadorans migrated to neighboring Honduras. The increasingly repressive regime prevented further organized dissidence. By the 1950s, cotton and sugar cane supplemented coffee as major agricultural products, increasing local seasonal migration at harvest times.
International Migrations The frequent electoral frauds and increased deterioration of the social and economic conditions facilitated the emergence of popular political and military organizations. Beginning in late 1960s, peasants, urban workers, teachers, and students formed multiple popular political organizations, which became the political basis for the popular military organizations that subsequently composed the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). Beginning in the 1970s, the Salvadoran government, supported by U.S. military and economic aid, repressed the movements using detention, disappearances, mass arrests, and bombardment of villages and towns. By the late 1970s, the FMLN and government forces were engaged in open warfare. The United Nations estimated that by 1980, 1 million people had been displaced as refugees. By 1982 about one-third of the workforce had migrated to Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Canada, Australia, and, primarily, the United States. Since the 1980s, approximately 3.1 million Salvadorans have lived outside El Salvador. The 12-year war left more than 9,000 individuals unaccounted for and 80,000 dead, including Archbishop Oscar A. Romero. The UN-sponsored truth commission judged the Salvadoran government responsible for 85% of the deaths. The United States spent approximately $6 billion in military aid to El Salvador. In 1992, the government and the FMLN signed peace accords that ended the war, brought the military under civilian control, made the FMLN a political
party, and reformed political and economic structures. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch hit El Salvador killing 374 people and flooding approximately 65,200 hectares. Earthquakes devastated the country in 2001, leaving nearly 2,000 people dead or missing and 8,000 injured. In addition, the collapse of worldwide coffee prices caused substantial reduction in coffee production and decreased rural employment. Coffee exports accounted for more than half of export earnings in 1988 but only 7.0% in 2004. Since 1993, El Salvador has expanded its economic basis, particularly into the manufacturing and finance industries. About fifteen free trade zones operate in El Salvador, housing primarily maquila industries that assemble clothes for export to the United States. In addition to low labor cost, the apparel industry has benefited from the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership, which allows goods to enter the United States duty free. Since 2000, the maquila exports have contributed nearly 24% of the Salvadoran gross domestic product (GDP). In 2004, the U.S.–Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) promised to expand access to the U.S. market; the elimination of tariffs on staple foods such as red beans has flooded the country with cheaply produced U.S. foods, further decimating local production, relegating many peasants to factories.
The U.S. Community Salvadorans have lived in the United States since the late 1920s. Beginning in the 1950s there was a steady influx, primarily of students from the economic upper classes, military personnel, and professionals. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Salvadorans living in the United States grew from 119,145 in the 1970s to 369,615 in the 1980s. A substantial number of Salvadorans were admitted as political refugees during the early 1980s. During the 1990s, Salvadorans became the fourth largest Latin American group. They resided primarily in California; Washington, D.C.; New York; and Texas. In 2001, the United States granted Temporary Protection Status to about 268,000 Salvadorans. By 2005, an estimated 1.3 million documented and undocumented Salvadorans resided in the United States. Like other immigrant groups, Salvadorans have filled the United States demand for low-cost labor. The 2000 census reported 74.1% of Salvadorans engaged in low-wage service and manual labor industries.
Sami
Additionally, Salvadorans working in the United States have relieved El Salvador of excess labor. Although Salvadorans fare better economically in the United States than they would have in their homeland, little is known about their social conditions. For instance, despite media and police attention to Salvadoran gang activities, there is little understanding of the phenomenon. Mass deportations of U.S.-based gang members have promoted street gang activities into coordinated international networks. In 2005, the U.S. embassy in El Salvador warned visitors that gang-related homicides have skyrocketed making the country the second most dangerous in Latin America. Since the 1980s, Salvadorans working in the United States have been a fundamental source of financial support for their families back home. The U.S. State Department estimates that remittances reached $2.5 billion in 2004 and $3.0 billion in 2005. In 2005, the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that about 28% of adults in El Salvador received remittances from the United States. In the same year, the World Bank estimated that remittances constituted about 17.1% of El Salvador’s GDP. With no cost to U.S. taxpayers or the Salvadoran government, remittances, reaching Salvadoran families directly, have become a successful and sustained form of international aid. The 2000 census estimated that 11.1% fewer Salvadorans lived in the United States than in the previous decade. Despite this decline, Salvadoran communities have formed in additional states including Nevada, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. El Salvador continues to be a key commercial and military partner of the United States. In 2001, the U.S. dollar became the country’s currency; in 2004, El Salvador was the first country to ratify CAFTA, and it remains the only Latin American country with troops in Iraq. In 2005, the U.S. Agency for International Development reported that 48% of the people in El Salvador live in poverty, that the cost of living had gone up, and that the gap between rich and poor was widening. A local newspaper poll showed that two-thirds of Salvadorans wished to leave the country. One can anticipate that such social conditions will lead to future emigration to the United States and elsewhere. P Rafael Hernández-Arias See Appendix A See also Central Americans in the United States; Maquiladoras; “Marielitos”; Nicaraguan Americans
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Further Readings
Cordova, Carlos. 2005. The Salvadoran Americans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Menjívar, Cecilia. 2000. Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Montgomery, Tommie Sue. 1995. Revolution in El Salvador: From Civil Strife to Civil Peace. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Popkin, Margaret. 2000. Peace without Justice: Obstacles to Building the Rule of Law in El Salvador. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
SAMI The Sami are the Indigenous People of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and part of Russia. Although the Sami have historically been oppressed and exoticized by most races of the countries in which they live, the Sami have made great strides in gaining autonomy over decisions affecting their ways of life during the past century. This entry describes the history and culture of the Sami.
Where Sami Live The Sami people (previously spelled Sámi and Saami, also previously called “Lapps” or “Laplanders,” though these terms are now considered derogatory) live in an area called Sápmi. This area includes approximately the northern two-thirds of Norway, reaching into Sweden just short of the eastern coast and extending east through northern Finland to the Kola Peninsula in Russia. The Sami are historically a reindeer-herding people, though today only about 10% of Sami continue in this occupation.
Sami Population According to recent estimates by the Sami Information Center, approximately 40,000 Sami live in Norway, 20,000 in Sweden, 6,000 in Finland, and 2,000 in Russia. Because the censuses in these countries do not include ethnic identification, these numbers are only approximate. The Swedish Sami Parliament Act of 1992 defines a Sami as a person in whose home Sami is or was spoken and who considers himself or herself to be Sami. Also included as Sami are people whose
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grandparents spoke Sami in the home and people whose parents registered as Sami in the electoral register of the Sami Parliament.
The Sami Language Sami is a Finno-Ugric language, related in language base to Finnish, and it is an official minority language in Sweden and Finland and an official language in Norway. The three main dialects of Sami (Eastern, Central, and Southern) are further broken into nine total dialects. Northern Sami, a Central Sami variant, is the most spoken dialect, with approximately 15,000 to 17,000 speakers. Some of these dialects are mutually understandable; however, the differences between others make communication impossible without translation. Because of a lack of accurate census-taking, estimates on the number of Sami who speak the Sami language vary from about 20,000 to 32,000 in Norway alone. The governments of the lands included in Sápmi did encourage the use of the Sami language during certain points in history; for instance, during the period of colonization with Sami participation in Sweden beginning approximately in 1723, the clergy in Lapland, Sweden was required to learn Sami, and in the mid-1700s, new books in the Sami language were published. The late 1800s, though, saw a rise in assimilationist policy wherein the Sami language was discouraged and the majority language was the language of instruction and the church. The Sami people have worked to establish their language as a respected mode of personal and political communication. In 1971, the Sami Language Committee was established to preserve and promote the Sami language.
Political History of the Sami The Sami people, whose situation has been compared by many scholars to that of the Native Americans in North America, were historically ruled by the countries on whose land they lived. Problematic in this situation was that the Sami were nomadic, following their reindeer herds. An additional problem arose as legislation presented by the governments, often without Sami representation, defined what it meant to be an ethnic Sami and created laws favoring certain groups of Sami. The nonherding Sami were most often overlooked because popular views strongly associated reindeer husbandry with this ethnic group.
The previously mentioned assimilationist policies, which required the Sami to follow the ways of life of the majority population, were followed by a period of segregation policy from the early 1900s to 1971. During this time, the lawmakers proceeded from the belief that to protect the Sami people, a distinct division must be made between the majority population and the Sami. The first Sami National Congress took place in Trondheim, Norway, on February 6, 1917; this meeting marks the first time the North Sami and the South Sami had gathered to discuss the state of the Sami people. This day is still celebrated as the Sami National Day. The Sami flag, designed by Astrid Båhl, was adopted on August 15, 1986. The colors are the same as on the Sami costume (the kolt): red, green, yellow, and blue. The red part of the circle represents the sun and the blue half represents the moon. The Sami Parliament (Sámediggi) was established in 1989 in Norway, 1993 in Sweden, and in 1996 in Finland. A delegation for Sami affairs had been in operation in Finland since 1983; this was reorganized into a Sami parliament in response to those established in Sweden and Norway.
Sami Arts Sami handicrafts are a mode of personal and ethnic expression. The Sami Handicrafts Foundation (Sámi Duodji) certifies that handicrafts were made by Sami craftspeople. Some common resources used by Sami craftspeople are antlers (usually from reindeer), leather (also usually from reindeer), bone (also usually from reindeer), wood, and pewter. Some techniques and products are “native,” or developed by the Sami people, and others are borrowed from other cultures. Sami handicrafts always reflect the Sami identity by using colors, patterns, and techniques that are specific to the traditions of this culture. The musical mode of expression of the Sami is the yoik (alternately spelled joik and jojk). Historically a spontaneous expression, the yoik can be used in shamanistic activities but also may simply be performed as personal expression. The yoik may consist of words or of “vocables,” syllables for the purpose of vocalization, and carries a modal melody. Accompaniment may be provided by a drum. Yoiks have the spiritual purpose of invoking the person, animal, or thing being yoiked. As early as the 15th and 16th centuries, Christian influences in northern Scandinavia began to discourage and even prohibit shamanistic rituals, including the yoik
Samoan Americans
(even when not performed in shamanistic activities), and many of the drums used to accompany the yoik were destroyed. The practice of yoiking is still prevalent in the Sami culture today and has been integrated even into popular music and symphonic works. Suzanne Martin See also Assimilation; Ethnic Group; Ethnonational Minorities; Europe; Internal Colonialism; Minority/Majority; Minority Rights; Native Americans; Nativism; Racial Identity Development Further Readings
Gaski, Harald, ed. 1997. Sami Culture in a New Era: The Norwegian Sami Experience. Vaasa, Finland: Davvi Girji OS. Kvist, Roger, ed. 1989–1992. Readings in Saami History, Culture and Language. 3 vols. Umeå, Sweden: Umeå University Press. Sami Handicraft Foundation. 2005. English Summary. Retrieved January 15, 2007, from http://www.sam eslojdstiftelsen.com/?p=42 Web Sites
Sami Information Center: http://www.eng.samer.se Sami Parliament, Norway: http://www.sametinget.no Sami Parliament, Sweden: http://www.sametinget.se
Hawaiian Islands and 1,600 miles northeast of New Zealand. The islands are divided into two political entities—American Samoa and the Independent State of Samoa. The Independent State of Samoa (formerly Western Samoa) was under New Zealand as a League of Nations mandate. After World War II, New Zealand administered it as a UN trust territory. An independent nation since 1962, Samoa’s sovereignty status today provides it a seat in international organizations. Samoans from the Independent State of Samoa are considered immigrants and must have a visa when traveling to the United States. The world powers, at the 1899 Treaty of Berlin, gave the United States jurisdiction over the group of Samoan Islands now known as American Samoa. Thus, in April 17, 1900, the high chiefs of Tutuila and Aunu’u signed a Treaty of Cession, and Manu’a followed with one of its own in 1904. American Samoa is a U.S. territory. American Samoans are considered U.S. nationals, and they travel freely in and out of the United States. They have all the rights of a U.S. citizen except the right to vote for the president of the United States. The initial great migration of American Samoans to the United States occurred in 1952, following the closure of the U.S. naval base established in American Samoa during World War II. Many Samoan naval
Canada
SAMOAN AMERICANS Samoans in the United States are known as Pacific Islanders. More specifically, they are Polynesians, which is one of the three racial groups in the Pacific Basin. Ethnic and racial categories are used by the U.S. government to identify populations in the United States. In 1997, Pacific Islanders were added as the newest racial and ethnic category, the fifth racial group, “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders,” for purposes of data collection. This category was implemented for the first time in the 2000 census. This entry looks at their immigration and the U.S. community.
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Johnston Atoll
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Howland I.
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Immigration History Samoans in the United States originated from the Samoan Islands, which are located in Central Polynesia approximately 2,270 miles southwest of the
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personnel and their dependents were transferred to Hawaii and the West Coast. The U.S. military has made a big impact on the island’s economy and culture. Throughout the years, the U.S. military has provided employment and educational opportunities so that many young Samoans left the islands to join, some serving with distinction. According to the best estimates, the number of American Samoans in the military, on a per capita basis, is higher than the U.S. national average. The first Samoan settlements in the United States sprang up near military bases—in San Diego, Oceanside, and the now-defunct San Francisco and Long Beach bases, all in California. Later Samoan migrants moved to Hawai‘i and elsewhere on the U.S. mainland in search of better economic, medical, and educational opportunities. American Samoans now make up the largest Pacific Islander migrant group. The 2000 census shows that the total Samoan population in the United States is 128,183, constituting 0.05% of the U.S. population.
The U.S. Community Today, Samoans live in urban areas of almost every U.S. state, although most live in the states of California, Hawai‘i, Washington, and Utah. States with small Samoan populations include Vermont, Delaware, Washington, D.C., and New Hampshire. California has the largest concentration of Samoans with most living in Southern California—Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties; another community is in the greater San Francisco Bay area. Demographics
Samoan migrants are considered a distinct and somewhat isolated community. They migrated from rural, nontechnology-based societies. Before the U.S. Navy established its port on the islands, the local economy was largely based on subsistence farming and fishing. In the U.S. mainland, Samoans were challenged to adapt to a highly industrialized society. They are a relatively young population with a high proportion (37%) of them younger than 18 years old. Compared with the average U.S. resident, an average Samoan is 14 years younger. A little less than 19% of the Samoan workforce is in management, professional, and related fields. Although Samoans are represented in all occupations, the highest proportion of Samoans (31.4%) work in sales and
office jobs. About two-thirds of Samoan households live in rental units. Compared with the total U.S. population, they tend to live in smaller houses with more members (4.08 versus 2.59) per household. Almost 20% of American Samoans exist below poverty level compared with 12.4% of the total U.S. population. As one of the first Pacific migrant groups to the United States, the Samoan community is often characterized as self-reliant and resourceful because of its strong cultural loyalty and close kinship ties. Samoans have found a source of strength in their traditional way of life (fa’a Samoa). Faced with an ongoing lack of technical skills as well as language and educational barriers, they rely principally on families for material and financial support. Wherever they move, Samoans become “clearing houses” for other Samoans, providing for them and providing subsequent migrants places to stay and alerting them to job availability and opportunities. Cultu ura al Ties
Every Samoan is part of an extended family (aiga potopoto). Each extended family has a matai who sits in the village council and presides over family affairs. A matai and members of his household have a village residence and communally owned land that members can clear and cultivate for their own use. Religion plays an important role in the lives of the Samoan people. In the United States, the Samoan church has become the urban village, functioning not merely as a religious center but as a cultural one as well. Within this urban village, Samoan migrants have replicated their homeland social structure. They followed village hierarchy, with the pastors and church deacons taking the place of the chiefs and the council of chiefs. Although villages are the common identifier for individuals in the islands, the churches have assumed that role in the United States. Thus, wherever they move, Samoans make the collective purchase of land and the building of a church their primary priorities. In this urban village setting, they engage in their traditional ceremonies and gift-exchanges. The resultant community network preserves the culture and provides individuals the much-needed support base needed in times of crisis. The Samoan word for crisis (e.g., funerals, weddings, and title bestowal ceremonies) is fa’alavelave. Fa’alavelave connotes “trouble” or “entanglement” and reflects how Samoans typically perceive such events. For the most part, Samoans participate in
Samora, Julian (1920–1996)
fa’alavelave as a coping mechanism for the high cost of living. Family members render services to the aiga potopoto and contribute money and material goods to family crisis. When they, in turn, have a crisis, they are assured of assistance. One area in which early Samoan migrants have achieved modest success is entertainment. In the early 1960s and 1970s on the West Coast, many of them put their talents to good use—forming dance troupes and bands to play at hotels, restaurants, and nightclubs. Others landed small contracts and were offered cameo appearances on television commercials and in movie and television productions. In no other field is the Samoan presence more felt than in sports, particularly college and professional football. Football, with its offer of a college or university scholarship, has lured many Samoan youths to the mainland. Although statistics do not reflect it, education for their children has always been foremost in the minds of many Samoan migrants. In American Samoa, more than half of the high school graduates move to Hawai‘i and the U.S. mainland each year to seek higher education. Others attend the American Samoa Community College or simply remain in their villages in the hopes of landing employment on-island. Like many other ethnic groups that migrated to the United States, first- and second-generation Samoans are finding it harder to preserve their traditional customs and values. The younger population has made the cultural transition more easily than have their elders. But as a whole, the Samoan community faces new social issues that challenge community leaders to find solutions and new coping mechanisms outside of its traditional lifestyle in its quest for self-sufficiency. In the meantime, the Samoan community represents a rich tradition of the Polynesian culture. Pat Luce-Aoelua and Daniel Pouesi See Appendix A See also Asian Americans; Assimilation; Census, U.S.; Hawaiians; Immigration, U.S.; Pacific Islanders
Further Readings
Faleomavaega, Eni. 1994. “A Unique Relationship in the South Pacific.” In New Politics in the South Pacific. Rarotonga, Cook Islands: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific. Hanna, Joel M. 1998. “Migration and Acculturation Among Samoans: Some Sources of Stress and Support.” Social Science Medicine 46(10):1325–1336.
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Janes, Craig R. and Ivan G. Pawson. 1986. “Migration and Biocultural Adaptation: Samoans in California.” Social Science Medicine 22(8):821–834. Office of Management and Budget. 1997. Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/ population/www/socdemo/race/Ombdir15.html Shaffer, Robert. 2000. American Samoa: 100 Years under the United States Flag. Honolulu, HI: Island Heritage Publishing.
SAMORA, JULIAN (1920–1996) Julian Samora was the first Mexican American to earn a doctorate in sociology and anthropology in the United States. His pioneering research in the areas of public health, rural poverty, civil rights, and immigration illuminated the debilitating conditions facing Mexican Americans as a minority group, and his work as an educator, consultant, and policy advocate helped set in motion efforts to address those conditions and provide wider opportunities for Mexican Americans. This entry discusses Samora’s life and contributions.
Formative Experiences Born in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, on March 1, 1920, Julian Samora was subjected to numerous instances of anti-Chicano prejudice early on. He was forced to repeat first grade without benefit of testing simply because Spanish was his first language. At the time, in Colorado and in other parts of the Southwest, Spanishspeaking children were required to repeat first grade, ostensibly to gain sufficient skills in English. In high school, when he was cast as the lead in the school play, Anglo cast members threatened to quit so the teacher deferred to them, denying Samora the part. During his senior year in college, he ran for student body president and lost by one vote. His roommate, citing the reasoning that he could not vote for a Mexican, had cast the deciding vote against him. When Samora traveled to interview for graduate school, he was turned away from lodging by signs that read, “No Dogs, Indians, or Mexicans Allowed.” He was finally able to obtain lodging when a hotel owner mistook him for a traveler from India. These encounters shaped his determination to prove himself as an equal to members of the dominant group and to use education as a tool in the struggle against racial/ethnic hostility and ignorance.
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Samora graduated from high school in 1938, and received a prestigious college scholarship, which he used to attend Adams State Teacher’s College in Alamosa, Colorado. In the summer between his freshman and sophomore years of college, Samora was orphaned when his mother died of cancer. Despite now being alone in the world, he persevered, supplementing his scholarship money by washing and ironing shirts for the other men in his dorm, and graduating in 1942 with a degree in history and political science.
Early Research Initiatives In 1947, Samora obtained a masters in sociology from Colorado State University. In 1953, he received a PhD in sociology and anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis. In his doctoral thesis, Minority Leadership in a Bicultural Community: An Analysis, he concluded that in a community economically and politically dominated by Anglos, Mexican Americans aspiring to leadership had to operate in the Anglo world on Anglo terms, losing, in the process, part of their connection to the Mexican community. His findings were one of the early revelations of the marginality faced by minority group leadership. In 1955, Samora was hired as assistant professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health in the University of Colorado, School of Medicine. After noticing that Anglo doctors were having difficulty understanding or relating to their Mexican American patients, Samora undertook a study of medical delivery systems and their impact on Mexican Americans. By taking his observations back to the classroom and helping the medical students develop sensitivity toward their Spanish-speaking patients, Samora, in effect, was teaching some of the first undergraduate courses in medical sociology in the United States. From 1957 to 1959, Samora taught sociology and anthropology at Michigan State University. While there, he studied the consequences of rural to urban migration for Mexican Americans in the Southwest. One of his discoveries was that generational differences played a significant role in whether a successful adaptation to a new (urban) environment occurred or not. Samora also received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to investigate Mexican American conceptualizations of health and medicine. His fieldwork in a New Mexico village in the summer of 1959 uncovered a Mexican American cultural
complex that employed two levels of explanation and treatment for illness—the medical and the supernatural.
The University of Notre Dame Years In 1959, Samora was hired by the University of Notre Dame. At Notre Dame, Samora initiated one front in an emerging sociological exploration of Mexican Americans in the United States. Samora began researching broader concerns such as the educational needs of Chicanos, the movement of people along the U.S.–Mexico border, the status of Mexican Americans in the Southwest and Midwest, the causes of Mexican undocumented immigration to the United States, and the symbiotic nature of U.S.–Mexico relations. In one of the earliest studies of the educational problems of Mexican Americans, Samora demonstrated that dropping out of school occurred primarily in the high school years. He refused to believe that the family and culture supported education in the earlier years and reversed themselves in the high school years. He was one of the first to conclude that the dropout rate of Mexican Americans was rooted more in the practices of the school system than in the cultural traits of Chicanos. Samora was beginning to gain national attention through his research, and in 1960, he received a grant from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission to investigate civil rights concerns of Mexican Americans. The report, titled National Study of the Spanish-Speaking People, was an informative introduction for many academics to what had been up to then a largely invisible minority. While chair of the Sociology Department at Notre Dame (1963–1966), Samora became one of the first Mexican Americans to live and work as a scholar in Latin America. He was a visiting professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1963, and a program adviser in population studies for the Ford Foundation in Mexico City in 1966. In 1966, Samora edited La Raza: Forgotten Americans, a compilation of articles on the status of Spanish-speaking people in the southwestern United States. In its conclusion, this book offered a suggested research agenda for Chicano studies that foreshadowed much of the actual research embarked upon by academics in the following decades. In 1968, Samora co-founded the Southwest Council of La Raza, which later became the National
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Council of La Raza, the nation’s foremost advocate for the civil rights of Latinos. In addition, Samora supported the establishment of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, served on its board, and made available the most current research to help their fight against social injustice. In 1969, Samora coauthored Mexican-Americans in the Southwest, important for spotlighting the large incidence of urban poverty among the Mexican American population of the Southwest. In 1971, Samora established the Mexican American Graduate Studies Program at Notre Dame. In what he regarded as his greatest accomplishment, he served as mentor to and trainer of at least fifty-seven students who went through the program from 1971 to 1985. Earlier in his career, while doing research on political leadership, Samora had understood the importance of training people to move into majority leadership positions. Now, in an atmosphere designed to provide mutual support and a sense of community, he provided the students of the Mexican American Graduate Studies Program with the opportunity to work toward advanced degrees in a variety of disciplines such as economics, government, history, law, political science, psychology, and sociology. By sponsoring young people in their pursuit of a graduate degree, Samora realized his goal of creating a new generation of scholars, leaders, and role models. Also in 1971, Samora authored the first booklength study of undocumented Mexican immigration into the United States, Los Mojados: The Wetback Story. The book was a product of the U.S.–Mexico Border Studies Project at the University of Notre Dame, which was under Samora’s direction. Samora’s last two major books, A History of the Mexican American People, and Gunpowder Justice: A Reassessment of the Texas Rangers, were published in 1977 and 1979, respectively. Significantly, Samora also developed a Chicano studies series within the University of Notre Dame Press that provided a publishing source for other Chicano academics. Samora retired from the University of Notre Dame in 1985. In 1989, Michigan State University founded the first major university research center named for a Latino, the Julian Samora Research Institute. In 1990, the Mexican government awarded him El Orden del Aguila Azteca (Order of the Aztec Eagle), the highest award Mexico gives to non-Mexicans. In 1989, he started showing signs of a puzzling illness that was misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s disease
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until 1995, when he received the news that he had progressive supranuclear palsy, a terminal neurological disorder. He died February 2, 1996, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Victor Rios, Jr. See Appendix B See also Chicano Movement; Hispanics; La Raza; Latina/o Studies; Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Mexican Americans; National Council of La Raza; “Wetbacks”
Further Readings
Blasi, Anthony and Bernard Donahoe. 2002. History of Sociological Research and Teaching at Catholic Notre Dame University. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Galarza, Ernesto, Herman Gallegos, [and] Julian Samora. Photos by George Ballis. 1970. Mexican-Americans in the Southwest. 2nd ed. Santa Barbara, CA: McNally and Loftin. Rios, Victor, Jr. 2005. “The Samora Legacy: The Development of Theory for the Study of Undocumented Immigration.” Pp. 96–110 in Diverse Histories of American Sociology, edited by A. J. Blasi. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Samora, Julian, ed. 1966. La Raza: Forgotten Americans. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Samora, Julian. 1971. Los Mojados: The Wetback Story. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Samora, Julian, Joe Bernal, and Albert Peña. 1979. Gunpowder Justice: A Reassessment of the Texas Rangers. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Samora, Julian and Patricia Vandel Simon. 1977. A History of the Mexican-American People. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
SAN ANTONIO INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT V. RODRIGUEZ With the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court officially ended the legal segregation of races in U.S. schools. Brown did much to rescue the United States from the throes of the “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson; however, its legacy has been a troubled one. Brown’s progeny were cases that dealt with thorny legal issues
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relating to desegregation. The San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez case (1973), which involved differences in school district funding, is an apt example of this conflicted legacy. This entry describes the legal background, the court’s reasoning, and the effect of the decision in this case.
Legal Background The Brown decision drew a correlation between the concept of educational opportunities and their protection by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. However, the decision led to disagreements in subsequent cases regarding what was meant by “equal protection.” In the case of Rodriguez, the specific question was, How much spending per child would protect equality? The case provides an interesting record of the legal battle civil rights activists fought to obtain equal opportunity in education and the setbacks they have faced. In Rodriguez, the Supreme Court reviewed the financing system for funding public education in Texas, which was challenged as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Bringing the action were Mexican American parents whose children attended the elementary and secondary schools in the Edgewood Independent School District, an urban school district in San Antonio, Texas. Their class action suit was filed on behalf of schoolchildren throughout the state who were members of minority groups or who were poor and resided in school districts having a low property tax base. Thus, this class action conflates racial identity and poverty in the United States. The suit was brought against the State Board of Education, the Commissioner of Education, the State Attorney General, and the Bexar County (San Antonio) Board of Trustees. Financing of public schools was based on funds raised from property taxes. A student residing in a property-rich district could attend a well-funded school. If a school district did not have property wealth, the school would not be well funded. The claim of the parents was that substantial interdistrict disparities in per-pupil expenditures, resulting primarily from differences in the value of assessable property among the districts, disadvantaged their children compared with students in districts with higher property tax rates. The U.S. District Court supported the parents’ claim, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision.
The Court’s Reasoning Several significant legal issues were discussed in this decision. First, the Court did not think there was discrimination against any specific suspect class. The majority said there was no definable class of “poor” people or any discrimination that depended on the relative wealth of the families in any district. The Equal Protection clause obligates governments to treat people who are similarly circumstanced the same. When legislation classifies different groups of people for different treatments under the law, such classifications are subject to scrutiny by the courts. Sometimes the scrutiny is to see if the state has a legitimate objective for the classification. If there is a rational basis, the courts do not look closer. However, scrutiny is of a strict standard if the classification is based on criteria such as race that have been historically suspect as discriminatory. The Court did not apply the strict scrutiny standard in this case because there was no suspect criterion such as race involved in the education finance system. The Court said wealth, in and of itself, was not a suspect classification. Differences in funding were because of where the children lived and not whether they were poor or rich. The challenge made by the parents failed, and the Supreme Court said that the funding system was not unconstitutional. Second was the question whether education is a fundamental constitutional right. In Rodriguez, the Supreme Court decided that this cannot be determined by reference to the societal significance of education. The test must be to scrutinize if the right to education is explicitly or implicitly guaranteed by the Constitution. Based on this test, in a 5 to 4 decision, the Court concluded that education is not a fundamental right. In the specific case of Rodriguez, the Court pointed out that no child was being deprived of a public education. The effect of this decision is significant because following the Supreme Court’s Rodriguez test, a number of other courts refused to consider education a fundamental constitutional right. Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., who delivered the majority opinion, said that the Texas system, though ensuring a basic education for every child in the state, permitted and encouraged participation in and significant control of each district’s schools at the local level. Justice Potter Stewart filed a concurring opinion agreeing with this position. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Thurgood Marshall sounded a clarion call for educational rights. He set
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out in clear and nonnegotiable terms that education is fundamental to U.S. society because of “the unique status accorded public education by our society, and the close relationship between education and some of our most basic constitutional values.” By recognizing that education prepares one for active participation in important societal and political concerns, Marshall stated that education is essential to functioning adequately in society. In later cases on education and desegregation, Marshall continued to dissent from similar majority positions (Board of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 1978; Crawford v. Board of Education of Los Angeles, 1982; and Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools v. Dowell, 1991). Of Marshall’s dissents, Justice Brennan (1991) wrote in the Harvard Law Review: “Justice Marshall’s persuasive voice made all of us more sensitive to the legacy of discrimination.”
Understanding the Decision Why did the Supreme Court reverse the district court’s decision that wealth is a “suspect” classification and that education is a “fundamental” right? Without this reversal, the state of Texas would have had to demonstrate a compelling state interest for having this educational financing system—a rather stiff burden. Earlier, the district court had held that the state of Texas could not demonstrate a reasonable or rational basis for its system. By the compelling interest standard, the system of financing would certainly have been struck down. The Supreme Court’s reasoning for the reversal is based on a restrictive understanding of rights. A literal reading of the Constitution led the Court to the decision that education is not among the limited category of rights the Constitutions recognizes. Using the rational basis standard, the Court held that the Texas system did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because there was a legitimate state purpose behind the system as required by the rational basis standard scrutiny. The majority decision has been criticized for its failure to appreciate that adequate financial spending on each child is critical; without equality in funding, formal equality would not make much difference to the lives of the people. For the plaintiffs, it seemed clear that the Texas school funding system, with its heavy reliance on property taxes, was unconstitutional under
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the Fourteenth Amendment because it deprived the poor of equal protection of the law. They argued that poverty is a vulnerability that renders students in poor school districts a suspect class. The failure of the Court to appreciate this position could be based on its reluctance to view economic position as a ground for judicial scrutiny. The Court reasoned that poor people do not historically suffer from enough intentional discrimination to command the extra protection. Thus, Brown’s logic for racial minorities—who had suffered such discrimination—could not be extended to the poor. Rodriguez is not the final word on this point, and some state constitutions do protect the right to education. Many courts after Rodriguez have upheld education as key to the exercise of other fundamental rights and applied the same implicit-explicit Rodriguez test to protect the right to education. Apart from Justice Marshall’s strong endorsement of the right to education, perhaps the redeeming feature of the Rodriguez decision is that it did not foreclose all future Constitutional challenges to educational funding systems. The majority, while basing its decision on lack of discriminatory intent noted that there was no claim that any student was being absolutely deprived of an education in the particular case. This left the door open for future claims that a system failed to provide basic educational skills and that this was linked to the deprivation of other protected rights. Devyani Prabhat See also American Apartheid; Brown v. Board of Education; Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District; Educational Performance and Attainment; People of Color; Pipeline; Plessy v. Ferguson; Resegregation; School Desegregation
Further Readings
Baker, Edwin. 1983. “Outcome Equality or Equality of Respect: The Substantive Content of Equal Protection.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 131(4):933–998. Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237 (1991). Board of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978). Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Crawford v. Board of Education of Los Angeles, 458 U.S. 527 (1982). Grayson, Zebie A. 1993. “Comment: Marshall’s Dream Deferred: Almost Four Decades after Brown, the Vestiges of De Jure Segregation Linger as the Implementation
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Process Continues. Southern University Law Review 20:53. Horowitz, Harold W. 1966. “Unseparate but Unequal: The Emerging Fourteenth Amendment Issue in Public School Education.” UCLA Law Review 13:1147–1172. Margolis, Emanuel. 2005. “Every Passing Day.” Cornell Law Review 90(2):371. Michelman, Frank. 1981. “Process and Property in Constitutional Theory.” Cleveland State Law Review 30:577, 588–589. Millonzi, Kara A. 2003. “Recent Developments: Education as a Right of National Citizenship under the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” North Carolina Law Review 81:1286–1311. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Rosenberg, Gerald N. 1993. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring about Social Change? Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973). Smith, Steve. 2004. “Education Adequacy Litigation: History, Trends, and Research.” University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review 27:107. Winston, Judith A. 2003. “Rural Schools in America: Will No Child Be Left Behind? The Elusive Quest for Equal Educational Opportunities.” Nebraska Law Review 82:190.
SAND CREEK MASSACRE Just after sunrise, November 29, 1864, on the high plains of southeastern Colorado Territory, Colonel John M. Chivington of the Third Colorado Volunteer Regiment led an attack against a peaceful encampment of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians that would be become known as one of worst atrocities of the 19thcentury American Indian wars. Alternatively, the incident was considered the greatest victory, measured by American Indians killed, the dominant society recorded during the Native American battles for the Great Plains. This entry recalls those events and their subsequent impact.
Chivington’s Attack With the permission of John Evans, the Territorial Governor, Chivington, who had been both a lay preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church and field
commander—“the fighting parson”—during earlier Civil War engagements in the West, organized a volunteer militia unit whose sole purpose was to rid Colorado of its American Indian problem and gain political capital. Although relations between the races had been rocky for some time in the region, Colonel Chivington chose to assault an American Indian village, situated on the banks of Sand Creek, led by its principal peace chief Black Kettle (Moketavato). The American Indians had been assured of U.S. Army protection from nearby Fort Lyon, but because of demands for personnel to fight in the Civil War, the regular Army commander there could not counter the territorial militia. Commanding some 750 men, cavalry, and artillery including the First Cavalry Regiment, Chivington hit the camp of 120 Southern Cheyenne and 8 Arapaho lodges with its herd of about 1,100 horses. The troopers, many of whom had been recruited from Denver’s saloons and mining camps in the Rockies for a 100-day enlistment had superior fire power, overwhelming the Natives, mostly older men, women, and children; many of the men (warriors) were away. Although the activity was described as chaotic, the force managed to kill almost 200 American Indians, although some sources indicate more than 310 dead. Chivington, who would be called the “crimson parson” by American Indian people, had told his men previously to take no prisoners and to allow no one to escape if that could be prevented. Chivington became infamous for his counsel: “Kill and scalp all big and small; nits make lice.” Both Native men and women, including a group of warriors with rifles who took up a defensive position upstream from the main part of the camp had fought to the best of their abilities against the intruders. A number of natives had been able to elude death, including Chief Black Kettle who had displayed both U.S. and white flags on his lodge poles. His wife suffered nine gun shot wounds, but survived the encounter. At the ruins of the tribal camp, the White men scalped most of the American Indian corpses and many of the bodies were mutilated. The body parts were packed on saddles, returned to Denver by the soldiers, paraded through the city’s streets, and displayed on the stage of an opera house. The primary regiment, which became known as the “Bloody Thirdsters,” had 47 wounded, 7 of whom died afterward.
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The Aftermath
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See also Cheyenne; Genocide; Native Americans
The Sand Creek event produced significant fallout, some of which resonated well into the 1990s and beyond. The incident became identified as the Sand Creek Massacre or the Chivington Massacre. A joint military-congressional inquiry beginning in March 1865 assigned culpability, but Chivington’s career seems not to have been adversely affected, although he was kicked out of the Colorado Territorial militia. Evans was dismissed by President Abraham Lincoln. In that same year, the federal government promised 112 Cheyenne and Arapaho families land, provisions, and $68,000 as restitution for the massacre, but never followed through on its proposed actions. Four years later, Chief Black Kettle was killed, along with about 100 of his tribe’s people, on November 27, 1868, in his village on the banks of the Washita River in the Indian Territory. The Army unit that attacked the natives was the newly constituted U.S. 7th Cavalry under the command of the Civil War hero, Lieutenant Colonel (former Brevet Major General) George A. Custer. On April 22, 1996, in a resolution passed at its general meeting, the United Methodist Church in Denver, Colorado, issued an official apology to the Cheyenne and Arapaho people for the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. The document also denounced Chivington’s actions. The Sand Creek Massacre site’s exact location was lost for decades, but subsequent interest and archaeological work adequately identified the place in Kiowa County, Colorado. In 2000, Congress authorized a Sand Creek National Historical Site to cover 12,500 acres. Since then, the U.S. Park Service, along with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, has acquired nearly 2,500 acres of the site. Negotiations continue with landowners for the remaining acreage. Thus, what was officially called a battle of the Civil War era that involved U.S. military forces (Colorado territorial militia) and Native Americans of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations has morphed into a much larger event in the historical record of race relations and genocide on the Great Plains. In the final analysis, Chivington’s actions were deplorable; the cause of justice was not served. The Sand Creek Massacre has not been forgotten—a novel, Arrow in the Sun, and a film, Soldier Blue, both released in 1970, are based on the events. Donald J. Berg
Further Readings
Dunn, J. P., Jr. [1886] 1958. Massacres of the Mountains: A History of the Indian Wars of the Far West 1815–1875. New York: Archer House. Fletcher, Harrison. 2006. “Shifting Sands.” National Park Services Update on Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. Retrieved July 28, 2006, from http://www .santafetrailscenicandhistoricbyway.org/scmasacre.html Jackson, Helen Hunt. [1881] 1964. A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government’s Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes. Minneapolis, MN: Ross & Haines. Klinkenberg, Verlyn. (2000 November-December). “The Conscience of Place: Sand Creek.” Mother Jones. Retrieved July 28, 2006, from http://www.motherjones.com/ commentary/columns/2000/11/sand_creek.html Svaldi, David. (1989). Sand Creek and the Rhetoric of Extermination: A Case Study in Indian-White Relations. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Web Sites
National Park Service, Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, Colorado: http://www.nps.gov/sand
SANSEI Sansei are grandchildren of Japanese immigrants/ emigrants, literally, “third generation” in Japanese. As with other generational terms for Japanese Americans in the United States (Issei, Nisei), Sansei refers to a specific cohort set of experiences as well as to generations in the United States and removed from Japan. As with any category of people, patterns of similarities can be made salient at the same time that the diversity of the group is also recognized. This entry describes the background and the future development of the Sansei. Most Sansei came of age in the 1960s and have tended to follow two different career and lifestyle paths. Most have continued in their parents’ footsteps, opting to become middle-class professionals and taking on relatively conservative views largely consistent with that of the White majority.
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Other Sansei, as Jere Takahashi has explained, have been more affected by the social movements of the 1960s and have developed more radical perspectives. The views of this second group have been greatly shaped by the civil rights, Black Power, Yellow Power/Asian American, women’s, anti–Vietnam War, anticolonial Asian nationalist, and transnational Third World solidarity movements of the late 1960s and 1970s. This activist culture significantly influenced the ways in which Sansei identity was racialized and positioned in relation to other people of color in the United States and around the world. These Sansei eventually became involved with or started their own community service-oriented organizations to immediately and directly apply their more progressive political perspectives. Sansei are commonly associated with and given credit for being the instigators of the Japanese American redress and reparations movement, which ultimately attained a government apology and $20,000 for each person who was forced to relocate because of Executive Order 9066 issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 signed by President Ronald Reagan acknowledged that the relocation and internment of Japanese in the United States during World War II was unconstitutional and a violation of their civil rights. The attainment of this redress and reparations is often attributed to the activist view prevalent among Sansei. Though their parents’ generation had stronger memories of the internment and were more directly affected by it, Sansei experienced a different socialization that may have enabled them to come together to mobilize the Japanese American community at the right political opportunity to insist that Japanese American civil rights had been violated by their forced evacuation, relocation, and wartime internment within their own country. Sansei experiences and identity formations on the U.S. mainland and in Hawai‘i are quite different, though both have been constructed as part of larger cross-racial and cross-ethnic social identities. On the U.S. mainland, the 1960s saw the development of Asian American panethnic identities; Sansei learned to see themselves as part of this racialized group that sought empowerment through the assertion of common political interests between ethnic groups previously viewed as separate, including Chinese, Filipinos, and Koreans. Meanwhile, Hawai‘i Sansei identities have been constructed within a larger context of “local”
multiculturalism. Because of the way Hawai‘i politics and society have developed, people with ties to the local area are increasingly distinguishing between “locals” and “nonlocals.” In addition to Japanese, “local” identity usually includes people of native Hawaiian, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Portuguese, Samoan, and other ancestries. This category includes both Indigenous People and the descendents of immigrants, juxtaposing them against mainlanders, military, (Japanese) businesspeople, tourists, and other temporary or recent migrants. More than half of all Sansei are married to people not of Japanese ancestry. This demographic shift from largely monoracial Sansei to predominantly mixed race and ethnic Yonsei (fourth generation) has been provoking larger discussions about how to define Japanese Americans. Although blood quantum rules for Japanese American sports leagues and beauty pageants are slowly becoming more inclusive, a debate persists about whether a Japanese American community will cease to exist or if the boundaries around “Japanese American” will need to keep expanding. Scholarship on Sansei (and Japanese Americans as a whole) tends to differ in two major ways. One strand of research looks at Sansei as a highly assimilated ethnic group that has somehow maintained a sense of ethnic community much more than third-generation White counterparts of different immigrant heritage— despite geographic dispersion, social and economic mobility, and increasing interracial and interethnic marriage rates. Another thread looks at Sansei as a racialized Asian American group and locates them more within the racial politics of the United States. Finally, in light of increasing globalization and diaspora consciousness, it is relevant to note that the meaning attached to the category of “Sansei” has additionally been constructed by the Japanese government, with the establishment of a special visa status for people of Japanese ancestry up to the third generation. Since 1990, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has offered a visa that is sometimes referred to colloquially as the “Sansei visa,” “Nisei visa,” or “Nikkei visa.” Upon providing documentation that a parent or grandparent is or was a Japanese national, foreign nationals are eligible to apply for visas to Japan with relatively unlimited activities. In this way, Sansei are constructed as Nikkeijin (Japanese emigrants and their descendents) who are welcome in Japan, whereas Yonsei are located outside the legally defined boundaries of that group and receive the same
Santería
official treatment as foreign nationals not of Japanese ancestry. Jane H. Yamashiro See also Asian Americans; Hapa; Hawai‘i, Race in; Internment Camps; Nikkeijin; Nisei
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spiritism is also said to have had an influence within the syncretic view.) Likewise, there is no consensus in recognizing Santería as a religion; various groups of people and institutions classify Santería either as a cult, a cultural practice, or a religion (hence, the use of religious-cultural in the entry). This entry describes the practice of Santería and its modern incarnation in the United States.
Further Readings
Espiritu, Yen Le. 1992. Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Levine, Gene N. and Colbert Rhodes. 1981. The Japanese American Community: A Three-Generation Study. New York: Praeger. Okamura, Jonathan Y. 1994. “Why There Are No Asian Americans in Hawai‘i: The Continuing Significance of Local Identity.” Social Process in Hawaii: The Political Economy of Hawai‘i 35:161–178. Takahashi, Jere. 1997. Nisei/Sansei: Shifting Japanese American Identities and Politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Tuan, Mia. 1998. Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites?: The Asian Ethnic Experience Today. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Yamamoto, Eric. 1993. “The Significance of Local.” Pp. 138–150 in Social Process in Hawaii: A Reader, edited by P. Manicas. New York: McGraw-Hill.
SANTERÍA Santería is an Afro-Cuban religious-cultural practice developed as a result of the forced migration of Africans from Nigeria to Cuba in the 18th and 19th centuries. As part of the imposition of European belief systems, these slaves were forced to accept Catholicism; according to some scholars, Santería emerged as a syncretic religious-cultural system based on the influence of both Catholicism and Yoruba traditions. In such a view, African slaves took on Catholic saints and hid their Yoruba-based deities, creating a syncretic notion of religion. For example, within such belief, Saint Lazarus is parallel to Babalú Ayé, Saint Barbara is said to be referenced to Changó, and Our Lady of Regla (or Mary, Star of the Sea) is compared with Yemayá. Yet, whether Santería is Yoruban or a mix of Catholic and Yoruba traditions continues to be the source of debates for both practitioners and academic scholars. (Kardesian
Communicating With the Orishas Santería is a Spanish term that means “the way of the Saints” or “worshipping the Saints.” (Santería is more formally known as Lukumí, La regla Lukumí, La regla de Ochá, or La regla de Ifá, although many people, public and practitioners alike, would not recognize it if it were designated only by any one of those terms.) The religious-cultural practice involves beliefs in deities (called Orishas in Yoruba language, Santos in Spanish) and ritual that focus on communication and interaction with these deities. Santería practitioners participate within a structure of rituals toward their deities and under the direction of padrinos (Spanish for godfathers) and madrinas (godmothers). Orishas come and participate in the activities, contributing with their charms, personalities, and funny or possessive behavior. The religion centers on its appreciation of, worship of, and dialogue with the Orishas; their benefits for practitioners; and the sense of community based on such worship. A few dozen Orishas are known in U.S. Santería practice. Additional elements linked to the religious practice through which people worship and communicate with their Orishas include (a) readings (divination) of destinies and the course of action when practitioners are confronted with illness, family problems, and the like; (b) animal sacrifice as one way of negotiating, or attempting to alter, one’s destiny (which is never fixed and without the possibility for change); (c) individual initiation into the religion; (d) the participation within the religious structure into a house (a house is a lineage of initiates led by godparents); and (e) the possession of Santería practitioners. After animal sacrifice, possession is considered by some to be the second most challenging aspect of Santería. Worshipping the Orishas takes place through public ceremonies such as bembés or tambores (Spanish for drummings), or birthdays, as well as the maintenance of home altars. Padrinos and madrinas are responsible for guiding new initiates, especially during their first
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year of formal entrance to Santería as a practitioner, or an Iyawo (or called in Spanish a Yabó). Thus, there is generally a hierarchical approach of communication and direction: from the Orishas, to the godparents, to newly initiated practitioners, to the uninitiated. This communication restriction is especially evident for the first year after a Santero or Santera formally joins the practice as a Yabó, because the Yabó has become a wife to the Orishas (irrespective of his or her gender) and at the same time she or he is a newborn. In the process of becoming initiated, the new Santero or Santera enters a lineage where her or his place is marked by the time she or he entered this relationship to the Orishas and her or his community.
A Marginalized Religion, a Religion of the Marginalized Santería practices have been common in the United States since the 1950s; further Cuban migration in 1980 with the Marielitos increased the U.S. practice. Some newspapers estimate the number of U.S. Santería practitioners at 1 million. Cities such as Hialeah, Florida, have an estimated 100,000 followers, and New York and Tampa have only slightly smaller numbers. Migration patterns between Cuba (which is estimated to have 3 million Santería followers), Puerto Rico, and the United States indicate that there may be a few million Santería practitioners. People in the United States have been exposed— through popular media—to seemingly ritualistic elements of Santería; from Desi Arnaz’s invoking “Babalú Ayé” in his I Love Lucy television show in the 1950s (something most people did not know relates to a Santería deity), to movies such as Perdita Durango (Dance With the Devil) and The Believers. (A lot of these popular readings do not respect neat boundaries between Creole religious traditions like Vodou, Candomblé, and Santería, for example, and lump them all together in their portrayals.) In addition, animal deaths or dismembering of animals (or human bodies) in the United States often trigger accusations that Santería, Vodou, and Espiritismo were the cause; actually, no human sacrifices are involved in their ritual, and most animal sacrifices are conducted within initiations and other indoor rituals. Santería is generally perceived as primitive compared with other religions, as these and other media portrayals illustrate, and such a reading may well be linked to Santería’s African origins.
Since its development in Cuba and in its trajectory to the United States, Santería has been a religion practiced by marginalized populations. Dismissed as superstition and worship of the devil by Cuba’s colonizers, Santería served as a force of resistance that brought hope to Afro-Cubans and Africans before the 20th century. It became a tool that allowed believers to gain strength during the second half of the 20th century, particularly among Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants to the United States. Some note that in the last few decades, many non–Afro-Cubans began practicing Santería when they arrived in the United States—presumably because they found it to be a force to counter their experiences of adversity as immigrants in a foreign country. Similarly, Newyoricans, that is, mainland Puerto Ricans and islander Puerto Ricans who moved to the United States, have been tied to the religiouscultural practice as a way of coping with discrimination based on racial, class, and national origin; general and psychological well-being; and with illness. The religious-cultural practice remains a religion dominated by people of color in its U.S. practice. Cubans, Puerto Ricans, other Caribbeans, and other Latin Americans are the majority of Santería’s U.S. base, although many houses have practitioners who are African American, Asian, Native American, or White. In both academic and practitioner circles, the religious-cultural practice may be referred to as AfroCuban, Afro-Caribbean, or Afro-Latino, delineating a certain ownership of it by a region or country; however people refer to it (in the United States or elsewhere), the religious-cultural practice is certainly diasporic and debates about where Yoruba “ends” and where Santería “begins” are continuous. Although Santería is often a communal practice, the Internet has become an essential resource for practitioners and onlookers alike, especially those who live outside the main cities where Santería is practiced by many people. With an increasing number of texts, historical reports, and social scientific studies that have multiplied in the last decade, Santería’s general belief system is much more accessible. Overall, its number of worshippers continues to grow and myths about this religious-cultural practice continue to be addressed. Salvador Vidal-Ortiz See also Creole; Cuba; Cuban Americans; Diaspora; “Marielitos”; Religion; Religion, Minority; Slavery
Scapegoats
Further Readings
Brown, David H. 2003. Santería Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Church of Lukumi Babalú Ayé v. City of Hialeah. U.S. Supreme Court, 508 U.S. 520. (1993). Clark, Mary Ann. 2005. Where Men Are Wives and Mothers Rule: Santería Ritual Practices and Their Gender Implications. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. De La Torre, Miguel A. 2004. Santeria: The Beliefs and Rituals of a Growing Religion in America. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Fernández Olmos, Margarite and Lizabeth Paravasini-Gebert. 2003. Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo. New York: New York University Press. Gregory, Steven. 1999. Santería in New York City: A Study in Cultural Resistance. New York: Garland.
SCAPEGOATS On Biblical Israel’s annual Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), “all the inequities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins” were humbly confessed and symbolically “put upon the head of a goat.” This “scapegoat” bearing “all their iniquities upon him” was gently led out into the wilderness and freed (Leviticus 16:21–22, RSV). In modern societies, political leaders and government institutions often seek to blame underrepresented minorities for problems the society is experiencing. For example, in Nazi Germany, the Jewish minority was blamed for the nation’s World War I defeat and subsequent economic problems, a rationale that led to the Holocaust. The leaders who put forth these accusations may cite statistical and scientific evidence in support of their claims. However, their actions can also be viewed as a modern version of scapegoating. This entry describes the second perspective.
Scapegoating and Diversity Traditional Judaism’s scapegoat is distant from modern notions of scapegoating minority populations for the larger culture’s difficulties. Where the ritual exiling of the blameless scapegoat constituted Israelis’ ultimate confession of their society’s wickedness, modern scapegoating flatters mainstream society as
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sinless and condemns the scapegoated out-group as the true cause of difficulty. It is often characteristic of societies that are experiencing severe stress, such as Nazi Germany in the interwar period. The United States is the only wealthy country with a history of racial and ethnic diversity. The ease with which U.S. politicians and institutions rally popular fear and anger to blame powerless demographic scapegoats for vexing social problems is a consequence of the fragmented U.S. social structure. Institutional scapegoating hampers the development of effective, inclusive health and social policies, contributing to substantially higher levels of gun violence, serious crime, drug and alcohol abuse, HIV/AIDS contagion, incarceration, and other social maladies in the United States, compared with similarly affluent but less racially diverse Western nations. Institutional scapegoating, an organized, politically coordinated strategy, consists of three key elements: (1) a social or health crisis demanding official attention; (2) a broad consensus of politicians, interest groups, and public opinion marshaled to blame the crisis on the purportedly inferior biology and culture of a feared minority group; and (3) widespread panic that the crisis is invading the middle and upper classes through their most corruptible links, women and youth. Social and medical scientists who supply and interpret “objective evidence” to support popular prejudices regarding the scapegoated group’s innate inferiorities (such as intelligence tests administered to immigrants or imagined biological differences between races), even though later debunked, receive official and media acclaim. In some cases, the scapegoated minority does manifest the worst aspects of the social or health crisis creating concern. More often, institutional scapegoating targets out-groups to avoid confronting behavior crises rooted in mainstream populations.
Institutional Scapegoating in the Past The recurrent U.S. “War on Drugs,” inexorably linking “demon drugs” to “demon populations,” provides a salient example of institutional scapegoating. The late-1800s panic over relatively harmless opium smoking by Chinese immigrants occurred against the backdrop of the widespread addiction by an estimated quarter-million middle-aged Whites to patent medicine opiates such as morphine. Officials and news reports
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spread lurid tales of opium dens where “cunning Orientals” seduced and kidnapped young White women into “degenerate practices.” Opium smoking was outlawed beginning in 1875 and cited as a motivation for the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Institutional scapegoating drove early-1900s antidrug wars linking Black men to cocaine, Catholic immigrants to alcohol, and Mexicans to marijuana. Alarms by police and medical authorities that cocaine drove Black men to rape White women and rendered them invulnerable to .32-caliber police bullets spurred sensational press reports and emergency upgrading of police arsenals. Prohibition of alcohol via the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 crowned the legislative triumph of rural, Protestant, native-born U.S. residents over urban Catholic immigrants and their alcohol practices. Stung by budget cuts in the wake of Prohibition’s repeal in 1933, Federal Bureau of Narcotics chief Harry Anslinger incited a new crusade against marijuana as a “killer weed” supplied by violent Mexican laborers to White youth who, maddened by reefer, “murdered entire families.” In the 1950s, official inquiries blamed marijuana and barbiturate use by White midwestern teenagers on their commingling with Black youth and alluring lower-class values.
obesity have tripled, illicit drug abuse deaths have quadrupled, and imprisonments have risen sevenfold among U.S. residents ages 40 to 59 as younger and older ages show lesser increases or declines. In fact, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Center for Health Statistics, and other standard sources show that among youth and young adults, rates of murder, rape, robbery, property crime, and other serious offending, as well as rates of violent deaths, drunken driving, drug overdose mortality, HIV/AIDS infections, early pregnancy, school dropout, and other ills have declined sharply during the last 2 to 3 decades—to record low levels in several cases. Nevertheless, officials and the news media continue to depict younger and poorer populations as causing the increases in these problems. In some cases, institutional scapegoating has involved framing genuine social crises with racially charged images. The damage of crack cocaine addiction and gun violence by dealers to poorer Black and Latino urban communities during the 1980s and 1990s was severe. However, sensational claims by authorities and in news stories of hordes of animalistic addicts and “crack babies” turned out to be unfounded. Meanwhile, burgeoning heroin, powder cocaine, and illicit prescription drug addiction, crime, and mortality
Modern Institutional Scapegoating A new phase of institutional scapegoating emerged from the 1970s to the present as the increasing political standing of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians rendered entire races riskier to blame for social problems. Institutional scapegoating now targets narrower subgroups, along with the specter of a new breed of dangerous and endangered youth arising in more racially diverse younger generations. Modern institutional scapegoating is made more difficult by the fact that recent social and health crises have been rooted in middle-aged, mostly White, mainstream U.S. residents. From the 1970s and 1980s to the latest figures available (2004 and 2005), per-capita rates of felony arrests have doubled, HIV infections and
Men in a Chinese lodging house in San Francisco smoking opium. During the 1800s, officials and news reports spread lurid tales of opium dens where “cunning Orientals” seduced and kidnapped young White women into “degenerate practices.” Subsequently, exclusionary legislation focused on Chinese immigrants in response to economic downturns as if this group were responsible for the nation’s woes. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-102090.
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among middle-aged White populations exceeded crack cocaine’s toll (as well as contributing to gun violence among urban drug dealers) but drew little stigma. In other cases, panics founded in traditional scapegoating appear to have been baseless, such as campaigns depicting heroin, violence, and other “ inner-city” afflictions spreading to suburban youth. Institutional scapegoating, whether expressed directly in racist demagoguery or in sophisticated codings, continues to stigmatize already feared populations, prevents authorities from formulating effective responses to social problems, and hampers the U.S. transition to a multicultural society. Mike A. Males See also Chinese Exclusion Act; Crime and Race; Drug Use; HIV/AIDS; Institutional Discrimination; Prejudice; Stereotypes Further Readings
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Reports for the United States (1960–2005). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. Glassner, Barry 1999. The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. New York: Basic Books. Gould, Stephen Jay. 1996. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton. Meier, Kenneth J. 1994. The Politics of Sin: Drugs, Alcohol, and Public Policy. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Musto, David F. 1991. “Opium, Cocaine, and Marijuana in American History.” Scientific American (July):40–47. National Center for Health Statistics. Mortality Data from the National Vital Statistics System. Hyattsville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved November 2, 2007, from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/deaths.htm Reinarman, Craig and Harry G. Levine, eds. 1998. Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice. Berkeley: University of California Press.
SCHMIEDELEUT One of the three distinct branches of Hutterites, an Anabaptist group that formed the oldest successful communal group in North America, is the Schmiedeleut (smith’s people). Its members became a distinct subgroup after leaving the Ukraine for South Dakota and founding the Bon Homme colony in 1874.
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Before the move to the United States, there were only Hutterites. The emigrant Hutterites settled three separate colonies, which developed into the three branches of the Hutterite church—the Schmiedeleut, the Dariusleut, and the Lehrerleut. This entry describes the Schmiedeleut. The Hutterites encountered strong prejudice in South Dakota during World War I, and all left for Canada except the Schmiedeleut Bon Homme colony. In 1935, South Dakota passed the Communal Corporation Act, allowing colonies to incorporate and receive the same tax benefits as a cooperative, and seven colonies migrated back from Canada—all Schmiedeleut. At present, Schmiedeleut colonies are located in eastern South Dakota (54), Minnesota (9), North Dakota (6), Manitoba (106), and Alberta (1). The Schmiedeleut split into two separate groups in 1992 and have been in formal disunity. Most colonies seem to regard the split as nonpermanent, and both factions continue to intermarry. The Schmiedeleut are the largest group, with about three-eighths of the total Hutterite population (estimated between 40,000 and 50,000 in the United States and Canada). About 60% of the Schmiedeleut live in Manitoba, Canada, and the remaining 40% in South Dakota, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Typical Hutterite colonies consist of 100 to 150 people, living communally. Houses differ from the main culture by the absence of individual kitchens (all meals are taken in a common facility) and the lack of television or radio. When the colony grows past 140 people, it branches and about half the members move to the new colony. All Hutterites share the same Anabaptist religious doctrine and social patterns; communal living is an essential component of the religion. Despite the similarities, interaction between the three leuts (branches) has become less common. Each leut is patrilocal and endogamous. The Schmiedeleut are regarded as the least conservative of the three groups and tend to be less insular, interacting more with their non-Hutterite neighbors and with the dominant culture. Although farming continues to be a large part of the Hutterite identity, it is increasingly supplemented by on-colony manufacturing; heat pumps and metal products are two of their successful products. Traditionally, Hutterite education has ended at the eighth grade, but the Schmiedeleut, both in South Dakota and Canada, have added opportunities for
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postsecondary education, with the first U.S. colony high school graduation occurring in 2004; in both the United States and Canada, postsecondary education is increasing. Michael McCurry See also Hutterites
Further Readings
Hostettler, J. 1974. Hutterite Society. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kant, J. 2007. Hutterites of South Dakota: The Schmiedeleut. Coral Springs, FL: Lumina Press. Satterlee, J. 1993. The Hutterites: A Study in Cultural Diversity. Brookings: South Dakota State University, Department of Rural Sociology.
SCHOOL DESEGREGATION Desegregation, although difficult to define, is commonly referred to as the elimination of the separation of individuals by virtue of their race or ethnicity. This term is commonly used in reference to public schools in the United States that have, either through social measures or legal requirements, eliminated practices that perpetuate educating students of different racial or ethic groups in different schools and classrooms. Historically, the desegregation of schools referred to Black and White students. However, the increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the United States is a graphic reminder that desegregation should be understood as involving many different peoples of color both vis-à-vis each other and vis-à-vis Whites. In a fully desegregated school district, the racial/ ethnic composition of all school buildings and all classes within each building would generally approximate that of the district. Historically, desegregation at the building level has been difficult to achieve even in the presence of court orders requiring it. Moreover, desegregation at the building level has frequently been accompanied by relatively high levels of segregation across academic tracks and classrooms within buildings. This entry looks at the history of school desegregation and the reverse tide that has been growing since the 1980s.
History School segregation, which has a long and often contentious history in the United States and especially in the South, was sanctioned by the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. The Plessy ruling allowed separate public facilities for Blacks as long as they were equal to those for Whites; this decision supported the state-mandated segregation that characterized public education in the South for the next half century. State-mandated segregation is generally called de jure segregation whereas de facto segregation refers to segregation that arises from other sources such as housing and other social patterns not explicitly enforced by law. In the half century after Plessy, the separate but equal doctrine provoked a range of political and legal challenges, culminating in the unanimous 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board Education. The Brown decision stated that segregated education was inherently unequal and thus a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. The Court ordered the elimination of segregated schooling but failed to designate specific ways that desegregation efforts should proceed; the next 10 years saw little progress in desegregating schools. Pro omotin ng Desegre egatio on
The situation changed dramatically in the 1960s as the Civil Rights Movement transformed many aspects of the political landscape and, among other things, resulted in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The act outlawed discrimination in public accommodations, in employment, and in programs receiving federal aid. The act also enabled the U.S. Department of Justice to initiate school desegregation lawsuits. This legislation was followed by the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provided for unprecedented levels of federal aid to local school districts. These two acts thus provided the federal government with an effective mix of carrots and sticks for getting local school districts to desegregate. Adding to the impetus for desegregation was a flurry of court cases, most notably the Green et al. v. County School Board (1968) and Swann v. CharlotteMecklenburg Board of Education (1971) cases. In Green, the Court ruled that it was not enough for school districts to eliminate laws that required a dual, segregated system; they must take affirmative steps to actively desegregate public schools. The Green
School Desegregation
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School desegregation. An African American boy is shown walking through a crowd of White boys during a period of violence related to school integration (Clinton, Tennessee, December 4, 1956). Desegregation of schools and neighborhoods often was resisted even after being approved and supported by courts and local government officials. Source: Library of Congress, U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, LC-U9-657B-13.
decision directed that segregation must be removed “root and branch” and identified six areas that needed to be desegregated: student assignment, facilities, transportation, staff, faculties, and extracurricular activities These six criteria became known as the Green factors and have frequently been used by courts to determine the extent of segregation or desegregation. The 1971 Swann case, arising in Charlotte, North Carolina, accelerated desegregation efforts by allowing districts to bus students for desegregation and to make use of mathematical ratios for racial balance in the schools. One justification for the Court’s decision was the evidence that, because segregated schools were linked to segregation in housing patterns, schools would not “naturally” desegregate themselves. Charlotte subsequently implemented one of the nation’s most successful busing plans. In the early 1980s, fewer than 10% of Charlotte’s students attended schools whose racial composition
fell outside desegregation guidelines, and the Black–White test score gap decreased. However, although Charlotte could claim considerable success in remedying between-school segregation, withinschool segregation remained a problem. Moreover, the busing plan required Black children to ride the bus longer and more frequently than did White children. Thus, even in a district widely praised for its desegregation efforts, Brown’s promise of desegregated and truly equal education was, at best, only partially realized even at the peak of its success. By the mid-1980s, Charlotte began a drift toward resegregation that lasted until the end of the century when Swann, as discussed later, was reopened. Resegre egatio on Begin ns
The first major Supreme Court decision against desegregation, Milliken v. Bradley I, arose in Detroit
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in 1974. Because of the relatively small percentage of White students in the city of Detroit, the desegregation plan included the city’s predominantly White suburbs. However, these suburbs were in a different school district, a situation very different from that in previous cases, which involved desegregation within a single school district. In the Court’s view, the distinction between intradistrict and interdistrict desegregation was of crucial legal significance, and the Court’s ruling voided the desegregation plan, stating that it was unfair to those living in the suburbs. The decision created legal barriers to school desegregation in the many metropolitan areas characterized by predominantly White suburbs and central cities with large populations of peoples of color. Subsequently, in Milliken v. Bradley II (1977), the Court ordered the state to pay for special compensatory education programs in Detroit, in the hope that such programs would counter the effects of segregation. Milliken I was a setback to desegregation efforts, especially in the North, but in the South, betweenschool desegregation levels remained relatively high until the 1990s. This was partly because the South’s history of de jure desegregation had made it the focus of most initial federal desegregation efforts, and substantial progress had been achieved in the South before Milliken. In addition, because southern school districts are generally larger than northern ones, Milliken posed fewer barriers in the South. Beginning in the 1980s, the federal judiciary, partly because of the growing number of newly appointed conservative judges, increasingly ruled that districts had made sufficient progress in remedying the problems of previous segregated dual systems, declared that the districts were unitary (the opposite of dual), and released them from court supervision. Among other things, in several decisions in the early 1990s, the court ruled that a district could be declared unitary even if desegregation had not been realized on all the Green factors and that once a district was declared unitary, it was under minimal legal obligation to maintain desegregation. ed Swann Revisite
In the late-1990s, Swann was reopened when a group of White parents challenged Charlotte’s desegregation guidelines. Most school boards are eager to claim that they have satisfied court-mandated desegregation goals and should be declared unitary and
released from court supervision. But the Charlotte school board, aware of the drift toward resegregation that had begun in the mid-1980s, asserted that it had not met the original court-mandated desegregation, needed to continue its desegregation efforts, and was not yet unitary. Hearing the case in a 1999 trial was a federal district court judge who had been appointed by President Ronald Reagan; before the judge’s appointment, he had been a vocal opponent of Charlotte’s busing plan. Despite the indisputable evidence of a 15-year drift toward resegregation and the popularly elected school board’s view that it could do more to fulfill desegregation goals, the judge ruled that the district had removed all the remnants it could of the dual, segregated system and declared Charlotte unitary. The most important parts of the judge’s decision were upheld by the circuit court, and the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal. In the wake of these rulings, resegregation in Charlotte has increased dramatically. For instance, in the 2001–2002 school year, 52% of CharlotteMecklenburg schools were racially balanced, but by the 2003–2004 year, this percentage dropped to 33%. The Swann case is an example of the increasing reluctance of courts to continue to pursue legal remedies for segregation, even if a school board asserts that these remedies are necessary. This reluctance comes at a time when growing evidence suggests that desegregated learning environments have academic as well as social benefits for students.
Desegregation Outcomes A vast amount of research shows that desegregated schooling has benefits for children. Studies show that desegregated schooling increases Black student achievement while not decreasing White student achievement. Schools with high concentrations of students of color tend to have high poverty levels. High poverty and racially segregated schools pose a variety of problems for students and teachers that desegregated schools often do not have to face: low levels of expectations, deteriorated schools, limited curricula, peer pressure against achievement, teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, and fewer networks with colleges and employers. Some advantages of desegregated schooling are intangible, such as the social capital that students share with each other in the form of expectations for success, social networks, and family influences.
School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning
Segregated schooling tends to harm not only poor Blacks but often middle-class Blacks as well. Middleclass Blacks tend to live in areas with higher concentrations of poor than does the White middle class and therefore attend schools with higher poverty levels. Although the United States is increasingly diversified, very few studies have been conducted showing the effects of desegregation on other minority groups. In addition to the academic and social consequences of segregated schooling, studies have found that increased desegregation leads to less intergroup prejudice and higher levels of tolerance of people who are of different backgrounds. Racially and economically integrated schools are likely to provide all children, White and Black as well as other minorities, with the social skills that prepare them for the real world outside of school and lessen racial prejudices. In addition, Black children who attend desegregated schools are more likely to have higher educational and career aspirations and go to college and work in white-collar desegregated environments. Along with granting children access to similar resources and preparing them to function in an increasingly diverse society, desegregation promotes social community cohesion as well. When schools are segregated by race or class, divisions result as parents battle for scarce resources in the form of quality schools. Parents are forced, in segregated systems, to compete to get their children into the high-quality schools even if that entails moving to a new community with a “better” neighborhood school. This creates an inequality of access to education. Those left in the poor communities are relegated to the segregated minority and often poor schools. When schools are desegregated, parents, the school board, and the wider community tend to view education in terms of the public good and less in terms of their own self-interest and competition between the “haves” and “have nots.” In 1896, the Plessy case decided that separate facilities were justifiable as long as they were equal. For more than 50 years, there were efforts, of varying degrees of intensity and success, to increase equality between schools. Equality, however, never materialized. Although desegregation efforts were slow to start after Brown, they accelerated during the civil rights era and produced important, although partial, successes; however, in the past quarter-century, desegregation efforts have diminished significantly. Despite the current resegregation trends, as the United States becomes increasingly diverse, the issue of how
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to educate all of the country’s children is as important as it ever was. Research shows that children benefit from desegregated schooling, and Brown gave us important lessons. Stephanie Southworth See also American Apartheid; Brown v. Board of Education; Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District; Pipeline; Resegregation; San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez; School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning; Segregation; Separate but Equal
Further Readings
Cuban, Larry and Dorothy Shipps, eds. 2000. Reconstructing the Common Good in Education. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Douglas, Davidson M. 1995. Reading Writing and Race: The Desegregation of the Charlotte Schools. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Mickelson, Roslyn A. 2001. “Subverting Swann: First and Second Generation Segregation in the CharlotteMecklenburg Schools.” American Educational Research Journal 38(2):215–252. Orfield, Gary and Susan Eaton and The Harvard Project on School Desegregation. 1996. Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: New Press. Patterson, James T. 2001. Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, Stephen S. 2004. Boom for Whom? Education, Desegregation and Development in Charlotte. Albany: State University of New York Press.
SCHOOL DESEGREGATION, ATTITUDES CONCERNING In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which had declared that separate but equal schools for White and African American students were legal. In the famous Brown v. Board of Education (Brown I) decision, the Court declared that the legally supported dual school systems (de jure segregation), which enrolled 40% of the nation’s public school students at that time, were inherently unequal and that intentional government action supporting segregation violated the U.S. Constitution.
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School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning
Thus, the Brown decision laid the legal basis for school desegregation, the creation of schools specifically intended to serve both African American and White students. This entry traces the history of school desegregation since the Brown decision, as well as discussing public reaction to it and its impact on students.
Early Efforts to Desegregate Opposition to desegregation by many Whites was fierce and prolonged, especially in the South where de jure segregation was widespread. Opposition included physical attacks on African American students, the stoning and burning of school buses, the founding of hundreds of private segregated academies, and even the closing of an entire public school system in Virginia to avoid having to desegregate it. Initially, desegregation proceeded slowly, consistent with the Supreme Court’s determination in Brown II in 1955 that segregation could be eliminated rather gradually, “with all deliberate speed.” However, considerable desegregation was eventually achieved in the later 1960s and early 1970s. Contributing to this change were laws passed in the mid-1960s that allowed withholding federal funds from districts excluding students from schools on the basis of race and provided large amounts of federal support for education. Also important were Supreme Court decisions in the late 1960s and 1970s requiring districts to replace identifiably “Black” and “White” schools with racially mixed ones, expanding desegregation requirements to regions of the country without existing dual school systems, and expanding coverage of desegregation orders to include Hispanics. Thus, between 1968 and the mid-1970s, desegregation moved ahead rapidly in the South. Indeed, although more than three-quarters of African American students there were in 90% to 100% Black schools in 1968, less than one-quarter of them were in such schools by 1976. A significant amount of change also occurred in border states, which typically had existing de jure school systems. Less dramatic change occurred in most other regions of the country, where desegregation was generally de facto, caused by factors other than direct state action.
New Strategies for Big Cities The possibility of desegregating many big-city school systems was undercut by the 1974 Milliken decision, in which the Supreme Court rejected a lower court’s
support for desegregation of the Detroit school system through a metropolitan solution in which White students from the suburbs went to school with African American students from the city. Specifically, the Court ruled that a remedy for segregation in a district could not involve other districts unless it was clear that the districts’ actions had created the differences between them. Numerous strategies were used to eliminate racially identifiable schools. These included the redrawing of attendance zones, the construction of schools in locations between heavily African American and heavily White residential areas, the pairing of two previously segregated schools to create two desegregated schools, controlled choice plans allowing students to select schools as long as their enrollment there furthered racial balance, and the creation of magnet schools designed to attract with the promise of a special curricular focus. The most controversial of these approaches, dubbed forced busing by its opponents, reduced or eliminated the connection between where students’ lived and where they attended school by providing students with transportation from their often-segregated neighborhoods to racially mixed schools elsewhere. Once the initial work of creating desegregated schools had been accomplished, second-generation problems arose, problems within desegregated schools likely to block the attainment of important academic and social goals by limiting academic opportunities for African American students or recreating traditional status hierarchies and patterns of interaction. Examples of such problems included the tendency toward resegregation within desegregated schools and disproportionate suspension rates for African American students. Such problems were sometimes marked. For example, factors ranging from school policies, such as tracking, to students’ own tendency to seek out those similar to them in background led to sometimes-extreme resegregation within desegregated schools. Public attitudes toward desegregation have changed dramatically over time. Although Whites’ initial attitudes toward desegregation were negative overall, recent surveys find widespread support among Whites for the idea that students from diverse racial and ethnic groups should go to school together. In stark contrast, though, most Whites still disapprove of busing, which in most cases is a necessary means to achieve substantial amounts of desegregation, given the high degree of residential segregation in the United States.
School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning
African American support for desegregation has traditionally been strong. However, it is not unanimous. Especially in the last few decades, influential voices in the African American community have emphasized that African Americans have disproportionately borne the burdens of desegregation and have emphasized the constructive roles that African American schools often played in the lives of individual students and of their communities. For example, these influential people point out that much desegregation was achieved through the closing of previously African American schools, with consequently disproportionate unemployment of the African American educators who had worked there.
Recent Resegregation In the 1990s, the Supreme Court ruled that once a school district had eliminated discrimination based on race and created racially balanced schools, the district had achieved unitary status. Districts attaining unitary status are released from the requirement to maintain racial balance in their schools when challenges to it arise from sources such as demographic change occurring within them. Indeed, after a district has attained unitary status, it is free to take actions producing segregation unless it can be proved that such actions were undertaken with an intention to discriminate, a difficult task. Numerous districts, including some large ones like Dallas, Texas, have been declared unitary. Demographic patterns characterizing the last half of the 20th century, including the marked flow of Whites from cities to suburbs, have left many large urban school districts with relatively low proportions of White students. (This pattern was modestly exacerbated by White flight, the departure of White families from desegregated districts as a result of desegregation. However, the flow of Whites to suburbs also clearly occurred in areas without desegregation plans.) A dramatic rise in immigration toward the end of the 20th century also markedly changed the composition of many large urban schools districts. By 1998, 20% or fewer of the students enrolled in almost 80% of the nation’s twenty-five largest school districts were White. Given such facts, it is hardly surprising that, after reaching a low point in the late 1980s, the segregation of African American students began to increase in the 1990s. Students of Hispanic origin are even somewhat more segregated now than African American students are.
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The retreat from desegregation as a social policy indicated by such trends occurred even though a considerable body of research suggests desegregation has positive outcomes, especially for African American students. Specifically, desegregation appears to have a modest positive impact on African American students’ achievement, especially in reading. In addition, some evidence indicates that attending a desegregated school often affects important adult outcomes for African Americans, including the likelihood that they will (a) pursue a career in “untraditional” occupations, (b) enter and complete college, and (c) work and live in desegregated environments, although these effects sometimes vary by region or gender. Considerable research also suggests that fears that desegregation will undermine White students’ achievement, often a stated reason for opposition to desegregation, are generally unfounded. In sum, although school desegregation appears to have tangible benefits for African American students and not to harm the achievement of White students, legal decisions and demographic trends during the past 2 or more decades have combined to move the United States back toward essentially segregated schooling for a large percentage of its students. Janet Ward Schofield See also Brown v. Board of Education; Discrimination; Plessy v. Ferguson; Resegregation; School Desegregation; Separate but Equal; White Flight
Further Readings
Braddock, Jomills H. and Tamela McNulty Eitle. 1995. “The Effects of School Desegregation.” Pp. 828–843 in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by J. A. Banks and C. A. M. Banks. 2nd ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Brown v. Board of Education (Brown I), 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Brown v. Board of Education (Brown II), 349 U.S. 294 (1955). Clotfelter, Charles T. 2004. After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Cook, Thomas D., David J. Armor, Robert L. Crain, Norman Miller, Walter G. Stephan, Herbert J. Walberg, and Paul M. Wortman. 1984. School Desegregation and Black Achievement. Washington, DC: National Institute of Education. Hawley, Willis D., Robert L. Crain, Christine H. Rossell, Mark A. Smylie, Ricardo R. Fernandez, Janet W. Schofield, Rachel Tompkins, William T. Trent, and
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Science Faculties, Women of Color on
Marilyn S. Zlotnik. 1983. Strategies for Effective Desegregation. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974). Orfield, Gary and Susan E. Eaton. 1996. Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: New Press. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Schofield, Janet W. 1995. “Review of Research on School Desegregation’s Impact on Elementary and Secondary School Students.” Pp. 597–617 in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by J. A. Banks and C. A. M. Banks. New York: Macmillan. Wells, Amy S. 1995. “Reexamining Social Science Research on School Desegregation: Long- versus Short-term Effects.” Teachers College Record 95(4):691–706.
SCIENCE FACULTIES, WOMEN OF COLOR
ON
Science and technology permeate every aspect of lives and drive economies worldwide. African American, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Native American/Alaskan Native/Native Hawaiians are underrepresented on college and university faculties in the sciences, defined as biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and computer science; for the purposes of this analysis, the sciences do not include medicine, dentistry, or veterinary science. Despite the increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the U.S. population, science faculties remain largely White, nonHispanic, and male. Women of color, in particular, are all but absent in many fields. Research data on participation in science must be disaggregated by race and ethnicity and by gender. It is as important to identify gender differences within race and ethnic groups as differences between race and ethnic groups. Failure to make these distinctions results in policy, programs, and practice that are at best ineffective, and at worst counterproductive for enhancing the quality of the sciences. This entry discusses the background, progress, and future of diversity on science faculties.
Background In 1975, thirty women scientists met at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
to examine career concerns and issues of minority women scientists; more than 30 years later, these issues are still prominent. Despite some increases during the past 30 years in the numbers of degrees at all levels earned in both the biological and physical sciences, African American, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Native American women are still conspicuous by their absence on science faculties in the United States. This situation is particularly acute in the top fifty research institutions in the United States. For example, in 2005, there was only one Black female professor in astronomy and no female Black or Native American full professors in any of the top fifty physical science or engineering departments. Academic scientists are crucially important to science because they educate and train future scientists; they also function as gatekeepers through their role in the certification process, which determines who will practice science in the future. Most of the research literatures on the underrepresentation of “minorities” and “women” in the sciences assume that African American, Native American, and Hispanic women are “included” in the categories “women” or “minority”; therefore, this research either relegates them to footnotes or parenthetical discussions or excludes them completely. Although women of color share some of the experiences of men of color and non-Hispanic White women, the confluence of race, ethnicity, and gender warrants special attention because it influences how knowledge is formulated, interpreted, and perceived.
Progress/No Progress Traditionally, the United States drew its science talent from a pool consisting mostly of non-Hispanic White males. Despite major demographic changes in the population—for example, Hispanics and African Americans are among the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. population—both the science talent pool and higher education faculties continue to be largely non-Hispanic, White, and male. Although there have been increases in the numbers of doctoral degrees in the sciences earned by Black and Hispanic women, the distributions of these degrees across fields remains relatively unchanged: Black and Hispanic women still earn between three and four times as many doctorates in the biological sciences as in the physical sciences.
Science Faculties, Women of Color on
Gains in the numbers of science doctorates earned by Black and Hispanic females have not been reflected in tenure-track faculty appointments. During the 1990s, women were responsible for the increases in the numbers of faculty positions held by African Americans and Hispanics. Nevertheless, Black and Hispanic males continue to hold most faculty positions. Despite obtaining degrees at higher rates than their male counterparts, African American women constitute less than one-half of African American faculty. There is still an inverse correlation between gender and rank—the higher the rank, the fewer the number of women on college and university faculties in general, and particularly in the sciences. African American and Hispanic women are less likely than are men of any race and non-Hispanic White women to be awarded tenure and to be “full” professors. One reason that African American and Hispanic female faculty do not persist in science is that they are not encouraged to do so; this lack of encouragement produces the same result as active discouragement. Another reason is that the scientific community fails to address work and family issues.
Next Steps to Diversity The virtual absence of African American and Hispanic females on science faculties impedes enhancing the quality of the current and future science workforce in the United States. Identifying, developing, enhancing, and nurturing talent among all citizens enhances the quality of science and the scientific enterprise. Moving toward that goal means interventions to increase the participation of African American and Hispanic women on science faculties; these must be researchdriven. Much of the traditional data consist of snapshots of different cohorts in the sciences at different points in time. Systematic collection of longitudinal data from both the research and program evaluation literatures could provide data on effective policies, programs, and practices. This would allow identification of what does and does not work (in what types of institutional settings) and what can be replicated in other settings. At the individual level, longitudinal data must be systematically collected regarding the career experiences of African American and Hispanic females in science careers to better inform interventions. At the institutional level, trends in the numbers of faculty disaggregated by race,
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ethnicity, and gender (as well as by field) should be systematically monitored; however, documenting numbers is necessary, but not sufficient. The organizational climate in colleges and universities must be systematically monitored to identify the factors that facilitate and those that hinder the recruitment, retention, and promotion of African American and Hispanic female faculty. Research has identified factors associated with success in science careers, including publishing as a student (undergraduate and graduate); strategically selecting academic advisers, mentors, graduate institutions, postdoctoral appointments, and full-time jobs; and developing a research agenda. Factors specifically identified as “tenure traps” include ambiguous standards, contradictory priorities and expectations (“shifting targets”), erratic or inconsistent feedback, inconsistent and incomplete performance reviews, and the work–family conflict. If universities wish to make a commitment to increasing and enhancing the participation of faculty from racial and ethnic groups that are underrepresented in the sciences, this objective would have to be an integral part of an institution’s standard operating procedure and, therefore, perhaps even one criterion on which to evaluate the performance of faculty and administrators. Cheryl B. Leggon See also Affirmative Action in Education; Black Intellectuals; Educational Performance and Attainment; Educational Stratification; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Pipeline; School Desegregation
Further Readings
Building Engineering and Science Talent (BEST). 2004. A Bridge for All: Higher Education Design Principles to Broaden Participation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. San Diego, CA: BEST. Leggon, Cheryl B. 2006. “Women in Science: Racial and Ethnic Differences and the Differences They Make.” Journal of Technology Transfer 32:321–329. National Science Foundation. 2004. Women, Minorities and Persons with Disabilities in S&E 2004 [NSF 04–317]. Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation. Pearson, Willie and Alan Fechter, eds. 1994. Who Will Do Science? Educating the Next Generation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Segregation
SCOTTISH AMERICANS See UNITED KINGDOM, IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS IN THE UNITED STATES
SEGREGATION As a general concept, segregation indicates separation, isolation of an entity from others of the same kind, a main body, or group—suggesting most often physical exclusion, rather than inclusion. Most usually, though, segregation refers to a social relationship, often with political connotations (some of which can be feedback related to the generic connotations described earlier). In this sense, segregation may be of a social nature, based on various sociobiological criteria. The term is used in a variety of contexts and can be de jure—sanctioned by law—or de facto—customary, or factual. Most relevant to this discussion is segregation relating to racial, ethnic, religious, and gender groups, described in this entry.
Types of Segregation Social segregation, often related to discrimination against groups identified by race, ethnicity, religion, or gender, can be manifested in a variety of ways. The two forms that have received perhaps the most attention recently are race and gender segregation. Racial segregation separates people according to race, which may be an ascribed or socially defined status, and is an extensive basis of discriminatory treatment. It can be manifested in a variety of ways, most prominently including schools and housing. Educational segregation, for example, involves separate schools and educational facilities. In explicitly segregated societies, public spaces may be segregated as well, with separate areas of buses, restaurants, and theaters, for example, designated by race. The most extreme form of sociopolitical segregation is apartheid. In geographical segregation, certain groups are settled in different areas than the general population core, most often with a political motivation. One form of this is residential segregation, which can result from specific discriminatory categorization or imposed placement, or just reflect socioeconomic
differentiation. Immigrants and persons with lower income are more likely to be affected by involuntary residential segregation. For example, urban special segregation occurs in a social differentiation context, resulting in immigrant-dense areas. Gender segregation can be more or less extreme in various contexts, ranging from specially reserved buildings and facilities to special places in churches or on public transportation, for example (again, often with a sociopolitical or religious motivation). Occupational segregation can be a particular form of gender segregation, the tendency for men and women to be employed in different positions. This also triggers a gender pay gap, as women systematically get lower pay, sometimes because their occupations are less valued. However, women may get lower pay even when doing the same job, which is a form of gender discrimination. Historically, women have also experienced educational segregation. Various groups may be separated from the general population on grounds of ethnicity or culture and cultural identity, including linguistic identity This may be a direct or indirect choice of the respective groups, or it may be forced and sometimes even legislated (in which case it may become a matter of extreme discriminatory treatment, such as apartheid). A related from of segregation divides people by religion. This often entails actual geographic separation, for example, between Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Jerusalem. Less frequently discussed forms of segregation include segregation by social category or class or belonging, especially as a hierarchic form of discrimination. Social segregation is often related to income level and is a function of class and space in the urban context. Segregation of people with disabilities may result from lack of access to common facilities as, for example, when buildings are not adapted to their specific needs.
Historical Background Segregation in its various forms is not a new phenomenon. Discriminatory practices of restricting persons belonging to certain groups to circumscribed areas have occurred in almost all diverse communities, whether based on racial or purely social or class characteristics. In ancient societies, but also more recently when the phenomenon occurred, slaves were physically
Segregation
restricted to designated areas. Whether in ancient Rome or among Asian Mongols, African Bantu, or American Aztecs, conquerors have practiced various extreme forms of discrimination related to the conquered, who were often enslaved. History has also recorded a variety of social outcasts, for example, the leprosy segregation of the Middle Ages in Europe or the 19th and 20th century in India or Japan. India’s caste system represents a traditional and widespread segregation of the Dalits or “untouchables” in India. In contemporary Slovakia, the rural Roma have systematically been excluded from direct physical contact with the mainstream society. Instances of racial, religious, and gender segregation have occurred throughout history in most cultures and geographical regions.
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Drinking fountain on the county courthouse lawn in Halifax, North Carolina (1938). The 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson sanctioned legal separation of races, which enabled treatment of non-Caucasians as second-class citizens by allowing “separate but equal facilities” to be considered constitutional. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) initiated a long struggle against discrimination and segregation. The so-called Jim Crow laws adopted throughout the United States between the 1880s and 1960s created an elaborate apartheid policy. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-100414.
Racia al Segregatiion
The policy of separating different races in everyday life is an extreme form of social discrimination. In the United States, the earliest instance of racial segregation is dated to 1502 and connected to the enslavement of Africans. However, even after the abolishment of slavery in 1865, Blacks continued to be segregated. Although three Constitutional amendments granted African Americans legal status—the Thirteenth abolished slavery, the Fourteenth provided citizenship, and the Fifteenth guaranteed voting rights—several Supreme Court decisions between 1873 and 1883 virtually nullified their effect. The 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson sanctioned legal separation of races, which enabled treatment
of non-Caucasians as second-class citizens by allowing “separate but equal facilities” to be considered constitutional. In 1909, the newly organized National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) initiated a long struggle against discrimination and segregation. The so-called Jim Crow laws adopted throughout the United States between the 1880s and 1960s practically sanctioned an elaborate apartheid policy. Full-fledged “White supremacy” was established in some areas as early as 1870 by the Ku Klux Klan, and more than 3,700 persons, mostly southern Blacks, were lynched between 1889 and 1930. The 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education finally declared racial segregation in elementary and secondary education unconstitutional— largely reversing Plessy. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, which provides the legal foundation for affirmative action
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Segregation
programs; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans discrimination based of race, color, religion, gender, or national origin—on penalty of otherwise being denied public funding—was only the first among a number of antidiscriminatory pieces of legislation. During the following 2 decades, further legislation, including the 1975 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, has invalidated formal racial discrimination, even though informally it still exists. Many are still confronted with racial segregation. The prolonged experience of segregation and discriminatory treatment has created deep, longlasting mistrust among African Americans. Massey and Denton saw similarities when comparing U.S. patterns of racial segregation and South African apartheid, notwithstanding different contexts and background history. Derived from an Afrikaans word meaning apartness or separation, the term apartheid was coined in the 1930s and used as a political slogan by the National Party in early 1940s. It became officially legislated in 1948, when the Afrikaner Nationalists came to power, in a policy of “separate development,” but such racial separation can be traced to the early White settlements in South Africa in 1652. A series of legislative documents culminated with the Population Act of 1950 supporting the successive Bantustanization of the country (through the Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 and the Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 and by creating ten “independent” and resourceless African “homelands” through the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970). It took 3 decades of struggle and international sanctions until the system was dismantled in 1990, after Nelson Mandela’s election as the first Black president, when the apartheid system was finally outlawed. Relig gious Segre egatio on
Ancient Rome imposed its rules over the conquered peoples, allowing and even encouraging a degree of segregation and mutual discontent between the various groups to the extent that it made them more easily governable. This was manifested in the schism between various Semitic tribes and in Rome’s attempts to contain emerging Christianity. Religion and politics have polarized various groups over time, triggering segregational effects within and among these conflicting communities, as constituted by local majorities and minorities. Castedivided Hindu India presents a structurally segregated society beyond legal bans, but although some have
considered Christianity and Islam instrumentally democratizing because they rejected such a caste system, segregation has nevertheless been a feature of both religions. For centuries, societies felt the powerful segregating impact of conflicts between and among Catholics, the Greek or Russian Orthodox, and later Protestant or Reformed branches of the Christian religion (Calvinists, Lutherans, Anglicans, for example). Enhanced by ethnonationalistic ideals, religious differences evolved into prolonged local conflicts, an extreme example being the ongoing strife between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. In the Netherlands, between 1917 and 1966, a selfimposed system of religious segregation was applied between Catholic, Reformed, and atheist, polarizing the infrastructure of the entire society. As late as the 1990s, in the aftermath of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and the remaining Serbia and Montenegro suffer from deep internal conflicts built on religious segregation, though with political connotations, which are often violently manifested. Muslim Bosnians, Orthodox Serbians, and Roman Catholic Croatians are divided in every way—from language policy and official institutions to the education system. In the Muslim world, religious segregation occurs both within and without: within, between the Shi’a and the Sunni groups, and without, between Muslims and non-Muslims (i.e., Jews, Christians). Some devout countries (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, etc.) still apply extreme legislative measures against whatever is considered a religious threat— from imposing restrictions on, persecuting and even banning the practice of other religions, or even punishing conversion attempts to non-Muslim religions by imprisonment or death penalty. After millennia of suffering religious persecution by Christians and Muslims, Israeli Jews, exemplifying a religious and ethnopolitical identity, strictly contain Palestinians to controlled, segregated areas, restricting their access. Gender Seg greg gattio on and Relig gion
Almost all main religions apply some forms of segregation to women, for example, by ascribing separate sections in places of worship. Muslims restrict women to strictly segregated areas in mosques and, in some Muslim countries, to limited arenas of social life. A mechitza is a curtained and separated section in
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Jewish synagogues. Less obvious reserved sections may be found in some Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Anglican churches, but no segregation is noticeable in Lutheran or Calvinist churches, for example. This basic attitude toward women is also reflected in the fact that, so far, only some Protestant churches accept female priests, but both Catholics and Muslims reject the idea entirely. Elena Dingu-Kyrklund See also American Apartheid; Apartheid, Laws; Blockbusting; Brown v. Board of Education; Caste; Discrimination in Housing; Jewish Americans; Jim Crow; Plessy v. Ferguson; Roma; School Desegregation; Slavery
Further Readings
Banton, Michael. 1988. Racial Consciousness. London: Longman. Banton, Michael. 1997. Racial Theories. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Beinart, William and Saul Dubow, eds. 1992. Segregation and Apartheid in Twentieth Century South Africa. London: Routledge. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Hockett, Jeffrey D. 1989. “Justice Robert H. Jackson and Segregation: A Study of the Limitations and Proper Basis of Judicial Action.” Journal of Supreme Court History 21:56–67. Lijphart, Arend. 1979. “Religion vs. Linguistic vs. Class Voting: The ‘Crucial Experiment’ of Comparing Belgium, Canada, South Africa, and Switzerland.” American Political Science Review 73(2):442–458. Massey, Douglas. S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McClinton, Fareeda and Tukufu Zuberi. 2006. Racial Residential Segregation in South Africa and the United States. Paper presented at the 2006 Annual Meetings of the Population Association of America. Retrieved from http://paa2006.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submission Id=61673 Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY People routinely develop beliefs about others in an attempt to understand and predict the world around them. In some instances, people’s beliefs are inaccurate
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because they are based on invalid information such as rumor or social stereotypes. When people hold inaccurate beliefs about others, there is the potential for their beliefs to create self-fulfilling prophecies. Selffulfilling prophecies occur when people’s false beliefs about others become true through social interaction. Ethnic and racial stereotypes, when held by people in authority, may be particularly likely to create these false beliefs. This entry summarizes research suggesting that the effects of people’s self-fulfilling influences on others are, on average, quite small. Nevertheless, these effects can be more powerful than average for certain individuals, under specific conditions, and through processes of accumulation. Individuals belonging to stigmatized groups may be more likely to face and to be harmed by unfavorable beliefs because their experiences are consistent with many of the factors that lead to more powerful self-fulfilling prophecy effects. These factors lend support to researchers’ early claim that self-fulfilling prophecy effects perpetuate social inequalities.
Background The term self-fulfilling prophecy was first coined by sociologist Robert Merton. Merton believed that selffulfilling prophecies had the potential to create largescale social problems. He proposed that self-fulfilling prophecies contributed to discrimination against African Americans. During the early part of the 20th century, labor unions prohibited African Americans from joining on grounds that they were strikebreakers. This exclusion made it difficult for African Americans to find work. As such, when work opportunities did become available, African American laborers were quick to respond, even if that meant filling positions left vacant by striking workers. Merton argued that the originally false belief that African Americans were strikebreakers, created a situation in which they had no choice but to become strikebreakers, thereby confirming the originally false belief that was held about them by union members. One reason that social scientists are interested in studying the effects of self-fulfilling prophecies is because of their ability to contribute to social inequalities. For example, a teacher, biased by racial and ethnic stereotypes, may develop the false belief that a minority student is less capable than the student is in reality. The teacher may then act on his or her false belief by treating the student as if he or she is not
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capable. In comparison with other students in the class, the teacher may behave less warmly toward that student, call on that student less often, spend less time with that student, and teach that student less difficult material. The student may then confirm the teacher’s originally false belief by showing poorer academic performance. By virtue of learning less, the student is now on a course that could have serious consequences. For example, because of the student’s poor performance, he or she may be less likely to be placed into advanced classes, less likely to enter college, and less likely to be hired for a good job. In this manner, people’s biases may start a chain of events that have the potential to undermine the opportunities and competencies of individuals who are the targets of negative expectancies such as women and ethnic and racial minorities. Three steps are involved in the self-fulfilling prophecy process. First, one person must hold a false belief about another person. Second, the person holding the false belief must act on it by treating the other person as if it were true. Finally, the person about whom the false belief is held must subsequently behave in a manner consistent with the false belief. Through this sequence of events, people have the potential to socially construct reality.
Tests of the Process Although Merton’s discussion of self-fulfilling prophecies was largely theoretical, it did spark hundreds of experimental investigations of the process. This large body of experimental work provides strong evidence that the self-fulfilling prophecy is a real phenomenon. Many of these experiments echoed Merton’s belief that self-fulfilling prophecies contribute to social inequalities. For example, in an early field experiment, Robert Rosenthal, who was a professor at Harvard University, and Lenora Jacobson, who was the principal of an elementary school in San Francisco, California, examined whether teachers’ false beliefs about their students’ intellectual potential had selffulfilling effects on their students’ intelligence. Rosenthal and Jacobson were concerned that one reason minority students may perform more poorly in school is because that is what their teachers expect of them, and Rosenthal and Jacobson wondered if minority students might perform better if their teachers expected them to improve academically.
To test this, Rosenthal and Jacobson led teachers to believe that they had developed a new IQ test that could identify late bloomers—students who would make large intellectual gains within the coming year. The researchers then informed teachers which of their students had been identified by this test as one of these late bloomers. Although the test did measure students’ IQ, it could not identify late bloomers as Rosenthal and Jacobson had claimed. In reality, the late bloomers had been chosen at random and were, therefore, no more likely than any other students in the class to show large gains in their IQ during the school year. The only factor that distinguished the students who were labeled as late bloomers from the other students in the class was their teachers’ beliefs about them. This means that any differences in these students’ IQ at the end of the year could only be caused by a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is what the results of this study found. By the end of the school year, those students who had been labeled as late bloomers showed larger IQ gains than the other students, thereby confirming their teachers’ originally false beliefs about them. In addition, teachers described these students as being more interesting, more curious, more appealing, better adjusted, and more autonomous than the other students in their classes. Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study is representative of experimental work on self-fulfilling prophecies in general. In the typical experiment, researchers induce false beliefs in participants by giving them invalid information about another person. The invalid information that participants receive constitutes the only information that they have because participants usually have no prior experience or knowledge about the other person. However, this situation is artificial because within people’s everyday lives they typically have at least some valid information about others on which to base their beliefs. For example, teachers normally have access to students’ previous grades and test scores—information that provides relatively accurate information about students’ academic ability and future performance. The availability of this kind of information enables people to develop relatively accurate beliefs about those with whom they interact. Because accurate beliefs cannot be self-fulfilling, the availability of accurate information within the naturalistic environment raises questions about whether, and to what degree, self-fulfilling prophecies occur in the context
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
of people’s everyday lives. Nonexperimental research of self-fulfilling prophecies has addressed this issue. Most of these studies have been conducted within educational settings examining whether the beliefs that teachers naturally develop about their students are selffulfilling. These studies show that teachers’ beliefs about students tend to be highly (though not perfectly) accurate. Moreover, consistent with experimental findings, they show that the inaccurate portion of teachers’ beliefs are self-fulfilling: Teachers’ beliefs assessed early in the school year predict students’ subsequent achievement even after controlling for valid predictors of academic performance, such as students’ previous grades, standardized test scores, and motivation. However, the magnitude of teachers’ self-fulfilling effects tends to be quite small, in large part, because their beliefs are highly accurate by virtue of relying on valid measures of students’ academic performance. Thus, although nonexperimental research provides evidence that self-fulfilling prophecies do occur in people’s everyday lives, this research suggests that, on average, the degree to which people shape others’ behavior via self-fulfilling prophecies is minimal.
Impact of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Even though it is well-established that self-fulfilling prophecies have only a small influence on people’s behaviors, for some people and under some conditions, the power of self-fulfilling prophecies may be large. These conditions include the favorableness of people’s beliefs, individual characteristics, situational and motivational factors, and the accumulation of self-fulfilling prophecy effects. Each of these conditions is discussed in greater detail in the following sections with an emphasis placed on the connection between self-fulfilling prophecies and their potential to contribute to social inequalities. Do self-fulfilling prophecies do more harm than good? It has generally been assumed that self-fulfilling prophecies do more harm than good—that is, that they bring about bad performance and unfavorable outcomes more than they bring good performance and favorable outcomes. The concern has been that many expectations, especially those derived from social stereotypes, are unfavorable and have the potential undermine the outcomes of stereotyped individuals. However, research bearing on this hypothesis has been mixed.
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Whereas early work suggested that people’s selffulfilling effects harm others more than they help them, more recent work has suggested that people’s self-fulfilling effects help others more than they harm them. For example, teachers’ false beliefs have been shown to raise students’ achievement more than they lower it, and mothers’ false beliefs buffer their children against increased alcohol use rather than put them at greater risk. Given the lack of consensus, further research is needed before a definitive conclusion can be reached about whether self-fulfilling prophecies do more harm than good. Are some individuals more susceptible to self-fulfilling prophecies than others? Some people’s individual characteristics render them more susceptible to confirming other people’s false beliefs about them. For example, evidence indicates that self-fulfilling prophecies are more powerful among individuals who belong to stigmatized social groups, including African Americans, girls in math classes, people from lower social class backgrounds, people with histories of poor performance, and people who belong to more than one stigmatized group. Although no evidence indicates that self-fulfilling prophecies harm people from stigmatized social groups more than they harm people who are not members of these groups, people who are stigmatized may more often interact with people who hold unfavorable beliefs about them. This is one way in which people who are stigmatized may be disproportionately harmed by self-fulfilling prophecies—they simply face a greater number of unfavorable beliefs in their everyday lives. Are there situational and motivational factors that can influence the occurrence of self-fulfilling prophecies? Self-fulfilling prophecy effects are also more powerful in the presence of certain situational and motivational factors. For example, people are more likely to create self-fulfilling prophecies when their status is high (e.g., teacher, parent, and therapist) versus low (student, child, and client) and when they are confident versus doubtful that their false beliefs are accurate. Thus, if an individual finds himself or herself in a low status position with someone who strongly holds an inaccurate belief about him or her, then he or she may be more likely to confirm that belief. The occurrence of a self-fulfilling prophecy can also depend on people’s motivations. In some instances, people may be particularly motivated to have others see
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them as they see themselves. People with this motive are less susceptible to confirming other people’s false beliefs about them. In other instances, people may be motivated to ensure smooth social interactions. People with this motive are more susceptible to confirming other people’s false beliefs about them. Thus, the motives that people have for social interactions can influence how likely they are to confirm or disconfirm inaccurate beliefs about them. Is it possible for the effects of people’s self-fulfilling influences to accumulate? Self-fulfilling prophecy effects also have the potential to become powerful through processes of accumulation. Self-fulfilling prophecies may accumulate in two ways: over time and across people. Accumulation over time is a process in which a person’s self-fulfilling influence becomes stronger over time. This process has been studied in a variety of contexts (e.g., MBA graduates, teachers-students, and parents-children) with a variety of beliefs (e.g., attractiveness, achievement, and underage alcohol use). The data tend to support the conclusion that self-fulfilling prophecy effects can accumulate if people are repeatedly exposed to the same false belief over time. For example, children whose mothers overestimated their alcohol use year after year drank more across adolescence than did children whose mothers underestimated their alcohol use year after year. Moreover, these effects became more powerful as time passed. In other words, what started out as small differences in the drinking behavior of young adolescents who were the targets of unfavorable versus favorable beliefs gradually widened over time into larger differences. This general pattern has important implications for understanding the creation of social inequalities because it suggests that the accumulation of self-fulfilling prophecy effects over time may put people on trajectories that increasingly benefit some while increasingly harming others, thereby widening the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged individuals and groups over time. Self-fulfilling prophecy effects can also accumulate across people. In a given day, a person may interact with many different people, each of whom may hold a false belief about him or her. If these beliefs are similar (e.g., all favorable or all unfavorable), then their individual self-fulfilling effects can combine to have a large effect on the person’s behavior. For example, if a person consistently interacts with people
who hold similar false beliefs about him or her, then that person may be more likely to confirm those beliefs than if only one person had held that false belief. Consistent with such a process, research has shown that children who had two parents who both overestimated the children’s alcohol use drank more alcohol 12 months later than did children who had at least one parent who underestimated their alcohol use. In this case, each parent held an unfavorable belief about their child and the self-fulfilling effects of these unfavorable beliefs combined to ultimately have a strong and harmful impact on their child’s subsequent behavior. The accumulation of self-fulfilling prophecy effects across people may also contribute to the development of social problems. Members of stigmatized groups are often the targets of unfavorable beliefs because it is consensually believed that these people possess characteristics that are devalued in some way. The effects elicited by those who hold unfavorable beliefs may become stronger as the number people holding similar beliefs increases. In this manner, that self-fulfilling prophecies have the potential to exert particularly damaging effects on individuals who are stigmatized or disadvantaged. In summary, the self-fulfilling prophecy represents one process through which beliefs can shape reality. These beliefs influence how people both approach and respond to one another. In this way, beliefs that were inaccurate can become accurate. This gives humans the unique ability to elicit positive as well as negative behavior from others. Jennifer Willard, Stephanie Madon, Ashley A. Buller, and Kyle Scherr See also Educational Performance and Attainment; Labeling; Prejudice; Social Inequality; Stereotypes; Stereotype Threat; Tracking
Further Readings
Jussim, Lee, Jacquelynne Eccles, and Stephanie Madon. 1996. “Social Perception, Social Stereotypes, and Teacher Expectations: Accuracy and the Quest for the Powerful Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.” Pp. 281–338 in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 28, edited by M. P. Zanna. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Separate but Equal
Madon, Stephanie, Lee Jussim, and Jacquelynne Eccles. 1997. “In Search of the Powerful Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72:791–809. Madon, Stephanie, Max Guyll, Richard L. Spoth, Susan E. Cross, and Sarah J. Hilbert. 2003. “The Self-Fulfilling Influence of Mother Expectations on Children’s Underage Drinking.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84:1188–1205. Madon, Stephanie, Max Guyll, Richard L. Spoth, and Jennifer Willard. 2004. “Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: The Synergistic Accumulation of Parents’ Beliefs on Children’s Drinking Behavior.” Psychological Science 15:837–845. Madon, Stephanie, Jennifer Willard, Max Guyll, Linda Trudeau, and Richard L. Spoth. 2006. “Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Effects of Mothers’ Beliefs on Children’s Alcohol Use: Accumulation, Dissipation, and Stability over Time.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90:911–926. Merton, Robert K. 1948. “The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.” Antioch Review 8:193–210. Rosenthal, Robert and Lenora Jacobson. 1968. “Teacher Expectations for the Disadvantaged.” Scientific American 218:19–23.
SEPARATE
BUT
EQUAL
The “separate but equal” doctrine was the legal underpinning of the U.S. system of racial segregation. Born in the period when Whites regained control of the South after the Reconstruction era, segregation was the law of the land for many years, operating under a U.S. Supreme Court finding that separate but equal facilities were legal. This ruling became embodied in a variety of Jim Crow laws and social customs, most noticeably in the South but in the North as well. This entry recalls the background, implementation, and eventual reversal of the separate but equal society.
Historical Background During the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War, African Americans experienced a decade of remarkable progress in the South. Sixteen Blacks served in Congress. Eighteen African Americans served as lieutenant governor, treasurer, superintendent of schools, or secretary of state. African Americans also held many other elective offices at the state and local levels.
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In 1877, however, the Hayes-Tilden Compromise, which resolved a contested presidential election, resulted in the withdrawal of federal troops from the South. The Reconstruction era began to fade. Within a few years, Whites seized control of state legislatures, often using violence and intimidation to achieve their goals. Black elected officials were forced from their offices and driven from their homes. A reign of violence and terror ensued. In this context, racial segregation was established. In an 1895 speech, Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee Institute, urged southern business leaders to rely on the labor of local Blacks rather than importing immigrant workers from Europe. Illustrating his point with an outstretched hand, Washington stated, “In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet as one hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” Interpreting Washington’s metaphor as the solution for race relations in the South, the crowd exploded with enthusiastic applause; the governor of Georgia rushed over and enthusiastically shook Washington’s hand. Newspapers across the nation reported the remarks. The speech made Washington the leader and spokesman for all African Americans. As Washington delivered his historic address, a test case organized by a group of African Americans in New Orleans was on its way to the Supreme Court. The case involved a local ordinance that required segregation on railroads. The plaintiff, Homer Plessy, argued that the ordinance violated the Fourteenth and Thirteenth amendments because it treated him less favorably than White passengers were treated. In 1896, the Supreme Court decided in Plessy v. Ferguson, “The enforced separation of the races . . . neither abridges the privileges or immunities of the colored man, deprives him of this property without due process of law nor denies him equal protection of the law within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Reflecting the prevailing racial attitudes, the Court stated, “If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them on the same plane.” Plessy endorsed segregation and established the “separate-but-equal” doctrine. The Court held that laws requiring segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment as long as the separate facilities provided for Blacks were equal to those available to Whites. After Plessy, a regime of White supremacy was imposed. The Fourteenth Amendment was effectively
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nullified in the South. African Americans were disenfranchised, forced to reside in segregated neighborhoods, and limited to low-paying, menial, and service occupations.
The Segregation Era Vio olent Enfo orccement
Violence and intimidation were critical to maintaining the regime of White supremacy. Lynchings were a regular occurrence. One example was the Sam Hose lynching. In April 1899, Sam Hose, a Black laborer in Georgia, asked his employer for a salary advance and time off to visit his ill mother. After the employer, Alfred Cranford, refused, an argument ensued. The next day, Cranford approached Hose uttering remarks that reignited the argument. Cranford drew a pistol and threatened to kill Hose. Hose defended himself by killing Cranford with an axe and fled from the scene. Hose was apprehended, and local newspapers reported that he had approached Cranford surreptitiously and murdered him with the axe. The newspapers also claimed that Hose raped Cranford’s wife in the presence of her dying husband. On April 23, 1899, approximately two thousand Whites gathered near Newnan, Georgia, to witness the lynching. Some traveled from Atlanta on a special excursion train that had been arranged for the occasion. Hose’s clothes were removed, and he was chained to a tree. Kerosene soaked wood was piled around him. Before the fire was lit, the crowd cut off his ears, fingers, genitals, and the skin from his face. Hose was repeatedly stabbed with knives. After a slow and agonizing death, Hose’s heart and liver were removed and cut into small pieces. His bones were crushed. Small pieces of bone sold for 25 cents; a piece of liver, “crisply cooked,” sold for 10 cents in an Atlanta market. The identities of the perpetrators were well known, but the thought of a criminal prosecution never crossed anyone’s mind— such was the criminal justice system in the South in the Jim Crow era.
Socia al Conduct
Interpersonal interactions were governed by an unwritten code of conduct. Blacks were expected to address Whites as “Sir,” “Mr.,” “Ma’am,” or “Mrs.” Whites addressed African Americans by their first
names or as “boy,” “uncle,” “elder,” “aunty,” and the like. When approaching the home of a White family, Blacks had to enter through the back door. Social visits and dining with Whites were not permitted. When walking down the street, Blacks were expected to step aside to allow Whites to pass. In stores, Blacks were required to wait patiently until all of the White customers had been served before they could make purchases. African Americans were not allowed to try on clothes, nor could purchases be returned. Blacks were expected to lower their eyes in the presence of Whites. The purpose of these elaborate, but unspoken, rules of conduct was to provide a constant demonstration that Blacks were inferior to Whites and acknowledged their inferiority. The slightest violation would result in a torrent of verbal abuse or violence. Unequal Justiice
If an unscrupulous merchant cheated a Black customer, resort to the courts was futile. The testimony of a Black would never be taken against the word of a White person. Rather than offering protection, police officials were the principal enforcers of the racial order. The presence of a police officer in a Black community inspired fear and dread. There were two criminal justice systems: one for Whites, another for Blacks. If a Black was suspected of committing a crime, he was presumed guilty. Confessions were coerced by violence, sometimes resulting in African Americans confessing to crimes they did not commit. Jury trials were summary with guilty verdicts quickly returned. In many instances, trails were dispensed with altogether, and justice was meted out by a lynch mob. Whites were seldom arrested for assaults—or even murders—inflicted on Black victims. Seg gregated d Neighborh hood ds
In the South, it was unthinkable for Blacks to consider residing in a White neighborhood except as livein domestics. In the North, segregated neighborhoods were imposed in reaction to the migration of thousands of African American families from rural areas in the South to urban industrial centers. Several communities enacted municipal ordinances that prohibited African Americans from occupying properties except in designated neighborhoods. These laws were challenged
Separate but Equal
and eventually declared unconstitutional in a 1917 Supreme Court decision, Buchanan v. Warley. After Buchanan, however, the real estate industry quickly discovered another device to maintain segregated neighborhoods: racially restrictive covenants. These were provisions in deeds that prevented property owners and subsequent purchasers from selling their homes to racial and religious minorities. As the covenants were agreements between private parties, rather than local ordinances, they avoided the Fourteenth Amendment prohibition that applies only to official actions taken by state or local governments. During the post–World War II era of the 1940s, an unprecedented number of White families moved from urban neighborhoods to suburban communities. This was made possible by a prosperous, postwar economy and federal subsidy programs such as Veterans Administration and Federal Housing Administration mortgages. African American families were excluded from suburban neighborhoods by discriminatory practices, many of which were imposed by the federal government because it required restrictive covenants on federally insured mortgages. This meant that African Americans were barred from participating in the largest wealth-producing programs in the history of the United States: single-family, suburban homes subsidized by federally insured mortgages. Throughout the Midwest and in some northern localities, there were “sundown towns”: municipalities in which the physical presence of African Americans was not permitted after dark. Many towns posted signs warning Blacks to stay away. Others had sirens that sounded an ominous alert at sunset. Seg gregated d Schools
A system of segregated schools was established in the South. Booker T. Washington persuaded southern leaders that the educational program he developed at Tuskegee would train a productive labor force. Academics were not stressed. Washington’s program of agricultural and industrial education was designed to improve the skills of Black workers and inculcate students with the deferential attitudes required to maintain harmonious race relations. Public officials throughout the South embraced the Tuskegee model. School curricula prepared students for careers as cooks, maids, laundresses, porters, chauffeurs, and the like. African Americans would serve
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Whites as laborers or in service occupations. Black schools were never equal to those reserved for White students, nor was there any intent to comply with the equality aspect of the “separate but equal” doctrine.
The Legal Challenge to Segregation African Americans reacted to Plessy by establishing racial uplift organizations that promoted their equality rights, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In the early 1930s, the NAACP hired Charles H. Houston, the dean of Howard University’s Law School, to lead the campaign that would challenge segregation in the courts. At Howard, Houston trained the generation of Black lawyers who would later serve as leaders in the effort to enforce the legal rights of African Americans. While dean of the Law School, Houston convinced his students that they had a moral obligation to serve as advocates for the rights of African Americans. Houston was aware of the hostile environments in the southern states. Nevertheless, he told his students, “It is where the pressure is greatest and racial antagonisms most acute that the services of the Negro lawyer as a social engineer are most needed.” At the NAACP, Houston developed and implemented the long-range legal strategy that eventually resulted in the Supreme Court victories of the 1950s. The legal strategies of the school desegregation cases, the campaign against racially restrictive covenants in housing, and the fight for equality in public accommodations and transportation were all developed by Houston. He also challenged employment discrimination and fought against the disenfranchisement of Black voters in the South. To attack segregation in public schools, Houston devised an “equalization” strategy in which a series of lawsuits were filed that demanded that state and local governments provide educational facilities for Black students that were actually equal to those reserved for Whites. Using a gradualist approach, the initial cases avoided a direct challenge to Plessy. Houston envisioned eventual school desegregation because he was confident that the southern states could not afford the financial burden of dual systems that were actually equal. Segregation would eventually collapse under its own weight. After a series of successful graduate school cases in the 1930s and 1940s, a direct challenge to segregation
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Serbian Americans
in schools was launched under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall, who succeeded Houston at the NAACP. The 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education signaled the end of segregation. The marches, boycotts, and demonstrations of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s persuaded Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. These laws prohibited almost all aspects of discrimination and segregation. Conditions for African Americans are immeasurably better now than they were during the segregation era. Remarkable gains have been made. There are, however, substantial racial disparities in employment, education, wealth, and family income. The continuing problems weigh most heavily on the low-income residents of inner-city communities. These conditions are, in large measure, vestiges of the history and legacy of segregation. Leland Ware See also African Americans; American Apartheid; Brown v. Board of Education; Crime and Race; Discrimination; Discrimination in Housing; Jim Crow; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Plessy v. Ferguson; Racism; School Desegregation; Segregation; Tracking
SERBIAN AMERICANS Serbian Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from Serbia, Montenegro, and the former Yugoslavia. In 2007, the population of Serbia and Montenegro combined was estimated at 10.1 million. Serbia and Montenegro were two republics of the former Yugoslavia that became a union in 2003. In June 2006, however, the state union effectively ended with a proclamation of independence, and each is now considered an independent nation. Included in Serbia’s territory are Kosovo and Vojvodina, both of which are autonomous provinces. This entry will look at the background of immigration from Serbia, Montenegro, and the former Yugoslavia to the United States and the contemporary picture of Serbian Americans. Belarus Germany
Poland
Ukraine
Czech Republic Slovakia
Moldova
Austria Hungary Slovenia
Romania
Croatia Bosnia & Herzegovina
Serbia
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Further Readings Italy
Bulgaria
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Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917). Cottrol, Robert J., Raymond T. Diamond, and Leland B. Ware. 2003. Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture and the Constitution. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1935. Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Foner, Eric. 1988. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper & Row. Franklin, John Hope and Alfred Moss, Jr. 1947. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. New York: Knopf. Last update with Alfred Moss, 8th ed. McGrawHill Education, 2001. Litwak, Leon F. 1998. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. New York: Knopf. McNeil, Genna Rae. 1983. Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Myrdal, Gunnar. 1944. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York: Harper & Bros. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
Se
Montenegro
Greece
Ionian Sea
Turkey
Malta
Mediterranean Sea
Immigration Patterns The earliest Serbian immigrants arrived in the United States around 1815, however, the largest wave of immigration occurred between 1880 and 1914. Accurate Serbian data is not available because early census data of Serbian immigrants includes many immigrants from various Slavic groups because the term Slavonic was often used in recording immigrants from Eastern Europe. Additionally, many Slavonic immigrants were
Sexual Harassment
categorized by country of origin, so Serbs could have been listed with the Austro-Hungarians, Bosnians, Bulgarians, Croats, Dalmatians, Hercegovinians, Montenegrins, Romanians, Slovenians, Turks, or Yugoslavs. Many immigrants came to the United States under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 and the Refugee Relief Act of 1953. These immigrants were political refugees and displaced persons from World War II. Arrivals during the 1960s through 1980s included people who were both seeking economic opportunity and escaping Yugoslav regime.
Contemporary Community According to the 2000 census, 134,110 U.S. residents reported Serb ancestry. Additionally, 379,052 persons reported their ancestry as Yugoslavian. In recent years, people from Serbia have sought permanent residency and refugee status, and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2006, about 44,000 Serbians immigrated to the United States. Peak years were 2001 and 2002, totaling 16,590. The number of refugees who arrived between 1997 and 2006 fluctuated. In 1999, an estimated 14,000 refugees arrived in the United States; since then, about 4,500 refugees have come. The number of Serbians who have become naturalized citizens has steadily increased each year beginning in 1997, totaling 27,192 Serbians since that year. According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, there were 129,474 people of Serbian national origin in the United States. In geographic distribution, the top five states were Illinois, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. Among famous Serbian Americans (including both native-born U.S. residents of Serbian heritage and Serbian immigrants) are Rod Blagojevich, current governor of Illinois; Aleksandar “Sasha” Pavlovic′, NBA basketball player; Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin, physicist and chemist; Nikola Tesla, inventor, physicist, and engineer; and Alfred Matthew “Weird Al” Yankovic, singer, songwriter, and satirist. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Balkans; Bosnian Americans; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Ethnic Conflict; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Muslim Americans; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity
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Further Readings
Cirkovic, Sima. 2004. The Serbs. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http:// www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/ yearbook.shtm Linton, Cynthia, ed. 1996. The Ethnic Handbook. Schiller Park, IL: Business Press. Padgett, Deborah. 1988. Settlers and Sojourners: A Study of Serbian Adaptation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. New York: AMS Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Serbia. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/ socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
SEXUAL HARASSMENT Sexual harassment can occur in the workplace or at school. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 governs sexual harassment in the workplace, and Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 governs sexual harassment in schools receiving federal funding. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces Title VII, and the Office of Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Education (OCR) enforces Title IX. Both authorities define sexual harassment as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature. This entry provides an overview of what the law requires, discusses key court rulings, and examines racial and cultural aspects of sexual harassment.
Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Title VII prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of gender, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that sexual harassment is a form of gender discrimination that violates Title VII. In 1980, the EEOC issued guidelines prohibiting sexual harassment and categorizing it as a form of gender discrimination. The EEOC defines sexual harassment as occurring when “(1) submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment, (2) submission to or rejection of
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such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual, or (3) such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment.” The first two provisions constitute quid pro quo harassment while the last provision constitutes hostile work environment harassment. Quid Pro Quo Hara assment
Quid pro quo harassment typically occurs when a supervisor or other employee with higher authority than the victim requests sexual favors in exchange for employment benefits. Quid pro quo harassment was first defined in Williams v. Saxbe, which was also the first case where the courts determined that sexual harassment constitutes gender discrimination. For quid pro quo harassment to occur, the victim’s reaction to unwelcome sexual advances must result in a “tangible employment action,” and the perpetrator must be in the position to affect these tangible employment actions. A tangible employment action is any significant change in the terms of employment, such as hiring, discharge, promotion, demotion, compensation and benefit changes, or reassignment. An employer is strictly liable for quid pro quo harassment by supervisors. Hostille Work Environment Harasssment
Hostile work environment harassment typically occurs when employees are repeatedly subjected to unwelcome sexual remarks, unwelcome physical contact, or offensive materials of a sexual nature at the workplace, and this unreasonably interferes with their ability to work or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment. Hostile work environment harassment does not require that an employee suffer any adverse tangible employment action or that the harassment come from a supervisor or superior. The courts first defined hostile work environment harassment in Bundy v. Jackson (1981). Later, the Supreme Court, in Meritor Saving Bank, FSB v. Vinson (1986), ruled that hostile work environment harassment occurs when the conduct is unwelcome and severe or pervasive enough to significantly alter the conditions of employment or create an abusive working environment. Determining whether the conduct rises to the level of hostile work environment is subjective, and in Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc.
(1993), the Supreme Court offered guidance in determining hostile work environment by applying a “reasonable person” standard for the victim and looking at all the circumstances, including the frequency and severity of the conduct. Generally, the conduct must be sufficiently pervasive or severe as to create an abusive work environment for a reasonable person. Examples of hostile work environment harassment include making sexual comments, discussing sexual topics, displaying pornographic or sexually suggestive pictures, making sexual gestures, leering, and engaging in unwanted physical contact such as touching, hugging, kissing, or stroking. Hostile work environment sexual harassment can be caused by coworkers and by contractors and clients. An employer is liable for hostile work environment harassment if the employer knew or should have known of the harassment and failed to investigate and take immediate action to stop the harassment.
Sexual Harassment at School Title IX prohibits educational institutions from discriminating on the basis of gender in educational opportunities and activities, and the U.S. Supreme Court has also ruled that sexual harassment is a form of gender discrimination that violates Title IX. In 1997, the OCR issued policy guidelines regarding sexual harassment, which it later revised in 2001. The OCR defines sexual harassment as occurring when the conduct will “deny or limit, on the basis of gender, the student’s ability to participate in or to receive benefits, services, or opportunities in the school’s program.” Like sexual harassment in the workplace, sexual harassment at school can be quid pro quo or hostile environment. Quid pro quo harassment occurs when a teacher or other school employee leads a student to believe that his or her grade or ability to participate in a school activity is dependent on submission to unwelcome sexual advances or conduct. Hostile environment harassment includes conduct similar to that of hostile work environment. However, hostile environment in educational sexual harassment can be created by school employees and agents and by students and individuals visiting the school. In Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District (1998), the Supreme Court ruled that for a school district to be held liable for sexual harassment by a teacher, an official with supervisory power over
Sexuality
the teacher must have prior knowledge of the harassment and must have been deliberately indifferent to the teacher’s misconduct. In Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (1999), the Supreme Court ruled similarly that for a school district to be held liable for sexual harassment by another student, the school district must have prior knowledge of the harassment and must have responded with deliberate indifference. Furthermore, the harassment must be severe, pervasive, and offensive enough to interfere with educational opportunities of the student victim.
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Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17 (1993). MacKinnon, Catharine. 1979. Sexual Harassment of Working Women. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. MacKinnon, Catharine, ed. 2003. Directions in Sexual Harassment Law. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Meritor Saving Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57 (1986). Stein, Nan. 1993. Secrets in Public. Wellesley, MA: Center for Research on Women. Williams v. Saxbe, 413 F.Supp. 654 (1976).
SEXUALITY Racial and Cultural Factors in Sexual Harassment Sexual harassment of women of color often involves racial stereotypes. Historical stereotypes of African American women, exemplified in the treatment of Saartjie Baartman as the “Hottentot Venus” in the 19th century, have erroneously cast them as gender objects. Asian women have also been stereotyped in U.S. culture as exotic, submissive, and subservient. Sexual harassment of women of color is often based on both gender and race. Cultural factors may also play a role in sexual harassment. For example, many Asian and Latin American cultures have been historically patriarchal, where women are perceived as having limited or no rights. This may result in perpetrators falsely believing that they are entitled to engage in harassing behavior, or in victims believing that they must endure that type of harassment. African American women may be deterred from reporting because they feel culturally compelled to perpetuate the “superwoman” stereotype: that women must be strong and bear stressful circumstances alone without complaint. Stewart Chang See also Discrimination; Title IX; Victimization
Further Readings
Bundy v. Jackson, 641 F.2d 934 (DC Cir., 1981). Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629 (1999). Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 29 C.F.R. §1604.11. Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, 524 U.S. 274 (1998).
Race has always played an integral part of defining sexuality for men and women of color. In varying degrees, women of color have often been viewed as sexual prizes for White male conquerors, whether through military conquest or slavery, and men of color have been viewed as possessing “deviant” sexuality, whether they be too sexual or not sexual enough. This entry looks at sexuality issues in various racial groups.
Asian Americans U.S. immigration and labor policies have had a strong effect on Asian American sexuality. Barred from the “masculine” occupations of the old West, Asian American men were often forced to engage in more “feminine” occupations such as cooks, domestic servants, or laundry workers. After the passage of the Page Act of 1875, which served to exclude Asian women from immigrating to the United States, Asian women in the United States were portrayed as being prostitutes who were different from the more virtuous White woman, leading to an overly sexualized view of Asian women. In addition, the exclusion of Asian women led to the formation of bachelor societies among Asian men. This portrayal of the asexual or feminine Asian man continues to influence the sexual relations between Asian American men and women, with a larger percentage of Asian American women marrying White men than any other racial group other except White women.
African Americans African American sexuality has also been heavily influenced by historic events, particularly the legacy
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of slavery. Justifying slavery often resulted in treating Black men and women as little more than sexual livestock. Following emancipation, Black men were particularly sexualized as a menacing threat to White female virtue. Denied the cultural markers of male “success” as defined by the European American standards of manhood as provider, protector, and disciplinarian, Black men sometimes engage in sexual promiscuity and violence to prove “manhood” in the areas of masculinity available to them. This hypermasculinization of Black men is further propagated by the media’s unrelenting portrayal of Black men as being angry, violent, and criminal. Much like Black men, Black women’s sexuality has also been heavily influenced by the legacy of slavery. In a feeble attempt to justify the raping of Black female slaves, White slaver owners often pointed to their perceived notion of uncontrollable Black female sexuality. Painted this way, Black women were viewed as sexually wild, uncontrollable, and in many cases, animalistic.
Latina/o Americans Sexuality for Latinas/os is marked by the dual concepts of machismo for men and marianismo for women. For many Latino men, sexuality is characterized by hypersexuality and aggressive sexual behaviors toward women. As such, a macho man is supposed to be sexually knowledgeable, aggressive, and virile. On the other hand, for many Latina women, sexuality is characterized by hyper-femininity manifested as submissiveness to men, sexual purity, and innocence. As such, feminine sexuality for Latina women is dictated by maintaining feminine virtues. However, the concepts of machismo and marianismo, like the factors that influenced sexuality for other racialized groups, must be understood in the larger context of Spanish conquest. Rather than being indigenous to Latin American culture, both machismo and marianismo were probably the result of incorporating the economic values and gender or sexual norms of the Spanish conquistadors. With colonial economies depending on labor, a dichotomized labor system developed whereby men provided the brute labor needed for colonial enterprises and women provided the reproductive labor needed to create more workers. Coupled with the rise in Catholicism, this economic system led Latin American men and women to
assume gendered roles similar to those found in Europe. Although long viewed as a system of gender and sexual oppression, marianismo has been redefined by recent developments among women in Latin American cultures. Instead of suggesting a submissive characteristic among women, it now represents moral superiority and feminine spirituality for many Latina feminists.
Native Americans Comparatively little is known about Native American sexuality; however, what is known is that some Native American societies included members who transcended the contemporary male and female genders and practiced multiple forms of sexuality. Much like the other racialized groups, however, contemporary sexuality among Native Americans has also been shaped by historic processes of conquest and domination. With European conquest came European standards of sexual norms, which contemporary Native Americans have adopted. Like other racialized people, Native Americans were often the victims of sexual violence at the hands of the conquerors.
Gays and Lesbians of Color Gays and lesbians of color often confront homophobia in their ethnic communities and racism in the larger gay community, which is overwhelmingly dominated by Whites. Trapped in the margins of two already marginalized communities, gays and lesbians of color often report feeling alienated and invisible. Sexual behavior among gay men and women of color also seems to follow the cultural traits associated with sexuality. Gay Asian men report an overwhelming preference for White sexual partners, whom they view as being more masculine than other Asian men. Black men often become the object of a White male fetish based on the mythology of Black male anatomy. For Latino men, the sexual roles of the dominant partner and the submissive partner are often dictated by how closely one comes to the machismo expectations. Recently, an interesting development among gay and lesbian Native Americans has been the rise of the two-spirit movement through which gay and lesbian Native Americans have been able to reclaim a sexual history lost with European conquest.
Sicilian Americans
Bisexuality For many people of color, who confront homophobia in their ethnic communities and racism in the gay community, bisexuality may be an attempt to minimize the stigma associated with being homosexual. Recently, there has been a rising level of controversy regarding the “down low” phenomenon, particularly among Black men, where men engage in homosexual acts but lead heterosexual lives. Although there is much debate regarding the sexual orientation of these men, with one side arguing that they are actually gay but choose to remain closeted due to various reasons or that they are, indeed, bisexual, most scholars acknowledge that this pattern is more prevalent in communities of color and may be a result of both the homophobia in ethnic communities and racism in the gay community. It should also be noted that the engaging in homosexual activity while leading heterosexual lives is not limited to men of color. However, many argue that in terms of percentages, men of color may be engaging in this behavior at higher rates than are White men. Chong-suk Han and Kristopher Proctor See also African Americans; Asian Americans; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Hispanics; HIV/AIDS; Intermarriage; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender; Machismo; Native Americans; Scapegoats
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Messina, Palermo, Ragusa, Syracuse, and Trapani. Sicilian Americans are a subset of Italian Americans and are often considered a separate group because of cultural and historical differences. This entry will look at the background of immigration from Italy, noting specific Sicilian patterns of immigration to the United States and the contemporary picture of Italian and Sicilian Americans.
Immigration Patterns Italians settled in the United States in the late 17th century, but immigration trickled thereafter until the late 19th or early 20th centuries. The first subsequent immigration wave brought about 100,000 immigrants to the United States mainly for economic and political reasons. Many Italian Americans came from southern Italy and Sicily as rural peasants with little education. These early immigrants settled in urban areas, creating communities that supported their cultural heritage, and often referred to these neighborhoods as “Little Palermo/Sicily/Italy.” Between 1850 and 1870, more Italians settled in New Orleans than in any other U.S. city. Many were able to find work in the cotton, vegetable, and fish markets. Between 1890 and 1900, about 656,000 Italians arrived in the United States, mainly settling in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. The number of
Further Readings
Espiritu, Yen Le. 1997. Asian American Women and Men. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Jacobs, Sue-Ellen, Wesley Thomas, and Sabine Lange, eds. 1997. Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Spirituality. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Nagel, Joan. 2003. Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press. Staples, Robert. 2006. Exploring Black Sexuality. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Netherlands
Poland Germany
Belgium
Czech Republic Slovakia Austria France
Hungary
Switzerland Slovenia
Romania
Croatia
Italy
Bosnia & Herzegovina
Ad
ria
tic
Se a
Serbia
Montenegro
Albania
Tyrrhenian Sea
Mediterranean Sea
SICILIAN AMERICANS Sicilian Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from Sicily, a small island off the coast of Italy. In 2007 estimates, the population of Sicily was just over 5 million. Sicily is divided into nine provinces—Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Catania, Enna,
Greece
Ionian Sea
Sicily
Malta
Algeria
Tunisia
Libya
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Italian immigrants swelled to more than 3 million between 1900 and 1920. In the following decades, the number of Italian immigrants dropped significantly, with only a slight rise between 1961 and 1970.
Contemporary Community According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, there were 95,989 people of Sicilian national origin in the United States in 2005. In geographic distribution, the top five states were California, New York, Florida, Illinois, and Michigan. Large Italian communities can be found in cities such as Boston, Chicago, and New York. In addition, 2000 census data indicate that Italian Americans’ median family income was $61,300 compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Italian Americans are widely represented in occupations and trades such as the arts, engineering, science, law, medicine, and the skilled trades. Among famous U.S. residents with Italian heritage are Joe DiMaggio, baseball player; Frank Sinatra, singer; and Philip Zimbardo, psychologist.
SINGAPORE Singapore, the independent nation-state located at the southern tip of Peninsular Malaysia, has a total land area of 682.7 square kilometers. According to 2007 estimates, the total population numbered 4.7 million, with a resident population of 3.3 million citizens and permanent residents. In ethnic composition, the resident population is divided into four categories: Chinese (76.8%), Malays (13.9%), Indians (7.9%), and others (1.4%) (CMIO). Scholars have referred to this official classification as the basis of Singapore’s model of CMIO multiracialism—the acronym is ordered according to the relative size of each “race” and “multiracialism” is propounded as a state policy. This entry looks at race and ethnicity in Singapore. Laos
Thailand
Cambodia Vietnam
South China Sea
Jennifer M. Klein Malaysia
See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Italian Americans; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity
Malaysia Singapore
Indonesia Indonesia
Further Readings
Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http:// www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/ yearbook.shtm Guglielmo, Thomas A. 2003. White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color and Power in Chicago, 1890–1945. New York: Oxford University Press. Mangione, Jerre and Ben Morriale. 1992. La Storia: Five Centuries of Italian American Experience. New York: HarperCollins. Margavio, A. V. and Jerome J. Salamone. 2002. Bread and Respect: The Italians of Louisiana. Los Angeles, CA: Pelican. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Italy. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/ socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
Indian Ocean
Historical Background The CMIO classification has its roots in colonial history dating from the establishment of the island as a British trading settlement in 1819. The British ruled over a plural society composed of Indigenous Peoples from the Malay archipelago and increasing numbers of immigrants—especially traders and laborers—from China, India, and West Asia. Colonial rule was partly premised on essentialist notions about native and immigrant communities,
Singapore
each of which were ascribed specific stereotypical racial and social attributes. British divide-and-rule policy, for example, was manifested in the 1822 city plan devised by Lieutenant Phillip Jackson, sectionalizing Chinese in Kreta Ayer, Malaya, Arabs in Kampong Glam; and Indians in Chulia Kampong. British rule also saw the development of separate educational streams based on four main languages, namely, English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil, with English-medium education serving the needs of colonial administration. During the era of decolonization after World War II, the People’s Action Party (PAP), founded in 1954, sought to unite the population by pledging equality of treatment for the four educational streams. The PAP’s ideology of multiracialism was developed in the wake of interethnic tensions during the 1950s and 1960s, including during the brief merger with Malaysia (1963–1965).
Current Environment Since independence in 1965, the PAP has been the ruling party. Its commitment to both meritocracy and multiracialism has served the state management of ethnic relations in Singapore by assuring official “neutrality” vis-à-vis the claims of diverse communities. However, as pointed out by Geoffrey Benjamin and other scholars, the policy has tended to conflate race, ethnicity, culture, language, and community; heighten ethnic consciousness along essentialist and primordialist lines; and erode differences among subgroups within the racial categories. Along with the CMIO classification, Singapore has four official languages: Chinese, Malay, Tamil, and English. English is the de facto dominant working language in Singapore and has been regarded as the neutral language that is not the cultural property of any race. With English as the language of administration, science, and technology—hence also the first school language—the ethnic languages are regarded as the “mother tongues” of the three officially recognized races; they are taught as second languages in the schools and serve the function of cultural transmission for the members of each race. Chin nese
In understanding ethnicity in Singapore, it is necessary to probe beneath the CMIO paradigm. To begin with, people of Chinese ancestry have formed the majority of Singapore’s population since the 1840s,
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and every census since 1921 has registered “Chinese” as constituting about three-quarters of the population. Since independence, the government has emphasized that the Chinese in Singapore are culturally rather than politically Chinese, that is, they do not owe political allegiance to China, especially with Malaysia and Indonesia as neighboring countries and, domestically, with Malays and Indians as ethnic minorities. Regarding ethnicity, however, the Chinese category allows a variety of identities. Historically, for example, the Chinese who had settled in the Malay archipelago for generations in earlier centuries came to be known as Peranakans or Straits Chinese, the local-born in the Straits Settlements (that is, Singapore, Malacca, and Penang), including individuals from intermarriages between Chinese men and local women. This community, whose males are known as Babas and females as Nyonyas, was characterized by its own distinctive culture, retaining traditional Chinese customs that were discontinued in China’s modernization and evolving new hybrid artistic forms and a language—Baba Malay—that is a combination of Malay and Hokkien (the Fujian dialect) and has a written form based on Romanized Malay. By virtue of their deeply localized ways and their familiarity with British practices, the Peranakans were politically favored by the colonial authorities and were culturally and socially distinct from the sinkeh or new arrivals from China. Many of the sinkeh arrived in Singapore with the expansion of the coolie trade from the 1840s and with the advent of Japanese aggression and civil war in China from the late 1930s. In the decades before and after World War II, there developed a cultural gulf between the Chinese who were educated in the Chinese schools and those who received English-medium education. The two groups of Chinese residents contrasted with each other in language use, socioeconomic status, and political affiliation. Following the war, the Chinese-speaking masses became a formidable political force, manifested especially in the trade union and student movements engendered by the social inequality they faced. Even after independence, the Chinese-educated tended to perceive themselves as a social minority within a numerical majority of Chinese in the population, and as culturally distinct from their English-educated counterparts, who were socially and economically advantaged by the use of English as a dominant language in Singapore. From the 1980s, however, Chinese ethnic identity was shaped by the government’s efforts in promoting
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Mandarin as the official Chinese language to be used by Chinese from diverse dialect backgrounds. Along with English as the main school language and Mandarin as the mother tongue taught to Chinese pupils, the official annual “Speak Mandarin Campaign” (launched in 1979) also played its part in changing language patterns among the Chinese in Singapore. Census data shows that the use of English at home among persons above the age of 4 among the Chinese population increased from 8% to 24% between 1980 and 2000. During the 2 decades, Mandarin speakers increased from 10% to about 45%, and dialect speakers decreased from about 80% to 31%. Parenthetically, because the CMIO classification is based on patrilineal descent, children of Peranakan families whose mother tongue was Baba Malay had to learn Mandarin as a second school language. Just as the ethnic peculiarities of Peranakans have been eroded over time, the same is true of dialect-based customs and practices among the Chinese in Singapore. The opening of China and its economic and political rise on the global stage in recent decades have made an impact on Chinese ethnic identification in Singapore. Malays
“Malay” as a racial category has become a convenient way to include not just the Malays from the Peninsula but also specific groups in the wider region including, for example, the Bugis from present-day Sulawesi, the Javanese from the main island of Java, the Boyanese from Bawean, an island off the northern coast of Java, and the Minangkabau from western Sumatra. Moreover, there has been intermarriage between immigrant Arab or Indian Muslim men and local Malay women, and their descendants have tended to be regarded as Malays. Most Arabs in Singapore have their origins in Hadramaut, Yemen, and many have integrated with the Malays after several generations of residence in the region, although some are keen to assert their specific Arab identity despite the tendency to become officially classified under the Malay category. The descendants from intermarriages between Indian Muslim men (who originate from southern and western India) and Malay women, are also known as the Jawi Peranakans; they share some affinity with their Peranakan counterparts among the Chinese in their adoption of local ways of life. Considered as constituting a single community, Malays have faced societal perceptions about their
relative socioeconomic, educational, and political marginality in relation to mainstream Singapore society. Such marginality has been rooted in social discrimination and structural inequality since the colonial era, and community leaders and organizations have made efforts to redress the problem. In addition, the link between Malay ethnicity and Muslim identity has been fostered over generations, although this has been strengthened in recent decades by renewed Islamization, both regionally and globally; hence, in Singapore, there has been a tendency to use the term Malay-Muslims as a reference to the community. Since September 11, 2001, there have been exhortations both within and outside the community that the community not be spotlighted by virtue of its religious affiliation and that its political loyalty not be challenged. Indians
The presence of Indians in Singapore’s population can be traced to the earliest days of colonial rule, especially with the arrival of soldiers, laborers, and traders in response to the expansion of trade and fast pace of urban development on the island. Since the 1950s, Indians has included ethnic groups originating from many parts of the Indian subcontinent, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. According to the 2000 census, Tamil is the most frequently spoken language at home among 43% of Indians above 4 years of age; English is the home language reported by 36%. Other Indian languages in Singapore include Gujarati, Hindi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Sindhi, Telugu, and Urdu. Given this, the educational authorities have recently allowed Indian schoolchildren to learn Indian languages other than Tamil as a second language. Slightly more than half of all Indians in Singapore are Hindus, and about a quarter are Muslims; other religious affiliations include Christianity and Sikhism, the latter especially among the Punjabis. In sum, to the extent that ethnicity is shaped by identification with place of origin, customs, language use, and religious practices (and also caste), the Indians as a racial category in Singapore exhibit great heterogeneity. Oth hers
Eurasians constitute less than 0.5% of Singapore’s resident population, numbering about 15,000. The term refers to people from both European and Asian
Sioux
ancestry, especially from the intermarriages between Portuguese men and local women in places such as Malacca, Goa, and Macau; there are also Dutch and British Eurasians, and the ethnic boundaries between these specific groups have blurred through inter-Eurasian marriages and intermarriages with non-Eurasians. Despite their support for the policy of multiracialism, many Eurasians saw themselves as an invisible community with no official recognition of their culture because they were subsumed under the others’ category in the CMIO paradigm. Kristang, the language of Portuguese Eurasians, was also not considered as a mother tongue for Eurasian schoolchildren, who had to learn Mandarin or Malay as a second language. During the 1980s and 1990s, however, a heightened sense of ethnic identity among members of the community led to the revival of the Eurasian Association, which then became regarded as an ethnicbased welfare organization by the government, having similar status as those of the Chinese, Malay, and Indian welfare organizations. Moreover, as a minority community, the Eurasians received assurance of representation in parliament, and Eurasian culture became officially represented in events such as the annual National Day parade. The Eurasian case demonstrated the tendency for ethnic consciousness to become reinforced within Singapore’s model of multiracialism, in this case by the appeal for equal treatment when an ethnic group perceived itself to be excluded from official recognition. Kian-Woon Kwok and Caroline Plüss See Appendix A See also China; India; Islamophobia
Further Readings
Benjamin, Geoffrey. 1976. “The Cultural Logic of Singapore’s ‘Multiracialism.’” Pp. 115–133 in Singapore: Society in Transition, edited by R. Hassan. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Chua Beng Huat. 1998. “Racial Singaporeans: Absence after the Hyphen.” Pp. 28–50 in Southeast Asian Identities: Culture and the Politics of Representation in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, edited by J. S. Khan. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Kwok Kian-Woon. 1998. “Singapore.” Pp. 200–217 in The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, edited by L. Pan. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet.
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Lai Ah Eng, ed. 2004. Beyond Rituals and Riots: Ethnic Pluralism and Social Cohesion in Singapore. Singapore: Institute of Policy Studies & Eastern University Press. Li, Tania 1989. Malays in Singapore: Culture, Economy, and Ideology. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Lian Kwee Fee, ed. 2006. Race, Ethnicity and the State in Malaysia and Singapore. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. PuruShotam, Nirmala Srirekam. 1998. Negotiating Language, Constructing Race: Disciplining Difference in Singapore. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Rahim, Lily Zubaidah. 1998. The Singapore Dilemma: The Political and Educational Marginality of the Malay Community. New York: Oxford University Press. Rudolf, Jürgen. 1998. Reconstructing Identities: A Social History of the Babas in Singapore. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Tong Chee Kiong and Lian Kwen Fee, eds. 2002. The Making of Singapore Sociology: Society and State. Singapore: Times Academic Press.
SIOUX The Sioux were originally forest people who lived in the region at the headwaters of the Mississippi River. They have traditionally been organizers and classifiers, and as their universe was intricately patterned into hierarchies and divisions, so was the nation as a whole. The Sioux have continually maintained a form of government, a political concept that incorporated their ideal logic with the accompanying pragmatism of successful communal living in a difficult and dangerous world. The Sioux constitute a large segment of the American Indian (Indigenous) population in the United States today. They are a group of citizens who have endured the many eras of federal American Indian policy, which include discovery, conquest, and treaty-making; removal and relocation; allotment and assimilation; reorganization and self-government; termination; and finally, self-determination. This entry outlines how the Sioux struggle to exist while demonstrating their importance to the study of race and ethnicity issues within contemporary society today.
Organization of the Sioux The Sisseton and Wahpeton Bands are subdivisions of the eastern or Dakotah Indians. There are two bands of the eastern Santee Division, who speak the
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political and social lives of the people within their specific geographical location.
Kinship and the Social and Political Order of Bands The Sioux were originally family-oriented and honored close kinship ties. Kinship terms denoted the primary roles and relationships of people and respect was a primary responsibility between members. The tribe comprised the tioyspaye, and the primary function of this formal structure within the tribe was to provide support, to instruct, provide a nurturing environment, and to guide and protect a healthy family life. Sioux at the White House. Members of the Yankton, Santee Sioux (Dakota), Historically, kinship has been involved and Upper Missouri Sioux tribes are shown with President Andrew Johnson in Dakota social, economic, and political and others at a reception in the East Room of the White House on February life. At the center of these values is the 23, 1867. Throughout the 1800s, the United States negotiated, under show inner core or immediate family, consisting of armed force, a series of treaties with various Sioux tribal groups. These of the father and mother, their children, treaties involved, essentially, land cessions and promises to pay for the land with goods and cash. called tiwahe (immediate family). The brothers and sisters of the father and Source: The Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-106694. mother in the family are considered more than in-laws and uncles or aunts. Their Dakotah language with the D dialect. The other children become brothers and sisters to the offspring divisions are referred to as the Great Sioux or of the brothers and sisters. This interrelatedness is Dakota/Lakota/Nakota Nations and consist of the called tiospaye (extended family). western Teton division and the middle Yankton diviWhen members of one extended family are related sions who speak the L and N dialects, respectively. to another one, and one tiospaye is related to another The word Dakota can be translated into English as tiospaye, this extends the kinship to an ospaye (band), friend. The real significance of the word Dakota such as the Sisseton Band and the Wahpeton Band. derives from the word WoDakotah, meaning Historically, members of a tiospaye lived together in a harmony—a condition of being at peace with oneself village numbering 50 to 150 lodges, and as the village and in harmony with one another and with nature, and grew, new villages would often form and physically a condition of lifestyle patterned after the natural separate from the original village. order of nature. Within each Dakota village, the goal of achieving The Sioux were further divided by Council harmony and well-being was strictly enforced by speFires: Eastern-Santee-Dakota: Spirit Lake People cial organizations or societies. The governing society (Mdewakantonwan), Shooters among the Leaves of a village was called the tiotipi or Soldiers’ Lodge. People (Wahpekute); People Dwelling among the From their midst, officers were selected—a spokesman Leaves (Wahpetonwan); People of the Fish Village (often called Chief), his assistants, and other officers, (Sissetonwan); A Middle-Yankton-Nakota: Dwellers which included keepers of the Sacred Pipe, Drum, at the End; Yankton-Ihanktonwan; Little Dwellers at Eagle Staff, and Whip, for example. Decisions were the End Yanktonai-Ihanktonwanna; and Westernreached by deliberation and consensus within the Teton-Lakota, Dwellers on the Plains (Titonwan). structure of this governing Soldiers’ Lodge, where all These Council Fires were located in present-day village males who were older than 9 years of age had North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and a seat and voice. Minnesota. Their governmental structure was dictated In addition to the Soldiers’ Lodge, there were other by these subdivisions, which in turn, dictated the societies within the village. The mawatani society
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(the Red Owl Feather Society), for example, was given the responsibility of ensuring that there would be no jealousy among the families in the village. Warrior societies such as the Kit Fox and Badger or Brave Hearts were the special forces of the governing Soldiers’ Lodge and served, primarily, as defenders of the people during times of war. Often these societies comprised family members whose specialties were negotiation, warfare, hunting, or public service. Numerous historical accounts refer to American Indians, generally, as savages. People of the Sioux Tribes have long considered themselves a civilized people by virtue of the fact the white buffalo calf woman gave the Dakota/Lakota/Nakota Nations the Sacred Pipe. This pipe, along with the Seven Sacred Rites and Ceremonies, enhances and advances a particular way of life for the people in ways either misunderstood or concealed from outsiders. Primarily, the ceremonies enhance the value of kinship. For example, if one’s parents died, the rite of hunka or adoption was performed, immediately, so the orphan always would have a central family including a mother, father, and siblings. From birth to death, the Dakota people use rites and ceremonies for each stage of life to foster and promote the name given to them through ceremony. Elders in the community often say that poverty was nonexistent and that the people were wealthy, both corporately and individually. They also say that it was rare for anyone to openly display anger, aggression, or violence in the village because the value of harmony and peace permeated the entire community. This same system of living upheld the value of women in the family and community. The woman, as spouse, owns the lodge and decides who lives within it and who is welcome in the home. Dakota theologians have likened the role of the woman to that of the tripod, which are the three foundational tipi-poles used to erect the tipi. The husband is the covering for this lodge, and the children are the pegs that hold the tipi to the earth. In the family, the wife and mother is the instructor in the ways of the pipe and ceremonies; and during certain ceremonies, the woman holds the Sacred Pipe during their enactments. The woman is considered a co-participant with the Creator because in giving birth to a child she participates with the Creator in the creation of new life for the family and community. The Dakotas’ view that the woman’s role in the family and community are central to the family parallels those concepts of the nuclear
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family in contemporary times. In this same context, the Dakota people call the earth mother because it gives life to all plants and creatures, and at all times, the traditional Dakota people require that respect and honor always be shown to their sacred mother, the earth.
Conflict and Destruction of a Way of Life European traders and missionaries, such as Father Louis Hennepin, made initial contact with the Sioux in the mid-1700s. Then, during the first half of the 18th century, French traders encroached on them from the southeast while outfitting the Chippewas, the Sioux’s bitter enemy, with firearms. Unable to match the superior firearms, the Sioux began their westward migration. At that time, the bands resided in villages that ranged as far north as present-day Manitoba, Canada, and included the area around the Missouri River, still further west into Wyoming and parts of current day Montana, southern Minnesota, northern Iowa, and Nebraska. Contact with European Americans increased after 1815 and continued throughout the 1800s. These continued dealings between the divergent societies proved detrimental to the Sioux Indians of Dakota Territory. Throughout the 1800s, the United States negotiated, under show of armed force, a series of treaties with the Sioux. The treaties, essentially, involved land cessions and promises to pay for the cessions with goods and cash. For example, the people of the Eastern Dakota Nation were forced to sign the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, giving up all of their lands west of the Mississippi River. In 1858, Dakota leaders took part in a diplomatic visit to Washington, D.C., where they were told they did not own the reservation land and that it was held in trust for their use by the federal government. Taxes were owed on most of the land because it had changed from trust to simple-fee status. The Native peoples did not initially understand this change. Faced with mounting debt and threatened expulsion, the Sioux sold the northern half of the reservation. In Minnesota and Dakota Territory, the Sioux were assigned to the reservation and subject to federal American Indian agents and missionaries who viewed their way of life and religious practices as pagan and unlawful. The Sioux were required to relinquish their practices and forms of village life. They were urged to settle on individual tracts of land and become farmers.
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Further, reservation agents insisted that the Sioux cut their hair and wear factory-made clothing appropriate for farmers. Finally, the Sioux were pushed to banish their own spiritual leaders and medicine men and become Christians. An Uprissing
By late summer of 1862, the eastern bands of Dakota people in Minnesota had not received their treaty-committed goods and payments, and agricultural conditions had brought them to a point of starvation and desperation. The policies of acculturation and assimilation further created internal factions and hard feelings among the families of the eastern Dakota. These events culminated in the Sioux Uprising of 1862. Dakota men went to war to reclaim their land, and in the resulting violence, more than 500 settlers were killed, and twenty-three southwestern Minnesota counties were left virtually depopulated by a mass exodus of non-Indian people. The U.S. Army, under General Henry Sibley, defeated the Dakota in 6 weeks, taking 2,000 prisoners. In late fall, more than 300 Dakota men were condemned by a military court in consecutive 15-minute trials, for their alleged participation in the uprising. President Abraham Lincoln summarily lowered the number to 38, after reviewing the trial records of the condemned individuals. The 38 condemned Dakota men were hanged before a crowd of 3,000 in Mankato, Minnesota, one day following the celebration of Christmas. This event marks the largest mass execution in U.S. history. After the uprising, Congress enacted legislation abrogating all previous treaties with the Eastern Dakota bands and further ordered all Eastern Dakota bands banished from the state of Minnesota, leaving more than 6,000 Dakota refugees to flee the state. The defeat of Sitting Bull at Wounded Knee marked the end of what was once considered the Great Sioux Nation. Many of the Sioux were relocated or fled to other parts of the United States and Canada. Today, reservations mark the remnants of the Sioux as a people in the Great Plains region of the United States. Roy F. Janisch See also American Indian Movement; Assimilation; Black Elk; Minority Rights; Native Americans; Pan-Indianism; Peltier, Leonard; Social Inequality; Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973)
Further Readings
Hassrick, Royal B. 1964. The Sioux: Life and Customs of a Warrior Society. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Milton, John. 1988. South Dakota: A Bicentennial History. New York: Norton. Nadeau, Remi. 1967. Fort Laramie and the Sioux Indians. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Utley, Robert M. 1963. The Last Days of the Sioux Nation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
SLAVERY Slavery is a central component in the history of economics and race relations in the United States. Slavery is significant in this volume because it connects the expansion of the original U.S. colonies and identifies the origins of racism and racial oppression. The enslavement of millions of Africans was legitimized for the economic growth of Europe through the development of the West Indies and the Americas. The New World was deemed most profitable, and enslaved Africans were used to harvest cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar. The slave system in North America became law early in the 17th century and legalized the ownership of one person by another. The process of legalizing slavery made the slave system in the North America unique. Because slavery was incorporated into the laws of the land, slavery was passed on to children from the mother and was a closed system. The legalization of slavery reinforced the inferior status of Blacks and institutionalized racism. This entry looks at the origin, evolution, and end of slavery in the United States.
Origins Slavery has varied in its practice since the start of human history. People were enslaved because they were in debt, they were being punished for breaking laws, or they had been defeated in warfare. Slavery was not always a closed system nor was one’s slave status always inherited. The duration of slavery was for a determined period after which many former slaves became productive members of society. By the 17th century, however, slavery changed because of the potential of massive economic growth in the Americas. European expansionism intensified and the
Slavery
need for a cheap labor source in the West Indies and in Central America was critical. The colonizers considered using Indigenous People but they were dying of disease and indentured servants from Europe proved inadequate. Africa solved this problem. By the start of the 17th century, Spain authorized the exportation of Africans as slaves to the West Indies and the Americas. By 1510, the European trade of Africans became a stable mode of economic wealth and, by 1518, became the cornerstone of the Spanish economy. Soon other maritime nations—such as England and France, soon followed by the Dutch— fought to become part of the trade that, until then, had been a Spanish-Portuguese monopoly. The competition for control of the trade of Africans dominated Western commerce for centuries. For approximately 400 years, millions of enslaved Africans were forced to endure tremendous suffering while being transported from the West African coast to the New World.
The Middle Passage The Atlantic slave trade, or the Middle Passage, describes the European slave trade from Africa. The slave trade to the Americas is called the Middle Passage because it made up the middle leg of a threeleg journey (also called the Triangular Trade). The first leg involved a ship sailing from Europe to the Guinea coast of Africa with goods such as cloth, gunpowder, and weaponry used in exchange for Africans. The second leg, the Middle Passage, involved transporting Africans to the West Indies and the Americas; the third leg involved the ship sailing back to European ports with sugar, tobacco, rice, wood, and molasses. The concept of trade is only accurate when considering the transaction of goods exchanged for Africans. The actual process of enslavement was much more complex. Africans were taken from the interior of Africa to the coast through warfare, trickery, and kidnapping. Millions of Africans lost their lives on the journey from the interior to the coast, as well as during the Atlantic crossing. Shackled and branded, Africans were forced hundreds of miles from the African interior to the point of embarkation on the coast. Once at the place of embarkation, those enslaved Africans who survived the journey were assembled to take part in an inexplicable horror. To increase the profit margin, hundreds of Africans were packed together and stowed below deck. The typical head clearance was about
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5 feet, which was halved if there were sleeping shelves. The sleeping quarters for slaves were incredibly constricted. Bodies were typically laid head to foot with not enough room to turn oneself. The enslaved were subjected to deplorable conditions where they were forced to lay in their own filth and vomit, and combined with stifling heat and little ventilation, disease was rampant. Millions of slaves died because of these conditions during the Middle Passage, and many chose to take their own lives. As a result of these horrific conditions, only one-third of the slave cargo reached the Americas.
Slavery in the New World In 1619, the first twenty Africans landed in Jamestown, Virginia. At that time, slavery was not immediate and the status of Blacks was not established. Most Blacks functioned as indentured servants along with Native Americans and Whites. By the mid17th century, the Black population in the new colonies rose to approximately 300 people. By 1660, slave laws were established, and slavery was firmly established in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of South America and British colonies in the North. The legalization of slavery gave people the right to literally own other people as private property and created a closed stratification system that stipulated slavery for life. By 1750, slavery was institutionalized in the U.S. colonies. The demand for slave labor was the direct result of the rise of agribusiness in the southern colonies. The plantation system emerged through the growing and exporting of cash crops such as tobacco, sugar, and rice. Profitability of the plantation system was based on large-scale farming and cheap labor. The attempt to use the existing sources of labor proved problematic. The colonists faced labor problems when attempting to use Native Americans and White indentured servants as their labor source. Because of their potential to resist enslavement and return to their tribes, and the high death rate from warfare and disease, Native Americans did not suffice as a labor source. Moreover, indentured servants were an unreliable labor source because they had to be released from indenture every few years. Consequently, to solve their labor problem, U.S. colonists relied on African labor. Africans were brought to the colonies by force, and they had no knowledge of their new surroundings, they had no family or friends for refuge, and they were easily overpowered. Initially,
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the motivation for slavery was for economic exploitation; however, racism was its justification.
Racial Construction Racism and the ideology that Black Africans were of an inferior race developed in response to maintaining the slave system. Because of the stark physical contrast between Africans and Europeans and the institutionalization of slavery, racial discrimination helped propagate the racist belief system that established Black inferiority. African slaves were believed to be savage subhuman creatures who, as a race, would benefit from slavery. As a newly found free Christian society, U.S. colonists believed that slaves would also benefit from Christianity, but struggled with the contradiction of being able to maintain their labor source while converting slaves to Christianity. The solution was to decree that Africans were in fact subhuman and therefore could not be freed once baptized as Christians.
Slavery as an Institution The institution of slavery was a well-organized system constructed to maintain total control over the enslaved. The dominant-minority relations were paternalistic, a system in which slave masters controlled Africans, much like fathers control their children, by withholding all rights and responsibilities and creating total dependency. Slave codes or slave laws were established throughout the colonies to limit slaves’ freedoms, and each state had its own codes. This complex system of laws was enacted to give slave masters total legal control over slaves. Slave laws defined slaves as personal property or chattel. As chattel, a slave could not own any property or enter into any type of contract. Consequently, slaves could not marry nor could they seek legal protection or offer testimony against Whites. Slave laws also were written to regulate slaves’ behavior. A pass system was implemented to limit slaves’ mobility. Travel away from the plantation without a pass or a White companion was illegal for slaves. If a slave was apprehended without a pass, the slave laws obligated any White person to whip the captured slave. If a slave resisted violently, a White person could kill the slave with impunity. Slave laws concerning runaways were the most severe. For the first offense, the runaway would be publicly whipped by as many as forty lashes; for the
second offense, the runaway would be branded with the letter “R” on the right cheek; for the third offense, the slave would be whipped by as many as forty lashes and one ear would be cut off, and males would be castrated. If a slave died because of these punishments, the owner could be compensated for the slave’s full value by the public treasurer.
Life on the Plantation Most field slaves worked endlessly from dawn to dusk. The field slaves were managed by a slave driver, typically a trusted slave who ensured the slaves worked hard. The slave driver was kept in control by a White overseer, and both made sure the slaves worked to the best of their abilities under the threat of violence. Whether it was a rice, tobacco, or sugar plantation, life was hard for slaves. From picking worms off plant leaves to clearing new land and harvesting the crop, the work of the slave was composed of hard labor 18 hours days. For domestic slaves—more commonly understood as slaves who worked in the “Big House”—proximity to the master made for much longer days. These slaves had many jobs such as cook, server, house cleaners, wet nurse, gardener, and tailor; they also ran errands and tended to the horses and cows. Unlike the field hands, the domestic slave could have access to better clothes and to more and a better quality food. However, the domestic’s role meant being at the master’s disposal at all hours. Because of the close quarters of master and slave, the domestic worker was under constant surveillance and therefore in many ways fared worse than did the field slave. The housing conditions for slaves were poor. Slaves lived in crudely built log cabins with cracked roofs and walls and dirt floors. Housing conditions were crowded, with six to ten people per cabin. The slave master would determine the amount of food and clothing that would be adequate for his slaves. Slaves were typically provided with one shirt made out of burlap cloth for the entire year. Additionally, the limited food rations would leave slaves to steal their food or fish and hunt small animals under the cover of darkness.
Resistance Familly
Although weakened, the Black slave family did exist within the slave system. Slave masters were quite aware that they would have more control over a
Slavery
rebellious slave who had a family living on the plantation than over one who was alone. The love of and obligation to one’s family was strong, and the slave master used this connection to control his slaves. Although the form of the slave family differed from that of freemen and Whites, it served as one of the most important forms of survival for the slave. In the slave family, the slave could find sympathetic support for such a terrible condition. Within the family, the slave could find love and companionship that buffered the cruelties of slave life and the total submission to the master. The most important relationship in the slave family was that of parent and child. Slave children were socialized by their parents and taught about the system they were born into. The slave family strived to protect the children by instilling in them values opposite of those instilled by the master. Parents taught their children to conform and to be obedient to avoid pain. Even though the slave family can be considered a major mechanism for survival, that the family could be separated at any time remained a constant threat in their lives.
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facing severe punishment and possibly death, slaves had to also consider dying of starvation or succumbing to the elements. The decision to run away was rarely a careless one. In the late 17th century, an organization composed of a vast network of individuals was formed to aid slaves’ escape to the Northern states and to Canada. This escape network was called the Underground Railroad and comprised hundreds of people, White and Black, committed to the freedom of slaves. Resistance to being enslaved was commonplace, but not always in the form of running away. Slaves covertly resisted by refusing to learn trades, killing livestock, feigning illness, and sabotaging their work in retaliation to oppressive treatment. Resistance also came in the form of slave revolts. Slave revolts involved large groups of slaves on a mission to destroy the lives and property of Whites. Between 1691 and 1865, there were at least nine large slave revolts in major cities. The largest revolt occurred in Southampton County, Virginia, where Nat Turner, with about 50 men, roamed from plantation to plantation killing every White man, woman, and child they could find.
Cultu ure
Black slave culture was unique because of the blending of various African ethnicities and U.S. culture. These cultural formations provided slaves a means of resisting the oppressive conditions of slavery. Through folk songs, folk tales, superstitions, and religion, slaves were able to build self-esteem, release aggression, and maintain hope. Culture served as a mechanism of resistance because the more slaves’ culture differed from the master’s, the more they were immune to the master’s total control. Sabota age and Escape
Many slaveholders would insist that their slaves not show sadness but demonstrate contentment with their status. However, the reality was that slaves’ resistance to bondage was inherent in their desire for freedom. Between 1640 and 1865, the colonial courts provide evidence of hundreds of slaves who attempted to sue for their freedom, to run away from their masters, and to rob, assault, and murder Whites. Escaping to the Northern states was not easy for the enslaved. When contemplating running away, the slave had to consider many serious potential obstacles. In addition to the fears of getting caught and
Ema ancip patio on
By 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring that all slaves in states not held by Union troops were free. A few years later, the slaves in the remaining states were emancipated. In 1865, slavery was officially abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment. Leslie C. Baker Kimmons See also Abolitionism: The Movement; African Americans; Douglass, Frederick; Dred Scott v. Sandford; Emancipation Proclamation; Frazier, E. Franklin; Lincoln, Abraham
Further Readings
Blassingame, John. 1979. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford University Press. Davidson, Basil. 1980. The African Slave Trade. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Littlefield, Daniel C. 1991. Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
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Slovak Americans
SLOVAK AMERICANS The history of the Slovak Republic has been one of domination by different countries for centuries. As a result of events at home, many Slovaks immigrated to the United States during the later part of the 19th century. Despite centuries of occupation, Slovaks have worked hard to maintain a distinct ethnic identity. The same can be said for Slovak immigrants in the United States. The history of Slovak Americans can be seen as the struggle to create a blended identity, one American yet uniquely Slovak, as described in this entry.
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Historical Background The Slovak Republic officially became an independent state on January 1, 1993. The Slovak Republic is surrounded by Hungary and Austria to the south, Poland and the Czech Republic to the north and the Ukraine to the east. Before independence, Slovakia, as it was known before (the terms will be used interchangeably here), had been part of Czechoslovakia since 1981, with a brief period of independence during World War II. Before becoming part of Czechoslovakia, the Slovak Republic was part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, under the direct control of Hungary.
Although much of the country was officially called Upper Hungary, Slovaks themselves referred to their land as Slovakia and struggled to resist Magyarization (to become Hungarian) by maintaining their native language and culture. When they came to the United States, they brought this struggle for ethnic identity with them. The first large numbers of Slovaks came to the United States in the 1870s and 1880s. Slovaks began to immigrate to the United States for three primary reasons: the exponential population growth in Slovakia, the lack of land, and the lack of industrialization. After the abolition of serfdom in 1848, many Slovak peasants found themselves without land to farm. Instead, the land became even more concentrated within the hands of a few gentry. At the same time, Slovakia was dealing with the same population growth in the 19th century that confronted the rest of Europe. But unlike Western Europe, which also was in the midst of industrialization in the 19th century, Slovakia, like much of the Hungarian part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, was still an agricultural society. As a result, Slovak peasants filled the few cities, but found no work. These landless unemployed former farmers began to emigrate to neighboring countries, and eventually to the United States. In 1869, agents from the coal mines in Illinois and Pennsylvania appeared in Hungary and Slovakia proclaiming the high salaries and good life that could be found in the United States. Many Slovaks, desperate for income, began to make the journey to the United States. The first waves of Slovak immigrants to the United States came from the eastern parts of the country, from counties such as Saris, Zemplin, Spis, and Abov. The first Slovak community that developed in the United States came from Saris and settled in Streator, Illinois, near the coal mines. Central and western Slovakia also had countrypeople emigrating to the United States but not until after 1900 and not as many as came from the eastern parts of the country. Emigration helped Slovakia. It helped to alleviate the problems of the population boom. From 1870 to 1914, 650,000 people left Slovakia. As a result, the population of Slovakia declined from 2,400,000 in 1840 to less than 2,000,000 in 1919. More than 480,000 of these emigrants arrived in the United States. In the 1920 U.S. Census, there were 619,866 first- and second-generation Slovak Americans. Slovaks were the second largest Slavic group to come to the United States. Many of the original immigrants were men who sent money home to their families in
Slovak Americans
Slovakia and eventually brought their families to the United States or returned home.
Life in the United States Slovak immigrants settled mainly in the northeastern part of the United States. Unlike other immigrant groups, they tended to settle in more mid-size cities such as Cleveland, Ohio, and Hazleton, Pennsylvania. They also settled in industrial or mining towns located primarily east of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio and Potomac rivers. Almost half of Slovak immigrants settled in Pennsylvania. Ohio had the second largest Slovak population, followed by New Jersey, New York, Illinois, and Connecticut. Focus on Work k
The early Slovak immigrants were either unskilled laborers or farmers. Upon arriving in the United States, Slovaks tended to work in the steel, coal, and oil industry. In a survey of the U.S. labor force at the beginning of the 20th century, 13.1% of steel workers and 12.8% of coal miners were Slovak. In the oil refining industry, Slovaks made up 12.4% of the labor force, third behind the Irish and Poles. During this early immigration period, Slovak men on average made less than other White males. As a result, other family members would often have to work to contribute to the household. Slovak women often took in boarders, or worked in sweatshops and as maids. Slovak boys were often employed in the mines along with their fathers. Few Slovaks were skilled laborers or businesspeople. In a survey of Slovak leaders during the 1900s in Cleveland, Ohio; New York; and Bridgeport, Connecticut, less than 1% of those surveyed had their own businesses. Slovaks tended to embrace their working-class heritage. Slovak authors, such as Thomas Bell author of Out of the Furnace, wrote books about life in the mines and steel mills. They also wrote poems about life in the mills. One Slovak American poet, Peter Oresick, wrote a poem titled “Songs from the Slovak: The Mill.” When examining these works by Slovak authors, Laurence notes that what is most apparent is the central role that work plays within their lives. Yet, unlike what one might expect, Slovaks, within these works, though noting the difficulty of the working conditions, often tended to embrace their labor, making it a central part of their identity and sense of purpose. The workers themselves also would fight for
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better wages or to prevent a worsening of work conditions. The bloodiest Slovak-led strike occurred in Lattimer, Pennsylvania, in 1897. More than 1,000 workers in the anthracite mines went on strike. In the end, 16 people of Slavic descent were killed and 35 were wounded. Mainta ain nin ng Identiity y
Despite working long hours at the mines, Slovaks worked hard to establish a unique ethnic identity while highlighting their new U.S. heritages. They would often hold Slovak Days on U.S. holidays such as the Fourth of July. During these celebrations, Slovaks would sing both Slovak and U.S. songs. At these events, they would have Slovak activities such as the Miss Slovakia of Cleveland contest, while engaging in U.S. activities such as picnics. When they arrived in the United States, Slovak immigrants quickly began to establish fraternal organizations similar to the craft guilds they had in Slovakia. Some of these fraternal organizations were based on craft guilds from home, but others were based on religious affiliation and the more general category of national identity. Between 1883 and 1890, forty Slovak fraternal organizations were established. The fraternal organizations were responsible for providing their members with assistance if they became ill or injured, an early form of worker’s compensation. These organizations also provided a form of life insurance that covered burial expenses and sometimes gave a nominal amount of money to surviving family members. But perhaps most importantly, they provided a social center where members got together for balls, picnics, and athletic events. Most Slovaks were Catholic, but a significant minority was also Protestants. This religious difference served as a source of division during different times of Slovak immigration. The religious divisions also made it difficult to establish one national fraternal organization. As a result, each religious group established its own fraternal organizations and newspapers. For example, Catholics established the First Catholic Slovak Union and a newspaper titled Jednota. Newspapers were usually written in Slovak and contained news about what was going on among the immigrants in the United States and news from home. Another way that Slovaks worked to maintain their ethnic identity is through language. Slovaks developed ethnic communities usually within ten blocks of the parishes they developed. Within these communities,
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Slovak Americans
they began to build local churches, where they often insisted that their religious leaders be Slovaks loyal to the Slovak cause of independence from Hungary. They wanted Slovak priests in the Catholic parishes so that they could say mass in Slovak. In addition, Slovak Americans would often send their children to the local parochial school so that they could learn the Slovak language. But to do this, the churches had to find Slovak priests fluent in the Slovak language. To accomplish this goal, Slovaks would actively petition their dioceses to get priests with the desired characteristics. They also recruited nuns fluent in Slovak to teach in the schools. Slovaks considered fighting for the freedom of Slovakia from Hungarian control as part of their ethnic duty. They wanted Slovakia to be united with the Czech Republic because they thought it would help Slovaks maintain their identity. The goal was to create a unified, Czech-O-Slovakia as a federated nation, where Slovakia would have its own governing body, could use its own language and would share power equally with the Czechs. Slovak Americans worked hard to make this happen. They supported the idea in newspapers and even sent money home to support the cause. In 1918, Czechoslovakia was formed. But in the end, many Slovaks complained that power was too concentrated among the Czechs and that they were a subjugated people once again. Becomin ng U.S S. Citiz zens
During the 1920s, it became harder for Slovaks to maintain a unique ethnic identity. Immigration had slowed greatly ever since the beginning of World War I. In addition, anti-immigrant sentiment was growing in the United States and culminated in the passage of the Immigration National Origins Act of 1924, which limited the number of immigrants from specific parts of Europe. Slovaks were considered among the undesirable “new immigrants” and thus immigration from the new Czechoslovakia was severely limited. To combat nativist sentiments, Slovaks worked hard to highlight their loyalty to the United States. With their annual Slovak Days, they made sure that U.S. songs were sung and that the U.S. flag was proudly displayed, and they would often deliberately hold the event on the Fourth of July. Many immigrants became U.S. citizens. During World War I an II, they bought war bonds through their fraternal organizations so that the Slovak origins
of the money would be apparent. During World War II, Slovak Americans raised so much money that they had a B-17 bomber named after them: The American Slovak. They also had a ship named after an honored Slovak sailor, the USS Durik. In this way, Slovaks highlighted their U.S. identity while embracing their Slovak roots.
The Contemporary Community Throughout the history of Slovak Americans, they have worked hard to maintain a unique ethnic identity although their homeland was not independent. Yet, because of a lack of immigration since World War I, many Slovaks have assimilated into U.S. society and no longer identify as Slovak. In addition, because the Slovak Republic only became an independent nation in 1993, it is difficult to obtain an accurate count of Slovak Americans. When they first came to the United States, their country of origin was Hungary. In the 20th century, their country of origin became Czechoslovakia. During this time, the only way to identify Slovaks was through their mother tongue. As of 1993, Slovak Americans can now claim their Slovak roots. Unfortunately, many may not even realize their Slovak origins and instead identify themselves as Hungarian and Czechoslovakian. In the 2000 U.S. Census, only 797,764 U.S. residents, or .4% of White Americans, defined their ethnicity as Slovak. In the same year, 441,403 defined their ethnicity as Czechoslovakian. Based on the census data, Slovak Americans are doing much better than their ancestors a century ago. The median family income for Slovak Americans was $59,363, more than $9,000 more than the total population. Similarly, 22.8% of Slovak Americans have at least a bachelor’s degree whereas 15.8% of all U.S. citizens have such a degree. Slovak Americans have contributed greatly to U.S. society. Yet, it is difficult for Slovaks to gain recognition for their contributions because of the history of Slovakia, which makes it difficult to determine who is of Slovak origins. The primary way of determining Slovak origin is by the town from which people or their ancestors emigrate. Based on this criterion, there are many noteworthy Slovak Americans, among them are Edward Teller, a nuclear physicist who is credited with developing the first atomic bomb; Melville Herskovitz, a sociology scholar of race and ethnicity focusing on the African American community and
Slovene Americans
writer of the classic Myth of the Negro Past; actors Peter Lorre and Paul Newman; artist Andy Warhol; and John Daniel Hertz, the founder of Yellow Cab Co., and Hertz Car Rental. The history of Slovak Americans in the United States is one of trying to maintain a unique ethnic identity, while still becoming a part of U.S. society. In the end, Slovak Americans developed a blended identity that included a commitment to a free Slovak nation and a commitment to the U.S. ethic of hard work and determination. Given the history of the Slovak Republic, it is remarkable and a testament to their commitment to their ethnic origins that almost 800,000 U.S. citizens define their ethnicity as Slovak. Despite the low numbers today, Slovak Americans have made and continue to make valuable contributions to U.S. society. Monique R. Payne-Pikus See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Czech Americans; Hungarian Americans; Immigration, U.S.
Further Readings
Alexander, June Granatir. 2004. Ethnic Pride, American Patriotism: Slovaks and Other New Immigrants in the Interwar Era. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Laurence, Patricia Ondek. 1983. “The Garden in the Mill: The Slovak Immigrant’s View of Work.” MELUS 10(2):57–68. Rechcigl, Miloslav, Jr. 2005. Czechs and Slovaks in America. New York: Columbia University Press. Stolarik, M. Mark. 1976. “From Field to Factory: The Historiography of Slovak Immigration to the United States.” International Migration Review 10(1):81–102. Stolarik, Marian Mark. 1989. Immigration and Urbanization: The Slovak Experience, 1870–1918. New York: AMS Press.
Historical Background The Slovene territory of indigenous settlement is today divided among five nations. Most Slovenes live in the Republic of Slovenia, which was part of Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1991, but has been an independent state since 1991. As members of indigenous minorities, Slovenes live also in frontier regions of neighboring Italy (in Friuli-Venezia Giulia), Austria (in southern Carinthia and some neighboring parts of the frontier region of Styria), and in border regions of Hungary and Croatia. From the Middle Ages until 1918, most of the Slovene ethnic territory was part of the Habsburg monarchy. Slovene emigration began in the 17th century. The first Slovene immigrants to the United States were missionaries (e.g., Marcus Antonius Kappus). At the end of the 17th century, as a result of the CounterReformation in Slovene lands, some Slovene Protestants emigrated and together with German Protestants established Ebenezer, Georgia, which was destroyed during the Civil War. These immigrants were followed by some adventurers and Catholic missionaries (Bishop Friderik Baraga, Rev. Franc Pirc, Bishop Ignacij Mrak, among them), who labored among North American Indians in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Later some political émigrés also settled in the United States; especially worth mentioning are “utopian socialists,” including Andrej Bernard
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Slovene American immigrants in the United States and their descendants trace their ancestry to one of the smallest European ethnic groups, with less than 2 million members. Their history in the United States dates back to the 17th century, and the current community, though small, remains vital, as this entry shows.
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Smolnikar and participants in the March Revolution of 1848 in Austria (e.g., Anton Fister). After the U.S. Civil War ended, the first larger groups of farmers from Gorenjska followed the calls of the Rev. Pirc to Minnesota. Mass emigration of Slovenes started in the 1870s. According to the U.S. Census of 1910, 183,431 inhabitants with Slovene as their mother tongue lived in the United States; in 1920, their number had increased to 208,552. After the U.S. Congress passed restrictive immigration laws in the 1920s, the only large group of Slovene immigrants to the United States was a group of about 3,000 political émigrés who fled the communist dictatorship in the 1950s. Later, they were joined by relatives, after the government of communist Yugoslavia gave them permission to leave. Since the mid-1950s, only individual adventurers and scholars, scientists, and artists have emigrated, as part of a “brain drain.” Most of the early immigrants found work in the mines and industries around the Great Lakes (Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin); in New York and Pennsylvania; in the West in California, Oregon, and Washington; and in mountain regions in Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. There has recently been a large increase in the number of Slovenes in Florida because of the migration of retirees, from 1,500 in 1980 to 5,300 in 2000.
Contemporary Community The 2000 U.S. Census recorded 176,691 persons of Slovene ancestry. Most of them are second, third, or fourth generation. Most of the Slovene immigrants to the United States settled in cities, where they founded Slovene ethnic settlements; some are still vital today. A Slovene ethnic settlement is defined as part of a city or town with a large enough concentration or nucleus of a Slovene community that at least one ethnic organizational structure exists: a lodge of a Slovene fraternal benefit society, a Slovene national home, a Slovene or mixed Catholic or evangelical ethnic parish, or the editorial offices or publisher of a Slovene ethnic newspaper. Slovene fraternal benefit organizations are insurance companies that developed when the United States did not have any kind of insurance, to insure workers against accidents at work or illnesses. These organizations use their profits to support cultural and editorial activities of Slovene immigrants. First
organized at the beginning of the 1880s, many of these centralized organizations, composed of individual lodges, are still active today in Slovene settlements. Among them are the Slovene National Benefit Society (SNPJ), headquartered in Imperial, Pennsylvania; the American Slovenian Catholic Union (KSKJ) in Joliet, Illinois; the American Fraternal Union (ABZ) in Ely, Minnesota; and the American Mutual Life Association (AMLA) in Cleveland, Ohio. The KSKJ, once named the Grand Carniolian Catholic Union, demanded that its members be active Catholics, but the SNPJ proclaimed that the religious beliefs of individual members were their private affair. The SNPJ ideologically consisted of two wings, liberal and socialist; its leading members were active in the socialist workers’ movement in the United States. Ethnic parishes played an important role in the life of Slovenes in the United States. The first Slovene parish was founded in 1871 in St. Stephens (formerly Brockway), Minnesota. By 1941, there were thirty-two Slovene Catholic parishes, one Protestant parish, and one Franciscan monastery. These parishes were also important in promoting cultural and educational life, establishing their own parish schools where there were enough Slovene believers. Instruction in parish schools was provided in English, but the Slovene language was often a subject. Most priests and parish schoolteachers were of Slovene ancestry, which played a positive role in keeping awareness of Slovene ancestry among Slovene immigrants and their descendants. Cultu ura al Cente ers
Slovene immigrants in the United States also built Slovene national homes, in which meetings of the lodges and cultural events and parties took place. In larger settlements, Slovene national homes consisted of two-story buildings with halls for cultural events, libraries, and smaller rooms for meetings. The first homes were built by fraternal benefit societies. In 1905, only two existed, in Chicago, Illinois, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania. During the next 10 years more were built: in Rock Springs, West Virginia; Frontenac, Kansas; Herminie, Pennsylvania; and Ely, Minnesota, with building reaching its peak in the 1920s. The largest was built on St. Clair Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1924. Some were built after World War II. In 1949, Slovene political émigrés established the “Baragov
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dom.” In the 1970s, Slovene retirees established homes in New Smyrna Beach and Miami, Florida. In the 1990s, a home was also built in Detroit, Michigan. In the 1990s, a Slovene Cultural Centre was built near the Slovene Franciscan Monastery in Lemont, Illinois. In the 1930s, fraternal benefit lodges started to construct recreation centers in the countryside. In 1938, the Cleveland federation of SNPJ lodges opened a recreation center in Kirtland, Ohio. Lodges of Slovene fraternals opened similar centers in Samsula, Florida; in Illinois; and in Colorado. Members of the Slovene political émigré community built “Slovenska Pristava,” with a hall, swimming pool, and chapel, in Harpersfield, Ohio, to commemorate victims of communist terror in Slovenia after World War II. The largest recreation center of Slovene immigrants was built in 1963 by SNPJ near Enon Valley in western Pennsylvania. It was incorporated as the Borough of SNPJ and became the smallest Pennsylvania city in 1977. The problems and economic decline of inner cities, followed by movement of people to the suburbs, caused the closing of some Slovene national homes and parishes in the 1960s. However, both forms of organization still play an important role in uniting and organizing Slovene Americans.
1941 to 1944, and George Voinovich, whose mother was a Slovene American, was mayor of Cleveland from 1980 to 1989. Both Lausche and Voinovich later served as Ohio governors (Lausche, 1944–1946 and 1948–1956; Voinovich, 1991–1998) and U.S. senators from Ohio (Lausche, 1956–1968; Voinovich, 1998– ). Among members of the U.S. House of Representatives of Slovene descent are John Blatnik (D-MN, 1947–1974), Joe Skubitz (R-KS, 1963–1978), Dennis Eckart (D-OH, 1981–1992), Ray Kogovsek (D-CO, 1979–1984), and James Oberstar (D-MN, 1975– ). Slovene Americans have also contributed to the United States as writers (e.g., Louis Adamic), journalists (e.g., Charles Kuralt), and professors. Slovene Americans have also demonstrated their interest in events in the old homeland, especially during political crises such as World Wars I and II and the period of democratization of Slovene society, independence movements, and the struggles for international recognition of Slovenia as an independent state. Slovene Americans also supported Slovenia during its accession process to the European Union and NATO. Slovene Americans have helped Slovenia morally and materially whenever the country needed their help, regardless of when and why they emigrated.
Papers and Politiccs
See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Community Empowerment; Ethnic Conflict; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Immigration, U.S.; Religion; Roman Catholics
Slovene ethnic newspapers and other periodicals, both local and organs of Slovene fraternals, played an important role in keeping Slovene identity alive. Some of them printed numerous copies that were spread around the United States. These publications followed the events in Slovene communities and influenced the political and economic activities of Slovene immigrants. Prominent among those still published today are Ameriška Domovina, Amerikanski Slovenec–Glasilo Kranjsko-slovenske katoliške jednote (a successor of the first U.S. Slovene ethnic newspaper, published since 1891), and Glas–Voice, an organ of AMLA (all published in Cleveland), and Prosveta-Enlightment, an organ of SNPJ. A noteworthy ethnic newspaper among the many that have ceased publication is New York’s Glas Naroda, a daily issued between 1893 and 1963, with a circulation of 14,000 copies in the 1900s. Various ethnic organizations fostered the participation of individual members in U.S. politics at all levels. Among successful Slovene American politicians have been Frank Lausche, mayor of Cleveland from
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Further Readings
Gobetz, Giles Edward, ed. 1980. Slovenian Heritage, Vol 1. Willoughby Hills, OH: Slovenian Research Center of America. Klemencic, Matjaz. 1995. Slovenes of Cleveland: The Creation of a New Nation and a New World Community Slovenia and the Slovenes of Cleveland, Ohio. Novo mesto, Slovenia: Dolenjska zaloz ba. Klemencic, Matjaz. 1999. Jurij Trunk med Koroško in Zdruzenimi dr z avami Amerike ter zgodovina slovenskih naselij v Leadvillu, Kolorado, in San Franciscu, Kalifornija [Jurij Trunk between Carinthia and the United States and the History of the Slovene Settlements in Leadville, Colorado, and San Francisco, California]. Celovec-Ljubljana-Dunaj, Slovenia: Mohorjeva zaloz ba. Friš, Darko. 1995. Ameriški Slovenci in Katoliška cerkev: 1871–1924 [American Slovenes and the Catholic Church: 1871–1924]. Celovec-Ljubljana-Dunaj, Slovenia: Mohorjeva zalo ba. ∨
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Social Capital
SOCIAL CAPITAL The basic premise of social capital is that social relations of a noneconomic nature can be developed or used to obtain economic benefits. Social capital is a general concept that includes many possible ways in which connections and relationships among families, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, coworkers, and fellow nationals can potentially produce a variety of positive economic benefits for individuals, families, neighborhoods, communities, and nations. This entry looks at three specific characteristics of social relations that have been studied as sources of social capital: closure, bridging, and resources.
Closure as Social Capital An integral part of social capital research is the theory that education, income, and wealth inequality between genders, as well as racial and ethnic groups, can be explained by differences in social relations patterns and practices. One such difference is in the degree of “closure” in networks of social relations; closure describes a group or network of individuals where all members know each other intimately; they spend a significant amount of time together, and therefore possess similar values and cultural characteristics. A tightly knit set of social relations in a family and a community allows for the creation of rules or norms of reciprocity that translate into a stable environment for exchanging and developing resources within the group. Cheating one member of the group is usually seen as unacceptable behavior and punishable by all members. This line of research has concentrated on the positive effects of the traditional family, formed by a husband and wife, and parental involvement on educational outcomes for children. The involvement of both parents in children’s education produces higher grades and higher probabilities of college enrollment, translating into better possibilities for social mobility and higher incomes. Research related to closure also includes the positive effects of a tightly knit community united by culture, ethnicity, or religion, as all members of the group actively participate in regulating the behavior of children and support family efforts in that regard. Asian immigrants and Asian Americans (particularly of Chinese, Korean, and Filipino descent) have largely been identified as groups possessing cultural norms supporting educational and economic achievement.
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These groups also have sufficiently close social networks to enforce and perpetuate those norms. Minority communities and ethnic enclaves are fertile ground for the development of closure-based social capital. Geographic proximity between individuals and families with similar backgrounds facilitates maintaining common beliefs. The relative uniformity of these beliefs, particularly those related to trust and reciprocity, creates a preference for intra-group exchanges, where the exchange of “favors” is a common occurrence. Finally, because of geographic and social proximity, the group possesses the capacity to punish members who do not behave in socially prescribed ways. Because of their social capital, entrepreneurs in ethnic and immigrant communities are able to access cheaper (and sometimes free) resources such as capital, labor, production inputs, and information through their social relations. The support of their family and neighbors increases their chances of survival. Research and theory in the area of political science has been concerned with a degradation or loss of closure-based social capital in the United States. According to scholars in this area, modern technologies and lifestyles have diminished the amount of interaction between members of a community and even a nation, dramatically reducing the amount of social capital available for all individuals. Without constant face-to-face interaction, the mechanisms to control the behavior of group members weakens. With less social capital, communities and nations have a reduced capacity for collective action and are unable to solve their own problems.
“Bridging” Social Capital An opposite approach to social capital is the one that concentrates on social relations as “bridges.” People have a tendency to connect or have relationships with people similar to themselves. Constant interaction over an extended period makes them even more similar to their family and friends. This behavioral tendency makes society a collection of network clusters more or less separate from each other; spaces separating clusters are structural holes. Individuals within a cluster have more interaction among themselves than with individuals from other clusters. From an economic perspective, social ties within a cluster are redundant; all individuals within the cluster provide the individual with the same information and resources. The value of social capital as a bridge
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lies in the ability of certain individuals to connect previously separated social networks, creating a fresh flow of information, resources, and ideas. Although not always the case, bridging social capital is located on the weak ties between acquaintances rather than on the strong, cohesive ties of family and friends. This particular approach to social capital has concentrated in exploring the business environment, explaining differences in career performances and entrepreneurial outcomes by pointing out different networking patterns by managers, scientists, and other workers. Individuals who are capable of bridging the different departments in an organization or who bring new clients through their social connections tend to be compensated better and promoted earlier. Although closure-based and bridging social capitals are apparently opposite concepts with conflicting mechanisms, scholars in the area of development have integrated them both into a coherent approach. For a rural community to solve its developmental problems, it needs a certain level of cohesion to organize projects, but it also benefits from bridging contacts that bring resources and ideas from the outside world. This need for balance between bonding and bridging has been extended to urban neighborhoods, teenage development, voluntary and religious associations, and businesses.
Social Capital as Resources The third dimension of social relations that creates economic benefits is resources. According to this perspective, the type of connection and the type of social capital (bridging or bonding) are not as important as are the quantity and quality of resources accessible through social connections. Society can be described as a hierarchy, and people at the top possess more resources than people at the bottom do. Individuals who are able to access contacts in higher levels of the social hierarchy than themselves have higher degrees of success in activities such as finding a better job or obtaining money for entrepreneurial ventures. Disadvantages for minority groups come from lack of both resources in the environment and specific strategies for investing in social relations. The need for strong, closure-based social ties or bridging social connections depends on the socioeconomic position of the individual and his or her group. In general, racial and ethnic minorities have limited resources available in their immediate social environment.
Furthermore, individuals of lower socioeconomic status tend to use strong local contacts from their family and kin. Because family and kin are likely to have similar resources among themselves, the lack of bridging networking leads to poor social capital. Developing social connections that transcend structural holes to reach individuals with higher resources is a more efficient strategy to obtain economic benefits. By the same token, individuals belonging to socioeconomic elites do not need to reach out to individuals of lower socioeconomic levels because their closure-based ties with family and friends provide them with plenty of resources.
Negative Consequences of Social Capital Researchers have also considered the possibility that social connections may interfere with economic activity and create undesirable outcomes for communities and individuals. A first approach considers the unfortunate interaction between class and social capital. Small, tightly knit social networks are developed by minorities and disadvantaged groups and by political and economic elites. By maintaining a closed network with highly regulated behaviors and specific rules that favor dealings with insiders, elites keep opportunities and resources for themselves. Research into ethnic enclaves has highlighted three potential negative effects of closure for both minority groups and minority individuals. First, individuals and businesses in ethnic communities are embedded in a complex web of social obligations that may drain resources from them. According to the rules of reciprocity, business owners are entitled to receive help from their kin but also obligated to provide it regardless of economic efficiency or profitability. A second negative consequence of social capital is the loss of freedom. Immigrant communities may offer opportunities for newcomers, but they sometimes overregulate individual behavior and limit access to the outside world. Closure in a community enhances the capacity for punishing individuals, which strongly discourages behaviors that are not culturally accepted. In such an environment, innovation and change are incredibly difficult. Finally, a third negative effect is related to the inherent tension between upward mobility and solidarity. Communities may exercise pressures on individuals to “level” down their goals and expectations
Social Darwinism
to match those of their peers. As facing common adversity is the main source of solidarity, successful members who leave the group are seen as a threat. Leveling norms are more common in groups that have consistently been blocked from economic opportunity for generations. Martha A. Martinez See also Cultural Capital; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Immigrant Communities; Wealth Distribution
Further Readings
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.” Pp. 241–258 in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by J. G. Richardson. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Burt, Ronald S. 1992. Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Burt, Ronald S. 1998. “The Gender of Social Capital.” Rationality and Society 10(1):5–46. Coleman, James S. 1988. “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital.” American Journal of Sociology, 94:S95-S121. Lin, Nan. 2000. “Inequality in Social Capital.” Contemporary Sociology 29(6):785–795. Lin, Nan. 2001. Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Perna, Laura W. and Marvin A. Titus. 2005. “The Relationship Between Parental Involvement as Social Capital and College Enrollment: An Examination of Racial/Ethnic Group Differences.” Journal of Higher Education 76(5):485–518. Putnam, Robert D. 1995. “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital.” Journal of Democracy 6:65–78. Woolcock, Michael and Deepa Narayan. 2000. “Social Capital: Implications for Development Theory, Research, and Policy.” World Bank Research Observer 15(2):225–249.
SOCIAL DARWINISM Social Darwinism was a widely diffused ideology of the late 19th and early 20th century based on the premise that disparities among individuals, social classes, and ethnoracial categories are the outcome of fundamental inequalities in their capacity to adjust to the environment. Inequalities in social conditions are
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the result of natural inequalities in capability and intelligence. Individuals and groups become poor and subordinate because they are inherently inferior and incompetent. This entry describes the theory, distinguishes it from Darwin’s theory of evolution, and summarizes the historical context in which it developed and the current survival of related ideas.
What Is Social Darwinism? Social Darwinism is a set of ideas that attempted to explain and justify a specific social order. Social Darwinists asserted that inequalities are natural. At a practical level, Social Darwinists opposed social intervention to reduce disparities. In political and social theory, Social Darwinists challenged the view that greater equality among individuals and groups is possible and desirable. Social equality may have existed in primitive societies, they thought, but it disappeared as societies became more complex. In fact, growing inequality spurred societal evolution. Capitalism, which Social Darwinists saw as the most advanced form of society, is especially competitive. Social Darwinists addressed a contradiction in capitalist society—the formal equality of citizens is in tension with the large disparities among individuals and groups in wealth, power, living conditions, and ownership of property. Social Darwinists explained this contradiction by asserting that formal equality cannot eliminate the effects of fundamental biological differences in human ability. At a philosophical level, Social Darwinists opposed ideologies of transcendence, arguing that because inequalities persist and are natural phenomena, egalitarian social orders must be considered counterfactual utopias that can never be realized in complex societies. Attempts to realize egalitarian social arrangements can only end in disorder, stagnation, or bureaucratic rigidity, they thought. Social Darwinists considered inequalities and disparities to be a natural and healthy condition associated with dynamic societies and economic growth.
Comparison With Darwin’s Theory of Evolution The ideology of Social Darwinism used terms from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution of species but applied them to human institutions with a considerable amount of distortion and misinterpretation.
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Darwinian evolution is a theory of change in populations and species. Inheritable variation in the characteristics of individuals and populations is a fundamental feature of life in this view. As the environment changes, inherited characteristics become more or less conducive to the survival of individual organisms and the likelihood that they can reproduce themselves and pass these characteristics on to offspring. Thus, in the long run, certain organisms with inherited traits that are favorable to survival and reproduction become more numerous within that specific environment, but other individuals and entire species may disappear. Natural selection takes place within a specific environment, and within that environment, a species (or a variant form within a species) is said to survive when it continues to reproduce itself. Under favorable conditions, its numbers or population proportion may increase in succeeding generations. Natural selection and changes in species can readily be observed and do not always take many eons. For example, when the landscape of English milltowns became darker and sootier during industrialization, dark moths were less likely to be seen and eaten by predators than were light moths, so dark-colored mothers were more likely to survive and reproduce. They became more common. Multidrug resistant tuberculosis bacteria and penicillin-resistant bacteria are strains that emerge by natural selection and survive in the new environment of modern drugs that kill the nonresistant varieties. Developments in genetics in the late 19th and 20th centuries—specifically the discovery of DNA and the understanding of mutations— have clarified the mechanisms posited in Darwin’s original formulation. Social Darwinists made a dubious effort to transpose these scientific discoveries to the area of social arrangements. Social Darwinists made debatable claims about the inheritability of key characteristics, failed to observe that the social environment is contested and socially constructed, and conveniently overlooked the fact that impoverished groups often reproduce their numbers on a larger scale than the wealthy do—which would suggest that the poor are more fit than the rich in evolutionary terms. Social Darwinists believed that competitiveness and aggression are the inheritable traits that make individuals and groups more fit, when one could argue the opposite— altruistic and sociable behavior are the human capacities that made the species dominant on the planet.
The confusion of “Social Darwinism” and Darwinian evolutionary theory leads to disingenuous and misleading arguments. Social Darwinists used references to Darwin to make their ideology seem part of a scientific theory, and creationists charged Darwinian evolutionary theory with complicity in racist and inhumane positions.
Historical Context Social Darwinism was an ideology of the late 19th and early 20th century, widely diffused among middleclass groups in Europe and among European settlers, but not popular among the European working classes or colonized peoples. Its rise and diffusion can be interpreted as an effort to justify social class inequalities, colonialism, and the displacement and extermination of Indigenous Peoples. Although Enlightenment and early 19th-century thinkers occasionally used biological arguments to justify slavery and other social inequalities, such arguments were generally still subordinated to the ideal of “liberty, equality, fraternity” and the belief that “all men are created equal.” The later 19th century was a period of large disparities within industrial societies, the rise of “robber baron” capitalism, and major imperial expansion, and Social Darwinism provided a justification of these inequalities and an attempt to explain their origins. Two social theorists associated with Social Darwinism were Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) in England, who is said to have invented the phrase “survival of the fittest,” and William Graham Sumner (1840–1910) in the United States. They focused on the necessity for the successful strata of capitalism to be unceasingly aggressive, competitive, and innovative. Sumner summed up this view with his striking admonition “It’s root, hog, or die.” Competition in capitalist society is structured by a system of contracts, not force, and Spencer opposed militarism as a less evolved form of contention than economic struggle leading to peaceful industrial development and progress. Capitalist society is advanced by ruthless competition and has become the most successful form of society by the constant struggle for economic and social survival in this view. Policies of curbing competition, subsidizing industries, and aiding vulnerable populations in the economic struggle would therefore appear to stifle initiative and weaken society as a whole.
Social Darwinism
Like all ideologies, Social Darwinist ideology was in contention with other perspectives of the time: One opposing ideology was socialism, especially Marxist socialism, which championed equality not just as an ideal but as a goal to be realized in economic, political, and social arrangements. Social Darwinism clashed with the “Social Gospel,” the conviction of many Christians that the Gospels teach us to love our neighbor and engage in activism for the poor and oppressed. Social Darwinism was also challenged by utilitarian liberals inspired by John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), who supported public health measures, public education, and state regulation of factory conditions because these policies would enlarge liberties and contribute to greater happiness and well-being. In the United States, sociologists such as Lester Ward (1841–1913) and pragmatic philosophers associated with the Progressive movement, such as John Dewey (1859–1952), sharply criticized Social Darwinism and questioned its laissez-faire conclusions. Social Darwinism overlapped in its ideas and support base with racism, another prevalent pseudoscientific ideology among Europeans in the later 19th and early 20th century. Racist thinkers of the period argued that racial difference is the key feature of human biology, cultural differences are the result of inheritable differences in mentalities, and races are fundamentally unequal in their intellectual capacities. Social Darwinism thus was linked with racism as ideological justification for European dominance. Social Darwinism was also linked to the eugenics (“good breeding”) program and movement, widespread among middle-class Europeans at that time. The eugenics movement called for applying plant and livestock breeding techniques to human populations to propagate good strains (often identified with the middle class of Northern European or “Anglo-Saxon” origin) and reduce the numbers of undesirable ones (explicitly or implicitly identified as the poor, “the criminal element,” “the rising tide of color,” and inferior races).
Recent History The major wave of Social Darwinism disappeared by the middle of the 20th century. The Nazis’ use of racial ideologies to justify the extermination of ethnic groups (Jews and Roma) cast doubt on all discourses based on race, racial difference in mentalities, and notions of
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inferior or superior races. This type of thought, so popular and widely diffused a generation earlier, became unacceptable after World War II. Modern population biology and physical anthropology eliminated the notion of “race” from scientific analysis. The emergence of the modern welfare state in Europe, sharp decreases in income inequalities, the political activism of the working class, and improved health and education systems showed that “the poor” were not naturally trapped in their inferior condition and limited abilities but were sharing in dramatically rising standards of literacy, health, well-being, and measures of intelligence. After the weakening of welfare states in the 1970s and 1980s, new forms of Social Darwinist arguments reappeared to justify recent increases in disparities within and among societies, although the term “Social Darwinist” is no longer used. For example, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994) argued that poverty, income disparities, welfare dependency, criminal and antisocial behavior, and racial disparities are reflections of underlying differences in intelligence. The authors contend that social intervention to promote equality of opportunity is unlikely to alter these disparities because a large proportion of variation in life conditions is the result of inherited differences in ability and competence. Though there are major problems in Herrnstein and Murray’s data, statistical analysis, and interpretations, the popular interest in their book shows that Social Darwinist arguments continue to be used to justify disparities. Roberta Garner See also Bell Curve, The; Colonialism; Cultural Relativism; Eugenics; Marginalization; Political Economy; Racism
Further Readings
Bannister, Robert. 1979. Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Hawkins, Mike. 1997. Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945. New York: Cambridge University Press. Herrnstein, Richard J. and Charles Murray. 1994. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press.
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Social Distance
Hobsbawm, Eric. 1988. The Age of Empire, 1875–1914. New York: Random House. Hofstadter, Richard. [1959] 1993. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Sumner, William G. 1883. What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. New York: Harper.
SOCIAL DISTANCE Social distance refers to the tendency to approach or withdraw from a racial or ethnic group in social relationships. It is meant to summarize not merely physical distance in living alongside but also how one might react to personal relationships such as interracial marriages. This entry describes the origin and use of the term. Theoretically, the concept has its origins in the work of Georg Simmel, who wrote about people’s linkages through broad social spaces. Simmel’s student Robert Park and his “Chicago School” of sociology refined the concept and directly applied it to race and ethnic relations. Emory Bogardus, with whom it is most closely associated today, operationalized social distance in such a manner to allow it to be easily measured. His social distance scale is so widely used that it is often called the “Bogardus scale.” The scale asks people how willing they would be to interact with various racial and ethnic groups in specified social situations. The situations describe different degrees of social contact or social distance. The seven items used, with their corresponding distance scores, follow. People are asked whether they would be willing to admit each group: To close kinship by marriage (1.00) To my club as personal chums (2.00) To my street as neighbors (3.00) To employment in my occupation (4.00) To citizenship in my country (5.00) As only visitors to my country (6.00) Would exclude from my country (7.00)
A score of 1.00 for any group would indicate no social distance and therefore no prejudice. Researchers regard the Bogardus Social Distance Scale as a
cumulative scale because agreement with any item implies agreement with all preceding items—that is, if you are prepared to allow one to become your neighbor, you presumably would allow them to become citizens. The social distance scale has been administered to many different groups in other counties as well. Despite some minor flaws and certain refinements needed in the scale, the results of these studies are useful and can be compared over time and across different societies. The attractive feature of the conceptualization of social distance is that it brings societal issues such as “race relations” down to the personal level. In addition, it is intuitively simplistic that quantifies the common conversational query, “But would you allow your daughter to marry one?”
Social Distance in the United States Reviewing findings of the social distance scale in the United States at different points in time over a 65-year period, the top third of the hierarchy (least social distance) embraces White Americans and Northern Europeans. Typically in the middle are Eastern and Southern Europeans, and generally near the bottom (most social distance) are racial minorities. Social distance is not limited to how members of the dominant group perceive individuals who are members of racial and ethnic minorities. The scale has been posed to a sample of African Americans, asking them to express their attitudes. This is sometimes referred to as the “reverse social distance scale.” In such instances, a hierarchy emerges that is similar to that of White respondents. In other words, Jewish, Mexican American, Asian, Puerto Rican, Black African, and Black American groups share the same hierarchy but each placed its own group at the top. The extent of prejudice as illustrated in the ranking of racial and ethnic groups seems to be widely shared. Studies have also been performed in other societies and show that they have a racial and ethnic hierarchy as well. A tentative conclusion that we can draw from these studies is that the extent of prejudice is decreasing over time. Although the change was slight from survey to survey, it is generally downward. However, many specific nationalities and races experienced little change. This result was also confirmed empirically in research on stereotypes. However, researchers are cautious about whether people are becoming more sophisticated and are increasingly responding with
Social Inequality
“respectable” answers rather than their true opinions about other racial and ethnic groups. Companion to measuring social distance are efforts to determine how it may be reduced. Somewhat ironically it appears that the more contact people have with someone of a different background, the less likely they will categorize them generally in a negative light in social distance measures. Critical to this contact is that it match people of equal status. For example, when professionals of different ethnic backgrounds interact, they are likely to see one another’s group membership in a different, more positive light. However, if the contact is unpleasant or is hierarchical in nature (for example, master and slave), there will be little reduction of social distance. Although social distance was developed with a focus on social relationships among racial and ethnic groups, it has been used effectively to speak of the relationships people are willing to have, or not to have with religious groups as well as a host of stigmatized groups in society such as ex-mental patients, gays and lesbians, the homeless, and ex-convicts. Richard T. Schaefer See also American Apartheid; Chicago School of Race Relations; Contact Hypothesis; Housing Audits; Interracial Friendships; Park, Robert E.; Prejudice; Robbers Cave Experiment; Stereotypes; Sundown Towns
Further Readings
Bogardus, Emory. 1925. “Measuring Social Distance.” Journal of Applied Sociology 9(March–April):299–308. Bogardus, Emory. 1968. “Comparing Racial Distance in Ethiopia, South Africa, and the United States.” Sociology and Social Research 52(January):149–156. Crull, Sue R. and Brent T. Bruton. 1985. “Possible Decline in Tolerance toward Minorities: Social Distance on a Midwest Campus.” Sociology and Social Research 70(October):57–62. Lee, Motoko Y., Stephen G. Sapp, and Melvin C. Ray. 1996. “The Reverse Social Distance Scale.” Journal of Social Psychology 136(1):17–24. Owen, Carolyn A., Howard C. Eisner, and Thomas R. McFaul. 1981. “A Half-Century of Distance Research: National Replication of the Bogardus Studies.” Sociology and Social Research 66(October):80–97. Park, Robert E. and Ernest W. Burgess. 1921. Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
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Simmel, Georg and Kurt H. Wolff. 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
SOCIAL INEQUALITY Social inequality is used to describe the varying levels of group and individual access to resources and power in a given society. Social stratification is a closely related term, defined as the system of social inequality between various groups, within a fairly fixed hierarchical arrangement. Social inequality among groups is often based on a number of social group characteristics, such as social class, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, immigrant status, sexual orientation, age, or disability. Each of these characteristics can be overlapping and simultaneous because the bases for social inequality intersect for any given person. The major social inequalities most often studied are within the realms of income and wealth, education, housing, health care, work, family, and politics. This entry examines inequalities related to race and class.
Social Class Social class is a key component of social inequality in society. Class, or socioeconomic status, refers to the ability of one group to access resources and influence other people in relation to other groups. Social class determines an individual’s life chances: whether one lives a comfortable and privileged life and has access to educational and economic opportunities. Even life expectancy is tied to social class. It is a group that is not merely based on income or wealth (though this is a strong component of class and power), but also on occupational prestige, educational level, and cultural aspects (such as language, personal appearance, and food). Although class consciousness has not been especially strong in the United States recently (most U.S. residents state that they are “middle class,” whether this is reality or not), the social class of the individual at the time of birth continues to be a huge determinant of later privileges and opportunities. U.S. residents generally remain in the same social class as their parents, despite the supposedly fluid class system that is central to the so-called American Dream. Actually, evidence shows increasing class slippage, with a significant number of people doing worse economically than the generation before them.
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Social Inequality
Growing class inequality in the United States (as well as global inequality) has been a large concern of both scholars and journalists in this era of U.S. politics. Many trends since the 1970s indicate that the growing gap between the poorest and the wealthiest U.S. residents will continue to grow. Between 1979 and 2003, people in the bottom 20% of family income in the United States had their real incomes shrink by 2%, but people in the top 20% of family income had their incomes grow by 51%. Looking at the top 1% of earners, the growth in family income jumps to more than 75%. Another illustration of this trend is visible in the disparity in wages between the chief executives of major corporations and the employees they oversee. There has always been a gap between what the average CEO of a top U.S. corporation was paid and what an average worker was paid; however, that gap has grown into a huge chasm. In 1980, the average CEO/worker pay gap was 42 (where the CEO is paid as much as 42 workers), but in 1995, the gap rose to 141, and in 2000, it reached an all time high of 531. We have seen this gap lessen in 2003 (with the average CEO being paid only 301 times the amount of the average worker), but this decline had more to do with a stock market dip, rather than a reining in of the top executives’ inflated wages, stock options, and bonuses.
Wealth Inequality Although the income gap is one indicator of social inequality, wealth studies paint an even clearer picture of U.S. inequality. Wealth is the sum of all income plus all the financial assets one owns, minus debts. It can include anything of value, such as property, stocks, bonds, and insurance policies. Wealth has been a focus of social inequality studies because, unlike income, it grows exponentially and can be passed down from generation to generation. Wealth is even more unequally distributed than income. In 1976, the wealthiest 1% of U.S. residents owned 22% of all wealth, but in 2001 the top 1% owned 38% of wealth. Thus, the bottom 99% of U.S. residents must share the remaining 62% of wealth left over, most of which is controlled by the top 10% (who owns 70% of all wealth). Many U.S. residents (about one out of six) have zero or even negative wealth. This number has grown in recent years, going from 15.5% in 1983 to 17.6% in 2001. Without some form of financial assets to rely on, many families are at a distinct disadvantage
when paying for health care, funeral expenses, a college education, or adequate housing. Race-based social inequality is at its most apparent when investigating racial differences in wealth accumulation. The income gap between Whites and Blacks and Latinos is closing; however, the large wealth gap between Whites and non-Whites shows that the historical legacy of lack of wealth among racial minorities is still at work. Blacks have 26 cents of wealth for every White dollar of wealth, and the median household net worth in 2001 was $19,000 for Blacks, $11,500 for Latinos, and $121,000 for Whites. This wealth difference cannot be accounted for by spending habits or a lack of savings. Because wealth is intergenerational, the public and private policies of the past, which barred many Black Americans from accumulating wealth (such as not being able to purchase homes in middle-class areas, attend elite universities, or obtain more prestigious jobs) remain an obstacle for current and future generations of Blacks. As racism (individual and institutional) and racial segregation continue into the 21st century, racial inequality also continues, and the wealth gap between Whites and racial minorities grows.
Poverty and Contingent Work Poverty is another area in which social inequality based on race, class, gender, and other group characteristics is made apparent. The poverty line in the United States is determined by the federal government, and represents the dollar amount necessary for a family of four to survive at subsistence level. Although numerically more Whites live at or below the poverty line than any other race, Blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans are disproportionately represented, in relation to their percentage of the population. Women of all races are also more likely to be in poverty, especially those women who head their own single-parent households. This phenomenon has been termed the feminization of poverty because women are more likely than men to be financially responsible for children, fare worse in the labor market, and suffer from changes in social service programs, such as the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act, which created lifetime time limits and work requirements for welfare recipients. Racial and ethnic minority children are especially likely to be poor in the United States, with about one-third of all Black and
Social Mobility
Latino children living in poverty. Poverty is most concentrated in segregated inner-city Black neighborhoods, reflecting the lack of educational and work opportunities in isolated poor neighborhoods. Recent economic restructuring in the workplace has made it even more likely that one may work but still be in poverty. Contingent work, which includes temporary, part-time, seasonal, day labor, and contract workers, has become much more common in the United States. Although some workers take on contingent work because it offers more scheduling flexibility than does regular work, at least two-thirds of contingent workers would like to obtain permanent positions. The average contingent worker receives lower wages and fewer benefits and lacks control over work conditions and time spent in each job. Few contingent workers receive health insurance or retirement pensions, which implies that the government will have to cover these benefits for the companies that rely on contingent labor. Women, racial and ethnic minorities, and immigrants are overrepresented in this workforce.
Trends for the Future Social inequality in the United States shows no sign of lessening. There continues to be growth in the concentration of income and wealth in the top 10%, whereas the bottom 90% face rising debts, a decline in savings, consumer inflation, outsourcing of jobs to foreign nations, rising university and college tuitions, a lack of health insurance and retirement security, and a growing temporary workplace. Because these trends disproportionately affect those with less wealth, such as Blacks, Latinos, and White women, race and gender inequality will continue to be intertwined with rising social stratification. Meghan Ashlin Rich See also Gender and Race, Intersection of; Social Mobility; Wealth Distribution; Welfare Reform
Further Readings
Collins, Chuck and Felice Yeskel. 2005. Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Economic Inequality and Insecurity. New York: New Press. Lardner, James and David A. Smith, eds. 2005. Inequality Matters: The Growing Economic Divide in America and Its Poisonous Consequences. New York: New Press.
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Newman, Katherine S. 1993. Declining Fortunes: The Withering of the American Dream. New York: Basic Books. Oliver, Melvin L. and Thomas M. Shapiro. 2006. Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Wilson, William Julius. 1996. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Vintage.
SOCIAL MOBILITY Social mobility refers to a person’s or group’s ability to transition markers of social status in a society. In the United States, one way that social status is determined is by economic class. Class positions are largely based on occupation, education, income, and wealth, although prestige other than that attached to those categories is also a major factor in some cases. There is also a tendency for some groups to be associated with lower educational achievements, lower occupational status, and lower amounts of wealth. For instance, on average, non-Whites and women are in lower positions on these scales than are Whites and men. Overall, both of these statuses play important roles in determining the class position an individual is in, and the likelihood of that person moving unto a higher class position. This entry looks at the sources and measures of social mobility and describes the U.S. class system and trends in mobility from one class to another.
Capital-Based Mobility Pierre Bourdieu argued that social mobility is determined by four types of capital. The first, economic capital, refers to any access to money and wealth. Next, social capital refers to any benefits received from social networks and other relationships. Cultural capital is the overall knowledge, skills, and cultural background that are passed from parents to their children. Finally, symbolic capital refers to any symbols of prestige and power that one is able to possess. In U.S. society, all capital associated with the upper class is highly valued and allows for greater social mobility. However, upper-class capital tends to be the result of high levels of education and wealth and greater access to those resources. This results in an unfair advantage for those in higher class positions,
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Social Mobility
leaving those in lower-class positions without the same access to opportunities. Social mobility is determined by two types of statuses. An achieved status is any attribute that one can gain, such as earning a college degree or trade training. These types of achievements help increase one’s likelihood of obtaining a more prestigious occupation or making more income. An ascribed status is what an individual is born into, such as a particular race or gender. Although these characteristics cannot be controlled, there is a tendency for some groups to gain large amounts of prestige based on their ascribed status, such as being born into a particular family (e.g., the Hiltons, Rockefellers). The General Social Survey (GSS), conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), takes measures of “occupational prestige.” Prestige is determined by the level of respect associated with a particular occupation and is ranked from 0 as the lowest score to 100 as the highest score. When an individual changes professions that have the same occupational prestige score, this is referred to as horizontal mobility. However, if an individual moves up or down the occupational prestige rankings, this is referred to as vertical mobility. This can occur as upward social mobility, when an individual gains something that allows him or her to move into a higher class position, such as earning a college degree. On the other hand, downward social mobility occurs when an individual loses something that helps that person maintain a current class position (e.g., loss of a job). Intragenerational social mobility refers to social mobility that occurs in one’s lifetime, and intergenerational social mobility is the relationship between the social class of a family and the social class that its children are in as adults.
Class Divisions Class stratification in the United States is complex and determined by many factors. In general, however, U.S. society can be divided into six major classes: the upper- and lower-upper classes, the upper- and lowermiddle classes, the working class, and the poor. The upper-upper class (approximately 0.5–1% of the population). These individuals are born into families with a great deal of wealth. This wealth has been maintained through the generations and is often referred to as “old money.” Most people in this class position tend to be White. Most in this class position
do not need to work and gain most of their income from pre-owned assets. The lower-upper class (approximately 4% of the population). This class typically comprises people who have newly acquired wealth. They are usually referred to as the “working rich,” because most of their wealth comes from income. Most non-Whites who have acquired significant wealth are considered members of this class category. The upper-middle class (approximately 15% of the population). People in this class are likely to have postsecondary degrees and tend to be employed in high-prestige professions. The high amount of income earned helps those in this class generate enough assets to increase their wealth. The lower-middle class (approximately 27% of the population). This group mostly comprises people typically working in either lower skilled white-collar jobs or highly skilled blue-collar jobs. Only about half of those in this class are likely to have a college degree. Although their wealth is modest, most manage to accumulate assets in the form of a home or savings account. The working class (approximately 33% of the population). Those who work low-level white-collar and most blue- and pink-collar jobs make up this category. Most of these people do not have a college degree, and they tend to work in occupations that require few technical skills. Most of those employed do not have employment benefits and little or no wealth. The poor class (approximately 20% of the population). People in this class tend to work many lowwage jobs at once, making it difficult to accumulate wealth. Most people in this class are non-White, especially African American. About half of the people who occupy this class position have completed high school. Although an estimated 40% own their homes, these homes are usually in inner-city and rural neighborhoods with few resources.
Measures of Social Mobility Social mobility occurs with changes in educational achievements, occupational prestige, income, and accumulated wealth. In the United States, educational opportunities are unequal and greatly determined by
Social Mobility
class and race. Those in the upper classes have access to better education and are likely to have the social networks and finances to help put the younger generation into good colleges. Those in lower-class positions do not have the same advantages. They are more likely to attend schools that have inadequate resources, and they are more likely to receive a subpar education by comparison. Most non-Whites tend to occupy the working- and lower-class rungs in society, so they are disproportionately less likely to receive a good quality education. High occupational prestige tends to be associated with the high education levels required for those positions. For example, professions ranked with high prestige scores include physicians, lawyers, and various scientists. In the United States, there is an unequal distribution by race of those employed in certain professions. Whites in higher class positions, compared with their non-White counterparts, have the adequate capital to succeed in high prestige occupations. NonWhites, especially African Americans and Hispanics, tend to work in less prestigious occupations. As a result, most non-Whites do not experience upward social mobility. Further, globalization has contributed to outsourcing many middle-class jobs, leaving those U.S. residents out of work. Income also tends to predict social mobility because it can provide families with assets and inheritance to use or pass down to their children. Although income disparities between White and Black households have existed until the 1980s, contemporary studies suggest that this difference is slowly shrinking. However, income becomes irrelevant when recognizing the primary role of wealth on social mobility. Wealth includes real estate, stocks, bonds, and other assets, and tends to significantly increase income. For instance, a White upper-middle-class family is more likely to have inherited wealth from parents, to have been provided with access to a good education, to have a prestigious occupation, and to live in a nice house in a nice community compared with their non-White counterparts. As a result, African American families are less likely to be provided with opportunities to accumulate wealth for themselves and their children.
Past and Current Trends There have been four main social mobility trends in the United States since 20th-century industrialization.
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First, social mobility, especially among men, has been fairly high. Second, the overall results of data on social mobility indicate that it has been rising. Both are the results of an industrialized society. Third, social mobility from one generation to the next tends to be small. On average, it takes at least three generations for true social mobility to occur. Fourth, social mobility since the 1970s has been uneven. For instance, in the 1970s, social mobility was relatively stagnant. It remained stagnant for most of the population during the 1980s, and rose again in the 1990s. In the 2000s, however, social mobility is considered more of an anomaly rather than the standard. Among non-White racial groups, a relatively small number of African Americans began to accumulate wealth during the 1980s and 1990s. However, this did not even the playing field with wealthy Whites because Blacks were more likely to have debt as the result of no inheritance. Furthermore, income statistics for Blacks have stayed virtually the same since the 1980s. Income among Hispanics has decreased slightly since the 1970s, which also contributes to lack of social mobility in general for this group. Asian Americans as a whole have shown upward social mobility, but this picture varies among the different Asian groups. For instance, Chinese, Japanese, and Asian Indians have had increasing levels of education and wealth compared with other Asian immigrants such as Vietnamese, Hmong, and Cambodians. American Indians and Alaskan natives also have far lower incomes compared with Whites, with almost one-fourth living in poverty. Today, social mobility has been constrained for many reasons. The small percentage of wealthy, mostly White, families has continued to hold on to their wealth over the generations, leaving waves of non-Whites out. Though education has always played an important role in social mobility by contributing to high occupational prestige, a good education has increasingly become dependent on class. Class itself is dependent on the amount of wealth a family has accumulated. This wealth, when inherited by the next generation, greatly increases that generation’s chances of upward social mobility. Any capital associated with inherited wealth, such as social connections or cultural knowledge, also contributes to social mobility. Nevertheless, the United States is a highly stratified society with few people who have access to most resources. This is especially true for the non-White population. As a result, the “rags-to-riches” fable has
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Social Support
become less of a reality for most U.S. residents who seek to strike it big in the land of opportunity. Bhoomi Thakore and David G. Embrick See also African Americans; Asian Americans; Cambodian Americans; Discrimination; Hispanics; Hmong Americans; Hourglass Economy; Informal Economy; Model Minority; Social Capital; Social Inequality; Vietnamese Americans; Wealth Distribution
Further Readings
Bourdieu, Pierre. [1980] 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Davis, James A, Tom W. Smith, and Peter V. Marsden. 2005. General Social Surveys, 1972–2004: Cumulative Codebook. Chicago, IL: NORC. Conley, Dalton. 1999. Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth and Social Policy in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Keister, Lisa. 2005. Wealth in America: Trends in Wealth Inequality. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, Amanda. 2003. Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Macionis, John. 2002. Society: The Basics. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Pattillo-McCoy, Mary. 1999. Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Schaefer, Richard. 2008. Sociology Matters. 3rd. ed. New York: McGraw Hill. Scott, Janny and David Leonhardt. 2005. “Class Matters: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide.” New York Times, May 15. Available from http://www.nytimes.com U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. “We the People: Asians in the United States (Census 2000 Special Reports).” Available from http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/ censr-17.pdf U.S. Census Bureau. 2007. “The American Community— American Indians and Alaskan Natives.” Available from http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/acs-07.pdf
SOCIAL SUPPORT Social support has been defined as emotional, tangible (or instrumental), and informational assistance. Support can be formal, informal, social, professional, structured, or unstructured. Scientists have recognized for many years that social support is an important
factor that can affect the general well-being of individuals living with chronic and life-threatening health conditions such as breast cancer. Emotional support entails empathizing, listening, and caring. Tangible support entails providing assistance with transportation, cooking, or financial resources. Someone who provides information about resources or gives advice is giving the individual informational support. Social support can be divided into two forms—informal and formal support. Racial/ethnic minorities have diverse experiences regarding the types of social support used as well as the sources available for social support. This entry looks at the different kinds of social support and their impact.
Family and Community Support: Informal Support Family support remains an important resource for many racial/ethnic minority communities. Families remain the central location through which culture is defined and interpreted. The importance of family and being able to rely on the family for support remains a core social value among many Asian American families. Filial piety, a central value to many Asian societies, is exemplified by the expression of responsibility, respect, sacrifice, and family harmony that regulates
Three-generation Asian American family having dinner. Filial piety, a central value to many Asian societies, is exemplified by the expression of responsibility, respect, sacrifice, and family harmony that regulates children’s attitudes and behaviors toward family-based support. The family provides important source of support for many racial and ethnic minority communities and provides the central location through which culture is defined and interpreted. Source: Jon Riley/Getty Images.
Social Support
children’s attitudes and behaviors toward family-based support. Like Asian American families, Latina/o families exhibit high levels of family support. The concept of familism is about placing the needs of the family above individual concerns. The support in Latina/o families can be from multigenerational households and an extended kinship network. A frequent explanation for what appears to be better health for Latinas/os has been a higher degree of family support among Latina/o families. Several research studies have found positive mental and physical health benefits of family support for Latinas/os. The importance of family within African American communities is crucial to understanding African American culture. Traditionally, an individual’s “family” incorporates the entire community, with particular emphasis on group effort. Historically, this type of mutual aid system among extended African American family members has provided emotional and financial support. Multigenerational households within African American families traditionally have provided support to both the young and the frail and ultimately help buffer the negative effects of stress. African American congregations are also essential to providing social support on a variety of levels. For example, church members act as an extension of the nuclear family, providing services such as meal preparation, child care, and counseling in times of crisis. African American churches have been a center for information, and they have been used to promote cancer awareness and provide preventative health screenings. Additionally, the physical church itself also symbolizes a gathering place for forming strong political and social identities.
Formal Support Formal support refers to sources of support outside one’s family and community, such as government assistance and health and social service providers. Formal support for low-income recipients may be provided without charge. For middle-income families, formal support often means paying out of pocket for support services such as a home health aide or child care. Barrie ers to o Form mal Support
Barriers to formal support by racial/ethnic minorities may be the result of racism, language, education, geography, culture, and resources. Several studies
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have documented that racial/ethnic minorities tend to use formal support less than do Whites. The lack of sufficient support networks among communities of color contributes to a variety of social and healthrelated complications. For Native Americans, the biggest barrier to support is geographic location. For example, most tribes are located in rural, isolated areas that limit access and interaction with any kind of social network. This isolation may constitute a significant hindrance in medical treatment and services. Furthermore, transportation and cultural ideals about the need for selfsufficiency may prevent Native Americans from seeking support in times of need. For African, Asian, and Latino immigrant communities, barriers to support are compounded by significant language barriers. Monolingual and limited English proficient immigrants face language and cultural barriers that may prevent them from receiving adequate forms of social support. At the same time, the lack of information is also a barrier for formal support in racial/ethnic minority communities. Informational and tangible support can affect access to health care and timing of extremely important health screenings in racial/ethnic minority communities. Cancer in racial/ethnic minorities is diagnosed at later, more life-threatening stages. Support at all the multiple levels plays a significant role in community awareness, prevention, and treatment of health issues. Social support has been documented to help with more than just adjustment and coping with serious illness. Previous work in cancer and racial/ethnic minority communities show that culture, stigma, and concerns about burdening the family may prevent minorities from seeking and receiving support. According to one study, Asian American breast cancer patients are less likely to seek help for psychological distress compared with White breast cancer patients. Previous research on Asian American women and disclosing HIV status has shown that concerns about disclosing included fears of stigma, that they will be perceived as a burden, and fear of discrimination. Previous research with Latinas/os with HIV shows that they were more likely to withhold their diagnosis from their parents to prevent worrying them. Furthermore, stigma deterred Latinos from seeking HIV-related social support. The fears about burdening family and friends, emotionally and financially, with their illness seem to be a major concern for racial/ethnic
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minority community members, and this may lead to a lack of needed support. Grace J. Yoo and Erin McCoy See also African Americans; Asian Americans; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Familism; HIV/AIDS; Immigrant Communities; Kinship
Wallace, Stephen and Elisa Facio. 1987. “Moving Beyond Familism: Potential Contributions of Gerontological Theory to Studies of Chicano/Latino Aging.” Journal of Aging Studies 1(4):337–354. Wong, Sabrina, G. Yoo, and A. Stewart. 2006. “The Changing Meanings of Family Support among Older Chinese and Korean Immigrants.” Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences 61:S4–9.
Further Readings
Ashing-Giwa, Kimlin Tam. 1999. “The Recruitment of Breast Cancer Survivors into Cancer Control Studies: A Focus on African American Women.” Journal of the National Medical Association 91(5):255–260. Ashing-Giwa, Kimlin Tam and P. A. Ganz. 2000. “Effect of Timed Incentives on Subject Participation in a Study of Long-Term Breast Cancer Survivors: Are There Ethnic Differences?” Journal of the National Medical Association 92(11):528–532. Ashing-Giwa, Kimlin Tam, Geraldine Padilla, Judith Tejero, Janet Kraemer, Karen Wright, Anne Coscarelli, Sheila Clayton, Imani Williams, and Dawn Hills. 2004. “Understanding the Breast Cancer Experience of Women: A Qualitative Study of African American, Asian American, Latina and Caucasian Cancer Survivors.” Psycho-Oncology 13(6):408–428. Chin, Dorothy and Kendall W. Kroesen. 1999. “Disclosure of HIV Infection Among Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: Cultural Stigma and Support.” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 5(3):222–235. Kagawa-Singer, M., D. K. Wellisch, and R. Durvasula. 1997. “Impact of Breast Cancer on Asian American and Anglo American Women.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 21(4):449–480. Moon, Ailee, James E. Lubben, and Valentine Villa. (1988). “Awareness and Utilization of Community Long-Term Care Services by Elderly Korean and Non-Hispanic White Americans.” Gerontologist 38:309–316. Mulder, Pamela, Mary Beth Kenkel, Sylvia Shellenberger, Madonna Constantine, Regina Streiegel, Samuel L. Sears, M. R. Jumper-Luborsky, and C. K. McMullen. 1999. “Culture and Aging.” Pp. 65–90 in Gerontology: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, edited by J. C. Cavanaugh and S. K. Whitbourne. New York: Oxford University Press. Mulder, Pamela, Mary Beth Kenkel, Sylvia Shellenberger, Madonna Constantine, Regina Streiegel, Samuel L. Sears, Pamela Jumper-Thurman, Melissa Kalodner, Caroline Danda, and Angela Hager. 1998. The Behavioral Health Care Needs of Rural Women. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
SOCIAL WORK The social work profession in the United States seeks to understand, intervene, and resolve complex social problems experienced by vulnerable, oppressed, and marginalized communities. Issues of race and ethnicity in U.S. society are particularly relevant to social work because of the profession’s mission to further the cause of social justice. Many of the racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States have experienced racism and oppression, and the social work profession seeks to create a more equitable society, as this entry records.
Professional Values and Ethics Like all professions, social work is built on specific philosophical values and a code of ethics that provides guidelines for responsible professional behavior. Social workers value the concept of an equitable society. Recognizing the inherent inequities of the U.S. society, social workers strive to create communities where resources are most equitably divided among all members. Social work also emphasizes the value of the common good. Social workers believe that the well-being of all individuals is interrelated and that individual interests are intrinsically related to the interests of the broader society. The value of the common good points to the tension between two additional professional values espoused by social work: individual freedom and cooperative relationships. At the individual level, there is the value of self-determination. Social work stresses the right of individuals to live their lives autonomously so they can shape lives based on their personal interests. Cooperative relationships, according to the social work field, require that individuals temper their autonomy to engage others with the common goal of developing a mutually satisfying society. From the
Social Work
perspective of social work, individuals and society must work in concert to empower each. Another important element of the social work profession is the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). Based on the fundamental professional values, the NASW Code of Ethics outlines the social worker’s responsibilities to clients, colleagues, organizations, the profession, and the larger society. For instance, the profession’s code of ethics strictly prohibits sexual involvement with clients who engage the social workers in a professional helping relationship. Sexual involvement would hamper a client’s self-determination and represents an abuse of power by the social worker. Social workers are also charged with strictly adhering to preserving the client’s right to confidentiality. Clients must feel safe and secure in knowing that social workers will not disclose personal information to others. However, there are limits to the right of confidentiality when the safety and well-being of the broader community is at risk. Social workers must manage this and all ethical dilemmas in a manner that does the most good and least harm.
History of the Profession Like many institutions and professions in the U.S. society, social work has been greatly influenced by Great Britain. The Poor Laws of 1601 and the numerous poor houses established in Great Britain were early precursors to social welfare institutions adopted by the United States in the late 19th century. The Industrial Revolution of the last half of that century brought about dramatic changes in U.S. society. Population booms brought about by immigration and rapid urbanization created social and economic problems unseen in the previous agrarian society. These societal problems brought about a new understanding of the relationship between individuals, communities, and the larger society. The social work profession emerged during the Progressive Era of the early 20th century with new approaches to the existing complex social problems. The modern social work profession emerged from two major movements—the Charity Organization Societies and the Settlement House Movements. The Charity Organization Society (COS), founded by Mary Richmond, was the precursor to the development of micro social work practice. Dissatisfied with the seemingly haphazard methods of alms-giving
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sponsored by many religious organizations, Richmond sought to bring accountability to social welfare by applying scientific analysis to “social casework.” Richmond developed meticulous assessment procedures and trained “friendly visitors” to collect information on each family’s situation. The COS then provided minimal social provisions based on established need. The Settlement House Movement, led by Jane Addams, established the origins of macro social work practice. Addams and her reform-minded contemporaries established settlement houses in impoverished communities and sought to provide both social provisions and instigate social reforms. Social provisions consisted of teaching residents vocational skills, social mores, and providing cultural experiences. Based on information gathered from community residents, the leaders of the settlement house movement also engaged in social action that led to Progressive Era reforms in areas such as labor, housing, and child welfare. At the 1915 National Conference of Charities and Correction, a pivotal event occurred that diminished the reform-minded social work movements and shifted efforts toward developing a more individualized “social casework” profession. The conference organizers invited Abraham Flexner, a noted educator and expert on professional standards, to assess the status of social work as a profession. Flexner’s declined because he believed that social work was primarily involved in advocating and mobilizing resources on behalf of individuals with other disciplines and lacked specialized education standards and practice competencies required of a profession. Social work responded to this challenge by moving toward individualized “social casework” and away from social reform work. Flexner’s assessment fueled a movement in the profession that saw the development of private social service agencies. These agencies became the primary settings in which social workers of the time practiced. The structure of the social service agency became the vehicle for a profession moving from informal volunteerism toward a science-based profession. The Great Depression of the 1930s marked another important event in the history of the social work profession. Community-based social work practice allowed social workers to see first-hand the national devastation brought on by the stock market crash of 1929. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, social workers joined coalitions composed of other groups to
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Social Work
advocate for a rapid and concerted response from the federal government. Social workers called for the development of federally sponsored relief programs to address the widespread unemployment and poverty. Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, social workers emerged as important architects in the development of the New Deal’s Social Security program. The 1950s saw the growth of social work education, the emergence of a national organization, and the development of a professional code of ethics. The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) was formed in 1952. CSWE was responsible for the development of standards for undergraduate and graduate schools of social work. The NASW was formed in 1955 and sought to bring together a profession made up of many different practice areas. By the end of the 1950s, NASW had adopted its first Code of Ethics, establishing standards of professional behavior for all social workers regardless of practice setting. The great social upheaval of the 1960s marked another important period in the history of the profession. The Civil Rights Movement and President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty provided the backdrop for the profession to undergo a radical change. The Civil Rights Movement forced the profession to examine its own collective perspective on issues of race/ethnicity, class, and gender. Social workers joined the movements of social activism that sought to confront the problems of racism and poverty. Johnson’s War on Poverty, like Roosevelt’s New Deal, was an opportunity for social workers to emerge as leaders in the development of antipoverty programs. Federal policies and programs also sparked the emergence of community organizing as an important social work practice modality. Community practice sought to empower poor, oppressed neighborhoods toward social and economic development. The decades of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s marked a more conservative time for the social work profession. The political backlash of the social movements of the 1960s saw a retreat from the development and implementation of federally funded social welfare programs. With the loss of political support, the social work profession returned to its emphasis on microlevel practice, including clinical therapeutic and case management services. Today, social work continues to provide social services that focus on helping individuals adapt to their environment rather than
advocating for large-scale social and economic reform.
Social Work Practice Social work practice encompasses the problems, techniques, environments, and groups with whom social workers apply systematic knowledge to fulfill the mission of social justice. Social workers seek to ameliorate societal problems such as substance abuse, crime, mental illness, child abuse, discrimination, and poverty. To this end, they apply systematic techniques including social planning, community organizing, research, therapy, group work, and case management. Social work practice employs these techniques in a variety of settings. Social workers practice in diverse fields including aging, housing, health and mental health, child welfare, criminal justice, rehabilitation, and substance abuse. Specific groups make up the final component of social work practice. Social workers practice with a diverse group of individuals, families, organizations, communities, and societies. An important aspect of social work practice related to multiculturalism and diversity is the profession’s emphasis on culturally competent practice. Because social workers often work with diverse groups, they are responsible for developing cultural competence. Culturally competent practice involves developing the knowledge, skills, and sensitivity necessary for effective work with groups different from the social worker. The development of a culturally competent practice is a career-long challenge for social workers practicing in an ever-changing diverse society. Neil Vincent See also Adoption; Aging; Community Empowerment; Hull House School of Race Relations; Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978; “Welfare Queen”; Welfare Reform
Further Readings
Dewees, Marty. 2006. Contemporary Social Work Practice. New York: McGraw-Hill. Farley, O. William, Larry Lorenzo Smith, and Scott. W. Boyle. 2006. Introduction to Social Work. 10th ed. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Leiby, James. 1978. A History of Social Welfare and Social Work in the United States, 1815–1971. New York: Columbia University Press.
South Africa, Republic of
SOUTH AFRICA, REPUBLIC
OF
Contemporary South Africa is characterized by cultural diversity and economic inequality. Apartheid entrenched racialized identities and fostered racial division at the same time as it exacerbated inequality in the distribution of income. The postapartheid state faces the challenge of tackling these legacies of racialized social engineering. This entry looks at the position of race in today’s South Africa, a country of an estimated population of 47.9 million in 2007.
Chad Nigeria Cameroon
Somalia
Sudan
Central African Republic
Ethiopia
Uganda Kenya
Gabon Rwanda Burundi
Congo, DRC
Congo
Tanzania Seychelles Comoros
Angola
Malawi
Mayotte
e
Zambia
qu bi
m
Atlantic Ocean
Zimbabwe Namibia
a oz M
Botswana
Madagascar
Swaziland Republic of South Africa
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before the arrival of either White or Black people and did not speak Bantu languages. How people categorize themselves also accords closely with how they say other people see them. In other words, there remains a close correlation between official apartheid-era racial classifications, postapartheid self-classification, and postapartheid classification by other people. This does not mean, however, that racial identities are the only identities that South Africans have. South Africans share a common national identity. Increasingly, they are also likely to employ class identities (working class, middle class, poor), and many use nonracial cultural identities, including religious ones (Christian, Muslim) or ethnic ones (Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans). In many contexts, these nonracial identities are more important than racial ones. Racial categories themselves mean different things to different people. Asked for reasons for their racial self-classification, White South Africans typically refer to their physical appearance or descent. African and colored South Africans do not refer to physical appearance or descent but instead emphasize “culture” (and, in the case of colored people, the categorization of the apartheid period). There is little difference in the distribution of self-assessed skin color among African and colored people, but White people see their own skin color as distinctly paler.
Lesotho
Indian Ocean
Questions of Identity Even today, after the end of apartheid, South Africans tend to see their society in terms of the apartheid-era categories of African (or Black), White, colored, and Indian. African refers to Indigenous Peoples speaking Bantu languages such as Xhosa and Zulu; White refers to the descendants of European settlers; Indian refers to the descendants of people brought from South Asia; and colored is a composite category including the descendants of relationships between White and Black people, the descendants of Malay slaves brought from Southeast Asia, and descendants of the indigenous Khoi and San who inhabited the Western Cape
Race in Today’s South Africa Although almost all South Africans use racial categorization in everyday life, White South Africans seem to hold onto biological conceptions of race. This is partly because White South Africans—like White people in many other contexts—take their culture for granted. Culturally, whiteness is invisible to most White people. African people are much more conscious of their cultural distinctiveness, because they speak different languages at home, often attend different churches, and perhaps above all retain distinctive beliefs in ancestors and (widely) witchcraft. The end of apartheid has also been accompanied by a resurgence of colored identity. Under apartheid, colored identity was defined by the intermediate status of colored people in the racial hierarchy: aspirations to assimilation into White society and fears of relegation to the status of African people combined with widespread feelings of shame as well as marginality. After
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South Americans in the United States
apartheid, a racialized conception of “coloredness” has grown stronger, with renewed affinities to whiteness and deepened racism toward African people. In recognition of cultural diversity, postapartheid nation building in South Africa employed the discourse of the multicultural “rainbow nation” rather than building a common South African national identity. The national anthem thus combines elements of both the hymn associated with the liberation movements and the apartheid-era anthem, and is sung in four major languages. Official multiculturalism, however, reproduces the culturally based racial identities of the past. In 1998, the then deputy president Thabo Mbeki emphasized racial inequality in a controversial speech in which he described South Africa as comprising “two nations, the one Black and the other White.” The White nation is, he said, prosperous, with good access to the economic, educational, and other resources that allow people meaningful opportunities in life. The other, larger nation is “Black and poor,” living “under conditions of grossly underdeveloped economic, physical, educational, communication and other infrastructure” and lacking any meaningful right to equal opportunity. Mbeki here was drawing on a tradition of referring to two nations that originated in mid-19thcentury, class-divided Britain (in the writings of Benjamin Disraeli) and was popularized in the United States in the late 20th century as a reference to racial differences there.
A Nation Divided by Class On average, White South Africans remain privileged after apartheid, and most African people remain poor. But data on the average person ignores the rapid increase in inequality within the African population. The rapid growth of the African elite and middle class, at the same time as unemployment locks many other African people into chronic poverty, has resulted in incomes within the African population being distributed nearly as unequally as in South Africa as a whole, and this inequality is as extreme as anywhere in the world. The growth of the African middle class has been the result primarily of the deracialization of education and of the labor market and of discriminatory postapartheid policies of affirmative action. The public service implemented affirmative action rapidly after 1994. The 1998 Employment Equity Act required midsized and large private employers to set targets for the
transformation of their workforce and to report on their progress in achieving these targets. The growth of an African elite has been the result primarily of discriminatory policies of “Black economic empowerment” in business. The 2003 Black Economic Empowerment Act set in motion a massive redistribution of corporate ownership from the old White elite to the emerging Black elite. The African middle class and elite are the agents of a reinvention of African culture: “African” names and dress are adopted, and rituals are practiced with newfound fervor. Postapartheid South Africa is thus characterized by a paradoxical combination of features. Race is no longer coterminous with class: opportunities for upward mobility open rapidly for some African people but opportunities remain limited for many others. Class is increasingly important. Racism has almost certainly declined. Yet race retains a central position in identities and culture, and political parties can and do continue to play the race card. Jeremy Seekings See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Apartheid; Apartheid, Laws; Mandela, Nelson; Segregation
Further Readings
Adhikari, Mohamed. 2005. Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community. Athens: Ohio University Press. Distiller, Natasha and Melissa Steyn, eds. 2004. Under Construction: Race and Identity in South Africa Today. Johannesburg, South Africa: Heinemann. Seekings, Jeremy and Nicoli Nattrass. 2005. Class, Race and Inequality in South Africa. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Steyn, Melissa. 2001. Whiteness Just Isn’t What It Used to Be: White Identity in a Changing South Africa. Albany: State University of New York Press.
SOUTH AMERICANS IN THE UNITED STATES Though relatively recent and small in number compared with other immigrant groups, the South American population in the United States has grown markedly in the last few decades. South Americans,
South Americans in the United States
differing in important ways from other Latin American immigrants, are gradually coming to play a larger role in the “Latinization” of the United States. This entry examines this heterogeneous Latino group with distinct dynamics that influence their economic, geographic, and cultural integration in the U.S. ethnic landscape.
History of South American Immigration Before the 1980s, South Americans were present in the United States only in small factions. Beginning in the 1850s, immigrants were drawn by opportunities in the U.S. West. In particular, a number of Chileans and Peruvians migrated to California during the gold rush. Approximately 50,000 Latin Americans, many of them South Americans, arrived in California between 1848 and 1852, but because of ethnic discrimination, many left the mines, returning to their home countries or settling in the San Francisco area. The U.S. Census Bureau reported about 5,000 South American–born living in the United States by 1900. Small waves of South Americans also arrived after each world war, bringing mostly professionals, such as nurses, engineers, and doctors, whose emigration contributed to a Latin American “brain drain.” Not until 1965, however, with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, was immigration policy open to Latin Americans. The new act abolished the national-origins quota system and established numerical restrictions on visas for the Western Hemisphere and new occupational preferences. A 1976 amendment further strengthened family reunification. However, because the first major waves of South American immigrants did not already have family members in the United States, they had to qualify for visas as skilled workers. Many of the initial South American immigrants were well-educated, upper- and middle-class professionals who entered as skilled workers and later facilitated the entrance of family members, contributing to a rapid growth in immigration after 1970. In much of South America, rapid population growth, high rates of rural-urban migration, high poverty levels, and declining economic conditions (including high rates of unemployment and inflation), as well as political instability and warfare across South America, stimulated emigration to the United States. Economic shifts in the 1970s decreased job wages and opportunities for social mobility. Many
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upper- and middle-class immigrants (those who could afford to migrate) left for the United States. Argentina and Venezuela typically have had the strongest economies, but even they suffered recent recessions because of restructuring of the regional economy. The rise in immigration in the 1960s and 1970s is also related to the affordability of air travel, which made migration to the faraway United States safer and faster and made visiting the home country more psychologically feasible. Though most South Americans come to the United States for economic reasons, civil unrest and statesponsored violence also stimulate emigration. The Pinochet regime in Chile in the early 1970s, the Argentinean “Dirty War” of the late 1970s, and the Peruvian civil war in the 1980s, all spurred waves of immigration to the United States. Colombians first arrived in the United States in large numbers during the period of “La Violencia” in the late 1950s, which marked a decade of political violence in the country. Renewed violence associated with drug-trafficking and military and guerrilla fighting spurred further migration to the United States in the 1990s. The United States did not experience significant inflows of South Americans until the 1980s, when more open U.S. immigration policy coincided with economic crises in much of Latin America. In fact, of the foreign-born South American population residing in the United States in 2000, three-quarters arrived after 1980. South Americans were eligible for the lottery created by the 1990 immigration act, which was granted to countries with previously low immigration levels. Today, the Latino population is one of the fastest growing in the United States, accounting for 12.5% of the total population in 2000. South Americans represented only 3.8% of the total Latino population in 2000. However, their numbers and growth rate have surged in the past few decades. Colombians, Ecuadorians, and Peruvians constitute the largest groups, followed by Brazilians and Guyanese. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the most recently arrived groups are Brazilians, Venezuelans, and Paraguayans. Many scholars point out that census figures probably undercount South American immigrants because many see themselves as temporary residents, so they do not participate in the census, and they do not fit easily into U.S. racial and ethnic categories. Often South Americans must report as “Other Hispanic,” even though they may not self-identify as “Hispanic.”
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47,377 2,318 1,404 4,491 1,640 10,847 5,906 7,662 789 9,177 516 2,427
264,599 18%
804,416 5.9%
South America Argentina Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Ecuador Guyana Paraguay Peru Uruguay Venezuela
Latin America (% South Americans)
All Countries (% South Americans)
720,459 6.3%
223,861 20%
45,666 1,762 1,332 4,558 1,534 10,838 6,397 7,362 559 8,066 414 2,627
1995
915,900 6.7%
335,700 18%
61,769 2,456 1,913 5,891 1,706 14,283 8,321 9,489 615 12,871 540 3,468
1996
798,378 6.6%
304,058 17%
52,877 1,964 1,734 4,583 1,443 13,004 7,780 7,257 304 10,853 429 3,328
1997
654,451 6.9%
250,410 18%
45,394 1,511 1,513 4,401 1,240 11,836 6,852 3,963 275 10,154 368 3,136
1998
646,568 6.4%
264,370 16%
41,585 1,393 1,448 3,902 1,092 9,966 8,904 3,300 217 8,438 271 2,508
1999
849,807 6.6%
334,803 17%
56,074 2,331 1,772 6,959 1,712 14,498 7,685 5,746 342 9,613 430 4,716
2000
1,064,318 6.5%
400,244 17%
68,888 3,328 1,826 9,505 1,947 16,730 9,706 8,303 408 11,131 545 5,205
2001
1,063,732 7.0%
413,741 18%
74,506 3,685 1,670 9,474 1,858 18,845 10,602 9,962 359 11,999 539 5,259
2002
Source: Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2004. Washington, DC: Office of Immigrations Statistics, 2006.
1994
South American Immigration to the United States (1994–2004)
Country of Birth
Table 1
705,827 7.8%
261,185 21%
55,247 3,157 1,382 6,357 1,323 14,777 7,083 6,820 209 9,444 473 4,038
2003
946,142 7.6%
359,462 20%
71,785 4,805 1,765 10,504 1,808 18,678 8,611 6,329 328 11,781 787 6,220
2004
South Americans in the United States
South American immigration to the United States has also grown increasingly unauthorized. When immigrant visas cannot be obtained through the lottery system, many South Americans enter with visitor visas and remain in the country after the visa has expired. In the face of violent conflict at home in the early 1990s, so many Colombians applied for visitor visas that many were rejected by U.S. officials, and immigrants began to hire smugglers to take them to the Caribbean and then by plane to Florida. Likewise, one scholar estimated that nearly 80% of the 80,000 to 100,000 Brazilian immigrants living in New York City in the 1990s had either overstayed their nonimmigrant visas or had entered the country undocumented, many of them clandestinely crossing the Mexican border. Brazilians recently became the second largest group, after Mexicans, crossing the border illegally. Ecuadorians have begun arriving in New York in a similar manner, entering the United States via Central America or Mexico. Because it has become more difficult to acquire even visitor visas from many South American countries, especially in the post– September 11th era, immigrants are increasingly entering outside authorized channels. Many scholars argue that because a large number of South Americans in the United States are unauthorized and maintain a degree of invisibility, their population is probably greatly underestimated.
Demographic Profile Socioecconomic Sta atu us
Though the composition of South Americans in the United States is diverse, a few key characteristics stand out. South Americans have arrived in the United States in large numbers only recently, and therefore a large proportion of them are foreign-born. Also, they typically have a higher socioeconomic standing relative to other Latino groups. South Americans in the United States are generally well-educated and hold professional jobs; they are essentially the only group of Latino immigrants who use the skilled-worker provisions of U.S. immigration laws. As a group, South American immigrants are about as likely to have university degrees and to be proficient in English as the overall foreign-born population. Compared with other Latino immigrant groups, they are more likely to participate in the labor force, less likely to live below the poverty line, and more
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likely to work in higher-income professional or managerial positions, primarily in sales, office, or service occupations. There is large within-group variation, however. For example, Andean immigrants overall have lower educational attainment and earnings than those from the Southern Cone. Geogra aphic Distriibutio on
South Americans contribute to the growing distribution of Latinos throughout the United States. However, immigrants usually follow family networks and concentrate in specific locations where others from their same community or country have already settled. Groups originating from different areas in South America have distinct settlement patterns, but most live in urban areas, and the top five states of residence are New York, Florida, New Jersey, California, and Massachusetts. Colombians, escaping the violence of the 1950s, settled primarily in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens in New York City, and by the 1960s and 1970s were followed by Ecuadorians and Peruvians. These three groups established a multinational economy to service Andean immigrants, and many entrepreneurs expanded their businesses outside the immigrant ethnic enclave. The other primary concentration of Colombians is in southern Florida, where Colombians and Venezuelans, along with Cubans, have been integral to the development of Miami. Peruvians also live in large numbers in Los Angeles, and recently they have filled a niche as shepherds in the Northwest. Argentineans have settled in Florida in a “Little Buenos Aires” as well as in San Francisco and New York. Bolivians have tended to settle in the Washington, D.C. area, especially in Arlington, Virginia. Unlike other urban immigrant communities they are dispersed throughout the city, rather than forming enclaves, because of the tight housing market. Brazilian immigration historically was concentrated in New England and California, and by the mid-1960s, small communities already existed in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida, and California, which are still home to about two-thirds of Brazilians living in the United States. Ethnic Backgrou und and Cultu ura al Inte egration n
Most South Americans have multiethnic backgrounds—a mix of Spanish, indigenous, African,
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—
13%
98% 87%
99% 99% 98%
83% 95% 8% 93% 98% 98% 2% 88% 96% 89% 91% 75%
% Self-identified as Hispanic/ Latino
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000. Foreign-born Population Tables.
281,421,906
26% 30%
817,335 16,086,975
Total U.S. Population
22% 61% 36%
9,177,485 872,715 687,675
Mexico Cuba Dominican Republic El Salvador Total Latin America
48% 37% 21% 41% 40% 34% 59% 50% 38% 51% 25% 39%
% Naturalized
125,220 53,280 212,430 80,805 509,870 298,625 211,190 11,980 278,185 25,040 107,030 1,913,655
Total Population
49%
52% 52%
55% 49% 45%
49% 49% 46% 49% 45% 52% 46% 47% 48% 51% 48% 48%
% Male
35
34 34
32 50 37
43 38 34 40 39 37 40 33 39 43 33 39
Median Age (years)
Characteristics of the Foreign-Born Population from Select Latin American Countries
Argentina Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Ecuador Guyana Paraguay Peru Uruguay Venezuela Total South America
Country of Birth
Table 2
80%
35% 44%
30% 59% 48%
80% 83% 80% 81% 72% 62% 70% 72% 81% 72% 88% 74%
% High School Graduate or Higher
$41,994
$34,722 $33,519
$31,503 $34,670 $28,192
$47,451 $46,772 $38,570 $42,317 $37,662 $40,227 $45,470 $42,931 $42,106 $46,589 $40,776 $42,317
Median Household Income
12%
20% 23%
26% 16% 27%
14% 13% 19% 13% 18% 17% 12% 11% 12% 19% 18% 17%
% Individuals Below Poverty Level
South Americans in the United States
other European, and Asian ancestry. However, most South American immigrants to the United States are closely tied to European backgrounds and a Spanishspeaking culture. Andeans are distinct in that American Indians and mestizos (European-Indian mixed) constitute most of the population, and a variety of indigenous languages, such as Quechua, are commonly spoken. Brazilians and Guyanese are also unique groups. Guyanese are ethnically Asian Indian and culturally West Indian, practice Hinduism, and are often considered part of the Caribbean rather than Latin America. Most have settled in New York City where there is a large concentration of Caribbean immigrants. Brazil, a country of net immigration (immigrants leaving exceeded migrants arriving) until the 1980s, has an ethnically diverse population comprising people of Portuguese, European, African, Japanese, Arab, and indigenous descent. Brazilians primarily speak Portuguese, rather than Spanish, and for that reason are often “invisible” among the largely Spanish-speaking U.S. Hispanic population. Most South American immigrants are already familiar with U.S. culture when they arrive, through television, movies, advertising, multinational companies, and information they receive from previous immigrants. However, the reality of life in the United States often fails to meet expectations. Many immigrants face downward mobility, working jobs below their skill levels, especially if they have poor English or undocumented status. Women, however, generally have more mobility in the United States than in their countries of origin. Because many South Americans arrive in the United States with the intention of staying only temporarily and returning to their home countries once they have saved money, they are less likely to naturalize than other immigrant groups are. South Americans do have a fairly high rate of return, but many settle in the United States and send for their families.
Ethnic Identity and the Potential for a Panethnic Latino Group Just as the umbrella terms Hispanic and Latino obscure the diversity of the subgroups they represent, South American subgroups are ethnically, culturally, and linguistically distinct. Also, not all South Americans see themselves as Latinos or “people of color,” though they may be considered so by scholars or government and ethnic leaders. Many South American immigrants were upper- and middle-class
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and considered themselves “White” in their countries of origin. Their ethnic background, class differences, and geographic differentiation affect how South American immigrants from the same country interact with each other and with other Latino groups in the United States. Social and class structures that existed in the origin country are often transplanted to the immigrant community in the United States, especially among the first generation. Community social clubs are often organized around nationality, and in addition to fostering community, they provide a means of asserting identity and a sense of social status. Social clubs involve musical showcases, soccer and organized sports leagues, and processions and national celebrations, and these clubs are often associated with the Catholic Church (Catholicism being the predominant religion in South America). These groups also serve as a means of maintaining ties with the home country. Colombians hold fundraisers to support an end to violence in their country, for example, and Bolivian soccer leagues raise money to develop infrastructure in their home communities. South Americans in the United States face a decision about their cultural identity—whether to view themselves as a nationality subgroup or as part of a larger panethnic Hispanic or Latino group from Latin America, which many resist, fearing destruction of their unique identities and agendas. Some groups, such as Portuguese-speaking Brazilians and indigenous Ecuadorians, do not fit neatly into the Hispanic category. Population ratios and geographical distribution influence how South Americans incorporate into already established Latino communities. They are a recent group, without the already established infrastructure of other Latino groups. Their recent arrival in the United States may push them to interact with other Latino groups, especially if they share a common language, creating common ground for a broader political and cultural voice. South Americans are already growing more visible in U.S. society, and second- and third-generation immigrants, along with new arrivals, will continue to integrate and contribute to the changing dynamics of the existing U.S. ethnic landscape. Sarah Zell and Emily Skop See Appendix A See also Argentina; Brazilian Americans; Central Americans in the United States; Hispanics; Hispanic Versus Latino;
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Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Panethnic Identity; Peruvian Americans
Further Readings
Arreola, Daniel D. 2004. Hispanic Spaces, Latino Places. Austin: University of Texas Press. Espitia, Marilyn. 2004. “The Other ‘Other Hispanics’: South American–Origin Latinos in the United States.” Pp. 257–280 in The Columbia History of Latinos in the United States since 1960, edited by D. G. Gutiérrez. New York: Columbia University Press. Margolis, Maxine L. 1998. An Invisible Minority: Brazilians in New York City. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Marshall, Adrianna. 1988. “Emigration of Argentines to the United States.” Pp. 129–141 in When Borders Don’t Divide: Labor Migration and Refugee Movements in the Americas, edited by P. R. Pessar. New York: Center for Migration Studies. Reimers, David M. 2005. “Central and South Americans.” Pp. 125–156 in Other Immigrants: The Global Origins of the American People. New York: New York University Press.
SCLC faced problems mobilizing youth members before its collaboration with members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Impressed with the ability of SNCC to develop and sustain protests through youth activists, SCLC reached out to leaders in SNCC and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) through established civil rights leaders and often financed these groups’ southern chapters. But the relationship between SCLC and youth-oriented groups such as CORE and SNCC was complex and often fraught with frustrations for members of all organizations. Young activists preferred local autonomy to the rigid organizational structure of SCLC. As the movement progressed, ideological cleavages based on the youths’ proclivity toward Black Power and militancy challenged the SCLC’s unwavering commitment to nonviolence, particularly as activists increasingly faced violence. Simultaneously, members of the SCLC worried about declining movement support because of public perceptions of militancy within the youth movement.
Key Civil Rights Events
SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE (SCLC) The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) arose under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy after their participation in the Montgomery bus boycott during 1955 to 1956. The SCLC relied on religion, particularly the Black church, to be a transformative force to promote social justice, mobilize large, previously unorganized Southern Blacks, and fund the movement. Central to SCLC’s tenets was the idea of a “beloved community,” in which all U.S. residents equally participated and reaped the benefits. The SCLC promoted the use of nonviolent tactics to highlight activists’ commitment to nonviolence in the face of virulent White racism. Developed as a centralized organization, the SCLC united churches and community-based groups across the South through local chapters. This structure allowed for regional collaboration and ties through local church- and community-based leadership and centralized financing in the national civil rights struggle. This entry describes the SCLC’s involvement in key civil rights events and its political and economic development.
SCLC was involved in a number of key civil rights events. In Nashville, SCLC organized with future founding members of SNCC to contribute to the national sit-in movement. In 1961, SCLC co-sponsored the Freedom Rides through the South to highlight segregation in public transportation, regardless of a federal law ruling this unconstitutional. Beaten, firebombed, and arrested, members of the CORE, SNCC, and SCLC brought national attention to White racist violence. The Albany, Georgia, movement merged long-term efforts by SNCC to register voters, integrate public facilities, and release dozens of arrested civil rights workers from jail with the national media attention made possible by King’s presence. SNCC activists grew frustrated with the media’s focusing on King while marginalizing their efforts, particularly after King decided to leave jail rather than remain with the young activists. To challenge the most ardent segregation and promote Black equality throughout the South, SCLC engaged in a multifaceted effort in Birmingham, Alabama, during 1963 to end economic, educational, and social segregation in businesses, schools, and public facilities. Realizing the need for youth participation, the SCLC sought SNCC’s aid in recruiting young activists. Provoking the city’s highly racist power structure to act, the media generated national
Sovereignty, Native American
sympathetic support through news images of young demonstrators blasted with fire hoses, attacked by police dogs, and jailed by the hundreds. King penned his famous and fiery “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” following arrest during these protests. Later that year King, under sponsorship by the SCLC and other civil rights groups, led the March on Washington where he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. This event brought national attention to civil rights struggles and mobilized even larger constituencies to action.
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Branch, Taylor. 2006. At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68. New York: Simon & Schuster. Fairclough, Adam. 1987. To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Morris, Aldon D. 1984. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change. New York: Free Press. Peake, Thomas R. 1987. Keeping the Dream Alive: A History of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from King to the Nineteen-Eighties. New York: Peter Lang.
Political and Economic Sustenance Web Sites
The SCLC increasingly sought to generate and sustain political and economic power within the Black community. In the South, the SCLC ran dozens of citizenship schools to instill in all community members the tools of democracy through lessons ranging from basic literacy skills to the U.S. government’s structure and the importance of voting. In the North, the SCLC initiated Operation Breadbasket and the Poor People’s Campaign to highlight economic injustices experienced by African Americans even after the passage of civil rights legislature, promote Black-owned businesses, and boycott those discriminating against Blacks. SCLC suffered a considerable loss with Dr. King’s assassination in April 1968. Members committed to the “beloved community” continued efforts to improve social, political, and economic conditions for African Americans nationwide, under the leadership of Ralph Abernathy and Joseph Lowery. Concerned with economic improvement of African Americans during the 1970s, SCLC’s programs confronted national economic inequality and international causes such as apartheid and U.S. investment in South Africa. Still in existence, the SCLC focuses on eliminating racism, poverty, and violence within the Black community. Melissa F. Weiner See Appendix B See also Civil Rights Movement; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Religion, African Americans; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Further Readings
Branch, Taylor. 1989. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63. New York: Simon & Schuster. Branch, Taylor. 1999. Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Southern Christian Leadership Conference: http://www.sclcnational.org
SOVEREIGNTY, NATIVE AMERICAN For federally recognized American Indian tribes in the United States, of which there are 334 in the lower fortyeight states, sovereignty is the central political issue. This issue is expressed through the treaty relationship that has existed between American Indian nations and the federal government since 1776. In addition to the federally recognized tribes, there are 228 Alaska Native Villages, which are also federally recognized but through the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. As distinct from the tribes in the lower forty-eight states, whose land is held in “trust” by the federal government, the Alaska Native villages are organized into corporations that hold their land. Although the land held in trust, most of which is organized into reservations, is legally defined as “Indian country,” the Alaska Native land is not so defined. Native Hawaiians do not currently have a special relationship with the federal government, though there is currently a movement on the island and in Congress to have Native communities recognized under the same rubric of federal American Indian law as the tribes in the lower forty-eight states. However, this movement is opposed by groups of Native Hawaiians who reason that gaining “trust” status would only limit or co-opt historic Hawaiian sovereignty, which pre-dates the European invasion of the islands in the 18th century. In fact, the sovereignty of all Indigenous Peoples worldwide, as expressed in the UN Draft Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, pre-dates the
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European invasions beginning in 1492. But the declaration also recognizes, as it condemns, the limitations placed on this sovereignty by the various European colonizers. Recognizing that it is the aspiration of Indigenous Peoples worldwide to restore in one way or another their precolonial sovereignty, this entry focuses on how the colonial power of the United States has limited and continues to limit this sovereignty for the 334 American Indian tribes in what would become the lower forty-eight states.
Congress and Sovereignty Tribal sovereignty is inherent and recognized as such under federal American Indian law, the colonial body of statute, and case law that regulates relations between the tribes and the federal government. Under this law, the Supreme Court has recognized Congress as having “plenary power” in American Indian affairs. Although there is an ongoing debate about the source of this virtually absolute power, the Court has historically located it in Article I, Section VIII, Paragraph 3 and Article II, Section II, Paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution. The former is the Commerce Clause under which the Congress has the power “To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes”; the latter gives the president “power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided twothirds of the Senators present concur.” Until 1871, when Congress abrogated treatymaking with American Indian tribes, the federal government negotiated treaties with Native tribes and in that sense recognized them as independent, sovereign nations. But from the beginning of the Republic, Congress and the Supreme Court, deferring to what was interpreted as the preeminent power of Congress in American Indian affairs as it does to this day, began to limit Native sovereignty. To that end, between 1790 and 1834, Congress established a series of trade and intercourse acts to regulate political and economic relations with the American Indian tribes. Paramount in these acts, which were expanded and synthesized in the 1834 act, was the federal government’s taking control of all sales of American Indian lands to U.S. citizens such that it was illegal for these sales to take place unless they were conveyed through a federal treaty or convention. Further, in Section 25 of the 1834 act, the U.S. government extended its criminal jurisdiction in American Indian country except in the case of
Indian-on-Indian crime, something for which it would also assume jurisdiction in the case of major crimes in 1885. Thus, the Trade and Intercourse Acts intruded significantly on two key areas of Native sovereignty: control of land and laws.
The Supreme Court and Sovereignty Concurrently with the congressional imposition of statute law on American Indian tribes, the Supreme Court began to develop a body of case law geared to expanding federal power in this area. Between 1823 and 1832, the Court, under Chief Justice John Marshall, heard three generative cases in federal American Indian law, known now as the “Marshall trilogy”: Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823), Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), and Worcester v. Georgia (1832). Marshall wrote the opinion of the Court in all three cases. Johnson v. M’Intosh involved a land dispute between Whites over land allegedly sold by the Piankeshaw Indians in 1775 to the forefathers of the plaintiffs (Johnson and Graham) and then resold to the defendant by the U.S. government after the Revolution, the plaintiffs argued that, being sovereigns, American Indian tribes had a right to sell their lands, while the defendant, among other arguments, denied this sovereignty, arguing instead that American Indians were not a part of society. What Marshall did in his opinion was effect a compromise between these two positions, one denying and the other affirming Native sovereignty over land. While acknowledging that American Indian nations were the rightful occupants of the land, their rights to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were denied. Thus, citing the medieval “doctrine of discovery,” which was based in the racist ideal of European superiority to Indigenous Peoples, the Marshall court actually and virtually dispossessed American Indian peoples of the title to their lands, thus affirming and expanding the control of land sales mandated in the Trade and Intercourse Acts. This fundamental limitation of tribal sovereignty (for how can a nation claim sovereignty if it does not control its own land base?) was expanded 8 years later in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. In this case, the Cherokees came before the Court as a sovereign foreign nation to ask for an injunction against the state of Georgia, which, in violation of Cherokee treaties with the United States, was violently annexing Cherokee land
Spanglish
and abrogating Cherokee laws. Facing intense political pressure from both an executive branch that refused to support the treaties with military force and the state of Georgia, which refused to recognize Cherokee sovereignty, the Marshall Court, sensing an imminent political crisis it feared it could not weather, denied the Cherokee status as a foreign nation and thus its right (at that time) to appear before the Court. In his now famous opinion, with Justices Joseph Storey and Smith Thompson dissenting, Marshall sought a compromise as he had done in Johnson, defining American Indian tribes as “domestic dependent nations” and declaring their relationship to the United States as being that of a ward to guardians. Because in international law a nation is defined as being both independent and foreign, Marshall’s definition, which holds today, is oxymoronic. Further, his dictum comparing the tribal-federal relationship to that of “a ward to his guardian” reduces American Indian nations to the status of minors before the law, a relationship now rendered under federal Indian law as one of “trust” in which, in exchange for the abrogation of certain sovereign rights, the federal government assumed certain responsibilities toward its “ward.” Worcester v. Georgia was driven by the same political circumstances as Cherokee Nation. In this case, Samuel B. Worcester and six other missionaries to the Cherokees were tried and convicted in the superior court of Gwinnett County, Georgia, of residing in Cherokee territory without a permit. Worcester had pleaded to the Georgia court that the state’s laws possessed no validity in Cherokee territory because in signing treaties with the Cherokees, the United States of America, in effect, acknowledged the Cherokee nation to be indeed a sovereign nation. But this plea was rejected, Worcester and the others were convicted, and the case went to the Supreme Court on a writ of error, where the Court found in favor of the plaintiffs. Reading his majority opinion, one understands that Marshall saw this as a case clearly threatening the sovereignty of the federal government over and against the states in American Indian affairs and beyond. But in upholding the preeminence of the federal government in American Indian affairs, Marshall took it upon himself in his dicta to revise his definitions of the doctrine of discovery and American Indian sovereignty in the previous two cases to the point of almost but not quite reversing himself. In the final analysis, Marshall’s language in Worcester established a hierarchy of sovereigns in American
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Indian affairs, which holds to this day, with the federal government at the top and the states at the bottom. Although the decision, effectively unsupported at the time by the executive branch, could not stave off the federal removal of the Cherokees from their homeland, it remains today the most important tool in the kit of federally recognized American Indian tribes who are continually struggling to maintain what limited internal sovereignty they have in a colonial system grounded in the commerce and treaty-making clauses of the Constitution, the Trade and Intercourse Acts, and in the case law of the Marshall trilogy. Eric Cheyfitz See also Alaskan Natives, Legislation Concerning; Australia, Indigenous People; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Cherokee; Colonialism; Hawaiians; Internal Colonialism; Native Americans; Red Power Further Readings
Canby, William C., Jr. 2004. American Indian Law in a Nutshell. 4th ed. St. Paul, MN: West. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1 (1831). Cheyfitz, Eric. 1993. “Savage Law: The Plot Against American Indians in Johnson and Graham’s Lessee v. M’Intosh and The Pioneers.” Pp. 109–128 in The Cultures of United States Imperialism, edited by A. Kaplan and D. E. Pease. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Cheyfitz, Eric. 2006. “The (Post) Colonial Construction of Indian Country: U.S. American Indian Literatures and Federal Indian Law.” In The Columbia Guide to American Indian Literatures of the United States Since 1945, edited by E. Cheyfitz. New York: Columbia University Press. Deloria, Vine, Jr. and Clifford Lytle. 1983. American Indians, American Justice. Austin: University of Texas Press. Johnson v. M’Intosh, 21 U.S. 543 (1823). Prucha, Francis Paul. 1984. The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians. 2 vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Wilkins, David E. 1997. American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court: The Masking of Justice. Austin: University of Texas Press. Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515 (1832).
SPANGLISH Like similar varieties that creatively fuse two languages—for example, Franglish (French and English), Finglish (Finnish and English), and Hinglish
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(Hindi and English)—Spanglish is a linguistic and cultural phenomenon that combines Spanish and English in an innovative manner and reflects the close contact between the U.S. and Latina/o cultures and languages in the United States. In Latina/o communities across the United States, speakers share a range of languages. Through some people in the community are Spanish monolingual and others are English monolingual, most people are bilingual to a greater or lesser extent. In this linguistic and social context, English and Spanish are in intimate contact, which gives rise to a new informal variety described in this entry.
Linguistic Characteristics Although there is no universally agreed-upon definition of Spanglish, most people identify it as language mixing or the use of English and Spanish in a single utterance or text. Borrowing, code-mixing, and calquing are the linguistic processes most identified with Spanglish. These three processes are quite common in situations of language contact. Borrowed elements from other languages are incorporated in all languages, but this practice is more common when cultures and languages are in close contact. In Spanglish, English words can be incorporated into a Spanish language utterance as is, or English language borrowings can be phonologically, morphologically and syntactically integrated into Spanish: biles (bills), mopear (to mop), troca (truck), watchear (to watch). Another process commonly associated with Spanglish is code-mixing, which consists of the use of two languages in a single utterance; mixing can occur at the word (No quiero problems contigo. / I don’t want problems with you.), clause (El es un muchacho who really works. / He is a guy who really works.), or sentence level (He is a good friend. Lo quiero mucho. I think he is a good person. / He is a good friend. I love him very much. I think he is a good person). Intrasentential code-mixing is the most complex process because it involves mixing at multiple sites in one utterance (Mi trabajo is really interesting porque puedo ir traveling a muchos lugares que are really cool. / My job is really interesting because I can travel to many really cool places.). Intrasentential codemixing is a rule governed process that generally does not violate the syntactic rules of either Spanish or English. It is characteristic of Latinos with a solid fluency in both Spanish and English. In fact, some linguists
have argued that the ability to code mix intrasententially is a good predictor of excellent bilingual proficiency of speakers of English and Spanish. Finally, calquing is a linguistic borrowing process whereby words and phrases that already exist in the borrowing language acquire new meanings in the lending language. These terms thus are used innovatively in ways that are not common in monolingual Spanish varieties. Calques can be single words; for example, the Spanglish word carpeta calques the English word carpet. In normative Spanish, the usual word for carpet is alfombra, and carpeta means folder. Therefore, the word carpeta acquires a new meaning in Spanglish that would be unfamiliar to monolingual Spanish speakers. Phrasal calques are also common; for example, the Spanglish phrase, coger retratos is a direct translation of the English phrase to take pictures but this idea is usually expressed as sacar fotos in normative Spanish. Although both coger and retratos exist in Spanish, the combination of these terms to express the idea of picture taking is what is innovative in Spanglish. Most Spanish monolingual speakers would be unfamiliar with the use of these words in this combination.
Spanglish Varieties Although the tools for creating innovative words and phrases combining Spanish and English are the same in different Latina/o communities and most bilingual speakers understand the bulk of expressions, different varieties of Spanglish exist just as regional varieties of Spanish and English exist across the United States. Each variety has a different flavor given the regionalisms common to each specific area. Although on the East Coast, the linguistic phenomena is known as Spanglish (and increasing, this has become the general term), it is known as “Tex-Mex” in the Southwest and “Cubonics” in Miami. Spanglish is not universally accepted in the United States. Although English and Spanish language purists bemoan the use of Spanglish because they believe that it is a corruption or ungrammatical use of the languages, many Latina/o speakers use the term in a positive way to highlight the creativity of the bilingual experience. It should be clarified that speakers who use this informal variety do not speak it exclusively; they also use varieties of Spanish and English.
Spanish Americans
Spanglish Culture Spanglish has existed as long as Spanish speakers have been in contact with English in the United States and the cultures have coexisted; however, the practice began to gain more recognition in the 1970s in an explosion of work by Latino poets. Nuyorican Poets such as Miguel Algarin, Tato Laviera, and Sandra Esteves and Chicano poets such Alurista, Tino Villanueva, and Bernice Zamora celebrated and incorporated Spanglish in their literary work. Roberto Fernandez, Junot Diaz, and Giannina Braschi also use Spanglish in their prose texts. Magazines targeting Latina/o audiences such as Latina, Urban Latino, Generation ñ, and Pocho regularly feature Spanglish in their work. Spanglish is a creative phenomenon that resonates with many Latinas/os, and it is increasingly found in informal language used in the United States and in other Spanish-speaking places such as Spain and Latin America. Spanglish is also becoming increasingly common in literature, music, advertisements, the mass media, and increasingly, in cyberspace (imeilear, la net, hacer un clic). Though purists continue to criticize the mixing of languages, Spanglish gains more visibility as contact between Spanish and English increases both in the United States and abroad.
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Torres, Lourdes. 1997. Puerto Rican Discourse. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Zentella, Ana Celia. 1997. Growing Up Bilingual. New York: Blackwell.
SPANISH AMERICANS Spanish Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from Spain, a country of 42.5 million, as of 2007 estimates. According to the 2000 census, there were 82,860 people born in Spain residing in the United States, of whom 44.2% were citizens. Spanish Americans represent different regions of Spain (Castile, Cataluña, Andalucía, Extremadura, Galicia, and the Basque Country). Many Spaniards identify themselves by region. This entry will look at the background of immigration from Spain to the United States and the contemporary picture of Spanish Americans.
United Kingdom
Ireland
Netherlands Belgium Luxembourg France
Lourdes Torres
Bay of Biscay
See also Assimilation; Bilingual Education; English Immersion; Hispanics; Latina/o Studies
Spain Portugal
Atlantic Ocean
Italy
ea
ic S
ear Bal
Mediterranean Sea
Further Readings
Amastae, Jon and Lucia Elias-Olivares. 1982. Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic Aspects. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Aparicio, Frances. 1988. “La Vida es un Spanglish Disparatero: Bilingualism in Nuyorican Poetry.” In European Perspectives of Hispanic Literature, edited by G. Fabre. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press. Cruz, Bill and Bill Teck. 1998. Official Spanglish Dictionary. New York: Simon & Schuster. Galván, Roberto and Richard Teschner. 1985. El Diccionario del Español Chicano. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook. Sanchez, Rosaura. 1994. Chicano Discourse. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press (reissue edition). Stavans, Ilan. 2003. Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language. New York: HarperCollins.
Morocco
Algeria
Western Sahara
Mauritania
Mali Niger
Immigration Patterns Several Spanish populations and settlements in the New World (now Florida, New Mexico, California,
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Arizona, Texas, and Louisiana) had ties to Madrid. For example, St. Augustine, Florida, is the oldest continuously occupied city in the continental United States, having been founded by the Spanish in 1585. Immigration of Spaniards wasn’t recorded until 1820. Since then, more than 250,000 Spaniards have come to the United States. Half of these immigrants arrived between 1900 and 1924. Spanish immigration patterns often included indirect immigration, that is, Spanish entering the United States through a third country (mostly Latin American republics). Thus, many were classified in immigration statistics by country of last residence. In 1924, the U.S. quota system greatly limited the number of Spaniards allowed to enter to 912. This number was further reduced to 131; however, some exceptions were granted to skilled workers. Immigration between 1924 and 1960 was small, except for the refugees fleeing from the Spanish Civil War during the 1930s and those fleeing the Francisco Franco regime. These refugees were intellectuals, activists, and businesspeople. A second wave, bringing more than 100,000, began in the early 1960s and continued through the late 1990s.
Contemporary Community In recent years, people from Spain have sought permanent residency, refugee status, and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2007, about 1,300 Spaniards immigrated to the United States annually. At least a thousand Spanish Americans have become naturalized citizens annually, beginning in 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, 2,064,053 people of Spanish national origin lived in the United States in 2005. In geographic distribution, the top five states were California, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and New York. In keeping with their regional identifications from Spain, Spanish communities have developed centers, clubs, associations, and organizations in various locations, such as New York (and in particular New York City), New Jersey, and California. Many Spanish Americans are bilingual, that is, they speak both Spanish and English. However, with a strong value on keeping their culture alive, many speak Spanish at home. According to the 2000 census, 14.2% speak only English at home. Famous U.S. residents of Spanish descent include Mabel Alvarez, artist and painter; Kate Brown, politician,
attorney, and first woman to serve as Oregon’s Senate majority leader; Manuel “Mani” Hernandez, former soccer player; and Alfonso Ramon Lopez, former baseball player and manager. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Hispanics; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Carr, Raymond. 2001. Spain: A History. New York: Oxford University Press. Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www .dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/ yearbook.shtm Hooper, John. 2006. The New Spaniards. 2nd ed. New York: Penguin Books. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Spain. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/ socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
SPLIT LABOR MARKET A split labor market is a situation in which wages for similar jobs are different for members of two or more distinct ethnic and racial groups. The theory of split labor market was developed to explain ethnic and racial antagonism as the consequence of class conflict and competition for finite resources, mainly jobs. The phenomenon and related theories are discussed in this entry.
Defining the Concept A split labor market occurs because racial and ethnic groups have different levels of resources, and employers engage in efforts to maximize profit by paying as little as the market will bear for a particular job. When a group has fewer resources, members may be willing to accept lower wages for the same kind of job than are members of a more economically advantaged
Split Labor Market
group. Usually, the low-paid group is a recently arrived ethnic minority and the high-paid group corresponds to the majority. Feeling threatened by the new competition, the high-paid group engages in exclusionary behavior. In a split labor market situation, the majority may use unions to completely exclude the ethnic minority from getting jobs or to segregate them to less desirable occupations and positions. The majority may also use its political power to create legislation criminalizing behaviors unique to the minority group; the separation of the minority group from the general population, and therefore from job competition, is then justified on moral and legal grounds. Exclusionary behavior by members of a majority has been identified as one of the causes of ethnic entrepreneurship; when other options are closed to them, members of the minority group start their own businesses.
Related Theories Besides the split labor market theory, two other theories attempt to explain different wages for similar jobs: dual economy and segmented labor market. According to the dual economy approach, organizations in a particular economy are divided into two sectors: core and periphery. Core organizations have a dominant position in their markets and tend to be bigger; have more complex organizational structures, use more sophisticated technology, and exercise power over other organizations; or are insulated from market pressures. Periphery organizations tend to be smaller, have a smaller number of levels of hierarchy, use only basic technology, and face stronger competition in a particular market. Because of their “structural” differences, core and periphery also present variations in the way companies organize work, as well as their employment practices and the opportunities that they offer to their employees. The more complex organizations in the core rely on company-specific skills and have a vested interested in keeping and developing talent, which usually translates into better wages and more training for workers. Jobs in the core are better paid and more stable over time because organizations in this sector are shielded from the effects of sudden changes in market conditions. The many layers of hierarchy in the core allow for career paths inside the organization, providing workers with the possibility of moving to better, higher-paid jobs as they gain more experience, knowledge, and skills.
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The periphery, in contrast, offers lower-paid jobs, fewer benefits, little training, no opportunities for career advancement within the same organization, and a lack of stability because of vulnerability to market changes. Individuals’ economic well-being depends at least partly on the sector in which they find jobs. The core-periphery divide explains the existence of differential rewards for similar jobs depending on the characteristics of the organization offering the position. A complementary approach, the dual economy theory, explains how workers are also divided into two labor markets: a primary labor market associated with core organizations and a secondary labor market that provides workers for the periphery. Workers in the different labor markets are not competing with each other, and it is difficult for workers in the secondary market to move to the primary and attain positions in core organizations. The existence of internal labor markets in core organizations is one mechanism for the establishment of barriers between the primary and secondary labor markets. Precisely because the core offers higher job stability and more opportunities for intra-firm promotions, employees become sheltered from competition with other workers. Individuals start their careers in entrylevel positions for which they have to compete with all other applicants. After this initial entry-level position, however, workers in the core follow career paths inside the organization and get the necessary skills to obtain promotions, regardless of the possible existence of better qualified candidates outside of the firm. Individuals who start their careers in the secondary market are forced to move from one job to another without developing highly complex skills, which makes them less desirable for employers in the core. The persistence of poverty is then explained by the fact that once an individual enters the secondary labor market, he or she is locked out of better and more stable jobs.
Linkage to Race and Gender Regardless of the mechanisms that separate the two labor markets, a disproportionate amount of racial and ethnic minorities, as well as women, are part of the disadvantageous secondary labor market. Researchers have hypothesized several reasons for the predominance of race and gender minorities in periphery organizations. First, employers from core organizations may engage in direct discrimination. Second, race may be used as an indication of the suitability of individuals for a particular job and the possible difficulties
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Sri Lankan Americans
training them by managers. Finally, periphery organizations are located in less expensive communities, where minorities tend to live. Particularly in the absence of good public transportation, workers are limited in their options to organizations located nearby their neighborhoods. Martha A. Martinez See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Discrimination; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Labor Market Segmentation Further Readings
Auerhahn, Kathleen. 1999. “The Split Labor Market and the Origin of Antidrug Legislation in the United States.” Law and Society Inquiry 24(Spring):411–440. Baron, James and William Bielby. 1984. “The Organization of Work in a Segmented Economy.” American Sociological Review 49(August):454–473. Bonacich, Edna. 1972. “A Theory of Ethnic Antagonism: The Split Labor Market.” American Sociological Review 37(October):547–559. Bonacich, Edna. 1979. “The Past, Present, and Future of Split Labor Market Theory.” Research in Race and Ethnic Relations 1:17–64. Brown, Cliff. 2000. “The Role of Employers in Split Labor Markets: An Event Structure Analysis of Racial Conflict and AFL Organizing, 1917–1919.” Social Forces 79(2): 653–681. Doeringer, Peter and Michael Piore. 1971. Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Hewitt, Cynthia, Leann Tigges, and Gary Green. 2001. “Why Does Job Segregation Lead to Wage Inequality among African Americans? Person, Place, Sector, or Skills?” Social Science Research 30:473–495. Hodson, Randy and Robert L. Kaufman. 1982. “Economic Dualism: A Critical Review.” American Sociological Review 47(December):727–739. Wilkinson, Doris Y. 1991. “The Segmented Labor Market and African American Women from 1890–1960: A Social History Interpretation.” Research in Race and Ethnic Relations 6:85–104.
SRI LANKAN AMERICANS Sri Lankan Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from Sri Lanka, a country of 20.1 million,
as of 2007 estimates. Sri Lanka’s population is ethnically and religiously diverse. It includes the Sinhalese, Tamils, Moors, Burghers, Malays, Parsis, and Vaddhas; as well as Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, and Muslims. Most Sri Lankans in the United States are Tamils and Sinhalese. According to the 2000 census, there were 25,265 people born in Sri Lanka resident in the United States, of whom 39.2% were citizens. This entry will look at the background of immigration from Sri Lanka to the United States and the contemporary picture of Sri Lankan Americans.
Uzbekistan Tajikistan Turkmenistan
China Afghanistan
Pakistan Nepal Bhutan
Bangladesh
India Myanmar
Bay of Bengal
Arabian Sea
Maldives Sri Lanka
Indian Ocean Indonesia
Immigration Patterns Beginning in the 1950s, there was a rising Sri Lankan population in the United States; however, immigration records classified Sri Lankans as “other Asians,” so accurate numbers are not available. A separate category for Sri Lankans was established in 1975, and records indicate that about 430 Sri Lankans immigrated to the United States that year. These immigrants were highly educated professionals who either were recruited for various professions or attended U.S. universities. Civil conflict fueled migration for the Tamils in the 1980s, bringing about 400 Sri Lankans each year. Ethnic violence in 1991 and 1993 brought about a hundred refugees to the United States.
Stereotypes
Contemporary Community In recent years, people from Sri Lanka have sought permanent residency and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2007, about 1,400 Sri Lankans immigrated to the United States annually. At least 8,400 Sri Lankan Americans have become naturalized citizens since 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 2005 American Community Survey, 39,810 people of Sri Lankan national origin lived in the United States. Many Sri Lankans have settled in urban areas that already have Sri Lankan and Indian communities established, such as in Los Angeles, New York, Newark, and Chicago. In geographic distribution, the top five states were California, Maryland, Texas, New York, and New Jersey. Of those Sri Lankan– born people in the United States in 2000, only 2.9% had entered the country before 1980. Their median family income was $62,490 compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Asian Americans; Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs.gov/ ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm De Silva, K. M. 2005. A History of Sri Lanka. New Delhi: Penguin. Fuglerud, Oivind. 1999. Life on the Outside: The Tamil Diaspora and Long Distance Nationalism. Sterling, VA: Pluto Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Sri Lanka. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/ socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www Wickramasinghe, Nira. 2006. Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: A History of Contested Identities. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Wright, Gillian. 1994. Sri Lanka. Lincolnwood, IL: Passport Books.
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STEREOTYPES Stereotypes are belief systems or cognitions held by one social group about another social group. Stereotypes are often held by one race, ethnicity, or society about other groups of people who are from another race, ethnicity, society, or social group. This entry provides an overview of the concept of stereotypes with illustrative examples and discusses consequences of stereotypes.
Defining the Concept Stereotypes are typically considered to be negative thoughts held by one social group toward another social group; however, the thoughts may also be positive or neutral. Given that stereotypes are social constructs, marginalized communities tend to be viewed through stereotypes that are more damaging and slanderous than are stereotypes of communities holding a higher status in the culture. Many of the stereotypes of African Americans tend to be derogatory in comparison with other ethnic groups that don’t share a similar role in U.S. history. This can be easily understood if one considers typical stereotypes of African Americans compared with typical stereotypes of French Americans. Psychologists have argued that everyone is guilty of stereotyping at one time or another and probably uses stereotypes on a daily basis. One way to manage all the infinite social stimuli one is challenged to interpret on a regular basis is to summarize all the information into manageable chunks. These chunks of information give rise to stereotypes. For example, it is difficult to look at each Jewish American as an individual who is unique and different from all other Jewish Americans. Social scientists have found that people tend to form stereotypes about people in groups. Someone who believes that all Jewish Americans “eat bagels, are frugal, and pretend to have liberal political views” would be guilty of having a stereotype about Jewish Americans. Likewise, someone having a belief that all African Americans “like basketball, fried chicken, watermelon, and rap music” would be guilty of having stereotypes about African Americans. Stereotypes often become a part of the cultural belief system, and they are resistant to change and persist over time. Thus, even though many of the stereotypes about African Americans
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Stereotypes
derive from the racist period of slavery, these stereotypes continue to exist.
Examples of Stereotypes Current examples of stereotypes include the hypothetical beliefs of certain European American students that Hispanic students with English as a second language are not as intelligent as are European Americans. The number of stereotypes one group holds regarding another can be endless and context dependent. In a classroom setting, for example, European Americans may have one set of stereotypes about Hispanic American students, but in another setting, such as the cafeteria, the stereotypes may be related to beliefs about the types of foods Hispanic Americans enjoy eating. A positive stereotype is a belief system one group has about another group that members of the first group would like to emulate. For example, someone who believes that all Hispanic Americans students are bilingual may be motivated to learn a new language. Stereotypes of Asian Americans often tend to suggest that they are the “model minority”: smart, studious, and quiet. Although some would consider these stereotypes to be positive, they can actually be just as damaging and slanderous as more overtly negative stereotypes and, furthermore, could be particularly damaging for Asian Americans who do not fit these stereotypes. Current stereotypes for Arab Americans have been particularly vicious since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. Stereotypes are commonly reinforced and perpetrated in the media and film industry where certain ethnic groups are chosen to play specific roles that are consistent with cultural stereotypes. The latter is vividly seen in casting for Arab characters who are commonly portrayed as terrorists or oil moguls. Other mediareinforced stereotypes includes the African American character who speaks in broken English, lives in poverty, is a violent criminal in a gang of thugs.
Consequences of Stereotypes Stereotypes often lead to prejudice, which is a belief about a specific individual because he or she belongs to a larger group. Racial profiling is an example of a stereotype leading to prejudice. For example, countless Arab Americans and Black Americans have been stopped for questioning by authorities because of their
appearance or their names. The belief that if someone looks a certain way they must fit a specific profile is the foundation of all prejudice. Prejudice may eventually lead to a form of behavior known as discrimination. Discrimination is a behavior directed toward an individual based on a prejudicial belief system. In a job interviewing situation, an individual holding negative stereotypes about an ethnic group may develop a specific prejudicial belief about the individual being interviewed, which then influences the hiring manager’s decision not to hire the ethnic American individual. The prejudicial misconception is driven by a stereotype that influences behavior, the behavior is a form of discrimination. When individuals of Middle Eastern descent are taken off planes, turned down for employment, followed in stores by security, or not allowed to participate in certain activities because of their appearance, they have become the victims of the progression of a stereotype leading to a form of prejudice that results in the behavior of discrimination. Several studies have found strategies that are helpful in preventing and overcoming stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. One such method is the “Jigsaw technique” in which groups of people from different ethnic or social groups in a classroom setting are divided up into diverse groups. Each individual is given small bits of information needed to solve a collective problem for the group. The individuals must share their bits of information with one another to solve the problem for the group. By interacting in a collaborative effort with collective sharing of information and developing personal experiences that are positive with individuals from other races, ethnicities, and social groups, then individuals’ stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination slowly begin to dissipate. Don Elligan See also African Americans; Discrimination; Hate Crimes; Hispanics; Internalized Racism; Islamophobia; Prejudice; Racial Profiling; Racism; Stereotype Threat
Further Readings
Allport, Gordon. 1979. The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Aronson, Elliot. 1988. The Social Animal. 3rd ed. San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman. Katz, Donald and K. Braly. 1933. “Racial Stereotypes of 100 College Students.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 28:280–290.
Stereotype Threat
Lott, Bernice and Susan E. Saxon. 2002. “The Influence of Ethnicity, Social Class and Context on Judgments about U.S. Women.” Journal of Social Psychology 142:481–499. Walker, Ianin and M. Crogan. (1998). “Academic Performance, Prejudice and the Jigsaw Classroom: New Pieces to the Puzzle.” Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 8:381–393.
STEREOTYPE THREAT Stereotype threat occurs when a person is at risk of appearing to confirm a negative stereotype about a group to which he or she belongs. People have different social identities—age, race, religion, gender, and sexual preference among them—that are associated with different stereotypes, and individuals may suffer negative consequences from these stereotypes. A key facet of stereotype threat concerns academic performance. Gaps in the educational accomplishments of men versus women or Whites versus Blacks and underrepresented minorities may result partly from stereotypes impugning the math abilities of females, for example, or the intellectual abilities of Black and Hispanic students. Stereotype threat is well known in the United States and prevalent throughout the world. This entry describes stereotype threat and some of the research regarding its impact.
What Is Stereotype Threat? Stereotype threat is transmitted through culture in a variety of ways: Mass media, environment, peers, and teachers are just a few examples. Although adults are also unconsciously affected, children are the vehicles by which stereotypes and stereotype threat are reborn in every generation. The toys children play with, the books they choose to read, the way their classmates treat them, the classes they choose to take, and the careers they decide to pursue are all avenues through which stereotype threat survives from generation to generation. Children’s gender-typed beliefs are thought to develop early and increase rapidly throughout childhood. Once children differentiate between the sexes, they begin forming gender stereotypes that inevitably result in behavior influenced by gender-associated expectations. Although the origins of these beliefs are poorly understood, they may pose unconscious
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stereotype threats in myriad areas including play and various preferences. Stereotype threat is present in academia, for example, in the belief that females (regardless of race) and minorities are somehow less capable than are Caucasian males in mathematical ability. However erroneous the beliefs relating to race, gender, and academic ability, common stereotypes pervade U.S. society.
The Impact of Stereotype Threat When stereotypes such as these are found among teachers at all levels of the educational system, consciously or unconsciously, the seeds of stereotype threat are planted. About 63% of high school teachers believe that males have superior math skills when compared with their female classmates. When the academic environment and parents support such a stereotypical belief, females may have low confidence in their math abilities regardless of their actual or potential competence. The gender and minority academic gap continues into college and adulthood, as evidenced by career choice, and is especially prominent in the fields of math, physics, and engineering. Although women represent 50% of the population, they account for only 22% of those who receive bachelors degrees and 13% of those who have doctorates; finally, women hold only 10% of the jobs in the field of math, physics, and engineering. Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians are underrepresented in colleges at all levels, especially as math and science majors, earning 7%, 5%, and less than 1%, respectively, of the degrees awarded. Why do they perform less well than their White male colleagues?
Explaining the Gap Several factors contribute to the performance gap, among them anxiety, low self-esteem, and stereotype threat—social psychological states that are created by situational cues in susceptible individuals. In addition, African Americans and other minorities may show performance differences because of comparative socioeconomic disadvantage, segregation, and discrimination. Although any minority person is susceptible to stereotype threat, specific enabling factors include (a) frequent and unprovoked anxiety, (b) low self-esteem, and (c) a belief that skin color limits life conditions. Minority groups tend to perform less well when performing a difficult task for which their identified
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racial groups are considered less capable. Similarly, when stereotype threat is high, women’s problemsolving skills may be impaired. It has been posited that when a group as a whole is considered weak in a particular skill, individuals who are asked to perform a difficult task in that area feel at risk of confirming the stereotype, and psychological pressure leads them to underperform. Thus, stereotype threat is a vicious cycle is which people perform poorly because they believe they are unable to do better, and their poor performance sustains the stereotype and its threat for another generation. Stereotype threat may occur when test takers are asked to identify their race or gender before the test and when a group of test takers comprises different races or gender. For example, individual women who are confronted with the idea that women as a group have poor math ability may then worry that their own behavior will substantiate the negative stereotypes. In this way, stereotype threats may reduce minority and female students’ performance, regardless of their actual abilities. Furthermore, in an environment where stereotype threats can occur, a stereotype may create internal barriers inhibiting success by lowering self-esteem or confidence and reducing hopes for the future.
Research on Stereotype Threat Several studies have been conducted to show the pernicious effects of stereotype threat. One looked at the impact of environmental stereotype threats on women’s math performance. Participating were 72 female undergraduates, each randomly assigned to the stereotype threat-removed group, or the nonremoved conditions. A male experimenter tested each respondent individually. For the nonremoved group, tests were administered in a laboratory where a cartoon depicting a girl struggling with an easy math problem while a boy answered one much more difficult hung prominently on the wall. In the stereotype-removed control condition, tests were administered in an environment lacking any stereotypical statements. In the lab with the cartoon, the experimenter gave the participant instructions for the math test and read them aloud. The directions included the stereotype threat manipulation. All the test instructions informed the participant that she had half an hour to work on the 50-item math test. In the stereotype threat-removed condition, the instructions included the statement, “males and females do equally well on this test.” In
the nonremoved stereotype threat condition, no information regarding gender performance differences was given. Participants in the nonstereotype threat condition performed better than did participants in the stereotype threat condition, suggesting that environmental stereotype threats have measurable impacts regarding female students’ math performance. In other results from the same study, women in male-dominated academic areas, such as math, science, and engineering, perceived higher levels of gender discrimination. Similarly, these women reported anticipating the most gender discrimination if they pursued careers commonly thought of as “male.” In a study by Steele and Aronson, researchers recruited 117 Stanford University undergraduates— male and female, Black and White—using campus advertisements that offered $10 an hour for participation. Of these, 114 were randomly assigned to the three experimental conditions (diagnostic, nondiagnostic, and challenge). Participants were contacted by telephone before their experimental participation and asked to provide SAT verbal and quantitative scores, to rate their enjoyment of verbally oriented classes, and to provide background information such as year in school and major. When participants arrived at the laboratory, the experimenter, a Caucasian, explained that for the next 30 minutes, they would work on a set of verbal problems in a format identical to the SAT exam. When everyone was finished, the students would answer questions about their experience. The experimenter gave each participant a page that stated the purpose of the study, the correct procedure for answering questions, and the importance of indicating guessed answers. The test was described as very difficult, and students were told to expect they would answer many of the questions incorrectly. They were told they would receive feedback regarding their performance at the end of the session. In the diagnostic condition, participants were also informed that the study was concerned with “various personal factors involved in performance on problems requiring reading and verbal reasoning abilities.” In the nondiagnostic and challenge conditions, the description of the study did not refer to verbal ability. Results showed that Black participants underperformed compared with their White counterparts when the test was presented as a measure of their ability. However, when the test was presented without that comment, Black participants’ performance improved
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
dramatically to achieve the same level as the White respondents. Cary Stacy Smith and Li-Ching Hung See also Hate Crimes; Labeling; Prejudice; Racism; Social Distance; Stereotypes Further Readings
Bandura, Albert. 1997. Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: Freeman. Huston, Aletha C. 1983. “Sex Typing.” Pp. 387–467 in Handbook of Child Psychology, vol. 4. Socialization, Personality, and social Development, edited by P. H. Mussen. 4th ed. New York: Wiley. Hyde, Janet Shibley, Elizabeth Fennema, and S. J. Lamon. 1990. “Gender Differences in Mathematics Performance: A Meta-Analysis.” Psychological Bulletin 107:139–155. Steele, Claude M. 1997. “A Threat in the Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance.” American Psychologist 52:613–629. Steele, Claude M. and Joshua Aronson, J. 1995. Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69(5):797–811.
STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE (SNCC) Best-known for initiating the student sit-in movement that transformed southern U.S. culture and reshaped the history of African Americans nationwide, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was at the forefront of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement and, later, the Black Power Movement. This entry records that history. On February 1, 1960, four African American college students sat down at the counter of the Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth’s lunch counter and refused to move until they were served. For hours, the students were tormented by Whites who were shocked at the blatant violation of racial customs. Eventually, the store closed rather than serve the Black students. The next day they returned, joined by more students, and the following day, by dozens more, all from local historically Black colleges. The students went to jail rather than continue to be denied equal service. Throughout the next few months, hundreds
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of African Americans, and some White sympathizers, engaged in dozens of sit-ins in fifty-four cities across the country. Willing to be jailed for their efforts, these and the thousands of other students who later joined SNCC called attention to segregation through nonviolent tactics directed at local White establishments. Students such as Marion Barry, Diane Nash, John Lewis, and James Bevel emerged early in the movement at the first conference led by long-time community activist Ella Baker, who was then with the Southern Christian Leadership Coalition (SCLC). Leadership remained in the hands of local students throughout the organization’s history. Barry was the first leader, followed by Lewis from 1960 through 1966, when Stokely Carmichael rose to power. Under Lewis, SNCC sought equal access to public facilities, increased voter registration, and increased education within southern Black communities. With Carmichael came a significant shift in ideology within the ranks of SNCC membership. Although initially an organization devoted to nonviolent tactics to promote social equality and draw attention to their struggle, SNCC’s ideology shifted toward revolution to change the underlying structure of inequality in U.S. society. SNCC consistently sought autonomy from the more religiously inspired SCLC, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Although some SNCC members drew on radical aspects of Christianity and most members drew particular inspiration from the Reverends James Lawson and C. T. Vivian, others demurred, even refusing to join in the group prayer sessions while held in local jails. SNCC members often came to resent the attention paid to King when much of the onthe-ground planning and action involved local students, rather than a national figure. SNCC consistently used the national media to highlight the continued existence of segregation in the United States. In 1961, SNCC joined with the Congress of Racial Equality, SCLC, and White student allies for Freedom Rider through the South to highlight segregation in public transportation, which persisted despite a federal law ruling this unconstitutional. Beaten, firebombed, and arrested, the Freedom Riders ended their journey having brought national attention to White racist violence. Expanding their program to a nationwide effort, SNCC created Freedom Summer in 1964 to register voters and call national attention to southern Black voter disenfranchisement and promote community education in cities and towns throughout the South.
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Recruiting White college students and young professionals from the North again drew national media attention to SNCC’s efforts. The tragic death of an African American SNCC member, James Cheney, and two White northern students, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, heightened the nation’s consciousness of the violence perpetrated against young Black and White activists promoting equality. In addition to registering thousands of new Black voters, SNCC established Freedom Schools and community centers to provide education in citizenship and African American history and culture. Throughout its history, SNCC wrestled with the role of White sympathizers and allies. SNCC initially operated as an interracial organization; White members and field secretaries experienced violence at rates similar to, but less than, Black members. As a liberatory Black consciousness arose, SNCC purged its membership of Whites to ensure that the organization would not be co-opted. Within its realm, several critical ideologies relating to African American equality, nationalism, and selfsufficiency were nurtured, debated, and developed. From SNCC arose key members of the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party, such as Carmichael and H. “Rap” Brown. For both members and nonmembers, SNCC provided African American students and activists with new visions of their potential and a new empowered identity from which social change could arise. Internal dissention led to SNCC’s ultimate collapse as members disagreed about whether violent confrontation was the most appropriate tactic to promote positive change. In 1969, the group was renamed the Student National Coordinating Committee, signifying its shift away from nonviolence. By 1970, the organization, last led by H. Rap Brown, was defunct. Melissa F. Weiner See also Black Panther Party; Black Power; Civil Disobedience; Civil Rights Movement
Further Readings
Carson, Clayborne. 1995. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn, ed. 1998. A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Halberstam, David. 1998. The Children. New York: Fawcett Books. Killian, Lewis. 1968. The Impossible Revolution? Black Power and the American Dream. New York: Random House. Morris, Aldon D. 1984. The Origins of the Civil Rights Community: Black Communities Organizing for Change. New York: Free Press. Zinn, Howard. 2002. SNCC: The New Abolitionists. Boston, MA: South End Press.
SUNDOWN TOWNS Sundown towns are communities where non-Whites were systematically excluded from living. Between 1890 and 1968, thousands of towns across the United States drove out their Black populations or took steps to forbid African Americans from living in them. Thus were created sundown towns, so named because many marked their city limits with signs typically reading, “Nigger, Don’t let the sun go down on you in our town”; Manitowoc, Wisconsin posted such a sign at least until 1964. Some towns in the western United States drove out their Chinese American inhabitants even earlier, between 1885 and 1920. A few excluded Jewish Americans, Native Americans, or Mexican Americans— citizens and non-citizens alike. “Sundown suburbs” developed a little later, mostly between 1900 and 1968. Many suburbs kept out not only African Americans but also Jews. The history of sundown towns and the strategies they used to maintain their status are discussed in this entry, along with current situation and long-term effects of the practice.
Prevalence of the Practice Until recently, minimal awareness existed of how widespread this practice was. Local folklore specialists and some state historical societies would document the existence of sundown towns, but generally it was felt to be a limited practice and one that generally ended generations earlier. Sociologist James T. Loewen became interested in this social phenomenon in 2001 when he was in the small town of Anna, Illinois and confirmed this story: the town’s name (which originally had come from the name of a farmer’s wife) had evolved to stand for “Ain’t No Niggers Allowed.” The practice dated at least from 1909.
Sundown Towns
After extensive research, Loewen learned that the majority of all communities outside the Old South barred African Americans except as transients or daytime laborers. In Illinois, for example, about 475 municipalities—70% of all incorporated places—had such a policy, formally or informally. Similar proportions are likely for Oregon, Indiana, and several other Northern states. Whites in the traditional South rarely engaged in the practice; thus Mississippi had only about 6 sundown towns because the African American population played an essential, if marginalized, role in the local economy of the South. Overall, Loewen estimates that at least 3,000 and perhaps as many as 15,000 towns of varying size went sundown in the United States, typically in the period between 1890 and 1930. Sundown towns ranged in population from very small towns of less than 500 to Appleton, Wisconsin, with 57,000 residents in 1970, and Warren, Michigan, with 180,000. Entire counties went sundown, such as Josephine County, Oregon; Washington County, Indiana; and Garrett County, Maryland. Multi-county areas also kept out African Americans, including a 4,000-square-mile area southwest of Fort Worth, Texas; a v-shaped area of more than 2,000 square miles in northeastern Arkansas and the western Missouri boot heel; six adjacent counties in the Appalachians of north Georgia; and a thick band of counties and towns on both sides of the Iowa–Missouri border. Indeed, Loewen has described entire subregions of the United States, such as the Cumberlands, the Ozarks, and the suburbs of Los Angeles, that went sundown—not every suburb of Los Angeles, not every county and town in the Ozarks or the Cumberlands, but enough to warrant Loewen to make the generalization.
Maintaining the System These practices rarely date back to the Civil War, although a few communities in Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio have been documented as sundown towns earlier. The absence of the phenomenon being widespread does not necessarily reflect an interracial civility in the past, but it instead reflects the demographic reality that there were very few African Americans living outside the South until the latter part of the 19th century. As freed slaves sought opportunities outside the states of the Confederacy, they were often greeted with a less-than-hospitable reception. Threats to African Americans were both formal and informal in the latter part of the 19th century, lynchings peaked, and, in
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many small towns, White residents mounted race riots that are overlooked except in local histories or diaries. All-White communities of the twentieth century were not necessarily sundown towns. Black people did not move everywhere, and the fact that a town in the far reaches of Idaho has never had an African American family does not mean it was ever a sundown community. However, this is not true in many areas of the United States, and a significant discovery is to identify towns that did have a sizeable Black population and then find that a later Census shows no African American residents. Research into local history often will document a massive expulsion, house burnings, a labor-union action expelling any non-White members, or an upsurge in activity by a vigilante group. Either a gentle discussion of local traditions or an episode of intimidation could then keep out Black newcomers at future dates. The pattern was not limited to communities who had Black populations historically. As the automobile rose in popularity, more and more towns feared the potential for becoming desegregated. Even communities which had never had African American residents now enacted ordinances which basically forbid African Americans from remaining within the city limits after dark. Despite their dubious constitutionality, some communities even maintained their ordinances after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The presence of a few Black residents or travelers did not necessarily mean a community was not, for all intents and purposes, a sundown community. A few non-White residents in Census data may only represent live-in servants. The temporary presence of African Americans may reflect a town’s “willingness” to tolerate a traveling group of entertainers. For example, Loewen has cited the University of Northern Iowa historian John Baskerville, who recalled that the city council of New Market, Iowa, suspended its sundown restriction just for one night, in either 1984 or 1985, to allow an interracial band named “Westwind” (of which he was a member) to play at a town festival, but the restriction went back into effect the next day. As they left town, the sheriff reminded Baskerville that his presence and that of other African Americans was not welcomed after dusk in most towns within the county.
Attempts to Integrate As with other racial injustices, Black people did not accept the existence of sundown towns passively.
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Figure 1
Va bu nd rg er h
Harrison Warrick
Perry Spencer
Suspected sundown county Sundown throughout or in substantial part
Sundown Counties in Indiana
Source: Loewen, James W. 2005. Sundown Towns. New York: New Press. Map 2, p. 66. Notes: Indiana had only 1 Black-free county in 1890, but it had 6 by 1930 as well as 27 others with a handful of African Americans. All 23 were probably sundown counties with Loewen, author of the book Sundown Towns, having confirmed 18.
Swedish Americans
African Americans repeatedly tested sundown towns and suburbs. Some of these tests led to the Africa Americans’ severe injury, death, or disappearance. In some instances White residents took steps to end the practice. In 1969, White professors and students at Valparaiso University in northern Indiana brought two Black families from Chicago public housing projects to homes in Valparaiso, breaking that town’s sundown policy. In the early 1970s, educators in Appleton organized a chapter of “A Better Chance,” a program that brings Black students to White high schools to prepare them better for college. The newcomers helped Appleton natives decrease their prejudice, and in the 1980s, Appleton finally relented. Similarly, by the 1990s, residents of all racial backgrounds in Oak Park, Illinois, valued that former sundown suburb’s interracial mixture, and it became one of Chicago’s most prestigious suburbs. By the year 2006, no town, according to Loewen, still excluded Chinese Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, or Jews. He estimates that more than half of all sundown towns had given up their exclusionary policies vis-à-vis African Americans. Formally, no town still claimed to exclude Blacks, but such chilling nicknames like “Ain’t No Niggers Allowed” for Anna, Illinois, and “the White Shore” for the suburbs across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, linger. A related topic is the somewhat narrow distinction between de jure and de facto segregation. De jure segregation refers to explicit government policies intended to separate race and ethnic groups, which would include the old sundown ordinances. De facto segregation is the result of historical residential practices—the knowledge that no Black people have lived in an area for generations. Most African American families want to live near people who will accept them, and the surest way to find neighbors like that is in neighborhoods that are already interracial. Consequently, Black avoidance helps maintain de facto sundown towns. Further, zoning restrictions or redlining practices may eliminate more affordable homes or exclude higher occupancy. This is yet another way for a community to keep out those they consider undesirable. Also, the new gated communities, especially in the Sunbelt, maintain the linkage between exclusivity and prestige, now increasingly on social class lines. The prestige enjoyed by such enclaves makes it difficult for neighboring towns to become and remain racially balanced.
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Sundown towns and suburbs make it easier to give African Americans inferior educations, health care, and other public services. A lack of contact with dominant culture and ideas is one reason why African Americans (and to a degree Hispanics and Native Americans) average lower scores than European Americans on college entrance exams. Because sundown towns segregate social networks of opportunity, information about jobs and connections often fails to reach Black America. The effects of sundown towns on White residents are equally unfortunate; they become more racist than Whites from biracial towns. Living in an all-White community leads many residents to defend living in an all-White community. Resulting from their prejudiced pasts, “recovering” sundown towns face continuing impediments to good race relations such as biased school curricula and overwhelmingly White teaching staffs. At least the presence of Black households makes it possible eventually to ameliorate these problems. Towns that continue to have no black residents remain problematic, although an influx of Hispanics or Asian Americans can lead to more tolerant attitudes among their White residents. James W. Loewen and Richard T. Schaefer See also Brown v. Board of Education; Discrimination; Discrimination in Housing; Jim Crow; Lynching; Redlining; Segregation
Further Readings
Gehm, John. 1984. Bringing It Home. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press. Loewen, James. 2001. “Telling History on the Landscape” and “Don’t Know Much History Quiz.” In Challenges to Poverty: Poverty and Race in America Ed. By Chester Hartman, pp. 27–33. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Loewen, James. Sundown Towns. 2005. New York: The New Press. Loewen, James. 2008. The Sundown Town News. 1 (No. 1). Available from http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/newsletters/ sundownnewletter12–08wt.pdf
SWEDISH AMERICANS Immigrants from Sweden in the mid-1800s viewed the United States as a primary destination and established
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significant settlements in many parts of the United States. These settlements enacted U.S. life as they encouraged the contribution of Swedish tradition to U.S. culture. In the 2000 census, 1.4% of the population claimed Swedish heritage, and communities with particularly high percentages and strong heritage ties have made their heritage and connection to Sweden obvious in their festivals and everyday life. This entry provides an overview of the history of Swedish Americans and their contributions.
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Early Immigration The major immigration waves to the United States from Sweden began in the 1860s. The historical reasons for emigrating varied, but Swedish poet Esaias Tegnér claimed the problem stemmed from “peace, vaccines, and potatoes.” Sweden had been at peace for many decades, and the population had become more resistant to disease through the smallpox vaccine and less affected by famine because of the agricultural production of potatoes; all these factors resulted in an exponential increase in the population of Sweden. Family farms were parceled into lots too small to produce enough to sustain a family, and the thin Swedish topsoil exacerbated the problem. In the 1860s, prompted by a famine and potato crops inadequate to feed the relative overpopulation, the first wave of
Swedish emigrants crossed the ocean. Swedes traveled inward to the Midwest, settling in areas with the thick topsoil and plentiful farmland their homeland had lacked. Swedish immigrant communities developed in Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and the surrounding areas. The series of four historical novels by Vilhelm Moberg, The Emigrants, has gained in popularity as a representation of the trials of the early Swedish immigrants, and it serves as a testament to Swedish American heritage. For later immigrants (1880s and after), job opportunities were often similar to the careers they had pursued in Sweden. Initially, however, many men began their U.S. careers in hard labor and industry, attempting to earn money to buy tickets to the United States for their families and loved ones. Many women immigrating to the United States from Sweden took positions as domestic servants; they had been attracted to the prospect of working in the United States because of the high wages advertised by friends and family as well as by ethnic newspapers and emigration agents. According to Ulf Beijbom, 61% of Swedish-born immigrants lived in urban areas, where job opportunities were limited to industry and factory work, household help, and civil service. Letters written by U.S. immigrants to relatives and friends left at home in Sweden encouraged further emigration because the immigrants (particularly women) presented a positive view of the treatment of workers and the high wages provided by U.S. employers. These so-called America-letters (Amerikabrev) exhibit an insider’s view of the conditions for recent immigrants. Although many letters are complimentary of the freedoms available in the United States, many also shatter notions of an idyllic move to the land of prosperity and freedom, calling attention to the hours of hard labor and the sometimes unreasonable expectations of employers; because labor unions were not yet pervasive, some supervisors would require employees to report for double shifts, to work with dangerous and unreliable machinery, and to work even while ill or injured for fear of being replaced. The speed of acculturation and assimilation of the Swedish immigrants and the first-generation Swedish Americans varied. Because the communities were closely knit and the families often came from the same parish in Sweden, the tendency to keep the language of their motherland pervaded for some time. Later generations of immigrants, however, encouraged children to speak the language of their new country rather than that of their parents.
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Early Settlements Many immigrants made their way to Chicago, which was an early established center for Swedes. The immigrants built churches, predominantly Lutheran but also Episcopal and other denominations, and fostered a sense of Swedish community in the big city. This sense continues today, as Chicago is home to numerous sites such as the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce and the Swedish American Museum Center, which was opened in 1976 in a small storefront by the king of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, who returned in 1981 for the opening of the museum at its current location on North Clark Street. This museum was founded for the purpose of celebrating Swedish American heritage in Chicago and was fostered by Swedish immigrant Kurt Mathiasson. Although some scholars observe pan-Scandinavian unity in Chicago, a primary example of national conflict may be observed in the situation of St. Ansgarius. This church was the first parish to include the Swedes explicitly, and even this community was a mixture of Swedish and Norwegian parishioners. Leading the founding of St. Ansgarius in 1849 was Gustav Unonius, a Swede (though also fluent in Norwegian) who led the congregation through troubled financial times and attempted to bridge the gaps that had split the congregation along national lines. Unonius resigned in 1858 to return to Sweden, and the combined parish disintegrated in approximately 1868 after a decade of internal strife and conflict over financial woes and lack of congregational unity; that is, fighting between the Norwegian and Swedish parishioners. St. Ansgarius was reestablished as a solely Swedish parish. The church was destroyed in the Chicago Fire in 1871, but the altar painting, a silver communion set given to the church by the so-called “Swedish Nightingale,” singer Jenny Lind, and other church records were saved. By 1880, thirteen Swedish churches could be found in Chicago. The Swedish population in Chicago tripled during the 1880s. Swedish immigrants, though found throughout the city, clustered particularly on the North Side, bounded by Division, Superior, Franklin, and Larrabee streets. Swedish churches and associations played a large role in encouraging solidarity in the immigrant communities, and some historians observe the migration of immigrant Swedes away from the industrial areas of Chicago and from the noise of the elevated train (colloquially called the “L”) into the more “suburban” locales of the time such as Lake View, Summerdale, and Andersonville.
Bishop Hill Colony. Although the major immigration wave from Sweden began in the 1860s, the arrival of Swedish immigrants was facilitated by the establishment of earlier immigrant communities. Bishop Hill Colony in Henry County, Illinois, founded in 1846 by Swedish pietist Eric Janson (1808–1850) and his followers, was recognized as one of the first and largest driving forces for Swedes and other Scandinavians to immigrate to the United States. A number of historically significant buildings have survived and are scattered throughout the village, with four of these buildings owned by the state and managed as part of the Bishop Hill State Historic Site. The settlement continues to be maintained as a historic site and the Bishop Hill Historic District was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1984. Shown in the photo is the first original store and post office at the colony. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS ILL,37-BISH,3-5.
Later Settlements and Festivals Although Swedes settled in such large cities across the country as Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston, and New York, the representation of Swedish American heritage remains particularly strong in the smaller midwestern cities of which Lindsborg, Kansas, is an example. Swedish immigrants, primarily from Värmland and Småland, established a community in Lindsborg in 1869. The city has been particularly recognized for its yearly parade, during which the residents of the town dress in folk costumes and bake traditional Swedish foods. The folk costumes in Sweden differ based on the region, and as Gradén observes, interestingly, the most popular costume in Lindsborg is not that of the provinces from whence the immigrants came. The Rättvik costume is the one most featured on postcards and other commercialized representations of Sweden from the first half of the 20th century.
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Food served at such heritage celebrations as the parade in Lindsborg represents the traditional Swedish smörgåsbord, with bread, cheese, sliced vegetables (typically peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers), and sliced smoked salmon with which to build the open-faced sandwiches the Swedes call smörgåsar and after which the table (bord) is named. In addition to Swedish rye bread, Swedish knäckebröd, commonly known in the United States as crispbread, hardtack, or Wasa bread (after a popular imported brand), might be served. With coffee, cinnamon rolls are popular. Although businesses such as IKEA have presented these rolls with frosting, the more traditional Swedish American tops the cinnamon rolls with pearl sugar and includes cardamom in the dough. Other foods understood in the Swedish American community as “authentic” Swedish foods are potato sausage (potatiskorv), pickled herring (inlagd sill), and meatballs (köttbullar), which are often served with mashed potatoes (potatismos) and lingonberry jam (lingonsylt). Many Swedish Americans continue the holiday traditions of their homeland by celebrating St. Lucia (December 13) and Midsommar (June 23–24), though the celebrations are most common in such communities as Lindsborg where the communal aspect encourages the festivities. The St. Lucia festival dates back centuries to when the Swedish people believed December 13 to be the darkest day of the year; few Swedish Americans celebrate in the traditional Swedish manner, where the eldest daughter, while wearing a wreath with lit candles, brings breakfast in bed to her parents. A church service using the same type of wreath tends to be more popular. Midsommar celebrates the longest day of the year. In the northern areas of Sweden, the sun barely dips behind the horizon, if at all, at midsummer. Swedish Americans have revived the celebration since the 1980s, though certainly some communities have observed the holiday ever since immigration.
Swedish American Heritage Learners Swedish Americans have been encouraged to support Swedish-ness in many forms by such Swedish exports as IKEA, Absolut vodka, and Volvo, not to mention cultural exports of Ingmar Bergman and August Strindberg. Swedish American communities attempt to retain the traditions of their immigrant ancestors, and many are
prompted to learn this language and even to travel to Sweden in search of their ancestry and of authenticity. Scandinavian departments in universities across the nation comprise heritage students, and technical colleges in such metropolises as Seattle, Washington, are encouraged to support a community interest by offering courses in Swedish language and culture. Suzanne Martin See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Assimilation; Danish Americans; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Ethnic Group; Finnish Americans; Icelandic Americans; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Norwegian Americans; Symbolic Ethnicity; Whiteness
Further Readings
Anderson, Philip J. and Dag Blanck, eds. 1992. SwedishAmerican Life in Chicago. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Beijbom, Ulf, ed. 1991. Swedes in America: New Perspectives. Växjö, Sweden: Davidsons. Gradén, Lizette. 2003. On Parade: Making Heritage in Lindsborg, Kansas. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University Library. Moberg, Vilhelm. [1949–1959] 1995. Emigrants: The Emigrant Novels. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press. Nordstrom, Byron J. 2000. Scandinavia since 1500. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Web Sites
Swedish-American Museum: http://www.samac.org
SYMBOLIC ETHNICITY Herbert J. Gans introduced the concept of symbolic ethnicity in 1979 in a study of the assimilation and acculturation of third-generation and later descendants of European immigrants to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It may or may not be applicable in the study of those whose forebears immigrated after World War II or those African Americans, Native Americans, and Mexican Americans whose ancestors arrived before the United States was established.
Symbolic Ethnicity
The concept is used to support a compromise position between, on the one hand, a straight-line approach predicting that the logic of a modern democratic society ensures a steady decline in ethnicity with each succeeding postimmigration generation until it disappears and, on the other hand, the claim of a revival of ethnicity. Symbolic ethnicity is seen as a form of ethnicity that can adapt to changing circumstances and, thus, can persist with no predictable end but without a revival of earlier modes of ethnicity. This entry looks at the range of analyses in which the concept has been employed, notes the defining characteristics of symbolic ethnicity, and identifies common examples of its manifestation.
Use of the Term The concept of symbolic ethnicity, but not the term itself, represents a development of Gans’s analysis of the past, present, and future of U.S. Jewry in the 1956 volume of Commentary. Subsequently, symbolic ethnicity has been used in analyses of other ethnic groups in the United States, including Armenians, Finns, Italians, Louisianan Cajuns, and Jews. More generally, Mary C. Waters used the idea in her discussion of the choice of ethnicity among Roman Catholics in the United States. Interestingly, despite its origin, the concept of symbolic ethnicity also appears in analyses of multiculturalism in Canada by Lance W. Roberts and Rodney A. Clifton, of Danish Jewry after World War II by Andrew Buckser, and of Mexican Americans by Thomas Macias.
Defining Characteristics of Symbolic Ethnicity Symbolic ethnicity entails feeling or being identified with a particular ethnicity, but it does not necessarily entail either practicing an ongoing ethnic culture or participating in an existing organization, formal or informal, of fellow ethnics. The symbolic ethnic may feel part of or identify with a collectivity that is either real and contemporary or mythic or historical. Moreover, symbolic ethnicity is voluntary rather than ascribed, situationally relevant rather than pervasive, and idiosyncratic rather than socially or consensually defined. Symbolic ethnicity does not necessarily influence the choice of friends, mates, or neighbors. Furthermore, symbolic ethnicity is constructed so that
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it does not interfere with integration into the economic, political, and social life of the United States. Thus, it is compatible with a middle-class lifestyle. Nevertheless, people may use symbolic ethnicity to differentiate themselves from others in what they see as an overly homogenized society or culture. In short, symbolic ethnicity enables a person to be essentially, but not exactly, like every other U.S. citizen. However, some have suggested that the rise of symbolic ethnicity among descendants of European immigrants is an aspect of identity politics, that is, a way of asserting their whiteness as a type of European American rather than as an African or Hispanic American.
Manifestations of Symbolic Ethnicity In general, but by no means always, manifestations of symbolic ethnicity occur during leisure time or as part of family life. Ethnic practices may, to some degree, be engaged in at significant times in the life cycle, for example, at birth, in a marriage ceremony, or at a funeral, or simply by vacationing in the “old country.” Moreover, despite the often-private nature of symbolic ethnicity, contributions of time, energy, and money to nonprofit ethnic organizations and causes are common among symbolic ethnics. They may also participate in ethnic festivals, food fairs, street bazaars, and parades, many of them multiethnic affairs. A particular ethnic holiday, such as St. Patrick’s Day, may also be celebrated, privately or publicly. Perhaps the most central manifestation of symbolic ethnicity is people’s pride in their ethnic heritage and in the accomplishments of those regarded as sharing their ethnicity, even if the object of their admiration does not see the connection. Symbolic ethnics may also manifest their heritage by adorning their homes with traditional ritual objects or art by ethnic artists or with ethnic themes. Their bookshelves may include appropriate cookbooks, how-to books on traditional handicrafts, anthologies of folk tales, or folk music. Symbolic ethnics may even take courses in the ethnic language, culture, or history. In addition, despite the generally private nature of symbolic ethnicity, they may use decals that are ethnic identifiers: attaching an Italian flag on a car, wearing a Star of David, or having a lapel pin in the form of a shamrock. Overall, symbolic ethnicity is manifested not in agreement on particular shared symbols but, rather, in
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the use of a framework of common symbols to construct individualized understandings of one’s self and of one’s society. J. Alan Winter See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Ethnic Group; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Identity Politics; Irish Americans; Symbolic Religiosity; Third-Generation Principle; Whiteness
Further Readings
Bakalian, Anny. 1993. Armenian Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press. Buckser, Andrew. 2003. After the Rescue: Jewish Identity and Community in Contemporary Denmark. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gans, Herbert J. 1956. “American Jewry: Present and Future: Part I: Present.” Commentary 21:422–430. Gans, Herbert J. 1979. “Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups in and Culture in America.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 2(1):1–20. Gans, Herbert J. 1992. “Comment: Ethnic Invention and Acculturation: A Bumpy-line Approach.” Journal of American Ethnic History 12:43–52. Gans, Herbert J. 1994. “Symbolic Ethnicity and Symbolic Religiosity: Towards a Comparison of Ethnic and Religious Acculturation.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 17:577–592. Macias, Thomas. 2006. Mestizo in America: Generations of Mexican Ethnicity in the Suburban Southwest. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Roberts, Lance W. and Rodney A. Clifton. 1982. “Exploring the Ideology of Canadian Multiculturalism.” Canadian Public Policy 8(Winter):523–537. Waters, Mary C. 1990. Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
SYMBOLIC RELIGIOSITY The concept of symbolic religiosity is rooted in the analysis of the assimilation and acculturation among Jews of Eastern European descent in the United States, initially presented by Herbert J. Gans in a 1956 article in Commentary magazine. This entry offers a definition of symbolic religiosity and identifies some of the ways in which it may be manifested, noting relevant research findings.
Gans later generalized the concept of symbolic religiosity in his 1994 discussion of ethnic and religious acculturation. Interestingly, the concept is meant not as a tool for better understanding religious belief and practice in the United States, but as a way to illuminate the character of the assimilation and acculturation of third- and later-generation descendants of those who emigrated to the United States from Southern and Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed, one of the central characteristics of symbolic religion is that its beliefs and practices pose no barrier or complication to the pursuit of socioeconomic mobility and a secular lifestyle by the third and later generations of an immigrant’s family. Furthermore, as Stephen Sharot has suggested, religiosity may become a symbol or stand-in for ethnicity. This is often the case among people whose national or ethnic identity and religious identity have long been conflated, for example, Jews, Armenians, the Greek Orthodox, and Muslim Arabs. In his classic analysis, in Protestant-Catholic-Jew, of religiosity and ethnicity among immigrants to the United States in the late 18th and early 20th century and their descendants, Will Herberg argues that religious differences are more acceptable than are ethnic differences as a basis for pluralism in the United States, and hence, religiosity comes to replace ethnicity as a basis for personal identity in as little as three generations. Symbolic religiosity is defined as the use of religious symbols for purely secular purposes and apart from regular participation in a religious culture. For example, one may attend worship services as a spectator, not as a participant. As Gans has suggested, this may be especially the case on major religious holidays such as Easter and Christmas among Christians or Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur among Jews. Symbolic religiosity may also take the form of travel to important religious sites such as the Vatican, Westminster Abbey, or the Wailing Wall as a tourist rather than as a pilgrim. More generally, symbolic religiosity may take the form of an object culture that consists of all kinds of decontextualized religious and secular objects such as candlesticks or other ritual items, books, art using religious themes, food, or identifying jewelry such as a crucifix, cross, or Star of David. Given that the roots of the concept of symbolic religiosity lie in Gans’s analysis of the beliefs and practices of Jews in the United States, it is not surprising that most studies employing the concept are
Syrian Americans
of U.S. Jews. Among these are J. Alan Winter’s analysis of data from the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey and Uzi Rebhun’s analysis of both the 1990 and earlier 1970 National Jewish Population Surveys. Each study finds support for Sharot’s suggestion that religiosity may have become a symbol of ethnic identity. Paul Eid applies the concept of symbolic religiosity in a study of the second generation of an immigrant’s family, rather than the third and later generations that were Gans’s focus. Moreover, instead of Jews in the United States, Eid’s study looks at Christian and Moslem Arab students in Montreal, Canada. Nevertheless, student responses to his questionnaire indicate an ethnicization of religion among them. None of these studies makes use of the ethnography or intensive interviews that Gans thought were required for a fuller understanding of symbolic religiosity. Such an approach is better than simple survey data because symbolic religiosity may consist primarily, if not entirely, of the personal, even idiosyncratic, meanings of religious beliefs, practices, and symbols. The mere presence or use of a particular religious belief, practice, or symbol need not be a definitive indicator of symbolic religiosity or the lack of it. One person may think a beautiful statuette is a wonderful example of a particular genre worthy of admiration, but another sees it as an icon worthy of veneration, calling forth a moment of silent prayer.
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Other Formulations of Ethnicity and Religiosity Regarding American Jews.” Contemporary Jewry 18:25–43.
SYRIAN AMERICANS Syrian Americans are the immigrants and their descendants from Syria, a country of 19.9 million, as of 2007 estimates. Syrian Americans represent one of the many diverse groups of the Arab nation—including Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, the Republic of Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates. According to the 2000 census, 54,560 people born in Syria were resident in the United States, of whom 59.3% were citizens. This entry will look at the background of immigration from Syria to the United States and the contemporary picture of Syrian Americans.
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J. Alan Winter See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Symbolic Ethnicity; Third-Generation Principle
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Further Readings
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ea
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Eid, Paul. 2003. “The Interplay between Ethnicity, Religion, and Gender among Second-Generation Christian and Muslim Arabs in Montreal.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 35(2):30–60. Gans, Herbert J. 1956. “American Jewry: Present and Future: Part I: Present.” Commentary 21:422–430. Gans, Herbert J. 1994. “Symbolic Ethnicity and Symbolic Religiosity: Towards a Comparison of Ethnic and Religious Acculturation.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 17:577–592. Herberg, Will. 1955. Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology. New York: Doubleday. Sharot, Stephen. 1997. “A Critical Comment on Gans’ ‘Symbolic Ethnicity’ and ‘Symbolic Religiosity’ and
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Immigration Patterns Among Syrians, the main impetus for immigration to the United States was the lure of economic opportunity.
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However, others factors, such as religious warfare between Muslims and Christians, land disputes, and intertribal fighting, also pushed many to migrate. Because of inaccurate record keeping, it is difficult to approximate how many Syrians arrived during the early 19th century. However, census records indicate migration patterns during the late 19th and early 20th century changed from only a few hundred in 1887 to 4,000 in 1898. This jumped dramatically to more than 9,000 in 1913, and then dropped significantly around World War I. Immigration peaked again briefly before the Immigration Act of 1924, which restricted the number of immigrants entering the United States. Further, immigration was curbed between 1925 and 1948 because of the Depression and World War II. Many of the Syrian immigrants during these periods were mainly Christian or Jewish. Muslim Syrians arrived after 1965. Beginning in 1965, Syrian immigration to the United States grew dramatically, mainly because the Immigration Act of 1924 expired, but also because of Arab–Israeli conflict and religious conflict in the Middle East. Approximately 65,000 Syrians immigrated between 1961 and 2000.
Contemporary Community In recent years, people from Syria have sought permanent residency, refugee status, and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2007, about 2,500 Syrians immigrated to the United States annually. The number of refugees arriving during this time is quite low, with only 67 arriving in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. At least 1,900 Syrian Americans have become naturalized citizens annually beginning in 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, there were 109,157 people of
Syrian national origin in the United States in 2005. In geographic distribution, the top five states were California, New York, Florida, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. According to the 2000 census, 45.9% speak English less than “very well.” The median family income among Syrian Americans was $49,171 compared with $50,890 for the United States as a whole. Of those Syrian-born present here in 2000, 26% had entered the country before 2000. Among famous Syrian Americans are Tige Andrews, actor; Yasser Seirawan, chess grandmaster; Steven Paul Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple computers; and Jerry Seinfeld, comedian and actor. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Arab Americans; Assimilation; Deficit Model of Ethnicity; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Islamophobia; Muslim Americans; Refugees; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http:// www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook .shtm Hitti, Phillip. 1924. Syrians in America. New York: George Doran. Horani, Albert. 1991. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, MA. Warner Books. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Syria. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/ socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www
T TAIWAN Taiwan is a recently democratic, industrialized country located about 100 miles southeast of the Chinese mainland. Taiwan is one of the world’s most active trading nations, has the third largest foreign reserve, and is home to some of the tallest buildings in the world. It is also one of the most densely populated countries with an estimated 2007 population of 22.9 million. In September 2006, the Directorate General Russia
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of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) reported more than 631 individuals per square kilometer. In all, there are 22.7 million people documented in the nation’s household registration data. In 1971, the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC) lost its UN seat to the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC). Since then, the sovereignty of the island and the political status of the nation have been in dispute. It is viewed by the mainland government to be a “renegade” province. Twenty-four nations, mostly in Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific, maintain official diplomatic ties with Taiwan. It also has semiofficial relations in many countries through consular offices such as the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Offices in the United States. Although Taiwan is no longer recognized by the United Nations, it is a member of some intergovernmental organizations such as the World Trade Organization and the International Olympic Committee. In these cases, however, it is known by the name “Chinese Taipei.” This entry reviews the history of Taiwan and describes how the economics, demographics, and social characteristics affect ethnic groups and migration.
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History Taiwan was settled by Malayo-Polynesian peoples around 4,000 BC, though archaeological evidence exists to suggest earlier arrivals. The island was referenced in early Chinese writings and was visited on many occasions. Yet, Chinese settlement did not begin to occur until the 6th century AD. During this time, the Aboriginal inhabitants were assimilated,
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killed, or driven into the mountains in the center of the country. In the 1600s, the Chinese court officially recognized the island as its possession, though the Portuguese (1590s), Japanese (1616), Dutch (1624–1661), and Spanish (1626) had attempted to claim the island. The Dutch in particular were able to sustain a settlement, importing laborers from the mainland of China, and cultivating rice and sugar. From the mid-1600s, when the Dutch were driven out, to 1895, Taiwan was officially ruled by Chinese provincial governors. In 1895, China lost the island to Japan as part of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which ended the First SinoJapanese War. Just before the Japanese took control, the Republic of Formosa (from the Portuguese name given to the island) was established by Chinese inhabitants of the island. The Republic was forcibly dissolved by the Japanese 5 months later. The Japanese subdued the Taiwanese population, but also established factories, plantations, and hospitals. The Japanese government first worked to make the island a model colony. Following the 1919 appointment of a civilian governor, the approach shifted to truly incorporate the Taiwanese as subjects of Japan. The Taiwanese were encouraged to assist Japan in World War II, and were even drafted as soldiers in the final year of the war. Many older Taiwanese still maintain a high regard for the Japanese today. In 1945, the Japanese ceded control of Taiwan to the Chinese Nationalist Party (known as the Kuomintang, or KMT). Anti-mainland sentiments led to an uprising of the Taiwanese on February 28, 1947 (known as the 228 Incident). In the following few weeks, the Nationalist government put down the rebellion, killing from 10,000 to 20,000 people. In 1949, the Nationalist General Chiang Kai-shek and about 2 million Nationalist soldiers and supporters retreated to the Island of Taiwan. For more than 20 years, the Nationalists had struggled with the People’s Liberation Army, interrupted only shortly by a limited truce to defend against the Japanese during the second Sino-Japanese War. The Chinese Civil War had continued after World War II. Until 1971, Chiang Kai-shek’s administration was recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate government of the mainland, though residing on the island of Taiwan. The country was ruled under martial law until 1987 amid growing opposition to the Nationalist party. The country did not have its first democratic election until 1996.
Economics, Demographics, and Social Characteristics Taiwan’s standard of living is comparatively quite high. The economy is strong with low unemployment and a per capita GNP of about US$15,300. Citizens receive good quality health care through a nationalized health care system. The populace is well educated. According to the Ministry of Education, more than 34% of the population had completed high school and 27% had completed postsecondary education in colleges or universities. Among 25- to 34year-olds, this number rises to 45% completing postsecondary education. Overall, there is a 98.7% literacy rate. There have been recent political gains in the rights for women and minority populations including the 1999 Domestic Violence Prevention Act and the formation of the Aboriginal Affairs Commission. Eth hnicc Groups
The four major ethnic groups in Taiwan are the following: the Hoklo (62%), Hakka (19%), Han (17%), and Aboriginal people of Malayo-Polynesian descent (2%). Of the twelve Aboriginal groups, the Amis is the largest. Many of the Aboriginals who did not intermarry with other groups live in the mountainous central region of Taiwan on reservations. The Han are mostly accounted for by the Mandarin-speaking Nationalists who came to the island in 1949. The Hakka are a people who originated in the northcentral mainland, migrating south in the 13th century and eventually to Taiwan in the 17th century. The largest ethnic group, the Hoklo, migrated from Fujian province in the south of the mainland beginning in the 17th century. Although the numerical majority, they have only recently found political power following the democratization of the island. Mig gra atiion
Most foreigners in Taiwan reside there for work, marriage, or study. Immigration to the island has increased as the government has become more open. Most of these new immigrants are foreign brides from Vietnam, China, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia (totaling about 1% of the total population). There is also a fairly sizable population of imported guest workers. There is great fear that guest workers will bring with them social and health problems and
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will want to settle permanently in Taiwan. For this reason, workers receive restricted visas limiting their stay to only 3 years at a time. Workers are also required to provide a background check or “certificate of good conduct” from their homeland and to submit to a medical exam including tests for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), parasites, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and other communicable diseases. According to Taiwan’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission (OCAC), emigration from Taiwan about equals immigration to the island with about 1.265 million emigrants and 1.262 million immigrants. Economic Dev velopmen nt and Imported Labor
Rapid industrialization and development of a robust export market have been encouraged by the government. This has placed Taiwan among Southeast Asia’s “Tiger” economies, along with Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea. The diminishing importance of agriculture in the 1960s and the resulting growth in laborintensive industry and the service sectors led to a greater demand for labor. According to the National Statistics Office, Taiwan has a workforce of more than 10 million people and an unemployment rate of less than 4%. By the 1980s, there was a shortage of workers as the birthrate had declined markedly and labor demand had risen. In addition, the increasing number of years spent in education delayed entry into the labor market for younger generations. As workers became better educated and in shorter supply, labor costs began to rise. Workers involved in the “3D” occupations (dirty, difficult, and dangerous) had begun to unionize arguing for better working conditions and more pay. This conflict between labor rights organizations and industry has been seen by some as the true cause for importation of foreign labor. By the mid-1980s, as many as 100,000 foreign workers were employed illegally in Taiwan. At this point, the government decided, under pressure from industry and growing public concern, to legalize and regulate the importation of foreign workers in designated projects and certain labor-intensive industries such as electronics and textiles. Stephen J. Sills See Appendix A See also Asian Americans; Asian American Studies; China; Chinese Americans; Foreign Students; Globalization; Japan; Pacific Islanders
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Further Readings
Copper, John F. 1990. Taiwan, Nation-State or Province? Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Davidson, James W. [1903] 1988. The Island of Formosa, Past and Present. Taipei: Southern Materials Center. Reprint of 1903 edition published by Macmillan, New York. Directorate General of Budget. 2006. Accounting and Statistics. Retrieved November 24, 2006, from http://eng.dgbas.gov.tw Government Information Office Republic of China (Taiwan). 2005. Taiwan Yearbook 2005. Available from http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/5-gp/yearbook Manthorpe, Jonathan. 2005. Forbidden Nation, A History of Taiwan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ministry of Education, Republic of China (Taiwan). 2006. 2006 Educational Statistical Indicators. Available from http://english.moe.gov.tw National Statistics, Republic of China. 2006. Available from http://eng.stat.gov.tw Teng, Jinhua H. 2004. Taiwan’s Imagined Geography, Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University East Asia Center.
TALENTED TENTH The Talented Tenth is a term used to describe the vanguard—that is, the best and brightest—of the African American community. An admittedly elitist concept, the Talented Tenth was originally conceived as a class of educated and principled Black men who would emerge as leaders of the disadvantaged “Negro” community. Although the term was coined in 1896 by the White liberal Rev. Henry Lyman Morehouse (1834–1917, after whom Morehouse College was named), W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) first gave this idea prominence. Though Du Bois was its primary architect in theory, Alain Locke (1886–1954) was arguably its most successful promoter in practice. The Harlem Renaissance (1919–1934)—with Locke as the real genius behind it—was a cultural movement made of the literary and artistic vanguard of the Talented Tenth. Related to Du Bois’s concept of the Talented Tenth (“the Best”) is its polar opposite, the “submerged tenth” (“the Worst”), and, at the other end of the spectrum, Du Bois’s later concept of the “Guiding Hundredth” (what one might characterize as the Talented Tenth among the Talented Tenth). This entry compares Du Bois’s and Locke’s conceptions of the Talented Tenth.
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W. E. B. Du Bois’s Vision of the Talented Tenth In his 1903 manifesto, “The Talented Tenth,” Du Bois propounded a theory that was simple yet profound: Raise up the most gifted African Americans, and they will advance the interests of all Black Americans. Du Bois wrote that African Americans had to be saved by the “exceptional men” among them. Du Bois viewed “the Talented Tenth” as the missionaries of culture among Black people, a role reserved for them, not for Whites or others. Forty-five years later, when he felt that the race had not been saved as he had hoped it would, Du Bois refined his theory. In August 1948, Du Bois delivered his famous Wilberforce University speech, “The Talented Tenth Memorial Address,” to an audience of eminent African Americans—themselves the epitome of the Talented Tenth. Du Bois proclaimed, true to his Marxist vision at the time, that these leaders must not work as individuals but be willing to make sacrifices and actually plan for an economic revolution in industry that would lead to a redistribution of wealth. Elaborating his notion of the Talented Tenth, Du Bois then spoke of the “Guiding Hundredth” The “Guiding Hundredth,” as Du Bois envisioned it, would function as a leadership group of inspired individuals. Its members would form alliances (Whites included) on all continents to bring about “a New World culture.” Du Bois’s new doctrine effectively democratizes and internationalizes his original strategy for racial advancement by giving it global horizons beyond Black Nationalism. As the maturation of his original theory of the “Talented Tenth,” the “Guiding Hundredth” is numerically narrower, yet strategically broader. Du Bois’s original vision was born of his own experience. After meditating profoundly on the plight of his people—lynching, disenfranchisement, and segregation—Du Bois saw salvation through intelligent leadership through a Talented Tenth. At the other end of the social spectrum, however, he saw “the submerged tenth”—a term Du Bois defines in The Philadelphia Negro as an underclass of the criminals, prostitutes, and the lazy.
Alain Locke’s Vision of the Talented Tenth As part of this process of social “salvation,” Du Bois was the Talented Tenth’s living exemplar, embodying
all of its ideals. Another advocate and exemplar of the Talented Tenth was Alain Locke, a figure who, in his heyday, commanded an influence nearly equal to that of Du Bois. In their contribution to the United States as a whole, Locke saw this vanguard of talent within the Negro community serving as literally an investment for all in democracy. Famed as the first African American Rhodes scholar (1907), as editor of The New Negro (1925)—acclaimed as the first national book of African Americans and, he himself, as the father of multiculturalism (in his role as one of the first philosophers of cultural pluralism), Locke began editing the Bronze Booklets on the History, Problems, and Cultural Contributions of the Negro in 1936 under the auspices of the Associates in Negro Folk Education. These eight booklets became standard references for teaching African American history. In 1945, Locke was chosen as the first African American president of the American Association for Adult Education. Like Du Bois, Locke supported the idea of the Talented Tenth, championing college education to advance the vanguard and adult education to advance the masses. Because racial justice and ideal race relations were essentially interracial endeavors, Locke recognized the role of talented and outstanding Whites in advancing racial democracy as well. As in Du Bois’s vision of the “Guiding Hundredth,” the idea of the Talented Tenth took on increasingly international dimensions. More than Du Bois, in fact, Locke is generally credited with having most effectively internationalized the U.S. race dilemma. In his unpublished Hampton commencement address, “Stretching Our Social Mind” (August 18, 1944), Locke states that the time had come for an organization like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to shift its emphasis and change its name to the “National Association for the Advancement of American Democracy.” The concept of the Talented Tenth was not static. It evolved into something much broader than originally conceived, progressing from a Black Nationalist vision to a world vision. Even in their own lifetimes, Du Bois (who embraced Marxist ideology) and Locke (who embraced Baha’i ideology) relativized their vanguard elitisms within the wider strategy of common cause. Christopher George Buck See also African Americans; Black Intellectuals; Discrimination; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Harlem Renaissance; Lynching; Minority Rights; Model
Terrorism
Minority; Multicultural Social Movements; People of Color; Pluralism; Prejudice; Racism; Segregation
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world politics. This entry examines definitions of terrorism, its recent impact, and responses to the threats to Western nations.
Further Readings
Battle, Juan and Earl Wright II. 2002. “W. E. B. Du Bois’ Talented Tenth: A Quantitative Assessment.” Journal of Black Studies 32(6, July):654–672. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1899] 1967. The Philadelphia Negro. New York: Schocken Books. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903. “The Talented Tenth.” In The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative American Negroes of To-day, edited by B. T. Washington. New York: J. Pott. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1948. “The Talented Tenth Memorial Address.” Boulé Journal 15(October):3–13. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 1996. “W. E. B. Du Bois and ‘The Talented Tenth.’” Pp. 115–132 in The Future of the Race, by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cornel West. New York: Knopf. Green, Dan S. 1977. “W. E. B. Du Bois’ Talented Tenth: A Strategy for Racial Advancement.” Journal of Negro Education 46(3):358–366. Locke, Alain. 1918. “The Role of the Talented Tenth.” Howard University Record 12(7, December):15–18. Locke, Alain. 1927. “The High Cost of Prejudice.” The Forum 78(December):500–510. Locke, Alain. 1938. “The ‘Talented Tenth.’ Review of The Negro College Graduate, by Charles S. Johnson.” Survey Midmonthly 74:252. Locke, Alain. “Stretching Our Social Mind.” Alain Locke Papers, MSRC, Box 164-127, Folder 30 (“Resume: Speech given by Dr. Alain Locke, professor of philosophy, Howard University[,] at the Hampton Commencement, August 18, 1944”). Morehouse, Henry Lyman. 1896. “The Talented Tenth.” Independent (April 23):1. Rabaka, Reiland. 2003. “W. E. B. Du Bois’s Evolving Africana Philosophy of Education.” Journal of Black Studies 33(4):399–449.
TERRORISM Terrorism is generally viewed as unjustifiable violence against innocent victims; however, the definition and the events that are categorized as terrorism vary widely from place to place and time to time. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, terrorism has received a great deal of attention; terrorist acts and efforts to stop them have become central features of
What Is Terrorism? Defining terrorism is a difficult task, with more than a hundred definitions proposed by various governments and their laws. For many years, violence of one form or another has been included in the definition, and some see most violent action as terrorism. Any war may be considered as an act of terrorism, and since World War II, violent actions by nationalist groups have been defined as terrorism. Two widespread definitions of terrorism define it on the basis of violence, or the use of force, and the object or point of focus of that violence. The first defines terrorism as the use or the threatened use of violence to bring about political change. The second argues that terrorism is defined by the “illegitimate” use of violence by targeting “innocent” people for political objectives. Within debates on terrorism and antiterrorism, terrorism is viewed primarily as the use of violence by groups independent of a state in the furtherance of a particular cause. Terrorism and violent extremist groups have a long history. For example, the Ku Klux Klan, a right-wing extremist group that attacked African Americans following the Civil War in the United States and continuing into the 20th century, might be categorized as terrorist according to some definitions. There have been terrorist groups based on right-wing philosophy, communist revolutionary ideology, religion, and nationalist movements. Some groups have very little support and act primarily in isolation, but other groups become well established. The Irish Republican Army, for example, had significant support over a prolonged period in its attacks against the British and Protestants, both in Northern Ireland and England. Among Irish Catholic supporters, it was seen as a popular nationalist movement. Terrorism can also be perpetrated by governments, such as the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, Nazi Germany, or more recently, the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. Similarly, drives for ethnic cleansing, attempts to eradicate people of a particular ethnic identity from a territory, can be seen as a form of large-scale state-sponsored terrorism. Definitions of terrorism and terrorists often change with time or perspective. The French Revolution of
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1789–1795, now viewed as an uprising to secure democracy, was seen as an act of terrorism by the established government of the time. Similarly, although Nelson Mandela was once arrested as a leader of a terrorist group, he has been heralded as a national hero since the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
others merely define them as criminal activity. Still others view terrorist action in Western nations as heralding a new world order related to a clash of cultures or clash of civilizations. Widely debated even before September 11th, the clash of cultures concept is based on the premise that there are fundamental differences between Western and non-Western cultures. In media reporting on terrorism, the binary is often defined as the clash between the West and Islam, even Terrorism Since 2001 though neither the West nor Islam is a homogeneous entity. Because the terrorist leaders are radical Until the attacks by the radical militant organization Muslims, the media also tend to conflate violence and Al Qaeda on New York City and the Pentagon on terrorism with Islam and Islamic fundamentalism, September 11, 2001, terrorism had little direct impact contributing to an increased level of anti-Muslim on most people living in the United States, Britain, sentiment. Not surprisingly, the Muslim minority in Canada, Australia, and other Western nation-states. Western nations, along with people who are of Middle Those events established the idea that terrorism was a Eastern appearance, have experienced an intensificathreat to people in the West. The bombing of touristtion of anti-Muslim sentiment and occasional acts of oriented nightclubs in Bali in 2002, killing more than violence. 200 people, and bombings in the London transport sysIn addition, the political discourse on terrorism, tem in 2005, with more than 50 deaths and several hunwhile highlighting the complexities of national secudred injuries, increased that sense of danger. rity, also often appeals to historical fears and reproSome analysts have categorized these attacks as duces the binary between the West and the non-Western arising from differences between rich and poor, but Other. Some analysts are concerned that the politics of fear has become a predominant feature of contemporary politics in many Western nation-states, along with an increase in racist discourses and a new racism, coupling terrorism and race or ethnicity. Some politicians in the West have used the notion of border security to engender electoral support. As national borders have become more permeable through trade, investment, and immigration, some leaders have voiced a fear of losing what is perceived as the traditional markers of national identity, contributing toward a growing level of fear of the Other associated with popular nationalism. The threat of terrorism heightens the level of these concerns. Airport security. California National Guardsman Marcos Ong (center) and Since 2001, increased attention has screener Tracy Albert (right) check passengers’ carry-on bags by the American been focused on policies of immigraAirlines boarding gate at Los Angeles International Airport on August 11, 2006. tion and asylum seekers. In the United Following an alleged terrorist plot uncovered by London authorities the day States, immigrants, asylum seekers, before, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger activated the National Guard and students or workers seeking temfor the first time since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to aid in secuporary visas have been subjected rity at airports. Airport security is perhaps the most public face in the domestic effort to confront terrorism. to greater scrutiny by a government Source: Getty Images. aware that the September 11 group
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worked from within the United States. As part of the wider debate on counterterrorism and security, host populations in many Western nations have been increasingly reluctant to embrace humanitarian immigration programs to admit asylum seekers. Peter Gale See also Asylum; Cosmopolitanism; Immigration, U.S.; London Bombings (July 7, 2005); Orientalism; PATRIOT Act of 2001; Racial Profiling; Whiteness
Further Readings
Coady, Tony. 2002. “Terrorism, Just War and Supreme Emergency.” Pp. 8–21 in Terrorism and Justice: Moral Argument in a Threatened World, edited by T. Coady and M. O’Keefe. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Press. Gale, Peter. 2005. The Politics of Fear: Lighting the Wik. Sydney, Australia: Pearson Education. Grosfoguel, Ramon and Eric Mielants. 2006. “Minorities, Racism and Cultures of Scholarship.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 47(3–4):179–189. Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster. Jenkins, Brian. 1985. International Terrorism: The Other World War. Santa Monica, CA: Rand. Laqueur, Walter. 1987. The Age of Terrorism. Boston, MA: Little Brown. Primoratz, Igor. 2002. “State Terrorism.” Pp. 31–42 in Terrorism and Justice: Moral Argument in a Threatened World, edited by T. Coady and M. O’Keefe. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Press. White, Jonathan, 2003. Terrorism: An Introduction. 4th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.
TESTING Testing has been used for various purposes, including measuring intelligence and assessing academic performance. These tests have served an important role in gauging the social and educational status of racial and ethnic groups. Because there are high stakes associated with contemporary testing, it plays a pivotal role in determining student promotion, graduation, and postsecondary access. This entry considers how racial groups have been affected by the use of testing as a
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measure of intellectual and academic competency and looks at arguments about whether such tests are neutral indicators of human capacity.
Intelligence Tests as Indicators of Human Capacity In 1904, Alfred Binet developed tests to identify French children for special education. Although Binet did not develop this assessment as an indicator of human intelligence, U.S. scholars adapted it to serve this purpose. Throughout the early 1900s, intelligence tests were used to demonstrate that African Americans, Mexicans, and Eastern and Southern European immigrants were inferior to White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Subsequent research fueled debates about whether intelligence was innate and reflected intractable genetic differences among racial and ethnic groups. Those who held this view used the tests as evidence to justify the social, political, and economic disenfranchisement of African Americans. These beliefs supported legalized racial segregation. Tests were also used to inform restrictive immigration policies aimed at limiting the migration of some White ethnic groups, including Jews, Hungarians, and Italians, into the United States. Although many now espouse a belief that intelligence is not innate, there are still debates about the relationship between race, intelligence test score (also known as IQ) differences, and heritability. The most recent public debate about this topic began in 1994 with the release of Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve. This text revitalized old debates about African American intellectual inferiority. These researchers suggested that differences between African American and White IQ scores could not be explained away by environmental factors such as access to quality schools. Instead, they concluded that these test differences were inherited and would be transmitted across generations. This evidence supported their call for the dismantling of social programs including welfare; such initiatives would not change the life chances of social groups with low test scores, they argued.
Achievement Tests and Academic Proficiency Although the academic community tends to reject the idea that intelligence is innate, researchers continue to grapple with the racial gaps that exist within current
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measures of student outcomes. Today’s testing is used to understand individual outcomes and to monitor average performance of students in various schools, districts, and racial and socioeconomic groups. These outcomes are used to certify whether students have the prerequisite skills required to progress through elementary and high school. Data from local schools and districts and state and federal departments of education consistently show an “achievement gap” in which African American and Hispanic students tend to have lower performance in all tested subject areas including reading, mathematics, social studies, and science when compared with Asian and White students. Although there have been gains in test scores among racial groups over time, a persistent achievement gap continues to directly affect postsecondary education and occupational opportunities among a disproportionate number of African American and Hispanic students.
The Fairness of Testing Scholars continuously grapple with why the racial gaps in test outcomes persist. Recent explanations for these gaps in student performance tend to dismiss a focus on intellectual inferiority. Rather, scholars have proposed a number of explanations for these differences, including unequal access to quality school buildings, funding, and highly qualified teachers, as well as a mismatch between home and school cultures. Considerable discussion has been focused on the fairness of testing and whether all racial groups have received adequate opportunities to learn content areas that are tested. Despite the widespread use of testing in our society, some scholars question its fairness regarding racial and ethnic groups in the United States. A contemporary critique about intelligence testing is that there are multiple intelligences, which cannot be measured by a single assessment. Another criticism of both intelligence and other standardized tests is that they are culturally biased because they test knowledge that is closely aligned with White, middle-class culture, experiences, and language. Issues of language bias regarding testing have also existed historically. When intelligence tests were given to non-English-speaking immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, researchers did not consider how the language barrier prevented their respondents from adequately answering questions. Although there is more awareness about how language proficiency affects students’
ability to adequately address test questions, continuing challenges exist. Some now argue that when students who lack a full command of English are tested, these examinations may be measuring language proficiency rather than intellectual or academic competency. Another concern about testing is whether all students have been given adequate opportunities and support to learn tested content. The United States lacks a national curriculum, so states, districts, and local schools vary in the academic opportunities afforded to students. Many secondary schools use academic tracking where students are placed in different courses based on their prior preparation, personal choice, test scores, or teachers’ recommendations. Research shows that students placed in lower level courses are the least likely to gain access to challenging and rigorous content often found on standardized tests. Because African American and Hispanic students are more likely than their Asian and White peers to be placed in the lowest academic groups beginning in elementary school through high school, they have less exposure to content on many tests. Donna Marie Harris See also African Americans; Asian Americans; Bell Curve, The; Educational Performance and Attainment; Hispanics; Intelligence Tests; Tracking
Further Readings
Gould, Stephen J. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton. Herrnstein, Richard J. and Charles Murray. 1994. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press. Jencks, Christopher and Meredith Phillips, eds. 1998. The Black-White Test Score Gap. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Watkins, William H. 2001. White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power in America, 1865–1954. New York: Teachers College Press.
THAI AMERICANS Thai Americans mostly consist of three ethnic groups: Thai, Chinese, and Lao. In Thailand’s national discourse, ethnic Thai have been regarded as superior to non-Thai, whereas ethnic Lao have been marginalized
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that Chang and Eng rejected their Chinese identity. Even after adopting a U.S. lifestyle, they wore Chinese queues for many years. In the 19th century, a queue was the key symbol of being Chinese. The twins developed different attachments to China, Siam, and the United States throughout their lives. Siam was where they were born and grew up. The United States was where they became U.S. citizens, celebrities, slaveholders, and gentlemen farmers. Their identifications were plural, overlapping, and transforming. Only a few Thai immigrants came to the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. According to INS records, just 458 Thais registered as immigrants from 1951 to 1960. Most were students, and a disproportionate number of those students were ethnic Chinese whose ancestors had long been depicted as the “trading minority” in Thailand.
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as “backward,” and ethnic Chinese as “the other” because of their connections with China and their economic clout. However, many U.S. residents know little about Thailand, a country estimated to have a 2007 population of 65.7 million, or its people, often confusing Thailand with Taiwan and Thai with Taiwanese. Ethnic hierarchies so meaningful in Thailand have been disrupted in the United States. This entry reviews the history of Thais in the United States.
Early Arrivals The first documented Thai immigrants were the famous conjoined Siamese twins, Chang and Eng. They left Siam (as Thailand was called before 1939) and arrived in Boston in August 1829. The term Siamese twins originated because of them, but in Siam, they were known as the “Chinese twins,” the offspring of a Chinese immigrant father and a mother who was “three-quarters Chinese and one-quarter Siamese.” Thailand’s king was proud of governing people of diverse ethnic groups, so to be identified as Chinese in Siam at that time was not considered shameful, or a sign of inferiority, as it was for much of the 20th century. U.S. showman P. T. Barnum has been credited with inventing the term Siamese twins in 1853, but Chang and Eng coined it themselves in 1832, 21 years earlier. However, self-identifying as Siamese did not mean
In response to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and a shortage of medical personnel, thousands of nurses, doctors, scientists, and engineers came to the United States. Since 1968, increasing numbers of ethnic Thai, ethnic Lao, and ethnic Chinese have immigrated to the United States. After graduating, many students did not want to return to Thailand. Some stayed and opened the first Thai restaurants in the United States, pioneers in an industry that continues to thrive. Thus, a professional and entrepreneurial class has quietly but steadily emerged from the former student body. Ethnic Lao are called Thai Isan. Isan also refers to the northeast, Thailand’s poorest region. Among Thai immigrants in the United States, missionary monks and women who married U.S. servicemen are predominantly ethnic Lao. From 1968 to 1977, 14,688 Thai women immigrated to the United States as wives of U.S. servicemen; many of these women came from peasant families and had only a primary school education. Serving as a monk, an exclusively male vocation, is one way to achieve respectability in Thailand. Middle-class Thai men, especially in the urban areas, tend to serve as monks for only a short time and then pursue their education or career as a means to gain socioeconomic upward mobility. In Isan, some men became novices or monks because their families were too poor to support them. The temple became their home and provided them with sustenance and an education. Some remain in the monkhood for life. The high percentage of Isan monks in Thailand is reflected
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Ritual of paying respect to the teacher at a Thai American Buddhist temple. Serving as a monk, an exclusively male vocation, is a highly regarded profession. Thai Americans have worked together to create Thai Buddhist temples as places to worship and socialize. The temples can serve as a place where they overlook the diversity within the community, such as the different ethnic backgrounds of Thai, Chinese, and Lao, as well as the social class distinctions among them in the United States. Source: Photograph by Jiemin Bao.
by the disproportionately large number of Isan missionary monks in the United States.
The Thai Community According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the Thai population in the United States reached 150,283, a growth rate of 64.6% since 1990. The estimates for 2007 place the population of Thailand itself at 65.7 million. In addition, the percentage of Thai Americans who hold at least a bachelor’s degree, participate in the labor force, and hold managerial and professional occupations is higher than is the percentage for ethnic Khmer, Hmong, Lao (from Laos), and Vietnamese refugees. Nevertheless, Thai Americans are sometimes mistaken for refugees, and many resent this because they feel that they are being stigmatized. The heterogeneity among Southeast Asian Americans apparently remains invisible to much of U.S. society. Thai Americans have made a great effort to build Thai Buddhist temples to have a place to worship, to socialize, and to help solve the riddle of Thai invisibility in the United States. The first Thai temple was established in Los Angeles in 1972; now there are more than
ninety-five temples nationwide. Despite ethnic differences, ethnic Lao and Chinese often self-identify as Thai, an identity they have learned and cultivated since their first day of school in Thailand. In some communities, the well-educated professionals tend to be friends, and the workingclass women tend to interact and socialize together. Under certain circumstances, class differences override ethnic differences. Ethnicity, which itself is never static or immutable, converges with class, gender, socioeconomic networks, and cultural forces. To better understand Thai Americans, one needs to comprehend the formation and transformation of Thai American identities in relation to the political and economic conditions in Thailand and the United States. Jiemin Bao See Appendix A See also Asian Americans; Foreign Students; Hmong Americans; Identity Politics; Pan-Asian Identity; Refugees
Further Readings
Bao, Jiemin. 2005. Marital Acts: Gender, Sexuality, and Identity among the Chinese Thai Diaspora. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Cadge, Wendy. 2005. Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravada Buddhism in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Desbarats, Jacqueline. 1979. “Thai Migration to Los Angeles.” Geographical Review 69(3):302–318. Numrich, Paul David. 1996. Old Wisdom in the New World: Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Tchen, John Kuo Wei. 1999. New York before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture 1776–1882. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
THIRD-GENERATION PRINCIPLE On May 15, 1937, Marcus Lee Hansen, the most important immigration historian of his era, delivered
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an address titled “The Problem of the ThirdGeneration Immigrant” to the Augustana Historical Society in Rock Island, Illinois. Speaking not to a gathering of academic specialists but, rather, to a literate lay audience interested in the preservation of a distinctly Swedish American identity, he offered the grounding for a model, “the third-generation principle,” capable of looking at ethnicity in the United States in a way that forced a reconsideration of the dominant theoretical model of the period, assimilation (particularly as it was associated with the Chicago School of Sociology), and its main challenger, cultural pluralism (associated primarily with the writings of Horace Kallen). Without disputing the claim that assimilation was occurring, Hansen—perhaps somewhat counterintuitively—also thought that an interest in one’s ethnic background need not necessarily or inevitably erode with each passing generation, culminating in the vanishing of particularistic ethnic identities from U.S. social life. This entry looks at the original idea of the third-generation principle and some contemporary interpretations.
Hansen’s Remarks In the most significant and familiar passage from the essay, Hansen contended that what the second generation wishes to forget, the third generation wishes to remember. The argument he advanced, which has come to be called the third-generation principle, was a decidedly social psychological one. The second generation was depicted as insecure, suffering from status anxiety brought about by second-generation members’ tense relationship with their parents—who were often seen as backward thinking and thus an embarrassment. At the same time, second-generation members were sensitive to any indication of exclusionary beliefs and practices by the host society. To address their seemingly precarious status, they sought to abandon all that reminded them of the homeland culture. In contrast, the third generation was construed to be at ease in the United States, fluently speaking English without a trace of an accent. These people understood and embraced the nation’s folkways and mores. In short, they had succeeded in assimilating. Whereas for certain strains of assimilation theory these changes signaled the erosion of the ethnic element in their lives, Hansen proposed that the psychological security possessed by the third generation made it possible for these people to return to their ethnic backgrounds. Freed of a sense of inferiority, they were in a position to appreciate
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the sacrifices made by the immigrant generation and, sometimes with a romanticizing cast, take pride in elements of their ancestry. About 2 weeks after his address to the Augustana Historical Society, Hansen elaborated on these themes in a little-known talk at the National Conference of Social Work held in Indianapolis. In his speech, “Who Shall Inherit America,” he speculated about the possibility of a revival of immigrant cultures. Noting that ethnic communities had established homeland connections, that there were, to use today’s language, transnational ties, he distinguished between political and cultural relationships with the countries of origin. The former, he cautioned, were to be avoided in a period of heated nationalism because immigrants and their offspring were likely to be caught up in partisan conflict. For this reason, he thought, a cultural revival needed to take place largely on U.S. soil. Not designed to offer a theoretical account of ethnic identities over time and across generations, these two lectures were pregnant with theoretical possibilities. Hansen died shortly after delivering the address in Indianapolis; his additional remarks remained largely unknown until 1990, when they were published in a volume edited by Peter Kivisto and Dag Blanck. The Augustana Historical Society published his talk in 1938, but it received virtually no attention until Nathan Glazer, then editor of Commentary, discovered it in an act of serendipity and had it republished in the magazine in 1952, with an introduction by the Harvard historian Oscar Handlin. From that point forward, it became a touchstone for scholars intent on understanding the variability of ethnic identity and its capacity to wax and wane over time.
Perspectives on Ethnic Identity Interpreters have chosen to read the essay and the thirdgeneration principle in rather different ways, though four recurring approaches can be distinguished. In the first instance, repeated efforts have been made to empirically test a literal reading of the argument; that is, the third generation (the immigrants’ grandchildren) tries to remember or reestablish cultural traditions that the second generation has given up. Such studies have almost uniformly concluded that Hansen’s “thirdgeneration principle” or “law of third-generation return” is not borne out by the evidence. Generational differences are much more complex and varied than the simple notion of second-generation flight and thirdgeneration return would suggest. Indeed, Hansen knew,
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for instance, that his Rock Island audience was composed primarily of first- and second-generation Swedish Americans, but he contended that they were “third generation in spirit.” This might be what Margaret Mead had in mind when she viewed this notion (around the same time as Hansen) metaphorically, contending that we are all third generation. This second way of reading the essay has by no means been the most common, but that it continues to be an option can be seen in attempts to present the essay as a redemption story rooted in U.S. literary tradition. This view contends that Hansen’s model offered a polarized portrait of second-generation “traitors” to one’s ancestral origins and third-generation “redeemers.” A third approach originated with Will Herberg’s reformulation of the thesis that was designed to understand changes in religious affiliation and religiosity in the United States. Herberg’s proposal was to fuse Hansen’s thesis to Ruby Jo Reeves Kennedy’s “triple melting pot” thesis, which argued that marital assimilation was occurring, but into three distinct groupings based on religions affiliations: Protestants married Protestants, Catholics married Catholics, and Jews married Jews. The idea was that ethnic identity was increasingly becoming less significant in structural terms, but the power of religious identities was obvious. None of this meant that ethnicity necessarily disappeared or became irrelevant. Rather, it simply meant that religion had become more salient than ethnicity—a claim that has subsequently been questioned. Finally, in attempting to make sense of the resurgence of ethnicity in the United States during the latter decades of the 20th century, Hansen’s work on the thirdgeneration principle, read loosely for its appreciation of the variability of ethnicity, can be seen as a precursor to discussions of “the ethnic revival,” “emergent ethnicity,” “the new ethnicity,” “symbolic ethnicity,” and similar concepts. Its virtue was taken to be its sensitivity to the situationally conditioned character of ethnicity. This is what Mary Waters had in mind when she contended that many third-generation and beyond European-origin ethnics—who no longer confront significant obstacles to inclusion into the societal mainstream—chose to exercise their “ethnic options.” This concept is similar to Herbert Gans’s “symbolic ethnicity.” In her research, Waters found that ethnicity continued to have meaning for her subjects, partly as a product of a desire for a sense of being rooted in community.
At the same time, their involvement in ethnic activities tended to be intermittent and based on selectivity in which aspects of the heritage to embrace and which to reject or ignore. She also found evidence of cultural syncretism of aspects of various European nationality groups. Part of this embrace of ethnic options is predicated on the drawing of new in-group/out-group boundaries, wherein a pan-European identity was pitted against the identities of Blacks and other racial groups. This topic has been the focus of considerable scholarly attention in recent years—taking us beyond the concerns addressed in Hansen’s influential essay presenting the third-generation principle. Peter Kivisto See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Desi; Immigration, U.S.; Pluralism; Symbolic Ethnicity
Further Readings
Gans, Herbert. 1979. “Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 2(1):1–20. Hansen, Marcus Lee. 1938. The Problem of the Third Generation Immigrant. Rock Island, IL: Augustana Historical Society. Hansen, Marcus Lee. 1952. “The Study of Man: The Third Generation in America.” Commentary (November). Abstract available from http://www.commentarymagazine.com Herberg, Will. [1955, 1960] 1983. Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology. With a new introduction by M. E. Marty. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kivisto, Peter and Dag Blanck, eds. 1990. American Immigrants and Their Generations: Studies and Commentaries on the Hansen Thesis after Fifty Years. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Waters, Mary. 1990. Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
THORPE, JIM (1888–1953) Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the name Jim Thorpe became synonymous with athletic excellence; most sports authorities ranked Thorpe among the world’s greatest athletes. Born in the Oklahoma Indian Territory on May 28, 1888, to a half-Irish father and one-quarter-French mother,
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Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-120837.
college football, as well as the first college football player to achieve national recognition. Excelling as both an amateur and professional in track and field, football, and baseball, Thorpe became the first U.S. citizen to win the Olympic gold medal in the decathlon at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, and the only athlete to ever simultaneously win gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon. As a professional football player, Thorpe led his team, the Canton Bulldogs, to three world championships from 1915 to 1919, and served as the first president of the American Professional Football Association, now known as the National Football League. Thorpe played professional baseball for the New York Giants, Cincinnati Reds, and Boston Braves, batting .327 in his final season in 1919. Named the “Greatest Football Player and All-around Male Athlete of the First Half of the Twentieth Century” by a 1950 Associated Press poll of sportswriters, and the “Greatest All-time American Football Player” by a 1977 Sports Magazine national poll, Thorpe is a member of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, the College Football Hall of Fame, the Professional Football Hall of Fame, and the National Indian Hall of Fame.
Thorpe was raised as a member of the Sac and Fox Nation. As a Native American rising to national prominence at a time in which attitudes about, definitions of, and policies toward Native Americans were being dramatically reshaped, Thorpe’s athletic achievements, combined with his racial heritage, served as a great source of national pride, accomplishment, and identity. This entry discusses his major accomplishments.
Omitted from these highlights, however, are a number of nuances. By all accounts, Thorpe was a figurehead president of the American Professional Football Association. Furthermore, as a baseball player, Thorpe was a competent although unexceptional major leaguer. On the other hand, in the areas of track and field and, especially, football, Thorpe’s athletic achievements were truly unmatched, making him the first sports superstar of the 20th century.
Athletic Achievements
His Private Life
During the past 100 years, Thorpe’s athletic feats have achieved legendary status, so much so that, at times, it is difficult to separate the man from the myth. Most highlights of Thorpe’s life, however, including the following edited excerpts drawn from a 1999 U.S. Senate resolution honoring Thorpe as the “Athlete of the Century,” note the following athletic achievements:
Along with these athletic triumphs, however, Thorpe’s life was also marked by a series of personal tragedies: the death of his twin brother when Jim Thorpe was 8 years old, his mother when he was 12, and his father when he was 16. Later, he suffered the loss of his firstborn child and two divorces; after playing his last professional football game, he endured years of unsteady work, financial hardship, and problems with alcohol. By all accounts, the crowning achievement of Thorpe’s athletic career was his gold medal performance at the 1912 Olympic Games. Six months
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• Jim Thorpe. Thorpe is greeted by Mayor Gaynor (third from left) and other dignitaries in an Olympic ceremony at City Hall, New York, 1912. Thorpe’s athletic achievements, combined with his Native American heritage, served as a great source of national pride, accomplishment, and identity.
• Starring at four different positions for the Carlisle Indians of the Carlisle Indian School from 1908 to 1912, Thorpe was a two-time All-American halfback in
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afterward, however, Thorpe was forced to publicly acknowledge that he had inadvertently broken Olympic rules of “professionalism” by having played minor league baseball a few years earlier. Although most sports fans sympathized with Thorpe, the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) rescinded Thorpe’s amateur status and soon afterward, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) expunged Thorpe’s Olympic records and stripped him of his gold medals. For the next 70 years, Thorpe’s family, friends, and admirers lobbied for the return of his Olympic records and medals. These efforts finally paid off in 1982 when the AAU posthumously restored Thorpe’s amateur status and the IOC, following up, reinstated his Olympic records and medals on the grounds that the IOC, itself, had broken Olympic rules by failing to challenge Thorpe’s Olympic victories within the time frame allotted for such challenges. After his retirement from professional sports in the late 1920s, Thorpe barely eked out a living, struggling to find work wherever possible, which included appearing in more than forty Hollywood films— mostly in uncredited bit parts that often required him to prance around in demeaning American Indian costumes. Toward the end of his life, Thorpe served as a technical adviser for the 1951 Hollywood movie that chronicled his life story: Jim Thorpe—All American. Starring Burt Lancaster as Thorpe, the film was a big commercial success, even though Thorpe, believing he would be getting substantial money from it, got nothing. At the time of his death from a third heart attack on March 28, 1953, Thorpe was penniless. The U.S. public greeted the news of his passing with an outpouring of affection. Included among the many posthumous honors that Thorpe received was the eventual naming of an entire town after him: Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, which, home to his mausoleum, is now one of the state’s most popular tourist attractions.
A Native American Icon Assuming folkloric dimensions, Thorpe’s athletic triumphs continue to be a source of great pride for Native Americans. As late as January 2000, for example, Native Americans conducted a spirited “get out the vote” e-mail campaign that helped overwhelmingly to elect Thorpe “Athlete of the Century” in a widely publicized ABC Sports Internet poll. And 2 years later, following a letter-writing campaign led
by Thorpe’s family, friends, and admirers to pressure General Mills to put Thorpe’s picture on the box cover of Wheaties cereal, Thorpe’s name was finally added to Wheaties’ long list of champions. As the most recognizable Native American of the 20th century, Thorpe helped shape the image of 20thcentury Native Americans in the minds of millions of non-Native Americans. In so doing, his life story paralleled both the accomplishments and struggles of many 20th-century Native Americans. This was especially the case during the first half of that century when sports, race, and politics were inseparable—all deeply entwined with ideas about, and debates over, the alleged “pros and cons” of segregation, integration, immigration, assimilation, nationalism, and eugenics. As such, Thorpe’s life story continues to be open to competing ideological interpretations. What is beyond contention, however, was Jim Thorpe’s unparalleled all-around athletic skills and his enduring popularity, beyond his athleticism, as one of the most beloved U.S. citizens. Mark Rubinfeld See also Assimilation; Ethnicity, Negotiating; Eugenics; Leisure; Native Americans; Race; Segregation
Further Readings
Aleiss, Angela. 2005. Making the White Man’s Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies. Westport, CT: Praeger. Freeman, Everett (producer) and Michael Curtiz (director). 1951. Jim Thorpe—All American [Motion picture]. United States: Warner Brothers. Kilpatrick, Jacquelyn. 1999. Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Newcombe, Jack. 1975. The Best of the Athletic Boys: The White Man’s Impact on Jim Thorpe. New York: Doubleday. Oxendine, Joseph B. 1988. American Indian Sports Heritage. Champagne, IL: Human Kinetics. Rollins, Peter C. and John E. O’Connor, eds. 1998. Hollywood’s Indian: The Portrayal of Native Americans in Film. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Rubinfeld, Mark. 2006. “The Mythical Jim Thorpe: Representing the Twentieth Century American Indian.” International Journal of the History of Sport, Special Issue 23(2):167–189. Wheeler, Robert. 1979. Jim Thorpe: World’s Greatest Athlete. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Tibetan Americans
TIBETAN AMERICANS The migration of Tibetans to the United States and Canada is a relatively new phenomenon that began en masse in the late 20th century. An estimated 8,650 Tibetans live in the United States today, and nearly 2,000 live in Canada. This entry describes these immigrants and their descendants. Tibetans are followers of Tibetan Buddhism. Their current temporal and spiritual leader is His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso. Tibetans believe the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation in human form of his predecessor and of avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva or Buddha of compassion, and is reborn to help humans alleviate suffering. The modern history of Tibet traces back to 1949 when the army of the People’s Republic of China invaded Tibet. In 1950, at the age of 15, the Dalai Lama was called on to assume full political power. Through the 1950s, he negotiated with Mao Tse-tung and other Chinese leaders over the future of Tibet. In 1959, the Dalai Lama fled Tibet undercover over the Himalayan Mountains to India, where he established the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamsala. Tens of thousands of Tibetans followed, which began the modern Tibetan diaspora. More than 100,000 Tibetans now live in India and Nepal, essentially stateless as refugees. Some Tibetans came to the United States in the late 1950s. These Tibetans were trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, to fight a guerrilla war against the People’s Republic of China in the 1960s. A few of these Tibetans returned or remained in the United States once this support ended in 1969, as the United States began to normalize relations with the People’s Republic of China. Before 1990, an estimated 524 Tibetans lived in the United States. A large number of Tibetans living in the United States today came in 1992 and 1993 as a result of the 1990 Immigration Act, which provided 1,000 visas for Tibetans living in exile in India and Nepal to immigrate to the United States. To offer opportunities for the greatest number of Tibetans to benefit from these visas, the Tibetan government in exile along with the U.S.-based Tibetan U.S. Resettlement Project (TUSRP) arranged a program and lottery system whereby only one member of a family household would be eligible to receive an initial visa under this program. Once in the United States, these 1,000
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Tibetans could file applications for family members to receive visas as well. In essence, each of these visas could be parlayed into several visas and families would be reunified in the United States. This meant that many Tibetan men and women who immigrated under this program left behind spouses and children for several years until they were reunited in the United States. These initial 1,000 Tibetans were resettled in twenty-two different cluster sites around the United States by predominantly volunteer-run organizations under the umbrella of the TUSRP. Because Tibetans were not considered refugees eligible for public resettlement assistance, TUSRP and local organizations raised private funds to aid in covering the initial costs for such needs as housing, health care services, food, clothing, furniture, English language classes, and a variety of other social services. A condition of these 1,000 visas was that each Tibetan immigrant was required to have a confirmed job offer from a U.S. employer before arriving. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, many Tibetans arrived in the United States on tourist visas and subsequently stayed. Currently, the largest populations of Tibetans in the United States live in New York City (2,000–3,000); Minneapolis, Minnesota (1,000); San Francisco, California (600); Madison, Wisconsin (500); Boston, Massachusetts (400); Seattle, Washington (300); and Chicago, Illinois (250); smaller communities exist in Los Angeles, California; Charlottesville, Virginia; Amherst, Massachusetts; Ithaca, New York; Washington, D.C.; Austin, Texas; Portland, Oregon; Berkeley, California; Boulder, Colorado; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Burlington, Vermont; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Missoula, Montana; Boise, Idaho; Salt Lake City, Utah; and other cities. Many Tibetans have become U.S. citizens and see their roles in the United States as ambassadors of Tibet. Approximately thirty Tibetan community organizations in the United States provide leadership and service to Tibetans. Several organizations have established missions that maintain and promote Tibetan culture in the United States by teaching the Tibetan language as well as Tibetan history, culture, religion, and the arts to children. An estimated 1,850 Tibetans live in Canada. Approximately 240 Tibetans immigrated to Canada in the 1970s. Tibetan families were settled in four cities along with Buddhist lamas to provide spiritual guidance. As a result of an influx of about 1,000 Tibetans from New York between 1998 and 2001, the Tibetan
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population has grown. Toronto, with 1,450 Tibetans, is currently home to the largest Tibetan community in Canada. Calgary, Montreal, and Vancouver also have Tibetan communities. Jeff Libman See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Diaspora; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees
Further Readings
Conservancy for Tibetan Art and Culture. 2002. “North American Tibetan Community Cultural Needs Assessment Project: Findings and Recommendations.” Washington, DC: Conservancy for Tibetan Art and Culture. Hess, Julia Meredith. 2006. “Statelessness and the State: Tibetans, Citizenship and Nationalist Activism in a Transnational World.” International Migration 44(1).
TITLE IX Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act was passed on June 23, 1972, during an era of social unrest in the United States. The thirty-seven words of the law state, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Although the law makes no explicit reference to athletics, Title IX has had its greatest impact on high school and collegiate athletic programs. This entry summarizes effects of Title IX including increases in participation of girls and women in sport, a sometimes-inequitable distribution of benefits to women of color, and declines in positions of leadership and administration for women. For this entry, persons of color refers to those of American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black non-Hispanic, or Hispanic descent. Following passage of Title IX, schools were given until 1978 to become compliant with the law. To become compliant, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) required schools to fulfill one of three prongs: The proportionality prong says that a school’s participation opportunities in sport should mirror the proportion of males and females in the student body (for example, if 55% of the students are female, then 55% of athletic
opportunities must be provided for females); the second prong requires schools to show a history and continuing practice of expansion of its athletic programs for the underrepresented gender; and the third prong requires an institution to be responsive to the interests and abilities of the underrepresented gender.
Benefits of Title IX The most celebrated benefit of Title IX has been the dramatic rise in participation rates of girls and women in high school and collegiate athletics. The National Federation of State High School Associations reports that 294,000 girls participated in athletics in 1971, compared with 2,953,355 girls in the 2005 to 2006 school year. Similar increases occurred at the collegiate level, where an estimated 16,000 females participated in intercollegiate athletics in 1970, compared with 180,000 in 2006, a roughly tenfold increase. The number of African American women in sport showed a similar increase, from 2,137 in 1971 to 22,541 in 2000, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation. More recent and detailed participation rates for women of color are provided by Richard Lapchick and Jenny Brenden in the 2005 Racial and Gender Report Card. Between 1991–1992 and 2004–2005, African American women’s participation rose from 31% to 43.7% in basketball, from 23.2% to 26% in cross country/track, and from 2.9% to 4.6% in other sports. Although these increases are positive, the gains for African American women are not comparable in traditionally White sports (e.g., swimming, tennis, and golf). Other women of color had minimal participation rates in 2004–2005: Latinas, in basketball (1.6%), cross country/track (3.4%), and other sports (3.1%); American Indian/Alaska Natives, in basketball (0.5%), cross country/track (0.4%), and other sports (0.3%); and Asians, in basketball (1.3%), cross country/track (1.2%), and other sports (2.6%). In addition to enhancing participation, some scholars have credited Title IX with the spectacular performances of U.S. girls and women at national and international levels. As evidence, some point to Olympic medals won during the 1990s, the emergence of professional leagues such as the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) in 1997, and the U.S. women’s soccer team’s victory over China in 1999. Interestingly, considerable successes had been achieved by African American women before the passage of Title IX, starting with the 1960
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Rome Olympics and Wilma Rudolph, who became the first of many African American women to win gold medals in track and field.
Problems in Implementing Title IX Despite the acclaim of proponents, Title IX has also had its detractors. The main critics of Title IX focus on the proportionality prong in the test for compliance. In the quest to become compliant with Title IX, many schools have cut men’s minor or nonrevenue sports such as gymnastics, volleyball, and wrestling. Opponents of Title IX claim that men’s sports have been cut as a direct result Women’s ice hockey game. The University of Wisconsin Badgers women’s ice hockey team is shown during the opening face-off to the Frozen Four final because the proportionality prong progame against the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers at Mariucci Arena vides the only “safe harbor” for obtaining in Minneapolis on March 26, 2006. Title IX, the first comprehensive federal law compliance. Opponents believe that Title to prohibit gender discrimination against students and employees of educaIX is a “quota,” whereas advocates of the tional institutions, has had its greatest impact on high school and collegiate law contend that proportionality is only athletic programs. one of three options that can be used and Source: David Stluka/Getty Images Sport. therefore does not constitute a quota. Often overlooked in debates between likely to participate in nontraditional or “emerging” advocates of men’s sports and proponents of women’s sports that are added to bring schools into compliance sports is the role of revenue sports such as men’s footwith Title IX. Scholars suggest that a large percentage ball and basketball, which frequently skew the issues. of women of color are not exposed to many of the More relevant to this entry is that benefits of paremerging sports such as crew, gymnastics, lacrosse, ticipation and leadership opportunities have not and swimming and, thus, are not prepared to compete accrued equally to all women, and especially to when the opportunity arises. Therefore, added particiwomen of color. Among the factors that may conpation opportunities are more likely to go to White tribute to the disproportionate gains experienced by women than to women of color. girls and women of color are the following: lack of The difficulty of obtaining compliance with Title access to sports that are added to meet compliance IX is exacerbated for HBCUs, where the proportion of with Title IX, the heightened difficulty of meeting females to males in the student body is unusually high. proportionality at historically Black colleges and uniAs a result, in 1997, four HBCUs were among twentyversities (HBCUs), and social and cultural factors that five National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) may deter girls and women of color from seeking Division I schools named in a lawsuit filed by the opportunities to participate in sport. National Women’s Law Center (Bethune-Cookman Although the number of female athletes of color College, Coppin State, Hampton University, and South has increased since the passage of Title IX, the beneCarolina State). Craig Greenlee explained the comfits of participation have not been distributed equiplexity of obtaining compliance with Title IX at tably to all. Scholars suggest that what occurs is Coppin State, where 72% of the student body consisted known as “clustering,” which means disproportionof female students. This meant that 72% of participaately high participation in certain sports coupled with tion opportunities had to be available to females to low participation in other sports. For example, an estimeet the proportionality prong of Title IX. The diffimated 97% of Black female college athletes compete culty of meeting this standard was heightened because in basketball and cross country/track; they are less
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most female students at Coppin State were nontraditional students, and many were working mothers with little or no time to participate in sports, even if opportunities were available. Like Coppin State, many HBCUs face obstacles in meeting the proportionality prong of Title IX because of the disparate proportion of females to males in the student body. Cultural and social reasons may also inhibit girls and women of color from deciding to become involved with sport. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Diversity Project documented obstacles confronting low-income African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans; such obstacles included racism, low socioeconomic status, and physical environments that are not conducive to sport participation. Similarly, the Women’s Sports Foundation conducted a study in Chicago on health and physical activity among Hispanic girls, and found that many Hispanic girls are not encouraged to play sports because they are considered male activities. Like other minorities, many Hispanic communities are also faced with adverse socioeconomic conditions that make participation in sport a lower priority. Likewise, James Coble and Ryan Rhodes found significant differences in levels of physical activity between Native American males and females and concluded that low participation rates among women stemmed from environmental factors.
Coaching and Administration and Title IX A final unanticipated outcome that accompanied the passage of Title IX has been a dramatic decline in the number and percentage of women in positions of leadership (such as coaching and administration). Despite the well-documented gains in participation opportunities, the percentage of women in positions of leadership has continued to decline since the passage of Title IX. Vivian Acosta and Linda Carpenter have substantiated this trend since 1977 in their longitudinal study of women in intercollegiate sport. The two scholars estimated that before Title IX, 90% of the coaches of women’s collegiate teams were women, whereas the percentage of women coaching women’s teams reached an all-time low of 42.4% in 2006. The percentage of women of color in coaching positions appears to be even less encouraging. Lapchick and Brenden reported that in the 2004 to 2005 school year, African American women held approximately 5%
of all coaching positions in NCAA Divisions I, II, and III, but Latinas, Asians, and Native Americans (together) held fewer than 5% of those positions. Moreover, while women were estimated to hold more than 90% of administrative positions before the passage of Title IX, the percentage of women in positions of administration had fallen to 18.6% in 2006. Thus, although Title IX has been accompanied by an impressive growth in the number and percentage of girls and women participating in various levels of sport, there has been an alarming decline in the number and percentage of women coaches and administrators. That decline has been even more dramatic for girls and women of color. Nancy E. Spencer See also African Americans; Asian Americans; Discrimination; Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); Native Americans; Racism
Further Readings
Acosta, R. Vivian and Linda J. Carpenter. 2006. Women in Intercollegiate Sport: A Longitudinal, National Study Twenty-nine Year Update, 1977–2006. Available from http://webpages.charter.net/womeninsport/AC_29Year Study.pdf Butler, Jennifer and Donna Lopiano. 2003. The Women’s Sports Foundation Report: Title IX and Race in Intercollegiate Sport. East Meadow, NY: Women’s Sports Foundation. Carpenter, Linda J. and R. Vivian Acosta. 2005. Title IX. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Coble, James D. and Ryan E. Rhodes. 2006. “Physical Activity and Native Americans: A Review.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 31(1):36–46. Greenlee, Craig T. 1997. “Four Black Colleges Named in the Title IX Complaint.” Black Issues in Higher Education 14(9, June 26):9. Lapchick, Richard and Jenny Brenden. 2006. The 2005 Racial and Gender Report Card. Orlando, FL: DeVos Sport Business Management Program. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 2004. Active Living Diversity Project: A Look at Physical Activity and Healthy Eating in African Americans, Latino and Native American Communities. Seattle, WA: Pyramid Communication. Zurn, Lisa. 2005. The Women’s Sports Foundation Report: The Status of Health and Physical Activity in Chicago Hispanic Girls. East Meadow, NY: Women’s Sports Foundation.
Tlingit
TLINGIT The Tlingit are one of the major Northwest Tribes of the Pacific Coast. Being a part of one of the first migrations to the North American continent, they settled in the southeast of the Alaska Alexander Archipelago, and surrounding areas. In this locale, the weather is mild because of the Japanese Current that creates a northern rainforest. Reports from early explorers of the region about the abundance of fur, zoomorphic figures on totem poles and canoes, complete with gift and feast investitures within longhousestrewn shorelines captured the European and U.S. imaginations. This entry describes the prehistory of the Tlingit, early European and U.S. contact, and the contemporary Tlingit.
Kaw-Claa. A Tlingit native woman, Kaw-Claa, is shown in full potlatch dancing costume (1906). The Tlingit and other northwest coast Native American peoples held potlatches— large ceremonial gatherings involving dances, feasts, the exchange of goods, and the performance of sacred rituals—to honor the dead or affirm the high status of chiefs. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-101170.
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Prehistory The Tlingit are of the Na-Dené phyla, stemming distantly from the Athabaskans, who live to the north. Cedar and salmon, which were abundant in the area, became the core ingredients to their subsistence economy. This economy was established through the feasts and ceremonies of the potlatch, the medium that encapsulated the expression of their culture. The widespread Raven culture spread from the eastern coast of Russia to the shores of western Washington. The Tlingit feel a strong relation to the surrounding earth and creatures, with whom they coexist, and this perspective produced a deep respect for their environment. The Tlingit people are divided between the Raven and the Wolf or Eagle phratry, with numerous subclans under each. It was taboo for a Raven to marry another Raven or a Wolf another Wolf; even nonblood relations were considered family. So strongly was this adhered to that an uncle, as told by Frances Lackey Paul, condemned his niece to death for marrying within her clan. In this matriarchal society, children belonged to the clan of their mother. Thus, a boy began training (around the age of 12) with his maternal grandfather or uncle in the nature of subsistence hunting and fishing, and he learned which territories belonged to the clan, and practiced the skills of a warrior. The Tlingit had a hierarchical society: “masters of the clan house” or Hít s’àtí (commonly known as chiefs), highborn people, common people, and slaves; duties within the clans were dispersed according to caste. Shamans were part of the clan yet held a unique prestige and were both respected and feared. From spring through fall, daily activities involved constructing goods and accumulating provisions for survival through the winter, as well as preparing potlatch celebrations, usually held in the winter months. From cedar, the Tlingit made longhouses, totem poles, dugout canoes, masks, fishing gear, woven clothing, and so on. Tlingit subsistence was centered on fishing, hunting, and gathering. The Tlingit were extensive traders. It is plausible that potatoes and tobacco, the only crops they cultivated, were obtained through a barter system before European contact. A seafaring people, the Tlingit used canoes for most of their trading and war and slave expeditions, with routes that ranged from Aleut territories to the north to the tribes of Coastal Washington. The Tlingit lifestyle called for a hardy and resilient people; warriors descended into icy waters, beating themselves
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Tlingit
was the first and fundamental form of their written language, for it told who they were and what they owned.
Early European Contact
A new chief. The Northwest coast culture, specifically the Tlingit and Haida tribes of southeast Alaska and British Columbia, derive their social structure from the complex enterprises of the potlatch system, which in turn is contingent on moiety bonds, namely the Raven and Eagle (Wolf) clans. For example, the Eagle clan would conduct the rituals for a Raven funeral; then, during the memorial potlatch, the Eagle clan would be paid in gifts for their service. Such interactions strengthened allegiance between the clans. Through the ages, obligations between these clansmen have remained. In this 2005 photo, after delivering his speech on chieftainship at the Tlingit village of Klawock, Alaska, retired “Shungkweidi” Eagle Chief Theodore Roberts congratulates his grandson, James Roberts, who received the chieftainship for the Gaanax.adi Raven clan from retiring Gaanax.adi Chief Alex Peratrovich. Source: Photograph by Pamela Rae Huteson.
with boughs of cedar to acclimate themselves to the ocean environment. People of the Northwest were also known for their handicraft, and artisans mastered a fine art form that was later to be named “formline” by artist and Professor Bill Holm, art historian and authority on the Northwest coastal Indigenous Peoples. This abstract technique integrated numerous items that were painted, woven, and carved for their use. Tlingit art
Following the advent of explorers such as Captain James Cook, an onslaught of Europeans and “Bostons” (U.S. residents) seeking fur trade journeyed to the Northwest. Their arrival introduced the Northwest Peoples to the mercantile economy and initiated the acculturation process. The Tlingit guarded the trade routes to the interior tribes such as the Athabaskan, and according to an early ethnographer, George Thornton Emmons, the Tlingit “discouraged and threatened any White competition.” The arrival of European goods brought new high caste property into the potlatch, bringing an unprecedented new opulence that usurped a way of life that may never totally recover its original form. Woolen blankets, dresses, pants, and other European items superseded common cedar woven and fur clothing; labrets (lip ornaments) quickly fell out of fashion with the high caste. The arrival of alcohol initiated substance abuse that is still prevalent; unscrupulous traders charged outrageous prices for products such as whiskey, peppermint essence, and absinthe, to name a few. Diseases such as smallpox and whooping cough nearly decimated entire villages. In 1799, Alexandr A. Baranov established a trading camp and settlement at New Archangel (Sitka), in Southeast Alaska, where the Russians encountered the fortitude and resistance of the Tlingit peoples. Acts of war were not new to the Tlingit; conflicts over property rights, feuding, and other hostilities ensued among the surrounding tribes. When the Haida-Gwaii from the Queen Charlotte Islands began relocating into the Tlingit territory of Prince of Wales Island, conflicts regarding land rights erupted between the encroaching Haida-Gwaii and the resident Tlingit. As a result of the increasing negative interactions with European and U.S. newcomers, more alliances were made between tribes, by means of marriages and adoptions, resulting in truces formed to cease the ancient feuds and to band together to maintain their lands and rights in the face of European and U.S. claims. This coalition facilitated building a “Native community” when it was necessary to flee from epidemic-torn villages and relocate within newly created towns. The Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) was one of the results of tribal alliances. The bond created during this time of transition, not only
Tlingit
between the Tlingit and Haida but among all Alaska Native peoples, remains.
Drastic Social Change In 1867, the U.S. flag was raised in Sitka, bringing an end to the Russian occupation and the beginning of U.S. control, a change that brought homesteaders, missionaries, and patrolling gunboats. The new regime did not honor the Tlingit ancestral property rights of hunting/fishing and gathering territories. When schools were built, teachers punished Tlingit children for speaking their vernacular language. After Congress made it illegal to transport liquor to Alaska in 1868, a lively bootlegging business arose for a brew of distilled molasses and brown sugar called hoochanu or hooch. Arriving missionaries, appalled at what they saw as the “heathen state” of the Indigenous Peoples, made it a priority to eradicate their culture and persuade the Tlingit to become Christian. Early anthropologists such as Franz Boas and amateur collectors tried to accumulate as many artifacts as possible and to document and capture moments of the “dying” Northwest cultures. Shamans’ graves were pilfered during this time, and some totem poles disappeared from both unoccupied and occupied villages. Totem pole donations were also made by Tlingit and Haida chiefs and sent to the 1904 World’s Fair, organized by John G. Brady; later, many of these totems returned to Alaska to form the Sitka National Historic (Totem) Park. Sheldon Jackson, a Presbyterian missionary, built the first Christian boarding school in Alaska, which later evolved into a college. This school educated future leaders of the Tlingit communities, leaders who formed the ANB in 1912 and its sister organization the Alaska Native Sisterhood (ANS) in 1915. Discrimination was obvious in Alaska; “No Dogs or Indians Allowed” signs appeared in restaurant windows, and “For Indians Only” signs segregated theaters. Elizabeth Peratrovich, ANS Grand President, became a civil rights campaign leader, heading the ANB and ANS fight against discrimination. These efforts led to the passage of Anti-discrimination Act by the Alaska Territorial Legislature on February 8, 1945. The bill, which was signed on February 16, 1945, granted to Native peoples the “full and equal” right to enjoy public “conveyances and amusements,” and it provided for the punishment of those who violated this law
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through acts of discrimination such as refusing to allow a native into a movie theater. In 1988, the Alaska legislature established February 16th as the annual Elizabeth Peratrovich Day to commemorate the signing of the Anti-discrimination Act.
Contemporary Tlingit Under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, tribal lands were designated and divided according to area rather than by tribe. The corporatetype entities established for each division governed the new village corporations in their area. The Sealaska Corporation oversees the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian territories of Southeast Alaska, including the “13 Region” in Washington. Both urban and rural Natives are concerned with subsistence rights, as more of their cultural Tlingit foods, obtained via hunting, fishing, and gathering, are being regulated. The Repatriation Act of 1990 has brought numerous Tlingit artifacts and totems back to the original clan owners. The fishing and logging industries were once the dominant employment for Natives in southeastern Alaska; today, the occupations of the Tlingit are diverse as more youth are choosing alternative trades and graduating from college. The Tlingit culture, which was once discouraged, is being taught in schools, Native dance groups are increasing, and Native carvers and artists are on the rise. In 2004, the Perseverance Theatre in Douglas, Alaska, reset the Shakespearean play Macbeth, by director Anita Maynard-Losh, to a Tlingit prehistory setting with an Alaska Native cast. The translation to the Tlingit language was made by Johnny Marks (Tlingit) of the Sealaska Heritage Institute; the music, drumming, and choreography were by dancer, storyteller, and actor Gene Tagaban (Tlingit/Cherokee/Filipino). The group performed the play on a national tour, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution, in 2007. The Tlingit have met the challenge of attempts to destroy their culture and are returning to their traditional values. With a combined effort of youth and elders, they are exploring means of safeguarding their tribal identity in the modern world. Pamela Rae Huteson See also Alaskan Natives, Legislation Concerning; Aleuts; Canada, First Nations
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Tongan Americans
Further Readings
Ames, Kenneth M. and Herbert D. G. Maschner. 1999. Peoples of the Northwest Coast: Their Archaeology and Prehistory. London: Thames and Hudson. Bolanz, Maria and Gloria C. Williams. 2003. Tlingit Art: Totem Poles and Art of the Alaskan Indian. Blaine, WA: Hancock House. Emmons, George Thornton and Frederica de Laguna. 1991. The Tlingit Indians. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Holm, Bill. 1965. Northwest Coast Indian Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Huteson, Pamela Rae. 2002. Legends in Wood: Stories of the Totems. Tigard, OR: Greatland Classic Sales. Olson, Wallace M. 1991. The Tlingit: An Introduction to Their Culture and History. Auke Bay, AK: Heritage Research. Patrick, Andrew. 2002. The Most Striking of Objects: The Totem Poles of Sitka National Historical Park. Anchorage, AK: U.S. Department of the Interior. Paul, Frances Lackey. 1976. Kahtahah. Anchorage, AK: Alaska Northwest Books.
TONGAN AMERICANS Tongan Americans represent a relatively small group in the United States. They are part of a much larger collective immigrant group sometimes referred to as
Canada
United States
Pacific Ocean Midway Is.
Johnston Atoll
Tonga Kiribati
Howland I.
Jarvis I.
Tokelau
Samoa Fiji Niue Tonga
French Polynesia Cook Is.
“Pacific Islanders.” This entry provides a brief description of the Tongan homeland, looks at immigration patterns, and describes the current Tongan community in the United States.
The Kingdom of Tonga Tonga, an archipelago, is the only remaining kingdom in the South Pacific, with an estimated 2007 population of about 100,000. The crowning of Prince Tupouto’a in 2006 as King George Tupou V follows in the modern legacy of the Tupou dynasty that solidified its power in the constitution of 1875 under the auspices of the British military and Christian missionaries. Although Tonga was not formally colonized, the British ruled indirectly, and their prodigious influence can be traced in the formation of Tonga’s government, judiciary system, and indigenous cultural politics. The U.S. occupation of the Tongan islands during World War II was a pivotal moment in Tongan history because it greatly altered the Tongan economy. The structural changes that occurred during these years further widened the economic gap between commoners and elites. These economic disparities led to the unprecedented and exponential growth of the U.S.based Mormon Church from the 1950s until the 21st century. The central role of Mormonism in Tongan culture is illuminated by the fact that Tonga holds the record for the world’s highest ratio of Mormon conversions and membership to general population. The church offered Tongan commoners opportunities for upward mobility that often included a plane ticket to the United States and educational opportunities at the Mormon-owned Brigham Young University located in Laie, Hawai‘i. Early Tongan migrations to the United States were thus mitigated through membership in or affiliation with the Mormon Church. Although dubbed the “Friendly Islands” in 1777 by the British Captain James Cook, Tonga in the 20th and 21st centuries has been rife with social unrest including mass labor strikes, public demonstrations, and violent upheavals. These social contestations in the public sphere were the culmination of Tongan people’s resistance to new and often oppressive structural and economic policies. For example, the Tongan Pro-democracy Movement, a movement headed by Tongan commoners, was born in the 1990s. The movement’s allies continue to grow and extend beyond the borders of the Tongan nation-state into the diaspora.
Tongan Americans
These critical trajectories in contemporary Tongan history reveal the dire economic disparities created by globalization, and they inadvertently illuminate the Tongan government’s role in the exacerbation of economic disparities. The genealogies of past and present imperialisms in the Tongan islands led to the unprecedented numbers of Tongan conversions to Western religions and the subsequent migrations to industrialized countries like the United States.
Early Migrations Migrations overseas have become common in Tongan life. More than half the population of the islands lives abroad in industrialized countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. In the often-circuitous routes of Tongan overseas migrations, about four in ten Tongans live in the United States, a country viewed as the preferred and most prestigious destination. Tongan migrations to the United States began in 1945 after World War II, and they later proliferated after 1965 because of changes in U.S. immigration laws. The early Tongan migrants were male and tu’a or of the commoner class. They were commissioned by the Mormon Church to conduct physical labor that consisted of construction work and landscaping. One example of these efforts is the building of the Church College of Hawai‘i that would later become Brigham Young University. Many of these laborers also built the Polynesian Cultural Center, a popular tourist attraction located next to Brigham Young University. Tongan migrants were subsequently commissioned to work as performers of Tongan dances and cultural rituals to entertain spectators at the Polynesian Cultural Center. These neighboring institutions owned by the Mormon Church were the gateways for acculturating Tongan immigrants into U.S. life. These institutions played integral roles in the formation of Tongan American cultural politics and Tongan diaspora communities in the United States.
Tongan Communities in the United States Tongans are a highly marginalized population in the United States. According to the 2000 census, there were 36,836 Tongans or part Tongans in the United States. This is about 0.01% of the U.S. population. Within the Pacific Islander rubric, Tongans are also a minority.
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They constitute the fourth-largest group following Guamanians, Samoans, and Hawaiians, respectively. The census also revealed that most Tongan Americans live in communities next to each other, and the five states with the most Tongan Americans are California, Hawai‘i, Texas, Utah, and Washington. Tongans are frequently painted as formidable athletes because of the successes of nationally known football stars such as Lakei Heimuli, Vai Sikahema, and Alfred Pupunu. However, most Tongan Americans work menial jobs with salaries that fall below the poverty level. Only 14.8% of Tongan Americans have managerial, professional, or related occupations, compared with 33.6% of the U.S. population. Furthermore, unlike the masculine images of Tongan male athletes portrayed by the media, Tongan women are just as likely, or in many cases more likely, to be breadwinners. Tongan Americans, like many other Pacific Islanders, are some of the hardest working U.S. residents. Yet, according to the 2000 census, this population is one of the most poor. In California, the state hosting the largest Tongan community, Tongans have per capita incomes lower than any other major racial or ethnic group. Moreover, the already lean paychecks that many Tongans receive from their menial wage jobs are stretched to pay for local debts, and paychecks are also shared transnationally with multiple communities. Funds are transmitted to support familial obligations in diaspora locations around the globe, and most significantly, remittances are sent to Tonga. In 2002, these remittances accounted for about 50% of the Tongan gross domestic product. Tongan communities in the United States comprise many youths. More than half of Tongan community members are 19 years old or younger and many are facing escalating social problems in the United States. The formidable hurdles that Tongan youths face are illuminated in Tongan students’ performances in U.S. public schools. In California, only 51% of Tongan students graduate from high schools annually, with only 11% of Tongan Americans acquiring college degrees. The dismal state of Tongan American educational performances belies the 99% literacy rate of Tongans living in Tonga. Correspondingly, Tongan American arrest and incarceration rates are some of the highest in California. Fuifuilupe ‘Alilia Niumeitolu See Appendix A See also Asian Americans; Assimilation; Diaspora; Hawai‘i, Race in; Immigration, U.S.; Pacific Islanders
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Tracking
Further Readings
Gordon, Tamar. 1990. “Inventing the Mormon Family.” Pp. 197–219 in Christianity in Oceania: Ethnographic Perspectives, edited by J. Barker. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Hau’ofa, ‘Epeli. 1983. Tales of the Tikongs. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Helu, Konai. 1981. Langakali: Poems. Suva, Fiji: Mana. Latukefu, Sione. 1974. Church and State in Tonga. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Small, Cathy A. 1997. Voyages: From Tongan Villages to American Suburbs. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
TRACKING Tracking in schools involves differentiating the curriculum and organizing students for instruction based on perceived academic ability levels. The practice of tracking students became popular in high schools in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century and remains nearly universal today, although the implementation of the practice has changed since its inception. Despite its prevalence, tracking is controversial. Proponents argue that schools must group students by ability to offer instruction to all students effectively and efficiently. Critics believe that the practice should be modified or abolished because it disadvantages racial and ethnic minority students and exacerbates existing educational inequalities. This entry describes the history and implementation of tracking, as well as related issues.
The Rise and Fall of Tracking Educational tracking began as a response to the expansion of educational opportunities and changing immigration patterns in the early 20th century. The increasing diversity of the student population in language, ability, and expectations led educators to institute the practice as a way to meet the needs of all students. Tracking, in its original form, functioned as a strict assignment to a course of study, generally based on the results of IQ tests or standardized tests. Within this system, some students received an academic education that prepared them for college. Others received a general education in preparation for employment directly after high school. Finally, the vocational track provided students with trade skills and did not contain an academic component.
The practice of assigning students to isolated educational tracks began to disappear in the 1950s and 1960s. During this time, the high school population increased in size. This change led to the development of large, comprehensive high schools and more options for elective courses. Under this system, students gained opportunities to shape their educational trajectories, and the strict system of tracking began to weaken. Schools also began to place more emphasis on academic achievement and attending college, and this new focus highlighted the importance of offering all students an academic curriculum. The system of tracking students into rigid courses of study began to evolve into a system of stratified academic curriculum for all students.
Tracking Today The current form that tracking has taken in high schools in the United States reflects this focus on academics. All students are required to take courses in English, mathematics, social studies, and science. Within some, and perhaps all, of these subjects, students are grouped by ability. The curriculum generally includes advanced, honors, regular, and basic courses in academic subjects, but this may vary depending on the size of the school. Contemporary proponents of tracking believe that schools must group students by ability to offer all students appropriate educational opportunities. Critics counter that students in different ability group levels do not receive the same quality and quantity of instruction. Scholars who have examined achievement test score gains for students across ability groups consistently support this contention. These scholars find that, after controlling for previous test scores, students in higher ability groups demonstrate more academic gains than do students in lower ability groups. Research on the causes of the achievement discrepancies across groups indicates that students in high ability groups receive higher quality instruction and more instruction overall than do students in low ability groups. Students in low ability groups who receive appropriate and challenging instruction earn standardized test scores that are closer to those of students in high ability groups. These findings suggest that most students in low ability groups are not offered appropriate opportunities to learn.
Issues of Discrimination Inequalities in academic outcomes based on ability group placement raise concerns of discrimination
Tracking
against certain minority students. African American and Hispanic students score lower, on average, on standardized tests than do White students, and research has found that these achievement discrepancies often exist before entry into school. If group placements are based on standardized test scores, African American and Hispanic students will be more likely than will White students to be placed in a lower ability group where they are apt to receive low-quality instruction. Assignment to ability groups generally is not based solely on standardized test scores, however. Students are ostensibly assigned to ability groups based on their capacity for learning and their previous experience and performance in the subject. Standardized test scores play a role in making this determination but claims of cultural bias in standardized test scores have led schools to reduce their reliance on these measures. Most schools also consider prior grades in the subject, recommendations from teachers and counselors, student preference, and parental intervention when determining ability group placements. Taking these factors into consideration reduces the homogeneity of ability groups as measured by standardized test scores and may increase the likelihood that schools assign minority students to high ability groups. Scholars who examine the effects of minority status on ability group assignment have reported mixed findings. On the surface, African American students constitute a disproportionate number of students in low ability groups. After controlling for background factors, some research has indicated that African American students are more likely than are White students to be assigned to high ability groups, but other research contradicts this and indicates that they are less likely to be placed in a high ability group. Most research, however, reveals no effect of race on assignment after controlling for background factors. These findings suggest that other student characteristics, such as socioeconomic status, have a greater effect than do race and ethnicity on ability group assignments.
Implementation and Impact Ability group assignments are not permanent. A limited amount of research has addressed the prevalence and determinants of ability group mobility, both within and across school years. These studies find that mobility is common and most students who experience a change in group placement move from a high ability group to a lower ability group or drop a course of study completely. This research also shows that
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African American and Hispanic students are more likely than are White students to experience downward course mobility. The evidence presented here suggests that tracking, in its current form, leads to unequal academic outcomes. Although these inequalities appear to be based more on socioeconomic status than on racial or ethnic minority status, they are likely to disproportionately affect certain racial and ethnic groups. African American and Hispanic students are more likely than are White students to experience poverty or come from a low-income background. Therefore, African American and Hispanic students are more likely to be placed in or move to lower ability groups where they may receive a lower-quality education than do students in high ability groups. Research findings regarding inequities in the outcomes and practice of ability grouping, on the basis both of race and ethnicity and of socioeconomic status, have led to calls for elimination of the practice. The “detracking” movement has affected some high schools that have chosen to eliminate ability groups, generally as part of a larger restructuring of the curriculum in the school. Because this practice is not widespread, few studies have examined achievement outcomes in these schools. Those few studies have generally found that average levels of achievement in these heterogeneously grouped schools are similar to those found in schools with ability grouping. Scholars do find differences in the range of achievement across the two types of schools, however. Students in schools with ability grouping attain both higher and lower scores than do students in detracked schools. These findings indicate that low-achieving students in detracked schools receive better instruction than they would in tracked schools, but high-achieving students in these schools are not offered as many opportunities to learn as are their counterparts in ability-grouped schools. Academic results for students in detracked schools suggest that these schools, like tracked schools, can produce inequitable outcomes by not offering all students appropriately challenging curricula. Given this result and the continued prevalence of ability grouping in schools, the current challenge for high schools in the United States is to find a way to institute ability grouping programs in a manner that meets the needs of all students and does not disadvantage students based on socioeconomic status or racial or ethnic group membership. Schools can work toward this goal by ensuring that all students have access to necessary educational
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Trail of Broken Treaties
resources, including well-trained and -prepared teachers and challenging curricula. School administrators and teachers also need to establish policies for determining ability group placements and changes in these assignments based on appropriate criteria, taking into account that standardized test results may be affected by factors other than student ability and that students will progress at varying rates, necessitating frequent reviews of ability group assignments. Equitably implemented tracking programs may reduce some of the educational inequalities that many current tracking programs enhance. Brandy J. Ellison See also Bell Curve, The; Educational Performance and Attainment; Intelligence Tests; Pipeline; Testing
Further Readings
Gamoran, Adam and Mark Berends. 1987. “The Effects of Stratification in Secondary Schools: Synthesis of Survey and Ethnographic Research.” Review of Educational Research 57:415–435. Hallinan, Maureen T. 2003. “Ability Grouping and Student Learning.” Pp. 95–140 in Brookings Papers on Education Policy 2003, edited by D. Ravitch. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Lucas, Samuel Roundfield. 1999. Tracking Inequality: Stratification and Mobility in American High Schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Oakes, Jeannie. 2005. Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Oakes, Jeannie, Adam Gamoran, and Reba N. Page. 1992. “Curriculum Differentiation: Opportunities, Outcomes, and Meanings.” Pp. 570–608 in Handbook of Research on Curriculum, edited by P. W. Jackson. New York: Macmillan. Slavin, Robert E. 1990. “Achievement Effects of Ability Grouping in Secondary Schools: A Best-Evidence Synthesis.” Review of Educational Research 60:471–499.
TRAIL
OF
BROKEN TREATIES
In the history of race relations between Native American Indians and the majority White culture of the United States, treaties have played an important role. By definition in international law, a treaty is negotiated between sovereign entities. Under Article II, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution, a treaty refers to
an agreement concluded by the president, through his representatives, and approved by the Senate. These are referred to as “Article II treaties,” which are binding on the states and others as the supreme law of the land. Although the federal government claimed complete sovereignty over the Native Americans, it dealt with the tribes as if it were dealing with another nation. Ultimately, a schizophrenic relationship developed between the tribes and the national government as the former became the weaker party in the mix and Washington became stronger, asserting its power over the destinies of the Aboriginal inhabitants. A confrontation between resurgent Native American interests and the U.S. government broke out in the 1970s that continues in various manifestations. This entry surveys the history of treaties with Native Americans and discusses a specific protest named the Trail of Broken Treaties.
History of Relations With Native Americans What became the U.S. federal government and an American Indian tribe entered into their first treaty in 1778 when an agreement between the United States of North America and the Delaware nation was approved. This initiated a process that produced some 370 additional formal treaties, as ratified by the U.S. Senate, that became a part of the dominant culture’s jurisprudence. Eventually, the U.S. Congress abolished treaty making with Native Americans with legislation approved in 1871. That law did not repeal or modify any treaties that had been ratified before that date, however. During the ensuing decades, many treaty provisions and, in some cases, entire documents were overlooked by the federal authorities as the tribal people with whom the agreements had been negotiated were either neglected or simply dismissed as being of no further consequence. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) within the U.S. Department of the Interior is the controlling agency for the U.S. government. Examples abound of the BIA selectively applying treaty provisions, completely abandoning others, or simply abrogating the entire document. Tribal entities protested the failure of the national government to fulfill its treaty obligations, but in most cases, these efforts were futile. Vine Deloria, Jr., a keen observer of treaty history, noted in 1974 that the U.S. government’s American Indian policy was exemplified by expediency, which was based on a political calculus that largely ignored
Trail of Broken Treaties
any understanding of the Native peoples, laws, governing councils, or responsibilities. An earlier example of this attitude occurred in 1862 with the failure of the federal government to delivery treaty-promised provisions and annuities, which helped to precipitate an American Indian rebellion, known as the Dakota Uprising, in Minnesota. Hundreds of White people and Native Americans were killed during the hostilities.
A Dialogue on Treaty Rights What became known as “treaty rights” became a significant part of the dialogue between Native America and the national government, beginning in the early 1970s as the American Indian civil rights movement blossomed. American Indian militancy was fostered by the American Indian Movement (AIM), formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1968. AIM was part of a much larger effort by U.S. minorities, especially Blacks, to assert themselves and to gain full participation and representation in the U.S. system, with origins in the social ferment of the 1950s and 1960s. With the social, political, and cultural advances that Blacks and their supporters had achieved on a number of fronts as a model, American Indians and their backers determined that they should obtain justice through their efforts to receive the recognition of and amends for numerous issues of the past 2 centuries. Although Native Americans had gone to the courts to resolve many outstanding treaty-related problems, the net result was little gain for the tribal governments in their quests to make the dominant culture honor the various provisions of their treaties. American Indians wanted the federal government to keep the promises that had been made, through its legal system, to the country’s First Peoples. American Indian activists tried to focus the country’s attention on their long-standing issues with precursor events such as the occupancy of Alcatraz Island (1969–1971) in San Francisco Bay, the return of Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico (1970), and the occupation of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota (1970). In a highly publicized demonstration during the week of November 3 through 9, 1972, a caravan of vehicles four miles long arrived in Washington, D.C., carrying as many as 1,000 American Indians and their allies. Some of the participants started on the West Coast, and others joined the group as it progressed across the country. The march on Washington, D.C., was called the Trail of Broken Treaties; demonstrators went directly to a U.S.
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Department of the Interior building and occupied the BIA offices for 6 days. Because of timing, 2 days before the presidential election (Nixon/McGovern), the Nixon administration conducted negotiations in lieu of using armed force to dislodge the occupiers; the national media’s attention became concentrated on American Indian issues again. Activists focused on their demands for federal recognition of their claims that the government had failed to discharge its treaty obligations to Native Americans. Leaders carried an American Indian manifesto, released to the press in Minneapolis, and dated October 1972, titled “Trail of Broken Treaties 20-Point Position Paper.” The avowed purpose of the document was to promote the renewal of contracts, reconstruction of American Indian communities, and a secure future for American Indians. Points 1, 2, and 4 through 8 pertained to treaties or treaty-related issues; the titles include (1) Restoration of Constitutional Treaty-Making Authority, (2) Establishment of Treaty Commission to Make New Treaties, (4) Commission to Review Treaty Commitments & Violations, (5) Resubmission of Unratified Treaties to the Senate, (6) All Indians to Be Governed by Treaty Relations, (7) Mandatory Relief Against Treaty Rights Violations, and (8) Judicial Recognition of Indian Right to Interpret Treaties. Federal officials accepted a copy of the 20-Point manifesto and promised to review the proposals and respond within 60 days. On January 9, 1973, a response from the White House was released under the signatures of two presidential advisers, Leonard Garment and Frank Carlucci; it was not considered adequate by the activists because the administration essentially rejected the manifesto. Federal authorities didn’t interfere with the occupation of the BIA. When the natives left the offices, news media focused on the destruction and vandalism of the facilities. Some of the offices were quite heavily trashed, which made for dramatic imagery, but reporters and their editors seemed not to grasp why many American Indians had been so enraged in the first place. Perhaps the most significant issue for many in Native America revolved around the ownership of the Black Hills of South Dakota and related treaty issues. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 is at the crux of the controversy because it established a permanent Sioux Indian reservation occupying all land west of the Missouri in what became South Dakota, including the Black Hills. Native peoples had long ago recognized the Black Hills as sacred space, and the federal government
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Transnational People
endeavored to maintain the region free from outside, White, influences, according to the treaty. Gold was discovered officially during the Custer Black Hills expedition in 1874, although many non–American Indians had suspected the precious metal’s presence previously. With the assent of U.S. president Ulysses Grant in November 1875, part of the Fort Laramie Treaty was abrogated as miners were allowed to enter the Black Hills and begin mining because the federal troops had been withdrawn from the area. These actions produced a gold rush that laid the groundwork for the Little Big Horn tragedy in June 1876 and many subsequent negative events and affects on American Indians of the northern Great Plains. Essentially, the Black Hills had been stolen from the Great Sioux Nation, a stance the natives maintained for decades. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized this in its June 30, 1980, decision, which affirmed a lower court’s finding in the case United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians. The Court of Claims concluded, “A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history.” The ruling validated a monetary award for the taking of the Black Hills from the Indian Claims Commission proceedings, but the money, now more than half a billion dollars on deposit, has been rejected by the leaders of the Great Sioux Nation. Although a third of a century has elapsed since the Trail of Broken Treaties protest, the issues that generated the demonstrations still exist. Native American Indians continue to ask that official agreements entered into by the U.S. government be respected and honored. American Indians believe that the country owes them a debt that can only be discharged through a fair and honest recognition of the majority culture’s obligations to correct past injustices in relation to official actions with the country’s indigenous, tribal peoples. Donald J. Berg See also American Indian Movement; Deloria, Vine, Jr.; National Indian Youth Council; Native Americans; Peltier, Leonard; Red Power; Sioux; Sovereignty, Native American; Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973)
Further Readings
Cohen, Felix S. 1982. Felix S. Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law. Charlottesville, VA: Michie/Bobbs-Merrill. Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1974. Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence. New York: Delacorte Press.
Gonzalez, Mario. 1996. “The Black Hills: The Sacred Land of the Lakotas and Tsistsistas.” Cultural Survival Quarterly (Winter):63–69. Johnson, Troy R. 1996. “The Roots of Contemporary Native American Activism.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 20(2):127–154. Nies, Judith. 1996. Native American History: A Chronology of a Culture’s Vast Achievements and Their Links to World Events. New York: Ballantine Books. Prucha, Francis P. 1994. American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly. Berkeley: University of California Press. St. Germain, Jill. 2001. Indian Treaty Policy in the United States and Canada, 1867–1877. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Utter, Jack. 1993. American Indians: Answers to Today’s Questions. Lake Ann, MI: National Woodlands.
TRANSNATIONAL PEOPLE The term transnational people refers to individuals with ties to two or more nation-states. These individuals live their lives across borders and are simultaneously incorporated in two or more societies. Within these societies, transnational people participate in the movement of people, capital, information, culture, and ideologies from one nation-state to another. Because of this movement, a strong relationship exists between life in the country of origin and the new country of residence. In their old and new countries, transnational people attempt to maintain multilevel connections involving political, economic, cultural, racial/ethnic, and familial issues, and to successfully balance living between both worlds. An alternate definition of transnational people exists. Some define transnational people as individuals belonging to a network of activists working together as part of a socialist movement. In this sense, transnational people promote artistic, social, environmental, and technological projects to advance a specific social movement. These people use global ties to discuss, exchange, and further their agenda in different parts of the world. This entry focuses on the first definition.
Transnational Versus Immigrant Transnational people share similar experiences with immigrants in regard to leaving their countries of origin and making new homes in unfamiliar places. This leads some to believe that the concept of transnationals dates back to early immigrant communities with strong
Transnational People
ties to “home,” making transnationals and immigrants analogous. However, the concept of transnational people is a unique part of today’s society because of its link with recent, rapid increases in globalization. The concept emerged in the late 1990s and has gained increased scholarly attention during the past few years. Scholars suggest that the notion of transnational people encompasses much more than keeping in touch with an individual’s country of origin or harboring strong sentiments for the place left behind. Thus, transnational people differ from immigrants in fundamental ways. Unlike immigrants, transnational people are never completely assimilated into their new country. They strive to maintain connections with family and friends in their country of origin, while establishing meaningful ties in their new countries. Furthermore, transnational people are functioning members of social or economic organizations in both societies. As a result, they may act as cultural brokers or go-betweens and are useful to people on both sides of the border. Conversely, immigrants, once settled in their new country, typically no longer participate in social or economic activities in their former homes. Rather, they become assimilated into the mainstream society of their new countries. As a result, they tend to focus their attention on activities in the new environment and often leave behind their native languages or cultures.
Motives of Transnationals Despite the fundamental differences between the two groups, research literature on immigration has identified several motives for leaving home and settling elsewhere; these motives are similar to those that influence an individual to become a transnational person. Typically, individuals have personal or structural reasons for relocating. For some, they are leaving behind a life of social exclusion in their country of origin, with expectations of helping to improve living conditions for those who remain. Others are escaping economic or political instability in hopes of bettering life for their families or, in some cases, in anticipation of beginning families in sounder environments. Still others become transnational people simply because their occupations or daily activities require sustained contacts across borders. Over time, these individuals begin to perceive both countries as home and thus adopt transnational identities. Once relocated, some individuals maintain connections to global networks to diminish the effects of being racial minorities in
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their new societies. For these individuals, being a transnational person is a tactic to combat potential feelings of racialized exclusion in the new country.
Who They Are, What They Do Transnational people are not limited to one sociodemographic status. They occupy many labor market sectors, ranging from professionals to semiskilled laborers. Within these sectors, gender variations exist in types of employment. Often professional men’s wives stay in the new country with the children, while the husband continues to work in the country of origin. This allows the transnationals to increase the family’s economic gains. Conversely, both poor women and men may enter the new country as guest workers, while their spouses remain in the country of origin with the children. Transnational people from the developing world commonly are involved in labor migration as a means to make ends meet. These individuals become transnationals because of a lack of resources in their countries of origin or because labor market demands are elsewhere. Some developing countries encourage people to become transnationals, enticing them with the promise of property rights, improved health care, voting privileges, and even citizenship to capture remittances and bring money back into the country of origin. In contrast, people from the developed world become transnationals primarily to increase educational and economic opportunities, because family members have already moved, or to broaden their cultural horizons. These transnational people are often well educated, making their occupational skills useful in both nations, and as a result, they typically settle directly into the suburbs. In addition, because of their bilingual abilities, these transnationals frequently have access to some of the best jobs and highest wages in the host society. Like developing countries, developed countries also encourage people to become transnationals, but with a different motivation. Some developed countries hope that through emigration, stronger global relations between the country of origin and the new country can be established. Transnational people exhibit multiple, situational, and fluid identities as a result of their membership in multiple worlds. In most cases, transnationals have the ability to define their identities in different ways to function effectively in both their old and new countries; thus new identities can be acquired without losing the original sense of self affiliated with the country of origin. Because they are not locked into the
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Transracial Adoption
structure of one place, transnational people are able to move between various identities as they find appropriate. At times, balancing multiple identities can be problematic and is particularly stressful when it is unclear which identity is most suitable for a specific situation or environment.
Staying in Touch Technology plays a huge role in the ability of transnational people to maintain connections with their countries of origin and helps uphold transnational identities. Broad and wide-ranging access to technology allows even relatively poor people to travel home either physically or virtually. Transnational people make use of telephones, fax machines, the Internet, radio shows, and even newspapers (designed by the country of origin to specifically to keep transnationals informed) to participate in the life of their countries of origin. Technology provides quicker and more immediate connections for transnational people, further separating transnationals from early immigrants with ties to home. The ability of today’s people to sustain transnational connections is unprecedented. For the children of transnationals, technology is a vital part of building informal networks of friends and families. It is not unusual for the relatives of transnational children to be involved in the children’s lives, despite being located in another country. When parents and children reside in different countries, technology is an integral part of transnational parenting. For these reasons, the lives and experiences of transnational children are varied compared with those of first-generation transnationals. In contrast to their parents, transnational children typically do not consider the country of origin their main community and sometimes only maintain a transnational identity as a result of racism or anti-immigrant sentiment in the new country. Other second-generation transnationals are transnational people only in the symbolic sense. Having never resided in their countries of origin, they must rely on connections based on the memories of family and friends, coupled with their own imagination, to experience “living” in both countries. Despite the importance of transnational connections, the impact of transnational people on their countries of origin extends well beyond relations with family and friends. Transnational people have a huge influence on the economy in their countries of origin. They often make charitable and religious investments,
seeking to intervene in the public life of the country of origin. Even more, transnational people reconfigure the institution of national society. Because they have chosen to live their lives in two separate societies, their actions contradict traditional U.S. images of immigrants, altering the notion of the “melting pot” and creating a separate and new identity for transnational people. Simon Cheng and Jamie L. Gusrang See also Assimilation; Cosmopolitanism; Diaspora; Globalization; Guest Workers; Immigration, Economic Impact of; Immigration and Gender; Melting Pot; Remittances
Further Readings
Gold, Steven J. 1997. “Transnationalism and Vocabularies of Motive in International Migration: The Case of Israelis in the United States. Sociological Perspectives 40:409–427. Levitt, Peggy and Marcy C. Waters. 2002. The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Purkayastha, Bandana. 2005. Negotiating Ethnicity: Second Generation South Asian Americans Traverse a Transnational World. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Salazar Parrenas, Rhacel. 2005. Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Trueba, Enrique (Henry). 2004. The New Americans: Immigrants and Transnationals at Work. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
TRANSRACIAL ADOPTION Transracial adoption is the placement of adoptable children with parents of another race. With rare exception, transracial adoption involves White parents gaining access to children of color. Debates about transracial adoption have been largely focused on Whites who want to adopt African American children or children from other countries. The debates rage because race is central to the structure of society and identities. Given the significance of race and the color line, transracially adoptive families negotiate challenges beyond those of same-race families, as this entry shows.
Transracial Adoption
White Parents, African American Children, and Social Workers The adoption of Black children by Whites has been publicly debated since 1972, when the National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) gained enough strength to speak out against the practice in a White-controlled child welfare system. Historically, transracial adoption numbers have remained quite low. For instance, 2 years before the NABSW spoke out, only 2,500 transracial adoptions had taken place. Since 1992, no uniform method for tracking adoptions has existed. Unfortunately, the methods employed for gathering statistics are also problematic and reflect a continued misunderstanding of race. For instance, although Black-White multiracial children have been historically viewed and counted as Black, Black male–White female interracial couples as adoptive parents have been statistically counted as White. That is to say, agencies often track the race of the adoptive mother relative to the adopted child. Despite relatively low numbers of transracial adoptions and the problems with tracking, these adoptions have been subject to a great deal of media attention and political maneuvering. In 1994, the Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) was passed and then amended. The Interethnic Placement Act (IEP) followed in 1996. These pieces of legislation attempt to enforce “colorblind” practices in adoption. The goals of these laws are to reduce the amount of time that children wait to be adopted, increase the pool of potential adoptive parents, and make all adoptions “color-blind.” Based on this legislation, agencies can now be penalized (federal funds withheld) if they deny or delay an adoption based solely on race or national origin. The two acts do not extend to American Indian children. The unique history of the U.S. government and Native Americans has meant that Native Americans through the Indian Child Welfare Act are given the right of the “Nation to protect the best interests of Indian children.” In this case, the debates are waged around “who is American Indian?” and “who gets to decide,” but the resolution is not found in the newest pieces of U.S. adoption legislation.
The Debates Drawing on Western tenets of individual rights regarding group-based rights, advocates of colorblind policy argue that race ought to be ignored in the placement of children. MEPA and IEP codify the “best
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interest of the child” criteria. They argue that when race is considered in the adoption process, Black children and other children of color are needlessly raised in institutional care rather than in loving families. On the other side of the debate are advocates of a race-matching policy, who argue that because historically grounded inequalities are still pervasive, placing a Black child with a White family is a form of cultural genocide. Drawing on group-based rights criteria, they suggest that the best interests of a child are addressed only when the grievances of the oppressed group to which that child belongs are addressed. Color-blind advocates argue that race should be removed from adoption decisions because it offends the traditional, legal, and philosophical basis of “individual rights” as central to the U.S. Constitution. At the foundation of this perspective is the concern for two issues: (1) How do adoption policies fit with the prevailing ideologies of the United States? and (2) What is in the best interest of each individual child awaiting placement? Color-blind advocates believe that socially created differences and inequalities ought to be ignored and all people treated the same. As a result, many color-blind advocates conclude that racebased policies and politics are responsible for perpetuating racial significance in society and thus dividing the human community. Because we are all the same, they suggest, individual rights should be privileged over group rights. Further, those who advocate for transracial adoption cite the many longitudinal and indepth research studies that show that children of color who have been raised by White parents are healthy on a variety of measures and suffer few problems related to the transracial adoption. Advocates for the recognition of race in the adoption process suggest that race is pervasive and central to all our lives and should be acknowledged as such. Ignoring the centrality of race, they suggest, will lead to inappropriate policies and exacerbate the disadvantages that Blacks and other people of color face in a White dominated society. One piece of evidence that reflects the persistent racial problems facing society can be seen in the costs associated with adoption. Race is the primary basis for pricing. In 1990, a U.S. agency published a price list for adoption: White children cost $7,500, biracial children $3,800, and Black children $2,200. Today, the costs for all adoptions have increased substantially, especially following the passing of the 2001 adoption tax credit through which adoptive families are eligible for a tax
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credit of as much as $10,000 toward adoption expenses. In September 2003, a midwestern adoption agency posted the costs for the adoption of a White baby as $24,000 and the costs for a Black baby at $9,000 (prices allow $1,000 for attorney’s fees). These prices or costs provide blatant clues to the larger social inequalities under which adoption takes place. In short, rather than addressing the structural inequality that puts an undue burden on women of color, thus compelling many to place their children (or have them taken away), the individual rights platform (or colorblind advocates) is pushing an agenda that ignores the larger framework in which babies are placed for adoption and rewards those with the most privilege: White middle- and upper-middle-class parents. The research concludes that transracial adoption can be a viable option and should be encouraged when suitable Black families are not available. The NABSW continues to remind adoption workers and legislatures of the need to remove barriers to Black families interested in adopting and the need to address the pervasive racism that creates a situation in which children of color are disproportionately placed for adoption.
Intercountry Adoptions A growing number of transracial adoptions are also intercountry adoptions. Like the domestic transracial adoption policy, international policy has been developing around the “best interest of the child” tenet. In 1993, representatives from around the world met in The Hague to charter the Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, through which the movement of children across national borders would be regulated. At the meeting, seventy countries signed the convention; however, some have yet to get the document approved through their domestic political processes. For example, the United States plans to ratify the convention in the spring of 2007. One of the first concerns of the convention is that children should be given the opportunity to grow up in a loving family rather than in institutional care. Further, the convention demands that every nation make families a priority, such that nations provide for families in a way that allows a family of origin to remain intact. Similar to the long transracial adoption debates in the United States and in agreement with the NABSW, the convention demands that states make efforts to locate families in a child’s country of origin before placing
that child with a family outside the national borders. Finally, the rights of the child must be protected throughout the process to avoid human trafficking. In the 21st century, many countries have declared that they will not allow adoptions to take place into countries that have not yet ratified the Convention. To address concerns that the larger context of global inequality will continue to create a market for children awaiting adoption, a follow-up report was released in 2005 to review the practical operation of the 1993 Hague convention; this report delineates a concern shared by many race-conscious advocates in the United States, which is that the reasons children are being placed for adoption must be addressed.
Challenges for Transracial and Intercountry Adoptive Families Overall, transracial and intercountry adoption concerns are as broad as the number of adoptions. Because of the obvious physical differences in most transracial adoptions, these adoptions also tend to be “open adoptions” (in which the adoptive family is open about the adoption rather than attempting to “pass” as a biologically connected family). Unlike earlier adoption practices that were grounded in the attempt to match children with parents based on a set of criteria including physical features, transracial adoptions place children of color with White families and physical differences are obvious with rare exceptions. Some concerns expressed by all members of the adoption triad (birth mother, child, and adoptive parents) include racial make-up of the neighborhood and local schools into which the child will be adopted; appropriate racial and cultural socialization; and specifics about hair and skin care. In response to these additional burdens, some families turn to organizational support, and many agencies send White parents to racial awareness training sessions so that the onus of racism is not carried by the child alone. In recent years, a plethora of books, magazines, and articles have been published to address the concerns and needs of the adoption community. Heather M. Dalmage See also Adoption; Child Development; Color Blindness; Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978; Minority/Majority; Parenting; Racial Identity; Racial Identity Development; Social Work
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)
Further Readings
Dorow, Sara. 2006. Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship. New York: New York University Press. Rothman, Barbara Katz. 2005. Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Simon, Rita James and Rhonda Roorda. 2000. In Their Own Voices: Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Own Stories. New York: Columbia University Press. Sternberg, Gail and Beth Hall. 2000. Inside Transracial Adoption. Indianapolis, IN: Perspectives Press. Wegar, Katarina, ed. 2006. Adoption in a Diverse Society. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
TREATY OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO (1848) The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is the oldest treaty between the United States and Mexico that is still in force. Invoked as a peace treaty in 1848, but implemented under the threat of military power and fear, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially ended the Mexican War, established new political boundaries between the United States and Mexico, and sealed Mexico’s fate as an underdeveloped country. This entry discusses the history of the treaty and its continuing impact.
War With Mexico In 1846, the United States, led by President James K. Polk, was permeated with the ideology of “Manifest Destiny.” Perpetuated by Democratic Review editor John O’Sullivan, the concept of Manifest Destiny professed that English-speaking U.S. residents were naturally superior and therefore destined by God to claim ownership of the United States for the purpose of spreading the benefits of democracy. Against this backdrop, the United States declared war on Mexico in 1846 and then, 2 years later, sent Nicholas Trist, Peace Commissioner to Mexico, to negotiate the treaty that would end the war. During the Mexican War, the U.S. Army invaded a vast segment of Mexican territory on behalf of President Polk and the U.S. Congress, who hoped to acquire ownership of land extending to the Pacific Ocean. Ultimately, the terms of the treaty that ended the war were dictated by the United States and ceded approximately 50% of Mexico’s land to the United
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States. Historians have noted that a defeated Mexico, in an effort to end the hostilities, was forced to give up its land, establishing a pattern and sense of inequality between the United States and Mexico. With the signing of the treaty on February 2, 1848, the United States essentially purchased the geographical area that is now recognized as the U.S. Southwest, including California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona as far south as the Gila River, and sections of New Mexico, Wyoming, and Colorado. The purchase price for this territory was 15 million dollars and another 3 million in debt settlements. Texas was not part of the negotiations because it had been annexed by the U.S. Congress in 1845. The territory in Arizona south of the Gila River was acquired through the Gadsden Purchase in 1853.
Mexicans Become U.S. Citizens The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, so named because the final negotiations took place at Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo, north of Mexico City, allowed the 100,000 Mexican nationals living in the ceded territory to be granted U.S. citizenship. Along with the constitutional rights of citizens, the Mexicans were to maintain ownership of their property and were free to maintain their cultural and religious integrity, giving credence to the phrase, “we did not cross the border, the border crossed us.” Unfortunately, contrary to the dictates of the treaty, many of these new citizens were stripped of their land, relegated to second-class citizenship, and routinely denied social and civil rights. The ideology of Manifest Destiny, compounded by the fact that gold was discovered in California just weeks before the signing of the treaty, contributed to the exacerbated lawlessness, land speculation, robbery, and fraud. Although Mexicans had land titles that were valid under Mexican law, they were often only approximately marked and considered vague and inadequate by U.S. standards. A board consisting of three U.S. land commissioners was established to hear land case disputes. If Mexicans could not produce valid documentation, their land became public domain. Even though most Mexicans did not know English and were ignorant of U.S. legal principles, they relied on U.S. lawyers and many won their land cases. Unfortunately, they were land rich and money poor, so they ultimately gave up much of their land in payment of legal fees. The territory saw an increase in population caused by individuals headed to the California gold rush.
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Trinidad
Squatters moved onto land and took ownership without being prosecuted because Mexicans could not testify in court because of their non-White status. In general, crimes against Mexicans were not punished, institutionalized racism and discrimination was the norm, and Mexicans developed a great mistrust of the political process. The war and its aftermath relegated the Mexican population to poverty and passivity.
Contemporary Issues In the 1960s, the treaty was the driving force behind the struggle for civil rights and social justice embraced by activists in the Chicano movement and individuals such as Reies López Tijerina. The son of migrant workers, Tijerina became a minister ordained through the Assembly of God Church and led a nonprofit group called La Alianza Federal de las Mercedes (Federal Alliance of Land Grants). Claiming that his great grandfather had lost his land and life at the hands of an Anglo, Tijerina crusaded to bring attention to the fact that the guarantees set forth in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had been violated and should be rectified. He was charismatic and convincing as he traveled the Southwest, raising the level of consciousness regarding the “greedy” actions of the U.S. government in taking the land from Mexico. In 1969, Tijerina was found guilty of destruction of federal property and was jailed for 2 years. Following his release, terms of his parole dictated that he break all ties with the Alianza. Without this public platform, Tijerina eventually disappeared from public view, but not before making a profound impact and setting the stage for continued sentiments that the Indigenous People of the Southwest deserve restitution for stolen land, human dignity lost, and inflicted injustices. Provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo have guided disputes regarding civil and property rights for descendants of Mexican landowners, water and mineral rights, and international boundaries. The treaty has not lived up to the promises written within its articles, but it is a landmark of the past and part of a common heritage shared by the United States and Mexico. Alma Alvarez-Smith See also Alamo, The; Chicano Movement; Institutional Discrimination; La Raza; Mexican Americans; Mexico; Voting Rights
Further Readings
Candelaria, Cordelia C. 2004. “Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.” Pp. 846–849 in Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture, edited by C. C. Candelaria, A. J. Aldama, and P. J. Garcia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Griswold del Castillo, Richard. 1992. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Rosales, F. A. 1997. Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press.
TRINIDAD Trinidad is the southernmost island in the Caribbean, lying less than ten miles off the northern coast of Venezuela, and has formed a twin-island sovereign country with neighboring isle Tobago since independence from Britain on August 31, 1962. Despite its small size (1,864 square miles) and population (estimated at 1.4 million in 2007), this anglophone West Indian island has attracted scholarly attention and is occasionally referred to as a “frontier” for social scientific research on a wide range of subjects. Trinidad’s ethnically diverse configuration and unique social, political, and economic development are
Dominican Republic Puerto Rico Virgin Is.
Anguilla St. Kitts & Nevis Antigua & Barbuda Guadeloupe Dominica
Caribbean Sea
Martinique St. Lucia Barbados
Aruba Netherlands Antilles
Grenada
Atlantic Ocean
Trinidad
Venezuela
Guyana Suriname
Colombia
Brazil
French Guiana
Trinidad
especially rich heuristic materials for the students of race and ethnicity. This entry describes Trinidad’s society and explores Trinidad’s development as a social scientific research frontier.
A Plural Society For almost 300 years following its “discovery,” Trinidad remained a colony of secondary importance in the Spanish Main. England’s rise as a world power in the mid-18th century compelled the Spanish government to try to populate this formerly nearly deserted island. The Spanish developed an immigration policy that permitted non-Spaniards to settle in Trinidad as long as they professed Roman Catholicism. Trinidad became an ethnically diverse Catholic domain with French Creoles, natives of French colonies in the region, rather than Spaniards, as the absolute majority. After England conquered Trinidad in 1797, the French Creoles were more important economically and politically than was the Spanish government. Intra-elite ethnic conflict over cultural hegemony between the incoming colonizers (Anglican English) and the colonized colonizers (the pre-capitulation Catholics) marked 19th-century Trinidad. Landowners’ desperate efforts to secure a dependable and affordable source of agricultural laborers in the wake of full British West Indian slave emancipation in 1838 was particularly acute in Trinidad. The development of a plantation economy had just begun in earnest with the arrival of English settlers barely 40 years earlier. The owners of plantations first imported freed African laborers from nearby British possessions. These newly imported former slaves were generally English-speaking Protestants, whereas those already in Trinidad spoke a French-derived Creole and professed Roman Catholicism. Thus, the elite had become ethnically and culturally diverse as had the African descent population. Trinidad also received immigrants from Portugueseruled Madeira and Cape Verde until the late 1850s. The number of Portuguese immigrants was much smaller compared with French-Creole and English settlers. However, their arrival had a notable impact on Trinidad’s social structure because their distinct customs further differentiated it and because the Portuguese immigrants’ status as contract workers stratified the island’s “European” community. Because of their lack of experience in agricultural labor, along with the harsh treatment by the former slaveholders, Portuguese settlers
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recorded high mortality. The survivors shortly left the plantations for urban areas, where they became artisans, shopkeepers, and the like. Plantation owners needed yet another source of labor. An Alte ern nativ ve Workforce
The colonial government first opposed large-scale labor importation, assuming that inundation with an alternative workforce would deprive the former African slaves of their livelihood. However, the plantations’ increasing demand for labor led to the adoption of an indentured labor system in the mid-19th century. In the following three-quarters of a century, the indentured system brought contract workers mainly from the Indian subcontinent (the area currently divided into India and Pakistan), along with smaller numbers from China (chiefly the southern provinces). Like the earlier Portuguese arrivals, Chinese immigrants quickly withdrew from intensive agricultural labor on plantations. Some Chinese followed the Portuguese to cities and towns, but quite a few Chinese remained in agricultural districts as peasants and business owners. In the early decades of the 20th century, the island received additional inflows of free settlers from China. The immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, referred to as “East Indians,” finally satisfied the planters’ needs for a reliable workforce. During the entire period of the indentured system, between its introduction in 1845 and its abolition in 1917, 140,369 contract laborers arrived in the island, and they constituted the major source of population growth until the early 20th century (the island’s total population jumped from 69,609 in 1851 to 365,913 in 1921). Contrary to the preconception that they were sojourners who would repatriate upon the completion of their contracts, most time-expired indentured workers made Trinidad their permanent home. From the late 19th century on, many moved from the rural districts into the suburbs of major cities, although most remained in rural districts. Although representatives from different ethnic groups can be found everywhere on the island, from the early part of the 20th century on, Trinidad’s major ethnic groups have had a particular geographic pattern: Afro-Trinidadians reside and work in urban areas and industrial districts (northern and southern parts of the island), whereas Indo-Trinidadians are primarily found in rural and agricultural regions that occupy the central part of the island.
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The Conte emporary y Stru ucture e
politics characteristic of many other postcolonial nation-states, such as neighboring Guyana or Fiji in the South Pacific, which share the historical experience of British colonialism and resultant ethnic composition. In Trinidad, the culture of ethnicity developed in response to the commodification of labor. The landowning class reified cultural differences and tied them to specific racial attributes to make them objective “facts.” Once they were essentialized as presumably “ascribed” and thus “invariable” attributes, the putative cultural differences formed fixed distances between ethnic groups, which retained and justified strict labor regimentation and cultural hegemony of colonial elites of European descent. This reification of cultures resulted in an ethnic division of labor in which ethnic groups became concerned with mutually exclusive material interests. Politically driven, ethnic identification has been and is likely to remain the most evident force of social division in Trinidad. Nevertheless, cultural exchanges, borrowing, and mimetic appropriations across ethnic boundaries constitute an equally important component of Trinidadian social interaction both historically and contemporarily. The pre-Lenten Carnival was originally introduced in Trinidad as a festival of Catholic elites of European descent, but after emancipation, it turned into a celebration of freed African slaves and workingclass Black urbanites. However, as the confluence of interclass conflict (colonial elites versus the workingclass segment) and intraclass struggle (Catholic versus Anglican English elites), Carnival in Trinidad has
The indentured system greatly affected Trinidad’s social structure by importing ethnic groups that did not easily fit into the colonial classification of race, ethnicity, and culture. Phenotypically, these Asian settlers did not fit the dominant White-Black racial continuum that characterized plantation society. Rather than skin color, religion became the primary marker of ethnic difference. In response to discrimination, Indo-Trinidadian leaders reconstructed Hinduism and Islam as the primary icons of “Indian-ness” By 1990, Indo-Trinidadians surpassed AfroTrinidadians as the largest ethnic group, but since the abolition of the indentured system, the proportion of those who identify themselves as “mixed” has constantly risen. The Spanish colonial authorities encouraged French Creole settlement, so today the demographic and cultural composition of Trinidadian society remains heterogeneous (see Table 1).
A Research “Frontier” In addition to the continuing ethnic diversity, the sociocultural contours of Trinidad have drawn the attention of many scholars concerned with questions of racial and ethnic relations. In post-independence Trinidad, national politics became and remain suffused with interethnic conflicts. Yet, Trinidad has never descended into the widespread, uncontrollable violence fueled by ethnic
Table 1
Distribution of the Population by Race/Ethnicity in Trinidad, 1960–2000 1960 N
White European Origin African Origin East Indian Origin Syrian/Lebanese Chinese Mixed or Colored Other Not Described Total
1970 %
15,718 1.9 358,558 43.3 301,947 36.5 N/A N/A 8,361 1.0 134,748 16.3 8,304 1.0 292 0.03 827,957 100.0
N 11,383 398,765 373,538 993 7,962 131,904 5,141 1,385 931,071
1980 %
N
1.2 9,946 42.8 430,864 40.1 429,187 0.1 911 0.9 5,562 14.2 172,285 0.6 2,913 0.2 4,055 100.0 1,055,763
1990 %
N
2000 %
N
%
0.9 7,250 0.6 7,034 0.6 40.8 445,440 39.6 418,268 37.5 40.7 453,070 40.3 446,273 40.0 0.1 930 0.1 849 0.1 0.5 4,310 0.4 3,800 0.3 16.3 207,560 18.5 228,089 20.5 0.3 1,720 0.2 1,972 0.2 0.4 4,830 0.4 8,487 0.8 100.0 1,125,130 100.0 1,114,772 100.0
Source: Central Statistical Office of Trinidad and Tobago. Census of the Population and Housing of Trinidad and Tobago 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. Port-of-Spain, Trinidad: Ministry of Finance; Central Statistical Office.
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developed into a national ritual, neither merely European Catholic nor African, where the ethnic traditions are both reified as distinct and interlinked since the late 19th century. Like Hinduism and Islam for Indo-Trinidadians, African-derived religions and their creolized forms, such as Orisha and Shouter Spiritual Baptist, have been an important source of ethnic identity for AfroTrinidadians, particularly for those from the working class. However, symbols and forms of ritual are recurrently exchanged and appropriated across religions as Indo-Trinidadians occasionally worship Catholic saints, and Afro-Trinidadians pay homage to Hindu gods and goddesses. These cross-religious exchanges have rendered Trinidadian society divided but integrated. Trinidad constitutes an exemplary case in racial and ethnic studies of postcolonial societies, and has potential to address a wider audience concerned with human relations in multiethnic settings. Beginning with colonialism and expanding with the contemporary pursuit of economies of scale, cultures have disengaged from their putative spatial definitions. In response, cultural transformation has come to occupy a central position in social scientific research. Creolization, hybridity, and other concepts referred to as cultural mixing have become a master trope. In Trinidad, ethnicity fundamentally divides the society. Simultaneously, however, different ethnic groups live side by side, interacting with, rather than seeking to be isolated from, each other. They connect across sociocultural boundaries without necessarily fusing. Trinidad provides racial and ethnic studies and the broader field of cultural studies with material to address these still underdeveloped concepts. Trinidad also offers suggestions to policy-oriented studies concerning interethnic and religious reconciliation in comparison with more conflict-stricken multiethnic societies.
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Munasinghe, Viranjini. 2001. Callaloo or Tossed Salad? East Indians and the Cultural Politics of Identity in Trinidad. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Yelvington, Kevin A. 1993. Trinidad Ethnicity. London: Macmillan Caribbean.
TRUTH, SOJOURNER (1797–1883) Abolitionist, feminist, human rights activist, orator, preacher—Sojourner Truth was, along with Harriet Tubman, one of the most famous Black women of the
Teruyuki Tsuji See Appendix A See also Caribbean; Caribbean Americans; Colonialism; Creole; Intercultural Communication
Further Readings
Khan, Aisha. 2004. Callaloo Nation: Metaphors of Race and Religious Identity among South Asians in Trinidad. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Sojourner Truth. A U.S. abolitionist, preacher, feminist, and human rights activist who was born into slavery, Truth delivered her best-known speech in 1851 at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention. The speech became known as “Ain’t I a Woman?” The speech was delivered as a response to several conservative ministers who had challenged the notion of women’s equality. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-119343.
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19th century. This entry examining her extraordinary life provides a window into the past, a way to understand the U.S. battle for social justice and civil liberties.
Early Years: Life in Slavery Isabella Baumfree was born in Ulster County, New York, in 1797. Her parents were slaves. Isabella was the second youngest of ten, or perhaps twelve, children. All her older siblings were sold, with two kidnapped, before she was born. Isabella’s parents were loving and taught her the habits of honesty, respect, and hard work and the importance of salvation through religion—key qualities that would guide her through life. Isabella’s ties to her parents were, however, shortlived. In 1807 (or perhaps 1808), she was sold to neighbors, who were cruel masters. She was beaten and carried scars for the rest of her life, a constant reminder of the horrors of slavery. After a few months, she was sold to a fisherman and tavern keeper. Isabella carried fish, hoed corn, ran errands, and performed a variety of other chores. The tavern was a colorful place. Isabella learned to curse, drink, and smoke. In 1810, Isabella was sold to John Dumont. She remained with the Dumont family for 16 years, during which she married, had five children, and developed the character and determination that would make her one of the 19th century’s most famous African American civil rights activists. Isabella was a hard worker, but her efforts and loyalty were not repaid. Dumont agreed to free Isabella in 1826, but when the date arrived, he reneged. Isabella escaped to the home of Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen, Dutch abolitionists. The Van Wagenens welcomed Isabella. When Dumont came to retrieve his property, the Van Wagenens struck a bargain. They would pay Dumont twenty dollars for a year of Isabella’s services and five dollars for her baby. Dumont accepted. Isabella was semi-free. The Van Wagenens treated Isabella like a member of the family. They supported her decision to embrace religion and become a Methodist. Isabella, returning to the teachings of her parents, eschewed drinking, swearing, and other forms of vice. Isabella was so grateful that she changed her name to Isabella Van Wagenen. When she was legally manumitted in 1827—mandated by a New York law emancipating all slaves born after 1799—she was ready to move on. God would be at her side as she faced the trials and tribulations of life as a free Black woman—a path that led to the making of Sojourner Truth.
Beyond Slavery: The Making of Sojourner Truth In September 1828, Isabella moved to New York City where she lived, during the next 4 years, working as a house servant for James Latourette and his family. The Latourettes were zealot-Methodists who held open meetings in their home. The Latourettes and their visitors discussed the Bible, as well as social and political issues. These meetings fascinated Isabella and provided an opportunity to freely interact with White Christians, participating in debates and delivering informal sermons. In short, Isabella Van Wagenen was a budding preacher. Increasingly, Isabella’s thoughts were dominated by conservative Protestant religion. In 1832, she became a follower of Robert Matthews, a charismatic doomsday preacher. “The Prophet” Matthias was, however, a charlatan who regularly engaged in sex with his female followers. In 1834, Matthias was charged with murdering a member of his congregation and Isabella, one of his most loyal followers, was charged with trying to poison two of the community’s members, the Folgers. Isabella remained loyal to Matthias and testified at his trial. In 1835, Matthias was acquitted of murder but received a 4-month sentence for beating his daughter. Isabella was exonerated. She then sued the Folgers for slander, won the case, and preserved her reputation. In 1843, Isabella was attracted to another religious movement. William Miller attracted thousands of followers by predicting that the world would come to an end on March 21, 1843—or perhaps March 21, 1844. Miller, much like Matthias, warned sinners to prepare themselves for the upcoming battle between the forces of good and evil and the second coming of Christ. Isabella attended camp meetings, discussed the Bible, and prepared for Armageddon. On June 1, 1843, Isabella had a life-altering revelation. “The Spirit” instructed her to spread the word of God. Specifically, she was to encourage people to avoid sin and embrace the teachings of Jesus Christ, and she was to adopt a new name, Sojourner Truth—Sojourner, because she would travel, living off the charity and goodwill of the people she met, and Truth, because she would spread the true word of God.
Spreading the Gospel of God and Social Justice Sojourner Truth did not, however, immediately begin her mission for God. Instead, she followed the advice of
Truth, Sojourner (1797–1883)
friends and joined a socialist commune in Northampton, Massachusetts: the Northampton Association for Education and Industry. Commune members were committed to improving the world by combating slavery, the exploitation of workers, and the repression of women. In short, they championed social justice. One member of the commune, Olive Gilbert, played a particularly significant role in the making of Sojourner Truth. Gilbert was aware that Frederick Douglass’s newly published autobiography— Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)— was drawing considerable attention. Why not tell the story of a female slave? In 1846, Sojourner Truth began to tell Gilbert about her life in slavery and the path that had led her to the Northampton Association. The publication of the Narrative of Sojourner Truth in 1850 was widely heralded. Sojourner Truth was now ready—spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually—to spread the gospel of justice. In 1851, William Lloyd Garrison, one of the nation’s leading abolitionists, invited Sojourner Truth to accompany him on a speaking tour. She was, by all accounts, an imposing figure at five feet eleven inches and gave powerful talks. Speaking with a Dutch accent, she mixed religion, abolitionism, feminism, and common sense, as well as disarming humor, in calling for an end to slavery and social injustice. Several speeches were particularly memorable. On May 28, 1851, Sojourner Truth attended the Ohio Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. Several conservative ministers challenged the notion of women’s equality. Sojourner Truth’s response, delivered in her Dutch-African accent, rocked the audience and is still recognized as a classic defense of women’s rights: “But what’s all dis here talkin’ ’bout? Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to have de best place every whar. Nobody eber help me into carriages, or ober mud puddles, or gives me any best place and ar’nt I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me—and ar’nt I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear de lash as well—and ar’nt I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern and seen ’em mos’ all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard—and ar’nt I a woman? Den dey talks ’bout dis ting in de head—what dis dey call it?” Intellect, whispered some one near. “Dat’s it
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honey. What’s dat got to do with women’s rights or nigger’s rights?” (Gilbert and Titus, 1998, p. 92)
Other speeches and confrontations—which are, according to some historians, partial or full fabrications— have enhanced her reputation. In October 1858, a heckler interrupted Sojourner Truth’s speech, charging that she was a man. Popular accounts report that she bared her breasts and asked if he wanted to suckle. Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass made a joint presentation— possibly at Faneuil Hall in Boston or, more likely, at Salem, Ohio, in 1852—where Douglass stated that Blacks would have to take up arms to achieve justice. When Douglass finished, legend reports that Sojourner Truth asked, “Frederick, is God dead?” The end of the Civil War brought emancipation for slaves and new battles for Sojourner Truth. After 1865, she joined Susan B. Anthony and other radical feminists of the day in campaigning for women’s equality and the right to vote. In the 1870s, she lobbied Congress to create land grants in the western states for emancipated slaves. But Congress never considered her settlement bill. Sojourner Truth’s final years were spent at her home in Battle Creek, Michigan. Her health began to deteriorate in the early 1880s. A stroke left her partially paralyzed, and she developed gangrenous ulcers that never fully healed. On November 26, 1883, Sojourner Truth died. Frederick Douglass provided a fitting epitaph: In the death of Sojourner Truth, a marked figure has disappeared from the earth. Venerable for age, distinguished for insight into human nature, remarkable for independence and courageous self-assertion, devoted to the welfare of her race, she has been for the last forty years an object of respect and admiration to social reformers everywhere. (Gilbert and Titus, 1998, p. 92)
Alexander W. Pisciotta See also Abolitionism: The People; African American Women and Work; Feminism; Slavery
Further Readings
Gilbert, Olive and Frances Titus. 1998. Narrative of Sojourner Truth; A Bondswoman of Olden Time, with a History of her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from her “Book of Life; Also, A Memorial Chapter.” 1884 reprint edition, original 1850. New York: Penguin Books.
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Mabee, Carleton and Susan Mabee House. 1993. Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Ortiz, Victoria. 1974. Sojourner Truth: A Self-Made Woman. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott. Painter, Nell Irvin. 1996. Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol. New York: Norton. Stetson, Erlene and Linda David. 1994. Glorying and Tribulation: The Life-Work of Sojourner Truth. Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
TUBMAN, HARRIET (C. 1820–1913) Abolitionist, Underground Railroad conductor, Union Army nurse, Civil War scout and spy, feminist, social reformer—Harriet Tubman was the 19th century’s most celebrated civil rights activist. The achievements of the “Black Moses” are legendary, a monument to courage and conviction and an ongoing inspiration to the champions of freedom, equality, and justice. This entry describes her life.
Like many slaves, Harriet was subjected to beatings. These whippings left permanent scars, reminders of bondage that she would carry to her grave. When Harriet was about 15 years old (perhaps 13 or 14, depending on the historical account), she suffered a lifethreatening and life-altering injury. An overseer threw a two-pound piece of metal at an escaping slave but accidentally hit Harriet in the head. She was in a coma for several weeks, struggling for life. After she recovered, her skull was marked by a noticeable dent and she developed narcolepsy, sometimes losing consciousness for 3 or 4 minutes at a time. But during her recuperation, she also discovered God, a force that gave her courage and later guided her slave raids into the South. Following the accident, Harriet was regarded as damaged goods. In 1849, she overheard discussions about selling her into the Deep South, the most dreaded form of bondage. Harriet prayed on her plight and decided that she had one logical and moral choice: escape. She boarded the Underground Railroad, dodging slave patrols and slave catchers, and worked her way to Philadelphia. Harriet Tubman reached the Promised Land.
Early Years: Life in Slavery
The Rise of the Black Moses
Harriet Tubman was born Araminta (“Minty,” later Harriet) Ross near Bucktown, Maryland, in 1820. Her parents—Benjamin and Harriet Green Ross—were slaves. A number of her ten brothers and sisters were sold away from the family, several into the Deep South. However, Harriet was fortunate to remain with her parents, who were religious and gave her a good upbringing. The Ross family proudly traced their roots back to Ashanti, West African warriors. Courage and character were ingrained family traits. As a child, Harriet was assigned light housekeeping chores. Later, she performed a variety of slaverelated jobs that were generally performed by men. She split logs, carried timber, worked in the fields, and even waded into swamps to check muskrat traps. Although she was only five feet tall when full grown, she had a strong body and was a hard worker. Harriet tried to avoid indoor work and close, extended contact with her White masters. When they tried to teach her to weave, she feigned stupidity to return to the fields. Physical strength and mental acuity, coupled with acting ability and cunning, were traits that later served her well in her daring raids into the South.
Freedom in the North proved to be a mixed blessing. Harriet, now working as a cook and housekeeper, was free from the lash and the watchful eye of her master. But, like many other escaped slaves, she missed her family. Drawing, once again, on her faith in God, she decided to pursue a risky—if not nearly suicidal— course of action: She would travel back into the South to free her family. In December 1850, Harriet made her first raid, freeing her niece and two children, who lived in Baltimore. After this successful mission, Harriet decided to widen the scope of her liberation efforts. William Still, a Black man who worked for the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, and other abolitionists encouraged Tubman. More important, they provided her with money, contacts, shelter, and logistical support—in short, a liberation network. Harriet Tubman’s legendary raids were, by all accounts, daring and dangerous. Escapes usually occurred in the fall, beginning on a Saturday night, when slaves were allowed to leave the plantations to visit friends and relatives. Escaping slaves walked, rode in wagons, and traveled by boat or train, depending on the circumstances. There was, however, one
Tubman, Harriet (c. 1820–1913)
iron-cast rule: turning back was not an option. Harriet was armed with a pistol and, according to legend, presented a clear choice: move or die. Often disguised as a feeble and harmless old woman, she used music, the Bible, and folklore to communicate with the slaves in her party, as well as members of the Underground Railroad who were rendering assistance. Specific songs were used to give orders and warn of danger. The song “Steal Away,” for example, was a sign to run off. “Follow the Drinking Gourd” was a signal to use the Ohio River as an escape route. By the time Harriet made her last run in 1860, she had completed between seventeen and twenty-one trips into the South (depending on the historical account) and freed between 200 and 300 slaves. Harriet Tubman was a national figure: the Black Moses. She met with and was celebrated by abolitionists across the country, including Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. Harriet Tubman’s achievements and courage were so legendary that John Brown traveled to her home on two occasions to recruit her for his ill-fated raid on Harper’s Ferry. Brown believed that Tubman’s extraordinary instincts would be instrumental in the postraid escape, and that her celebrity status would serve as a recruitment tool in raising a slave army after the attack. Tubman was ill when the attack took place and, because of miscommunication, could not be located; save for this, she might have hung next to John Brown. Southern slaveowners were enraged by Tubman’s “criminal acts.” She had “stolen,” by various estimates, between 50,000 and 100,000 dollars in slaves. As important, stories of her exploits—outwitting masters, slave patrols, and slave catchers—undermined myths of White superiority and control. Rewards totaling more than 40,000 dollars were offered for Harriet Tubman’s arrest and return to the South. Put simply, the Black Moses faced execution if she was returned for Southern justice. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Tubman ceased her raids into the South. However, she made important contributions to the Northern cause. In 1861 and 1862, she helped contraband slaves who reached the Union lines. She also served as a nurse, tending to soldiers with war wounds, smallpox, and other diseases. Her expertise as a “root doctor” is credited with stopping a severe outbreak of dysentery in Florida, saving countless lives. Harriet also directly participated in military activities. On June 2, 1863, she accompanied Colonel James Montgomery in the Comabahee Raid. Tubman organized
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nine scouts and river pilots, came under fire, and helped liberate 800 slaves. She was also present at the famed 54th Massachusetts Colored Regiment’s ill-fated assault on Fort Wagner. According to some historians, Tubman dined with the unit’s legendary commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, and served him his last meal. Following the battle, she helped bury the dead and nursed wounded soldiers.
Postwar Years The end of the war was, indeed, a cause of great celebration for Harriet Tubman. However, she quickly learned, like many new freedmen, that the postbellum period would not erase the prejudices of the past. The first harsh lesson came shortly after the end of the war. Harriet was attempting to travel to New York on a half-fare train pass, which she received for serving as an army nurse. However, when she tried to board the train the conductor informed her that they did not carry “niggers.” When she resisted, she was forcibly removed by three White men, who broke her arm. Later, she was also shocked to learn that the army would not pay her a service pension, claiming that she did not have a formal commission. When she finally reached home in Auburn, New York, she discovered that her family was living in poverty. The Black Moses was forced to do menial work: selling chickens and vegetables, making baskets, cooking, cleaning, and caring for White children. Sarah Bradford, a children’s story author, was troubled by Tubman’s plight and offered to write her biography. The book, which was completed in 1869 and extended in 1886 and 1901, was sold at fairs and conventions, raising enough money to keep the family out of poverty. Financial security allowed Tubman to turn her attention to charitable and social issues. She participated in the development of the National Federation of Afro-American Women and the National Association of Colored Women. She campaigned for women’s rights, especially the right to vote, with Susan B. Anthony and other suffragettes. Her personal passion was, however, to establish a home for aged and disabled Blacks. The opening of the Harriet Tubman home for the Aged and Indigent Colored People in 1908 fulfilled her dream. In 1911, she moved into the Home as a resident. On March 10, 1913, she died of pneumonia. In 1868, Frederick Douglass provided a fitting tribute: “Excepting John Brown—of sacred memory—I know of no one who
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has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have” (Bradford, 1869, pp. 6–8). Alexander W. Pisciotta See also Abolitionism: The People; African American Women and Work; Feminism; Slavery
Further Readings
Bradford, Sarah H.1869. Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. Auburn, NY: W. J. Moses. Bradford, Sarah H. 1901. Harriet, the Moses of Her People. Rev. ed. New York: J. J. Little. Clinton, Catherine. 2004. Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Conrad, Earl. 1943. Harriet Tubman. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers. Humez, Jean M. 2003. Harriet Tubman: The Life and Life Stories. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
TURKEY Turkey, established as a republic in 1923 and with an estimated 2007 population of 74 million, has a history stretching back well before the reign of Sultan
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Süleyman the Magnificent (1520–1566), which marked the pinnacle of the Ottoman Empire. Most of the people in Turkey today are descendants of ethnic groups from Central Asia that predate the Ottoman Empire. Turkey remains a predominantly Islamic country (80% Sunni, 20% Shi’a) with minorities of Kurds (20%) and Arabs (1.5%), and smaller numbers of Jews, Greek Georgians, and Armenians. This diverse country established a more singular national identity when Ataturk (previously known as Mustafa Kemal), between 1924 and 1937, established Turkish as the official language, prohibited in official use other languages, imposed the Latin alphabet, and established the Georgian calendar. This entry describes the history of Turkish emigration and the effects of race, ethnicity, and religion on immigration to the United States.
History Because Turkey is heir to a multiethnic and multireligious empire, the population in Turkey has a highly composite ethnic mixture. Because of the millet (nation) system of the Ottoman Empire, different communities coexisted. They were relatively autonomous in pursuing their own laws, customs, and commercial activities. However, with the Reform Period (1839–1876), this system changed. The 1876 constitution guaranteed civil rights to all subjects of the Empire, regardless of their religion or ethnicity, and introduced various laws and principles to protect their wealth and property. However, the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and the Albanian Revolt fostered separatist and nationalist tendencies within the Empire. By means of settlement and deportation policies, the establishment of a national economy and the construction of a national core in Anatolia (Anadolu) became the main target. The population exchanges and deportation (techir) policies resulted in the migration of thousands of non-Muslims (i.e., Greeks, Armenians, etc.).
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At first, Turkish nation had a broad definition: Every citizen within the borders of Turkey was deemed constitutionally a Turk regardless of such differentiations as ethnicity, religion, gender, race, sect, sexual preference, or philosophical beliefs. This broad definition mostly focused on broad civic values such as religion, ethics, aesthetics, and socialization as the common denominator of a nation. Later on, however, Kemalist nationalism (named after the founder of the republic,
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Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk) differed from earlier, more united definitions, and in practice an ethnic nationalism ruled instead of a civic notion. The assimilation and integration methods differed in relation to the current economic, political, and cultural integration of these minority groups. The project of nation building continued after the establishment of the republic, as did the disputes among communities and population exchanges. Nevertheless, the population contained various elements from the imperial period such as Jews and Christians, and other ethnic Muslim minorities such as Kurds, Arabs, Lazes, Muslim Georgians, Greek-speaking Muslims, Albanians, Macedonian Muslims, Pomaks, Serb Muslims, Bosnians, Tartars, and so on. Today, the major ethnic minority group is the Kurds (approximately 20% of the total population), although they are not officially recognized as a minority by the authorities. This has led to the repression of any expression of unique identity; for example, the use of the Kurdish language is illegal. This exemption has led to several uprisings since 1935, but the Kurdish movement reached its culmination after the emergence of the Kurdish Workers’ Party the (PKK) in 1984. During the 1980s and 1990s, clashes between the Turkish army and PKK militants had serious economic, political, and social costs for the country. In 2007, the PKK attacked a Turkish military patrol, further inflaming the region. Also recently, in relation to the European Union (EU) harmonization process, the ban on native languages was voided. Education and music, radio, and television broadcasts in native languages are now permitted, though with restrictions. In this context, a new notion of Turkishness (Turkiyelilik), which aims to encompass all citizens, started to gain popularity among the Turkish academic and intellectual circles. According to the authorities, about 99% of the population is Muslim. Most belong to its Sunni branch, but a significant Alawite/Alevi minority has a particular concentration in central Anatolia. Roughly, they constitute 20% to 30% of the total population. Alevis are the followers of a specific Shi’a strand of Islam and may come from different ethnic backgrounds, that is, Turks, Zaza, Kurds, Turkmen, and Azeris. An ongoing debate concerns whether the Alevis have been discriminated against, persecuted, and kept away from political, financial, and organizational privileges that are enjoyed by the Sunni Muslims. In addition, there are also small groups of Orthodox Christians and Jews. Although the Kurds are concentrated in the southeastern provinces, the Greeks, Armenians, and
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Jews live in Istanbul and Izmir, and the Arabs are settled on the southern border.
Immigration As noted earlier, Turkey’s population is currently about 74 million, but approximately 3.6 million Turkish nationals live abroad, most of whom, about 3.2 million, are settled in European countries. The first labor export agreement was signed with the Federal Republic of Germany in 1961, and similar agreements were followed by other Benelux countries. Except for the political refugees, these people almost exclusively had rural origins, lacked language skills and occupational qualifications, and were unfamiliar with the European cultural codes. Concomitantly, these characteristics negatively affected their socioeconomic integration, inhibited the preservation of their family-based structure and their native language, and led to high academic failure among their young people. The first wave of immigration from Ottoman territories to the United States occurred between the 1860s and the 1920s. About 60,000 people, mostly uneducated peasants, moved from Asian and European territories. Seeking jobs in the iron-steel, automobile, and leather industries; textile, tire, and battery factories; and railroads, most of the immigrants settled on the East Coast. Others moved to states such as New Hampshire and Michigan, where they found jobs in the forests, fields, and orchards and started their own businesses, mainly in the service sector. Although its pace slowed down with the Reed-Johnson Immigration Act in 1924 and during the Great Depression, immigration continued in the 1950s, although with a significant change in the demographic composition of the immigrants: The demand for professionals in the United States facilitated the mobility of physicians, engineers, architects, and so forth. From then on, particularly after the 1980s, educated modern Turks have been moving to the United States. In recent years, almost 4,000 Turks have immigrated to the United States annually.
Relationships With the West Since its foundation in 1923, Turkey has been closely associated with Western powers. Turkey is a founding member of the United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a member state of the Council of Europe, and a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Although it was officially recognized as a candidate for
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membership in 1999, Turkey’s future accession to the EU gained momentum after the negotiations in October 2005. Nevertheless, Turkey’s formal application has been dogged by several controversies. The issues are centered on Turkey’s disputes with its neighbors, the issue of Cyprus, and other domestic issues such as Turkey’s high unemployment rate, spiraling inflation, and financial debts, as well as issues concerning democracy, human rights, and minority rights. The continuing religious and ethnic discrimination has been a serious problem that negatively affects domestic and foreign political stability. Evren Hosgor See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Ethnic Conflict; Europe; Immigration, U.S.; Kurdish Americans; Muslims in Europe; Turkish Americans
Further Readings
Ahmad, Feroz. 2003. Turkey: The Quest for Identity. Oxford, UK: Oneworld. Karpat, Kemal H. 1973. Social Change and Politics in Turkey: A Structural-Historical Analysis. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Kushner, David. 1977. The Rise of Turkish Nationalism 1876–1908. London: Billing & Sons.
TURKISH AMERICANS The word Turk refers to a large number of ethnic groups spread across Asia and Europe from China to Bosnia that share a common language origin but today have different histories and cultures. This entry discusses a population whose origins are from the Turkish Republic. Turkey has been a country of emigration since before World War I, yet relatively few Turks have come to the United States, and today Turks are among the smallest ethnic groups in the United States. This is especially surprising when one considers that Turkey is a country of more than 70 million people—larger than France or Great Britain.
Present-Day Population The 2000 census estimated there are 117,575 persons of Turkish ancestry living in the United States, of which
78,380 were born in Turkey. The Turkish American population was broadly dispersed across the United States, with the largest concentrations in the states of New York (23,674), California (15,104), New Jersey (12,396), Florida (9,615), and Texas (4,711). Ethnic Turks were concentrated in major metropolitan areas, with 56.4% living in ten consolidated metropolitan statistical areas (CMSAs) with the following distribution: New York City (32,658); Los Angeles (7,488); Washington, D.C. (6,655); San Francisco (4,018); Chicago (3,861); Boston (3,730); Philadelphia (3,303); Detroit (1,648); Houston (1,594); and Dallas (1,414). Among the population over the age of 25, 48.4% had attained bachelor’s degrees or higher, and 47.8% of households lived in owner-occupied dwellings. In recent years, there has been modest legal immigration from Turkey. Between 1996 and 2005, only 32,360 documented immigrants arrived, with annual variation ranging from a low of 2,215 in 1999 to a high of 4,614 in 2005. These numbers have been augmented by an increasing number of Turkish students coming to the United States, some of whom undoubtedly will remain here. Data from the 2000 census indicate that approximately two-thirds of Turks in the United States are foreign born, and approximately 45% of immigrants have become naturalized citizens. Among Turks who came to this country before 1980, 86.2% are naturalized citizens. Citizenship rates for later immigrants are much lower—59% for 1980s arrivals and 11% for 1990s arrivals. The immigrant population is relatively old— in 2000, their median age was 38.4, and nearly 94% were older than 18 years of age. Males constituted 55% of the immigrant population and females 45%. Turkish immigrants are relatively well educated: In 2000, 19.6% had bachelor’s degrees, and 23.1% had graduate or professional degrees. Approximately 47% of the civilian employed population older than 16 years worked at managerial, professional, or related occupations. Per capita income was $29,120, median male and female full-time employed earnings were $42,361 and $31,843, respectively, and median family income was $51,826.
Periods of Immigration There have been three waves of Turkish Immigration to the United States—before World War I, between 1950 and 1980, and post-1980. Each of these waves of immigration is characterized by a different type of
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immigrant population and different life experiences in this country. The first period of migration consisted mainly of Ottoman Empire minority populations—Armenians, Greeks, and Jews who fled the empire to escape oppression. This was particularly true for Armenians. Most of these immigrants did not identify themselves as Turks even if they spoke Turkish fluently. Among the ethnic Turks who came to this country before the 1950s, some settled in large cities such as New York, but many settled in a few small enclaves, such as the one in Whiting, Indiana, and worked as laborers. Over the years, these immigrants and their descendants have assimilated into the larger population and lost their Turkish identity. During the 1960s, Turkish consular officials attempting to contact these immigrants or their heirs regarding the inheritance of property in Turkey found it difficult or, in many cases, impossible to locate them. The second wave of immigration to the United States began shortly after the end of World War II when Turkey aligned itself with the West, joining both the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliances. Political affiliation opened the door to Turkish students and a limited number of professionals, particularly scientists, engineers, and doctors, many of whom came to the United States for advanced training and later were either enticed to, or decided to, stay. A relatively small number of women who had married military personnel in Turkey also came as a part of this second wave of immigrants. There were a few preferred places of destination, such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., but most second-wave immigrants were dispersed across the United States in relatively small concentrations ranging from single families living in small towns, to a few thousand persons in metropolitan areas. Even within metropolitan areas, Turkish households were often dispersed across neighborhoods and suburbs, and one still cannot find either a Turkish ethnic enclave or neighborhood typical of larger immigrant groups. Although most Turkish immigrants are Muslim in faith, many of the second-wave immigrants were “the children of Ataturk,” the founder of the Turkish Republic, persons of middle-class background with Western and secular orientations. As a group, this cohort of immigrants possessed considerable human capital, including professional occupations and facility with the English language. Many of the secondwave immigrants have prospered financially and have fit easily into the suburban upper middle class.
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Many second-wave immigrants who came to the United States as single persons have married nonTurks and non-Muslims, further hastening assimilation into the larger U.S. society. One indicator of both intermarriage and assimilation is the 2000 census count of 18,385 persons listing Turkish as a second or third ancestry. In the attempt to create some sense of community, social relationships between individual families have tended to be based more on physical proximity than on family ties, place of origin, or social status. In many instances, for the sake of the children, fictive family relationships were created in lieu of the presence of other family members. The second-generation and, now, third-generation children, regardless of their parents’ place of origin, are readily assimilated into the larger U.S. society and, beyond their Turkish names, may have little sense of Turkish ethnic identity, not speak Turkish, not remain Muslims, not marry ethnic Turks, and not be acquainted with Turkish history and culture. During the 1980s, the Turkish government sent cultural emissaries to a number of U.S. cities in an attempt to create a link between persons living in this country and their Turkish heritage. That program was marginally successful but canceled because of budgetary constraints. The third wave of immigrants from Turkey began in the 1980s, and although it comprises a significant number of students and professionals, it also includes persons who are somewhat less well educated, less urban, of working-class and rural origins, and somewhat less likely to be secular in orientation than were second-wave immigrants. In recent years, third-wave migrants have included a number of households coming from Germany. Except for students and professionals, third-wave immigrants are more concentrated in a few major metropolitan areas—including New York City; Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago— than were second-wave Turkish immigrants.
Assimilation or Turkish Identity New technologies and the global economy have significantly affected the cultural assimilation of Turkish immigrants, making it easier for the third-wave cohort to retain its native culture and for second-wave immigrants, now older, to reconnect with their Turkish heritage. Relatively inexpensive nonstop flights to Turkey now leave from New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The cost of phone calls to Turkey has
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declined so that maintaining regular contact with relatives and friends is inexpensive. Turkish television, available by satellite, provides entertainment, movies, and news. Newspapers are available on the Internet. And Turkish food products are increasingly available in metropolitan grocery stores. Within metropolitan areas, third-wave immigrants are more likely than are second-wave immigrants to associate with persons of other Muslim ethnicities, particularly at mosques but also at school, at work, and in local neighborhoods. Turkish immigrant, second-generation, and foreign students, who in previous years chose to assimilate into larger school populations, are increasingly likely to join Muslim student and Middle Eastern student campus organizations. Even though most persons of Turkish ethnicity have not experienced either informal or institutional discrimination, events since September 11, 2001, have caused many both second- and third-wave immigrants as well as members of the second generation, regardless of their religious or political orientation, to feel a sense of identity with other Muslims who believe they are suffering from Western, Christian, persecution. This suggests that over time many persons of Turkish origins may become part of a larger pan-Islamic ethnicity in the United States. The Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) in Washington, D.C., acts as an umbrella organization for the larger Turkish community and as a voice for the Turkish government and its policies in the United States. Many of the efforts of the ATAA are political in nature, often centered on countering Armenian claims of genocide some 90 years ago and justifying Turkey’s internal and foreign policy. There are a number of other, more specialized national organizations, such as the Association of Turkish American Scientists and the Turkish Women’s
League of America, as well as numerous local organizations and collegiate student organizations whose purpose is to maintain Turkish identity and culture. Several organizations, such as dance groups, also bring together U.S. residents and Turks. In all, the ATAA Web site lists nearly sixty Turkish organizations in the United States. Kenneth Fidel See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Assimilation; Citizenship; Cypriot Americans; Kurdish Americans; Muslim Americans
Further Readings
Immigration and Naturalization Service. 2006. Legal and Permanent Resident Flow by Region and Country of Birth: Fiscal Years 1996 to 2005. Available from http:// www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Institute of International Education. 2005. “U.S. Sees Slowing Decline in International Student Enrollment” (Press Release, July 14). Available from http://www .ataa.org Kaya, Ilhan. 2004. “Turkish Immigration History and Identity Formations.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 24(2, October):295–308. Micallef, Roberta. 2004. “Turkish Americans: Performing Identities in a Transnational Setting.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 24(2, October):233–241. U.S. Census 2000, Special Tabulations STP-159; SF3 PCT 118 and PCT 159; SF3, FBP-1; SF3 FBP-2. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.
Web Sites
Assembly of Turkish American Associations: http://www.ataa.org
U UGANDAN AMERICANS Ugandan Americans are U.S. citizens whose ancestral origin is in Uganda, a nation in East Africa, with a population in 2007 of an estimated 28.5 million. This entry recounts the portion of Uganda’s history relevant to immigration to the United States and the presence of Ugandan Americans.
Ugandan History and Emigration
war was an eye-opener to African servicemen, among them Benedict Kiwanuka, of Uganda, who returned from service to work toward the political independence of Uganda. In 1962, he became the first prime minister of a self-governing Uganda, which, on October 9, 1962, achieved total political independence under the prime ministership of Apollo Milton Obote. By 1966, Milton Obote had become president of Uganda, governing with an authoritarianism from which Uganda has not completely recovered to the present day. In 1972, General Idi Amin ousted Obote through a coup d’etat. The resulting destabilization
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What is known today as Uganda came into existence because of Anglo-American intervention. Until the late 19th century, that region of East Africa was known as the “Kingdom of Buganda.” Captain John Hanning Speke, a British explorer, and John Morton Stanley, an Anglo-American journalist, were the first Anglos to arrive at the court of Ssekabaka Muteesa I, the King of Buganda, Speke in 1862 and Morton in 1875. What the two had in common was the promotion of British interests in Buganda. In 1892, Captain Frederick Lugard established the authority of the Imperial British East Africa Company in Buganda. Two years later, Great Britain officially made the Kingdom of Buganda a protectorate and changed the name to Uganda. From late the 1890s to 1918, the British expanded their authority to neighboring areas inhabited by other ethnicities and annexed their territories by negotiating treaties or by applying force. The result was a Uganda created by a colonialist vision of Ugandan society. During World War II, these British colonialist subjects were recruited by the British for military service. The
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greatly contributed to the exodus of Ugandans, large numbers of whom sought refuge in the United States.
Immigration Patterns As a result of colonialism, Uganda had a special relationship with the United Kingdom. Ugandan schools are patterned after the British system of education, and English is the official language. Uganda remains a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Many Ugandans have been educated in the British Isles, and the country tends to turn first to the United Kingdom in international affairs. After World War II, however, the United States started to catch the attention of Ugandans as a destination for education and cultural activities. During the 1940s, Dr. Ernest Balintuma Kalibbala was admitted to Harvard University, where he studied anthropology, earning a PhD in 1947. Later, many Ugandan students came to the United States in pursuit of education in a variety of fields. On the eve of Uganda’s independence, Benedict Kiwanuka (president of the supreme court under General Amin) acquired 300 scholarships for Ugandan students to pursue courses of study that would help them lead their homeland. Under Kiwanuka, Uganda became one of the African countries that achieved independence without bloodshed, but peace did not continue under subsequent leaders. Obote unleashed violence in Uganda, and the extensive lack of the rule of law under Idi Amin sent Ugandans seeking refuge in different parts of the world. The United States served as a safe haven for many. Whereas Ugandans had previously come to the United States for an education, most of the new immigrants were seeking political asylum. The U.S. immigration system helped many to achieve safety, and others came through the immigration lottery. According to the 2000 census, there were a total 11,740 people born in Uganda resident in the United States, of whom 41% were citizens. Immigration from Uganda has been uneven. According to the 2000 census, 16.6% spoke English less than “very well.” The median family income was $51,758, compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. In recent years, people from Uganda have sought permanent residency and refugee status and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. The number of refugees arriving has been less than 20 annually. Between 200 and 500 Ugandan nationals became naturalized citizens between 1997 and 2006.
Many Ugandan Americans have contributed to the wellness and advancement of communities, often by establishing businesses and restaurants catering to the African disapora in the United States, that is, recent African immigrants to the United States. Among the more celebrated are Kwatsi Alibaruho, the first African American to lead NASA’s Mission Control as a flight director for the International Space Station, and Samite, a Ugandan American artist whose songs of simple joy and peace have entranced listeners around the world. Aloysius M. Lugira See Appendix A See also African American Studies; Africans in the United States; Afrocentricity; Americanization; Assimilation; Colonialism; Nigerian Americans
Further Readings
Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs .gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Ingham, Kenneth. 1958. The Making of Modern Uganda. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Karenga, Maulana. 1993. Introduction to Black Studies. 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: University of Sankore Press. Lugira, Aloysius M. 2005. Africism: The Unifying Name of African Autochthonal Religion and Philosophy. A Treatise. Winchester, MA: Africa Resource Institute. Pirouet, M. Louise. 1995. Historical Dictionary of Uganda. African Historical Dictionaries, No. 64. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004 Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in Uganda. Available from http://www.census.gov/population/www/ socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html
UKRAINIAN AMERICANS Today, as the result of emigration, approximately onequarter of all Ukrainians in the world live outside of Ukraine, which has a population of 46.5 million people according to 2007 estimates, and a sizable population resides in the United States. Most Ukrainian Americans trace their ancestry back to one of four waves of immigration. Each wave immigrated in response to very
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different social and political “push factors.” To a large extent, each new wave has remained segregated from previous waves after its arrival. Geographic origins, however, unite the first three waves. Ukrainian immigrants of the first three waves nearly all originated in the regions of Transcarpathia, Galicia, and Bukovyna. These areas were once ruled by the Austro-Hungarian empire and today constitute Western Ukraine. The fourth wave, which began with the collapse of the Soviet Union, is the first to bring immigrants from all regions of Ukraine to the United States. This entry looks at these different groups and their experiences in the United States.
The First Wave: Before World War I In the 19th century, Ukrainians were a stateless people ruled by the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. Their homeland was one of the least developed agricultural regions of Europe. To escape severe land shortages, overpopulation, and poverty, Ukrainians began a massive emigration. Ukrainians who lived in the Russian empire immigrated to the Asian regions of the empire, while their counterparts in the AustroHungarian empire immigrated to the New World. The first wave of Ukrainian immigration to the United States began in the late 1870s. The earliest Ukrainian immigrants were brought in by agents of a Pennsylvania coal mine to work as strikebreakers.
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The coal mines of central Pennsylvania remained a primary destination for later Ukrainian immigrants. However, some immigrants found work as laborers in factories and foundries in the industrializing towns and cities of the Northeast and Midwest. The majority of the Ukrainian immigrants who came to the United States prior to 1914 had in the past been peasant farmers, unskilled laborers, or servants. They migrated in order to seek better lives. Many intended to return to their homeland after they had earned enough money to purchase land. Although they retained close ties to their place of origin, most tended not to be nationally conscious. They identified themselves not as Ukrainians, but as Rusyns (Ruthenians in English), the customary designation used in the Austrian empire. Many of these immigrants also continued to refer to themselves using regional identities (e.g., Hutsuls, Lemkos, or Boykos). For these immigrants, community life revolved around the church. Indeed, priests were very nearly the only community leaders of this era who were educated. Immigrants of this first wave generally belonged in their homeland to the Uniate Church. A small minority was Greek Orthodox. Upon their arrival in the United States, most Uniates at first attended Roman Catholic churches, and most Orthodox attended Russian Orthodox churches. Soon, Uniates began to campaign for their own Greek Catholic churches. The first Greek Catholic congregation was established in 1884, in the mining community of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Others followed. By 1916, there were nearly 260 Greek Catholic priests and many parishes. The Vatican agreed to allow Ukrainians to establish a separate Greek Catholic diocese, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, called the Byzantine Ruthenian Catholic Church.
The Second Wave: Between World Wars Immigration to the United States ceased altogether during World War I. After it resumed, a second wave of Ukrainian immigration took place. It brought 15,000 to 20,000 immigrants, mainly from Western Ukraine. The Ukrainian immigrants who belonged to this second wave sought to escape the wars and political unrest that followed the collapse of the Russian and Austrian empires. The breakup of these empires created opportunities for the formation of new states. There were several attempts to establish a separate
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Ukrainian state, but each ended in defeat. Following the conclusion of the Polish-Soviet War, Poland and the Soviet state divided most of Ukraine. The western part of Ukraine was incorporated into the Polish Republic. The central and eastern parts of Ukraine became the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. Second-wave immigrants to the United States settled in urban areas in the Northeast and Midwest. Many chose to live in neighborhoods where previous Ukrainian immigrants had established churches. The largest of these Ukrainian American communities were located in the Allentown-Bethlehem region of Pennsylvania; in Rochester and Buffalo, in New York State; and in Newark, New Jersey. Sizable Ukrainian American communities also arose in the Midwest, in Chicago, Illinois, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Second-wave immigrants tended to be more nationally conscious than members of the first wave. A small but significant share were priests, but others were secular professionals, in particular, teachers. Under the guidance of these new secular community leaders, patriotic community organizations proliferated during the interwar period. Dozens of new choirs, theatrical groups, orchestras, and dance groups were formed. Fraternal societies expanded and sponsored new schools, children’s groups, women’s auxiliaries, and newspapers. Women’s and youth organizations were particularly active. These increases in national consciousness and patriotic activism among Ukrainian immigrants created new unity but also new divisions. Adherents of the Ukrainian national independence movement led a new push to redraw religious and confessional lines along ethnic lines. Their efforts resulted in the separation of the Ukrainian Catholic Church from other Greek Catholics in 1924. Similarly, as Orthodox believers became more nationally conscious, they formed Ukrainian Orthodox congregations that split off from the Russian Orthodox Church. The emergence of Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox churches created new rifts. Due to internal disputes, Orthodox leaders formed two distinct Ukrainian orthodox churches, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Many Ukrainians joined new congregations defined by nationality. Religious reorganization following World War I resulted in the formation of 144 Ukrainian Catholic congregations, 24 Ukrainian Orthodox congregations and 43 Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox
congregations. But some Ukrainians remained followers of either the Byzantine Ruthenian Catholic Church or the Russian Orthodox Church. A further set of new divisions emerged in response to the proliferation of secular civic organizations. As secular organizations grew in number, their leaders tried to form umbrella structures to unite organizations around common interests. A general coordinating body arose in 1922, the United Ukrainian Organizations of America. It represented nearly 200 organizations. In 1940, after this group had dissolved, a second umbrella group was formed: the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America.
The Third Wave: Post–World War II After World War II, a brief wave of immigration brought an estimated 85,000 Ukrainian refugees to the United States. Most were Western Ukrainians who had fled the turmoil that resulted from the Soviet army’s invasion and annexation of Western Ukraine in 1939. These refugees ended up after the war interned in “displaced-person camps” in Austria and Germany. They faced forced repatriation to the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America worked together with the United Nations to locate sponsors and resettle roughly 60,000 refugees and displaced persons in the United States. Although relatively small in number, the third wave had a dramatic impact on Ukrainian American communities. The descendants of the immigrants of the first and second waves had begun to assimilate and integrate into U.S. life. Unlike their predecessors, the third wave included a sizable pool of educated people, mainly teachers but also engineers, lawyers, physicians, and scholars. The new immigrants were not only better educated, but as refugees who had fled Soviet rule, they were more concerned than previous waves about the role the diaspora played in preserving historical memory and cultural identity. Many became actively involved in scouting organizations and other groups aimed at transmitting a sense of national identity to youth. Their efforts reinvigorated Ukrainian American neighborhoods. Members of this third wave breathed new life into the community’s credit unions, schools, youth groups, and ensembles and also founded dozens of new societies and associations and professional groups that organized concerts, ran summer camps, managed schools, and coordinated sports leagues. These activities
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brought a rise in the membership in community groups, most evident in a dramatic increase in the size of Ukrainian church congregations in the postwar era. The number of Ukrainian Catholics grew to nearly 300,000, and the number of Ukrainian Orthodox grew to an estimated 90,000.
The Fourth Wave: Post–Soviet Union The collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s independence in 1991 brought a fourth wave of immigration to the United States. Nearly 200,000 immigrants arrived in the United States from Ukraine between 1987 and 2000. Most emigrated through one of two routes. Many belonged to religious groups that were persecuted during the Soviet era and were given priority status by the U.S. Congress to migrate to the United States as refugees. The main groups were Jews, Pentecostals, and Baptists. Other immigrants arrived to seek economic improvement in the face of the collapse of the Ukrainian economy. Some of the immigrants who emigrated from Ukraine have integrated into the existing Ukrainian community and have joined churches and civic organizations that are located in traditional areas where previous immigrants have settled. Most have not. Those immigrants who have migrated to areas of Ukrainian settlement have tended not to join diaspora organizations. They have found that local political and civic leaders focus on cultural and linguistic issues and not on the economic and legal problems recent immigrants face. Furthermore, U.S. immigration settlement policies encourage new immigrants to migrate to small towns in regions of the country that have not traditionally been destinations for Ukrainian immigrants. These new immigrants have established new religious organizations, in particular, evangelical churches. They have also started new businesses that employ or serve other post-Soviet immigrants, but they have forged few ties to the preexisting immigrant communities.
Contemporary Communities The four waves of Ukrainian immigration to the United States have created a large population. According to the 2000 census, 897,294 residents of the United States consider themselves to be of Ukrainian ancestry. Twothirds live in the Northeast and the Midwest. The largest populations are located in the states of New York
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(147,356), Pennsylvania (122,150), and New Jersey (72,954). A growing number of Ukrainian Americans reside in the West, where new Ukrainian American communities have emerged in the states of California (83,758), Texas (16,061), and Oregon (14,367). Although nearly a million Americans consider themselves to be of Ukrainian heritage, Ukrainian Americans are largely invisible. The Ukrainian American diaspora has grown increasingly dispersed and divided in recent decades. The Ukrainian population of Chicago provides an illustration of the impact on such communities of recent patterns of assimilation, suburbanization, and the settlement of new immigrants. In the postwar era, Chicago became the location of one of the largest, most concentrated, and best organized Ukrainian diaspora communities in the United States. Within the Chicago metropolitan area, there are seven Ukrainian Catholic churches, five Ukrainian Orthodox churches, two Carpatho-Rusyn Greek Catholic churches, and one Carpatho-Ruthenian Orthodox church. There are over 100 Ukrainian American civic organizations. Community life is centered in a neighborhood called the “Ukrainian Village.” Within this neighborhood, one can find a senior citizens’ home, credit unions, Saturday schools that offer classes in the Ukrainian language, radio programs broadcast in Ukrainian, and bakeries, restaurants, and a bar, all catering almost exclusively to Ukrainians. Local organizations based in this neighborhood, such as the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art and the Ukrainian National Museum, host frequent talks, performances, and exhibits. Census figures, however, confirm that the Ukrainian American population of Chicago is increasing but has grown increasingly dispersed in the last decades. Most Ukrainian Americans have moved far from the Ukrainian Village neighborhood. According to the 2000 census, nearly 50,000 Chicago area residents consider themselves to be of Ukrainian ancestry. But only about 13,000 live in the city, and far fewer— between 2,000 and 3,000—live in or near the Ukrainian Village. Furthermore, only a small proportion of Chicagoans of Ukrainian descent are active in Ukrainian American community organizations and belong to Ukrainian American religious organizations. While the Ukrainian Village remains the center of community life for Chicago Ukrainians, most members of the immigrant population tend to visit there mainly on weekends or during religious holidays. Within the Ukrainian Village, Ukrainians are far outnumbered by recent Latin American immigrants,
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who have constituted West Town’s majority population since 1980. Chicago’s Ukrainian population now lives mainly outside the Ukrainian Village neighborhood, in suburban areas. Relatively few recent immigrants and migrants have settled in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood since Ukraine became independent. Census figures suggest that unlike immigrants of previous waves, new immigrants from Ukraine are instead settling throughout the city.
underclass, how homogeneous it is, where it is located, what it encompasses, why it exists, and whether or not it is growing. The most fundamental question is whether or not the publicized observed behaviors such as problems with alcohol, drugs, and police in the underclass should be viewed as cause or consequence. This entry describes two principal descriptions of the underclass and its causes, while discussing pertinent theoretical questions.
Alexandra Hrycak See Appendix A See also Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Immigrant Communities; Immigration, U.S.; Labor Unions
Further Readings
Kubijovyc, Volodymyr and Danylo Husar Struk. 1984–1993. Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 5 vols. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Kuropas, Myron B. 1991. The Ukrainian Americans: Roots and Aspirations 1884–1954. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Pawliczko, Ann Lencyk, ed. 1994. Ukraine and Ukrainians throughout the World: A Demographic and Sociological Guide to the Homeland and Its Diaspora. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press for the Shevchenko Scientific Society. Subtelny, Orest. 1991. Ukrainians in North America: An Illustrated History. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Wolowyna, Oleh, ed. 1986. Ethnicity and National Identity: Demographic and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Persons with Ukrainian Mother Tongue in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.
UNDERCLASS The term underclass, used to describe a group of people, has acquired pejorative implications, especially in the context of alleged cultural deficiencies. Today, academic and popular discourses evidence substantial disagreements over the appropriate definition, defining characteristics, and explanation of the underclass in the United States. These disagreements are reflected in the debates over what criteria are necessary to claim a separate class, who belongs to the
Conservative Views In defining the underclass, what has been termed the conservative view emphasizes the most pathological members of a targeted group, such as unwed mothers, prostitutes, drug addicts, and gang members, and aggregates these behaviors into an underclass culture that is characterized by dysfunctional or pathological relationships. According to this view, social problems arise because these individuals make poor choices— reflected in lack of commitment to school, family, or neighborhood, rising rates of illegitimacy, and unwillingness to work. Those who hold this perspective on the underclass believe that social welfare programs merely exacerbate these problems. The inner-city poor, who are characterized as having “weak moral fiber,” are more likely to receive welfare and therefore to suffer its consequences. In this view, the government contributes to the problem by trying to solve individuallevel failings with societal-level programs. Because these programs allegedly obviate personal responsibility, they are seen as destructive. Therefore, disparities in socioeconomic status attainments are seen as primarily in individual, not structural, terms. Despite a lack of comparative research that would verify their claims, the behavioral characteristics that constitute this culture are said to be more severe among the Black poor than among the White poor. Regardless, members of the underclass cease to be responsible adults as a consequence of cultural deficiencies that undermine their participation in the labor force.
Structural Views Sociologist and author William Julius Wilson developed the contrasting thesis that the underclass exists mainly because of structural changes in the U.S. economy, spatial concentration, and social isolation. According to Wilson, the out-migration of middle- and working-class
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Blacks from Black neighborhoods and the in-migration of poor Blacks, along with changes in the age structure of the neighborhoods, skills mismatches, inadequate public transportation, and discriminatory practices, created high levels of Black unemployment after the late 1960s. This problem was exacerbated, in Wilson’s view, by the politics of locating public housing projects in low-income areas and by government policies that channeled a disproportionate share of federal, state, and local monies to the more affluent. Wilson held that underclass neighborhoods are characterized by severe losses of opportunities and resources and by inadequate social controls. Segregation compounds the problem of joblessness because it undermines employment networks and contributes to social isolation, according to Wilson, thereby reducing residents’ chances of acquiring the human capital necessary to compete. In this view, as neighborhood institutions decline or disappear, formal and informal mechanisms of social control become more difficult to maintain. Property values drop, thus encouraging landlords to abandon buildings, which, in turn, become havens for criminal activities. Disinvestments in, and the decline of, public services; an inability to procure government aid and assistance; and a lack of participation in community-based initiatives accelerate neighborhood decay. Therefore, for Wilson, structural disadvantages come before, rather than follow from, a particular set of values, attitudes, and behaviors. In his view, the problem is not the term underclass per se. Rather, the problem is that the focus is almost exclusively on individual characteristics. Wilson noted that a ghetto underclass has emerged and that it exhibits the characteristics that are anathema to liberals and conservatives generally. However, these characteristics do not define the underclass per se or the boundaries that separate it from the rest of society. According to Wilson, they are the consequences of structural changes that have created a concentration effect. That is, the most disadvantaged segments of the urban Black population are isolated spatially and socially from the rest of society and have become economically marginal or superfluous. Alternative value structures emerge that are expressed in speech patterns, academic failure, exaggerated sexuality, street demeanors, and gang activities. Social buffer refers to the presence of a sufficient number of stable middle- and working-class Black families to cushion the effects of uneven economic
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growth, periodic recessions, and insufficient budgets on inner-city neighborhoods. The movement of these families to the suburbs makes it more difficult to sustain community institutions in the face of prolonged joblessness, according to Wilson. The probability that the Black underclass will develop contacts and interact socially with the Black middle and working classes decreases, thereby enhancing the negative effects of living in a neighborhood of highly concentrated poverty. Here, social interaction among residents is confined to those who do not promote positive outcomes.
The Debate Continues Rigorous research does not support the view that the moral fabric of individuals is at the root of concentrated poverty in the inner city. The “hyperghettos” of today have complex antecedents that range from structural transformations in the U.S. economy to demographic transitions. Wilson viewed as secondary to other social factors the behavioral characteristics of the poor as individuals that have often been used to define the underclass. In his view, reducing structural inequalities, strengthening community institutions, and improving opportunities would decrease the frequency of ghetto-specific practices and make their transmission by precept less efficient. A considerable body of research shows that many inner-city poor express support for basic American values, such as the Protestant work ethic. If they behave in ways that contradict mainstream expectations for behavior, this may be due to their circumstances. Undesirable role models may increase the likelihood that children will drop out of school, commit crimes, forgo marriage, and bear children out of wedlock. These behaviors could represent specific cultural adaptations to the systematic denial of opportunities. In neighborhoods where few, if any, residents have achieved success, the social environment may encourage fatalism and hopelessness. Illegitimacy rates among the inner-city poor are among the highest in the United States, and these rates are prima facie evidence for the argument that the underclass is responsible for its fate. However, a variety of factors affect the probability of bearing children out of wedlock, including family background, educational experiences, career aspirations, employment prospects, and neighborhood characteristics. According to sociologist Kathryn Edin, most women who bear
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children out of wedlock prefer marriage to remaining single. They are, however, reluctant to marry into situations that offer more risks than rewards, given (a) a lack of marriageable men who are able to provide a steady and reliable income, (b) changing sex role expectations among women but not among men, (c) the likely loss of household and parental control, and (d) men’s risky and sometimes violent behavior. Substantially improved opportunities in the labor market might encourage marriage and reduce illegitimacy rates without resolving a pervasive mistrust of men or the probability of domestic abuse.
The Problematic Nature of the Concept The concept of the underclass places a disproportionate emphasis on the culture-of-poverty thesis and its associated dysfunctional behaviors (sometimes called a “tangle of pathology”). It naturalizes culture as an independent variable that undermines initiative and fetters upward mobility. Typically, race, class, and culture are conflated, thus obscuring the explanatory weight that each should be accorded. Critics argue that the term underclass lacks analytical rigor, the boundaries that separate the underclass from other social classes lack appropriate specification, and the category itself appears internally and externally inconsistent. The word is used as a catchall, sometimes for political purposes that aren’t made clear. For example, equating the underclass with the Black inner-city poor implies that “race” is a necessary condition for the emergence of the underclass. This position is problematic, for a White underclass arguably exists as well. The behaviors attributed to the underclass exist throughout the social class structure in the United States: a weak commitment to education, present time orientation, lack of a work ethic, underachievement, an inability to defer gratification, irresponsibility, alcohol and drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, illegitimacy, family breakup, and a propensity to commit crimes. Defining an underclass by criteria such as long-term unemployment, declining marriage rates, and criminality is problematic, for some percentage of all Americans engage in these behaviors. If the criteria exist across racial and social class lines, then it is not reasonable to claim that they are the most important variables that reproduce the so-called tangle of pathology.
In certain respects, the emergence of an underclass may be a uniquely U.S. (indeed, regional) phenomenon. Some sociologists have suggested that processes of deindustrialization and disinvestment may have a greater impact in the United States than in other advanced capitalist countries because of the limited development of the United States welfare state and the relative powerlessness of the working and lower classes to control the consequences. In the United States, as compared with European countries, social citizenship rights are more restricted, less developed, and structured to stigmatize the lower classes. On the problematic of comparative analyses of the underclass, others have argued that the concept of the underclass is too narrow to capture the reality of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. Jack Niemonen See also American Apartheid; Crime and Race; Culture of Poverty; Ghetto; Homelessness; Resegregation; Urban Riots; “Welfare Queen”; Wilson, William Julius
Further Readings
Auletta, Ken. 1982. The Underclass. New York: Random House. Beverly, C. G. and H. J. Stanback. 1986. “The Black Underclass: Theory and Reality.” The Black Scholar 17(5):24–32. Heisler, Barbara Schmitter. 1991. “A Comparative Perspective on the Underclass: Questions of Urban Poverty, Race, and Citizenship.” Theory and Society 20:455–484. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reed, Adolph, Jr. 1990. “The Underclass as Myth and Symbol: The Poverty of Discourse about Poverty.” Radical America 24(1):21–40. Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, William Julius. 1996. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Vintage Books.
UNITED KINGDOM Issues of race and ethnicity in the United Kingdom (which includes England, Scotland, Wales, and
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Race relations were at an especially low ebb during these years, and researchers have observed how the prevailing suspicion of ethnic minorities, in particular African Caribbean communities, as “undesirable” or “disorderly” was largely a result of a process of deviancy amplification and demonization of the United Kingdom’s Black communities on the basis of their supposed criminogenic cultural tendencies. Strains between these groups and the police increased as a result of continued negative stereotyping and the politicization of “race” and crime, culminating in a series of violent confrontations between predominantly Black communities and the police across urban Britain during the early to mid-1980s. The graphic images of widespread rioting and the observations of the Scarman Inquiry into the causes of this unrest emphasized the importance of improving police-minority relations to ensure the maintenance of order in the ethnically diverse communities of urban Britain.
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Contemporary Relations Northern Ireland, with a combined estimated population in 2007 of 61 million people) have long been the source of extended fascination to academics, politicians, and the media, with the significance and import of the terms shifting quite considerably from one generation to another. Although the conceptual emergence of “race” can be traced back to the age of the European Enlightenment, during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the post–World War II period of large-scale migration to the United Kingdom from former British colonies marked its advent as a major political issue, from which point the impact of immigrants upon the ethnic and cultural identity of the national landscape has continued to be a contentious topic. This entry presents an overview of the ways in which the position of ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom has evolved over the years and charts significant developments in the history of contemporary British race relations as well as some of the more noteworthy challenges of the present day.
Early Migration The surge in migration during the 1950s and 1960s, brought about mainly as a result of labor shortages within the United Kingdom, resulted in extensive public unrest and an ensuing raft of legislation spread over the course of several decades designed to limit the growth in, and perceived threat of, “colored” immigration.
Depictions of disorderly ethnic minorities had tended to overshadow their status as victims of prejudice and their vulnerability to racist attack. However, a more pronounced emphasis on problems of racist victimization began to emerge following the murder of Stephen Lawrence in southeast London in 1993. Although many racist murders have taken place in the United Kingdom over recent decades, the unprovoked killing of this middle-class African Caribbean teenager of unblemished character received unprecedented media attention, largely because the characteristics of the victim and the failure to convict his killers appeared to resonate with people of all backgrounds, not just those from minority communities. The subsequent inquiry into the flawed investigation of the murder has been widely described as a watershed in the policing of racism in the United Kingdom, and its findings, as detailed in what became known as the “Macpherson Report,” have had a profound effect upon Britain’s “race” agenda. Arguably, the most significant development to have emerged from the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry relates to the acknowledgment of institutional racism within the police service. While the earlier Scarman Inquiry had rejected claims of institutional racism and instead attributed the racist behavior of the police to the actions of only a few “bad apples” within the service, the Macpherson Report went much further in condemning the practices of the
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England during the summer of 2001 sparked intense debate over the integration of Muslims and other minority ethnic groups within mainstream British society. This debate has intensified following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States, and, more recently, the bombings in the London Underground, on July 7, 2005, in the United Kingdom. The British government’s response to the 2001 disturbances in northern England called for a renewed emphasis to be placed upon the concept of community cohesion as a way of establishing a common sense of national identity, irrespective of ethnicity, to resolve escalating tensions between different cultural, Queen Elizabeth II. The British queen is shown visiting a community picreligious, and ethnic groups, but fears over the nic Gunnersbury Park on June 24, 2002, where locals are providing musithreat of Islamic extremism, expressed through cal and dance entertainment to celebrate the ethnic diversity of West alarmist media narratives and bellicose politiLondon. In the United Kingdom, tensions created by racism also coexist with such congenial get-togethers. Although such symbolic meet-andcal rhetoric, have raised levels of public anxigreet events between members of the Royal Family and people of color ety over the compatibility of Islamic values would have been unlikely a generation earlier, more significant moves with conventional Western ideology. These have yet to be made toward including the African Caribbean and South concerns, together with more general unease Asian communities in the political power structure. over the perceived benevolence of the United Source: Tim Graham/Getty Images. Kingdom’s immigration and asylum system, have been taken up by British Far-Right politpolice, and indeed other public institutions in the United ical parties and extremist organizations, and one group Kingdom, as being institutionally racist. The use of in particular, the British National Party (BNP), has the term institutional racism, which, according to been relatively successful in its attempts to strengthen Macpherson refers to an organization’s collective failure its appeal through its anti-immigration and -asylum to provide an appropriate service to people on the basis policies and explicitly Islamophobic propaganda. of their ethnicity and includes unintentional or thoughtConsequently, despite the positive steps taken followless racism, was contested by many police officers and ing the murder of Stephen Lawrence to tackle problems sections of the media who saw the term as little more of racism in the United Kingdom, there remain a numthan a sweeping accusation that all officers are racist. ber of formidable and ongoing challenges to the mainHowever, commentators in the United Kingdom tenance of race relations in the United Kingdom. have largely welcomed the acknowledgment of the Neil Chakraborti institutionalized, and not simply individualized, nature of racism, and the recommendations of the See Appendix A See also Britain’s Irish; Community Cohesion; Crime and Macpherson Report, endorsed by senior police offiRace; Hate Crimes; London Bombings (July 7, 2005); cials and the British government, triggered a wideMuslims in Europe; Northern Ireland, Racism in; Racism; ranging program of reform designed to tackle Victimization problems of racism in British society. Although considerable progress has been made in the years following the publication of the Macpherson Report Further Readings in 1999, a number of significant challenges have emerged within the context of race relations in the United Bowling, Ben and Coretta Phillips. 2002. Racism, Crime, and Kingdom, most notably with regard to the position of Justice. Harlow, UK: Longman. British Muslims and the renewed popularity of the Far Macpherson, William. 1999. The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Right. Outbreaks of disorder between White communities Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson. Cm 4262-1. London: Home Office. and predominantly Muslim communities in northern
United Kingdom, Immigrants and Their Descendants in the United States
McGhee, Derek. 2005. Intolerant Britain? Hate Citizenship and Difference. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press. Rowe, Michael. 2004. Policing, Race, and Racism. Cullompton, UK: Willan.
UNITED KINGDOM, IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS IN THE UNITED STATES The United Kingdom, with an estimated 2007 population of 61 million, consists of Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) and Northern Ireland. Scotland became a part of the United Kingdom in 1707, and the present boundaries between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland were defined in 1921. Hence, when discussing immigration from the United Kingdom historically, it should be noted that many families came from Scotland and parts of Ireland that at the time were independent of England. Furthermore, even today, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish immigrants often identify more with their own people than with the larger identity of the United Kingdom. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there were a total of 677,750 people born in the United Kingdom now resident in the United States, of whom 46.6% were citizens. This entry looks at the background and contemporary picture of immigration to the United States from the United Kingdom.
Immigration Patterns Historically, settlement of North America by people from the United Kingdom has played a significant role in generating not only the culture of the United States but also its people. About 80,000 English people departed from their homelands between 1628 and 1642 and settled in what is now Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Although hardships were the norm in the first settlements, economic motives, the prospect of independence, and religious freedom were nonetheless encouraging reasons to migrate. Distinct settlement patterns emerged among the early immigrants. For instance, young men who worked as laborers or indentured servants in tobacco fields settled in Virginia. Those who settled in the New England area were mostly families and congregations that included women and children. The
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Massachusetts Bay area attracted clergymen, lawyers, and merchants. This pattern remained until the mid- to late 17th century, when the importation of slaves to the colonies reduced the need for immigrant labor and the granting of religious freedom in the United Kingdom slowed migration to the colonies. By the end of the colonial period, the people who settled in the colonies were more likely to be ScotchIrish and Irish (as well as French and German) than English. Heavy immigration occurred in the 1720s, 1750s, and late 1760s to about 1775. In the years following the American Revolution, the number of English immigrants was minute: The English government discouraged emigration by tightening regulations for those wanting to leave England. However, relations between the English and the United States improved by 1815, and unprecedented numbers of immigrants arrived during the 19th century. Factors such as social unrest, famines, financial panics, and chronic poverty fueled mass migration of people from their homelands in England, Scotland, and Wales to the United States. Further, the population growth and rural decline that accompanied the Industrial Revolution motivated many immigrants to seek new lives in America. Like other immigrant groups, they hoped to create better lives for themselves and enjoy greater potential economic opportunities in the United States. Immigration from England began to decline in the late 19th to early 20th century. Between the years of 1901 and 1920, about 638,000 arrived, and between 1921 and 1940, about 179,000. Many also returned to England during the latter period. However, of the immigrants who continued to arrive, among them were professional people. This pattern continued in the following decades and was considered part of the “brain drain” that occurred in the 1970s, when approximately 10,000 arrived annually. As of the 2000 U.S. Census, English ancestry (which did not include most Scots and Irish from the northern part of Ireland) was the third most often claimed among Americans; German was first, and Irish was second.
Contemporary Community The issue of selected migration of U.K. residents to the United States has raised cries of “brain drain.” In particular, professionals were attracted to the United States by higher salaries in the post–World War II period, and some in the United Kingdom expressed
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concern over loss of skilled workers. Most conspicuous was the migration from the United Kingdom of physicians who expressed frustration with the National Health Service and wished to take advantage of the private health care system in the United States. These concerns must be placed in perspective, as the United Kingdom itself was and continues to be an attractive destination for professional and skilled workers from its former colonies. In recent years, people from the United Kingdom have sought permanent residency and completed the naturalization process to become citizens. From 1997 through 2006, about 13,000 British persons immigrated to the United States annually. At least 8,300 British Americans have become naturalized citizens annually since 1997. According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey in 2005, 918,915 people in the United States named the United Kingdom as their country of national origin. Their median family income at the time was reported at $69,741, compared with $50,890 for the nation as a whole. In terms of geographic distribution, the top-five states were California, Florida, Texas, New York, and Virginia. Given the tens of millions of people in the United States of English, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry, the impact of immigration of people from the United Kingdom is literally nationwide. Jennifer M. Klein See Appendix A See also Assimilation; Brain Drain; Britain’s Irish; Europe; Immigration, U.S.; Ireland; Irish Americans; Northern Ireland, Racism in; United Kingdom; WASP
Further Readings
Department of Homeland Security. 2006. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2005. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics. Available from http://www.dhs .gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Games, Alison. 1999. Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gerber, David. 2006. Authors of Their Lives: The Personal Correspondence of British Immigrants to North America in the Nineteenth Century. New York: New York University Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. Profile of Demographic and Social Characteristics: 2000. People Born in the United
Kingdom. Available from http://www.census.gov/ population/www/socdemo/foreign/STP-159-2000tl.html U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. American Community Survey 2005. Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www Van Vugt, William E. 1999. Britain to America: MidNineteenth-Century Immigrants to the United States. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
UNITED STATES V. FORDICE In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court decided United States v. Fordice, a case involving discrimination on the basis of race in the state university system of Mississippi. Justice Byron White delivered the opinion of the Court, which found that a state has an affirmative duty to dismantle its segregated system even though the segregation was by choice rather than by law. The other judges either joined in this opinion or filed concurring opinions. Only Justice Antonin Scalia filed an opinion that was partly a dissent from Justice White’s opinion. This entry describes the background of the case, the Court’s decision, and the legal reasoning it followed in reaching its conclusion.
The Case and Early Rulings According to the facts of Fordice, the State of Mississippi operated eight separate public postsecondary institutions. Four of the institutions, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, University of Southern Mississippi, and Delta State University, were established after the Civil War exclusively to educate Mississippi’s Anglo-American (i.e., White) citizens. During the same period, Alcorn State University, Jackson State University, and Mississippi Valley State University were established to educate the state’s African American citizens. When the case was filed, the universities remained segregated by institutional choice; there was no law that mandated desegregation. Private citizens (mostly Mexican Americans) went to court to challenge this largely segregated highereducation system. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi (674 F. Supp. 1523) found that state officials had met their duty of desegregation. The citizens appealed this decision. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (893 F.2d 732) at first reversed the District Court’s decision but later
Unitted State es v. Fordicce
it reheard the matter en banc and then affirmed the decision of the District Court (914 F.2d 676). The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to review the rulings.
The Supreme Court Ruling In its Fordice decision, the U.S. Supreme Court directed the state of Mississippi to eliminate or reduce all the significant vestiges of its prior de jure segregated system of higher education. If it did not do so, the Court said, it would have to prove that sound educational policy and/or necessity warranted such nonaction. The Court held that no racial identifiability of universities should be attributable to state action, and it interpreted state action in a broad sense. Supreme Court Justice White held that “merely adopting and implementing race-neutral policies to govern college and university systems did not necessarily fulfill the state’s affirmative obligation to disestablish the prior de jure segregated system.” Thus, the citizens’ position was ultimately vindicated by the U.S. Supreme Court. The legal victory can be traced back to three earlier decisions of the Supreme Court.
Case Precedents In 1954, in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, the U.S. Supreme court had examined the concept of “stigmatic injury” to American children in a segregated school system. Such injury is caused by the enforced separation of the two races for educational purposes, the Court found. After the Brown decision, de jure segregation was officially over. However, in certain U.S. states, significant effects of the prior de jure segregation persisted. In effect, a de facto segregated system of higher education, like the one that existed in Mississippi, could cause the “stigmatic injury” that Brown discussed. Two other related cases played significant roles in the Fordice decision: Green v. New Kent County Board of Education, 391 U.S. 430 (1968), and Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U.S. 385 (1986). In the Green case, the court said that the state has a constitutional duty to have a racially unitary system of education in elementary and secondary public schools and the state would have to take all possible steps to ensure this. The focus of this case was on actual desegregation. In the Bazemore case, the Court held that the affirmative duty to desegregate required by
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the Green case did not apply to clubs in which membership was chosen voluntarily by Black and White youth. The clubs were operated without discrimination and were open to all youth, regardless of race, but because youth of one race tended to choose a particular club, it retained its historical racial identity. This did not violate the Constitution, the Court found. The Green decision appears to be about the end effects of segregation and Bazemore about voluntary choice of students. The lower courts in Fordice drew more on Bazemore, because in higher education, students voluntarily choose which colleges they want to attend. The Supreme Court in Fordice drew on Green to define Mississippi’s constitutional duty. The Supreme Court also took into account student choice in higher education, however, and did not adopt Brownlike remedies such as pupil assignment and school zoning. It focused instead on the continuing influence of a state’s past segregationist policies on admissions. The Supreme Court agreed that there were major differences between higher education and elementary and secondary schools, but it did not agree that the constitutional duty to desegregate was different. By maintaining eight educational institutions that could be racially identified, the Court found that Mississippi’s university system appeared to perpetuate segregation. The Court suggested that closing or merging one or more institutions would remedy the discriminatory effects, as it would provide more uniform resources to the students of different races. It held that this is the affirmative duty of the state. Race-neutral policies would not by themselves be enough to achieve racial equality, the Court said. A state’s prior separation of races by law could have significant influence on student enrollment decisions and contribute to racial identifiability of universities. While Mississippi’s policies were neutral on their face, the Court ruled, they were contributing to actual segregation by limiting students’ choices of which institutions to enter. An example of a neutral policy that promotes segregation is a policy that requires higher American College Testing program scores for historically White institutions than for historically Black institutions. Such a policy is constitutionally suspect, as it was originally enacted by historically White universities to discriminate against Black students. If a state university system has policies in force that can be traced to a dual, de jure system and those policies have a discriminatory effect, they must be “reformed to the extent practicable and consistent
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with sound educational practices,” the Court ruled. The Fordice decision does not address the issue of whether historically Black universities are constitutionally justifiable. In the only partly dissenting opinion, Associate Justice Scalia agreed that under the Constitution, Mississippi is required to dismantle its prior dual system and remove any barriers that continue to support it. He did not, however, agree with the others that Mississippi needed to remedy funding disparities between historically White and historically Black institutions. Scalia’s focus was on Bazemore and its application of freedom of choice to the context of higher education. He also expressed doubts about whether the years of litigation in the area of desegregation in higher education would benefit anybody. Nevertheless, Fordice has been heralded by many civil rights activists as a positive step in the direction of complete racial equality. Devyani Prabhat See also Affirmative Action in Education; Brown v. Board of Education; Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District; Educational Performance and Attainment; Higher Education; People of Color; Pipeline; Plessey v. Ferguson; School Desegregation
Further Readings
Grayson, Zebie A. 1993. “Comment: Marshall’s Dream Deferred: Almost Four Decades after Brown, the Vestiges of de Jure Segregation Linger as the Implementation Process Continues.” Southern University Law Review 20:53. Holley, Dannye. 1997. “United States v. Fordice: The Mississippi Aftermath.” New England Law Review 31:769. Kelly, Jane Chambers. 1993. “United States v. Fordice: Desegregation Becomes a Mandate for Integration in the Context of Higher Education.” Loyola Law Review 39:231. Moore, John A. 2000. “Are State-Supported Historically Black Colleges and Universities Justifiable after Fordice? A Higher Education Dilemma.” Florida State University Law Review 27:547. Wilson, Cory Todd. 1994. “Mississippi Learning: Curriculum for the Post-Brown Era of Higher Education Desegregation.” Yale Law Journal 104:243.
URBAN LEAGUE See NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE
URBAN LEGENDS Urban legends are improbable stories that circulate from person to person. Usually odd and amusing, they are repeated as true stories about strange occurrences or bizarre events. A kind of folk narrative, they are typically validated because the source is personally known, is one or two steps removed (such as a “friend of a friend”), or is attributed with a vague mention that “I heard it somewhere.” Modern technology also plays a role in spreading urban legends in chat rooms and on the Internet, where the stories spread around the country with amazing speed. Capturing the public imagination and told and retold, most urban legends are harmless and amusing, but when analyzed, they frequently yield rich information about contemporary culture. While difficult or impossible to validate or discredit, the stories sound just true enough to be believable. Urban legends tend to touch on some subliminal fear or deeply held social concern that reflects the stress and anxiety of contemporary life, and issues of race and ethnicity are often explicit or implied. One long-lived example takes place in a fancy hotel: A large Black man with a dog on a leash gets into an elevator with two elderly White women. Politely moving to the back of the elevator he says, “Sit, lady!” The women, assuming he is dangerous, instantly sit on the floor. He laughs, explains he was talking to the dog, and introduces himself; it turns out that he is a celebrity. Over time, both the celebrity and the location of the incident have changed. It has been told with the setting in San Francisco and the celebrity as O. J. Simpson, but variations place the elevator incident in major cities all over the country—and the celebrity is identified as Reggie Jackson, Mike Tyson, Eddie Murphy, or one of many others. Clearly expressing anxiety about race, particularly Black men and White women, this urban legend bases its humor on the idea that the wealthy Black man is at the upscale hotel and is not recognized by the women, who fear all Black men equally. The mental image of two white-haired ladies dropping to the floor, to the surprise of the man, completes the joke. Ethnic and economic anxieties interact in another urban legend. In this one, a woman is shopping for sweaters at a department store. As she digs through a pile of recent imports, she feels a sting and suddenly collapses. The woman is rushed to a hospital, and doctors conclude that she was bitten by a poisonous snake.
Urban Legends
Tracing her steps back to the sweater display, authorities discover that some small, deadly snakes are mixed with the imported sweaters. As with the previous urban legend, there are different variations mentioning any number of large department stores; various types of soft goods, such as rugs or blankets; and many different countries, but the premise is the same. This urban legend implies that the items were made by foreigners who are “different” and cannot be trusted. It plays on people’s fear of poor countries and anxiety over cultural differences. Concerns about pollution and contamination to the point of imagined snakes in the imported textiles are mixed with economic concerns. Many Americans are unable to resolve the conflict between their desire for low-cost consumer goods and a fear of dependence on foreign sources for those goods. However subliminally, many Americans also feel guilty about the exploitation of desperately poor foreign workers—a combination that one might imagine is certain to “come back to bite us” eventually. Contamination and pollution are frequent themes of urban legend, and rumors about contaminated food are among the most common, with some specifically focusing on race. What we are willing to eat and drink varies with culture, as does what may or may not be done with human waste. Physical or symbolic pollution by ingesting something harmful or coming in contact with something considered disgusting is a source of tremendous anxiety in U.S. culture. The obsession with contamination and pollution is obvious in the numbers of television commercials trying to sell an unending variety of cleaning products to protect against bodily contamination by germs. In the modern urban world, where much of our food is processed outside the home and handled by strangers, fear of food contamination is very real and a subject of urban legend. According to folklorist Patricia Turner, many African Americans believed the urban legend that one fast-food chain common in Black neighborhoods deliberately contaminated fried chicken, thought stereotypically to be particularly appealing to Black people, with a tasteless substance that causes sterility in African American men. The rumor was widespread and, though untrue, was supported by Black people’s distrust of White-controlled corporations that historically have shown a lack of concern for the welfare of Blacks. This lack of trust has its foundation in the abuses suffered by Blacks under slavery, but it is also supported by more recent perceptions of corporate indifference to the health of Black people.
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One example of this indifference to the health of Blacks is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which became public knowledge during the early 1970s. Begun in 1932, it was a 44-year study by the U.S. government of the long-term effects of syphilis on Black men. Around 300 Black men with the disease were examined and left untreated, even after the discovery of penicillin in the 1940s. This outrage and others made it easy for African Americans to believe the urban legend that food was being sold in their neighborhoods that would ultimately destroy them. The existence of chicken with a secret sterilization ingredient that affects only the Black community, though untrue and probably impossible, is one urban legend maintained by racial mistrust. A fear of contaminating both the personal and the social body is its subtext. Most commonly, believers of this urban legend name the Ku Klux Klan as the group responsible for the contamination conspiracy. In another urban legend, one brand of bottled tea was claimed to be the product of a Klan-run business because the clipper ship on its label was thought to be a slave ship. Many African Americans boycotted the product to avoid giving their money to the Klan. The label has since been redesigned, though it is unknown whether poor sales in Black communities had anything to do with the change. Urban legends that focus on race or ethnic origin have been the cause of violence and even death in minority communities. Among the oldest urban legends is one known as the “blood libel.” This is the unfounded and bizarre belief that Jews need the blood of a Christian child to make matzo (unleavened bread for ceremonial Passover meals). Urban legends, as mentioned earlier, are told as true and perceived as true, and, however unreasonable, they take on a life of their own. As early as the 12th century, tales circulated about Jews killing children for ritual purposes; Chaucer’s “The Prioress’s Tale” includes a reference to a boy killed by Jews. Cases of supposed “ritual murder” and subsequent mayhem against Jews were recorded all across Eastern Europe in the 19th century. The “blood libel” legend seems to go hand in hand with racist anti-Semitic thinking, and cases of this urban legend fomenting ethnic and religious violence against Jews may be found in modern Europe, Russia, Egypt, and the United States. As recently as 1935, according to folklorist Alan Dundes, Jews were arrested, tortured, and even condemned to death based on the existence of this anti-Semitic urban legend. Very similar to the “blood libel” legend, a type of racist urban legend accompanies or even precedes
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modern race riots. Whether the rioters are White people attacking Black-owned businesses and individuals or Black people attacking White-owned businesses or individuals, the rumors seem to take the same form. Turner cites several race riots, including those in East St. Louis in 1917; Chicago in 1919; and Detroit, Harlem, and a series of other places in the 1960s, in which Black or White communities or both were flooded with rumors that individuals of the other race were arming themselves, that someone had been killed or raped, or that police had shot or assaulted someone. In many cases, a person was actually harmed by an individual of another race, but the urban legend cycle of adapting and expanding the story for dramatic effect turned an unfortunate incident into an imagined racist conspiracy to attack and destroy a community. Turner believes that the subsequent rioting was often more a result of the urban legend cycle expanding on fears, rumors, and stereotypes held by Blacks and Whites about each other than of the actual incident. In the mid-1990s, with gang violence becoming a serious concern in major cities, a new urban legend surfaced that warned about a supposed deadly gang initiation ritual. In this legend, gang members drive around at night with their headlights off. When a helpful citizen blinks his headlights to alert the driver to his lack of lights, the potential gang member has to shoot into the car. The story was always accompanied by a mention of someone who had been killed. Most references to this urban legend simply mention gangs, but, in California, it was specifically attributed to Latino gangs. Spreading through the Internet and widely believed, the story usually specified a certain date, holiday, or weekend that would be the time of the initiation. When the urban legend first appeared, warnings to the public were mentioned on television news shows, and at least one California trucking company took it seriously enough to hand out printed warnings to its drivers. Police and other authorities investigated and quickly realized they had been taken in by an urban legend. Thriving on the anonymity of freeway driving and resurfacing every few years, this urban legend plays on justified fears of random driveby shootings but turns it against polite drivers who helpfully blink their lights. One of the ways human beings communicate and make sense of the world is by telling stories, and certain kinds of stories become part of our reality. People are astonished when they discover that something they believed as true turns out to be an urban legend.
The tricky part of urban legends is that they sound so plausible, and their source is usually credible: “a friend of a friend.” A number of Web sites are devoted to urban legends, primarily to analyze them in “factor-fiction” style. These sites, such as the AFU urban legend archive, take great delight in debunking widely believed rumors and exposing them as urban legends or, occasionally, finding them true. Urban legends can be amusing or strange, and they make lively conversation, but they are never meaningless, and though they may be repeated in innocence, they are not always harmless. Linda Sanderson See also Anti-Semitism; Gangs; Media and Race; Racism; Xenophobia
Further Readings
Brunvand, Jan Harold. 1981. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meaning. New York: Norton. Brunvand, Jan Harold. 2001. Encyclopedia of Urban Legends. New York: Norton. Dundes, Alan, ed. 1991. The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook of Anti-Semitic Folklore. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Turner, Patricia A. 1993. I Heard It through the Grapevine: Rumor in African-American Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Web Sites
AFU and Urban Legends Archive: http://www.tafkac.org Darwin Awards, Urban Legends: http://www.darwinawards.com/legends Urban Legends Reference Pages: http://www.snopes.com
URBAN RIOTS Urban riots are major disturbances involving many residents and significant police response that immobilize an area of the city for several hours, and often days, resulting in significant destruction and deaths. They can be distinguished from protests, which are fundamentally peaceful in nature and usually focus on particular policies or actions of public officials, and revolutions, which may involve urban violence but
Urban Riots
ultimately aim to overthrow the state. Riots happen infrequently, in unpredictable ways, in most of our major cities. Riots are more common in the poorest city centers but also occur in suburbs and in some of the more prosperous cities. This entry describes common characteristics of riots, their underlying causes, and strategies for controlling them.
Common Characteristics Common to urban riots is a breakdown of civil society. The ties that encourage people to act civilly to one another and respect property and public authority break down. Residents shoot deadly weapons at other residents, the police, and firefighters. Stores are broken into, looted, and firebombed. Police attack demonstrators, snipers fire at the police. Large sections of the city are destroyed, and many are arrested and killed. Riots are precisely the opposite of good government. Riots do not occur in all cities, and years go by without significant urban riots in the United States. From 1965 to 1967, major riots rocked large cities and many smaller ones, but few such disturbances were recorded until Miami in 1980. Years passed again until the Los Angeles riots of 1992, which followed the acquittal of police officers accused of beating African American Rodney King, an incident that was captured on video and widely circulated. That disturbance was the largest, bloodiest, and most costly of all riots in the United States up to that time, resulting in 58 deaths, over 3,200 injuries, and over three-quarters of a million dollars in property damage over a 5-day period. It spread across many neighborhoods and required the mobilization of numerous law enforcement agencies. Riots are often precipitated by a police-civilian encounter resulting in a dramatic arrest witnessed by many bystanders. Especially if the incident occurs on a warm night, it is more likely that many civilians will be out on the street and may witness it or shortly learn of its occurrence. The incident triggers frustration on the part of bystanders who may relate the incident to longer-term grievances against the police or the city or recent police or legal events. News of the event and more violent incidents may quickly spread, even to distant parts of the city. Urban riots end with a restoration of order through increased police activity that often requires reinforcements from other police and fire departments and even the National Guard or elements of the armed forces. The events are followed by significant soul-searching
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by city, state, and federal officials, generally through investigative commissions whose members represent broad sectors of the greater community.
Explanations of Urban Riots Because of their infrequent and sporadic occurrence, urban riots are difficult to analyze. At the same time, riots have triggered intense interest on the part of analysts and government agencies and frequently spawned major efforts to study possible causes and explanations. Since the middle of the 20th century, analysis by social scientists can be grouped into three major kinds of explanations. Many of the early analyses of the urban riots of the 1960s and the comments of political leaders at the time are best described as the underclass hypothesis. Proponents argue that characteristics of the rioters are largely responsible for riot behavior. Some argue that early family socialization among deprived members of the cities leads to present-oriented actions. Riot participants either fail to understand the long-term implications of participating in unrest or see few opportunities for social betterment by following society’s rules. Hence, riotous actions are a response to the development of antisocial values or perceiving a society with little hope for advancement. According to this view, the problems therefore are found in the individual, not in the broader society. Others look to differential opportunities between those who riot and the generally more prosperous members of the society. These analysts see limited resources and opportunities for those in riot areas causing feelings of anger and hopelessness that result in violent behavior. Proponents point to differences in police protection, schools, housing, and job opportunities as the causes of feelings of despair that result in riots. However, disturbances sometimes occur in cities where the poor appear to be better off socially and economically than those in cities where riots do not occur. Some maintain the occurrence is related to the relative deprivation of those in impoverished parts of the city compared with those in wealthier areas. In both cases, the social and economic conditions of the poor are thought to trigger riotous behavior. This approach became the dominant explanation following the publication of the report of the president’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, an investigation created by the national government following the riots of 1967.
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Urban Riots
A third group sees the cause more directly in police and public official behavior as riotous incidents occur. In some cases, riots spread because the police fail to act and public officials are generally inattentive. The Los Angeles riots of 1992, for instance, may have increased in violence and spread throughout the urban area because the Los Angeles Police Department was slow to respond and because strained relations between the chief of police and the mayor prevented an orderly and politically accepted response. Others point to positive police-community relations that occur in cities where riots don’t happen and the lack thereof in cities where they do.
Controlling Urban Riots Can we expect more or fewer urban riots in the future? There are optimists and pessimists among urban experts. Changes in the management of cities lead some to conclude that riots may be less frequent in the years ahead. Others, however, point to changes in 21st-century life that may lead to their increased frequency. Police officials discuss increased efforts at policecommunity relations, particularly the emphasis on community-based policing that focuses on the use of the police to improve social conditions within the community and the use of citizens as aids in the law enforcement process. Related to that concern is the effort on the part of many cities to create neighborhood governance and improve public services within deprived neighborhoods. In both cases, the aim is to improve the connection between citizens and government so that law enforcement officials are not viewed as an occupying force. It is also hoped that citizens, through connections with the police and their neighborhood representatives, will channel their grievances toward government officials rather than commit acts of violence. The officials, in turn, will act on community grievances before tensions become widespread. On the other hand, several aspects of the present era suggest a potential for more serious violence. Studies of census data indicate that polarization within cities has increased significantly since 1970. Thus, poor households are more likely today to exist in neighborhoods made up of residents of mostly lower socioeconomic status, thereby increasing their isolation from the wealthier sectors of the society and, accordingly, role models of success and potential sources for mobility. Alienation from the larger
society then may increase. Increased immigration of non-English-speaking people to poorer neighborhoods may further increase tensions between immigrants and the more established. If riots do occur, the potential for more deaths and destruction may be greater today. Weapons, including those with greater lethality, are more readily available and comparatively less expensive. Changes in communication transmit news of events with greater speed. Television broadcasts images of violence instantaneously, and cell phones and computers can connect potential participants with greater speed. The two points of view may both be incorporated regarding future occurrence of urban riots. Urban riots result from pent-up grievances on the part of deprived citizens. When they occur, the government responds by devoting resources and attention to the affected areas. As the grievances subside, government attention wanes. The consequence is greater potential for riots, and urban violence may ultimately recur. Characteristics of 21st-century cities have the potential to increase the ability of government to respond to the grievances of those in riot-prone areas through resources devoted to connecting citizens and government officials. However, improvements in communication and the broader availability of deadly weapons also create the means today to result in more death and destruction than in the past. Alan Saltzstein See also Barrio; Community Cohesion; Crown Heights, Brooklyn; Ethnic Enclave, Economic Impact of; Ghetto; Pachucos/Pachucas; Police; Underclass; Zoot Suit Riots
Further Readings
Banfield, Edward C. 1968. The Unheavenly City. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Cannon, Lou. 1997. Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD. New York: Times Books. National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. 1968. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. New York: Bantam Books. Piven, Frances Fox and Richard Cloward. 1971. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. New York: Vintage Books. Saltzstein, Alan L. 2003. “Urban Riots and Public Policy.” Pp. 205–236 in Governing America’s Urban Areas. Belmont, CA: Thomson-Wadsworth.
“Us and Them”
“US AND THEM” The phrase “us and them” refers to the tendency of marginalized groups to be viewed as “different from” the dominant group. For the most part, group relationships in society have involved assertions of supremacy, specifically the belief that one group is superior to another group or civilization. Early assimilation theorists and scholars specializing in world civilizations were quick to point out how clashes between cultures typically began with ethnocentric judgments of one group against another group. The notion of viewing outsiders as “others” has historically been used to justify the mistreatment and oppression of one group of people by another. For instance, the notion of Manifest Destiny in the middle 1800s was dependent on the view that the United States, as the “more civilized” nation, had a right to expand westward and assimilate or eliminate other “less civilized” or racially inferior groups in the process. Similarly, slavery and the systematic theft of resources and oppressive treatment of indigenous populations under colonialism were deemed to be justifiable based on the idea that the oppressed group represented a “less civilized” or “subhuman” group of people. While severe forms of overt ethnocentrism and group discrimination such as slavery are no longer an issue in the United States today, the notion of viewing outsiders with suspicion or as inferior remains. Although these suspicions tend to have racial connotations, they also extend to differences based on ethnicity, class, nationalism, culture, and religion. This entry looks at some expressions of the “us versus them” attitude in the United States.
Orientalism The term Orientalism refers to images of the “Orient” or Eastern-based cultures as being completely different from Western thought or ideals. Used to express European imperialistic attitudes and prejudice toward Eastern cultures and people in the 18th and 19th centuries, the term has recently been used to describe the negative view in the West of Arabs and other Middle Easterners. For instance, after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Virginia, anti-Muslim sentiments have spread across the United States, creating an “us versus them” mentality between mostly moderate and
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right-wing Christian American groups (but other religious groups as well) and Muslim Americans. Although many Muslims have renounced groups such as Al Qaeda or the use of violence as a way to solve problems, Muslim Americans have increasingly been the subject of discrimination perpetrated by not only the U.S. government but also the mainstream public. Orientalism represents a bipolar relationship between Western and Eastern societies and hence, an “us versus them” mentality regarding Eastern societies by the Western world. In his 1978 book, Orientalism, Edward Said was critical of Western philosophy and prejudice against Eastern cultures. Said’s central argument was that all discourse and philosophical stances are ideological in nature. As such, any discourse by Westerners creates a biased divide between the West and the East. According to this view, Westerners typically hold the opinion that Eastern cultures and societies are untrustworthy, irrational, and dangerous and have anti-Western mentalities—that people in the East are an inferior group compared with their Western counterparts.
Assimilation and Otherization Assimilation refers to the process by which people or groups voluntarily adopt or are forced to adopt the language and cultural norms and values of another group. In most cases, the minority group is expected to conform to normative practices and ideals associated with the majority group. Those who refuse to assimilate to the larger culture, such as immigrants who choose to retain their cultural practices and language, are typically viewed as “anti-American” or somehow different from “typical Americans.” Whether people are allowed to assimilate into the dominant culture largely depends on the whether they will fit into the political, social, and economic desires of the dominant group, a group that has historically been (and continues to be) made up of European White ethnic groups. In the United States, for example, Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans have lived in the United States much longer than most European American groups. Unfortunately, instead of being viewed as the normative culture (or part of the normative culture), these groups continue to be viewed as “others” who have cultures different from that of “Americans” or “White” culture. One way to examine how groups become or remain “otherized” is to look at the issue of citizenship. For instance, U.S. citizenship was once legally denied to
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“Us and Them”
Chinese immigrants, as well Chinese born in America. Although the law has changed so that Chinese Americans today can be legal citizens, in some circles, they continue to be viewed as outsiders and foreigners because of their race. One recent study exposed how Asian Americans continue to be “otherized,” even those who have lived in the United States for several generations. According to the study, when Asian Americans were asked where they were from, the answer that was most unsatisfactory to Whites was “America.” Unsatisfied that Asians can be “Americans,” many Whites continue the conversation by asking, “No, where are you really from?” Some have argued that Asian Americans are “perpetual foreigners” in the United States. One example of the perpetual foreigner can be illustrated by an incident that occurred during the 1998 Winter Olympics. During the figure-skating competition, Michelle Kwan lost out on the gold medal to Tara Lipinski, both representing the United States. A 1998 MSNBC headline read “American Beats Out Kwan,” suggesting that Kwan, an Asian American, was not as “American” as Lipinski, who is White. Four years later, a similar headline appeared in the Seattle Times, when Kwan lost to Sarah Hughes, also a White U.S. skater, in the 2002 winter Olympics: “Hughes Good as Gold: American Outshines Kwan, Slutskaya, in Skating Surprise.” Both of the above are examples of how minority groups continue to be relegated to “other” status by the dominant group in society.
The Future of Race Relations There have been numerous studies on the relationship between minority group size and racial prejudice and discrimination. As some scholars have suggested, when the dominant group perceives a “racialized threat” from a minority group, even if the threat is unfounded, there is increased prejudice against the minority group. Other research indicates that typically, the dominant group’s prejudice against minority and immigrant groups increases during economic downturns, when the majority may blame them for perceived loss of jobs, economic insecurities, and threat of job competition. During such times, there may be an increase in the “us versus them” mentality. Recent debates indicate that there is no clear consensus on the future of race relations in the United States. According to some scholars, future race relations in the United States will largely remain a Black/White issue. Other scholars, however, argue that the United States is
becoming a multiracial society similar to many South American countries. These researchers conclude that the United States will be further racially stratified, with White groups at the top, groups such as those who identify themselves as multiracial serving as a buffer group in the middle, and darker-skinned groups at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. David G. Embrick See also Americanization; Assimilation; Minority/Majority; Nativism; Orientalism; Privilege; WASP; White Privilege Further Readings
Blalock, Hubert. 1967. Toward a Theory of Minority-Group Relations. New York: Capricorn. Blumer, Herbert. 1958. “Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position.” Pacific Sociological Review 1:3–7. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2003. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the USA. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo and David G. Embrick. 2006. “Black, Honorary White, White: The Future of Race in the United States?” Pp. 33–48 in Mixed Messages: Multiracial Identities in the Color-Blind Era, edited by D. L. Brunsma. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Burr, Jeffrey A., Omer R. Galle, and Mark A. Fossett. 1991. “Racial Occupational Inequality in Southern Metropolitan Areas, 1940–1980: Revisiting the VisibilityDiscrimination Hypothesis.” Social Forces 69:831–850. Ferber, Abby. 1998. White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy. New York: Roman & Littlefield. Fossett, Mark A. and K. J. Kiecolt. 1989. “The Relative Size of Minority Populations and White Racial Attitudes.” Social Science Quarterly 70:820–835. Quillian, Lincoln. 1996. “Group Threat and Regional Change in Attitudes Toward African-Americans.” American Journal of Sociology 102:816–860. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Random House. Schneider, Hermann. 1931. The History of World Civilization from Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages. London: Routledge. Wu, Frank H. 2002. Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. New York: Basic Books. Yancey, George. 2003. Who Is White? Latinos, Asians, and the New Black/Nonblack Divide. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
U.S. CENSUS See CENSUS, U.S.
V VEIL The word veil is often used in association with the dress of Muslim women. A contested term and idea among scholars as well as Muslim and non-Muslim women and men, it is often misunderstood. According to some scholars, the term is misleading, as the strict definition of veil is a covering for the face, whereas in the Muslim context, it is used to describe what Muslim women use to cover their hair. Hijab is another word used by Muslim women and many contemporary scholars in its stead, as its meaning is more flexible. There are a variety of terms across the Muslim world for different types of clothing worn by Muslim women. The abayah refers to the loose cloak, and the niqab refers to the veil that covers the face in many Middle Eastern countries. For this entry, the term hijab is used, along with veil (when referencing scholarship that uses this term), because the meaning is flexible, ranging from the covering of one’s body (including one’s hair) to modest behavior. In an attempt to provide a more complex look at the hijab, this entry looks at the different perspectives among scholars about the hijab and why some women choose to wear it, while others do not. Scholars differ about what the Koran, the Muslim holy book, says regarding appropriate attire for Muslim women. Some feminist scholars state that the Koran does not explicitly command women to cover their hair, but rather, according to Islam, requires them to dress modestly. They also argue that these instructions were meant for the wives of Prophet Muhammad and did not apply to all Muslim women. Other scholars
state that the Koran does mention the headscarf and interpret the relevant verse as evidence that wearing the hijab is mandatory. Not just scholars but also Muslim women differ in their interpretation of the Koran, which, in turn, affects their decision to wear the hijab. Many scholars have examined veiling practices in the Middle East. Different countries have forced women to wear the hijab by threatening and imposing punishment for women who go unveiled, while in other secular countries, wearing the hijab has been banned. Countries such as Iran and Afghanistan underwent a transition from secular societies to Islamic states, and, as a consequence, everyday social interactions have been subject to religious scrutiny. Women in these countries are being forced to dress modestly and cover their hair, perpetuating the stereotype of the hijab as a symbol of oppression for Muslim women. While these countries exemplify the oppressive nature of their treatment of women, there are also instances where women have put on the hijab of their own free will. Scholars have noted that in countries such as Egypt, Turkey, and Morocco, a re-veiling movement has occurred since the mid-1980s. Some Middle Eastern countries have undergone a secular movement, with a tendency toward becoming more Westernized and modern. To protest this trend, some Muslim women have taken up the hijab. Scholars offer several other reasons for the popularity of a re-veiling movement among these women in these countries. Wearing the hijab provides Muslim women with more mobility in the public sphere. Many women are limited in their ability to work or leave the house
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Veil
because of strict control by their husbands, who fear their wives will get inappropriate attention from other men outside of the house. Wearing the hijab has eased the fears of their husbands and helped many women to gain the freedom to be more mobile and active in the public sphere. Scholars also note that Muslim women feel they get more respect when they wear the hijab because it symbolizes a “good” woman who is pious and devoted to her husband and family. Muslim women also claim that the hijab protects them from male sexual harassment because Muslim men who see women in the hijab treat them with respect, as they are perceived as pious and good. Wearing the hijab is also a way for women to be identified as Muslims and part of the Muslim community. Scholars also note that by covering themselves, some women feel they are contributing to improving society and preventing it from disintegrating morally and socially due to modernization. There is much evidence that shows that the Western view of the hijab is a negative one. The media often represent Muslim women who wear the hijab as primitive, backward, and oppressed by showing images that appear antithetical to women in a democratic Western society. These images help to reinforce the colonial perspective that Islam oppresses Muslim women and that Islam is a barbaric religion. The events of September 11, 2001, have had an impact on the increasing negative stereotyping as well. Many scholars have contributed to these stereotypes, as they represent the veil from a limited Western perspective, resulting in a reductive analysis where the veil is seen only as a tool of oppression. Other scholars, however, have attempted to provide a more in-depth analysis of what the hijab means to different Muslim women and how its meaning differs from woman to woman by looking at the importance of the context in which each woman chooses or refuses to wear it. For example, immigrant women who came from countries, such as Iran, where women are forced to wear the hijab are less likely to take up this practice voluntarily in the United States. On the other hand, second- and third-generation Muslim women in the United States have voluntarily taken up the hijab. Many second- and third-generation Muslim women in Canada and the United States have taken up wearing the hijab, even if their parents disapprove. They see it not as a patriarchal tool to oppress women but as a practice that empowers women. Their reasons
for choosing to wear the hijab are similar in many ways to those of women in the Middle East who have been part of the re-veiling movement: It gives them greater mobility in the public sphere, protects them from unwanted sexual advances, commands greater respect, and so on. These women also enjoy feeling that they are a part of a larger community (ummah) of Muslim women because they are easily identified as Muslims. Many of these women also feel they are helping to fight negative stereotypes of Muslim women portrayed in the media, especially after the events of September 11, 2001, by demonstrating the compatibility of being both a Muslim and an American. The debate about the veil or the hijab is ongoing. While some women view it as a tool of domination and oppression by men, others see it as a choice and a religious duty that enables Muslim women freedom and some level of autonomy. There is no doubt that the hijab has been used to force women into submission in countries such as Iran and Afghanistan. However, in other societies, such as the United States and secular Middle Eastern countries, the hijab is taken up willingly by women for a variety of reasons. As scholars continue to debate the role of the hijab, more scholarship is focusing on a variety of perspectives rather than limiting the analysis to just one. Saher Farooq Selod See also Arab Americans; Iranian Americans; Iraqi Americans; Muslim Americans
Further Readings
Bullock, Katherine. 2000. “Challenging Media Representations of the Veil: Contemporary Muslim Women’s Re-veiling Movement.” American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 17(3):22–53. Hoodfar, Homa. 2003. “More than Clothing: Veiling as an Adaptive Strategy.” Pp. 3–40 in The Muslim Veil in North America, edited by S. Sultana, H. Hoodfar, and S. McDonough. Toronto, Canada: Women’s Press. Mernissi, Fatima. 1991. The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Read, Jen’nan Ghazal. 2000. “To Veil or Not to Veil? A Case Study of Identity Negotiation among Muslim Women in Austin, Texas.” Gender and Society 14:395–417.
Victim Discounting
VICTIM DISCOUNTING The term victim discounting refers to marginalization of the negative effects of a victim’s experience, underreporting of victims in crime statistics, and disproportionate administrations of rewards and punishments by social institutions—primarily the law and media. Thus, victim discounting includes efforts to distort the harm of victimization, intentional or unintentional miscalculations of victimization reports, and biases in media coverage and the administration of criminal justice. Victim discounting analyzes the relationship between victims and perpetrators, as well as the relationship between victims and institutions. Victims are discounted for a variety of reasons, including race, sex, and social status. For example, the criminal justice system sometimes regards the homicides of African Americans as less significant than murders of Whites, and juries tend to enact more punitive sanctions for the murder of Whites than for the murder of minorities. Victims may also be discounted because their perpetrators occupy a higher status in society than they do. For example, studies indicate that many people doubt that women, especially mothers, sexually abuse children. As a result, social service and legal agencies sometimes discount the need for children to be protected from female offenders. In victim discounting, a type of victim is characterized as less worthy than others or as responsible for his or her own victimization. For example, the sexual and/or violent assault of prostitutes may be viewed by social and legal services as unworthy of investigation because of the status prostitutes occupy in society. This entry discusses all three major categories of victim discounting.
Blaming the Victim One form of victim discounting tends to “place the burden on” or “blame” the victim. In this sense, it is a form of secondary victimization in which interactions between victims and medical, legal, and social services cause further harm because of the treatment such victims receive from persons in these institutions. Discounting may occur because the magnitude of the incident, as well as its negative outcomes, are poorly understood by medical, legal, and social service staff. Such lack of understanding may be accompanied
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by lack of empathy among service staff. This may lead to a stigmatization of the victims; their psychological trauma is marginalized; and they are ridiculed for experiencing symptoms. Indeed, some responders may view symptoms exhibited by victims as a result of predisposing factors such as so-called attentionseeking behaviors. Denial of services and assistance as a result of preconceived notions about victims may occur. Necessary services are sometimes deemed unwarranted, or victims may be viewed by responders as undeserving of such services. Denial of services also includes a lack of security systems for employees as required by law. After an incident of workplace violence, victims’ pleas for increased security or attempts at legal and financial retribution may be denied. Such denial discounts the importance of the incident and sends a message that the victim’s pain is unimportant to the criminal justice system or to the employer. In cases of homicide and other extremely traumatic events, courts usually provide security or separate areas that isolate the victims and their families from perpetrators. Courts that do not offer these protections discount the traumatic nature of victimization, placing the burden on the victim to navigate a criminal justice system that is insensitive to victims’ needs, threatening, and conducive to secondary victimization.
Victim Discounting in Crime Statistics Crime statistics sometimes fail to reflect the actual incidences of victimization. Victim discounting refers to the numerical discrepancies between reported and actual crimes. A good example is hate crimes, which are underreported for a variety of reasons. First, the discretionary power of the criminal justice system allows police, lawyers, and courts to define acts, or fail to define acts, as hate crimes. Thus, certain individuals are more influential in defining criminal behavior and determining who is considered a victim and what type of victim status applies. Second, the system for reporting hate crimes under national crime statutes is voluntary. Hate crime reporting has political connotations; the term originated as part of a grassroots effort to stem the tide of assaults against homosexuals during the mid- to late 1980s and early 1990s. In September 2000, a study conducted by the U.S. Justice Department revealed major gaps in hate crime reporting. At a local level, it was revealed
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Victim Discounting
that 35% of police departments failed to report on hate crimes, although at least one hate crime had occurred. In addition, 31% of departments submitted reports stating zero hate crimes had occurred, when, in fact, at least one hate crime had occurred, an example of “false zeros.” The phenomenon of “false zeros” occurs for a variety of reasons, ranging from bureaucratic error to intentional omission. Police and other criminal justice officials lack training regarding the identification of hate crimes. For example, the criminal justice ideology generally regards vandalism as symptomatic of behavior that if left unchecked will lead to future criminal behavior of a more severe nature. However, when a hate message directed at an individual or group is spray painted, officers may not conclude the violation is a hate crime symptomatic of a future escalation in hate crimes. Characterizing the harmful act as a lesser offense than a hate crime means the act does not qualify as a hate crime and is not reflected in reports. Furthermore, the Justice Department study found that hate crime data were subject to political influence that leads to the underreporting of hate crimes in which underreporting occurs. Certain victims of crime are often not reflected in the government’s calculation of crime, the Uniform Crime Report. Political crimes—the assassination of government officials and leaders of oppositional movements and other atrocities committed by governments— are not represented in official government data. This is also true of corporate crimes such as manipulating stock reports and misleading investors about a corporation’s financial well-being. As a result of the lack of attention these political and corporate crimes receive, the countless groups and individuals who are victimized are discounted. In addition to their victimization being marginalized, they find few legal resources for seeking retribution or compensation, and the burden of proof overwhelmingly falls upon the victim. Underreporting is a result of confusion as well as coercion. Forms and definitional categories used to report hate crimes, for example, are relatively new, leaving the most conscientious officials unable to accurately report. Other problems occur because of procedural pitfalls, such as a lack of uniformity in defining a hate crime and sloppy data collection methods. For example, police reports frequently lack information about the motivation behind a criminal act, so that information needed to report a hate crime is not available.
Finally, victims may underreport crime because of their perception or the reality that their experiences will be marginalized by social service, medical, and legal personnel. Scholars assert that many marginalized individuals and groups hold negative perceptions about medical, social service, and legal staff that dissuade reporting. For example, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals report that these negative perceptions result in feelings of alienation that deter their motivation to report.
Victim Discounting and Social Institutions Victim discounting also refers to the uneven distribution of rewards and punishments that occurs through the administration of criminal justice or misrepresentations by the media. Just as some victims receive disproportionate legal access and outcomes, they may also receive disproportionate media coverage of a positive or negative nature regarding their victimization or status as victimizers. Due to factors such as race, sex, and class, the victimizations of certain individuals and groups, largely minorities, are not investigated, prioritized, and prosecuted as severely as others. Racial disparities regarding access to processing, representation, and sentencing discount victims’ rights and value as human beings. Murders of African Americans receives less media coverage than those of Caucasians, while, on the other hand, African Americans are often the subject of negative reports that characterize them as violent offenders. This creates a situation in which the lives of African American victims are discounted in value through the misrepresentation of media coverage. Research also reveals disparities between capital punishment convictions along racial lines. For example, a study conducted in 2006 on the death penalty in South Carolina revealed that prosecutors sought death penalty convictions more often if the homicide victim was Caucasian. Findings reveal that prosecutors sought death penalty convictions for the murder of African Americans by African Americans only 1.6% of the time, but 9.6% of the time when a Caucasian was killed by an African American, and 6.7% of the time when a Caucasian was killed by a Caucasian. Such inconsistency devalues the lives of African American victims through the leniency of criminal justice punishments. Additional research shows that in general, women tend to receive capital punishment sentences less often than men. Also, for
Victimization
certain crimes, such as sexual abuse, women are less likely to be viewed as sexual predators, and victims’ claims are likely to be discounted by medical, social service, and legal staff based upon that misconception. For a host of offenses, individuals of high social class receive disproportionate benefits and marginal punishments by the criminal justice system compared with those in lower social classes. In addition, those of high social class are better suited to fight and win legal disputes and, for some who are extremely powerful, even participate in designing law and criminal justice procedures. Although the crimes perpetrated by the rich and wealthy are devastating to society, enforcement and prosecution are lacking and, at times, punishments are inadequate. Victims of these situations often lack the legal, economic, and social power to achieve retribution or receive compensation, devaluing their suffering and discounting their rights as victims. Scott Mathers See also Criminal Processing; Culture of Poverty; Death Penalty; Hate Crimes; Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists; Homicide; Racial Profiling; Scapegoats; Social Inequality; Victimization
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VICTIMIZATION The term victimization refers to the adversity that results from exploitation as well as more generally to the process by which individuals and groups become victims. Victimization generally describes an experience characterized by a variety of conditions detrimental to an individual’s or group’s physical, social, cultural, or psychological well-being. Victimizers may be individuals, groups, social structures, or social institutions. The most common offenses include criminal acts, but victimization may also take the form of group prejudices, such as those commonly exhibited by the Ku Klux Klan against African Americans. Social structures and social institutions may also victimize to the extent that social processes adversely affect a particular group, such as victim discounting of African American homicides by law enforcement and the discrimination African Americans experience in the criminal justice system. This entry describes victims demographically, discusses the social process of victimization, and examines responses to and possible explanations for victimization.
Demographic Characteristics of Victims Further Readings
Berrill, Kevin T. and Gregory M. Herek. 1990. “Primary and Secondary Victimization in Anti-gay Hate Crimes: Official Response and Public Policy.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 5:401–413. Dubber, Markus Dirk. 2002. Victims in the War on Crime: The Use and Abuse of Victims’ Rights. New York: New York University Press. Perry, Barbara. 2001. In the Name of Hate. London: Routledge. Reiman, Jeffrey. 1995. The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Crime, and Criminal Justice. 4th ed. Washington, DC: American University. Robinson, Susan. 1998. “From Victim to Offender: Female Offenders of Child Sexual Abuse.” European Journal on Crime Policy and Research 6(1):59–73. Smelser, Neil J., William Julius Wilson, and Faith Mitchell, eds. 2001. America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences, vol. 2. National Research Council, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. West, Cornel. 1993. Race Matters. New York: Vintage Books.
While victims come from all segments of society, factors such as race, gender, age, and socioeconomic class reveal important patterns regarding victimization. Ethnic and racial minorities are more likely than other groups to be victims of violent acts, especially assault and homicide. For example, scholars report that African American and Latino men are almost six times more likely to be victims of homicide than Whites and are twice as likely to be assaulted as Caucasians. Women are less likely to be victims of violent crime than men, except crimes involving domestic violence or sexual assault. A woman’s lifetime risk of homicide is three to four times lower than a man’s. Adolescents are more likely to be assaulted than young adults and older persons, and most rapes involve victims less than 18 years of age. The socioeconomic status of family is a strong predictor of victimization, with the poor being especially vulnerable to a host of victimizing experiences. Interpreting demographic characteristics can be confusing; however, a general pattern is that age, gender,
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and race are characteristics interrelated with socioeconomic status. Women tend to have less money than men, youth less than older people, and racial minorities less than Caucasians.
The Process of Victimization Victimization is best understood as a process that occurs in two phases: primary and secondary. Primary victimization refers to an initial harmful act, such as domestic violence. Secondary victimization refers to the reverberations or consequences that flow from the initial victimizing event. In cases of domestic violence, individuals may experience secondary victimization navigating the criminal justice system when incompetent or insensitive services are administered. In addition, victims may report mental health problems, such as fear and anxiety, as a result of domestic violence. Individuals and groups experience the effects of secondary victimization when they suffer the physical, social, or psychological ramifications of the initial victimization. The secondary effects of a harmful act are experiences in which victims revisit the initial harm in some form. Secondary victimization is best understood as a social process. At the individual level, the trauma of the initial harmful event often causes long-lasting secondary effects in terms of stress, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Victims may conceal their victimization out of fear of being stigmatized as well as to avoid reliving the victimizing experience. This veiling of victimization can result in serious psychological harm or health problems if medical services are required and not provided. Secondary victimization also includes the experiences of victims who feel legal and social services “put the burden on the victim” or “blame the victim” by treating them as responsible for or complicit in their own victimization. Individuals contend the label of “victim” establishes a conceptual framework by which society views them as weak and vulnerable. This has led many former victims to reconceptualize their experiences and regard themselves as survivors. Victimization affects small groups. The victimization of a single individual within small primary groups such as family or peers can harm the entire group. Families and significant others often absorb some of the impact of stigmatization and grief that results from victimization. In extreme cases, society also stigmatizes a victimizer’s family members, casting blame on those surrounding the perpetrator. When
individuals are stigmatized by the victim label, such as in the case of incest, this may affect the immediate family as well as interpersonal relationships throughout the life course. It is likely that members will become isolated, leading to weak family bonds, causing the family to dissolve altogether or producing long-range family dysfunctions. Victimization also refers to the experiences of large groups victimized by political, economic, or educational systems as a result of their sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, class, or religion. Social structures and social institutions establish conditions of widespread disadvantage for certain groups by disproportionately distributing resources or punishments. For example, slavery victimized African Americans in the United States. The capture and institutional ownership of large numbers of humans is an example of the primary victimization of the group. The long-lasting negative effects of the multiple historical events, such as Jim Crow, police brutality, disproportionate incarceration, and voter disenfranchisement, intensify the trauma of the initial event, creating immense and enduring forms of secondary victimization. This affects countless numbers of individuals and has major consequences for life chances. For large groups, secondary victimization generally refers to experiences and conditions of disadvantage that affect future generations. African Americans and other minority groups currently suffer a host of disadvantages in U.S. society because of slavery. The basis of the institution rested on the premise that some racial groups are inferior and subject to ownership, establishing deep cultural, economic, and social divides that continue to negatively affect all minorities. On a global scale, war between nations and its disastrous consequences have ramifications for future generations. These include economic, social, environmental, and humanitarian crises that burden societies for decades and, in some circumstances, centuries.
Responses, Experiences, and Explanations The most common effects of victimization include stigma, social isolation, and condemnation by the larger society. Psychological symptoms experienced by three-quarters of victims include anxiety, depression, compulsivity, fear, self-blaming, anger, sleeplessness, and shame. Physical symptoms may include a wide variety of conditions, including short- to long-term
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cognitive or motor dysfunction, permanent disability, and even death. The experience of victimization is often characterized by frustration, guilt, and unresolved feelings about the harmful act. Victims often blame themselves for their own victimization and recount the events in an attempt to find flaws in their behavior that may have resulted in or spurred their victimization. Family, legal, and social service agencies are sometimes insensitive or lack the knowledge necessary to help. Physical and mental health conditions can ebb and flow, exacerbating recovery. Feelings of fear and extreme anger may emerge, stressing interpersonal relationships and in extreme cases leading to a high rate of suicide among marginalized groups, such as is found among gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. Victimology is the study of victimization and includes analysis of victim/offender relationships, as well as experiences with criminal justice and social service organizations. Victimology emerged as a branch of criminology that focused primarily on the role victims played in their own victimization. Victimology often studied how personal attributes or behaviors, such as depressive personality, low selfesteem, low self-control, and sensation-seeking behavior, contribute to victimization. This perspective fell out of favor because it was seen as “blaming the victim,” asserting that people engage in behaviors that lead or contribute to their own victimization; for example, people take risks such as taking shortcuts and walking through alleys at night. According to this view, the more an individual engages in such behavior, the more likely he or she is to become a victim. Especially unpopular explanations for victimization include the idea that women who dress in ways deemed by men as provocative encourage aggressive sexual advances by men. The body of research on victimization is diverse and includes the role that dominant social groups play in the victimization of minority groups, as well as how society responds to victims. Societal responses include the behavior of service providers, such as police and counselors, who can be insensitive to groups or individuals, inflicting further harm. Additional studies include analysis of victimization perpetrated by social institutions and structures, marginalizing weaker groups to protect their dominant status. Some research has suggested the spread of capitalism and the expansion of the global economy have resulted in the victimization of large groups,
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nation-states, and small geopolitical regions, for example, areas on the continent of Africa where the history of Western colonialism and current multinational corporate influence has led to the exploitation of natural resources. In addition, ideologies such as international terrorism and the forceful spread of political ideologies can create situations that spur human rights abuses, civil and ethnic violence, and regional conflicts. Scott Mathers See also Criminal Processing; Culture of Poverty; Domestic Violence; Jim Crow; Marginalization; Scapegoats; Social Inequality; Victim Discounting
Further Readings
Bachman, Ronet. 1994. Violence against Women: A National Crime Victimization Survey Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Gottfredson, Michael R. 1981. “On the Etiology of Criminal Victimization.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 72:714–726. Kilpatrick, Dean G., Heidi S. Resnick, Benjamin E. Saunders, Connie L. Best, and J. Epstein. 1994. “Violent Assault and Alcohol Dependence among Women: Results of a Longitudinal Study.” Research Society on Alcoholism, Abstract 80:433. Schafer, Stephen. 1977. Victimology: The Victim and His Criminal. Reston, VA: Reston. Schwartz, Martin and Victoria Pitts. 1995. “Exploring a Feminist Routine Activities Approach to Explaining Sexual Assault.” Justice Quarterly 12:9–31. von Hentig, Hans. 1948. The Criminal and His Victim. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Wyatt, Gail E., Donald Guthrie, and Cindy M. Notgrass. 1992. “Differential Effects of Women’s Child Sexual Abuse and Subsequent Revictimization.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 60:167–173.
VIETNAMESE AMERICANS Vietnamese Americans constitute one of the larger Asian ethnic communities in the United States. This entry briefly discusses Vietnamese American history in the United States, while also providing information about demographics of the community, internal
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China India
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Myanmar Laos
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Cambodia
South China Sea
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community diversity, and Vietnamese American socioeconomic and political advancement over time.
Demographics The fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 resulted in the exodus of thousands of Vietnamese refugees to the United States. In 1975, 125,000 Vietnamese refugees, primarily from South Vietnam, were resettled in the United States. A few thousand Vietnamese were admitted annually into the United States from 1976 to 1978. In 1979, the border war between China and Vietnam stimulated the acceptance of over 44,000 Vietnamese refugees by the United States. In 1980 and 1981 combined, over 180,000 Vietnamese refugees were admitted into the United States. The number dropped to 42,000 in 1982 and, with the exception of 1985, continued to exceed 20,000 each year through the mid-1990s. From 1989 through the mid-1990s, Amerasians (the children of Vietnamese mothers and American servicemen fathers) and former South Vietnamese prisoners of war, under the auspices of special refugee resettlement programs, constituted one-third to one-half of the Vietnamese refugees admitted into the United States. Since the mid-1990s, Vietnamese immigrants sponsored by family members in the United States have replaced refugees as the most significant portion of the arriving Vietnamese population.
The 1990 census enumerated 593,213 persons of Vietnamese origin residing in the United States. Ten years later, in 2000, U.S. census takers counted 1,122,528 Vietnamese, a near doubling of the population. The 2005 American Community Survey estimated the U.S. Vietnamese population at 1,418,334. This compares to an estimated population of Vietnam in 2007 of 85.1 million. While the refugee flow has largely ended since the mid-1990s, the Vietnamese population has continued to expand due to family reunion immigration and natural increase. According to 2000 census data, Vietnamese families were somewhat larger and younger than the United States population as a whole. According to state estimates from the 2005 American Community Survey, the most sizable Vietnamese populations in the United States are in California (539, 150), Texas (159,107), Washington (60,543), Florida (55,555), Massachusetts (48,583), and Virginia (48,035). According to the 2000 census, among U.S. metropolitan areas, the largest Vietnamese communities are found in Los Angeles-Orange CountyRiverside, California; San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, California; Houston-Galveston-Brazoria, Texas; Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; the Washington, D.C., region; and Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton, Washington. Probably the most identifiable Vietnamese neighborhood in the United States is the Westminster area of Orange County, California, also known as “Little Saigon.” It has been estimated that more than 1,000 Vietnamese businesses and institutions surround Bolsa Avenue, the main intersection of Little Saigon. Westminster’s Vietnamese community has attracted the ongoing attention of both the national media and social science scholars as a setting to investigate internal cohesion and divisions within an ethnic community as these emerge in relation to external community relationships with the government in Vietnam and other issues pertaining to social integration into U.S. society. Other U.S. cities with sizable Vietnamese business districts include Houston (Bellaire Avenue); Falls Church, Virginia, near Washington, D.C.; and Chicago (Argyle Street).
Vietnamese Culture Vietnamese American organizations and religious institutions have played a very important role in providing social support, social services, English instruction, U.S. citizenship exam classes, and other services to Vietnamese living in cities with
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Vietnamese Americans. A group of Vietnamese American volunteers is shown distributing the U.S. flag and the flag of the former South Vietnam (sometimes referred to as “heritage flags”) to demonstrators near the entrance of a video store in Little Saigon, Westminster, California, on February 27, 1999. For more than a month after the video store owner, Truong Van Tran, displayed a flag of Vietnam and a portrait of the late communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, thousands of demonstrators from the Vietnamese American community filled the alley in front of the shop, resulting in more than thirty arrests and several violent confrontations. An Orange County Superior Court judge ordered Tran to remove the picture of Ho Chi Minh and the flag from the walls of his store on the grounds that the flag and picture, which caused the protest in the strongly anti-communist community in Westminster, was a public nuisance. The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California joined Tran’s defense, claiming that the court’s order interpreted the meaning of “public nuisance” too broadly, thereby violating Tran’s rights under the First Amendment and the liberty of speech clause of the California state constitution. Such episodes reflect the continuing division within the Vietnamese community regarding life and politics in today’s Vietnam. Source: AFP/Getty Images.
Vietnamese communities across the United States. The National Alliance of Vietnamese American Service Agencies (NAVASA), located in the Washington, D.C., area, links Vietnamese organizations across the United States with information about funding opportunities and other resources, while hosting an annual conference attended by Vietnamese American leaders and service professionals who serve Vietnamese American clients. Ethnic-specific Vietnamese churches and temples are equally important to community life as Vietnamese American mutual assistance associations. In Vietnam, Buddhists traditionally have been the majority, with only 10% of the population or so practicing Christianity (by far, the bulk of these
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Vietnamese being Catholic, with a smaller number of Protestants) and an even smaller group practicing Cao Dai, a syncretic religion indigenous to Vietnam. In the United States, solid data related to Vietnamese American religious affiliation are lacking; however, it has been estimated that up to 30% of Vietnamese Americans may be Catholics, and evangelical Christianity has also seen considerable growth among the Vietnamese American community in the past two decades. The two most sizable Vietnamese American Protestant denominations in terms of membership are probably the Baptist and the Christian Missionary Alliance churches. Multiple Vietnamese Buddhist temples are located in most U.S. cities with significant Vietnamese populations. Cao Dai temples are located in cities with the largest Vietnamese communities, including Westminster, California; Houston; and the Washington, D.C., area. For many Vietnamese American families, churches or temples are primary and very important foci of social interaction with fellow co-ethnics outside of family relationships. Many Vietnamese American churches and temples host Vietnamese cultural events, such as the Vietnamese Tet New Year festival, along with Vietnamese language classes as part of Sunday school for children and youth, assisting the community in passing on the language and cultural traditions to future generations of Vietnamese in the United States.
Political Views and Participation It is important to note that the Vietnamese American community is very diverse and that different social groups within the community may hold quite varying views on social and political issues. As documented by social science research into the Vietnamese American experience, social variables that bring diversity to the Vietnamese community in the United States include, but are not limited to, gender, age, and time of arrival in the United States; Amerasian status, for example, ethnic Chinese as opposed to ethnic Vietnamese identity; veteran/nonveteran status; arrival in the United States as a refugee or, conversely, as a family reunion immigrant or government-sponsored foreign student; religion (the considerable religious diversity in the Vietnamese American community is described above); region of origin in Vietnam (northern, central, or southern); and educational achievement level, occupation, and social class in Vietnam and the United States.
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Over time, Vietnamese Americans have become active in electoral politics in the United States. Vietnamese elected officials have been voted into office in a few electoral districts with large Vietnamese American voting populations. The first Vietnamese American elected to public office in the United States was Tony Lam, who was elected to the Westminster, California, city council in 1992. Several Vietnamese Americans have subsequently been elected to the city council in Westminster. In 2004, Van Tran was elected as a Republican member of the California State Assembly, serving portions of Orange County. Tran was formerly a member of the Garden Grove, California, city council, to which he was elected in 2000. Also in 2004, Hubert Vo was elected as a Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives, representing west Houston and surrounding suburbs.
Socioeconomic Changes Homeownership data from the U.S. Census suggest Vietnamese Americans have experienced considerable advancement since 1990. In 1990, 43.4% of enumerated Vietnamese households across the United States lived in owner-occupied dwellings, while 55.9% resided in rented units. By comparison, in 2000, 54% of U.S. Vietnamese households lived in owner-occupied dwellings, and about 46% resided in rental housing. According to the 2000 census, about two-thirds of all U.S. households resided in owneroccupied units. According to U.S. Census data, Vietnamese Americans as a group have made considerable socioeconomic strides over time. Not surprisingly, Vietnamese Americans experienced fairly high rates of poverty in the late 1970s and 1980s as recent refugee arrivals. However, the 2000 census enumerated a 1999 median household income of $45,085 among Vietnamese households in the United States, compared with $41,994 among all U.S. households. According to census data, 14.2% of Vietnamese families had incomes below the poverty level in 1999, compared with 9.2% of all families in the United States. Looking at industry distribution data, the 2000 U.S. Census enumerated 33.0% of Vietnamese working adults working in manufacturing positions. To a lesser extent, Vietnamese Americans were also concentrated in the sectors of “Miscellaneous Other Services” (12.5%); “Educational, Health, and Social Services” (10.5%); and “Retail Trade” (10.0%). Not so apparent in the broad categories of the national
census data are the Vietnamese American sectoral concentrations (as documented in several academic research articles) in the fish and shrimp industry of the Gulf Coast and the computer and networking businesses of Silicon Valley, in California. The growing Vietnamese entrepreneurial niche of operating and staffing nail salons in California, Texas, and across the United States has been the focus of academic research studies concerned with the implications of contemporary ethnic entrepreneurship for the economic incorporation and advancement of ethnic group members in the wider society. Mark E. Pfeifer See Appendix A; Appendix B See also Asian Americans; “Boat People”; Discrimination; Gangs; Immigration, U.S.; Refugees
Further Readings
Aguilar-San Juan, Karin. 2005. “Staying Vietnamese: Community and Place in Orange County and Boston.” City and Community 4(1):37–65. Freeman, James M. 1995. Changing Identities: Vietnamese Americans 1975–1995. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Hein, Jeremy. 1995. From Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia: A Refugee Experience in the United States. New York: Twayne. Hung, Nguyen Manh and David W. Haines. 1996. “Vietnamese.” Pp. 305–327 in Refugees in America in the 1990s: A Reference Handbook, edited by D. W. Haines. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Zhou, Min and Carl L. Bankston III. 1998. Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Web Sites
Hmong Studies Internet Resource Center: http://www.hmongstudies.org Vietnamese Studies Internet Resource Center: http://www.vietnamese-studies.org
VOTING RIGHTS The right to vote has long been the hallmark of firstclass citizenship. In the early days of the American republic, voting was restricted to White male property owners. Over time, the franchise was extended to
Voting Rights
landless Whites, minority racial and ethnic groups, and women. The Fourteenth Amendment conferred citizenship on “All persons born or naturalized in the United States” but did not explicitly secure the right to vote. That was addressed by the Fifteenth Amendment, which proclaimed, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Despite this constitutional guarantee, people of color faced many barriers to full political participation. Passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, however, extended the franchise to many previously excluded groups. This entry summarizes their struggle.
African Americans Prior to the Civil War, few African Americans enjoyed the right to vote. Throughout the South, slaves and free people of color were denied basic civil and political rights. The situation in the North was not much better. Only five states, all in New England, allowed Blacks to vote on the same basis as Whites. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Congress passed several laws expanding African American rights. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 required the former Confederate states, as a condition of their readmission to the Union, to allow freedmen to vote. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to the former slaves and promised all persons “equal protection of the laws.” The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, did not positively guarantee the right to vote, but forbade discrimination against potential Black voters. The “Enforcement Acts” further strengthened Black voting rights. From 1867 to 1877, African Americans freely participated in southern politics, winning many local and state offices. The withdrawal of federal troops from the South following the contested election of 1876, however, began the erosion of Black voting rights. The Ku Klux Klan used intimidation and violence to drive Black voters from the polls. Gerrymandered election districts minimized Black political power. Despite widespread election fraud, Blacks continued to vote in substantial numbers. The drive to eliminate Black political power reached its zenith in 1890, when the Mississippi constitutional convention adopted residency requirements, literacy standards, tests of “good character,” and disqualification of criminals to disenfranchise African Americans. When the Supreme
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Court ruled that the Mississippi provisions were not “on their face” discriminatory, other states rapidly followed suit. The “grandfather clause” was another ingenious device to prevent Black voting. This law exempted from the literacy requirement men who could vote prior to 1867 and their descendants. Since only White men were eligible before this date, it disqualified Blacks without mentioning race. The poll tax also was used to discourage Black voters. All southern states except Arkansas and Texas required voters to pay a yearly fee of $1 or $2, effectively eliminating most Blacks and many poor Whites as well. By 1910, the combined effect of these measures had largely eliminated African Americans from southern politics. In Mississippi, only 6% of adult Blacks were registered voters; in Alabama, the figure was just 2%. The “White primary” was the final step in the drive to deny Blacks a meaningful voice in elections. Southern Democrats banned Black participation in their primaries. Since winning the primary ensured victory in the general election, the few remaining Black voters were effectively silenced. For much of the 20th century, civil rights advocates battled in court to overturn racist restrictions on Black voting. In 1915, the Supreme Court struck down Oklahoma’s grandfather clause. Although the Court upheld the Texas White primary in 1935, 9 years later, it invalidated this practice in the landmark case of Smith v. Allwright. In 1960, the Court threw out a gerrymandered election map that excluded Black voters from Tuskegee, Alabama. Favorable court decisions were not enough, however; positive legislation was needed. During the 1930s, New Deal liberals repeatedly tried to outlaw the poll tax but never gained enough support to pass a bill. Not until 1962 did lawmakers finally approve the Twenty-fourth Amendment, banning poll taxes in federal elections. Four years later, the Supreme Court ended the poll tax in local elections as well. As the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum during the 1950s, pressure mounted on the White House to take action. The Eisenhower administration introduced voting rights legislation in 1956. Lyndon Johnson, then Senate majority leader, overcame the opposition of southern senators by engineering compromises that greatly weakened the bill. The act did authorize the attorney general to sue officials who interfered with the right to vote. The Kennedy administration began bringing suit against southern registrars.
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Lawyers for the Justice Department faced the Herculean task of documenting discriminatory practices on a county-by-county basis. The pace of change was painfully slow. In Mississippi, organizers for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee risked their lives to help aspiring Black voters. They held classes to educate potential voters about the state’s labyrinthine registration process. Three years of unceasing effort against violent opposition brought numerous arrests and beatings, but only a handful of new voters. The 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project focused national attention on Black disenfranchisement, but the Civil Rights Act passed that year contained only minor voting provisions. Finally, events in Alabama precipitated change. Civil rights workers in Selma were stymied by local officials who blocked every effort to add African American names to the voting rolls. When protesters attempted to march to Montgomery on March 7, 1965, they were brutally attacked by highway patrolmen and sheriff’s deputies. Two weeks later, Martin Luther King, Jr. called on Congress to enact voting rights legislation. President Lyndon Johnson responded by introducing a comprehensive bill that became law in the summer of 1965.
The Voting Rights Act The Voting Rights Act ended decades of discrimination by making the federal government the guarantor of minority voting rights. The act suspended literacy tests, authorized the attorney general to dispatch registrars and poll watchers to the South, and required Justice Department approval of changes in voting districts and election procedures. Three days after Johnson signed the bill, federal registrars arrived in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, where they registered 27,385 new Black voters in 19 days. In the seven states covered by the act, registration jumped from 29.3% of eligible Blacks to 56.63% in just 6 years. The act was renewed for 5 years in 1970. A 7-year extension containing a provision expanding coverage to “language minorities” passed in 1975. The act was extended again in 1982, this time for 35 years. Debate continued for several years over interpretation and implementation of the act. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that electoral arrangements, such as at-large elections and multimember districts, were unconstitutional if they diluted minority voting strength. However, in 1980, a divided Court limited
such protection to cases where intentional discrimination could be proven. Because proof of intent was not possible in most cases, Congress amended the Voting Rights Act to outlaw all schemes that diluted minority voting strength, whether intentional or not. This resulted in the creation of numerous “majority minority” voting districts and a dramatic increase in African American officeholders.
Native Americans Before 1887, Native Americans were not considered citizens of the United States and therefore were not allowed to vote in many localities. Despite the clear language of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court insisted that the measure did not apply to Native Americans. In 1884, the Court ruled that Nebraska acted properly in denying John Elk the right to vote because he did not owe allegiance to the United States. Citizenship was extended on a piecemeal basis to those Native Americans who accepted allotments of land and left their reservations. Finally, in 1924, Congress recognized all Native Americans by passing the Indian Citizenship Act. Even then, Native Americans encountered numerous restrictions. Several states required that they give up their tribal affiliations and demonstrate they had become “civilized” before they could vote. Other states barred Native voters on the grounds that they did not pay taxes. Not until 1948 did Arizona and New Mexico courts strike down state laws prohibiting American Indians from voting. In Utah, reservation Indians could not vote until 1956.
Hispanic Americans The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago ended the Mexican-American War and brought many Mexicans into the United States. These new Americans were guaranteed the rights of citizenship, but literacy tests, property restrictions, poll taxes, and language requirements sometimes were used to prevent them from voting. Discriminatory practices varied greatly from state to state. Mexican Americans were considered “colored” in Texas and were excluded from electoral politics. In New Mexico, however, the state constitution contained a provision that the right to vote could not be restricted “on account of the inability to speak, read, or write the English and Spanish languages.” Puerto Rican voters in New York encountered discrimination
Voting Rights
until the Supreme Court ruled that they could not be disqualified by that state’s English language literacy requirement. Spanish-speaking voters greatly benefited from a 1975 change to the Voting Rights Act that required special assistance, such as bilingual ballots, bilingual voter information, and oral assistance at the polls for “language minorities.” Native Americans and Asian Americans also gained from this amendment.
Asian Americans Americans of Asian descent encountered numerous barriers to voting. The 1790 Naturalization Law denied citizenship to all non-White immigrants. In 1922, the Supreme Court affirmed that Asian immigrants were not eligible for naturalization. Chinese Americans were specifically targeted by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which denied citizenship to immigrants from China and their U.S.-born children. In 1898, however, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark that a child born in the United States to foreign-born parents becomes a citizen at birth. The California constitution of 1879 included an article that provided “no native of China shall ever exercise the privileges of an elector in this State.” The constitutions of Oregon and Idaho contained similar provisions. The California law remained in
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effect until 1926. The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943, and the ban on non-White naturalization was lifted by the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act of 1952. Paul T. Murray See also African Americans; Asian Americans; Chinese Americans; Chinese Exclusion Act; Citizenship; Civil Rights Movement; Gerrymandering; Hispanics; Ku Klux Klan; La Raza Unida Party; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); National Rainbow Coalition; Native Americans; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848); Washington, Harold
Further Readings
Goffman, Bernard and Chandler Davidson, eds. 1992. Controversies in Minority Voting: The Voting Rights Act in Perspective. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Keyssar, Alexander. 2000. The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. New York: Basic Books. Lawson, Steven F. 1976. Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944–1969. New York: Columbia University Press. Wolfley, Jeannette. 1991. “Jim Crow, Indian Style: The Disenfranchisement of Native Americans.” American Indian Law Review 16:167–202.
W WASHINGTON, BOOKER T. (1856–1915) Born into slavery at Hales Ford, Franklin County, near Roanoke, Virginia, on April 5, 1856, Booker Taliaferro Washington became the most influential Black in the United States in the late post–Civil War period. His practical focus on education and economic self-help as a means to later political gains became a paradigm for race relations that was sharply contested by other Black leaders, such as W. E. B. Du Bois. Their two contrasting approaches to Black political inclusion have continued into the present. This entry looks at Washington’s philosophy and achievements along with how his contemporaries and later Black leaders viewed him.
His Life Immediately after the Civil War, young Booker and his family migrated to West Virginia to work in the mines. Desiring an education, Washington walked to the Virginia coast and, in 1872, enrolled in the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, from which he graduated in 1876. The principal, General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, had developed a curriculum of agricultural and industrial training together with inculcation of Christian morality, all amenable to southern Whites. In this period, when Reconstruction was halted and southern White racism was growing and expressing itself violently, Washington accepted this approach, together with its implicit acceptance of Black disenfranchisement and cooperation with Whites. He later
promoted a version of Black self-help, believing that Blacks would be more accepted in Southern communities if they provided the services and products Whites needed. After considering the legal and ministerial professions, Washington settled on education and taught at the Hampton Institute till 1881. That year, he accepted an appointment as the first president of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, in Tuskegee, Alabama. There, he implemented the vocational pedagogy practiced at Hampton and developed his life’s vision of working with Whites (especially Northern philanthropists) and stressing practical as well as professional training for Blacks.
His Vision Washington’s approach, summed up in his speech at the opening of the 1895 Atlanta Cotton States Exposition, brought him public attention in both the South and the North, an honorary degree from Harvard in 1896, and presidential notice. He dined at the White House in 1901, as the guest of President Theodore Roosevelt, and served as a presidential adviser on racial relations to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft. His philosophy of economic self-help led to his establishing the National Negro Business League in 1900 to provide an economic base for further Black advancement. In 1906, he turned down an offer of a cabinet post. He died November 14, 1915, at Tuskegee. Washington was conciliatory and gradualist in his approach to civil rights, believing that Blacks had to gradually earn the respect of Whites and political
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rights, through their own efforts at economic and social advancement. This philosophy, outlined in his Future of the American Negro (1899), was clearly expressed in his 1895 Cotton States Exposition speech. It became known as “the Atlanta compromise,” since he seemed willing to compromise on immediate political or civil rights for Blacks. Other Black intellectuals, primarily W. E. B Du Bois, who had initially endorsed Washington’s famous speech, came to view it as a fatal compromise and accused Washington of downplaying civil rights and of practically accepting the alleged inferiority of Blacks.
Opposition Views Du Bois, like so many after him, did not view Washington’s speech (as did Washington) as a means toward full political participation, but as an acceptance of segregation, inequality, and injustice. He believed these had to be fought by direct political means. So, Du Bois, John Hope, William Monroe Trotter, and others founded the Niagara Movement to combat both racial discrimination and Washington’s Tuskegee patronage political system. When the Niagara Movement was dissolved in 1909, most of its leaders joined with liberal Whites in founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Frank M. Turner, for example, from the NAACP, represented a church as well as a working-class reaction to Washington’s position on what kind of education is appropriate. While church leaders recognized that Washington defended the right of freed slaves to vote and that he fought against Georgia’s legislative maneuvers to deprive African Americans of the right to vote, they nevertheless disagreed on the education issue, arguing that a general liberal arts education should be available to all. The loss of clerical support for Washington is evident from the fact that his strategies were not adopted by the clergy after his death in 1915. The differences between Washington and Du Bois reflected differences not only in practice but also in the philosophy of political activism and leadership. Washington was an accomodationist, operated a political machine centered on himself, and focused on developing Black social organizations based on a strong economic basis. The financing for this was largely provided by wealthy White sympathizers in the North, though the finance was never enough to meet the needs of Black education in the South. White racism and political exclusion were accepted by
Washington, it seems, to show Whites that Blacks were no political threat. Du Bois rejected this paradigm as encouraging White racism and as failing to remove the negative effects of excluding Blacks from the political process. Despite his criticism of Washington, Du Bois recognized his contribution to Black advancement in fostering higher education and developing a Black educated class of professionals.
History’s Assessment Civil rights leaders of the 1960s viewed Washington’s approach as reactionary. However, by the late 1980s, many ex-militants and religious leaders, disillusioned with government-sponsored welfare programs and encouraged by a rising neoconservatism propagated by Glenn Loury, Shelby Steele, and Robert Woodson, began to endorse and support economic and educational strategies for Black advancement similar to Washington’s. Since the Civil Rights Movement and the opening of political offices, as well as the desegregation of southern education, Black advancement has been steady, though roughly 30% remain economically and socially disadvantaged. Washington’s focus on individual and group advancement through education and economic advancement continues to exercise broad appeal. However, the social and political contexts have altered in the last half century, particularly since the protests and legislative actions of the1960s. Now, in a radically more pluralistic situation, with multiple and differing social actors, Black leadership and organizations are broadening their alliances and linkages with other organizations in order to further political, social, and economic gains. Iain S. Maclean See also African Americans; Black Intellectuals; Citizenship; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Further Readings
Cunnigen, Donald, Myrtle Glascoe, and Rutledge Dennis, eds. 2006. The Racial Politics of Booker T. Washington. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Harlan, Louis R. 1972. Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Harlan, Louis R. 1983. Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915. New York: Oxford University Press. Meier, August. 1969. Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915: Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Washington, Booker T. 1901. Up from Slavery. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
WASHINGTON, HAROLD (1922–1987) Harold Washington was mayor of Chicago from 1983 to 1987. Although he was not the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city—preceding him were Carl B. Stokes, in Cleveland, Ohio (1967); Richard Gordon Hatcher, in Gary, Indiana (1968); Thomas J. Bradley, in Los Angeles (1973); and Coleman Young, in Detroit (1973)—he was among the most notable, for his legacy rests on more than his election as Chicago’s first African American mayor. He also led the effort to dismantle the Chicago political machine of Richard J. Daley, the last of the nation’s bigcity political machines, which had for decades relied on the votes of loyal African Americans. More important, perhaps, the innovative public policies of his administration provided a model for other city administrations nationally. This entry examines the political and social context in which Washington was elected and recounts his history of achievements.
The Social and Political Context Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a Haitian trader of African descent, built the first permanent settlement on the Chicago River in 1779; however, more than 200 years would pass before the city elected its first mayor of African heritage. African Americans migrated from the South in two distinct waves, from 1840 to 1900 and from 1910 to 1920, seeking work and economic liberation. The second wave became known as the “Great Migration,” as African Americans from the rural South streamed into major U.S. cities in the North in search of better jobs that could provide both a decent living and a measure of dignity. They believed that the industrialization in the North would offer a fair marketplace for their manual labor skills.
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In Chicago, African Americans were contained, both socially and politically, within a narrow band of land that sociologists Sinclair Drake and Horace Cayton described in their book of the same name as the “Black Metropolis.” This area, geographically labeled the “Black Belt,” was created by segregation and de facto residential restrictions. By the early 1920s, some 300,000 African Americans lived in the area between 31st Street on the north and 63rd Street on the south and between State Street and Cottage Grove Avenue on the west and east. By 1925, the Black Belt had become the recognized center of Black business, politics, and culture. It was the natural spawning ground for Black political movements. The area elected Oscar DePriest as Chicago’s first African American alderman in 1915 and sent him to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1928. As a tenet of Chicago’s Democratic machine politics, racial and ethnic groups maintained areas of influence primarily through small-item decisions about street sign placements, garbage pickup, and other municipal service matters overseen by party leaders in the fifty city wards. Expenditures for schools, neighborhood infrastructure, and parks were tightly controlled by the mayor’s office and unevenly distributed, first, among the White wards and then, generally following much agitation, to the “darker wards.” A desire for increased influence over larger municipal matters, those that were affecting poor African American and Latino areas disproportionately, sparked rumblings of discontent. Some form of discontent characterizes all social and political change before it erupts into a full-fledged movement. In Chicago, Black-White collaborations for civil rights in the 1960s spilled over into a growing dissatisfaction with the machine of Mayor Richard J. Daley and the perception that a slave/plantation mentality was controlling the city’s Black wards. In the broad view, it took nearly 50 years for Black Chicagoans to demonstrate their independence from a “blind allegiance” to the Regular Democratic Organization machine. Contributing to the change was Mayor Daley’s death in 1976, which left the seemingly invincible machine in pieces that two subsequent mayors were unable to reassemble. Black political action in Chicago reached its apex with Washington’s election as mayor in 1983. Washington was not the first Black candidate for mayor. State Senator Richard Newhouse had challenged Daley in the 1975 Democratic primary, and, in 1977,
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Washington waged an unsuccessful bid in the special mayoral election following Daley’s death.
Washington’s Early Career Born April 15, 1922, Harold Washington was a decorated Army veteran of World War II when he returned to school and earned a BA from Roosevelt University and a law degree from Northwestern University. After practicing law in private practice, Washington became an assistant city prosecutor and subsequently an arbitrator for the Illinois Industrial Commission. Ward politics in Chicago is often a family affair. Washington came up the traditional way, through the ranks, first as an organizer of the citywide Young Democrats and, later, like his father before him, becoming a precinct captain in the 3rd Ward Regular Democratic Organization. He spent 15 years in state government, as Illinois State Representative, from 1965 to 1976, and as Illinois state senator, from 1977 to 1980. He went on to win a term as a U.S. Congressman, from 1981 to 1983. He eventually broke ranks with the Regular Democratic Organization over some polarizing racial incidents. Over the years, Mayor Daley had handily defeated his Republican challengers by a margin of some 70%. However, after his death, racial divisions became more prominent, and this was especially true in the 1983 mayoral primary and general election. Using his considerable skills of oratory often laced with humor, Washington won a paper-thin margin of 36% in a racially tinged primary battle against incumbent mayor Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley, the late mayor’s son and Cook County state’s attorney. In the general election that followed, he overcame the defection of many traditional White Democratic Party leaders and voters who voted for Republican contender Bernard Epton. Washington won with 52% of the vote.
The Mayoral Years Against considerable political opposition, Washington led a municipal administration that put forth a jobcentered economic development agenda built on the notion of equity and fairness. This agenda came to be emulated by progressive city governments across the United States. Washington’s struggles in the city council inspired a one-man “Council Wars” skit by Chicago comedian Aaron Freeman, a takeoff on the popular Star Wars
movie, as Washington clashed regularly with a bloc of twenty-nine White aldermen who rejected nearly every proposal the new mayor and his twenty-onemember coalition of African American, Latino, and progressive White council members advanced. The embattled mayor got a break when the courts reversed the redistricting of the city’s ward map, which White Democrats had maneuvered during the previous Byrne administration. A special election in 1986, required by the court decision, resulted in a 25-to-25 City Council split between pro- and anti-Washington forces, giving Washington a deadlock-breaking vote in any tie situation and the opportunity to move his policy agenda forward. Washington had taken note of Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes’s efforts to implement a comprehensive development approach that considered municipal plans and expenditures according to the potential beneficiaries and victims. He urged the commissioners in his administration to partner with community-based organizations, particularly those serving low- and moderate-income residents, in planning and implementing neighborhood development efforts. The result was “Chicago Works Together,” an equity-driven plan to guide Chicago development, which measured and evaluated all development policies according to their potential to produce jobs for the residents of all city neighborhoods. The Washington administration brought this perspective to its negotiations with sports teams, industrial sectors, and firms vying for city loans and incentives. At the same time, it invested in building the local capacity of neighborhood economic development groups, community-labor coalitions, and jobs advocacy coalitions. Mayor Washington suffered a fatal heart attack in his office at City Hall on November 25, 1987, 8 months into his second term. He had defeated his legislative nemesis and old-guard “machine” Democrat Edward Vrdolyak, who was running as an independent, and former city budget manager Donald Haider, the Republican candidate.
The Legacy Harold Washington’s legacy as a progressive mayor resulted from his vision, which elevated the role that municipal administrations could play in the pursuit of social equity and economic empowerment for poor and minority city dwellers. Consequently, many of the programs and development initiatives launched by the
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Washington administration inspired progressive city administrations. Mayors in cities such as Austin, Cleveland, Rochester, Savannah, and Seattle were among those who in the 1990s crafted partnerships among community organizations, business and civic leaders, and city government in an effort to shape an approach to social and economic development that included all strata of the citizenry. Michael I. J. Bennett See also African Americans; Black Metropolis; Black Power; Civil Rights Movement; Community Empowerment; Identity Politics; Operation PUSH; Restrictive Covenants; Voting Rights
Further Readings
Alkalimat, Abdul and Doug Gills. 1989. Harold Washington and the Crisis of Black Power in Chicago. Chicago, IL: Twenty-first Century Books. Clavel, Pierre and Wim Wiewel, eds. 1991. Harold Washington and the Neighborhoods: Progressive City Government in Chicago, 1983–1987. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kleppner, Paul. 1985. Chicago Divided: The Making of a Black Mayor. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University. Koval, John P., Larry Bennett, Michael I. J. Bennett, Fassil Demisse, Roberta Garner, and Kiljoong Kim, eds. 2006. The New Chicago: A Social and Cultural Analysis. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
WASP WASP is an acronym that stands for “White AngloSaxon Protestant.” The term Anglo-Saxon refers to the northern Germanic tribes, the Angles and Saxons, who invaded England in the 5th century. Thus, AngloSaxon in popular usage serves as a synonym for “English.” In its narrowest usage, WASP refers to White Protestants of English ancestry; however, Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Protestant are often used to refer to a more broadly defined core cultural grouping of White Protestants of northern European stock, which includes not only the English but also the Scots, Welsh, Scandinavians, and German Protestants. The use of the acronym WASP was popularized by sociologist and author E. Digby Baltzell, who used it to signify a White Anglo-Protestant upper class in
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America. Although WASP can also be used to refer to Anglo-Protestants outside of the United States, this discussion will focus on WASP influences on U.S. society and culture.
Dominance of WASPs in America As the first group to colonize America in large numbers, the English were able to establish institutional structures and cultural patterns that other ethnic groups have been expected to adapt to. English Protestants have been so closely identified with the dominant American culture that they are not really viewed as an ethnic subpopulation. Historically, WASP has served as a model representing the “typical White American.” The United States was established under the cultural, economic, and political dominance of Anglo Protestants. One of the most important legacies of Anglo influence is the English language. In addition, many of the core values of America come from English Protestantism. Strong beliefs in individualism, hard work, discipline, and self-reliance are a direct reflection of the nation’s Puritan-Calvinist Protestant heritage. Anglo-Protestant cultural values underlie public policies in law, education, and government. The basic tenets of U.S. law and government (e.g., decentralized power, representative assemblies, obligations established by contracts) are a direct reflection of British legal traditions. For most of U.S. history, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants have held major political offices in numbers disproportionate to the size of their population. The colonial assemblies were almost exclusively English in makeup. In early America, non-Protestants were at a disadvantage in attaining positions of political influence. In most of the American colonies, Catholics and Jews were denied the right to vote or hold political office. A majority of the signers of the Constitution were English. Of the forty-two presidents, from George Washington to George W. Bush, about two-thirds had English ancestry, and all the others had northern European backgrounds. WASPs have been similarly overrepresented as Supreme Court justices and members of the president’s cabinet. WASPs have also exerted a disproportionate influence on U.S. economic institutions. The basic models for U.S. industrial capitalism were established by the English. WASPs have exerted substantial influence on the U.S. economy through direct control of the highest executive offices. Numerous studies of business leaders in America have documented the fact that up
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until the mid-20th century, the largest commercial banks, insurance companies, railroads, utilities, and manufacturing corporations were WASP-directed institutions. Recent studies continue to indicate a disproportionate influence of WASPs among economic elites, albeit at reduced levels.
WASP as an Upper Social Class Because of the overrepresentation of WASPs at the highest levels of success in the United States, the acronym WASP has come to be associated with a U.S. upper class. Over the years, a number of social institutions and practices have been associated with the lifestyle of a WASP upper class. These institutions have served to promote a sense of solidarity and consciousness of kind among individuals of high social standing. In terms of religious affiliation, the WASP upper class is primarily identified with three Protestant denominations: Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist/ United Church of Christ. Because of their historical prominence, these three denominations became known as the “Protestant Establishment.” Neighborhood residence has been another factor promoting upper-class association patterns, as wealthy Anglo-Protestants have resided in exclusive residential districts, such as Bryn Mawr, on Philadelphia’s Main Line. Ancestor societies, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, have also served to promote a sense of consciousness of kind among WASPs. Over the years, elite educational institutions have solidified social ties among upper-class WASPs. Private boarding schools have long served to socialize the scions of the upper class and to isolate them from the larger public school population. Exclusive prep schools, such as Groton and St. Paul’s Academy, have served as feeder schools for Ivy League colleges. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton remain the preferred universities for the upper class. Today, admission to these institutions is much more academically competitive than it was before World War II, but a practice of giving admission preferences to legacy students (children of alumni) serves to benefit the children of upper-class WASPs. Today, WASP is often used in a derogatory way to indicate a degree of snobbishness and exclusivity associated with a privileged class. Probably the most persistent example of WASP exclusivity is associated with restrictive membership policies at private social clubs and with the publication of the Social Register, a society blue book. The Social Register continues to
list the descendants of “old-money” WASP families. Although Catholics and a few Blacks are included in the Register, there are very few Jewish families listed. Gentlemanly anti-Semitism has long been a black mark associated with the WASP upper class. A residue of ethnic exclusion persists in admissions policies at private clubs. Many of the nation’s most prestigious social clubs continue to embrace informal blackballing policies by denying membership to Jewish individuals seeking admission.
Decline of the WASP A number of analysts have suggested that WASP dominance of the institutional order has become a thing of the past. The accepted wisdom is that after World War II, the selection of individuals for leadership positions was increasingly based on factors such as motivation and training rather than on ethnicity and social lineage. The G.I. Bill of Rights was important in breaking down ethnic barriers to college opportunity and paving the way for a more diverse group of leaders in political, economic, and cultural spheres. The adoption of competitive admissions policies at elite schools allowed for greater ethnic diversity in college enrollments. Many observers believe that changes in the religious landscape since World War II indicate a decline in the influence of an older Protestant Establishment. Since the late 1960s, mainline Protestant denominations have experienced steady membership declines, while Catholics and evangelical Protestants have enjoyed continued growth. Despite the widespread acceptance of the “decline of the WASP” argument, there is evidence to suggest that WASPs continue to occupy positions of influence in the society’s major hierarchies. Studies of the ethnic and religious backgrounds of prominent Americans indicate that WASPs are well positioned among leaders in business, government, and cultural spheres, despite increasing ethnic diversity among the power elite. A study of the religious backgrounds of individuals listed in Who’s Who in America revealed that as of the 1990s, the three religious groups identified with the Protestant establishment were overrepresented among economic, political, and cultural elites by a considerable margin. For example, Episcopalians were seven times as likely to be listed in Who’s Who as one would expect based on the number of Episcopalians in the general population. Although people in the United States increasingly embrace diversity, there is little to suggest that the
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nation will turn away from its historic Anglo-centric cultural foundation. Many continue to identify with an Anglo cultural core while absorbing other sociocultural modes and patterns. Current debates about making English the official language of the United States reflect the intensity with which many associate the English language as a central element of U.S. national identity. There is even some indication of persisting Anglophilia in the United States. For example, there is a status benefit to claiming Anglo-Protestant ancestry, just as there is a status enhancement effect associated with speaking with a British accent in the United States. Claims that WASPs no longer exert much influence over life in the United States are overstated. While it is true that WASPs no longer dominate U.S. institutions the way they once did, it is unlikely that the nation will depart from the cultural and value orientations solidified during an earlier period of WASP hegemony. Perhaps the best indicator of the continuing influence of a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural foundation is the degree to which Americans still identify with a WASP-engendered value core that privileges individualism and self-reliance, hard work, materialism, and social mobility. The sacrosanct beliefs of U.S. society are still coequal with WASP ideals that have been championed since the time of the nation’s establishment. It is this legacy of a WASP cultural core that is most likely to endure. Ralph E. Pyle See also Anti-Semitism; Assimilation; Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907–1908); Minority/Majority; Underclass; United Kingdom, Immigrants and Their Descendants in the United States; White Privilege
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WATER RIGHTS Water is perhaps the most vital natural resource for community survival. Not surprisingly, competition over this essential resource is particularly intense in places such as the western United States, where the climate is arid and fresh water is especially scarce. This situation is complicated by federal policies favoring population growth and agricultural production, as well as the patchwork of conflicting legal rights involving American Indian tribes, family farmers, large agribusinesses, and burgeoning metropolises in the West. Unfortunately, rural communities of color have historically found themselves without a voice in the water wars. While this is certainly true for rural Mexican American farmers, who have continually struggled to maintain their lands and their traditional irrigation practices against powerful industrial and urban interests, the struggle over Native American water rights has resulted in far more sweeping consequences for the entire region. Because 55% of American Indian reservations and 75% of the reservation population live in the most arid regions of the western United States, access to water is a particularly crucial tribal concern. While obviously essential to community survival, access to water also has ramifications for political self-determination and economic development of tribes, issues of health and safety on reservations, and the preservation of cultural resources and traditions. This entry outlines the history of the Native American struggle for water, focusing particularly on the evolving recognition of Native water rights that has emerged out of a century of litigation involving tribes, the federal government, and the western states.
Further Readings
Baltzell, E. Digby. 1964. The Protestant Establishment. New York: Random House. Christopher, Robert. 1989. Crashing the Gates. New York: Simon & Schuster. Davidson, James D., Ralph E. Pyle, and David V. Reyes. 1995. “Persistence and Change in the Protestant Establishment, 1930–1992.” Social Forces 74:157–175. Jones, Katharine W. 2001. Accent on Privilege. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Pyle, Ralph E. 1996. Persistence and Change in the Protestant Establishment. Westport, CT: Praeger. Zweigenhaft, Richard L. and G. William Domhoff. 2006. Diversity in the Power Elite. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Competition Over Water While ceding vast quantities of land and natural resources to the United States, American Indian tribes agreed to live peacefully on smaller reservations of land and, in many cases, take up agrarian lifestyles. For its part of the bargain, the United States, through the secretary of the interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, agreed to protect tribal self-government by, among other things, providing services to tribes and representing them in legal actions to defend Native American rights. The relationship between the federal government and the tribes, known as the “trust relationship,” imparts a high duty upon the government to
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deal fairly with Native Americans and ensure that important tribal resources are protected. In 1902, the limits of the government’s obligations to tribes were tested with the passage of the Reclamation Act, which authorized the secretary of the interior to construct massive water projects to benefit non-Native settler communities in the arid West. Many of the new dams were built upstream from Indian reservations and caused catastrophic damage to tribal resources. In many cases, crucial spawning grounds became inaccessible to traditionally hunted fish species, and tribal fisheries dried up. In others, hunting and fishing spots, sacred sites, and agricultural lands were inundated. In the very worst circumstances, entire villages were flooded. The situation on Pyramid Lake Reservation in Nevada provides a particularly relevant example of the disastrous impacts of federal reclamation projects on tribal resources. From time immemorial, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe had depended on two species of fish from Pyramid Lake for their subsistence: Lahontan cutthroat trout and cui-ui, a species unique to the lake. After construction of Derby Dam upstream from the lake on the Truckee River in 1905, water levels in Pyramid Lake dropped precipitously. The loss of vital spawning runs for the lake’s fish ultimately resulted in the extinction of the Lahontan cutthroat trout in the 1940s and the listing of cui-ui as an endangered species in 1967. In addition, low water levels and increased erosion caused high salinity in Pyramid Lake, making general use of the lake hazardous to the tribe. The situation sparked decades of litigation and negotiations between the tribe, the federal government, and non-Native water users and has only recently been resolved through a series of settlements. The most notable results of these settlements have been stabilized lake levels, the provision of sufficient instream flows to maintain tribal fisheries, and the creation of an economic development fund to meet future needs of the Pyramid Lake Reservation.
Reserved Indian Water Rights To resolve the potentially devastating situation caused by dwindling water supplies, tribes turned to the courts to determine the extent of tribal water rights. In 1908, in Winters v. United States, a landmark case involving tribes on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana and upstream water users on the Milk River, the Supreme Court ruled that American Indian tribes have the right to use sufficient water to fulfill the purposes of their reservations. Notably, these water rights
were given a priority date of 1888, the year the reservation was created, which preceded the dates that non-Native settlers perfected their water rights under state law. Furthermore, unlike state perfected water rights, tribal rights could not be lost through nonuse. The Supreme Court ultimately found that because the federal government and the tribes could not have intended reservation lands to remain useless, water rights must have been implicitly reserved when the reservation was created. The attachment of water rights to the land was consistent with the federal government’s policy of encouraging Native Americans to use their reservations for agrarian purposes and thereby assimilating them into mainstream ways of life. Native American water rights have later been interpreted as including future as well as present reservation needs and providing minimum instream flows for tribal fisheries where such activities were considered upon creation of the reservation. Significant doubt remains as to whether tribes can use their water rights for secondary purposes of their reservations or future uses that were not contemplated when the reservations were created. Judicial confirmation of Native Americans reserved water rights was an enormous victory for tribes. Unfortunately, this was often only half of the battle in resolving the conflict between Native Americans and non-Native water users. To clarify the impact of Native water rights on the allocation of western water resources, tribes and states sought official quantification of Native American reserved rights through the courts. Under the McCarran Amendment of 1952, states were authorized to initiate broad-scale water rights adjudications in state courts and join the United States as representatives of interested Native American tribes in the proceedings. The state courts were charged with the considerable tasks of determining the existence of Native Americans’ water rights and also allocating to the tribes enough water to irrigate “all practicably irrigable acreage” on the reservations. Quantification was a lengthy and complicated process, involving the application of soil science, hydrology, engineering, and economics to determine exactly how much of the reservations could feasibly be irrigated. The economic component of quantification is the most controversial because it fails to consider the broader community values of water, including spiritual and aesthetic values, which are often essential to tribal water users. Because the adjudication process is costly and can last decades, states, tribes, and the federal government have increasingly engaged in negotiations to
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proportionally allocate water in river systems. These negotiations, while still lengthy and expensive, tend to be more flexible and contextually relevant and commonly provide the benefit of engendering greater cooperation between tribes and states. In these settings, tribes have been able to exchange a portion of their water rights for concessions that are not generally available through litigation. For example, a number of water rights settlements have included land transfers, funding for tribal fisheries, cultural preservation and other essential services, and the negotiated right for tribes to use their water in ways not contemplated when their reservations were originally established.
Regulation of Water Quality on Reservations American Indian tribes have an interest not only in securing water for on-reservation use but also in ensuring that the water running through their reservations is of a certain quality. In 1987, recognizing tribes’ sovereign right to protect the health and safety of tribal members, the secretary of the interior amended the Clean Water Act to enable tribes to implement their own water quality standards on their reservations. Since that time, a growing number of tribes have enacted ordinances for the purpose of regulating on-reservation water use and quality. Recent case law suggests that tribes can enforce their water quality standards against upstream users, including large corporate and urban polluters. The law is less clear about whether tribes can regulate the water use of non-Natives who live on the reservation; however, there is support for tribal jurisdiction over such activities when they threaten the health or welfare of the tribe. The ability of tribes to access and control water resources is vital to their community survival and is an expression of their political empowerment and autonomy. To Native American tribes, the struggle over water is a matter of environmental justice. Their successes in the face of institutional alienation and political oppression are linked to the persistent efforts of tribes and their allies to secure official recognition of tribal sovereignty and respect for the continued existence of Native American tribes as socially thriving, culturally and politically autonomous communities. Over the past century, Native American tribes have made significant strides in protecting their vital water resources from appropriation and contamination at the hands of non-Native developers. In the process, tribes have become legitimate
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players in the contested arena of western U.S. water politics and, as a result, are now in a more powerful position than they were a century ago to ensure that tribal water rights are protected and remain within tribal control. Julia Miller Cantzler See also Bureau of Indian Affairs; Environmental Justice; Native Americans; Native Americans, Environment and; Pan-Indianism; Red Power
Further Readings
Burton, Lloyd. 1999. American Indian Water Rights and the Limits of the Law. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Espeland, Wendy Nelson. 1998. The Struggle for Water: Politics, Rationality, and Identity in the American Southwest. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. McCool, Daniel C. 2002. Native Waters: Contemporary Indian Water Settlements and the Second Treaty Era. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Miller, Char. 2001. Fluid Arrangements: Five Centuries of Western Water Conflict. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
WEALTH DISTRIBUTION Wealth distribution refers to the wealth owned by individuals in a society and any inconsistencies based on groupings such as race, ethnicity, age, and gender. Wealth is defined as the total value of assets owned minus any debt. Assets include real estate and business investments such as stocks, bonds, and other forms of savings. Data indicate that more non-White households have slowly increased their wealth since the 1980s, although not at the same level as many White households. While improvements have been made, inequality in the distribution of wealth still remains along racial lines. Asian Americans have been the most consistent non-White group to break into the top 1%, but the percentage of Asian Americans reported in the 2000 U.S. Census is only 3.6%. The majority of people who have large amounts of wealth are White, while the majority of those who have little or no wealth tend to be non-White, in particular Blacks and Hispanics. The result is an unequal distribution of money and resources that greatly hinders any potential upward class mobility for these groups. This entry begins by clarifying the important distinction between wealth and income and then looks at
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patterns of wealth distribution as well as trends and explanations for the disparities.
Wealth Versus Income Wealth is also known as net worth. This is different from income, which includes wages and benefits from employment, pensions, interest and dividends, and transfer payments. While wealth and income constitute different types of money, both represent unique factors that ultimately contribute to accessing resources in the United States. The differences between wealth and income have not always been acknowledged in the social sciences. This has led to serious misunderstandings about wealth distribution in the United States, especially with regard to the wealth inequalities that exist between Whites and racial and ethnic minorities. While many researchers ask questions regarding income on survey questionnaires, very few ask questions of wealth and ownership. Data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) in the 1980s suggest that the correlation between wealth and income is very low, with any small correlation between the two due to asset income. There are a number of reasons that might explain why wealth and income are not correlated. First, very wealthy families tend to have lower incomes and make more on the returns from their asset income. Conversely, less wealthy households may have more debt and fewer assets regardless of their income. In other words, income cannot significantly predict financial stability or wealth because it does not take household debt or assets into account. In addition, data illustrate that wealth is more unequally distributed than income. SCF data from 2000 indicate that Whites’ income earnings were approximately twice the earnings received by Blacks or Hispanics. However, these ratios are more equal than the ratios of wealth among these groups. Hence, income alone does not account for the significant wealth discrepancies among different racial groups. Non-White groups tend to have disproportionately low levels of wealth compared with Whites.
Data on Wealth Distribution Estimates of wealth distribution and ownership in the United States come from survey data, estate tax information, and government aggregate estimates of household wealth ownership. In 1963, the Census Bureau released its first findings from the Survey of
Financial Characteristics of Consumers (SFCC). This survey is considered the first to have measured the amount and composition of consumer wealth and was the first to point out discrepancies in wealth among families in the United States. For instance, findings suggested that the overwhelming majority of families with high wealth gained most of it from investments, liquid assets, and other tangible assets, such as home and automobile ownership. However, one of the problems with this survey was that it failed to account for any of the differences in the race or ethnicity of the respondents. Thus, there is no information on the distribution of wealth among different racial groups. A fairly large number of surveys with questions on wealth were conducted in the 1980s. Among the more notable were the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), and the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). In 1983, the SCF was the first survey that measured wealth by race/ethnicity. This survey is still conducted every 3 years. According to 2001 SCF data, the top 1% of the population owned 33.4% of the total net worth and 39.7% of the financial wealth in the United States. The next 19% of the population owned 51% of the total net worth and 51.5% of the financial wealth. Conversely, the bottom 80% of the population owned only 15.5% of the total net worth and 8.8% of the financial wealth. The SIPP data collected in 2000 broke down wealth distribution by race and ethnicity. The mean net worth was $221,000 for non-Hispanic Whites, $178,200 for Asians, $75,900 for Hispanics, and $50,900 for Blacks. The median net worth was $101,700 for non-Hispanic Whites, $73,600 for Asians, $10,400 for Hispanics, and $7,100 for Blacks. These and other findings suggest that an unequal distribution of wealth exists in the United States, with most of the wealth highly concentrated among the top 20% of the population. Wealth is also concentrated among nonHispanic Whites. Because wealth tends to produce both asset income (i.e., income made from wealth) and large inheritances for the children of these households, there is a tendency for the majority of wealth to be concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of people. In other words, wealth in the United States has continued to stay in the hands of the mostly White, top 1% of the population. The result is the disadvantaged position of many African Americans and other nonWhites today, which reflects the transmission of economic disadvantages across numerous generations.
Wealth Distribution
Race and Wealth Data on race and wealth before the 1980s do not exist because prior surveys on wealth did not ask respondents to identify their race. In the mid-1980s, it was estimated that Blacks had a disproportionate difference in ownership of stocks, bonds, business ownership, and real estate compared with Whites. The assets owned by Blacks were mostly cash, homes, and life insurance. Thus, the type of wealth owned by Blacks during this time was neither the type to produce significant asset income nor the type most suitable in passing down as inheritance. The PSID has measured households under the Asset Poverty Line (APL) since 1984. The APL is determined by how much in assets a household needs in order to survive at the official U.S. government poverty line for that family size for 3 months. In 1984, the number of households below the APL was 41%, and it dropped to 36% in 1999. The number of White households below the poverty line in 1984 was 25%, jumped to 33% in 1994, and went back down to 25% in 1999. The number of Black households below the APL in 1984 was 67% and has slowly declined over the years, so that in 1999, 54% of Black households continued to be below the APL. This indicates that, in general, more Black families had and continue to have very few assets compared with their White counterparts. Because sample sizes of Asian American and Native American groups are relatively small in surveys on wealth, they are typically left out of the analysis. However, SCF data show a slight increase in “Asians and others” among the top 1% of wealth owners between 1983 and 1995. “Asians and others” made up 1.5% of the top 1% in 1983, 3.3% of the top 1% in 1989, and 4% of the top 1% in 1995. This suggests that while the number of Whites in the top 1% has decreased slightly, they are mostly being replaced by Asian Americans and “others.” The sample numbers of African Americans among the top 1% were 0.5% in 1983, 0.7% in 1989, and 1% in 1995. For Hispanics, the sample numbers of those in the top 1% were 0% in 1983, 1% in 1989, and 0% in 1995.
Why Does Wealth Inequality Exist? There are key factors that have contributed to the persistence of wealth inequality along racial lines, both structural and individual. Assuming that asset ownership is an important aspect of wealth, more Whites have historically had access to those assets that bring the most
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economic return. With this financial advantage comes access to such privileges as better educational opportunities, resource-rich communities, and a favorable housing market. Those benefits contribute to sustained financial security with good employment opportunities and homeownership, both of which are also family assets. Assets produce surplus money that can be used to invest in more assets and grow one’s wealth. Most non-White families do not have access to such assets and resources. These families have little access to educational opportunities or adequate housing close to community resources. As a result, Blacks and other minorities will not have the same social, economic, educational, and even political opportunities as do most Whites. Non-Whites who are living in less affluent communities, in part based on racist practices, will not receive the same returns on their assets as their White counterparts. As an asset, homeownership is especially important because it can serve as a feasible inheritance for the family’s children. It can be sold or rented to create asset income or used as a permanent residence that does not require rent or mortgage payments. Most non-Whites are unable to pass on significant wealth to the next generation. As a result, these families are unable to accumulate large savings or outside investments and will not be able to do so unless significant wealth is acquired. Acquiring wealth is difficult when the structural resources are not available or are made inaccessible to one or more groups in society, such as they have been for Blacks and many other minority groups. Bhoomi Thakore and David G. Embrick See also Black Bourgeoisie; Census, U.S.; Cultural Capital; Digital Divide; Homelessness; Hourglass Economy; Immigration, Economic Impact of; Informal Economy; Labor Unions; Social Inequality; Social Mobility; Split Labor Market; Underclass
Further Readings
Conley, Dalton. 1999. Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hacker, Andrew. 1998. Money: Who Has How Much and Why. New York: Simon & Schuster. Keister, Lisa. 2000. Wealth in America. New York: Cambridge University Press. Keister, Lisa and Stephanie Moller. 2000. “Wealth Inequality in the United States.” Annual Review of Sociology 26:63–81.
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Oliver, Melvin L. and Thomas Shapiro. 1995. Black Wealth/White Wealth. New York: Routledge. Ong, Paul and R. Varisa Patraporn. 2006. “Asian Americans and Wealth: The Role of Housing and Non-housing Assets.” Presented at the Closing the Wealth Gap Research Forum, September 19, Phoenix, AZ. Saenz, Rogelio. 2004. Latinos and the Changing Face of America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Saenz, Rogelio, Karen M. Douglas, David G. Embrick, and Gideon Sjoberg. 2007. “Pathways to Downward Mobility: The Impact of Schools, Welfare, and Prisons on People of Color.” Pp. 373–410 in Handbook of the Sociology of Racial and Ethnic Relations, edited by H. Vera and Joe R. Feagin. New York: Kluwer/Springer. Shapiro, Thomas. 2004. The Hidden Cost of Being AfricanAmerican: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press. U.S. Census Bureau. 1963. Survey of Characteristics of Consumers. Washington, DC: Author. Wolff, Edward N. 2004. “Changes in Household Wealth in the 1980s and 1990s in the U.S.” Working Paper No. 407, Annandale-on-Hudson: Levy Economics Institute and New York University.
“WELFARE QUEEN” “Welfare queen” came to be used beginning in the mid-1970s to epitomize single urban Black women on welfare and, in many people’s minds, African American women in general. The term emerged from a political campaign that used one apparent instance of welfare abuse to criticize all of welfare and many of its lawful recipients. The use of “welfare queen” probably developed out of the case of Linda Taylor (as detailed below). The exact derivation, though, has been the subject of some dispute. This entry looks at the history of the term and its political and social significance.
Background The U.S. welfare program began as a set of statefunded widows’ and mothers’ pensions. Beginning in 1911 and by the end of 1921, forty states adopted mothers’ pension legislation. Pensions were seen as a kind of salary for public service, much like those given to officers and teachers, so that mothers could fulfill their national duty by raising the nation’s children. The pensions allowed women and children
to avoid entering the workplace and ensured that children could remain in the home after the death of the father, who was seen as the primary breadwinner. Solutions to the problem of spousal death that were not considered were those that might help women effectively become mothers and workers. Critics have argued that the policy constructed mothers as eternal dependents, who, after they lost their husbands, effectively “married” the state. State officials, however, did not accept this union unconditionally, and they worked to make sure that the homes were “suitable” and that mothers were doing their jobs in raising the nation’s children. Many state laws included morality clauses, which restricted benefits to widows alone, as opposed to single mothers, and regulated the sexual behavior of recipients. There is also evidence that historically, the dominant conception of motherhood as public service had much more to do with a state of being than with the tasks a woman performed. Early welfare legislation came at a time of intense nationalism and xenophobic sentiment in the United States, and the policies reflected that. So intense were nationalist sentiments that benefits could be terminated for something as “egregious” as not speaking English in the home. Given the xenophobia of the age and U.S. racial history, it is ironic, though not surprising, that a group of women existed who had been represented in the country since its founding who were by and large denied benefits. Before World War II, 86% of Black applications for welfare were denied. Often, the intentions of the policy conflicted with officials’, and the wider public’s, beliefs about Black womanhood. The pensions were created so that women would not have to become workers to support their families, yet some officials saw Black women as workers who should be able to do without benefits. Some of these officials entrusted to help the general public actually believed that any Black woman who requested benefits did so out of laziness. Black women were also disadvantaged by longstanding beliefs, formed in the published accounts of early travelers to Africa and solidified during slavery, about Black female hypersexuality and hyperfertility. These beliefs only strengthened some aid workers in their resolve to deny benefits to Black women. Such public assistance workers and policymakers thought that benefits would encourage a morally suspect class of women to “have more children.” However, in the 1950s and 1960s, Blacks were able to secure access to benefits as they won access to U.S. civil rights.
“Welfare Queen”
Yet even as Blacks were gaining access to benefits, policy shifts affected public perceptions of welfare. The institution of Social Security effectively served to change the “color” of welfare in public opinion. After Social Security, and in particular the program’s survivor benefits for widows, welfare came to be seen as a program for undeserving single mothers in general and African American women in particular, as most widows were covered under the Social Security program and no longer had to rely on welfare. Detractors conveniently ignored the fact that through several categorical exclusions, like the denial of benefits to agricultural and domestic workers, the majority of Blacks were ineligible for Social Security benefits. For many, welfare became firmly associated with Black women.
The Emergence of the “Welfare Queen” Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan introduced the term “welfare queen” into the public lexicon during his 1976 campaign, referring to one “welfare queen” in speech after speech. Though he never mentioned her by name, Reagan’s claims about welfare recipients closely matched reports of Chicago resident Linda Taylor’s alleged misdeeds as chronicled by the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune, after detailing her arrest on fraud charges in 1974, reported that Taylor owned three cars, including a Chevrolet, a Lincoln, and—the car that Reagan most often mentioned in his speeches—a Cadillac limousine. The Tribune went on to report that she had twenty-seven different names, thirty-one different addresses, twenty-five different telephone numbers, three Social Security cards, stocks and bonds, and several dead husbands whose benefits she collected. In 1976, the New York Times reported that Reagan referred to the woman at nearly every stop in the Republican New Hampshire Primary. Reagan repeated, at venue after venue, “There is a woman in Chicago . . .” and then went on to detail the most outrageous of Taylor’s misdeeds. Reports of Taylor’s crimes, however, were greatly exaggerated. In the end, the state of Illinois charged Taylor with having four, not eighty, aliases. They charged her with stealing $8,000, not $150,000, from public programs. But Reagan’s attempt to call attention to the welfare program was successful. One direct impact was that Reagan’s claim led to several stories on alleged “welfare cheats” around the country, and
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agencies vowed to root out these “ne’er-do-wells” who stole from hardworking taxpayers. The politicization of the issue had an impact on more than the women who were accused of defrauding the system. A survey of 149 articles about welfare from the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post showed that “welfare queen” was most often associated with women who didn’t work, were teen mothers, were overly fertile, and were unmarried. Both constant use of the term by politicians and the enduring image of the “welfare queen” in media accounts served to convince many Americans that the majority of welfare recipients were young, inner-city single mothers who “stay on the dole.” Furthermore, these women were stigmatized as receiving generous handouts and therefore enabled, and perhaps emboldened, to produce children who would repeat the cycle. In reality, the typical recipients during the intense welfare reform debates of the early 1990s were rural White women. The majority of recipients received benefits for 2 years or less, and less than 20% of welfare recipients collected the benefit for more than 5 years. The antiwelfare tone, nevertheless, created hostility against poor Black women and paved the way for some of the more punitive policy measures that were a part of the 1996 welfare reform legislation. Single mothers and Black women proved an easy target for reformers pressing the case for “small government,” and women often paid the price. Many policymakers were eager to break a “cycle of dependency” by making drastic changes in welfare policy. In 1996, President Clinton signed a law that would “end welfare as we know it.” The changes limited the time a recipient could stay on welfare and instituted a policy known as workfare, which required states to push recipients into paid employment. It should be noted that workfare and “family caps” represent a significant departure from the maternalist policies of early-20th-century welfare activists. The history of welfare, welfare reform, and the “welfare queen” are powerful arguments that motherhood continues to be a racialized and classbased construct in U.S. society. Shatema A. Threadcraft See also African Americans; Culture of Poverty; Homelessness; Social Work; Stereotypes; Underclass; Welfare Reform; Xenophobia
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Further Readings
Bliss, George. 1974. “Panel Probes Welfare Cheating Charges.” Chicago Tribune, September 30. Bliss, George. 1974. “‘Welfare Queen’ Jailed in Tucson.” Chicago Tribune, October 12. Bliss, George. 1974. “‘Welfare Queen’s’ Bond Cut.” Chicago Tribune, October 25. Bliss, George. 1974. “14 Welfare Aliases Net ‘Queen’ $154,000.” Chicago Tribune, November 3. Hancock, Angie-Marie. 2004. The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen. New York: New York University. New York Times. “Welfare and Pension Swindle Laid to Woman of Many Aliases,” December 15, 1974, p. 58; “‘Welfare Queen’ Becomes Issue in Reagan Campaign,” February 15, 1976, p. 51; “‘Welfare Queen’ Loses Her Cadillac Limousine,” February 29, 1976, p. 42. Roberts, Dorothy. 1997. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Pantheon Books. Skocpol, Theda. 1992. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
WELFARE REFORM Welfare is generally the term used to describe the U.S. system of cash and noncash assistance provided to poor families primarily by federal and state governments. Welfare, while based on federal policy and funds, is distributed by each state, and the amount of aid as well as regulations regarding eligibility tend to vary. Welfare reform is the term used to describe a major shift in the ways in which the federal government provides basic cash and noncash assistance to people in need, for example, the shift that culminated in the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996. That act was renewed by the U.S. Congress in 2006. It is misleading to assume that the changes in welfare that have occurred since 1996 were based solely on the legislation. Reform was a long time in the making and still continues to be a work in progress. Another constant one must consider when looking at welfare reform is its differential impact on people of color; even under the guise of reform, there remains discrimination against the non-White poor in the United States. During the era of welfare reform, African Americans replaced Whites as the largest
welfare recipient group. This entry looks at the history of welfare reform and current policy.
U.S. Welfare Before 1996 Welfare reform has many roots. Historically, the United States has been reticent to fully establish an adequate or permanent social welfare safety net for all of its citizens. Welfare as a social or policy issue is burdened by notions of value and hierarchy: Those seen as needing it most (women, children, ethnic minorities) are often the least valued by the power elite in U.S. society. Furthermore, publicly provided welfare has always been connected to the needs of the U.S. economy; in times of economic booms, welfare rolls tend to contract. Toward the close the of 20th century, U.S. welfare was a cobbled-together system of minimal supports, which included the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Food Stamps, Medicaid, and other assorted programs that were usually administered by each state and varied significantly by region. In general, welfare, though minimally funded, was virtually guaranteed to those who could prove their eligibility; this is generally called entitlement programming. Access to the major U.S. social welfare programs was expanded significantly during the 1960s and 1970s to include more women and people of color, especially in southern regions where some states had simply not allowed African Americans to receive aid. The public generally perceived that spending on social welfare was increasingly straining the sluggish economy and contributing to U.S. industrial decline. Attitudes of patriarchy and racism no doubt contributed in part to public calls for ending or drastically altering government support for the poor. In 1980, with the election of Ronald Reagan to the U.S. presidency, the central tenets of the federal policy began to change under the influence of political conservatism. One of the pivotal aims of the Reagan administration was to reduce the size and role of the federal government, especially in social service spending, and to redistribute federal authority to state and local governments; this has been termed devolution.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 William “Bill” Jefferson Clinton became the nation’s 42nd president in 1993. In his first State of the Union
Welfare Reform
address, he promised to “end welfare as we know it.” As a former governor (of Arkansas), President Clinton had experienced state-level management of federal welfare programming and set about changing policy and spending at the federal level, ostensibly with an eye toward making social welfare more accountable to states and individual self-sufficiency. At the time of Clinton’s first presidential election, there was increased conservative political activism, which was expressed most notably in the Republican Party’s “Contract with America” in 1994, a manifesto outlining the party’s efforts to continue the reductionism, first begun during the Reagan presidency, as well as its opposition to most federal social welfare programming. After two vetoes and countless stalemates, the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was signed into law. Among the central tenets of the act were the dissolution of AFDC and replacement with a block grant program called “Temporary Assistance to Needy Families” (TANF); linking eligibility for assistance with recipient work or search for work activities; a lifetime limit on some benefits; and increased flexibility (and rewards) for states in designing benefit programs for their citizens, including the ability to funnel welfare funds and programming through private, nonprofit, philanthropic entities such as churches. It is important to note that welfare reform was undertaken during a time of national economic prosperity. The ending of entitlement programming, specifically AFDC, represents a significant policy and value shift for the nation. In turning to block grant funding, the federal government provides states with funds but fewer dictates as to how those funds are to be dispersed to those needing assistance. In the past, states were compelled to make programming available to all those who were eligible. Post-PRWORA, states were given more authority to decide eligibility criteria, types of programming and services offered, sanctions on consumers for failing to comply with eligibility or continuation criteria, and limits on the amount of time recipients can receive services or aid. States were also allowed to keep some of the block grant funds if they met certain federally mandated markers, such as decreases in births to unwed aid recipients. In another departure from previous practices, states also faced decreases in funding if they failed to meet predetermined markers. Ultimately,
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while PRWORA does facilitate more flexibility at the state level, it also promotes greater uncertainty. At the individual level, welfare reform has meant a different set of rules and requirements for aid applicants, most of which are tied to individual efforts to find employment. Welfare reform was also meant to impact the personal behaviors of people who apply for aid. More than had been the case under the previous system, states began creating and enforcing rules for applicants and recipients that could be seen as potentially constraining. Most states, for example, require recipients to document their search for employment in order to maintain benefits. The types of jobs available to most welfare recipients are not usually sufficient to move poor people and their families to permanent economic self-sufficiency. In addition, many states no longer allow people in educational programs to count that activity as meaningful, even if their education provides a greater chance of longer-term selfsufficiency, one of the stated goals of welfare reform. Welfare reform has also spurred increases in valuesbased social programming, such as marriage preparedness training. Much of this programming is facilitated by private organizations, paid for with public dollars.
A Continuing Imperfection In the 10 years since welfare reform entered the U.S. lexicon, the results of the 1996 act (and its subsequent renewal) have been found to be mixed. There are fewer people seeking assistance than was the case before efforts at reform. However, those still needing aid tend to have much more complex needs that may take longer to resolve than is allowed under PRWORA guidelines. There continues to be an overrepresentation of people of color in the TANF and other assistance programs. In addition, there is evidence that to maintain funding levels, states are encouraging people to make decisions that may or may not be in their own best interests and may be more costly to society in the long term. In some states, for example, a TANF recipient who surrenders custody of a child, for whatever reason, and thereby loses eligibility for aid is seen as a success, no matter the long-term consequences or outcome of that decision. Many critics of welfare reform point to state record keeping and number crunching as predominant values under welfare reform, rather than compassion and support for people in need.
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Wells-Barnett, Ida B. (1862–1931)
Like the system that was previously in place, the current reformed U.S. welfare state does not address the forces that contribute to people needing assistance, for either the short term or longer periods of time. The majority of recipients continue to be African American, as was the case in the two decades prior to reform. The majority of those who leave welfare do so through employment or marriage. Finally, the new system does not resolve the ongoing dilemma regarding who is entitled to what and for how long. Tracey Mabrey See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; African American Women and Work; Culture of Poverty; Domestic Work; Homelessness; Labor Market Segmentation; Underclass; “Welfare Queen”
Further Readings
Abramovitz, M. 2001. “Everyone Is Still on Welfare: The Role of Redistribution In Social Policy.” Social Work 46:297–308. Boo, K. 2003. “The Marriage Cure.” New Yorker, August 18, pp. 104–120. Retrieved from http://www.newamerica.net/ publications/articles/2003/the_marriage_cure Christopher, Karen. 2004. “Welfare as We [Don’t] Know It: A Review and Feminist Critique of Welfare Reform Research in the United States.” Feminist Economics 10:143–171. Clinton, Bill. 2006. “How We Ended Welfare, Together.” New York Times, August 22, p. A19. Retrieved from http:// www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/opinion/22clinton.html Dube, Arindrajit and Ken Jacobs. 2004. Hidden Costs of WalMart Jobs: Use of Safety Net Programs by Wal-Mart Workers in California. Berkeley, CA: UC Berkeley Labor Center. Retrieved from http://www.dsausa.org/lowwage/ walmart/2004/walmart%20study.html Fitzgerald, Janine. 2004. “The Disciplinary Apparatus of Welfare Reform.” Monthly Review 56(6):53–62. Hays, Sharon. 2003. Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform. New York: Oxford University Press. Karger, Howard Jacob and David Stoesz. 2006. American Social Welfare Policy: A Pluralist Approach. Boston, MA: Pearson. Katz, Michael B. 2001. The Price of Citizenship. New York: Metropolitan Books. Kelleher, Christine A. and Susan Webb Yackee. 2004. “An Empirical Assessment of Devolution’s Policy Impact.” Policy Studies Journal 32:253–270. Seccombe, Karen. 2007. So You Think I Drive a Cadillac? Boston, MA: Pearson.
WELLS-BARNETT, IDA B. (1862–1931) Ida B. Wells-Barnett, social reformer, activist, antilynching crusader, women’s rights advocate, and writer, was one of the great seekers of justice and truth of the 20th century. Wells-Barnett worked to raise gender issues within the “race question” and race issues within the “woman question.” Devoted to bringing attention to the phenomenon of lynching in the United States, Wells-Barnett demystified the mysterious process of lynching, bringing international attention to a dark and troubled part of America’s past. One of the great political reformers of the 20th century and one of the nation’s ardent defenders of democracy, Wells-Barnett attempted to persuade U.S. society of the necessity of protecting its citizens, regardless of gender or race.
Early Life Ida B. Wells was born in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, 6 months before the Emancipation Proclamation. Her parents worked to support their seven children, her father as a carpenter and her mother as a “famous” local cook. She was orphaned when the 1878 yellow fever epidemic swept through Northern Mississippi and worked as a school teacher in rural Mississippi and Tennessee to support herself and her siblings. She finished her studies at nearby Rust College, in Hollis Springs. In 1884, she filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railroad, for forcing her to give up her seat on a train to a White man; this made her the second African American to file a civil rights lawsuit. The conductor attempted to drag Wells out of the car and after failing to do so, received help from other men on the train. As she was forcefully removed, White passengers of the train applauded. Initially winning her case in the local court, the ruling was eventually overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court after the railroad company appealed. Wells’s pastor at the Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church invited her to contribute a story about her frustration with the courts to the Living Way, a religious weekly. The articles were well received, and Wells began to write for the local Black press, under the pseudonym “Iola.” In 1889, she was elected secretary of the Colored Press Association and joined
Wells-Barnett, Ida B. (1862–1931)
J. L. Fleming and Reverend Taylor Nightingale, pastor of the Beale Street Baptist Church, as partner and editor of the militant journal Free Speech and Headlight. Between 1889 and 1892, they published articles and editorials about racist practices directed toward African Americans.
Wells and Lynching On March 9, 1892, three close friends of Wells— Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and William Stewart—were mutilated and hung from trees on the outskirts of Memphis. Moss was killed for owning a prosperous grocery store that competed successfully with a White grocer, revealing the economic tensions and rivalries in America as Reconstruction opened opportunities for African Americans. A group of White men, attempting to “eliminate” the competition, attacked Moss’s grocery store. The owners fought back, shooting one of the attackers. The three men were arrested and jailed, but a lynch mob broke into the jail, dragging the men to where they were eventually lynched. Wells urged people to abandon Memphis and move west, saying that Blacks should save their money and leave a town that had little respect for property rights and the lives of Black people. If they couldn’t leave, they should boycott the city streetcars. Over 2,000 Blacks left Memphis, and the streetcars were almost bankrupt by the end of the summer because of the boycotts. In retaliation, local Whites burned Wells’s newspaper offices, forcing her to seek refuge in the North. Settling in Chicago, Wells began to research the backgrounds of hundreds of lynching cases. The resulting book, A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States, 1892–1893–1894, demystified the myth of Black males raping virtuous White women and confronted the White community about the psychological basis for their fear of Black sexuality. Wells embarked on an antilynching crusade in England, Scotland, and Wales in 1893 and 1894 to inspire international outrage, later writing the book Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.
Later Advocacy In Chicago, Wells became involved in many organizations focused on women’s suffrage, while campaigning against lynching. In 1895, she married Ferdinand
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Barnett, a lawyer and editor of one of Chicago’s early Black newspapers, with whom she had four children. She began one of the first Black feminist organizations and wrote articles and columns for several publications. She was a cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and still found time to work with newly migrated jobless and homeless Black men and women in Chicago. She was assertive, outspoken, and sometimes intolerant of Black male leaders of her day, and her colleagues sometimes considered her “difficult.” When the NAACP’s executive leadership virtually excluded her for her radicalism, despite her foundational role in its creation, few came to her defense, not even W. E. B. Du Bois, a previous ally. As a result, after 1912, she became inactive in the NAACP. Wells-Barnett loved the arts, particularly theater. She raised funds for actors and writers and helped finance Chicago’s historic Penkin Theater, the first legitimate African American theater in the United States. As late as 1930, after becoming disgusted with
Lynching caught on camera. George Meadows, a “murderer and rapist,” was lynched on the scene of his last alleged crime (photograph circa 1889). Ida Wells-Barnett’s book, A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States, 1892–1893–1894, demystified the myth of Black males raping virtuous White women and confronted the White community about the psychological basis of their fear of Black sexuality. Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-31911.
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the nominees of the major parties of the state legislature, Wells-Barnett ran for office in the state legislature, which made her one of the first Black women to run for public office in the United States. A year later, in 1931, Wells-Barnett passed away at the age of 69, after a lifetime of being an advocate for justice. Troy Harden See also Africans in the United States; Civil Rights Movement, Women and; Feminism, Black; Lynching; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Further Readings
McMurray, L. O. 1998. To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells. New York: Oxford University Press. Schecter, P. A. 2001. Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880–1930. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Wells-Barnett, I. B. 1997. Southern Horrors and Other Writing: The Anti-lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892–1900, edited, with an introduction by J. J. Royster. Boston, MA: Bedford Books.
WELSH AMERICANS See UNITED KINGDOM, IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS IN THE UNITED STATES
WEST INDIAN AMERICANS The West Indian American experience is a useful case for students of race and ethnicity, offering perspectives on the role of race in immigrant incorporation, how ethnicity functions for non-White groups, and—because West Indians have such a long history in this country— what is new about their contemporary identity choices, the kinds of communities they form, and their relations with native-born Black Americans. But to speak of a West Indian community or culture in the singular is somewhat misleading. There is a great deal of diversity—racial, cultural, historical, demographic, and economic—among the groups known collectively as West Indian Americans. Narrowly defined, West Indian refers to English-speaking Black immigrants and their
descendants from the independent island nations in the Greater Antilles, primarily Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, the Bahamas, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Croix, Antigua, and Grenada. The broader definition used here includes peoples from the larger Caribbean region, including Haiti (French and Kreyol speaking); Guyana, in South America; and Belize, in Central America, living in the United States, and not including those from Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Notably, much of the scholarship focuses on West Indians of African descent, but a growing number of West Indian Americans are East Indian, descendants of Indian indentured servants brought to the Caribbean (particularly Guyana and Trinidad) in the 19th century to replace enslaved Africans on sugar plantations after emancipation. This limitation of the scholarship is reflected in this entry.
The First Generation Although the number of West Indians historically has been quite small, their presence in the United States dates back several centuries. It is assumed that most of the enslaved Africans brought to South Carolina up to the 1700s came from the Caribbean, and from Barbados in particular. In the wake of the Haitian Revolution in 1791, refugees from the former French colony of Saint-Domingue settled in Louisiana and on the East Coast of the United States. The West Indian American population remained relatively small during the 19th century, but it grew significantly, especially after the Civil War. Between 1880 and 1930, approximately 100,000 persons socially defined as “Negro immigrants” legally entered the United States, and most of these came from the Caribbean region. The forces that prompted and sustained this first wave of West Indian migrants were fundamentally political and economic. In the British West Indies, oppressive colonial policies, economic distress, and natural disasters together with opportunities abroad occasioned mass migration, first to the Panama Canal Zone and then to the industrializing United States. The immigrants were mostly males in their wageearning years; over 36% were between the ages of 16 and 37 years old; and the majority were not married. Many had been skilled artisans, bankers, merchants, colonial civil servants, and professional persons in their countries of origin. Since immigrant laws
West Indian Americans
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Canada Florida (U.S.A.)
Grand Bahama
Abaco Eleuthera
The Bahamas
New Providence
Cat Island San Salvador Rum Cay Long Island Great Samana Cay Exuma Crooked Island Long Cay Mayaguana Acklins
Andros
United States
Atlantic Ocean
Cuba Isla De La Juventud
Little Inagua
Caicos Islands Great Inagua
G
r e a t e r Little Cayman Cayman Brac
Grand Cayman
Cayman Islands
Gulf of Mexico
A
n t i l l e s
Turks and Caicos Islands
Turk Islands
Haiti Dominican Republic
Jamaica
Virgin Islands (U S. & UK.)
Gre Mexico
St. Thomas
ater
Anegada Virgin Gorda Anguilla Tortola St. John St. Barthelemy St. Martin Antigua St. Croix Barbuda and St. Eustatius St. Kitts Barbuda Saint Kitts and Nevis Nevis Antigua
Puerto Rico
Ant
ille
s
Montserrat
Belize
Grande–Terre
Basse–Terre
Guatemala
Honduras
Caribbean Sea
Guadeloupe
Lesser Antilles
Maria–Galante Dominica
El Salvador Nicaragua
Mar inique
L e s s e r
A n t i l l e s Saint Lucia
Costa Rica Panama
St. Vincent Saint Vinc nt and the Grenadines Grenadines
Aruba
Venezuela
Grenada
Guyana
Pacific Ocean
Netherlands Antilles
Suriname
Colombia
Tobago Trinidad and Tobago
Venezuela
Trinidad
Brazil
Ecuador Peru
selected for literacy, more than 98% were literate when they arrived, and, with the exception of less than 2%, they spoke English. Those trained in skilled trades were most likely to emigrate, for they found it especially difficult to realize their ambitions in colonial societies. Although the migrants represented a select segment of their home societies, in general they became male industrial workers and female domestic servants once they arrived. This group of West Indians tended to settle in urban areas, alongside African Americans. Between 1900 and 1920, approximately 1,200 Bahamians went to Miami in search of jobs during the building boom there. Miami, New Orleans, New York, and Boston— especially after World War I and the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914—attracted West Indians in their roles as major seaports on the transportation routes of the United Fruit Company. Notably, few West Indians settled in the South, with the exception of Florida. Despite their desire to avoid the Jim Crow laws of the South, for the West Indian Americans who arrived
at the turn of the 19th century, their hyperracialization as Blacks had the most profound impact on their experiences. For the most part, distinctions of color, language, education, economic status, religious practice, or nationality mattered little in a society with a racial hierarchy held together by an ideology of biological inferiority. Whether they lived their lives as Haitians, Jamaicans, or Guyanese, the “one-drop rule” of racial classification consigned Black people of all classes to the bottom of the social ladder and was the basis for their exclusion from economic and educational opportunities. While West Indian Americans had a significant influence on the African American discourse on racism, protest, and Black advancement, more than the racial structure of the United States shaped their cultural self-representations. For most of the 20th century, within the Black community, attempts by Black immigrants to distinguish themselves from the nativeborn were considered divisive and ethnocentric. For this reason, many West Indians themselves tended to
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downplay their cultural distinctiveness for the sake of political unity. The incorporation of Black immigrants into the larger African American community generated an additional layer of social marginality; both as Blacks and as immigrants, their problems were invisible to mainstream society.
West Indians Today The visibility of West Indians has increased dramatically since the 1970s. According to the 2000 census, there are now over 1.5 million West Indians living in the United States; and West Indian social organizations, cuisine, music, and literary contributions have expanded the boundaries of contemporary Black American culture and the meaning of “blackness” in the post–Civil Rights Movement era. Unlike the first generation of West Indians, the post-1965 community is much more diverse in terms of both social class and human capital characteristics, such as education and occupational status. Over twothirds of West Indians are foreign-born, and because the immigration reforms facilitated family reunification, those with relatives or contacts in the United States could more easily migrate, despite having lower skills and levels of education. This diluted the selectivity of the newcomers. Further, political unrest in Haiti has added a large flow of political refugees and asylum seekers to the number of voluntary migrants who come to the United States for educational and economic opportunities. Race still impedes socioeconomic progress for Black immigrants and their descendants. The level of geographic dispersion among West Indians today is also different. Destinations like Miami, New York City, and Boston continue to attract large numbers, but smaller West Indian communities in the mid-Atlantic region, the Southeastern United States, and the San Francisco Bay area have developed, though not necessarily embedded in established African American neighborhoods. Also, the residential landscape of post-1965 West Indians is decidedly metropolitan. Rather than settling exclusively in urban areas, they have also formed communities in the surrounding suburban and rural areas. For contemporary West Indians, another factor helps to shape their experience in the United States. Prior to World War II, West Indian Americans were for the most part colonial immigrants who had no easily identifiable national homelands. They came to the United States from diverse colonies whose primary
bond was their shared history of colonialism and European exploitation. Hence, while early-20thcentury West Indians were categorically racialized, many had uncertain ethnic identities. National independence in many Caribbean islands since the 1960s, and the strong sense of national pride this brought about, keeps many West Indians today from complete assimilation into the African American community.
West Indian Americans and African Americans Comparison to African Americans has been the most constant feature of the social scientific literature on West Indians. Since the publication of Ira Reid’s groundbreaking work, West Indians are almost always written about in terms of what their experiences imply about native-born Black Americans. One noteworthy debate concerns the relative success of West Indian Americans. Black immigrants and their descendants fare better than native-born Blacks on a number of socioeconomic indicators. West Indians have higher education and income (12.1 years/$42,927 compared with 11.7 years/$29,251) and a substantially lower percentage of unemployed (9.4% compared with 12.5%) or below the poverty line (17.8% compared with 32.8%). Careful analyses of U.S. Census data also reveal that in the metropolitan areas where they live in largest numbers, West Indian Blacks tend to reside in neighborhoods with higher median incomes, education levels, and proportions of homeowners than African Americans. Similarly, recent research on U.S. institutions of higher education shows that the representation of Blacks with immigrant origins at selective colleges and universities is roughly double their share in the population. Whereas only 13% of all Black Americans between the ages of 18 and 19 were either foreign-born or the children of migrants, among the Black college freshmen entering selective institutions in 1999, 27% were first- or second-generation immigrants. Black immigrants earn significantly higher SAT scores (1,250) than do their native-born counterparts (1,193). The small size of the West Indian population relative to other groups accounts for some of these observed differences. There are over 33 million African Americans living in the United States and only 1.5 million West Indians. In addition, comparisons with White Americans and other ethnic groups with similar characteristics (such as Asian Americans) paint
“Wetbacks”
a different picture. Compared with Asian immigrants, West Indians have appreciably lower median household incomes, higher rates of unemployment, and a larger proportion living in poverty. Moreover, West Indians, like African Americans, are highly segregated from Whites; and regardless of nativity, non-Hispanic Blacks live in worse neighborhoods than do nonHispanic Whites. On college campuses, both Black immigrants and African Americans earn significantly lower grade point averages than do Whites; and all Blacks score well below Whites on the SAT (1,361). On balance, then, the empirical evidence suggests that institutional and societal processes may have a differential effect on West Indians compared with native-born African Americans, but there are no discernible cultural differences at work. The significance of race in their experiences notwithstanding, West Indian Americans can no longer be seen as the “other” Black Americans. Today, in addition to the larger numbers of co-ethnics, West Indians encounter a context in the United States that is more diverse, with considerably more recognition of the distinctive national origins and national loyalties of Blacks than ever before. The uninterrupted flow of newcomers, technological advances in travel and communication that connect West Indian Americans to their countries of origin, and this new U.S. context have created a space for the consolidation of distinct West Indian communities and social identities. Regine O. Jackson See Appendix A See also Argentina; Assimilation; Caribbean; Caribbean Americans; Carmichael, Stokely; Creole; Cuba: Migration and Demography; Culture of Poverty; Dominican Americans; Dominican Republic; Haiti; Jamaica; Jamaican Americans; One-Drop Rule; Puerto Rico; Trinidad Further Readings
Bryce-Laporte, Roy S. 1972. “Black Immigrants: The Experience of Invisibility and Inequality.” Journal of Black Studies 3:29–56. Hintzen, Percy. 2001. West Indian in the West. New York: New York University Press. James, Winston. 1998. Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early 20th Century America. New York: Verso. Kasinitz, Philip. 1992. Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
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Reid, Ira D. A. 1939. The Negro Immigrant: His Background, Characteristics, and Social Adjustment, 1899–1937. New York: Columbia University Press. Vickerman, Milton. 1999. Crosscurrents: West Indian Immigrants and Race. New York: Oxford University Press. Waters, Mary C. 1998. Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Watkins-Owens, Irma. 1996. Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900–1930. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
“WETBACKS” The term “wetbacks” refers to migrants who enter the United States unlawfully by crossing the Rio Grande or jumping off boats along the Pacific Coast. It is often used in a derisive way to criticize the illegal means by which migrants enter and find employment in a variety of sectors. This term also implicitly identifies unauthorized migrants from Mexico, and several key historical events popularized its usage today. This entry discusses the origins of legislation related to illegal immigrants, the history of U.S. government action in this area, and the contemporary situation. The first event dates back to 1951, when Congress introduced a bill, S. 1851, amending the Immigration Act of 1917. Commonly called the “wetback bill,” this measure sought to punish anyone entering the country illegally or harboring or concealing an unauthorized migrant. Eventually the bill became Public Law 283, which criminalized the harboring of illegal entrants. This law in itself, however, is not as significant as the circumstances leading up to its passage and the subsequent development. This bill was enacted during the height of the Mexican Farm Labor Program, or the Bracero Program, a bilateral agreement between the governments of the United States and Mexico signed on July 23, 1942. The United States desperately needed a massive labor force as its participation in World War II drained thousands of laborers from farms and cities. The agricultural sector experienced an acute labor shortage; as early as October 1939, the Federal Bureau of Agricultural Economics estimated that some 1.7 million farmers would leave for cities in the burgeoning war-related industries. The Bracero Program was
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“Wetbacks”
intended as a temporary measure during this wartime emergency, but the program was extended for almost 2 decades after the end of the war. Several flaws in the Bracero Program led to the increase in the illegal crossings. First, the annual quota of braceros was significantly lower than the actual labor needs, thus creating an opportunity for employers to persist in their practice of hiring unauthorized workers. Second, the bureaucratic procedures in procuring Mexican farmworkers made the program less responsive to the actual needs of employers who wanted mobile and flexible workers without having to wait to prove a labor shortage in their region and then submit requests for braceros. Third, despite the existence of the “anti-wetback” legislation, it became evident that Congress was unwilling to punish employers for employing unauthorized workers. Although the Bracero Program was sanctioned and administered by the two governments, the failure to enforce the contract terms and the gradual waning of the administrative control over the program escalated unauthorized migration and pitted one agency’s interest against another’s. While the Department of Labor was centrally responsible for assessing and meeting domestic labor demand, the increasing flow of unauthorized migrants along the U.S.–Mexico border placed the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), an arm of the Department of Justice, in an onerous position of having to escort unauthorized Mexican workers and legalize them at the border. In 1947, for instance, the INS legalized some 55,000 Mexicans who were in the United States illegally by taking the workers to the U.S.–Mexico border and instructing them to cross the border temporarily, thus making them legally “deported.” These same workers then became aliens eligible to be contracted by the U.S. farmers. The pressure to legalize the workers had come from the Mexican government insisting that it would be illogical to recruit workers from Mexico under contracts when a significant number of undocumented workers were already working in the United States. The farm employers also strongly favored legalizing their undocumented workers because they were able to keep the experienced farmhands and save on the transportation costs for bringing in additional contract labor. As the news about the legalization practice spread, it naturally attracted even greater numbers of workers willing to cross the border illegally. Migrants reasoned that it would be easier to become a bracero by first finding employment illegally in the United States and then becoming legalized by the INS. Consequently, some
87,220 undocumented Mexicans were legalized by 1949, while only 19,625 farmworkers were imported directly from Mexico. However, undocumented persons who were not employed at that time by farmers were arrested and deported, numbering more than 500,000 by the end of 1949. By 1951, the intention of the United States to establish a more permanent labor importation strategy became apparent in its continued legalization of unauthorized workers at the border, which supplied a steady flow of authorized braceros and undermined the bilateral agreements with the enactment of public laws. The original program aimed at meeting the “wartime emergency” labor needs through the Mexican Farm Labor Program had evolved into a permanent labor importation program that inadequately protected the rights of imported workers. The steady influx of braceros and the unilateral recruitment of undocumented workers also significantly undermined the interests of domestic farmworkers. Reflecting the interests of U.S. farm employers, Congress further enacted Public Law 309, which effectively circumvented the spirit of the bilateral agreement by permitting unilateral importation of Mexican workers if bilateral negotiations failed. This law intensified the contradictory role of the INS because it was responsible for legalizing undocumented workers, on one hand, and deporting those who were not needed by the employers, on the other. By this time, the undocumented worker problem had reached new heights. As the debate in Congress about the swelling number of unauthorized workers intensified, no viable plan was in sight. Instead, the pressure of undertaking a unilateral recruitment began to mount, and the governments on both sides of the border needed a quick and effective solution. After garnering the support of the Mexican side, U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell appointed a former lieutenant general of the army, Joseph Swing, as the commissioner of the INS to launch “Operation Wetback” on June 17, 1954. General Swing hired two other generals, Frank Partridge and Edwin Howard, to coordinate an all-out deportation of unauthorized persons. By streamlining the lines of communication among the patrol agents, local officers, and regional managers, General Swing effectively mobilized the roundup operations. Consisting of twelve-man squads, the mobile task force facilitated communication between teams on the ground and in the air. Equipped with automobiles, jeeps, trucks, buses, and planes, the Task Force systematically apprehended over 1 million persons by the end of the year.
White Flight
They established two separate routes for deportation, one for male detainees through the staging areas in California to Nogales, Arizona, and the other for families through the ports of Mexicali and Tijuana. Commissioner Swing, however, did not arrest and forcibly deport every unauthorized individual. Instead, he relied on voluntary departures by informing employers about their planned operation and urging them to make arrangements to hire legally contracted labor. Strategically, Operation Wetback proved to be enormously successful in California. With the additional $3 million support from Congress, the operation shifted to Texas, where thousands were arrested and over 60,000 left voluntarily. Major cities in other states, such as Spokane, Chicago, and St. Louis, also witnessed mass arrests, as many undocumented immigrants had been employed in the industrial sector as well. From more than 1 million arrests in 1954, the number had declined to less than 30,000 by 1960. The precipitous drop in the number of unauthorized workers again opened the way for massive contracting of braceros. Between 1954 and 1964, over 3.6 million Mexicans had signed contracts with employers, mostly in the states of California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Arkansas. Alongside the operation, the INS issued the “I-100” identification cards to braceros who successfully fulfilled their contract terms. This system kept the braceros in check because those who criticized the Bracero Program or were unwilling to abide by the contract terms ran the risk of not receiving the I-100 cards, thus preventing them from returning to the United States for another contract period as braceros. In effect, the I-100 card system allowed employers to selectively weed out unwanted workers. Ironically, many of the braceros who were employed after Operation Wetback had worked on the same jobs as unauthorized workers. When the two governments signed the international agreement in 1954, the Bracero Program had come full circle: Employers, Congress, and the INS had successfully weakened the bargaining power of the Mexican government and derailed the spirit of the bilateral agreement by unilaterally controlling both braceros and unauthorized workers. In 2006 and again in 2007, Congress intensely debated the problem of labor shortages in agriculture and in other areas. President George W. Bush has urged Congress to legalize undocumented workers who are already employed, secure the border, and establish a long-term temporary-worker program. While there are numerous arguments regarding these
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issues, a common issue on which all sides generally agree is that unauthorized migration must cease. Tougher immigration laws and border security measures are important, but these efforts only partially address the complex problem. The U.S. experience with the Bracero Program may provide important insight in figuring out how to get at the source of the problem. Some of these issues include an understanding of the interconnectedness of the push-and-pull forces of unauthorized migration, the degree and nature of economic dependence on unauthorized workers, the ways the labor shortage can be solved with domestic and authorized workers, the level of and commitment to border security, and the feasibility of and willingness to implement employer sanctions. Again, the problem of unauthorized workers today is not simply that they are in violation of immigration laws, but that the social, economic, and political conditions of both sending and receiving countries are intricate parts of the problem. Joon K. Kim See also Borderlands; Border Patrol; Bracero Program; Immigration, U.S.; Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS); Mexican Americans; Mexico; Political Economy; Samora, Julian Further Readings
Copp, Nelson Gage. 1963. “‘Wetbacks’ and Braceros: Mexican Migrant Laborers and American Immigration Policy, 1930–1960.” PhD dissertation, Boston University, Massachusetts. Craig, Richard B. 1971. The Bracero Program: Interest Groups and Foreign Policy. Austin: University of Texas Press. Galarza, Ernesto. 1964. Merchants of Labor: The Mexican Bracero Story. Santa Barbara, CA: McNally & Loftin. Kim, Joon. 2004. “The Political-Economy of the Mexican Farm Labor Program, 1942–1964.” Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies 29:13–53. U.S. President’s Commission on Migratory Labor. 1951. Migratory Labor in American Agriculture: Report of the President’s Commission on Migratory Labor. Washington, DC: Author.
WHITE FLIGHT The term White flight refers to the process of White migration from racially mixed urban areas to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban areas. This
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entry discusses the history of White flight and some of its repercussions for urban neighborhoods. The historical era to which the term usually refers is the post–World War II period of the 1950s and 1960s, when the creation and expansion of the suburbs gave urban dwellers a place to relocate. The term also describes the current phenomenon of Whites migrating from the older, inner-ring suburbs of metropolitan regions to nonmetropolitan regions in rural areas, and from the U.S. Snowbelt (Northeast and Midwest) to the Sunbelt (Southeast and Southwest). In the 1950s and 1960s, White flight from urban areas was mitigated by numerous push-and-pull factors. One significant push was the desegregation of public schools and facilities following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. In both Northern and Southern urban neighborhoods, there was strong and sometimes violent White resistance to the subsequent racial mixing of people in public spaces, including schools, swimming pools, golf courses, streetcars, buses, and parks. Many Whites feared that “their” facilities would be taken over by Blacks, and they responded by establishing private facilities (including new private schools) serving only Whites. The desegregation of urban neighborhoods was seen as a threat by many city-dwelling Whites. This was partially the result of White racist stereotypes and prejudice against Blacks. Whites commonly perceived the presence of Blacks in a neighborhood as a symbol of an encroaching ghetto and an inevitable decline in property values and public services. Because public facilities were also tied to neighborhoods, racially mixed neighborhoods meant more mixed facilities, which stirred up old prejudices of White females mixing with Black males. In addition, the Black population of cities was actually growing, due to the continued migration of southern Blacks into urban areas. Even when Whites did not perceive new Black neighbors to be a threat, unscrupulous real estate practices such as blockbusting and panic selling helped turn previously all-White urban neighborhoods into all-Black neighborhoods, sometimes within the course of just a few years. Although many neighborhoods formed homeowner “improvement” associations, meant to stall the rapid racial turnover, numerous Whites abandoned the fight for an all-White neighborhood in favor of “flight” to a newly expanded suburbia. The pull factors for Whites to leave urban areas were many, such that many Whites who did not see any racial turnover in their neighborhoods were nonetheless
compelled to leave for greener pastures. The demand for housing in the postwar era was enormous, spurring a period of new construction in previously rural areas, removed from cities. The federal government backed loan programs that placed home buying within the reach of many families, as well as new highway construction that allowed suburbanites to easily commute to work or shopping centers. Families in the United States grew during the “baby boom” years, and suburbia was a welcome refuge from the oftentimes cramped and deteriorating city neighborhoods. However, suburbia was not open to everyone. Very few Blacks were able to take advantage of federal loan programs due to the “redlining” of neighborhoods with high minority residency rates and racial covenants to keep out any “new element” that might disturb the racial homogeneity of the neighborhood. Redlining was a discriminatory practice institutionalized by federal loan programs. Neighborhoods that were deemed a credit risk for mortgage loans were coded the color red, and prospective homeowners in redlined neighborhoods were unlikely to receive federally backed mortgages. The neighborhoods most likely to be redlined were older and had significant Black populations or were determined to be undergoing racial turnover. The result of White flight from the urban realm was the explosive growth of all-Black neighborhoods across the United States. Spatial segregation increased between 1930 and 1970, as Whites became even more geographically segregated from Blacks by abandoning urban neighborhoods. All-Black neighborhoods became not only more numerous in cities but also more geographically concentrated, meaning that whole portions of cities (such as the South Side of Chicago) were inhabited by a majority of Blacks. Thus, what has been termed hypersegregation was cemented during the classic White flight period of the 1950s and 1960s—a condition in which Whites and Blacks are not just segregated but also so spatially isolated from each other that it is possible to live a life never interacting with someone of a different race. Moreover, as Whites fled cities and the social problems associated with them, they took much of their resources with them, leaving cities without a strong tax base. Good public schools, public services, and even the location of workplaces followed the White middle class to the suburbs, which meant more deterioration for the inner city. While there has been a “rebirth” of older U.S. cities in the past 40 years, with the creation of downtown
Whiteness
shopping centers and gentrification of older city neighborhoods, there continues to be a pattern of White flight. According to the census data from 2000, Whites continue to migrate to White-homogeneous areas that are outside of metropolitan regions, away from racially integrated inner-ring suburbs. While the push away from metropolitan regions may not be for the same reasons today as in the 1960s, the pull is quite similar. Whites tend to want to live in areas with less congestion, better schools, cheaper housing, and less crime. Older suburban areas have taken on some of the same characteristics as inner cities, with expensive housing and property taxes, deteriorating services and facilities, high levels of pollution and traffic, and other social problems associated with the inner city. As Whites move from coastal areas and metropolitan regions to the Sunbelt and nonmetropolitan regions, the White population has become even more geographically removed from non-Whites and newer immigrants than ever before. The continued dispersion of Whites to previously rural areas means that racial and economic segregation will most likely continue in the future. Meghan Ashlin Rich See also Blockbusting; Code of the Street; Discrimination in Housing; Resegregation; School Desegregation, Attitudes Concerning; Segregation; White Racism
Further Readings
Frey, William H. 2002. “Escaping the City—And the Suburbs.” American Demographics 24(6):21–23. Kruse, Kevin M. 2005. White Flight: Atlanta, and the Making of Modern Conservatism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Massey, Douglas S. and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
WHITENESS Whiteness can be defined as the result of a social and cultural process that situates White people in a place of power and privilege because of their skin color and White racial identity. This entry discusses how White privilege is defined and how scholarly discussion about it has developed over time.
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Kincheloe suggests that White people in the United States after 1680 were able to gain social, political, and economic power over Black people because of slavery. Slavery was one of the systems that contributed to the racialization of non-White people into a place of marginalization, oppression, and subordination. In many respects, then, whiteness is a social construction that ideologically and institutionally plays a key role in determining how racism operates in social and political arrangements in Western societies. Through a social and cultural process, those with White skin color hold power and privilege over those who are non-White in U.S. society. Furthermore, the power and privilege that White people hold as a collective group is systemically entrenched within society’s social, political, economic, and cultural institutions. Attitudes and social practices that favor Whites, as well as the resulting advantages that Whites have in society’s institutions, have also been labeled White racism. There is more to whiteness than White identity and racial privilege, however; it relates to a system and process that keeps those who are in dominant positions from recognizing or understanding how inequalities and racism operate in society. To understand the history of how White people historically came to be in a position of power in society, one can look to whiteness studies, an area of ethnic studies that examines the economic, political, and social history of White people and how their norms, values, and culture hold power in U.S. society. This research emerged in the 1990s as a key component of antiracism, that is, understanding whiteness as being linked to racism. To focus on the concept of whiteness, however, is controversial among those who study racism. Scholars have shown concern that whiteness studies may celebrate White people or reinforce problems of White guilt, rather than using the concept of whiteness as a strategy to dismantle White privilege. Furthermore, some scholars see the view of racism as being between White and non-White people as a false binary approach that denies the complexity of whiteness as encompassing an intersectionality of social locations other than race; they note that whiteness can also include privileges based on gender, class, ability/disability, and sexual orientation. People who are White are able to maintain their position of power and privilege through social and cultural processes that are not necessarily conscious, intentional acts. Rather, whiteness is a set of language, norms, and values that operate in society without
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people recognizing that what they do reflects the interests of a particular group of people in society. Whiteness is able to maintain its power by never having to name itself and therefore fails to be under the scrutiny or criticism of others. Underlying whiteness is what is known as a “White” culture. Many people who are White would deny that “White culture” exists. In fact, White culture is often referred to as “neutral,” “fair,” and “just.” When anyone questions White culture or tries to name the values and norms underlying it, typically White culture is viewed in terms of being different from that of non-White people. When non-White people try to name their cultures, values, needs, and aspirations, they are often seen as having special interests that introduce bias and values into the system. In addition, whiteness continually establishes itself as the norm by always defining “others” but never itself. Finally, whiteness is universalized as the way things are and ought to be. In other words, the social and cultural process that creates whiteness can be simultaneously everywhere, but also nowhere. Some authors have argued that the failure on the part of White people to see themselves as racialized beings has contributed to the perpetuation of racism. The significance of the concept of whiteness is to have White people look at themselves and at the complexities of how they, too, are implicated in the structures of society that create and perpetuate racism. To address these issues, an examination of whiteness and its implications for White people can lead to a form of White consciousness that moves beyond White identity and into the complexities of how White people are able to take responsibility for the problem of racism in society. In sum, whiteness, as a conceptual and analytical tool, can be used to unravel the complexities of how people whose identity is “White” are put into a racial and cultural position that creates systems of domination and subordination. Within whiteness studies, some argue for the abolition of the White identity: That is, they say there should be no place for a White identity because such an identity reinforces the power and dominance of Whites. In contrast, others argue the need for a positive, antiracist White identity. A White person with an antiracist White identity would demonstrate critical self-reflexivity and humility in everything that he or she does. In everyday life, those with antiracist White identities would take action by, first, listening to the voices of those who are racially marginalized in society and, second, finding
ways to dismantle their privileged social location. Such people with antiracist or non-White identities are commonly known as “White allies.” Whiteness, in these instances, becomes a strategy and tool that is constantly challenged and dismantled. June Ying Yee See also Critical Race Theory; Haole; Privilege; Racism; Whiteness, Measuring; Whiteness and Masculinity; White Privilege; White Racism
Further Readings
Doane, Ashley “Woody” and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. 2003. White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism. New York: Routledge. Kincheloe, Joe L., Shirley R. Steinberg, Nelson M. Rodriguez, and Ronald E. Chennault. 1998. White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America. New York: St. Martin’s Press. McIntyre, Alice. 1997. Making Meaning of Whiteness: Exploring Racial Identity with White Teachers. New York: State University of New York Press. Nakayama, Thomas K. and Judith N. Martin, eds. 1999. Whiteness: The Communication of Social Identity. London: Sage Publications.
WHITENESS, MEASURING One of the most striking developments in the field of racial and ethnic studies over the past 15 to 20 years has been work on the topic of whiteness. Research on White culture and identity is not entirely new. Scholars of color have a long and distinguished history of writing about White Americans and their problematic place in the racial hierarchy (in the 1940s, Richard Wright famously said, “There isn’t any Negro problem, there is only a White problem”). And mainstream social scientists have tracked the racial attitudes and opinions of Whites for decades. What is new about “whiteness studies” is its attention to the understandings of Whites, or the lack thereof, of their own racial identities and culture and the privileges that go along with them. The work, the bulk of which has been historical and qualitative, has provoked a good deal of controversy. Even among whiteness scholars, divisions have emerged between those who focus on White cultural practices and self-conceptions and those who emphasize broader social contexts and racial ideologies.
Whiteness, Measuring
Many of the debates, both inside and outside of the field, stem from basic challenges of data and measurement. The dearth of broad quantitative information and analysis has left open many questions about the nature and pervasiveness of “whiteness” in contemporary U.S. culture. A somewhat more fundamental problem is the difficulty of specifying and operationalizing key concepts and ideas. How, for example, does one measure the salience of an identity that is assumed to be hidden or taken for granted? How can the claim that Whites don’t see White advantage be documented without calling attention to these privileges in the first place? To illustrate and address these measurement challenges, three key theoretical issues from the literature are posited and examined in this entry. The first two involve core propositions about the relative importance of White identity and the visibility and understanding of privilege among Whites. The third is a set of claims about deeper cultural ideologies and norms. Strategies for operationalizing and measuring these concepts and claims using traditional survey methodology are discussed. Then, data from a 2003 survey conducted at the University of Minnesota under the auspices of the American Mosaic Project are provided. The goal is to provide a basic conceptual framework, set of procedures, and recent findings to illustrate the challenges and possibilities of bringing empirical data to bear on the study of whiteness.
White Identity One of the first and most basic claims from whiteness scholars is that White Americans have very little racial awareness of or consciousness about themselves. Being White, in this view, is essentially invisible to those who inhabit that racial category. Often conflated with collective designations of “American” or “human,” whiteness is hidden, unmarked, or taken for granted—as much the absence of an identity as an identity itself. Race becomes something only others have. Even when asked directly about what it means to be White, many White Americans have little of consequence or substance to offer. Of the three sets of propositions about whiteness discussed here, those relating to the invisibility of White identity are the most straightforward to deal with empirically. Some social psychologists use variations on the identity scales originally developed for minority groups. Another way to operationalize these claims is
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to simply ask Whites to assess the importance of their racial identity and culture and then compare their aggregated responses with those of respondents from other races and ethnic groups. Such an approach supplies basic, baseline data on the extent to which Whites see being White as a part of their identity (as opposed to the assumptions of invisibility from the field). On the American Mosaic questionnaire, respondents were asked about the importance of their own racial identity, in terms of both the present (“How important is this identity to you?”) and the past (“How important was [your racial identity] growing up?”). About 37% of Whites reported that their racial identity was “very important” to them at present, compared with 72% for non-Whites. Also taking into account those who answered “somewhat important” increases the percentage of Whites who believed their White racial identity to be of some significance to 74% (compared with 90% for non-Whites). Similarly, Whites were far less likely than non-Whites to say that their racial identity was important to them in childhood and adolescence: 26% of Whites said that being White was very important growing up, while 57% of non-Whites made that assertion. These data and measures have clear implications for theories of whiteness. The results suggest that throughout life, a majority of Whites see their own racial identity as less important than do members of other racial and ethnic groups. At the same time, however, the results suggest that White identity is far from invisible. Not only did many more respondents say that their White identity was important to them than whiteness theorists would have anticipated, they were also quite concerned about the preservation of White racial culture. To get at culture (as distinct from identity), respondents were asked whether they believed their racial group has a culture that should be preserved, a question that has frequently been asked of ethnic and racial minorities on conventional surveys. About 77% of White respondents affirmed the desire to preserve their racial culture. While not as overwhelming as for non-Whites (91% of whom answered “yes”), this result nonetheless suggests the need to reexamine basic presuppositions about the invisibility and “taken-for-grantedness” of whiteness.
Understanding of Privilege Whiteness scholars have also postulated that Whites are less willing or able to see the structural advantages
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that are accorded to them than are members of other racial groups. Theories about the visibility and understanding of White privilege are quite challenging to operationalize. The basic problem is how to ask about something that is presumed to be unrealized without giving away the answer in the question. The survey researcher has two options. The first is to ask White respondents questions that directly assess their awareness of being advantaged by race. This procedure would provide a concrete measure of awareness of White privilege for Whites, especially if used in comparison to the rates of awareness for other racial groups. However, it does not allow for deeper analysis of understandings of White privilege. (In fact, if White respondents fail to acknowledge privilege—as many would, according to prevailing theories—nothing else can be asked or analyzed.) The second approach to assessing awareness and understanding of White privilege is to assert the existence of White advantages and then explore respondents’ understanding of the sources, extent, and consequences of these advantages. While not a direct measure of awareness, this procedure would afford rich information on understandings and conceptions of White advantage. The Mosaic survey took the latter route. It first asserted the existence of White advantage (“On average, White Americans have better jobs, income, and housing than others”) and then asked respondents a series of questions about the perceived importance of factors frequently used to explain social inequality. These factors included prejudice and discrimination, laws and institutions, access to better schools and connections, effort and hard work, and differences in family upbringing. Responses to these items provide basic empirical data on how Americans explain White advantages and how these explanations differ between White and non-White respondents. The survey also employed an experimental, split-ballot design wherein half of the survey respondents were asked to explain White advantage (as just described), while the other half were asked to explain African American disadvantage using the same set of factors (a more traditional framing and standard approach). Several key findings emerged from these items. First, a majority of White respondents acknowledged factors such as “prejudice and discrimination” as well as “access to schools and other social connections” as factors contributing to their own advantages—62% and 83%, respectively. However, White respondents
were, on average, somewhat less likely than nonWhites to acknowledge the importance of these factors. By way of comparison, 79% of non-Whites attributed White advantages to prejudice and discrimination, and 91% said that access to schools and social connections play a role. Perhaps even more revealing, 46% of White respondents did not believe that laws and institutions contribute significantly to the advantages of Whites in society, while 81% of non-White respondents did. In other words, many White respondents acknowledged that their advantages were influenced by factors such as prejudice and other social inequities, but—in stark contrast to the beliefs of non-Whites—not by U.S. laws and institutions. Finally, the split-ballot design, which posed parallel questions about White advantage and Black disadvantage, revealed that White respondents’ understandings of White privilege did not directly mirror conceptions of African American disadvantage. Most striking in this respect is that White respondents were more likely to say that prejudice and discrimination contribute to racial inequality when posed in terms of Black disadvantage (75%) than when connected with White advantage (62%); conversely, Whites were more likely to attribute their collective success to effort and hard work (89%) than they were to blame African Americans on that score for their disadvantages (62%). These findings, derived from several innovative survey items, provide data and direction for future research into how White Americans think about and understand racial privilege, both on their own terms and in comparison to other racial groups.
Cultural Ideologies and Norms A third set of claims about whiteness that come out of the literature has to do with norms and ideologies about culture, social justice, and racial equality. These claims can be divided into two general categories: White adherence to color-blind ideals and the takenfor-grantedness of White cultural norms and practices, what is sometimes referred to as “White normativity.” Because they are presumed to be deeply held and built into the culture, these aspects of whiteness are among the most difficult to operationalize and measure, especially using traditional survey methods that rely upon individual respondents and their more or less selfconscious understandings. In terms of color-blind ideals, the basic argument by whiteness theorists is that Whites adhere to
Whiteness and Masculinity
individualistic values and meritocratic ideals that limit their ability to see the collective factors and structural forces that are the root of all racial phenomena. Adherence to color-blind ideals can be measured in a variety of ways. One approach is to draw upon standard survey questions relating to core beliefs about individual freedom, moral values, and the role of groups in U.S. society. Often used by racial attitudes researchers interested in “principled conservatism,” items on special merit, government assistance, and affirmative action programs also afford insight into the nature and limits of individualist, color-blind ideals. Another technique for assessing color blindness involves asking respondents about social factors such as favoritism, hard work, upbringing, and access to institutions that might have helped them personally to get ahead in life. In tandem with questions about group-based equalities outlined above, these items give purchase to the extent to which White respondents adhere to individualist ideologies in explaining their own success. Responses to such batteries of questions on the Mosaic survey did not provide support for whiteness theories about White adherence to color-blind ideologies. This is not, however, because White respondents did not hold color-blind ideologies and values. Rather, it is because respondents of all races held the individualist, meritocratic ideals and visions associated with color blindness. If color blindness is in any way unique among White individuals in the United States, it would appear that other data and techniques are required to document that claim and assess its relationship to whiteness more generally. Related to claims about color-blind ideologies in whiteness theory are notions about the normativity of White culture—the way in which White values, assumptions, and practices are intimately conflated with the dominant beliefs and behaviors of the society as a whole. In other words, White Americans are privileged not only by the color of their skin but also by a mainstream culture that allows them to feel comfortable, natural, and normal. Claims about White cultural norms (or any cultural norms, for that matter) are among the most difficult to operationalize using survey methods, almost always requiring indirect indictors and proxy measures. Questions about expectations for assimilation are one technique. What practices or standards do newcomers (or outsiders) need to adopt or adapt to in order to fit in? Over 90% of respondents to the Mosaic survey, for example, said that new immigrants need to
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learn English, and about two-thirds believed that immigrants should celebrate American holidays and traditions. (This held for Whites and non-Whites alike.) Nine of ten Mosaic respondents also agreed that Americans need to share a basic set of moral values. However, such items tend to be awkward to frame and interpret in explicitly racial terms. An experimental item on the Mosaic survey asked respondents whether they would characterize the United States today as a “White nation.” The results are intriguing but far from definitive: 34% of non-White respondents said “yes,” compared with 26% of White respondents. Powerful and pervasive as White cultural norms and ideals may be, conventional quantitative data and techniques are probably not the best way to grasp them or understand their broader social impacts. Douglas Hartmann and Paul R. Croll See also Affirmative Action in Education; Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Color Blindness; Critical Race Theory; Discrimination; Prejudice; Privilege; White Privilege
Further Readings
Doane, Ashley W., Jr. 1997. “Dominant Group Identity in the United States: The Role of ‘Hidden’ Ethnicity in Intergroup Relations.” Sociological Quarterly 38:375–397. Hartmann, Douglas, Penny Edgell, and Joseph Gerteis. 2003. American Mosaic Project Survey [Electronic data file]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, Department of Sociology. Helms, Janet E. and Robert T. Carter. 1990. “Development of the White Racial Identity Attitude Scale.” Pp. 67–80 in Black and White Racial Identity: Theory, Research, and Practice, edited by J. Helms. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Lewis, Amanda E. 2004. “‘What Group?’ Studying Whites and Whiteness in the Era of Colorblindness.” Sociological Theory 22:623–646. McDermott, Monica and Frank L. Samson. 2005. “White Racial and Ethnic Identity in the United States.” Annual Review of Sociology 31:245–261.
WHITENESS AND MASCULINITY With the emergence of women’s studies and scholarship on race and ethnic issues in the 20th century,
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many scholars began to take a closer look at whiteness and masculinity, which had long served as the unspoken standards in Western society. They argued that whiteness and masculinity are both privileged statuses and that to be White or male is to have greater access to rewards and valued resources simply because of one’s group membership. In this view, while efforts and ability may have some impact on an individual’s life course, considerable privilege is conferred regardless of merit. This entry discusses the background of that scholarship and its current direction.
The Invisibility of Privilege Oppressed groups have fought for analyses of race and gender inequality to create social change and greater equity. Traditionally, studies of race have focused on the victims of inequality: people of color. Similarly, studies of gender have focused on women and arose in part to make up for distortions in various disciplines in which the experiences of men had been taken to represent all of humanity. In literature, history, psychology, medicine, and other fields, men were seen as universal, abstract, and normal, and women as the particular. Understandably, early research on gender focused on bringing women into the analysis rather than generalizing from studies of and observations by men alone. Traditionally, whiteness and masculinity were treated as the invisible norms by which others were measured. Just as men’s lives had not been examined through the prism of gender, the lives of Whites had not been viewed through the prism of race. Whites, as the beneficiaries of privilege, were not confronted with the issue of race on a daily basis; it is something they could choose to ignore or recognize. According to new scholarship in race and gender, one of the greatest privileges experienced by Whites and men is the invisibility of their race or gender; instead, they are seen as the measure of humanity: generalizable, abstract, universal humans. For example, whereas White actors are traditionally described simply as “actors,” women and people of color are commonly pointed out, as in “Black actor” or “female scientist.” Scholars argue that this invisibility reinforces privilege, so that men’s violence against women becomes a “women’s issue.” The possible role of men’s privilege and dominance is excluded from focus. It is only recently that sustained analyses of men or White people have made gender and race central to the analysis. Antiracist and feminist scholarship have
made analyses of race and gender central to an understanding of society and all social institutions, holding that relations of inequality permeate and organize society at every level, shaping everyone’s experiences. The growing new fields of whiteness studies and masculinity studies have attempted to bring the experience of the privileged under the microscope, to understand the ways in which their lives are shaped by race and gender dynamics as well.
New Scholarship Highlights Whiteness and Masculinity In its beginnings, the field of masculinity studies took the experiences of White men to represent all men. Focusing primarily on gender, the research assumed a commonality among all men, regardless of race, class, age, ability, and so forth. These assumptions were challenged by people of color, gay men, disabled men, and others. More recent research examines the diverse experiences of men, pointing out that they do not necessarily share the same ideals of masculinity or have the same access and opportunities to achieve them. There is no single, monolithic masculinity. While men as a group experience certain privileges compared with women as a group, there is also tremendous inequality among men. Research that considers the intersections of gender with race, class, sexuality, and other socially significant categories of identity has revealed that many men disproportionately suffer the “costs of masculinity,” including poor health, dangerous work conditions, and shortened life span. In contrast to the early work of “sex roles” scholars, contemporary authors thus talk about “masculinities.” They see numerous competing masculinities and define hegemonic masculinity as that form of masculinity which is the dominant ideal at a given time. The hegemonic definition of masculinity that prevails in media culture today is White, heterosexual, youthful, and able-bodied. Hegemonic masculinity is constructed in relation to femininity and subordinated masculinities. Thus, hegemonic masculinity privileges White men and maintains their power over men of color, as well as women, according to this literature. White men disproportionately reap the privileges of masculinity. For example, while the U.S. Constitution guaranteed men certain rights, including the right to vote, these rights were in actuality limited to White men. Sociologists have detailed numerous examples of both race and gender privilege. Allan
White Privilege
Johnson has noted that male privileges include being held to a lower standard than women in upper-level occupations, enjoying disproportional representation in government, and being charged less for automobiles. As a White person, he has observed that he is never forced to represent his whole race; he is less likely to be arrested, convicted, or sentenced to prison; and most national heroes and models of success will be of his race. As definitions of women’s roles and femininity have changed, so has masculinity. In Western culture, social identities are often constructed as binary oppositions: man/woman, White/Black, heterosexual/homosexual. Each term has meaning in relation to the other, which is defined as its opposite. Furthermore, according to scholars looking at White male privilege, these oppositions are ranked: One side is considered superior and the other inferior. Because these identities are relational, changes to one side of the dualism force changes to the other side. In terms of whiteness and masculinity, many White men have felt threatened by the Civil Rights Movement; the women’s movement; and the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) movement of the past four decades and have responded in a reactive fashion. Many White men today feel threatened because of what they perceive as attacks against White masculinity, and, for many, their racial identity is central to their identity as men. For example, the White supremacist movement is one social movement in particular where men join to protect their privileges as White men, over men of color and over all women. What it means to be a man for White supremacists is bound to a notion of whiteness. Today, research often examines race and gender through an intersectional lens, seeing these social identities as interacting and mutually constitutive. Intersectional theory has been advanced by women of color, who argue within organizations of people of color and in scholarship on race that race cannot be understood on it own, without examining the dynamics of gender that shape the very different experiences of men and women of color. Similarly, women of color have had to confront their exclusion from traditional scholarship on women. The theory of intersectionality provides a framework for examining the intersecting dynamics of privilege and oppression. This theory argues that the categories of race, gender, class, and sexuality, as well as other identities, including ability, age, religion, and so forth, interact in maintaining privilege and oppression. Clearly, race
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and gender are two of the most significant aspects in shaping opportunities and experiences. Examining privileged statuses like whiteness and masculinity makes visible the ways in which everyone’s lives are shaped by race and gender. Abby L. Ferber See also Civil Rights Movement, Women and; Gender and Race, Intersection of; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender; Machismo; Privilege; White Flight; Whiteness; White Privilege
Further Readings
Connell, Robert W. 1995. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California. Ferber, Abby L. 1998. White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Johnson, Allan. 2006. Privilege, Power, and Difference. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill. Katz, Jackson. 2006. The Macho Paradox. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks. Kimmel, Michael S. 1996. Manhood in America: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press. Mac an Ghaill, Mairtin. 1996. Understanding Masculinities. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Messner, Michael A. 1997. Politics of Masculinities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
WHITE PRIVILEGE The current era of scholarship about race has moved beyond just focusing on racial “minorities” to include Whites and their role in race relations. By definition, if there is a “race problem,” there must be more than one group involved. This shift in viewpoint has focused on what is termed the “other side of racism”: White privilege. White privilege refers to the series of advantages that come to White Americans in their daily lives because, typically, they have been free of the labeling, stereotyping, and discrimination, past and present, that people of color experience. If there are racial groups that face discrimination, there must be a group (or groups) that benefit from such a social arrangement, by this reasoning. This entry looks at the perspectives put forward by scholars in the area of White privilege. Why has it taken scholars so long to focus on what they call “the other side of racism”? Some have
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asserted that academics themselves are subject to prejudices and biases. A significant part of the explanation, however, may pertain to the fact that privilege, by design, is invisible. Many White people do not recognize the existence, much less the benefits and privilege, of being White. Peggy McIntosh, one of the prominent academic theorists in this area, argues that White privilege is an “invisible knapsack” of unearned privileges that remain invisible, despite conferring advantage. White people are taught to not question this social system, which bestows benefits upon them. To question this system, she contends, is to acknowledge at a minimum that the privileged really do not live in a meritocracy.
Understanding Privilege How do scholars describe race privilege in U.S. society? First, they point out that society has a racial hierarchy, such that racial minorities are systematically disadvantaged, while Whites are systematically advantaged. However, that racial hierarchy coexists with multiple other hierarchies, most significantly those based upon class, sex, sexual orientation, and age, to name but a few. Within all status hierarchies, there are dominant and subordinate groups, advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Thus, an impoverished White woman, hearing her existence described as “privileged,” may find that difficult to see. The disadvantages associated with her social class and her gender are much more obvious to her, and, indeed, privilege is somewhat relative. Researchers note that people can be oppressors within one status hierarchy, while in others they may be disadvantaged. And more than likely, most people are both at some time or another. White privilege is not always intentional, according to this research perspective; most White people do not think of themselves as being oppressive. Second, scholars of White privilege note that White privilege shares some similarities with but is still different from White racism. With White privilege, White people are unconscious beneficiaries of this status hierarchy. White racism may refer not only to White people who are explicitly racist in their thoughts or behaviors but also to societal power relations and to an institutionalized system of privilege and oppression. In this view, privilege is part of that racist system, whether or not the beneficiaries acknowledge it to be so. Third, in order to understand White privilege, racial theorists suggest that the privileged must examine both themselves and social institutions, from the
media to religious organizations to educational institutions. The influence of this one aspect of power, White privilege, should not be underestimated. Scholars in this field urge those who are White to ask themselves in what ways being White has advantaged them. How has privilege been bestowed upon them? Fourth, scholars of White privilege point out that membership in a privileged group has its costs. Privilege carries with it intense emotional and psychological costs for individuals, in this view, because it actually warps a person’s sense of reality and values. For instance, when a White person is not hired or promoted, he or she may claim that this is the result of affirmative action rather than considering his or her actual strengths and weaknesses. Race shapes the lives and experiences of people whether they are oppressed or privileged by their racial status, in this view. White privilege also has collective costs, according to this research perspective. Privilege grants White communities a sense of entitlement that distorts reality. Consider how collective entitlement pertains to school funding debates. A vast disparity in school funding, often along racial lines, has been documented. In Jonathan Kozol’s eye-opening book, Savage Inequalities, White students at a wealthy suburban public high school in upstate New York insisted that they were entitled to their educational advantages and that distributing equivalent funds to an impoverished, predominantly Black school in East St. Louis would more than likely be a waste.
Creation of Privilege To understand race privilege, researchers have documented the process many immigrant groups go through to establish themselves as “White,” a process that goes beyond altering the racial designation of a group. Rather, it is a process that grants them access to privilege; thus, whiteness is a sought-after, coveted status. Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Greek immigrants have not always been considered White in American society. Therefore, the formation of the White working class is racialized. For immigrants, becoming White is intricately wed to their inclusion in the working class, thus establishing their “Americanness.” Researchers in White privilege offer a strategy that White people may use in eradicating privilege. First, they must honestly assess how privilege plays itself out in their lives, for instance, by noting that representations of Jesus as a White man are probably not based on
White Racism
geographical and historical accuracy. Researchers in this area would argue that White privilege was operating, for example, when young, White, exmilitary males were not racially profiled, and not automatically suspect, after Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murray Federal Building in Oklahoma in 1995. In contrast, many men who have attributes of Arab or Muslim appearance have been profiled since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. White privilege means that Whites are more likely to share the same racial status with teachers, supervisors, and employers because people in authority situations are more likely to be White. White privilege means that White social and culture perspectives are defined as the norms. Fundamentally, White people are privileged not to be forced to think about race, as people of color so often are. Kathleen J. Fitzgerald See also Affirmative Action in the Workplace; Critical Race Theory; Haole; Irish Americans; Privilege; Racism; Whiteness; Whiteness and Masculinity
Further Readings
McIntosh, Peggy. 2005. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Part 3, Section 2, in White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism, edited by P. Rothenberg. 2nd ed. New York: Worth. Roediger, David R. 1991. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. New York: Verso. Rothenberg, Paula, ed. 2005. White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism. New York: Worth. Wise, Tim. 2005. White like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son. Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press.
WHITE RACISM White racism refers to a system of oppression of African Americans and other people of color by the White Western world, specifically White Europeans and White Americans. Scholars have employed terms including institutional racism (or institutional discrimination), systemic racism, White supremacy, and global racist order to emphasize conceptually similar ideas. Although there is a tendency to think of racism as just a matter of individuals engaging in racially hostile prejudices and actions, White racism extends
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well beyond this to encompass the all-important ways in which racial oppression has been structured into societies over time, particularly through law, the economy, and education to privilege Whites and disadvantage people of color. This entry places White racism in its historical context and explains how it has been structured into society and how it affects worldviews of Whites and people of color. In this sense, the concept of White racism addresses a critique by those arguing that racism should not be conceptualized as a “White phenomenon,” but should incorporate the ways in which people of color are also “racist.” Although many people, including people of color, harbor racial prejudices, White racism, as a concept, captures the welldocumented world-historical development of enduring systems of racialized oppression within the United States and around the world, via White supremacy. Such systems have been created by White Europeans and Americans and have targeted people of color, making the term White racism theoretically appropriate and historically accurate. Understanding the concept of White racism requires a historical lens. Distinguished U.S. scholar W. E. B. Du Bois famously observed in 1910, “The discovery of personal whiteness among the world’s peoples is a very modern thing. . . . The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. . . . Today, we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is White and by that token, wonderful!” Although many people commonly assume the self-evidence of racial differences, “race” is, in fact, an idea that gradually emerged with European colonialism, beginning in the 1400s. Although not yet explicitly racialized, early colonizers, like the Portuguese and Spanish, employed beliefs regarding supposed European superiority as a rationale for exploiting the labor and natural resources of Indigenous Peoples. Later ideas drew upon religious differences, differentiating between European “Christians” and “heathen” others. As European colonialism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade expanded, color and other physical characteristics became progressively more central to an explicitly racist ideology rationalizing Western ascendancy over indigenous and inferior“raced” peoples. This racist ideology was disseminated in thousands of books and articles by leading European and U.S. thinkers from the 17th century on, advancing supposed “evidence” of White superiority contrasted with the intellectual, moral, and cultural inferiority of
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Africans and other people of color, marking them fit for conquest and domination.
White Racism in the U.S. Context The U.S. case is critical. As scholars have noted, the structural framework developed over 400 years within the U.S. nation represents the oldest system of overtly racial oppression developed systematically by White Europeans for a non-European group central to the internal operation of a modern society. Indeed, enslaved Black Africans (and, notably, American Indian lands) were critical to the expanding labor and economic needs of the North American colonies from the 1600s onward. Slavery generated wealth for slaveholders and for many other Whites who depended on slavery-derived businesses. This included merchants, shipbuilders, bankers, insurers, mill operators, and working-class Whites, who worked for such businesses or as overseers and militiamen. Slavery was lifeblood to the economic situation of most White U.S. residents, and central to the core operations of this U.S. society during its nearly 250-year regime. From this initial history, a White-dominated sociopolitical order was constituted, normalized, and maintained. Although White racism developed from the economic interests of White elites, it became structured into the rhythms of everyday life. Every major aspect of life was shaped to some degree by core racist realities. Indeed, the unjustly gained economic, political, and cultural domination of Whites, continuing resource inequalities, and the White-racist ideologies and institutions created to preserve White advantage were extended during the era of southern Jim Crow and northern de facto segregation. Despite the fact that Black and other U.S. residents of color achieved formal equality during the Civil Rights victories of the 1960s, significant racial oppression persists, reflecting the ways in which White racism has been embedded within U.S. society’s institutional structure as well as within the contemporary White mind.
Structured White Dominance Fundamental to a systemic theory of racism are the ways in which White advantages (and disadvantages for people of color) have been built into the structure of society. Many of these advantages are significant material privileges, particularly in the form of socioeconomic resources, which many Whites are able to
accumulate simply by their structural positioning in a racialized society, and often in ways that are disguised as nonracial. Consider the well-documented persistent racial disparities in wealth. Scholars find that at all income, occupational, and educational levels, White families own significantly more wealth than do Black families, suggesting a racial explanation. As indicated earlier, many White families began building not just livelihoods, but wealth off stolen land of Native Americans and labor of enslaved Black people. During the peak decades of Jim Crow, the U.S. government provided a vast array of wealthgenerating resources to White families and businesses. These included hundreds of millions of acres of land, billions of dollars of mineral and oil rights, major airline routes, major radio and television frequencies, and many other government-controlled resources. Although Blacks were excluded from many such benefits through racial violence and the apartheid system of the era, scholars have documented that many racial wealth disparities were exacerbated in ways that have made White “success” appear race-neutral. As Black Americans faced personal and institutional discrimination in employment, business ownership, housing, education, and banking, Whites benefited from seemingly “open” government programs, such as the Homestead Act, labor laws of the New Deal, and the G.I. Bill of Rights, each of which served as major assetbuilding instruments for White families. Although these acts did not use specifically racial language, they included provisions that effectively excluded Black Americans from reaping the rewards of such programs. Researchers have cumulatively estimated that significantly more than $100 billion in benefits was transferred almost exclusively to White Americans through the social progressive policies of the mid20th century alone. Significantly, these policies excluded African Americans, further prohibiting attainment of social equality, and exacerbated the gap between Black and White Americans, through the latter’s facilitated capital accumulation. One critical example is the G.I. Bill of Rights, often credited as having created the middle class in the United States. Despite universal eligibility for G.I. Bill benefits, through which millions of U.S. residents bought homes, attended college, started businesses, and found employment, the legislation’s administrative responsibilities were delegated to the state and local level, where, particularly in the segregated South, White officials engaged in blatantly discriminatory
White Racism
practices against Black veterans. Additionally, African Americans were largely restricted from using their college vouchers to attend predominantly White colleges, even outside the South, and demand for placements in historically Black colleges far exceeded capabilities. With respect to housing, specifically, the creation of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), along with the Veterans Administration, made homeownership possible for the first time for most U.S. residents. However, the FHA also institutionalized a national appraisal process for evaluating real estate areas in determining where to extend loans, appraising race of neighborhood as much as condition of properties. Communities that predominantly comprised people of color were “redlined” with low ratings. The result was that most mortgages went to suburbanizing the United States along racial lines. Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government underwrote $120 billion in housing, 98% of which went to White families. Such examples demonstrate the impact of White racism as a structure that institutionalizes inequality, and in ways that continue to reproduce White advantage and the disadvantage of people of color. Although redlining was eventually outlawed, it institutionalized an association between race and resources that persists. As people of color attempt to integrate neighborhoods, a “tipping point” often occurs where Whites begin fleeing neighborhoods. As research has documented, “White flight” arises both as a result of Whites’ explicitly discriminatory rationales and actions regarding not wanting to live by people of color, but also, importantly, because of the logic that emerges when racism is institutionalized—Whites make decisions regarding concerns for property values and associated factors, such as schools for children. Institutionalized racism (or discrimination) creates a system where discrimination is not simply about hostility but is “logical” as a result of resource inequalities that privilege Whites. Notably, people of color are damaged because “White flight” has the concomitant effect of taking income, wealth, and resources from neighborhoods, again, because of the persistent connection between race and resources, encouraging pernicious residential segregation. Examples like those described demonstrate the ways in which elite Whites created a social order that has worked to the economic benefit of most Whites in an intergenerational way. Wealth, which includes housing equity, has enabled continuing generations of Whites to provide better educational, housing, and
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other opportunities for their children than can generations of Black Americans whose ancestors did not receive access to most wealth-generating resources because of massive discrimination and segregation. Outside of White economic domination, White racism, as a systemic social order, also entails cultural domination, whereby people of color are pressured to reject their home cultures and assimilate to traditional White ways of doing things. Whiteness is normalized as the dominant culture, such that White cultural practices and institutions are racially unmarked and unnamed, and appear to be the only legitimate way of conducting everyday life in society.
White Racial Framing of the World As a system of oppression, White racism reaches from the largest societal institutions all the way into the human mind. Although it has been modified during different eras, particularly as new groups of color were incorporated into society (and despite the current belief that widespread racist thinking is a thing of the past), the basic racist ideology that was first developed in the 17th century persists in the minds of many Whites. Indeed, the development of a commonplace White racial frame, from which White people look at themselves, at others, and at society, has been fundamental to the persistence of White racism. This White racial frame includes racialized ideas (e.g., interpretations or explanations of the everyday world that legitimate White racism), stereotypes (e.g., negative images of people of color and assertively positive views of Whites and White institutions), emotions (e.g., fear of Blacks and other people of color), and inclinations to discriminate. Because of the structural position of Whites in society, the frame and associated discriminatory actions are expressed in the routine operation of institutions in society, as described above. White racism has generated great resistance by people of color. For centuries, and continuing today, people of color in the United States and around the world have striven to counter, restructure, and overturn the discrimination they face. To the extent that the United States and other societies (e.g., South Africa) have progressed toward realizing the ideals of liberty, justice, and respect for human rights, the resistant efforts of people of color must be credited greatly. Although, as demonstrated earlier, there is a strong tendency for the exploitative mechanisms, resource inequalities, and buttressing mental frames that maintain White privilege to
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remain in force, the collective and increasing actions of people of color and their White allies remain the hope for transforming the world’s racist system. Jennifer C. Mueller and Joe Feagin See also American Apartheid; Colonialism; Discrimination; Institutional Discrimination; Internal Colonialism; Privilege; Race; Racism; Racism, Types of; Redlining; Segregation; Slavery; White Flight; Whiteness; White Privilege
Further Readings
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2001. White Supremacy and Racism in the Post–Civil Rights Era. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Brown, Michael K. and David Wellman. 2005. “Embedding the Color Line: The Accumulation of Racial Advantage and the Disaccumulation of Opportunity in Post–Civil Rights America.” Du Bois Review 2(2):187–207. Du Bois, W. E. B. [1920] 2003. Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil. New York: Humanity Books. Feagin, Joe R. 2000. Racist America. New York: Routledge. Feagin, Joe R. 2006. Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression. New York: Routledge. Feagin, Joe R., Hernán Vera, and Pinar Batur. 2001. White Racism: The Basics. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Mills, Charles W. 1997. The Racial Contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
WHITE SUPREMACY MOVEMENT The White supremacy movement is a social movement consisting of a diverse array of groups and organizations often considered “extremist” and violent in their hatred of non-Whites and desire to establish a separate White homeland. This movement has existed for almost 150 years, and it has proven extremely malleable. This entry describes the history of this movement, characteristics of its membership, and the ideology that is common to White supremacist groups.
History and Membership The Ku Klux Klan, historically the most influential White supremacist organization in the United States, was founded in 1865 as a secret fraternal order for Civil War veterans of the Confederate states. The
Klan led a reign of terror between 1867 and 1871, torturing and killing thousands of Blacks. With the institutionalization of Jim Crow segregation and the accompanying security of White domination, the Klan temporarily disbanded, but was glorified and romanticized in accounts such as Thomas Dixon’s novel The Clansman (1905) and the subsequent film Birth of a Nation (1915). The Klan reemerged in 1915, and, in 1925, membership reached an all-time high of 4 to 5 million. In contrast with the Ku Klux Klan’s long history, grounded in mainstream politics in the United States, the American Nazi Party (ANP) never gained many members. Founded in 1958 by George Lincoln Rockwell, the party honored the legacy of Hitler and the German Nazis. Rockwell was subsequently assassinated, but the ANP was the predecessor to a variety of neo-Nazi splinter groups. The contemporary White supremacy movement in the United States has grown out of the ideology and traditions of the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis/neo-Nazis. In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center counted 803 active hate groups in the United States (this includes a small number of hate groups that are not White supremacist groups, such as Black separatists), a 33% increase since 2000. There are a wide variety of White supremacist organizations, ranging from neo-Nazis and Klan groups to Christian identity adherents and skinheads. While some organizations are attempting to move into the political mainstream, others are becoming increasingly violent. The movement is in a constant state of flux, with groups merging and disintegrating and new ones emerging each year. Researchers disagree regarding terminology. References to this movement may use the language of White supremacy, organized hate groups, White nationalism, White separatism, or White power. Most of the organizations themselves prefer the terms White separatist or White nationalist, highlighting the movement’s ultimate goal of geographic separation of the White race from all non-Whites, including Jews. Contemporary debates revolve around how to most accurately label the movement and identify its key branches today. Traditionally, most scholars have utilized a typology similar to that of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which now divides the movement into neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan, racist skinheads, and neo-Confederates. Key neo-Nazi organizations include the National Alliance, National Vanguard, White Revolution, and the National Socialist Movement. The largest Klan groups today are the Imperial Klans of America and
White Supremacy Movement
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George Lincoln Rockwell. Rockwell (center), head of the American Nazi Party, and a group of followers in uniform are shown giving the “Heil Hitler” salute in front of headquarters with Nazi and U.S. flags waving in the background (1960). The American Nazi Party was the predecessor of a variety of neo-Nazi splinter groups. Source: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.
the Brotherhood of the Klans. In recent years, the strength of the Klan has increased as membership in neo-Nazi groups has declined. However, there is always a great deal of movement of members from one organization to another. The racist skinheads tend to be the least organized branch and attract younger, more migratory members. In 2005, racist skinhead groups increased almost 20%. The broad term neoConfederates includes hate groups, as well as groups that would not be considered hate groups. The more extremist advocate breaking the country into racial states. Chip Berlet and Stanislav Vysotsky argue that rather than focusing on distinct organizations, we should instead think of the movement as composed of religious, political, and youth cultural organizations. This approach instead directs our attention to characteristics of group ideology and activity. Over the past decade, the movement has focused efforts on recruiting young people via the White power music industry and the World Wide Web. White power music has gained a sizable following among White teenagers and has facilitated the development of a self-contained youth culture. At the same time, hundreds of explicitly hateful Web sites have attempted to spread White supremacist ideology to
unsuspecting youth. Many of these sites target middle- and upper-middle-class educated youths. These sites provide the movement with the ability to reach a wide audience with little money or effort and provide viewers with seemingly intellectual material, privacy, and anonymity. Via the Internet and the World Wide Web, far more people read White supremacist publications and Web sites than actually join organizations. In this sense, the impact of the movement extends far beyond its membership. In 2005, there were 524 U.S.based hate sites, a 12% increase over 2004. Over the past decade, the Internet has also facilitated the forging of a strong international movement. Despite stereotypes of movement members as deviants, members of White supremacist organizations resemble the general population in terms of education level, occupation, and income. Hate groups are especially successful recruiting in communities hardhit by economic downturns. The growing wealth gap in the United States means that people at all economic levels are facing thwarted dreams and perceive themselves as doing poorly. Many scholars argue that gender is central to understanding this movement’s attraction and holding on to members and may be key to developing more
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successful strategies of resistance. The organizations attract primarily men; however, in recent years, many groups have targeted women for recruitment in order to stabilize their membership base. Within the movement, women tend to be relegated to subordinate roles. While increasing numbers of women are joining the movement, research shows that women often do not share the ideology of the movement and may instead be searching for a sense of community and meaning that comes from being a part of a larger movement. Despite the growing numbers of women in the movement, it remains centrally concerned with preserving White male privilege. Recent research suggests that women may play an important role in bringing men out of the movement. White supremacists recruit new members based on the assumption that the White race is under attack and faces the threat of genocide. U.S. society has experienced tremendous social change in recent decades, sparked by the Civil Rights Movement, the women’s movement, and the gay and lesbian movement. More recently, debates over immigration, affirmative action, welfare, and other highly politicized and racialized topics have been perceived by many White men as attacks against them, against not only their racial privilege, but their identity as men. For the organized White supremacist movement, concerned primarily with preserving whiteness and White privilege, these changes are particularly disturbing. What it means to be a White man is no longer secure, and White male privilege no longer proceeds unquestioned. Many sociologists have described a contemporary “crisis of masculinity.” In concert with economic dislocations and insecurity, many White men believe they are being denied the opportunity to achieve the “American dream,” which they see as their birthright. While the tactics of the White supremacist movement are extreme, especially the encouragement of violence, they are part of a broader cultural backlash to movements for equality. Organizing against the advances fought for by the civil rights, women’s, and gay and lesbian movements, these organizations seek to roll back the advances that have been achieved and reassert White, male, heterosexual hegemony. The White supremacist movement is founded upon historically mainstream views about race and gender. This movement has always accepted the entrenched view of race in the United States, which defines whiteness by White purity. They hold tight to the “one-drop rule,” defining Whites as those who are racially pure.
White supremacist organizations are most likely to flourish in communities that are most sympathetic to racist beliefs. Research reveals that many Americans share the views of White supremacists, even if they are not members of the movement. For example, sociologists have documented that the majority of Whites embrace stereotypes that Blacks are inferior and lazy, that Jews are moneygrubbing, and that discrimination against people of color is a thing of the past. Less than 10% of hate crimes are actually committed by members of White supremacist organizations. The presence of the movement nevertheless serves to encourage hatemotivated violence, providing a voice, community, and sense of legitimacy for a wider audience. As survey research reveals, White supremacists articulate the wider concerns shared by many Americans, as well as a comprehensive ideology that enables a broader audience to interpret their own experiences and concerns. The White supremacist movement and the broader White supremacist culture have a symbiotic relationship, each contributing to the strength of the other.
Ideology Despite disagreements among organizations and individual activists, the movement is united by a shared belief system. The key overarching frames uniting the movement are dualism, conspiracism, and apocalypticism. Dualism divides the world into opposing forces of good and evil, right and wrong, Whites and nonWhites. White supremacist literature argues that there has long been a Jewish conspiracy to eliminate the White race and that all historic political events are shaped by this vast conspiracy. White supremacist ideology argues that these eternal enemies will face a coming Apocalypse, a race war that will change the world as we know it and reveal the White race as victorious. White supremacists believe that racial and gender differences are essential and unchanging, given either by God or by biology. Social inequality is seen as a reflection of the natural order. Race and gender dualisms intersect here to define Whites as superior to non-Whites and men as superior to women. This naturalized hierarchy places White men securely at the top. Jews are constructed as the ultimate enemy, trying to race-mix the White race into oblivion. People of color and women are defined as inferior to White men, and it is believed to be the duty of White men to protect innocent White women and children from the brainwashing Jews, who control the world, and the
Williams, Fannie Barrier (1855–1944)
criminal, animal-like Blacks and other people of color. The movement’s fear of White genocide leads to an obsession with controlling White women’s sexuality and reproduction. White supremacist ideology thus offers itself as the antidote to America’s current social problems (crime, immigration, corruption, etc.) by promising to empower White men to regain control of the nation and solve our social ills. White men are encouraged to become “real men” by standing up and protecting White women, reasserting their place in the natural hierarchy, and saving the White race. Some groups advocate for separate, homogeneous, racial states, while others seek to cleanse the earth of all non-Whites. For adherents, the only way to secure the future of the White race is through the creation of a racially pure homeland. Despite ongoing fluctuations and disarray, the White supremacist movement is an entrenched feature of the U.S. social movement landscape. The specific organizations, leaders, and tactics may change, but the basic belief structure has changed very little over time and is closely tied to more-mainstream assumptions about race and inequality. Abby L. Ferber See also Anti-Defamation League; Canada; Hate Crimes; Holocaust Deniers and Revisionists; Ku Klux Klan; Prejudice; Privilege; Social Darwinism; Whiteness and Masculinity
Further Readings
Berlet, Chip and Matthew N. Lyons. 2000. Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. New York: Guilford Press. Berlet, Chip and Stanlislav Vysotsky. 2006. “Overview of U.S. White Supremacist Groups.” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 34(1):11–48. Blee, Kathleen M. 2002. Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dobratz, Betty A. and Stephanie Shanks-Meile. 2000. The White Separatist Movement in the United States: “White Power, White Pride!” Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Ferber, Abby L. 1998. White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Ferber, Abby L. 2004. Home Grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism. New York: Routledge. Kaplan, Jeffrey, ed. 2000. Encyclopedia of White Power. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira.
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WILLIAMS, FANNIE BARRIER (1855–1944) Fannie Barrier Williams generated a distinctive voice as a controversial orator, activist, and writer who analyzed the lives of African Americans, African American women, and the nature of racism in America, especially in Chicago. This entry looks at her life and contributions.
Early Years Williams was born in Brockport, New York, on February 12, 1855, to Harriet Prince and Anthony J. Barrier. She was the youngest child of three, with a sister, Ella D. Barrier, and a brother, George. She was trained in the local public schools and graduated from the State Normal School at Brockport in 1870. As a third-generation free Negro, her life differed dramatically from that of the typical African American slave; for example, she had strong childhood friendships with Whites and became a literate and highly educated journalist. Upon graduation, Fanny left her sheltered childhood home to teach the young, newly emancipated children of the South during Reconstruction. Her travels through the Jim Crow, segregated South and experiences changed her life sharply. For a decade, she taught in the public schools in Washington, D.C., while studying first at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and then at the School of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C. In 1887, she married S. Laing Williams, a young lawyer who graduated from Columbia Law School. He then moved to Chicago and established a law partnership with Ferdinand Lee Barnett, and Williams joined her husband there in 1887. They became leaders in the African American elite in that city for the next 30 years. The Williamses shared a deep belief in the Unitarian religion. They joined All-Souls Church and befriended its pastor, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, and his supporters, pioneer social worker Jane Addams and Mary MacDowell, a social activist known as “the Angel of the Stockyards.” The Williamses helped established the Prudence Crandall Society and met with twenty-five Black couples in that group until S. Laing’s death in 1921.
Noted Writer and Speaker Williams’s first public accomplishment was her work to establish the Training School for Nurses at Provident Hospital in 1891. In 1893, she became a
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Williams, Fannie Barrier (1855–1944)
noted speaker at the Women’s Congress at the Columbian World Exhibition in Chicago. She delivered a notable address there on Black women’s progress since the Emancipation Proclamation and another at the Parliament of Religions, where she discussed the role of religion in the Black community. Her career as a national orator and journalist began after these events. She spoke most frequently in the East, Midwest, and South. She wrote for many newspapers, including The Woman’s Era, Chicago Record Herald, New York Age, and The Colored American. From November 1894 until January 1896, Williams became the center of a controversy at the Chicago Women’s Club over her admission to that group of powerful White women. After a bitter campaign against her, her strong allies won her acceptance, and she worked with this group for the rest of her life in Chicago. She also became active in the organization of Black women’s clubs, both in Chicago and nationally. As a result, she became one of the founders of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and was at the center of a vital network of Black women including Elizabeth Lindsay Davis, Fannie Emmanuel, Mary Church Terrell, Mary Waring, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. All of them wrote on race relations, gender, community activism, and social justice, forming a golden era of Black women in sociology. Through her writings, speeches, and political activities, Williams generated a theory of African American life based on the Unitarian religion and on the assumptions of transcendentalism and pragmatism, especially those of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. She blended these ideas with the feminist pragmatism created by female residents at Hull House, a social settlement. Jane Addams headed this institution and was an active model for Williams’s work at a biracial social settlement, the Frederick Douglass Center. Their joint interests in the lives of African Americans resulted in the Hull House School of Race Relations. Williams had a dream for all Americans: the individual pursuit of happiness in one indivisible nation, based on truth and justice for all. Her interracial worldview encompassed both the accomodationist voice of Booker T. Washington and the militant voice of W. E. B. Du Bois. Williams represents an often unheard voice today: one integrating Blacks and Whites, homemakers and intellectuals, men and women, and
social settlements and women’s clubs. Contrary to most contemporary scholarship, Williams interpreted slavery as a major factor suppressing the African influence on their descendants. She also argued that an alternate community emerged from the spirituality, courage, and vision of the African Americans who survived the brutality of Whites. Williams was, moreover, a central, founding figure in sociology and the feminist pragmatism created primarily by women who lived and worked in communities and outside of the academy. Williams’s writings are scattered in now obscure newspapers and African American journals. In 2002, a significant set of her speeches and articles was edited for the contemporary reader and scholar for the first time, and analyses of her life and ideas have increased since then. Williams was a fascinating woman whose voice remains politically and intellectually in tune with contemporary life. She returned to Brockport, New York, to live with her sister. They lived together until Williams’s death of heart disease on March 4, 1944. She was laid to rest in the Barrier family plot. Mary Jo Deegan See also Black Intellectuals; Chicago School of Race Relations; Douglass, Frederick; Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt; Hull House School of Race Relations; Washington, Booker T.; Wells-Barnett, Ida B.
Further Readings
Deegan, Mary Jo. 2002. “Fannie Barrier Williams and Her Life as a New Woman of Color, 1893–1918. Pp. xii–lx in The New Woman of Color: The Collected Writings of Fannie Barrier Williams, edited and introduced by M. J. Deegan. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Deegan, Mary Jo. 2002. Race, Hull-House, and the University of Chicago: A New Conscience against Ancient Evil. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Deegan, Mary Jo. 2005. “Women, African Americans, and the ASA, 1905–2005.” Pp. 178–206 in The Diverse Histories of American Sociology, edited by A. J. Blasi. Sponsored by the History of Sociology Section, American Sociological Association. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Williams, Fannie Barrier. 2002. The New Woman of Color: The Collected Writings of Fannie Barrier Williams, introduced and edited by M. J. Deegan. DeKalb: University of Northern Illinois.
Wilson, William Julius (1935– )
WILSON, WILLIAM JULIUS (1935– ) William Julius Wilson, who is currently the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University, is one of the nation’s leading sociologists and public intellectuals. Time magazine in 1996 named him as one of America’s twenty-five most influential Americans, and a Washington Post article described him as the “most influential sociologist of his generation.” His sociological writings are primarily concerned with analyzing questions of changing race relations using sociohistorical and theoretical perspectives. He is best known for the contemporary classics The Declining Significance of Race, The Truly Disadvantaged, and When Work Disappears, in which he has refocused contemporary public debates on race and class in general and the urban underclass specifically. His life and works are discussed in this entry.
Early Life William Julius Wilson was born in 1935, in Derry Township, Pennsylvania, a small, rural, nonfarm community roughly fifty miles east of Pittsburgh. He grew up in the working-class community of Bairdstown, whose social structure was largely made up of persons in operatives, crafts, and laboring lines of work. Economic and social circumstances more than race appear to have influenced his perceptions, consciousness, and outlook on life. Although his family was quite poor and he often went hungry, he did not feel deprived and trapped in poverty, nor did he experience crowded conditions, crimes, drugs, or a sense of being imprisoned. A close and supportive extended family nurtured in him high levels of educational expectations, aspirations, and achievements. Within his extended family, an aunt helped finance his college education. As an undergraduate, Wilson attended Wilberforce University with a scholarship from his church and additional financial support from his aunt. Wilberforce has the distinction of being the oldest historically Black institution of higher education. Wilson initially considered majoring in business administration; however, he changed his mind after taking his first sociology courses. Professor Maxwell Brooks captured his interest with courses in social problems and race and offered him a teaching assistantship. Working under
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Brooks, he developed the holistic perspective that would influence his sociological imagination and analyses of social problems. After graduating from Wilberforce and serving 2 years in the U.S. Army, Wilson completed a master’s degree in sociology at Bowling Green State University. His master’s thesis, “A Study of Attitudes of the Protestant Pastors of Church and Sect Type Religious Organization in the City of Toledo Toward Militarism and Pacifism,” focused on liberal and fundamentalist religiosity and the relationships between political attitudes and human action. Wilson’s sociological interests at Washington State University, Pullman, were principally focused on theory construction, the logic of sociological inquiry, and the philosophy of the social sciences. Richard Ogles, a former professor in sociology, introduced him to the writings of the philosophers of science Ernest Nagel, Karl Hempel, and Gustav Bergman. Wilson’s earliest sociological publications address the scientific status of sociological theory with respect to structures of explanation, significance of concepts, and the nature of evidence. His PhD dissertation was titled “Preference Evaluation and Norms: An Empirical Exploration in Measurement.” Wilson’s first academic appointment was as an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he received tenure and promotion to associate professor without apparent difficulty. During the Amherst years, he was recognized as a master teacher and won the Distinguished Teacher Award. Earlier theoretical interests in the philosophy of science and formal theory were refocused on racial and ethnic relations.
A New Focus The spirit of the civil rights revolution, which led to increasing opportunities for Black Americans and the ghetto riots in Watts, Newark, and Detroit, fed Wilson’s intellectual curiosity for the subject. He sensed that the social structure for Blacks in the United States was changing rapidly and attempted to explain this phenomenon. The burning concerns driving his interests were the relative lack of theory, social history, and cross-cultural studies in the area. However, he was not interested in being a sociologist who was known for his work in race relations, but had broader concerns of connecting a more holistic societal analysis with racial and ethnic stratification.
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Wilson, William Julius (1935– )
Wilson’s years at the University of Chicago (1971–1996) were accompanied by his increased national visibility in sociological controversies concerning changing race relations and race-class intersections during the post–civil rights years. In Power, Racism, and Privilege, published in 1973, he described race relations as nested in dimensions of power and related to interaction between dominant and minority groups; race relations could not be understood without considering the impact of racism. Wilson used the concept of racism to describe the experiences of subordinate racial groups that suffer from forms of exploitation directed by racist norms or racist ideologies of the dominant group; the concept of power accounted for group oppression and the continued association of specific racial groups with particular positions of caste or class. Wilson viewed the history of intergroup relations between Blacks and Whites in the United States as power contests characterized by a dialectical relationship between integration and conflict processes. Societal changes such as industrialization, urbanization, internal migration and immigration, and political changes were hypothesized as affecting the accumulation of resources between racial groups, altering the balance of power, and bringing about shifts from paternalistic to competitive systems of race relations.
Major Works The Declining Significance of Race is characterized by a more complex analysis of the intersection of race and class that moves beyond the intergroup relations and power conflict perspectives. Here, Wilson analyzed race relations history in three stages: preindustrial, industrial, and modern industrial. These stages roughly approximated antebellum slavery and the early post–Civil War era, the late 19th century through the New Deal, and the post–World War II and post–civil rights eras. He argued that in each of these stages, macrosociological changes in the system of production, social relations of production, and state policies and laws were accompanied by changing patterns of race relations, including the norms and ideologies of racial domination that accompany racial stratification. With respect to post–civil rights era changes among Black Americans, Wilson argued that there was a deepening schism in the Black community between a new Black middle class and a Black urban underclass. He asserted that as a consequence of corporate and governmental expansion and antidiscrimination policies in
public accommodations, voting rights, affirmative action, and fair housing, younger, talented, and highly educated Blacks experienced unprecedented job opportunities and increasingly reached economic parity with Whites. These race-specific policies did not sufficiently address the unique problems of de facto segregation and social class subordination confronting ghetto Blacks, however. Simultaneously, Wilson observed, the poorest segments of the Black community, including the unskilled, uneducated, and young female-headed households, were falling further behind. The argument of the “declining significance of race” was actually intended to call attention to the relative increase in the significance of social class and play up the economic class differences among Blacks. Wilson underscored that economics, social class, and accumulated disadvantages based on racial discrimination were the major factors explaining racial differences in status. The notion of an economic schism in the Black community had earlier been discussed by Andrew Brimmer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The concept of “underclass” originated with Gunnar Myrdal. The controversy and criticism generated by The Declining Significance of Race resulted in Wilson refocusing his attention on inner-city poverty and public policy. In The Truly Disadvantaged, he challenged liberals who were reluctant to discuss the urban underclass and conservatives who were fixated on the culture of poverty. While appropriating the underclass discourse, integrating a research and public policy agenda, and going beyond both perspectives, this book reframed the national debate by connecting the analysis of poverty with macroeconomic changes such as industrial decline, unemployment, and joblessness. Microsociological changes, such as the out-movement of the Black middle class from inner-city neighborhoods and the loss of neighborhood social controls, interacted with these. In describing the growth of the Black urban underclass, Wilson introduced two concepts: social isolation and concentration effects. Wilson’s discussion of public policy critiqued the limitations in the visions of the Civil Rights Movement and war on poverty policies for addressing contemporary social dislocations and urged universal rather than race-specific policies to ameliorate these. He thought race-specific policies such as antidiscrimination and affirmative action largely benefited the Black middle class. Universal policies such as economic growth, school-to-work transitions, educational standards, child care, and transitional employment had greater chances of reaching the inner-city poor.
Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973)
In When Work Disappears, Wilson identified the primacy of macroeconomic, ecological, and public policy factors in the growth of contemporary Black joblessness and poverty. Unlike The Truly Disadvantaged, this work included an extensive discussion of racial, cultural, and social psychological factors. The disappearance of work alongside neighborhood ecological processes of social isolation and concentration effects were hypothesized as resulting in the loss of family among the inner-city poor and their lower levels of economic integration in the labor market. Indirect exclusionary processes such as statistical discrimination and “selective recruitment” by employers and the low levels of human and social capital brought by inner-city Black males to the workplace are advanced as more salient factors than overt racial discrimination in explaining joblessness. With respect to public policy discussions, Wilson urged that the contemporary inequalities of Blacks were better explained by changing economic organization factors than by structures of racism, discrimination, and prejudice. He viewed public policy discussions of inequality based on racism as tending to be divisive and polarizing. He urged the adoption of universal social rights policies that emphasized well-paying jobs, higher educational standards, school-to-work transitions, health care, and child care programs and proposed that race-specific policies such as affirmative action and flexible standards constituted a “hidden agenda.” In The Bridge Over the Racial Divide, Wilson proposed the creation of a large, strong, and organized multiracial coalition as essential for the development and implementation of policies that would reverse the trends of rising inequality. In the same year that When Work Disappears was published, Wilson relocated to Harvard University, where he was appointed as professor in the Department of Afro-American Studies and the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Frank Harold Wilson See also African Americans; Black Intellectuals; Chicago School of Race Relations; Declining Signficance of Race, The; Discrimination; Homicide; Informal Economy; Underclass
Further Readings
Willie, Charles Vert. 1979. The Caste and Class Controversy. Dix Hills, New York: General Hall. Willie, Charles Vert. 1989. The Caste and Class Controversy on Race and Poverty: Round Two of the Willie/Wilson Debate. New York: General Hall.
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Wilson, Frank Harold. 2004. Race, Class, and the Postindustrial City: William Julius Wilson and the Promise of Sociology. Albany: State University of New York Press. Wilson, William J. 1973. Power, Racism, and Privilege: Race Relations in Theoretical and Sociohistorical Perspectives. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, William J. 1978. The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, William J. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, William J. 1996. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Vintage Books. Wilson, William J. 1999. The Bridge over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wilson, William Julius and Richard P. Taub. 2006. There Goes the Neighborhood: Racial, Ethnic, and Class Tensions in Four Chicago Neighborhoods and Their Meaning for America. New York: Knopf.
WOUNDED KNEE (1890 AND 1973) Confrontations between the U.S. government and Native Americans at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890 and 1973, are important milestones in the history of race and ethnic relations in America and offer an opportunity to examine the position of American Indians over the years. This entry recounts the central events and provides an analysis of their impact, as well as the underlying issues related to treaties.
Historical Events Initially, the U.S. government described the 1890 event as “the Battle of Wounded Knee,” but after reviewing the actions of the Seventh Cavalry and with dissent in its own ranks, the federal government reclassified the event “the Massacre at Wounded Knee.” An agent of the reservation, who was purportedly minimally qualified for the position, requested army assistance in quelling what he called a “disturbance.” This disturbance was triggered when Sioux Chief Big Foot led his band of followers to Wounded Knee creek, where his followers could perform a ritual “Ghost Dance.” This dance was brought to the Sioux through a Paiute spiritual leader, Wovoca, who claimed to have had a vision suggesting that if they
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danced in intervals, for 5 consecutive days each time, they would secure their happiness. This dance was to restore to the Indian people their hunting grounds, their ancestral possessions, and all the game and wildlife that had formerly existed therein. The Seventh Cavalry responded, under orders from Washington, D.C., to arrest Chief Big Foot. The Sioux offered no resistance and were ordered to set up camp; Army guards proceeded to position four Hotchkiss guns (cannons) surrounding the camp. The following morning, the soldiers demanded that the Sioux relinquish their firearms. When soldiers attempted to disarm a deaf Indian, Black Coyote, a scuffle ensued, and the firearm discharged. Following the initial discharge, Army troops opened fire with the Hotchkiss guns, killing ninety warriors and approximately 200 women and children. The Wounded Knee Massacre symbolized the culmination of a clash of cultures, failed governmental Indian policies, and an end to the American frontier. It further emphasized the power of the U.S. government over Native American religious practices by extinguishing the Ghost Dance, which was meant to revitalize the Sioux/Lacotah people The second “incident” at Wounded Knee, in 1973, grew out of what many American Indians viewed as the continual oppressive nature of failed federal government policies toward their people. The Civil Rights Movement was strong at the time, and the country was experiencing national political turmoil as a result of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Domestic unrest resulting from racial and ethnic tensions spurred the creation and implementation among American Indians of a radical activism analogous to Black civil rights confrontations. The Civil Rights Movement created a higher level of social consciousness among American Indians, from both rural and urban areas around the country, which led to the creation of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Its primary objective was to advance the perspective that treaties between the federal government and Indian tribes should be adhered to and enforced between both parties. Civil unrest within the Oglala Lacotah tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, in South Dakota, stemmed from a conflict between traditionalists and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) supporters. Traditionalists met with AIM members and, on February 27, 1973, took over the town of Wounded Knee. The Wounded Knee occupation stemmed from high unemployment rates, failed Indian policies, and corrupt tribal government.
This occupation lasted 71 days, with daily heavy gunfire between both sides. The result was the death of two AIM members killed by this gunfire and two federal agents seriously injured. In addition, twelve individuals went missing while attempting to bring much-needed supplies to Wounded Knee. Over the course of the next 3 years, hundreds of arrests were made, resulting in only fifteen convictions for minor crimes associated with the Wounded Knee incident.
Contextual Perspectives It is advantageous to critically view these events from an interdisciplinary perspective and draw from the academic disciplines of law, history, political science, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and justice studies. The events represent a physical place and concurrent incidents in which American Indian and White relations clashed with militant force. “Wounded Knee 1890” is often referred to as the final armed confrontation between Lakota Sioux Indians and the U.S. government, via the Seventh Cavalry; “Wounded Knee 1973” was an attempt by Native activists to reintroduce the needs of their people, resulting once again in armed conflict with the U.S. government, this time via the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). These “incidents” were the culminations of broken promises by the federal government not adhering to its treaty obligations to Native American people. Poor agricultural production, unemployment, and a lack of adequate social services, housing, and opportunities, coupled with shifting government policy, all worked to keep Native American people outside the purview of society. Treaties were the vehicles that legally bound the federal government to Native American governments and created their unique political relationship, often referred to as the government-togovernment relationship that exists between the federal and tribal governments. One of the major issues with which treaties dealt concerned the political and jurisdictional problems created by offenses of Native Americans against non-Natives or by non-Natives against Natives. The formulation and implementation of laws and rules applicable to Native Americans are grounded in the Constitution of the United States. Regarding the president, the Constitution states, “He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties” (Article II, Section 2). The Constitution further lends the president the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,
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and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes” (Article I, Section 8). In addition, the supremacy clause states that treaties “are superior to any conflicting state laws and constitutional provisions” (Article VI, Clause 2). Finally, there are any number of congressional authorities that govern Indian Country in the form of executive orders, congressional statutes, and administrative rules and regulations. Many Native Americans perceive these purported federal regulations and powers, couched in claims of expertise in specific areas of Native-run programs, as exerting too much control over Native communities. Treaties frequently called for the delivery of goods and services to the Native American tribes by the United States in exchange for the vast quantities of land ceded to the government. These goods and services took the form of monetary payments, annuities, or other monies that were negotiated. Other provisions were health care, education, welfare, irrigation, farming implements, crop seed, training, and land management. Frequently, the United States committed itself more deeply to Native American tribes because it had extended treaty rights with special rights, to soften the blow of land cessions. Tribes were often granted special rights such as hunting and fishing or the right to take game, while simultaneously providing Native peoples with clear evidence of their sovereignty. Closely tied to American Indian treaty rights and sovereignty is Native self-determination. Recent American Indian movements have involved attempts to locate a forum that will hear their grievances. They seek to address, in some fashion as yet to be defined,
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the restoration, preservation, and advancement of their nations. As developments in technology, business, and networking continue to be made, it is only appropriate to incorporate indigenous communities into the emerging global aspects of our expanding societies. American Indians and other minority groups have grown accustomed to having their voices suppressed. Despite this, through different methods of resistance, these communities have invariably found ways to endure, and Native American communities will no doubt continue to maintain their existence and establish their roles within the new global economy, while their cultures persevere. Roy F. Janisch See also American Indian Movement; Assimilation; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Minority Rights; Native Americans; Pan-Indianism; Red Power; Sioux; Social Inequality; Sovereignty, Native American; Trail of Broken Treaties
Further Readings
Allen, Charles W. 1997. From Fort Laramie to Wounded Knee. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Brown, Dee. 1970. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York: Owl Books. Dewing, Rolland. 1985. Wounded Knee: The Meaning and Significance of the Second Incident. New York: Irvington. Utley, Robert. 2003. The Indian Frontier 1846–1890. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Zimmerman, Bill. 1976. Airlift to Wounded Knee. Chicago, IL: Swallow Press.
X The Causes of Xenophobia
XENOPHOBIA Originating in the Greek language, the term xenophobia refers to the “unreasonable fear” (phobia) of “strangers” (xeno) or “foreigners.” Xenophobia has been defined as a general fear of difference, an intense discomfort with people from other cultures, or hostility and intolerance toward people who look, speak, dress, and act differently from those in one’s own culture. This entry describes the causes of xenophobia and examines the link between immigration and xenophobia. In modern multicultural societies, xenophobia mainly entails the rejection of the different lifestyles or cultural or religious value systems of immigrant groups, the fear of society becoming “flooded” by immigrants, and the perceived threat to prosperity by heightened economic competition. Akin to ethnocentrism, racial prejudice, and anti-Semitic feelings, antiforeigner sentiments are grounded in an intense dislike for “otherness” or “outsiders,” as well as ideas of the cultural superiority of the ingroup. They also involve unexamined prejudices and scapegoating, such as blaming foreigners for a variety of societal problems, from moral decay to unemployment and crime. Nevertheless, not all foreign minorities are considered equally “threatening” to societal safety and prosperity. Some are more easily identified by physical appearance and language than others and thus are more likely to become targets of contempt or even violent attacks.
Traditional evolutionary approaches to human history assume that in the process of adapting to the natural environment for survival, humans developed psychological mechanisms to secure kinship bonding and ethnic boundaries. It is argued that an essential human fear of the unknown and a fear of intrusion by others have created suspicion of and hostility toward “outsiders.” From a sociological perspective, xenophobia is not “inherently natural,” but socially constructed; it is motivated by social mechanisms designed to ensure group cohesion, to maintain social stratification, and to increase solidarity with one’s own ethnic group. The resulting regional loyalties and national identities are socially maintained and reinforced by the nationalistic ideologies and values of any given society. Various social science theories identify economic, social psychological, and cultural causes for xenophobia in contemporary societies. Accordingly, the causes of xenophobia are thought to originate in a societal judgment about a particular group of “others,” rather than in individual hatred of specific members of this group. Xenophobia is seen as a collective reaction to the perceived threat of a group for which actual personal experience is unnecessary. The economic and social structure of modern society, characterized by growing competition for scarce economic and social resources, may lead to increased hostility toward foreigners. Western capitalist democracies maintain ethnic barriers and inequality among majority and minority groups by encouraging competition over jobs in segmented labor markets characterized by high unemployment or underemployment.
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The resulting rivalry and the continued erosion of the social safety net provided by the welfare state has revived an “us versus them” mentality between local and immigrant groups. Similarly, ethnic hostilities tend to intensify in times of political turmoil like civil war, leading to attacks on refugees. Hence, it appears that xenophobia also increases in times of rapid social change and economic instability, when feelings of disgruntlement, disappointed expectations, frustration, and anxieties about an unknown future are heightened. In a climate of insecurity, those who have fewer opportunities, capabilities, and resources to deal with social changes will be at a higher risk of feeling threatened and open to antiforeigner sentiments. According to social psychological theories, the lower our self-esteem, the more threatened we feel by the unknown: Everything foreign is devalued as opportunities to increase our self-worth are sought. The political system, with the help of the major media, may encourage a climate in which xenophobia and violence are tolerated or even accepted as normal. By fostering the perceived threat of large numbers of immigrants as well as spreading arguments about cultural incompatibility, the media can serve to reinforce hostile feelings. These processes are fertile ground for the institutionalization of racist ideologies through increased organization of right-wing parties and militant groups.
Immigration and Xenophobia Collective fear of groups like immigrants, refugees, or asylum seekers leads to negative attitudes about such minorities, which, in turn, can lead to active hostilities, such as ethnoviolence. Evidence suggests that xenophobia has become more prevalent in Europe in the last few decades, supporting the notion that the economic conditions created by the rapid transition processes in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 have fostered the reemergence of xenophobic thinking. In addition, the integration of the European Union, combined with a culture increasingly favoring individualism over collectivism, has accelerated sentiments supporting the exclusion of nonnationals. The global rise in fundamentalist sentiments, including nationalism, right-wing conservativism, and religious fundamentalism, shows that state
governments are taking a passive stance in policymaking that counteracts these processes. Current immigration debates in Europe and the United States center on ideological arguments about inclusion, exclusion, immigration policies, and how to deal with asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants. Many European nations’ resistance to multiculturalism and diversity reflects a lack of policies offering alternatives to xenophobic attitudes and violence or to ameliorate the perceived threat of immigration. As a multicultural society from its conception as a “melting pot,” the United States faces growing criticism regarding exclusionary policies toward Mexicans who attempt to cross the southern border. The proposal to build a fortified 700-mile fence along the southern border to keep undocumented workers from entering the United States reflects, in part, not only hostile sentiments against foreigners but also the inadequacy of U.S. immigration policy. In the past, xenophobia has been primarily associated with issues of immigration and citizenship. The new millennium, with its globalization processes and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, has brought into focus a new form of xenophobia, which seems to equate adherence to Islam or being of Arab descent with terrorism. The fear of terrorism has led to increasing intolerance and conflicts with processes of global intercultural understanding and human rights protections. Marina A. Adler See also Anti-Semitism; Dillingham Flaw; Hate Crimes; Immigration, U.S.; Juvenile Justice; Muslim Americans; Prejudice; Racism; “Us and Them”
Further Readings
Castles, Stephen. 2004. “Why Migration Policies Fail.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27:205–227. Kunovich, Robert M. 2002. “Social Structural Sources of Anti-immigrant Prejudice in Europe: The Impact of Social Class and Stratification Position.” International Journal of Sociology 32:39–57. Wimmer, Andreas. 1997. “Explaining Xenophobia and Racism: A Critical Review of Current Approaches.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22:101–132.
Y YOUNG LORDS The Young Lords started as a turf gang of young Puerto Rican men, residents of the Lincoln Park neighborhood in Chicago, who protested against the abuses of the government and other repressive institutions. In 1966, in the midst of the Division Street and African American riots, Jose Cha-Cha Rodríguez, one of the group’s founders, was in jail. During his time in jail, he met Fred Hampton, leader of the Black Panthers in Chicago, from whom he learned extensively about Marxism and Leninism. Following his release, Cha-Cha turned the former turf gang into a radical organization to resist the gentrification of the Lincoln Park area. The group saw a connection between their experiences in Chicago with U.S. institutions and the political relationship of Puerto Rico with the United States. The organization demanded an end to the divisive relationship of the island with the United States, which they saw as colonial. The organization was heavily influenced by the Black Panthers; however, the Young Lords were considered more radical. For instance, they favored legal abortion and adopted a feminist approach to resist the oppression of Puerto Rican and African American women. In fact, the thirteenpoint program that contained the beliefs of the Young Lords was changed in 1970 to replace a clause advocating for revolutionary “machismo” with one that demanded gender equality. In 1969, inspired by the organization in Chicago, a group of individuals decided to establish branches of the Young Lords in New York and in other northeastern
states. As part of their commitment to local community issues, they organized several activities, such as free breakfasts, health care services, and clothing for community residents. Their struggle was for social justice and against oppression. They relied on violence to obtain that goal, and police attempts to control them did not deter them from challenging the unequal system. In fact, they demonstrated that Puerto Rican children were unequally exposed to high levels of lead, a major environmental hazard for children. Motivated by the lack of or unequal access of minority individuals to health care, in 1970, the Young Lords decided to take over Lincoln Hospital, in the South Bronx, and open it as a drug rehabilitation center accessible to the poor. They also organized forceful campaigns to demand cleaner communities and persuade the city of New York to offer more frequent trash removal. In their struggle to uphold and promote MarxistLeninist principles, the Young Lords became the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization in 1971. However, after their many victories for Latino rights in the United States, internal divisions in terms of the scope of this new organization brought an end to the group. The Young Lords, in conjunction with the Black Panthers, occupies a central position in the history of the civil rights era and continues to serve as the inspiration for other Latino organizations. Jenniffer M. Santos-Hernández See also Black Panther Party; Puerto Rican Americans; Puerto Rico
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Further Readings
Melendez, M. and J. Torres. 2003. We Took the Streets: Fighting for Latino Rights with the Young Lords. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Torres, Andres and Jose E. Velazquez. 1999. The Puerto Rican Movement: Voices from the Diaspora. Pennsylvania, PA: Temple University Press.
Z ZAPATISTA REBELLION On January 1, 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional) (EZLN) launched a rebellion of mainly indigenous peasants of Mayan origin in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. The uprising heralded an innovative autonomy movement in which many indigenous communities in Chiapas began implementing local selfgovernance, while the rebel group continued pressing a broad agenda, including rights for Indigenous Peoples and for other marginalized populations. The Zapatistas also symbolized grassroots social movement resistance against market-driven globalization. To understand the rebellion, this entry examines its complex causes, its changing dynamics and strategies, and its implications for Mexico and beyond.
Roots of Rebellion Among the multiple causal factors behind the Zapatista uprising was a history of discrimination and oppression experienced by Indigenous Peoples, who make up some 11% of Mexico’s population. Over 28% of the population of Chiapas is indigenous, a proportion topped only by the states of Yucatán, Oaxaca, and Quintana Roo. Although Chiapas produces over half of the country’s hydroelectric power as well as oil and gas, most of the indigenous areas lacked electricity when the 1994 rebellion broke out. Chiapas is one of the poorest states in Mexico, and indices of marginalization are highest in the predominantly indigenous municipalities in the central
highlands, eastern Lacandón Jungle, and northern zone that were home to the Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, and Ch’ol, among other ethnicities. Historically a backwater since the colonial era, Chiapas was dominated socially and politically by a mainly Ladino (nonindigenous) conservative landowning elite that consistently obstructed reforms. The agrarian reform that had been a cornerstone of the Mexican Revolution, championed by Emiliano Zapata and enshrined in Article 27 of the Constitution of 1917, was implemented in delayed and limited fashion in Chiapas. Beginning in the 1950s, primarily indigenous poor peasants, lacking adequate access to land, migrated in growing numbers from the central highlands and other regions eastward into the canyons running through the Lacandón Jungle. This migration offered a temporary escape valve for agrarian social tension and allowed the settlers to experiment with selfgovernance in a remote region neglected by the state. Independent peasant organizations emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, promoting alternative credit, marketing, and production schemes, and the government responded with intermittent co-optation and repression. Mexico’s long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) (PRI) was beginning its slow decline, but local party bosses (caciques) retained an iron grip on many traditional indigenous communities, further fueling migration to the agricultural frontier. Meanwhile, indigenous consciousness grew, particularly after 1974, when Bishop Samuel Ruiz hosted a statewide indigenous congress. The bishop, an adherent of the progressive Liberation Theology wing of the Catholic Church, actively promoted the training
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of catechists organizing for social justice throughout the northeast half of the state, where most of the indigenous population lived. These peasant and religious organizing initiatives overlapped with small groups of Maoist organizers who had been working in the jungle canyons since the late 1970s. The growing squeeze on subsistence agriculture and escalating repression led many to support the more radical option of the then-clandestine EZLN. Mexico’s political economy shifted sharply in the 1980s and 1990s, bringing neoliberal policies of global market opening, with a devastating impact on poor peasants. The 1992 “reform” of constitutional Article 27 ended new land redistribution, stripping protection of peasant rights to community landholdings (ejidos). After peaceful indigenous marches to the city of San Cristóbal and to Mexico City were ignored, the skimasked Zapatista insurgents went public with a brief armed seizure of five Chiapas towns on New Year’s Day 1994. The Zapatistas timed their rebellion for January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA took effect, to dramatize the unequal impact of market globalization. Subcommander Marcos, the nonindigenous rebel spokesman and insurgent leader, became an international icon.
Evolution of a Movement After only 12 days of clashes with the much-betterarmed Mexican military and large demonstrations in Mexico City, public opinion successfully demanded a ceasefire and negotiations, mediated by Bishop Ruiz. The Zapatistas reached out to the broader civil society, convening a National Democratic Convention in the Lacandón Jungle in 1994 to network with other groups demanding social justice and democratization. In February 1996, the EZLN and government signed the San Andrés Accords on indigenous rights and culture. However, the government never passed implementing legislation, instead maintaining a heavy military presence in the indigenous regions. Counterinsurgency included paramilitary groups, such as the one responsible for a massacre of forty-five Tzotzil villagers in the highland community of Acteal in 1997. The Zapatistas began implementing their autonomy project anyway, creating their own education, health, and judicial systems in indigenous communities. In 2001, they led a caravan to Mexico City to demand indigenous rights legislation, but, instead, the congress passed a much weaker law. In 2003, the Zapatistas inaugurated Good Government Councils, regional self-governance conducted by rotating community
representatives. In June 2005, the Zapatistas’ “Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle” launched “The Other Campaign,” a series of public meetings and a 2006 national tour led by Subcommander Marcos, aimed at mobilizing a left movement alternative. The Zapatista rebellion contributed to rising consciousness and unity among Mexico’s more than fifty indigenous groups, which formed a National Indigenous Congress in 1994. Nationally, it kept democratization on the political agenda, amidst Mexico’s faltering transition from one-partydominant authoritarianism. It also symbolized a Latin American shift from the old guerrilla movements seeking state power to new social movements focusing on community empowerment and transforming society from below. By linking indigenous rights to a critique of global capitalism, the Zapatistas connected with a broader transnational movement challenging the dominant model of globalization. Richard Stahler-Sholk See also Community Empowerment; Globalization; Latin America, Indigenous People; Mexico; Multicultural Social Movements
Further Readings
Collier, George, with Elizabeth Lowery Quaratiello. 2005. Basta! Land and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas. 3rd ed. Oakland, CA: Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First Books. Harvey, Neil. 1998. The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and Democracy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rus, Jan, Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, and Shannan L. Mattiace, eds. 2003. Mayan Lives, Mayan Utopias: The Indigenous Peoples of Chiapas and the Zapatista Rebellion. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Womack, John, Jr. 1999. Rebellion in Chiapas: A Historical Reader. New York: New Press.
ZIMBABWE Zimbabwe (formally known as Rhodesia) attained independence from White minority rule in 1980, after 8 years of war that resulted in over 30,000 deaths. Of a population of 7 million in 1980, the White minority represented less than 2% of the country’s citizens, with the Shona and Ndebele ethnic groups representing 74%
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and 20%, respectively. Distinct with respect to ancestry, language, and customs, the Shona and Ndebele were also geographically separate, each dominating different provinces in the country. Since independence, the nation has been dominated by the Shona-led government of Robert Mugabe, suffering considerable war and economic decline, as discussed in this entry.
A New Government During the struggle for independence, two liberation movements advanced: (1) the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), led by Robert Mugabe, a Shona from the province of Mashonaland in the northeast of the country, and (2) the Patriotic FrontZimbabwe African People’s Union (PF-ZAPU) party, led by Joshua Nkomo, an Ndebele from Matabeleland in the southwest. With the first democratic elections in 1980, ZANU and PF-ZAPU competed for the eighty electoral seats available; ZANU won the election with fifty-seven seats, while PF-ZAPU acquired a total of twenty (a further twenty seats were reserved for Whites). ZANU’s political objective was the creation of a one-party state, as President Mugabe argued that this was “more in keeping with African tradition.” The initial years of independence were marked by improvements in education, health, and the economy, as well as a policy of tolerance and acceptance by the ZANU government toward the White Zimbabweans
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who remained in the country. However, ZANU faced a political challenge in the south of the country from the Ndebele supporters of PF-ZAPU. Several hundred soldiers had mutinied and fled into the rural areas, opposing what they saw as increased oppression from ZANU. In 1983, the government unleashed the 5th Brigade of the army on the Ndebele, with the aim of destroying their political power. The brigade was officially formed to address internal insurrection and was to operate outside the command structure of the national army, answerable to President Mugabe only. At the brigade’s inaugural “passing out” parade, the unit was told that they were to be called Gukhurahundi, or “the wind that blows away the chaff before the rains.” As the wind rids the land of the old discarded part of the grain before the new season of growth, so the 5th Brigade was tasked to rid the country of elements that would hinder the development of the new Zimbabwe. Between 1983 and 1987, an estimated 20,000 Ndebele were killed by direct action by the 5th Brigade, members of the police, or ZANU youth brigades or through the systematic use of starvation. White Zimbabweans were not overly affected by these killings; the government concentrated upon consolidating its hold on the political reins of power, leaving the 200,000 Whites to dominate the country’s industry and agriculture.
Land Seizures In 1999, the government faced a new set of challenges. Veterans from the war of independence wanted economic assistance and land that they had been promised. A new political party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had emerged from the trade union movement, one that had strong support across race and ethnic lines and was threatening to force ZANU from power in the 2000 elections. The government had been involved in a 2-decade-long policy of buying farms from willing sellers for resettlement; however, this had been slow and ineffective. Mugabe then directed a series of seizures of land belonging to 6,000 White farmers as part of a political and economic policy designed to redistribute land and resources to the majority Black population of the country. Within months, the value of the Zimbabwe dollar collapsed, the economy began to slow, and attacks on political opponents of the government increased. Farmers fought these actions through the courts, while war veterans and ZANU party supporters invaded the farms, attacking the farmers and farmworkers. In the following 3 years, all but 600 White farmers
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were moved off their farms; 250,000 farmworkers and their families were forced from their homes. In the violence of the invasions, fewer than 10 White farmers were killed by the land invaders, while several hundred Black farmworkers were killed. World media attention concentrated on the White farmers, largely ignoring the plight of the Black farmworkers and their families who were attacked and forced from their homes. The resettled farms were given to government supporters, highranking members of the police, army, and judiciary. Few had any farming experience, and the agricultural sector collapsed. The MDC campaigned on multiethnic and multiracial lines in two parliamentary and one presidential election between 2000 and 2007, winning over 55% of the vote despite widespread electoral fraud, voter intimidation, and the killing of MDC supporters. International observers characterized the three elections as highly fraudulent. During the electoral campaigns, the government accused the MDC of being a front for the interests of White Zimbabweans who were intent on recolonizing the country.
Economic Collapse After 2000, the economy of Zimbabwe declined rapidly, with inflation increasing from under 20% in 1999 to over 2,000% with an estimated population of 13.3 million, in 2007. Zimbabwe was a net exporter of food in the 1980s and 1990s; it was seen as the “breadbasket of Africa.” In 2007, 40% of the population required food aid; unemployment was over 80%; HIV/AIDS infected one in four; and it was estimated that between 3 and 4 million of the 12 million population had fled into neighboring South Africa. The international press is banned; political protest is illegal; and the country is ranked as one of the least free in the world. The government blamed the economic meltdown on the MDC, the few remaining White Zimbabweans, and British and American interference in the country’s internal affairs. Robert Mugabe has used the issue of race consistently since 1999 in an effort to support his policies of maintaining political power. The result has been the collapse of the economy and the destruction of a unified nation. Doug Thomson See Appendix A See also Colonialism; Ethnonational Minorities; HIV/AIDS; South Africa, Republic of
Further Readings
Blair, David. 2002. Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power in Zimbabwe. London: Continuum. Hill, Geoff. 2005. Battle for Zimbabwe: The Final Countdown. Cape Town, South Africa: Struik. Meredith, Martin. 2002. Robert Mugabe: Power, Plunder, and Tyranny in Zimbabwe. Johannesburg, South Africa: Jonathan Ball.
ZIONISM Zionism has been defined in many ways: as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, to use the tone and phraseology of the radical 1960s; as the return of the Jewish people from their exile (the diaspora, Greek for “scattering” or “dispersion”); and as the spiritual rebirth of the Jewish people. It has been used in a religious, secular, and nationalist sense. Zionism arose in the mid-19th century out of the rise of nationalism in several European countries that were throwing off the yoke of monarchy and religious domination. As the Israeli state has become well-established, Zionist assumptions are coming under increasing scrutiny. This entry discusses the history and current situation.
Early History The early Zionists were either religious or socialist. Religious Zionists such as Rabbi Yehudah Alkalai (1798–1878) saw the return to Israel in messianic terms as the “third redemption,” that is, the return to Israel after the first destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, in 586 BC, by the Babylonians, and the second by the Romans, in 70 AD. Alkalai, a Serbian Jew from Sarajevo, was influenced by Greek and Serbian independence movements. However, unlike other religious leaders, he proposed the creation of Jewish colonies in the Holy Land by people’s own efforts. This idea was, of course, at variance with the pious notion that the Messiah would come via a miraculous act of divine intervention. Alkalai was the first religious Zionist, as opposed to being a religious messianist. A second religious Zionist, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer (1795–1874), from the Polish–German border area of Posen, spoke of a redemption through natural causes by human effort and by the will of governments gathering the scattered tribes of Israel to the Holy Land.
Zionism
Socialist Zionists, both Marxist and Utopian, included Moses Hess (1812–1875), a friend, but later opponent, of Karl Marx, as well as Bernard Lazare (1865–1903), Nahman Syrkin (1867–1924), Ber Borochov (1881–1917), Aaron David (Aleph Daled) Gordon (1856–1922), Berl Katznelson (1887–1944), and Martin Buber (1878–1965). They used a Marxist framework to negate the diaspora, emancipate Jewry, and establish a socialist state in Israel via Jewish labor. These Zionists set the foundation for the kibbutz movement and for socialist Zionist leaders such as David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, and a host of other, less-known thinkers and politicians, as well as organizations such as Farband; Pioneer Women (now called Naamat); LZOA (Labor Zionist Organization of America); Habonim Labor Zionist Movement, a youth movement; and other institutions worldwide, along with their intellectual thinkers— Moshe Kerem, Max Langer, Moshe Tzedek, Aviva Zuckoff, Label Fein, and Muki Tzur. Nationalists were of two types: religious or secular. Today, in Israel, they have elements of both. Religious nationalism began with Rabbi Samuel Mohilever (1824–1898) of Vilna, continued with Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), and continues to this day with the radical rabbis called “settlers,” on the West Bank and Gaza, who seek both a messianic and pragmatic redemption of lands on former Palestinian soil. Secular nationalists included Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940), Joseph Trumpeldor, and Menachem Begin. All these movements have their counterparts in the Israeli political machinery. The Labor Zionists had the Mapai party and its many offshoots; Menachem Begin had Likud and its many offshoots, including the present 2007 government of Ehud Olmert; and the religious have their national political parties and movements. Following the 1967 Six-Day War and especially in the 1970s, a crisis occurred in the Zionist movement that led to an epoch called “post-Zionism.”
Post-Zionism Israel’s near fulfillment of the basic tasks of defense, state building, and development led to an examination of the meaning of the state and of Zionism itself. The end of Israel’s constant state of crisis led to a time of reflection and then to an emergence of open, bitter, and continuous conflict between Israeli secular and religious populations. This was similar to the battle
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occurring within Muslim countries between secular Arabs and fundamentalist Arabs and between Sunnis and Shi’ites. The question was: What kind of state should be built? A religious one or a secular one? Even though the secular Jews in Israel account for 80% of the population and the religious only 20%, the religious, through coalitions and focused energy, dominate debate and social institutions. The old Zionist truths and assumptions are being subjected to widespread scrutiny. A small but significant number of Israelis, particularly among the elite, have begun to question not only the Zionist view of history but also the political foundations on which the entire national enterprise has been built. These phenomena have been collectively referred to by Israeli commentators as “post-Zionism.” In its most common form, post-Zionism refers to the diminishing hold Zionist ideology has on the hearts and minds of Israelis. As early as 1972, prominent journalist and author Amos Elon had spoken of the “post-Zionist generation” in his book The Israelis. This has manifested itself in widespread mistrust of any ideology or of politicians, widespread materialism and the purchasing of material goods, rejection of community or even state needs, the rise of the cult of the individual, and the waning of idealism, even in such stalwart institutions as the Israeli Army. For example, failure to serve in the army is no longer a death sentence to career advancement. Post-Zionism may have been most influential in the economic sphere. Israel has moved from a state socialist economy to private and entrepreneurial capitalism. The image of Israel as consisting of agriculture-based people living on communes as schnorrers and mendicants has given way to a country with an affluent middle class, while the kibbutz movement has declined. Jack Nusan Porter See also Anti-Semitism; Diaspora; Jewish Americans; Palestinian Americans Further Readings
Diament, Carol, ed., with introductions by Gideon Shimoni and Arnold Eisen. 1998. Zionism: The Sequel. New York: Hadassah. Elon, Amos. 1983. The Israelis. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin, Open Market. Hertzberg, Arthur, ed. [1973] 2000. The Zionist Idea. New York: Athenaeum.
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Zoot Suit Riots
Lerner, Michael. 2003. Healing Israel/Palestine: A Path to Peace and Reconciliation. Berkeley, CA: Tikkun Books/North Atlantic Books. Lucas, Noah. 1980. “Is Zionism Dead?” In The Sociology of American Jews: A Critical Anthology, edited by J. N. Porter. 2nd rev. ed. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Rosenthal, Steve T. 2001. Irreconcilable Differences? The Waning of the American Jewish Love Affair with Israel. Hanover, VT: Brandeis University Press and University Press of New England.
ZOOT SUIT RIOTS The Zoot Suit Riots began on June 3, 1943, when several White sailors in Los Angeles alleged that they had been jumped by a group of young Mexican American men in “zoot suits.” For the next 4 days and nights, Mexican American “zoot suiters,” commonly referred to as Pachucos and known for wearing wide-brimmed hats, long coats with wide lapels and padded shoulders, and baggy pants tapered narrowly at the ankles, were attacked by White servicemen across the city. Soldiers and marines joined sailors to form posses and search city streets, restaurants, movie theaters, and other places of business in attempts to find and assault zoot suiters. While Mexican American young men were the primary targets, African American, Filipino, and even some White youth who wore zoot suits were pursued by the unruly mobs. Scores of zoot suiters were beaten, stripped naked, and left humiliated in the streets by White servicemen. Although no one was killed, countless zoot suiters were injured and arrested, while most of the servicemen rioters went unpunished. Ultimately, the riots revealed the volatile nature of home front race relations and the difficulties faced by many non-Whites in their quest for equality during World War II. The bloody and public nature of the riots prompted a wide range of responses from local authorities and city leaders. The city police, shore patrol, and military police initially did little to discourage the rioting, as many officers refused to stop the beatings, congratulated the servicemen assailants on a job well-done, and even participated in the verbal and physical abuse of zoot suiters. Only after several days did navy and army authorities in the area restrict enlisted men from the downtown area in an effort to end the riots. City
officials expressed support for the police and armed forces, discounted race discrimination as a factor in the riots, and blamed the disturbances on the presence of zoot suit gangs. The Los Angeles city council even considered a proposal to make wearing a zoot suit illegal within city limits, and the U.S. Department of Justice outlawed the manufacturing and selling of zoot suits on the grounds that the material used was in violation of orders by the War Production Board to conserve fabric. Similarly, the mainstream press blamed zoot suiters for the riots, criminalizing them as drug users, prostitutes, and inherently violent. Many race-based organizations, however, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Coordinating Committee for Latin American Youth, and newspapers like the African American–owned California Eagle, came to the defense of zoot suiters and demanded that everyone involved be held responsible and subject to legal action. The riots stemmed from the shifting economic and social conditions of wartime Los Angeles. As thousands of Mexican, African American, and White American migrants arrived in the city in search of employment, increased competition for limited jobs, housing, and social services sparked racial tension. Combined with the already sizable non-White communities in Los Angeles, the city’s growing diversity intensified the wartime xenophobia of White residents. Like the thousands of Japanese Americans forced into internment camps following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, zoot suiters were of particular concern to local authorities and residents who viewed them as a threat to home front stability and national unity. Animosity against zoot suiters was fueled by the infamous Sleepy Lagoon case of 1942, in Los Angeles, in which a group of nearly twenty Mexican American boys were convicted in one murder trial, and by the subsequent months of sensational journalism by the mainstream press depicting zoot suiters as juvenile delinquents, drug abusers, and prostitutes. Making matters worse, the multiracial and interethnic socializing of zoot suiters in dance halls and bars and on street corners in areas like the Los Angeles Central Avenue district was viewed by many Whites as a challenge to the segregated sensibilities of the wartime United States. Furthermore, male and female zoot suiters’ enthusiasm for leisure activities like fashion, jazz music, and jitterbug dancing did not meet popular expectations that youth devote their energy to
Zoot Suit Riots
working in the war industry or the armed forces. Their exaggerated, flamboyant, and colorful clothing style also challenged dominant images of wartime gender roles, as embodied, for example, by the all-White, tight-fitting, starched uniforms of U.S. sailors or images of “Rosie the Riveter” as a dedicated wartime factory worker dressed in heavy-duty work clothes. Following several minor rumbles between zoot suiters and sailors in April and May of 1943, race relations deteriorated, and the city was on edge, leading up to the outbreak of the riots. While the worst of the Zoot Suit Riots occurred in Los Angeles, within days, Mexican American and African American zoot suiters were attacked in San Diego, Detroit, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, foreshadowing a long and bloody summer of race and labor riots across the country. The Zoot Suit Riots demonstrated the volatile character of home front race relations during World War II, how the experiences of different race and ethnic groups were intertwined, and the fact that young people helped shape the contours of American identity in a time of crisis. Perhaps most important, during an era when many non-White Americans joined the armed forces to fight for democracy overseas and worked at home to help fuel the war
1429
effort, the Zoot Suit Riots showed that equality and national belonging were not so easily attained. Luis Alvarez See also African Americans; Ethnic Group; Mexican Americans; Pachucos/Pachucas; Racial Identity; Urban Riots
Further Readings
Alvarez, Luis. 2005. “Zoot Violence on the Home Front: Race, Riots, and Youth Culture During World War II.” Pp.141–175 in Latinos and Latinas in World War II, edited by M. Rivas-Rodriguez. Austin: University of Texas Press. Daniels, Douglas Henry. 2002. “Los Angeles Zoot: Race ‘Riot,’ the Pachuco, and Black Music Culture.” Journal of African American History 87(1):98–117. Escobar, Edward J. 1999. Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press. Public Broadcasting Company (PBS). Zoot Suit Riots, American Experience. Retrieved November 30, 2007, from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/zoot/index.html
Appendix Contents Appendix A: Data on Race and Ethnicity in the United States, 1820 to the Present
1433
Introduction to Appendix A
1434
Table 1 Persons Obtaining Legal Permanent Resident Status by Region and Selected Country of Last Residence: Fiscal Years 1820 to 2006
1436
Table 2 Persons Obtaining Legal Permanent Resident Status by Region and Country of Birth: Fiscal Years 1997 to 2006
1440
Table 3 Refugee Arrivals: Fiscal Years 1980 to 2006
1447
Table 4 Refugee Arrivals by Region and Country of Origin: Fiscal Years 1997 to 2006
1448
Table 5 Petitions for Naturalization Filed, Persons Naturalized, and Petitions for Naturalization Denied: Fiscal Years 1907 to 2006
1450
Table 6 Persons Naturalized by Region and Country of Birth: Fiscal Years 1997 to 2006
1453
Table 7 The United States and Major Metropolitan Areas: Ancestry, Race, and Hispanic Status
1460
Table 8 Percent of People Who Are Foreign Born: 2006
1486
Table 9 Percent of the Total Population Who Are American Indian and Alaska Native Alone: 2006
1487
Table 10 Percent of the Total Population Who Are Asian Alone: 2006
1488
Table 11 Percent of the Total Population Who Are Black or African American Alone: 2006
1489
Table 12 Percent of the Total Population Who Are White Alone, Not Hispanic or Latino: 2006
1490
Table 13 Projected Population of the United States, by Race and Hispanic Origin: 2000 to 2050
1491
Table 14 Projected Population Change in the United States, by Race and Hispanic Origin: 2000 to 2050
1492
Appendix B: Internet Resources on Race, Ethnicity, and Society
1431
1493
Appendix A Data on Race and Ethnicity in the United States, 1820 to the Present
1433
Introduction to Appendix A The fourteen tables in this Appendix offer insight into the patterns of race and ethnicity, stretching back to 1820 with population projections into 2050. Even a casual examination of these data will confirm the dynamic nature of race and ethnicity in the United States in a period covering 230 years.
Immigrants, Refugees, and Naturalizations The first six tables summarize data from the Office of Immigration Statistics of the Department of Homeland Security. Historical data are presented from 1820 by decade and for recent years annually of the number of people who are granted legal permanent resident status. This would consist of what most people consider to be immigrants—people who enter the country legally who intend to remain here and are not tourists, foreign students, or diplomats. This group of legal permanent residents would include those known as green card recipients. Once here, foreign students and refugees can apply to legal permanent resident status, and if it is granted, they then become immigrants. Tables 1 and 2 may seem similar, but there is an important distinction between them. One identifies groups by virtue of “last residence” while the other gives “country of birth.” Many immigrants granted entry to the United States enter from residence in a country other than that of their birth. For example, Table 1 shows 83,628 immigrants with a last residence of China in 2006, and 4,514 from Hong Kong. Yet in Table 2 we see that 87,345 immigrants were born in China that same year while only 3,216 were actually born in Hong Kong. Data on refugees (Tables 3 and 4) account for persons granted entry in order to avoid persecution in their country of origin, and they have applied for admission while still living outside the United States.
Besides actual persecution, refugee status may be granted based on a well-founded fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. Refugees may typically bring spouses and children with them. The first official refugees were granted entry in 1948 in the aftermath of World War II and the domination of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union. Naturalization data (Tables 5 and 6) refer to person’s age 18 and older who become citizens of the United States. The naturalization process has changed over the generations, but recently legal permanent residents have been permitted to apply for citizenship status after five years in the country (although they are not required to do so). Typically, spouses of U.S. citizens may apply after 3 years. Foreign-born children automatically (that is, without applying) become citizens if one parent is a citizen or becomes one while they are still under 18 years of age. On July 30, 2007, the citizenship application fee was raised to $675. In 2006, 702,589 people were naturalized and therefore became eligible to vote and to apply for U.S. passports. For all these tables relating to nation of origin or birth, the changing political boundaries and names of countries requires special caution as one examines data from further back in history.
The American Community Survey A contemporary picture of U.S. racial and ethnic diversity can be found in our analysis of data from the American Community Survey (ACS). The 2006 ACS data are based on a U.S. Census sample of 3 million housing-unit addresses, collected from all 3,141 U.S. counties, American Indian and Alaska Native areas, and Native Hawaiian areas. These data were released August 27, 2007, and include profiles of many racial
1434
Appendix A
and ethnic groups, such as African Americans, Chinese Americans, and Mexican Americans. In addition, profiles for 72 ancestry groups, from Afghani to Welsh, are also available. The first data set taken from the ACS (Table 7) shows the major racial and ethnic groups for the United States as a whole as well as for the 24 largest metropolitan areas, ranked from largest to smallest. We have added one additional metropolitan area, Honolulu, ranked as number 53, because of its distinctive pattern of diversity compared to the rest of the nation. Ranking tables from the ACS (Tables 8–12) provide an overview of data at the state level for the proportions of foreign-born, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian American, African American, or White non-Hispanic people in the 2006 U.S. population. Since the data are based on a sample, we show margins of error. These estimates offer a margin of error, that is, points at the upper and lower bounds of the confidence interval as “wings” or “arms” extending to either side of the estimated proportion or percentage. Typically, the span of this margin of error is less than 1 percent. So, for example, in Table 8, we see that California has 27.2 percent foreign-born population
1435
with a margin of error of +/−0.1 percent. This means that, if we surveyed all California residents instead of a sample of the population, the actual percent of foreign-born residents would most likely be between 27.1 and 27.3 percent.
Projections Tables 13 and 14 use assumptions about the components of population change (fertility, mortality, and international migration) to project the population by race and ethnic status from the revised Census 2000 population of 282.1 million forward to 2010, 2020, 2030, 2040, and 2050. To formulate these projections, the U.S. Census Bureau makes assumptions about levels of in-migration (both legal immigration and unauthorized in-migration) of the foreign born to the United States and about rates of emigration from the United States. While there are always reporting errors and assumptions in official data relating to nationality, race, and ethnicity, the U.S. Census data are unique in providing a picture that is so historically rich and detailed. Richard T. Schaefer
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Table 1
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Persons Obtaining Legal Permanent Resident Status by Region and Selected Country of Last Residence: Fiscal Years 1820 To 2006
Region and country of last residence1
1820 to 1830 to 1829 1839
Total
128,502 538,381 1,427,337 2,814,554 2,081,261 2,742,137 5,248,568 3,694,294 8,202,388 6,347,380 4,295,510
Europe AustriaHungary 2, 3, 4 Austria 2, 4 Hungary 2 Belgium Bulgaria 5 Czechoslovakia 6 Denmark Finland France 7 Germany 3, 4 Greece Ireland 8 Italy Netherlands Norway-Sweden 9 Norway 9 Sweden 9 Poland 3 Portugal 10 Romania Russia 3, 11 Spain 12 Switzerland United Kingdom 8,13 Yugoslavia 14 Other Europe Asia China Hong Kong India Iran Israel Japan Jordan Korea Philippines Syria Taiwan Turkey Vietnam Other Asia America Canada and Newfoundland 15, 16 Mexico 16,17 Caribbean Cuba Dominican Republic
1840 to 1849
1850 to 1859
1860 to 1869
1870 to 1879
1880 to 1889
1890 to 1899
1900 to 1909
1910 to 1919
1920 to 1929
99,272 422,771 1,369,259 2,619,680 1,877,726 2,251,878 4,638,677 3,576,411 7,572,569 4,985,411 2,560,340 — — — — 3,375 60,127 314,787 534,059 2,001,376 1,154,727 60,891 — — — — 28 20 — — — — 173 927 — — 7,694 39,330 5,753 124,726 17 49 51,617 170,672 430 2,225 1,105 1,377 91 1,149 — — — — 19 366 177 820 — — 86 280 2,595 2,010 3,148 4,430 26,336 74,350 — 3 34 3
— — — — 3,996 5,765 — — — — 671 3,227 — — 75,300 81,778 385,434 976,072 17 32 656,145 1,029,486 1,476 8,643 7,624 11,122 12,389 22,202 — — — — 105 1,087 196 1,299 — — 520 423 1,916 8,795 4,819 24,423 218,572 445,322
2,700 483 5,785 — — 13,553 — 35,938 723,734 51 427,419 9,853 8,387 82,937 16,068 24,224 1,886 2,083 — 1,670 6,966 21,124 532,956
54,529 204,805 5,598 109,982 6,991 18,738 — — — — 29,278 85,342 — — 71,901 48,193 751,769 1,445,181 209 1,807 422,264 674,061 46,296 267,660 14,267 52,715 178,823 586,441 88,644 185,111 90,179 401,330 11,016 42,910 13,971 15,186 — 5,842 35,177 182,698 5,540 3,995 25,212 81,151 578,447 810,900
268,218 532,416 589,174 203,350 685,567 565,553 19,642 37,429 32,574 52 34,651 27,180 — — — 56,671 61,227 45,830 — — — 35,616 67,735 60,335 579,072 328,722 174,227 12,732 145,402 198,108 405,710 344,940 166,445 603,761 1,930,475 1,229,916 29,349 42,463 46,065 334,058 426,981 192,445 96,810 182,542 79,488 237,248 244,439 112,957 107,793 — — 25,874 65,154 82,489 6,808 57,322 13,566 450,101 1,501,301 1,106,998 9,189 24,818 53,262 37,020 32,541 22,839 328,759 469,518 371,878
31,392 29,499 21,511 2,824 101,182 34,406 16,922 54,842 386,634 60,774 202,854 528,133 29,397 170,329 70,327 100,002 223,316 44,829 67,810 61,604 47,109 31,772 341,552
3 9,655 2,297
— 40 55 8 — 38 — — — — — — — — 8 — 1 31,905 11,875
— 79 121 32 — 33 — — — — — — — — 45 — 11 50,516 34,285
— 4 36,080 35,933 — 42 — — — — — — — — 94 — 11 84,145 64,171
— 9 54,408 54,028 — 50 — — 138 — — — — — 129 — 63 130,292 117,978
— 590 134,128 133,139 — 166 — — 193 — — — — — 382 — 248 345,010 324,310
— 1,070 71,151 65,797 — 247 — — 1,583 — — — — — 2,478 — 1,046 524,826 492,865
— 145 61,285 15,268 — 102 — — 13,998 — — — — — 27,510 — 4,407 37,350 3,098
— — 49,215 514 6,527 22,434 299,836 269,736 126,740 19,884 20,916 30,648 — — — 3,026 3,478 2,076 — — 208 — — — 139,712 77,125 42,057 — — — — — — — — — — — 5,307 — — — 127,999 160,717 40,450 — — — 9,215 7,500 5,994 277,809 1,070,539 1,591,278 123,067 708,715 949,286
3,835 3,061 — —
7,187 11,792 — —
3,069 11,803 — —
3,446 12,447 — —
1,957 8,751 — —
5,133 14,285 — —
2,405 27,323 — —
734 31,480 — —
31,188 100,960 — —
—
9 — — — — — — — — 19 —
185,334 120,860 — —
498,945 83,482 12,769 —
Appendix A
1930 to 1940 to 1939 1949
1950 to 1959
1960 to 1969
1970 to 1979
1980 to 1989
1990 to 1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
1437
2005
2006
699,375 856,608 2,499,268 3,213,749 4,248,203 6,244,379 9,775,398 841,002 1,058,902 1,059,356 703,542 957,883 1,122,373 1,266,264 444,399 472,524 1,404,973 1,133,443 12,531 13,574 113,015 27,590
825,590 20,387
668,866 1,348,612 131,920 20,437 27,529 2,009
5,307 8,393 7,224 5,181 4,013 12,473 1,062 449 17,757 8,475 3,470 4,549 2,438 2,230 13,761 36,954 119,107 119,506 10,599 8,605 28,195 15,701 85,053 50,509 7,791 13,877 13,452 17,326 6,901 8,326 6,551 9,000 25,555 7,577 3,518 6,765 5,264 1,254 2,463 605 3,669 2,774 5,990 9,904 61,813 131,794
81,354 31,661 18,885 97 1,624 10,918 4,923 50,113 576,905 45,153 47,189 184,576 46,703 44,224 22,806 21,418 6,465 13,928 914 453 6,880 17,577 195,709
14,239 6,148 5,413 1,011 5,654 4,405 2,829 26,281 77,142 102,370 11,461 150,031 10,373 10,298 3,927 6,371 33,696 104,754 10,774 28,132 41,718 8,536 133,218
15,374 5,063 7,028 1,124 5,678 4,847 2,569 32,066 85,752 37,729 22,210 55,562 11,234 13,941 3,835 10,106 63,483 42,685 24,753 33,311 22,783 8,316 153,644
986 1,023 817 4,779 1,407 549 377 4,063 12,230 5,113 1,264 2,652 1,455 1,967 508 1,459 9,750 1,373 6,506 43,156 1,390 1,339 14,427
996 1,307 997 4,273 1,911 732 497 5,379 21,992 1,941 1,531 3,332 1,888 2,544 582 1,962 12,308 1,611 6,206 54,838 1,875 1,786 20,118
6,920 2,039 9,978 5,584 19,231 34,532 5,874 16,072 — — 554 1,692 198 1,144 — 98 2,683 1,557 — — — 83 391 4,099 2,188 1,179 — — 1,327 754 — — 6,016 7,854 230,319 328,435 162,703 160,911
6,966 17,990 31,862 16,267 57,039 11,960 11,756 6,845 5,245 3,447 29,087 3,337 135,844 358,605 1,406,544 2,391,356 2,859,899 254,932 8,836 14,060 17,627 170,897 342,058 41,804 13,781 67,047 117,350 112,132 116,894 7,181 1,850 18,638 147,997 231,649 352,528 38,938 3,195 9,059 33,763 98,141 76,899 6,481 21,376 30,911 36,306 43,669 41,340 3,871 40,651 40,956 49,392 44,150 66,582 7,688 4,899 9,230 25,541 28,928 42,755 4,476 4,845 27,048 241,192 322,708 179,770 15,107 17,245 70,660 337,726 502,056 534,338 40,465 1,091 2,432 8,086 14,534 22,906 2,255 721 15,657 83,155 119,051 132,647 9,457 2,980 9,464 12,209 19,208 38,687 2,702 290 2,949 121,716 200,632 275,379 25,159 14,084 40,494 174,484 483,601 637,116 49,348 921,610 1,674,172 1,904,355 2,695,329 5,137,743 392,461 353,169 433,128 179,267 156,313 194,788 21,289 273,847 115,661 73,221 10,219
32,709 18,052 10,641 1,026
56,158 46,194 25,976 4,802
17,571 10,019 9,647 598 2,758 9,797 4,310 46,975 209,616 74,173 37,788 200,111 37,918 36,150 17,371 18,779 55,742 70,568 2,339 2,329 40,793 19,193 220,213
441,824 427,235 202,030 83,552
18,234 9,295 7,077 16,948 8,970 6,189 3,970 35,945 92,207 25,403 65,384 75,992 13,345 17,825 5,211 12,614 172,249 25,497 48,136 433,427 18,443 11,768 156,182
621,218 1,009,586 2,757,418 171,445 708,850 790,109 1,004,687 84,250 256,497 132,552 159,037 17,897 139,249 221,552 359,818 17,373
176,892 2,303
177,059 102,546 135,663 4,004 2,176 3,689
180,449 4,569
169,197 2,991
2,442 1,247 746 4,042 1,871 568 346 4,209 10,270 1,213 1,518 2,495 1,713 2,011 457 1,554 14,048 1,062 4,078 41,959 1,453 1,193 16,680
3,002 1,567 1,031 5,451 2,182 714 549 5,035 12,864 1,473 2,083 3,179 2,150 2,264 472 1,792 14,837 1,084 6,431 60,395 2,002 1,465 21,956
1,301 1,690 891 4,690 2,844 738 513 4,945 10,271 1,544 2,038 3,406 1,928 2,111 532 1,579 16,705 1,439 6,753 59,760 2,387 1,199 19,984
21,854 6,976 336,112 50,677 10,282 65,673 8,003 4,892 10,424 5,106 19,728 50,644 3,542 12,457 3,463 34,537 56,684 470,794 29,991
28,051 8,270 13,213 6,723 6,377 7,286 325,749 235,339 319,025 55,901 37,342 50,280 7,938 5,015 5,421 66,644 47,032 65,507 7,684 4,696 5,898 4,907 3,686 5,206 9,106 6,702 8,655 4,774 4,008 5,186 19,917 12,076 19,441 48,493 43,133 54,651 3,350 2,046 2,549 9,932 7,168 9,314 3,914 3,318 4,491 32,372 21,227 30,074 50,817 37,890 52,352 477,363 305,936 408,972 27,142 16,447 22,439
19,249 9,486 382,744 64,921 5,004 79,140 7,306 6,963 9,929 5,430 26,002 57,656 3,350 9,389 6,449 30,832 70,373 432,748 29,930
11,066 10,994 411,795 83,628 4,514 58,072 9,829 6,667 9,107 5,512 24,472 71,134 3,080 8,546 6,433 29,705 91,096 548,848 23,913
204,032 96,384 25,832 21,139
216,924 114,758 173,711 93,914 67,498 82,116 27,435 8,685 15,385 22,386 26,112 30,063
157,992 91,378 20,651 27,366
170,046 144,480 44,248 37,997
2,650 1,354 834 3,476 1,854 651 365 4,567 20,977 1,486 1,400 2,812 2,296 2,082 460 1,622 13,274 1,301 4,515 55,370 1,588 1,493 17,940
1,160 1,016 515 3,706 1,472 435 230 2,926 8,061 900 1,002 1,890 1,321 1,516 385 1,131 11,004 808 3,305 33,513 1,102 862 11,155
(Continued)
1438
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Table 1 (Continued) Region and country of last residence1 Haiti Jamaica 18 Other Caribbean 18 Central America Belize Costa Rica El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Nicaragua Panama 19 Other Central America South America Argentina Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Ecuador Guyana Paraguay Peru Suriname Uruguay Venezuela Other South America Other America 20 Africa Egypt Ethiopia Liberia Morocco South Africa Other Africa Oceania Australia New Zealand Other Oceania Not Specified 20, 21
1820 to 1830 to 1829 1839 — — 3,061 57 — — — — — — — 57 405 — — — — — — —
— — — — — 405 — 15 — —
1 — — 14 3 2 — 1 19,523
— — 11,792 94 — — — — — — — 94 957 — — — — — — — — — — — — 957 — 50 — — 8 — — 42 7 1 — 6 83,593
1840 to 1849 — — 11,803 297 — — — — — — — 297 1,062 — — — — — — — — — — — — 1,062 — 61 — — 5 — — 56 14 2 — 12 7,366
1850 to 1859 — — 12,447 512 — — — — — — — 512 3,569 — — — — — — — — — — — — 3,569 — 84 — — 7 — — 77 166 15 — 151 74,399
1860 to 1869 — — 8,751 70 — — — — — — — 70 1,536 — — — — — — — — — — — — 1,536 — 407 4 — 43 — 35 325 187 — — 187 18,241
1870 to 1879 — — 14,285 173 — — — — — — — 173 1,109 — — — — — — — — — — — — 1,109 — 371 29 — 52 — 48 242 9,996 8,930 39 1,027 754
1880 to 1889 — — 27,323 279 — — — — — — — 279 1,954 — — — — — — — — — — — — 1,954 — 763 145 — 21 — 23 574 12,361 7,250 21 5,090 790
1890 to 1899 — — 31,480 649 — — — — — — — 649 1,389 — — — — — — — — — — — — 1,389 — 432 51 — 9 — 9 363 4,704 3,098 12 1,594 14,112
1900 to 1909 — — 100,960 7,341 77 — — — — — — 7,264 15,253 — — — — — — — — — — — — 15,253 — 6,326 — — — — — 6,326 12,355 11,191 — 1,164 33,493
1910 to 1919 — — 120,860 15,692 40 — — — — — — 15,652 39,938 — — — — — — — — — — — — 39,938 — 8,867 — — — — — 8,867 12,339 11,280 — 1,059 488
1920 to 1929 — — 70,713 16,511 285 — — — — — — 16,226 43,025 — — 4,627 — — — — — — — — — 38,398 29 6,362 1,063 — — — — 5,299 9,860 8,404 935 521 930
Notes: ‘- Represents zero or not available. 1 Data for years prior to 1906 refer to country of origin; data from 1906 to 2006 refer to country of last residence. 2 Data for Austria and Hungary not reported separately for all years during 1860 to 1869, 1890 to 1899, 1900 to 1909. 3 From 1899 to 1919, data for Poland included in Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Soviet Union. 4 From 1938 to 1945, data for Austria included in Germany. 5 From 1899 to 1910, included Serbia and Montenegro. 6 Currently includes Czech Republic and Slovak Republic. 7 From 1820 to 1910, included Corsica. 8 Prior to 1926, data for Northern Ireland included in Ireland. 9 Data for Norway and Sweden not reported separately until 1869. 10 From 1820 to 1910, included Cape Verde and Azores Islands. 11 From 1820 to 1920, data refer to the Russian Empire. Between 1920 and 1990 data refer to the Soviet Union. From 1991 to present, the data refer to the Russian federation, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. 12 From 1820 to 1910, included the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands. 13 Since 1925, data for United Kingdom refer to England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Appendix A
1930 to 1940 to 1939 1949 156 — 6,229 6,840 193 431 597 423 679 405 1,452 2,660 9,990 1,067 50 1,468 347 1,027 244 131 33 321 25 112 1,155 4,010 25 2,120 781 10 35 73 312 909 3,306 2,260 790 256 —
823 — 14,593 20,135 433 1,965 4,885 1,303 1,874 4,393 5,282 — 19,662 3,108 893 3,653 1,320 3,454 2,207 596 85 1,273 130 754 2,182 7 25,375 6,720 1,613 28 37 879 1,022 3,141 14,262 11,201 2,351 710 135
1950 to 1959 3,787 7,397 21,037 40,201 1,133 4,044 5,094 4,197 5,320 7,812 12,601 — 78,418 16,346 2,759 11,547 4,669 15,567 8,574 1,131 576 5,980 299 1,026 9,927 17 60,314 13,016 1,996 302 289 2,703 2,278 5,448 11,353 8,275 1,799 1,279 12,472
1439
1960 to 1969
1970 to 1979
1980 to 1989
1990 to 1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
28,992 62,218 50,443 98,560 4,185 17,975 14,405 14,357 15,078 10,383 22,177 — 250,754 49,384 6,205 29,238 12,384 68,371 34,107 4,546 1,249 19,783 612 4,089 20,758 28 22,671 23,780 5,581 804 841 2,880 4,360 9,314 23,630 14,986 3,775 4,869 119
55,166 130,226 127,712 120,374 6,747 12,405 29,428 23,837 15,651 10,911 21,395 — 273,608 30,303 5,635 18,600 15,032 71,265 47,464 38,278 1,486 25,311 714 8,416 11,007 97 1,038 71,408 23,543 2,588 2,391 1,967 10,002 30,917 39,980 18,708 5,018 16,254 326
121,406 193,874 120,725 339,376 14,964 25,017 137,418 58,847 39,071 31,102 32,957 — 399,862 23,442 9,798 22,944 19,749 105,494 48,015 85,886 3,518 49,958 1,357 7,235 22,405 61 83 141,990 26,744 12,927 6,420 3,471 15,505 76,923 41,432 16,901 6,129 18,402 305,406
177,446 177,143 131,243 610,189 12,600 17,054 273,017 126,043 72,880 80,446 28,149 — 570,624 30,065 18,111 50,744 18,200 137,985 81,358 74,407 6,082 110,117 2,285 6,062 35,180 28 37 346,416 44,604 40,097 13,587 15,768 21,964 210,396 56,800 24,288 8,600 23,912 25,928
21,977 15,603 11,400 60,331 774 1,390 22,301 9,861 5,851 18,258 1,896 — 55,143 2,472 1,744 6,767 1,660 14,125 7,624 5,255 394 9,361 281 396 5,052 12 3 40,790 4,323 3,645 1,225 3,423 2,814 25,360 5,928 2,694 1,080 2,154 14,971
22,470 15,031 11,912 72,504 982 1,863 30,876 13,399 6,546 16,908 1,930 — 67,880 3,426 1,804 9,391 1,881 16,234 9,654 7,835 464 10,838 254 516 5,576 7 3 50,009 5,333 4,620 1,477 4,752 4,046 29,781 7,201 3,714 1,347 2,140 17,894
19,151 14,507 10,435 66,298 983 1,686 30,472 15,870 6,355 9,171 1,761 — 73,082 3,791 1,660 9,034 1,766 18,409 10,524 9,492 413 11,737 223 499 5,529 5 3 56,002 6,215 6,308 1,467 3,188 3,685 35,139 6,495 3,420 1,364 1,711 16,688
11,924 13,045 7,732 53,283 616 1,322 27,854 14,195 4,582 3,503 1,211 — 53,946 3,193 1,365 6,108 1,255 14,400 7,022 6,373 222 9,169 175 470 4,190 4 4 45,559 3,928 5,969 1,081 2,969 2,088 29,524 5,076 2,488 1,030 1,558 9,086
13,695 13,581 9,392 61,253 888 1,811 29,297 18,655 5,339 3,842 1,421 — 69,452 4,672 1,719 10,247 1,719 18,055 8,366 5,721 324 11,369 170 750 6,335 5 1 62,623 6,590 7,180 1,540 3,910 3,335 40,068 6,954 3,397 1,420 2,137 24,646
13,496 17,775 12,090 52,636 901 2,479 20,891 16,475 6,825 3,196 1,869 — 100,811 6,945 2,164 16,331 2,354 24,710 11,528 8,772 523 15,205 287 1,110 10,870 12 1 79,701 10,296 8,380 1,846 4,165 4,425 50,589 7,432 4,090 1,457 1,885 39,299
21,628 24,538 16,069 74,258 1,263 3,459 31,259 23,687 8,036 4,035 2,519 — 136,149 7,239 4,000 17,748 2,727 42,024 17,625 9,010 725 21,300 341 1,639 11,758 13 2 112,108 13,163 13,395 3,736 4,704 3,173 73,937 8,001 3,770 1,344 2,887 16,315
14
Currently includes Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Serbia, and Montenegro. Prior to 1911, data refer to British North America. From 1911, data includes Newfoundland. 16 Land arrivals not completely enumerated until 1908. 17 No data available for Mexico from 1886 to 1893. 18 Data for Jamaica not reported separately until 1953. Prior to 1953, Jamaica was included in British West Indies. 19 From 1932 to 1972, data for the Panama Canal Zone included in Panama. 20 Included in ‘Not Specified’ until 1925. 21 Includes 32,897 persons returning in 1906 to their homes in the United States. 15
Note: From 1820 to 1867, figures represent alien passenger arrivals at seaports; from 1868 to 1891 and 1895 to 1897, immigrant alien arrivals; from 1892 to 1894 and 1898 to 2006, immigrant aliens admitted for permanent residence; from 1892 to 1903, aliens entering by cabin class were not counted as immigrants. Land arrivals were not completely enumerated until 1908. For this table, fiscal year 1843 covers 9 months ending September, 1843; fiscal years 1832 and 1850 cover 15 months ending December 31 of the respective years; and fiscal year 1868 covers 6 months ending June 30, 1868. Source: Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics, Table 2 on pp. 6–11. Also available from http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm
1440
1997
797,847 47,732 265,674 119,764 307,313 4,340 52,832 192
797,847 1,127 4,374 717 — 75 19 393 1,961 2,093 26 1,626 485 1,450 641 80 8,680 828 3,061 553 664 48
REGION Total Africa Asia Europe North America Oceania South America Unknown
COUNTRY Total Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Angola Anguilla Antigua-Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin 653,206 830 4,220 804 4 66 26 297 1,503 1,144 23 1,139 290 504 602 52 8,616 725 978 419 494 47
653,206 40,585 219,371 90,572 252,503 3,922 45,281 972
1998
644,787 877 3,695 789 11 57 20 454 1,387 1,250 14 1,103 230 738 398 70 6,038 715 1,320 426 572 59
644,787 36,578 198,918 92,314 270,719 3,658 41,444 1,156
1999
841,002 1,011 4,755 906 7 87 25 429 2,317 1,253 25 2,044 405 1,036 766 106 7,204 777 2,170 670 757 62
841,002 44,534 264,413 130,996 338,959 5,105 55,823 1,172
2000
1,058,902 1,202 4,358 875 28 94 55 461 3,297 1,762 29 2,811 522 1,152 924 118 7,152 895 2,901 814 936 75
1,058,902 53,731 348,256 174,411 405,638 6,071 68,484 2,311
2001
1,059,356 1,759 3,765 1,030 26 92 20 380 3,661 1,800 32 2,557 483 1,164 808 85 5,483 813 2,923 769 966 137
1,059,356 60,101 340,494 173,524 402,949 5,515 74,151 2,622
2002
703,542 1,252 3,362 759 16 59 26 301 3,129 1,287 27 1,836 295 746 423 59 4,616 516 1,858 455 588 76
703,542 48,642 243,918 100,434 249,968 4,351 55,028 1,201
2003
957,883 2,137 3,840 805 12 107 22 414 4,805 1,833 31 2,604 402 969 586 116 8,061 630 2,255 638 871 185
957,883 66,422 334,540 133,181 342,468 5,985 72,060 3,227
2004
Persons Obtaining Legal Permanent Resident Status by Region and Country of Birth: Fiscal Years 1997 to 2006
Region and country of birth
Table 2
1,122,373 4,749 5,947 1,115 15 188 35 440 7,081 2,591 42 3,193 532 1,523 698 140 11,487 846 3,503 859 876 193
1,122,373 85,102 400,135 176,569 345,575 6,546 103,143 5,303
2005
1,266,264 3,417 7,914 1,300 28 272 32 570 7,327 6,317 51 3,249 524 2,371 847 148 14,644 959 3,086 716 1,252 275
1,266,264 117,430 422,333 164,285 414,096 7,385 138,001 2,734
2006
1441
Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia-Herzegovina Botswana Brazil British Virgin Islands Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burma Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China, People’s Republic Colombia Congo, Democratic Republic Congo, Republic Costa Rica Cote d’Ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus
Region and country of birth 62 6 1,509 4,209 12 4,380 55 19 3,731 14 1,370 51 1,436 690 10,130 812 28 6 8 1,228 36,854 11,801 155 118 1,199 364 547 17,304 119
93 6 2,774 13 1,084 59 1,638 895 11,583 920 35 10 18 1,442 41,128 12,993 414 31 1,330 430 717 33,524 147
1998
75 6 1,732 6,391 18 4,574
1997
87 190 883 303 580 14,019 106
32,159 9,928
3 24 1,085
76 16 4,171 17 1,200 16 1,394 824 8,782 902 18
63 4 1,444 5,412 5 3,887
1999
123 189 1,310 439 1,058 18,960 160
45,585 14,427
4 23 1,700
67 16 4,917 48 1,201 28 2,138 860 16,057 1,079 31
71 D 1,761 11,525 13 6,943
2000
145 311 1,733 596 2,853 27,453 216
56,267 16,627
11 44 1,921
70 27 4,400 68 1,373 79 2,462 791 21,752 868 23
98 5 1,819 23,594 24 9,448
2001
178 677 1,591 629 3,798 28,182 158
61,082 18,758
13 47 1,839
43 28 3,608 64 1,356 120 2,800 984 19,352 871 24
108 14 1,664 25,329 30 9,439
2002
110 513 1,246 483 1,153 9,262 123
40,568 14,720
6 8 1,310
43 20 3,825 60 1,193 74 2,263 927 11,350 745 35
92 15 1,376 6,155 27 6,331
2003
155 670 1,755 666 1,511 20,488 143
55,494 18,846
17 23 1,810
35 22 4,253 103 1,379 100 3,553 1,309 15,569 1,015 38
100 17 1,768 10,552 34 10,556
2004
260 1,064 2,278 930 1,780 36,261 196
69,967 25,571
24 31 2,404
41 49 5,635 128 2,095 186 4,022 1,458 21,878 1,225 37
116 30 2,197 14,074 54 16,664
2005
(Continued)
738 1,600 3,109 2,067 945 45,614 180
87,345 43,151
51 73 2,774
47 25 4,828 222 4,562 320 5,773 2,920 18,207 1,780 65
160 78 4,025 3,789 53 17,910
2006
1442
Czech Republic Czechoslovakia (former) Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Grenada Guadeloupe Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti
Region and country of birth
Table 2 (Continued)
144 342 454 15 283 20,355 6,843 4,826 14,577 7 641 128 4,199 1,717 314 2,342 D 14 21 226 295 5,440 4,455 855 655 30 7,747 46 165 3,960 13,434
394 429 18 746 27,047 7,779 5,029 17,955 D 947 285 5,893 1,549 372 2,564 6 21 24 175 812 5,714 5,093 1,042 755 52 7,780 158 24 7,253 15,053
1998
186
1997
318 367 6 40 17,811 8,882 4,421 14,581 D 325 142 4,262 1,599 307 2,196 5 9 4 183 310 5,166 3,707 719 661 54 7,294 5 134 3,290 16,514
145
1999
665 537 14 95 17,465 7,651 4,450 22,543 5 382 239 4,053 1,483 377 3,442 13 13 18 231 493 7,565 4,339 950 655 51 9,942 3 204 5,719 22,337
244
2000
863 706 22 93 21,195 9,665 5,159 31,089 D 540 348 5,092 1,452 497 4,569 8 16 32 390 786 9,790 4,023 1,155 645 84 13,496 11 273 8,279 27,031
307
2001
897 609 30 148 22,515 10,561 4,852 31,060 8 560 343 7,565 1,208 426 3,797 D 12 41 343 886 8,888 4,248 1,009 634 38 16,178 16 289 9,938 20,213
267
2002
543 405 16 204 26,159 7,066 3,348 28,231 D 556 235 6,635 1,095 241 2,375 4 14 40 263 735 5,064 4,410 651 481 35 14,386 29 176 6,809 12,293
267
2003
673 566 37 132 30,506 8,626 5,522 29,807 13 675 322 8,286 1,593 388 3,595 3 13 50 422 964 7,099 5,337 769 609 59 18,920 347 5 6,351 14,191
457
2004
784 718 50 198 27,504 11,608 7,905 21,359 10 796 438 10,573 1,422 574 4,399 8 19 66 581 1,389 9,264 6,491 1,070 840 48 16,825 495 26 9,318 14,529
476
2005
1,442 699 34 471 38,069 17,490 10,500 31,783 13 1,593 423 16,157 2,115 542 4,258 15 37 85 897 2,003 8,436 9,367 1,124 1,068 53 24,146 1,110 25 9,552 22,228
344
2006
1443
Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Korea Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Macedonia Madagascar Malawi Malaysia
Region and country of birth 7,614 5,574 947 119 38,048 905 9,635 3,243 998 2,445 1,976 17,833 5,092 4,170 1,025 1,387 14,226 836 287 1,933 615 3,567 6 2,210 169 812 28 277 783 33 72 1,051
1997 6,456 5,272 806 111 36,414 1,017 7,873 2,217 944 1,982 1,817 15,123 5,128 3,244 539 1,693 14,222 747 111 1,606 369 3,283 4 1,611 165 1,191 21 276 785 42 39 1,010
1998 4,793 4,910 694 79 30,157 1,186 7,176 3,360 804 1,847 1,512 14,693 4,202 3,269 723 1,407 12,795 801 189 846 444 3,033 5 1,351 156 1,147 11 294 569 26 41 991
1999 5,917 5,407 1,023 129 41,903 1,767 8,487 5,087 1,296 2,783 2,448 15,949 7,049 3,900 1,493 2,197 15,721 1,015 388 1,358 548 3,662 9 1,570 180 1,349 26 270 790 33 61 1,551
2000 6,571 8,300 1,263 134 70,032 2,525 10,425 4,965 1,505 3,744 3,096 15,322 9,578 4,572 2,310 2,501 20,532 1,258 582 1,398 711 4,579 6 2,273 223 1,732 34 340 921 61 70 2,439
2001 6,435 6,075 1,274 93 70,823 2,418 12,960 5,174 1,398 3,826 2,578 14,835 8,248 3,964 2,315 3,199 20,724 1,056 473 1,245 683 3,935 13 2,869 158 1,786 32 284 821 43 56 2,124
2002 4,645 3,574 1,021 97 50,228 1,805 7,230 2,450 983 2,741 1,644 13,347 5,971 2,927 1,740 3,209 12,382 707 356 896 458 2,956 5 1,766 140 2,266 16 244 653 40 62 1,200
2003 5,508 3,951 1,272 105 70,151 2,419 10,434 3,494 1,531 4,160 2,346 14,430 7,697 3,431 1,906 5,335 19,766 1,091 439 1,147 605 3,818 14 2,757 185 2,480 13 192 775 54 83 1,987
2004 7,012 3,705 1,567 135 84,681 3,924 13,887 4,077 2,088 5,755 3,066 18,346 8,768 3,748 2,229 5,348 26,562 1,152 656 1,242 769 4,282 12 4,880 223 2,417 35 133 1,070 60 131 2,632
2005
(Continued)
8,177 3,256 1,704 145 61,369 4,869 13,947 4,337 1,906 5,943 3,215 24,976 8,265 4,038 2,081 8,779 24,386 1,230 786 2,893 892 4,083 19 6,887 271 1,885 28 189 1,317 72 131 2,281
2006
1444
Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia, Federated States Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Namibia Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines
Region and country of birth
Table 2 (Continued)
D 83 58 6 20 78 37 131,353 4 562 6 26 65 2,402 39 24 476 914 61 625 3,511 282 7,730 296 25 13,083 6 1,637 10 275 10,141 34,416
1,347 4 22 97 2,358 48 22 447 1,059 43 655 6,327 837 7,031 372 36 12,959 8 1,979 15 304 10,843 49,102
1998
D 97 54 3 20 51 44 146,833 D
1997
753 5 41 80 2,970 31 13 453 773 35 522 13,327 12 6,742 307 40 13,485 D 1,640 14 216 8,414 30,943
— 72 43 3 23 24 38 147,402 D
1999
1,251 12 46 70 3,614 41 30 616 1,337 53 964 20,947 30 7,831 459 51 14,504 3 1,829 21 338 9,579 42,343
D 109 54 3 20 88 54 173,493 5
2000
2,068 9 102 61 4,958 48 54 945 1,679 114 1,205 19,634 1,330 8,253 547 55 16,393 3 1,867 26 401 11,062 52,919
9 119 57 D 22 117 84 205,560 9
2001
2,103 17 135 42 3,387 54 46 1,137 1,549 97 1,117 10,659 1,263 8,105 431 61 13,694 10 1,680 26 356 11,918 51,040
9 105 44 26 19 124 83 218,822 D
2002
1,151 D 153 36 3,137 36 40 2,095 981 59 877 4,094 808 7,872 320 76 9,415 8 1,164 34 207 9,409 45,250
15 124 37 26 14 131 57 115,585 4
2003
1,507 7 229 33 4,128 59 40 2,878 1,303 72 1,131 4,009 62 9,374 405 122 12,086 6 1,417 19 328 11,794 57,846
7 163 57 48 26 170 65 175,411 5
2004
3,507 7 323 50 4,411 54 63 3,158 1,815 116 1,293 3,305 126 10,598 423 101 14,926 8 1,815 44 516 15,676 60,748
6 277 74 32 37 275 99 161,445 6
2005
3,036 D 498 90 4,949 78 56 3,733 1,651 100 1,100 4,145 116 13,459 481 155 17,418 8 2,418 30 719 21,718 74,607
D 408 70 53 30 720 108 173,753 13
2006
1445
Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Kitts-Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia and Montenegro1 Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovak Republic Slovenia Somalia South Africa Soviet Union, former Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syria
Region and country of birth 8,451 1,529 60 5,104 11,517 52 404 509 413 146 703 372 2,399 4 952 388 491 57 2,623 1,897 6,323 1,040 1,084 1,158 143 8 818 825 2,835
581 138 815 435 2,792 15 1,879 460 629 62 4,004 2,091 2,940 1,240 1,126 2,028 191 11 956 1,063 2,269
1998
12,035 1,660 70 5,545 16,622 170 377 531
1997
1,886 10 970 355 492 58 1,690 1,577 5,022 869 899 1,346 141 8 821 647 2,048
442 91 759 368
8,773 1,058 78 5,678 12,321 97 463 529
1999
2,742 18 1,585 668 549 76 2,393 2,824 3,263 1,254 1,118 1,531 256 12 1,264 1,029 2,367
497 184 1,063 554
10,090 1,343 97 6,863 16,940 73 500 599
2000
6,203 18 1,878 1,100 809 142 3,007 4,090 2,707 1,711 1,505 1,650 245 18 1,682 1,298 3,350
559 165 1,178 663
11,769 1,609 125 6,628 20,313 148 463 674
2001
10,387 20 2,246 1,033 725 140 4,535 3,861 2,403 1,361 1,529 2,921 247 12 1,376 1,004 2,557
480 157 1,014 530
12,711 1,313 108 4,887 20,771 217 342 583
2002
2,994 16 1,492 582 674 64 2,444 2,210 1,072 917 1,246 1,883 180 23 963 632 1,938
322 178 735 522
10,510 808 72 3,655 13,935 109 310 488
2003
3,331 25 1,596 966 800 88 3,929 3,370 929 1,339 1,431 3,211 166 15 1,270 855 2,256
400 203 906 769
14,326 1,069 125 4,571 17,410 163 299 616
2004
5,202 16 2,731 1,204 965 114 5,829 4,536 2,899 1,888 1,894 5,231 300 16 1,517 1,092 2,831
625 173 1,210 913
15,352 1,125 174 7,103 18,083 276 342 832
2005
(Continued)
5,891 15 3,572 997 1,111 115 9,462 3,201 6,229 1,971 2,192 5,504 314 11 1,376 983 2,918
756 283 1,542 1,367
17,052 1,409 226 7,137 13,188 502 458 1,212
2006
1446
7,094 66 339 3,090 246 229 4,845 200 2,676 44 46 D 355 7,444 329 8,976 30 367 600 3,129 17,635 1,857 212 186 31 972
— 398 15,691 329 10,679 38 427 3,311 3,326 38,511 1,661 262 274 36 192
1998
6,738 311 399 3,092 221 303 6,402 163 3,138 99 37
1997
7,647 29 267 1,221 2,498 20,335 1,160 143 184 35 1,156
5 250 10,102 310
6,700 104 313 2,366 254 281 4,259 150 2,215 65 27
1999
13,273 35 426 1,631 4,693 26,553 1,789 211 322 56 1,172
3 418 15,511 435
9,019 156 480 3,753 386 349 6,635 307 2,606 97 46
2000
18,278 63 541 2,031 5,170 35,419 1,607 295 475 56 2,311
6 457 20,914 460
12,120 187 476 4,245 487 327 6,618 438 3,215 94 33
2001
16,297 64 536 2,317 5,228 33,563 1,227 308 484 72 2,622
9 575 21,190 472
9,775 181 577 4,144 935 331 5,738 540 3,375 93 31
2002
9,527 32 469 1,445 4,018 22,087 1,382 280 358 44 1,201
4 455 11,633 380
6,917 137 554 3,126 1,187 238 4,138 353 3,029 84 26
2003
14,915 57 787 1,995 6,220 31,524 1,760 359 628 51 3,227
13 721 14,156 586
9,005 167 747 4,318 2,041 327 5,384 457 3,835 117 28
2004
19,800 183 1,154 2,887 10,645 32,784 3,366 499 923 72 5,303
8 858 22,761 812
9,196 207 829 5,505 1,523 309 6,568 495 4,614 148 34
2005
Source: Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics, Table 3 on pp. 12–15. Also available from http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm
Notes: D Data withheld to limit disclosure. - Represents zero. 1 Yugoslavia (unknown republic) prior to February 7, 2003.
Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands U.S. Virgin Islands Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe All other countries Unknown
Region and country of birth
Table 2 (Continued)
17,207 333 1,664 4,015 11,341 30,695 4,308 672 1,049 66 2,734
7 1,372 17,142 1,006
8,087 239 949 11,750 1,720 437 8,854 510 4,941 248 52
2006
Appendix A
Table 3
Refugee Arrivals: Fiscal Years 1980 to 2006 Year
Number
1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
207,116 159,252 98,096 61,218 70,393 67,704 62,146 64,528 76,483 107,070 122,066 113,389 115,548 114,181 111,680 98,973 74,791 69,276 76,181 85,076 72,143 68,925 26,773 28,304 52,837 53,738 41,150
Source: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), Office of Admissions, Refugee Processing Center (RPC). Reproduced in: Department of Homeland Security, 2007, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics, Table 13 on p. 39. Also available from http://www.dhs.gov/ ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Notes: Data series began following the Refugee Act of 1980. Excludes Amerasian immigrants except in fiscal years 1989 to 1991.
1447
1448
Table 4
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Refugee Arrivals by Region and Country of Origin: Fiscal Years 1997 to 2006
Region and country of origin
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
REGION Total Africa Asia Europe North America Oceania South America
69,276 6,069 11,771 48,450 2,986 — —
76,181 6,665 13,669 54,260 1,587 — —
85,076 13,048 14,041 55,877 D — D
72,143 17,624 13,622 37,664 3,233 — —
68,925 19,070 15,356 31,526 2,968 — 5
26,773 2,550 6,885 15,406 1,924 — 8
28,304 10,719 5,862 11,269 305 — 149
52,837 29,110 10,896 9,254 2,998 — 579
53,738 20,746 14,977 11,316 6,368 — 331
41,150 18,185 9,245 10,456 3,145 — 119
69,276 — — — NA NA NA 21,357
76,181 88 — — NA NA NA 30,906
85,076 365 12 — 35 210 1,008 22,699
72,143 1,709 57 D 20 259 1,050 19,033
68,925 2,930 31 34 27 449 971 14,593
26,773 1,683 — 16 30 114 680 3,461
28,304 1,453 4 21 63 406 702 525
52,837 959 D 20 88 407 659 244
53,738 902 D 21 86 299 445 61
41,150 651 D 13 87 77 350 16
182 33 — 19 —
186 24 — 15 —
295 223 — 9 D
637 165 — 7 —
543 109 23 5 D
128 62 4 6 —
203 16 7 6 D
1,056 276 3 D 24
1,447 214 9 6 —
1,612 466 9 29 23
45 —
41 —
22 D
D D
D 12
D 9
D 9
4 3
— 13
4 21
— 45
— 52
— 42
— 1,354
— 260
8 107
149 251
577 569
323 424
115 405
— — — 2,911 16 —
— D — 1,587 15 —
27 5 1,660 2,018 8 —
11 — 2,995 3,184 — 12
6 D 1,020 2,944 12 —
5 3 109 1,919 D —
41 4 144 305 D D
73 — 92 2,980 6 —
43 5 39 6,360 — 25
66 23 D 3,143 — 11
7 NA 197 16 — 75
9 NA 152 50 — —
32 71 1,873 13 50 91
94 81 1,347 13 30 49
109 57 1,429 5 49 24
13 38 330 — 14 5
23 28 1,702 9 53 —
128 27 2,689 3 33 17
327 17 1,663 — 11 8
538 7 1,271 6 4 —
COUNTRY Total Afghanistan Algeria Angola Armenia Azerbaijan Belarus BosniaHerzegovina Burma Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Central African Republic Chad China, People’s Republic Colombia Congo, Democratic Republic Congo, Republic Cote d’Ivoire Croatia Cuba Djibouti Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Gambia Georgia Haiti
Appendix A
Region and country of origin Indonesia Iran Iraq Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Liberia Lithuania Macedonia Mauritania Moldova Nigeria Pakistan Russia Rwanda Serbia and Montenegro1 Sierra Leone Somalia Soviet Union (former) Sudan Syria Tajikistan Togo Tunisia Turkmenistan Uganda Ukraine Uzbekistan Vietnam Yemen Zimbabwe All other countries
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
1449
2006
— 1,305 2,679 NA — — NA 939 NA 231 NA — — NA 7 — NA 100
D 1,699 1,407 NA 13 — NA — NA 1,494 NA — — NA 312 — NA 86
26 1,750 1,955 412 D — 140 19 167 2,495 20 3 D 1,035 625 — 4,386 153
14 5,145 3,158 284 11 13 147 64 103 2,620 16 D — 1,056 50 6 3,723 345
5 6,590 2,473 291 13 — 116 22 125 3,429 40 D 202 1,168 85 3 4,454 94
18 1,540 471 222 24 6 69 18 57 559 D 4 6 1,022 28 — 2,105 47
17 2,471 298 118 3 — 46 13 49 2,957 21 13 — 616 57 18 1,394 47
5 1,786 66 312 — 14 100 6,005 52 7,140 13 — — 1,711 34 11 1,446 176
6 1,856 198 80 D — 38 8,517 25 4,289 9 — 3 1,016 11 9 5,982 183
10 2,792 202 124 5 — 15 830 21 2,402 — D 88 721 15 20 6,003 112
3 57 4,974 27,072
— 176 2,951 23,349
14,280 675 4,320 194
524 1,128 6,026 282
153 2,004 4,951 133
1,860 176 237 —
1,839 1,378 1,994 —
151 1,086 13,331 —
40 829 10,405 —
11 439 10,357 —
277 — NA 30 — NA 9 NA NA 6,660 — — 30
1,252 — NA 15 3 NA D NA NA 10,288 — — 7
2,393 D 9 93 — 16 12 8,649 818 9,622 D — 33
3,833 18 24 511 D D 18 7,334 693 2,841 D — 38
5,959 8 9 280 10 7 12 7,172 681 2,730 — 6 52
897 4 4 16 — D D 5,216 394 2,988 — — 35
2,139 3 13 47 — 4 D 5,065 166 1,354 D — 32
3,500 — D 35 — 7 8 3,482 426 974 8 D 15
2,205 7 6 72 — D 10 2,889 271 2,009 D D 19
1,848 27 4 18 — D 20 2,483 527 3,039 11 13 40
Source: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), Office of Admissions, Refugee Processing Center (RPC). Reproduced in Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics, Table 14 on pp. 40–41. Also available from http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Notes: NA Not Available. D Data withheld to limit disclosure. - Represents zero 1 Yugoslavia (unknown republic) prior to February 7, 2003. Note: Excludes Amerasian immigrants.
1450
Table 5
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Petitions for Naturalization Filed, Persons Naturalized, and Petitions for Naturalization Denied: Fiscal Years 1907 to 2006 Persons naturalized Petitions
Year
filed
1907 1
21,113
Total 7,941
Civilian 7,941
2
Military
NA
Not
Petitions
reported
denied
—
250
1908
44,032
25,975
25,975
NA
—
3,330
1909
43,141
38,374
38,374
NA
—
6,341
1910
55,750
39,448
39,448
NA
—
7,781
1911
74,740
56,683
56,683
NA
—
9,017
1912
95,661
70,310
70,310
NA
—
9,635
1913
95,380
83,561
83,561
NA
—
10,891
1914
124,475
104,145
104,145
NA
—
13,133
1915
106,399
91,848
91,848
NA
—
13,691
1916
108,767
87,831
87,831
NA
—
11,927
1917
130,865
88,104
88,104
NA
—
9,544
1918
169,507
151,449
87,456
63,993
—
12,182
1919
256,858
217,358
89,023
128,335
—
13,119
1920
218,732
177,683
125,711
51,972
—
15,586
1921
195,534
181,292
163,656
17,636
—
18,981
1922
162,638
170,447
160,979
9,468
—
29,076
1923
165,168
145,084
137,975
7,109
—
24,884
1924
177,117
150,510
140,340
10,170
—
18,324
1925
162,258
152,457
152,457
NA
—
15,613
1926
172,232
146,331
146,239
92
—
13,274
1927
240,339
199,804
195,493
4,311
—
11,946
1928
240,321
233,155
228,006
5,149
—
12,479
1929
255,519
224,728
224,197
531
—
11,848
1930
113,151
169,377
167,637
1,740
—
9,068
1931
145,474
143,495
140,271
3,224
—
7,514
1932
131,062
136,600
136,598
2
—
5,478
1933
112,629
113,363
112,368
995
—
4,703
1934
117,125
113,669
110,867
2,802
—
1,133
1935
131,378
118,945
118,945
NA
—
2,765
1936
167,127
141,265
140,784
481
—
3,124
1937
165,464
164,976
162,923
2,053
—
4,042
1938
175,413
162,078
158,142
3,936
—
4,854
1939
213,413
188,813
185,175
3,638
—
5,630
1940
278,028
235,260
232,500
2,760
—
6,549
1941
277,807
277,294
275,747
1,547
—
7,769
1942
343,487
270,364
268,762
1,602
—
8,348
1943
377,125
318,933
281,459
37,474
—
13,656
1944
325,717
441,979
392,766
49,213
—
7,297
1945
195,917
231,402
208,707
22,695
—
9,782
Appendix A
1451
Persons naturalized Petitions 2
Year
filed
Total
Civilian
Military
1946
123,864
150,062
134,849
15,213
Not
Petitions
reported
denied
—
6,575
1947
88,802
93,904
77,442
16,462
—
3,953
1948
68,265
70,150
69,080
1,070
—
2,887
1949
71,044
66,594
64,138
2,456
—
2,271
1950
66,038
66,346
64,279
2,067
—
2,276
1951
61,634
54,716
53,741
975
—
2,395
1952
94,086
88,655
87,070
1,585
—
2,163
1953
98,128
92,051
90,476
1,575
—
2,300
1954
130,722
117,831
104,086
13,745
—
2,084
1955
213,508
209,526
197,568
11,958
—
4,571
1956
137,701
145,885
138,681
7,204
—
3,935
1957
140,547
138,043
137,198
845
—
2,948
1958
117,344
119,866
118,950
916
—
2,688
1959
109,270
103,931
102,623
1,308
—
2,208
1960
127,543
119,442
117,848
1,594
—
2,277
1961
138,718
132,450
130,731
1,719
—
3,175
1962
129,682
127,307
124,972
2,335
—
3,557
1963
121,170
124,178
121,618
2,560
—
2,436
1964
113,218
112,234
109,629
2,605
—
2,309
1965
106,813
104,299
101,214
3,085
—
2,059
1966
104,853
103,059
100,498
2,561
—
2,029
1967
108,369
104,902
102,211
2,691
—
2,008
1968
103,085
102,726
100,288
2,438
—
1,962
1969
102,317
98,709
93,251
5,458
—
2,043
1970
114,760
110,399
99,783
10,616
—
1,979
1971
109,897
108,407
98,858
9,549
—
2,028
1972
121,883
116,215
107,740
8,475
—
1,837
1973
126,929
120,740
112,944
7,796
—
1,708
1974
136,175
131,655
124,807
6,848
—
2,210
1975
149,399
141,537
135,323
6,214
—
2,300
1976 3
199,152
190,722
183,578
7,144
—
2,799
1977
186,354
159,873
154,568
5,305
—
2,845
1978
168,854
173,535
168,409
5,126
—
3,894
1979
165,434
164,150
158,276
5,874
—
3,987
1980
192,230
157,938
153,343
4,595
—
4,370
1981
171,073
166,317
162,227
4,090
—
4,316
1982
201,507
173,688
170,071
3,617
—
3,994
1983
187,719
178,948
175,678
3,196
74
3,160
1984
286,440
197,023
192,113
2,965
1,945
3,373
1985
305,981
244,717
238,394
3,266
3,057
3,610
1986
290,732
280,623
275,352
2,901
2,370
5,980
(Continued)
1452
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Table 5 (Continued) Persons naturalized Petitions Year
filed
Total
Civilian
Military2
Not
Petitions
reported
denied
1987
232,988
227,008
224,100
2,402
506
6,771
1988
237,752
242,063
239,541
2,296
226
4,304
1989
227,692
233,777
231,198
1,954
625
5,200
1990
233,843
270,101
246,845
1,630
21,626
6,516
1991
206,668
308,058
299,373
1,804
6,881
6,268
1992
342,238
240,252
222,519
5,702
12,031
19,293
1993
521,866
314,681
303,211
7,069
4,401
39,931
1994
543,353
434,107
402,050
6,194
25,863
40,561
1995
959,963
488,088
474,169
3,862
10,057
46,067
1996
1,277,403
1,044,689
926,481
1,261
116,947
229,842
1997
1,412,712
598,225
534,756
538
62,931
130,676
1998
932,957
463,060
439,416
964
22,680
137,395
1999
765,346
839,944
742,749
712
96,483
379,993
2000
460,916
888,788
814,796
839
73,153
399,670
2001
501,643
608,205
576,671
749
30,785
218,326
2002
700,649
573,708
551,628
1,055
21,025
139,779
2003
523,370
463,204
449,650
3,870
9,684
91,599
2004
662,796
537,151
520,771
4,668
11,712
103,339
2005
602,972
604,280
589,269
4,614
10,397
108,247
2006
730,642
702,589
684,484
6,259
11,846
120,722
Source: Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics, Table 20 on pp. 51–52. Also available from http://www.dhs gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm Notes: NA Not available. - Represents zero. 1 Data on naturalizations were first compiled by a single federal agency with the establishment of the Naturalization Service in 1906. The year 1907 includes naturalizations from September 27, 1906 to June 30, 1907. 2 Data on military naturalizations prior to 1918 not available. Special provisions for military naturalizations expired or suspended in 1925 and 1935. 3 Includes the 15 months from July 1, 1975 to September 30, 1976 because the end date of fiscal years was changed from June 30 to September 30.
1453
1997
596,010 15,898 192,740 67,500 273,110 1,804 42,135 2,823 596,010 1,833 418 173 38 91 64 881 2,233 3,036 65 258 181 263 337 10 3,565 1,952 727 178 1,351
REGION Total Africa Asia Europe North America Oceania South America Unknown
COUNTRY Total Afghanistan Albania Algeria American Samoa Angola Anguilla Antigua-Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize 461,169 1,730 351 142 63 73 86 929 1,638 2,519 38 202 152 349 265 19 1,208 1,172 833 166 986
461,169 12,413 153,237 58,631 207,362 1,608 27,451 467
1998
837,418 2,747 598 277 75 99 165 1,100 3,351 3,181 86 342 230 878 793 32 2,277 2,551 1,869 292 2,072
837,418 20,358 273,163 100,989 384,385 2,378 54,205 1,940
1999
886,026 2,832 826 426 80 113 66 938 3,416 2,554 85 433 289 1,315 589 41 3,309 1,884 3,060 362 1,797
886,026 25,792 330,176 120,972 345,980 2,676 57,807 2,623
2000
606,259 1,938 1,032 469 97 85 38 477 2,204 1,968 41 391 270 946 392 47 4,416 906 2,006 296 1,014
606,259 24,255 246,516 89,210 200,089 2,585 42,155 1,449
2001
Persons Naturalized by Region and Country of Birth: Fiscal Years 1997 to 2006
Region and country of birth
Table 6
572,646 1,424 2,450 615 102 68 30 450 2,129 1,814 49 424 275 1,187 401 47 5,626 871 2,141 265 771
572,646 31,489 231,990 93,515 169,548 2,348 42,812 944
2002
462,435 1,235 2,284 493 117 64 24 325 1,879 1,673 28 882 240 886 342 31 4,345 663 1,224 250 665
462,435 28,529 191,761 74,113 130,551 2,889 33,635 957
2003
537,151 1,323 3,324 616 137 87 18 357 1,965 1,793 30 1,295 277 793 378 54 5,148 650 1,464 232 664
537,151 34,531 218,974 89,014 151,047 3,551 38,676 1,358
2004
604,280 1,464 3,830 722 294 86 27 371 1,976 1,737 39 1,155 307 904 343 57 5,503 778 1,549 247 704
604,280 38,830 237,724 97,482 180,572 3,898 44,504 1,270
2005
(Continued)
702,589 2,018 3,964 825 247 106 35 520 2,695 1,605 44 1,240 359 997 574 81 6,683 1,006 1,769 355 918
702,589 50,397 257,125 107,459 223,086 3,657 59,985 880
2006
1454
Benin Bermuda Bolivia Bosnia-Herzegovina Botswana Brazil British Virgin Islands Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burma Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China, People’s Republic Colombia Congo, Democratic Republic Congo, Republic Costa Rica Cote d’Ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Czechoslovakia (former)
Region and country of birth
Table 6 (Continued)
24 54 841 33 — 1,941 133 9 262 3 442 D 5,328 149 5,498 542 151 D 4 997 16,090 6,997 68 11 1,095 83 183 15,253 127 4 314
3 1,420 20,879 11,597 81 3 1,568 107 212 13,087 110 10 433
1998
19 39 1,087 50 5 2,356 101 5 355 4 575 3 5,160 163 6,607 571 286 D
1997
42 2,081 121 357 25,383 188 27 546
13,122 127
6 1,885 38,347
35 83 1,456 300 4 4,103 202 13 498 8 889 6 7,110 181 9,253 849 136 4
1999
58 1,887 184 500 15,608 204 58 654
13,964 138
9 1,881 54,443
23 90 1,369 1,745 8 4,510 134 15 845 16 1,129 13 5,275 285 11,322 732 23 4
2000
90 1,138 171 516 11,343 185 47 489
10,826 115
12 1,200 34,353
19 58 905 2,756 7 3,925 48 8 1,169 10 1,076 15 3,460 299 7,528 577 15 3
2001
139 1,000 271 620 10,857 150 64 453
10,601 116
D 1,148 31,987
25 47 1,098 4,092 4 3,885 40 12 1,310 7 1,069 28 3,113 461 7,581 683 17 10
2002
123 868 264 615 7,698 100 50 333
7,939 101
24 1,073 23,991
27 38 932 4,993 12 3,091 22 9 1,599 12 905 21 3,135 534 6,399 429 7 6
2003
163 970 317 1,084 11,236 104 69 434
9,819 88
27 1,142 27,309
42 47 1,125 8,013 5 4,074 41 10 2,487 19 1,177 59 3,975 575 7,682 635 9 5
2004
193 1,161 324 1,348 11,227 134 102 490
11,396 122
19 1,183 31,708
56 58 1,361 8,921 9 4,583 38 13 2,906 26 1,360 56 4,806 661 7,815 933 8 10
2005
369 1,402 491 1,623 21,481 140 122 614
15,698 229
18 1,549 35,387
64 72 1,630 9,686 17 7,028 54 13 3,488 51 1,486 71 4,778 771 9,607 1,126 18 14
2006
1455
1997 163 5 617 21,016 7,443 2,231 18,230 393 52 1,985 709 94 1,255 D 47 3 50 101 2,918 1,581 1,874 1,219 21 7,897 29 69 7,522 16,439 4,307 4,740 566
Region and country of birth
Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Grenada Guadeloupe Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary
165 5 677 11,875 4,656 1,495 12,211 443 52 1,835 492 109 1,121 — 101 D 40 76 2,499 1,073 1,546 662 19 5,507 31 206 4,565 10,391 2,745 2,918 529
1998 233 9 976 23,027 8,380 2,680 22,938 566 82 2,602 773 159 1,897 D 139 5 68 147 4,131 1,546 2,347 1,530 61 10,995 42 167 10,347 19,507 5,282 6,605 880
1999 285 10 713 25,098 9,454 3,486 24,001 823 108 2,758 921 200 2,278 10 128 8 81 406 4,508 2,032 2,252 1,164 32 11,444 70 20 10,794 14,373 5,168 8,085 1,071
2000 226 9 370 14,958 6,547 3,779 13,613 755 105 2,756 1,175 114 1,742 D 41 5 69 415 3,200 1,828 1,661 609 14 6,257 67 6 7,038 10,355 3,248 5,269 873
2001 194 18 456 15,562 6,392 3,698 10,699 809 110 3,892 1,020 140 1,718 6 16 12 135 444 3,424 3,326 1,285 607 25 5,442 111 14 7,220 9,268 3,496 4,849 827
2002 197 16 361 12,607 5,061 2,922 8,719 819 102 3,820 1,206 118 1,476 D 9 11 113 416 3,192 2,831 933 524 18 4,551 81 15 4,929 7,247 3,004 3,752 618
2003 175 12 441 15,464 5,616 3,726 9,602 829 126 4,255 1,267 352 1,802 6 10 12 136 382 3,836 3,577 1,100 530 21 5,080 124 10 4,877 8,215 3,455 3,713 738
2004 154 17 543 20,831 7,091 4,061 12,174 692 104 4,621 1,503 431 1,963 6 22 18 189 443 3,811 3,561 1,075 649 26 6,250 137 10 5,543 9,740 3,953 4,479 720
2005
(Continued)
199 18 741 22,165 8,321 4,271 13,430 653 156 5,397 1,163 532 2,449 D 16 23 286 628 4,556 4,760 1,291 781 36 6,551 194 14 7,434 15,979 4,949 4,263 955
2006
1456
1997 38 21,113 570 11,375 1,617 1,822 2,020 2,427 20,199 1,275 1,807 46 494 15,946 404 D 8,606 202 3,031 715 127 179 9 117 203 16 22 427 29 51 5 13
Region and country of birth
Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Korea Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Liberia Libya Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Macedonia Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique
Table 6 (Continued)
32 16,978 603 10,679 2,028 1,436 1,441 2,508 14,999 1,840 1,504 58 396 10,211 308 18 7,717 193 2,383 555 93 153 4 87 136 12 35 369 19 39 D 11
1998 50 30,612 1,459 18,205 3,225 3,400 2,910 4,370 28,544 3,168 2,461 226 698 17,663 596 32 9,164 383 4,214 846 153 308 15 197 212 16 37 883 31 93 D 20
1999 52 42,092 2,480 19,171 5,209 5,448 3,573 4,425 22,497 3,746 3,246 437 932 23,717 903 87 7,129 484 4,929 1,022 181 354 11 254 310 30 50 1,370 48 115 D 23
2000 44 34,240 1,242 13,834 3,443 4,437 2,970 2,972 13,947 2,362 2,876 429 731 17,979 766 81 6,469 359 3,550 778 171 402 9 199 394 25 39 1,032 51 63 3 21
2001 32 33,737 1,003 11,773 3,314 3,438 2,556 2,614 13,949 1,857 2,821 562 865 17,252 791 128 8,363 376 3,402 1,047 163 489 8 196 559 29 44 1,092 72 85 D 16
2002 41 29,761 963 10,782 2,209 2,583 2,036 1,845 11,218 1,795 1,917 455 823 15,928 606 131 5,841 224 2,499 917 112 457 9 115 376 22 25 983 64 61 4 10
2003 79 37,975 1,131 11,781 3,646 2,421 2,373 2,295 12,271 1,955 2,324 572 997 17,184 796 159 5,678 335 3,314 1,218 130 738 9 146 601 30 52 1,019 66 80 9 18
2004 82 35,962 1,234 11,031 3,273 1,995 2,436 2,511 13,674 2,154 2,464 726 1,158 19,223 846 217 5,261 348 3,288 1,548 173 887 7 195 651 29 60 1,221 85 67 4 21
2005
70 47,542 1,287 11,363 3,614 1,754 2,905 2,769 18,953 2,192 2,634 872 1,636 17,668 903 246 4,114 347 3,393 2,193 142 964 9 163 837 36 67 1,264 118 86 14 16
2006
1457
1997 3 29 142,152 D 620 — 140 553 39 9 78 468 62 221 4,399 188 3,525 111 5 7,237 10 2,030 D 246 6,336 30,774 8,016 4,256 16 3,026 8,188 5
Region and country of birth
Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia, Federated States Moldova Mongolia Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Namibia Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda
D 23 111,995 7 574 D 124 414 30 5 82 396 50 196 3,348 302 1,956 92 6 3,562 17 1,498 — 112 4,343 24,771 5,890 4,635 12 2,238 5,970 4
1998 12 41 207,072 D 1,154 6 190 854 59 10 143 690 88 316 6,636 607 3,115 159 D 6,547 19 3,080 3 193 8,292 38,850 13,102 5,810 27 3,268 10,331 9
1999 13 60 189,051 D 1,573 15 128 1,197 68 13 203 807 78 421 5,413 554 4,128 191 6 8,706 17 2,906 7 214 8,927 46,442 16,363 4,728 35 3,577 12,898 31
2000 19 38 102,736 4 955 9 86 1,247 29 15 205 546 34 345 3,549 183 4,349 126 8 8,367 7 1,577 7 165 6,659 35,347 11,625 2,762 37 3,512 9,395 60
2001 23 37 76,310 6 919 13 84 1,274 57 13 247 512 28 356 3,788 110 6,412 108 9 8,643 9 1,591 7 198 7,375 30,440 12,811 2,187 48 4,014 9,841 86
2002 29 42 55,946 6 713 17 64 1,283 32 13 318 500 19 340 3,044 46 5,691 93 16 7,424 12 1,248 D 175 6,130 29,043 9,139 2,034 34 3,267 6,669 77
2003 53 43 63,840 14 711 21 54 1,841 40 13 408 722 23 420 3,444 46 6,470 137 13 8,744 19 1,462 3 178 6,980 31,448 10,335 2,173 48 4,388 7,586 116
2004 56 46 77,089 22 927 41 78 2,628 50 18 417 860 25 444 5,080 48 6,894 136 16 9,699 18 1,643 10 202 7,904 36,673 9,801 2,403 66 4,602 8,297 123
2005
(Continued)
106 65 83,979 41 988 60 96 3,643 62 17 575 1,008 33 440 9,283 46 8,652 145 23 10,411 36 1,930 12 285 10,063 40,500 10,230 2,638 59 5,484 9,412 178
2006
1458
Saint Kitts-Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia and Montenegro1 Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovak Republic Slovenia Somalia South Africa Soviet Union (former) Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Togo Tonga
Region and country of birth
Table 6 (Continued)
764 527 474 219 78 106 1,001 7 420 141 35 17 305 675 6,973 901 459 140 45 5 203 300 1,452 4,825 35 189 1,968 18 298
154 147 222 1,287 16 491 168 26 13 171 655 9,259 749 547 218 74 — 218 328 1,628 6,424 15 220 2,277 20 335
1998
711 636 823
1997
13 486 292 80 36 815 1,416 11,282 1,234 880 281 130 5 350 504 2,337 11,185 167 354 4,026 35 423
257 152 188 1,755
993 708 996
1999
27 600 404 200 43 1,245 1,965 9,174 1,066 998 514 161 11 369 652 2,793 13,163 406 419 5,197 58 365
281 309 218 2,188
702 600 824
2000
18 516 306 243 42 1,167 1,468 4,563 722 835 739 111 3 321 516 2,151 9,052 368 333 4,088 57 301
194 247 250 2,076
331 392 439
2001
12 763 322 301 58 1,789 1,526 4,302 631 961 1,012 119 8 819 462 2,278 8,599 234 345 4,013 113 246
150 309 346 2,302
351 417 461
2002
15 777 273 286 43 2,235 1,262 3,437 552 827 839 120 7 948 430 1,881 6,742 127 295 3,636 153 182
117 251 274 2,012
321 366 374
2003
13 945 332 318 60 2,714 1,453 3,772 1,120 980 1,104 97 5 1,016 487 2,385 7,889 117 348 3,779 204 207
157 354 371 3,159
282 359 388
2004
8 1,043 338 362 58 3,238 1,495 3,668 1,256 927 1,551 125 5 980 541 2,252 8,295 116 363 4,314 291 246
165 397 401 5,857
331 515 491
2005
22 1,683 347 479 61 4,242 2,225 3,831 1,465 1,023 2,587 222 10 984 539 2,395 8,819 147 490 4,583 536 235
201 511 503 5,555
483 623 624
2006
1459
5,783 87 1,564 5 41 5 264 5,951 43 6,851 22 621 242 1,198 36,016 627 105 94 56 2,823
Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands U.S. Virgin Islands Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe All other countries Unknown
3,770 90 1,540 5 19 10 205 6,944 13 6,341 20 396 236 920 30,048 259 89 79 33 467
1998 7,711 129 2,017 27 83 11 347 12,184 44 9,951 28 686 1,142 2,258 53,176 510 168 172 75 1,940
1999 7,239 167 2,069 73 43 12 429 16,833 79 11,704 44 688 3,078 2,418 55,769 832 227 274 51 2,623
2000 4,474 157 1,792 60 39 D 296 11,819 84 8,038 38 471 2,492 2,103 41,462 807 158 206 41 1,449
2001 4,814 165 1,924 65 18 7 321 12,106 109 8,194 42 485 2,541 2,156 36,757 882 168 231 33 944
2002 3,774 119 1,724 43 15 4 279 8,236 112 6,717 37 352 1,480 1,952 25,933 589 134 210 37 957
2003 3,958 192 1,964 58 16 5 327 8,069 168 7,785 36 412 1,224 2,385 27,480 822 180 225 41 1,358
2004
4,832 226 2,231 59 21 4 340 9,343 197 8,087 29 475 1,588 2,659 32,926 814 159 260 47 1,270
2005
Notes: D Data withheld to limit disclosure. - Represents zero. 1 Yugoslavia (unknown republic) prior to February 7, 2003. Based on N-400 data for persons age 18 and over.
Source: Department of Homeland Security. 2007. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2006. Washington, DC: Office of Immigration Statistics, Table 21 on pp. 53–56. Also available from http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/yearbook.shtm
1997
Region and country of birth
6,612 315 2,742 75 30 D 477 10,184 277 9,104 57 579 1,821 4,476 29,917 989 239 322 41 880
2006
1460
Table 7
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
The United States and Major Metropolitan Areas: Ancestry, Race, and Hispanic Status
The United States Ancestry Total population American
American Indian and Alaska Native
2,369,431
299,398,485
Cherokee tribal grouping
301,750
20,372,454
Chippewa tribal grouping
109,149
Arab
1,466,874
Navajo tribal grouping
296,076
Czech
1,637,218
Sioux tribal grouping
116,737
Danish
1,516,126
Dutch
5,187,864
English French (except Basque) French Canadian German
2,482,141
28,290,369
Chinese
3,090,453
9,651,364
Filipino
2,328,097
2,240,648
Japanese
50,764,352 1,380,258
Hungarian
1,563,081
Irish
35,975,855
Italian
17,829,184
Lithuanian
722,879
Norwegian
4,669,516 10,024,683
Portuguese
1,442,077
Russian
3,105,965
Scotch-Irish
5,393,554
Scottish
6,006,955
Slovak
838,385
Sub-saharan African
2,540,781
Swedish
4,417,115
Swiss
1,018,910
Ukrainian
961,113
Welsh
1,959,794
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
2,418,969
Race (indicated only one) White Black or African American
13,100,095
Asian Indian
Greek
Polish
Asian
221,331,507 37,051,483
829,767
Korean
1,335,075
Vietnamese
1,475,798
Other Asian
1,558,764
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
426,194
Native Hawaiian
148,598
Guamanian or Chamorro
85,628
Samoan
73,385
Other Pacific Islander Some other race Two or more races
118,583 19,007,129 6,112,646
White and Black or African American
1,275,169
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
1,390,527
White and Asian
1,001,633
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
241,737
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
44,252,278 28,339,354
Puerto Rican
3,987,947
Cuban
1,520,276
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
10,404,701 255,146,207
Appendix A
New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA
Rank = 1 (largest metropolitan area)
Ancestry
American Indian and Alaska Native
1461
42,129
18,818,536
Cherokee tribal grouping
3,980
American
599,261
Chippewa tribal grouping
249
Arab
173,561
Navajo tribal grouping
203
Czech
66,301
Sioux tribal grouping
487
Total population
Danish
32,932
Dutch
145,337
Asian Indian
537,573
English
641,713
Chinese
584,317
French (except Basque)
197,506
Filipino
188,740
44,461
Japanese
50,274
French Canadian German
1,493,525
Greek
194,933
Hungarian
190,762
Irish
2,133,009
Italian
2,855,625
Lithuanian
57,237
Norwegian
90,733
Polish
882,901
Portuguese
110,760
Russian
562,418
Scotch-Irish
118,624
Scottish
158,834
Slovak
47,227
Sub-saharan African Swedish Swiss Ukrainian Welsh West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
263,289 88,219
Asian
Korean Vietnamese Other Asian
35,025 137,382 6,202
Native Hawaiian
1,385
Guamanian or Chamorro
3,407
Samoan
604
Other Pacific Islander
806
Some other race Two or more races
2,199,398 311,389
White and Black or African American
65,466
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
22,634
White and Asian
43,729
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
18,659
32,890 136,386 42,144 879,482
Race (indicated only one)
Black or African American
196,202
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican Puerto Rican
White
1,729,513
Cuban 11,224,177 3,305,728
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
3,985,375 467,471 1,199,248 125,259 2,193,397 14,833,161
(Continued)
1462
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Table 7 (Continued) Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
Rank = 2
Ancestry
American Indian and Alaska Native
60,641
12,950,129
Cherokee tribal grouping
4,595
American
389,208
Chippewa tribal grouping
362
Arab
100,527
Navajo tribal grouping
Czech
26,819
Sioux tribal grouping
Danish
46,102
Dutch
106,163
Asian Indian
117,743
English
650,186
Chinese
461,314
French (except Basque)
201,561
Filipino
356,149
Japanese
146,325
Korean
282,028
Vietnamese
243,162
Total population
French Canadian German
29,563 908,898
Greek
48,767
Hungarian
49,138
Irish
699,266
Italian
422,623
Other Asian Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
8,527
182,190
Samoan
33,670
Other Pacific Islander
Russian
184,650
Some other race
Scotch-Irish
111,679
Two or more races
Scottish
144,843 9,306 81,442 118,657
Swiss
26,304
Ukrainian
26,770
Welsh
43,893
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
35,649
Black or African American
6,604,486 935,329
15,383 6,713 3,179,118 362,532
White and Black or African American
35,651
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
41,525
White and Asian
79,029
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
8,831
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
Race (indicated only one) White
37,544
Guamanian or Chamorro
Polish
Swedish
163,758
106,332
Norwegian
Subsaharan African
1,770,479
6,921
19,123
Slovak
757
Native Hawaiian
Lithuanian
Portuguese
Asian
5,028
5,694,422 4,492,427
Puerto Rican
56,988
Cuban
47,627
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
1,097,380 7,255,707
Appendix A
Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL-IN-WI
Rank = 3
Ancestry Total population American
1463
American Indian and Alaska Native
17,186
9,506,859
Cherokee tribal grouping
1,981
204,160
Chippewa tribal grouping
434
Arab
59,616
Navajo tribal grouping
129
Czech
121,246
Sioux tribal grouping
271
Danish
44,764
Dutch
138,052
Asian Indian
English
487,946
Chinese
93,743
French (except Basque)
166,215
Filipino
110,864
28,970
Japanese
18,578
Korean
53,952
Vietnamese
20,663
French Canadian German Greek Hungarian Irish Italian
1,613,853 111,599 58,633 1,198,128 720,195
Lithuanian
92,937
Norwegian
128,846
Polish
987,716
Portuguese Russian Scotch-Irish
5,625 138,274 89,027
Other Asian Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
492,663 150,959
43,904 2,336
Native Hawaiian
N
Guamanian or Chamorro
N
Samoan
N
Other Pacific Islander
N
Some other race Two or more races
1,087,834 151,444
White and Black or African American
28,400
48,654
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
17,154
70,932
White and Asian
30,639
Scottish
102,340
Slovak Subsaharan African Swedish
Asian
217,450
Swiss
23,336
Ukrainian
48,509
Welsh
31,475
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
27,589
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican Puerto Rican
Race (indicated only one)
Cuban
White
6,049,049
Black or African American
1,706,347
5,061
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
1,828,296 1,434,677 173,171 18,693 201,755 7,678,563
(Continued)
1464
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Table 7 (Continued) Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
Rank = 4
Ancestry Total population American
American Indian and Alaska Native 6,006,094
Cherokee tribal grouping
430,391
Chippewa tribal grouping
Arab
27,155
Navajo tribal grouping
Czech
38,325
Sioux tribal grouping
Danish
16,675
Dutch
77,495
Asian
31,086 6,441 91 405 911 284,084
Asian Indian
77,857
English
550,894
Chinese
43,654
French (except Basque)
146,035
Filipino
16,559
16,353
Japanese
6,560
French Canadian German Greek Hungarian
687,495 13,922 15,052
Korean
29,357
Vietnamese
67,632
Other Asian
42,465
Irish
550,912
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
Italian
136,143
Native Hawaiian
585
Guamanian or Chamorro
563
Samoan
530
Lithuanian
5,184
Norwegian
45,556
Polish
79,637
Portuguese Russian
8,294 28,190
Scotch-Irish
121,689
Scottish
120,859
Slovak
3,597
Subsaharan African
94,548
Swedish
52,604
Swiss
11,554
Ukrainian
6,415
Welsh
34,323
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
10,614
Other Pacific Islander
White
630,836
Two or more races
107,770
White and Black or African American
20,438
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
24,508
White and Asian
15,912
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
Black or African American
845,390
5,646
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
Cuban 4,103,642
1,608
Some other race
Puerto Rican Race (indicated only one)
3,286
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
1,590,786 1,347,244 22,569 7,288 213,685 4,415,308
Appendix A
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD
Rank = 5
Ancestry Total population American
1465
American Indian and Alaska Native
9,875
5,826,742
Cherokee tribal grouping
N
192,588
Chippewa tribal grouping
N
Arab
25,885
Navajo tribal grouping
N
Czech
17,820
Sioux tribal grouping
N
Danish
9,419
Dutch
66,599
English
522,808
French (except Basque)
103,308
French Canadian German
18,263 1,049,605
Greek
31,976
Hungarian
45,371
Irish Italian
1,269,209 876,433
Asian
247,366
Asian Indian
75,096
Chinese
60,725
Filipino
18,599
Japanese
3,926
Korean
30,716
Vietnamese
27,492
Other Asian Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
30,812 1,767
Lithuanian
33,800
Native Hawaiian
N
Norwegian
22,789
Guamanian or Chamorro
N
Samoan
N
Other Pacific Islander
N
Polish Portuguese Russian
357,552 10,874 109,346
Some other race
Scotch-Irish
91,177
Scottish
94,697
White and Black or African American
Slovak
24,845
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
Subsaharan African
59,953
White and Asian
Swedish
43,927
Swiss
17,259
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
Ukrainian
58,189
Welsh
53,474
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
47,790
Two or more races
Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
Puerto Rican Cuban
White
4,104,915
Black or African American
1,188,404
86,658 30,819 8,659 14,197 6,818
Hispanic or Latino of any Race
Mexican
Race (indicated only one)
187,757
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
360,955 71,845 193,003 6,118 89,989 5,465,787
(Continued)
1466
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Table 7 (Continued) Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
Rank = 6
Ancestry Total population American Arab
American Indian and Alaska Native
21,305
5,542,048
Cherokee tribal grouping
N
306,083
Chippewa tribal grouping
N
Navajo tribal grouping
N
31,428
Czech
61,299
Danish
10,924
Dutch
48,371
Sioux tribal grouping Asian
N 311,303
Asian Indian
74,068
English
369,495
Chinese
64,115
French (except Basque)
158,284
Filipino
37,996
18,603
Japanese
4,513
Korean
8,443
French Canadian German
578,243
Greek
13,200
Hungarian
10,190
Irish
392,482
Italian
133,624
Lithuanian
4,193
Norwegian
24,665
Polish
77,062
Portuguese
6,164
Russian
19,795
Scotch-Irish
82,439
Scottish
84,722
Slovak
2,414
Subsaharan African
58,937
Swedish
32,517
Swiss
6,696
Ukrainian
7,861
Welsh
23,854
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
21,828
Race (indicated only one) White Black or African American
3,459,184 941,794
Vietnamese Other Asian Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
84,988 37,180 4,555
Native Hawaiian
N
Guamanian or Chamorro
N
Samoan
N
Other Pacific Islander
N
Some other race Two or more races
724,448 79,459
White and Black or African American
12,575
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
16,733
White and Asian
10,887
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
2,141
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
1,823,830 1,415,401
Puerto Rican
21,163
Cuban
13,480
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
373,786 3,718,218
Appendix A
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach, FL
Rank = 7
Ancestry Total population AAmerican
1467
American Indian and Alaska Native
13,238
5,463,857
Cherokee tribal grouping
N
217,814
Chippewa tribal grouping
N
Arab
32,134
Navajo tribal grouping
N
Czech
12,343
Sioux tribal grouping
N
Danish
6,302
Dutch
35,185
English
241,688
French (except Basque)
87,252
French Canadian
24,067
German
341,736
Greek
23,754
Hungarian
37,760
Irish
336,820
Italian
354,100
Asian
115,817
Asian Indian
43,680
Chinese
24,693
Filipino
16,223
Japanese
4,303
Korean
6,571
Vietnamese Other Asian Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
10,142 10,205 1,803
Lithuanian
11,114
Native Hawaiian
N
Norwegian
16,590
Guamanian or Chamorro
N
Samoan
N
Other Pacific Islander
N
Polish Portuguese Russian
151,843 17,335 144,499
Scotch-Irish
36,485
Scottish
44,339
Slovak
6,379
Some other race Two or more races White and Black or African American White and American Indian and Alaska Native
Subsaharan African
32,520
White and Asian
Swedish
28,318
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
Swiss
7,236
Ukrainian
11,590
Welsh
14,960
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
490,053
Race (indicated only one) White
3,819,937
Black or African American
1,114,676
301,322 97,064 19,140 6,960 10,099 1,564
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
2,093,306
Mexican
117,831
Puerto Rican
189,032
Cuban
879,858
Other Hispanic or Latino
906,585
Not Hispanic or Latino
3,370,551
(Continued)
1468
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Table 7 (Continued) Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Ancestry Total population American
Rank = 8 American Indian and Alaska Native
11,832
5,288,670
Cherokee tribal grouping
2,561
234,303
Chippewa tribal grouping
162
Arab
40,808
Navajo tribal grouping
770
Czech
19,466
Sioux tribal grouping
514
Danish
14,816
Dutch
53,365
Asian Asian Indian
450,392 105,481
English
485,789
Chinese
91,765
French (except Basque)
111,400
Filipino
55,100
20,077
Japanese
10,259
Korean
74,301
Vietnamese
56,432
French Canadian German
666,021
Greek
32,535
Hungarian
25,147
Irish
562,365
Italian
253,528
Lithuanian
16,416
Norwegian
37,808
Polish
131,211
Portuguese
14,246
Russian
81,063
Scotch-Irish
94,929
Scottish
109,284
Slovak
17,042
Subsaharan African
180,028
Swedish
47,685
Swiss
16,975
Ukrainian
21,671
Welsh
35,729
West Indian (excluding Hispani-origin groups)
58,364
Race (indicated only one) White
3,031,892
Black or African American
1,388,162
Other Asian Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Native Hawaiian
57,054 5,822 837
Guamanian or Chamorro
2,612
Samoan
1,781
Other Pacific Islander
592
Some other race
288,584
Two or more races
111,986
White and Black or African American
32,781
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
11,591
White and Asian
23,900
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
1,564
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
608,884
Mexican
97,605
Puerto Rican
39,800
Cuban
13,573
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
457,906 4,679,786
Appendix A
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA
Rank = 9
Ancestry Total population American
1469
American Indian and Alaska Native
9,782
5,134,871
Cherokee tribal grouping
N
468,872
Chippewa tribal grouping
N
Arab
19,444
Navajo tribal grouping
N
Czech
9,905
Sioux tribal grouping
N
Danish
8,344
Dutch
52,386
English
479,657
French (except Basque)
93,011
French Canadian
16,103
German
461,663
Greek
10,601
Hungarian
13,597
Irish
476,279
Italian
156,570
30,548
Filipino
8,366
Japanese
4,632
Korean
37,368
Vietnamese
37,528
Other Asian Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
26,423 1,457
N
79,811
Samoan
N
Other Pacific Islander
N
9,828 36,864
Scotch-Irish
111,652
Scottish
110,146
Swedish
Chinese
Guamanian or Chamorro
Polish
Subsaharan African
64,016
22,678
Norwegian
Slovak
Asian Indian
N
5,772
Russian
208,881
Native Hawaiian
Lithuanian
Portuguese
Asian
6,353 137,215 33,183
Swiss
7,639
Ukrainian
7,640
Welsh
29,816
West Indian (excluding Hispani-origin groups)
76,119
Some other race Two or more races
White
2,982,015
Black or African American
1,603,301
66,120
White and Black or African American
16,524
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
10,356
White and Asian
11,992
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
4,834
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
Race (indicated only one)
263,315
467,418 292,011
Puerto Rican
30,922
Cuban
14,838
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
129,647 4,667,453
(Continued)
1470
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Table 7 (Continued) Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI
Rank = 10
Ancestry
American Indian and Alaska Native
12,543
4,468,966
Cherokee tribal grouping
1,803
American
168,948
Chippewa tribal grouping
1,990
Arab
123,368
Navajo tribal grouping
109
Czech
19,981
Sioux tribal grouping
47
Danish
13,847
Dutch
64,455
Total population
Asian
144,617
Asian Indian
52,693
English
384,538
Chinese
21,823
French (except Basque)
203,736
Filipino
16,616
83,022
Japanese
9,871
French Canadian German
810,509
Greek
30,568
Hungarian
60,633
Korean Vietnamese Other Asian
Irish
492,616
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
Italian
313,371
13,255 8,091 22,268 187
Native Hawaiian
N
Lithuanian
14,068
Guamanian or Chamorro
N
Norwegian
25,974
Samoan
N
Other Pacific Islander
N
Polish Portuguese
514,211 2,495
Russian
48,905
Scotch-Irish
73,127
Scottish
113,874
Slovak
14,674
Subsaharan African
25,761
Swedish
48,196
Swiss
Some other race
76,663
Two or more races
68,881
White and Black or African American
20,157
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
15,358
White and Asian
10,099
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
6,490
Ukrainian
30,684
Hispanic or Latino of any Race
Welsh
24,195
Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
7,653
5,442
Mexican Puerto Rican
Race (indicated only one)
Cuban
White
3,145,913
Black or African American
1,020,162
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
156,901 107,162 17,756 4,412 27,571 4,312,065
Appendix A
Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH
Rank = 11
Ancestry Total population American
1471
American Indian and Alaska Native
8,379
4,455,217
Cherokee tribal grouping
N
152,041
Chippewa tribal grouping
N
Arab
45,663
Navajo tribal grouping
N
Czech
9,386
Sioux tribal grouping
N
Danish
10,882
Dutch
28,930
Asian Asian Indian
258,046 52,458
English
539,236
Chinese
104,452
French (except Basque)
305,614
Filipino
6,653
French Canadian
166,896
Japanese
7,739
German
308,212
Korean
18,528
Vietnamese
33,041
Greek
66,836
Hungarian
14,971
Irish Italian
1,140,048 683,977
Lithuanian
34,541
Norwegian
26,249
Polish
173,313
Portuguese
118,373
Russian
101,940
Scotch-Irish Scottish Slovak
92,034 131,621 4,562
Other Asian Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
N
Guamanian or Chamorro
N
Samoan
N
Other Pacific Islander
N
Some other race Two or more races White and Black or African American White and American Indian and Alaska Native
70,362
White and Asian
Swedish
76,652
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
8,738
Ukrainian
15,920
Welsh
19,267
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
87,678
White
Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
Black or African American
Cuban 3,619,603 302,415
189,909 74,946 26,991 9,322 15,570 2,490
Hispanic or Latino of any Race
Puerto Rican Race (indicated only one)
1,919
Native Hawaiian
Subsaharan African
Swiss
35,175
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
334,597 25,156 103,438 6,843 199,160 4,120,620
(Continued)
1472
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Table 7 (Continued) San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
Rank = 12
Ancestry
American Indian and Alaska Native
20,314
4,180,027
Cherokee tribal grouping
1,361
American
68,912
Chippewa tribal grouping
204
Arab
35,928
Navajo tribal grouping
480
Total population
Czech
12,026
Danish
27,303
Dutch
47,194
Sioux tribal grouping Asian
619 909,454
Asian Indian
102,039
English
328,143
Chinese
382,773
French (except Basque)
102,247
Filipino
221,757
15,481
Japanese
44,714
Korean
45,891
Vietnamese
51,219
French Canadian German
423,346
Greek
24,047
Hungarian
15,149
Other Asian
61,061
Irish
366,273
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
Italian
239,253
Native Hawaiian
3,206
29,420
Lithuanian
7,380
Guamanian or Chamorro
3,945
Norwegian
49,906
Samoan
7,330
Polish
70,860
Other Pacific Islander
Portuguese
76,452
Some other race
402,605
Russian
81,531
Two or more races
146,016
Scotch-Irish
59,508
Scottish
79,092
Slovak
3,152
Subsaharan African
48,633
Swedish
62,745
Swiss
19,396
Ukrainian
13,676
Welsh
24,163
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
6,136
White and Black or African American
14,930
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
16,847
White and Asian
49,478
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
White
Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
Black or African American
Cuban 2,307,980 364,238
5,499
Hispanic or Latino of any Race
Puerto Rican Race (indicated only one)
14,939
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
835,899 559,606 26,727 8,619 240,947 3,344,128
Appendix A
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ
Rank = 13
Ancestry Total population American
1473
American Indian and Alaska Native
79,034
4,039,182
Cherokee tribal grouping
2,210
209,173
Chippewa tribal grouping
769
Arab
16,679
Navajo tribal grouping
Czech
21,062
Sioux tribal grouping
Danish
30,217
Dutch
67,827
Asian
20,971 783 112,103
Asian Indian
24,073
English
399,998
Chinese
24,542
French (except Basque)
118,344
Filipino
17,373
23,850
Japanese
7,599
Korean
7,665
French Canadian German
666,833
Greek
17,180
Hungarian
20,173
Irish
428,567
Italian
211,470
Lithuanian
8,621
Norwegian
81,782
Polish
110,599
Portuguese
11,193
Russian
38,842
Scotch-Irish
65,068
Scottish
79,442
Slovak
6,154
Subsaharan African
18,762
Swedish
72,949
Swiss
11,993
Ukrainian Welsh West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
8,793 30,054 4,073
Vietnamese Other Asian
White
7,694
Native Hawaiian
1,236
Guamanian or Chamorro
2,644
Samoan
1,226
Other Pacific Islander
2,588
Some other race Two or more races
Black or African American
163,912
377,485 89,288
White and Black or African American
14,654
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
17,008
White and Asian
16,144
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
2,598
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
Cuban 3,209,666
10,225
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
Puerto Rican Race (indicated only one)
20,626
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
1,209,591 1,063,847 23,080 7,435 115,229 2,829,591
(Continued)
1474
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Table 7 (Continued) Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA
Rank = 14
Ancestry Total population American
American Indian and Alaska Native
32,836
4,026,135
Cherokee tribal grouping
5,323
112,305
Chippewa tribal grouping
229
25,921
Navajo tribal grouping
1,186
Czech
8,082
Sioux tribal grouping
1,135
Danish
21,123
Asian
222,686
Dutch
58,511
Asian Indian
20,875
272,011
Chinese
27,582
French (except Basque)
97,213
Filipino
80,894
French Canadian
18,238
Japanese
9,431
Arab
English
German
419,318
Greek
11,952
Hungarian
12,695
Korean Vietnamese Other Asian
19,708 28,920 35,276
Irish
322,883
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
Italian
151,859
Native Hawaiian
2,555
10,661
Lithuanian
3,546
Guamanian or Chamorro
1,375
Norwegian
38,347
Samoan
2,701
Polish
46,458
Other Pacific Islander
4,030
Portuguese
16,778
Some other race
819,362
Russian
22,115
Two or more races
138,972
Scotch-Irish
46,402
Scottish
53,515
Slovak
2,419
Subsaharan African
24,059
Swedish
49,205
Swiss
5,901
Ukrainian
4,383
Welsh West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
18,278 9,906
Race (indicated only one) White Black or African American
2,499,305 302,313
White and Black or African American
14,350
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
22,280
White and Asian
21,548
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
3,491
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
1,774,114 1,529,917
Puerto Rican
23,049
Cuban
11,988
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
209,160 2,252,021
Appendix A
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
Rank = 15
Ancestry Total population American
1475
American Indian and Alaska Native
32,164
3,263,497
Cherokee tribal grouping
1,932
112,835
Chippewa tribal grouping
1,275
Arab
13,441
Navajo tribal grouping
Czech
18,904
Sioux tribal grouping
Danish
43,020
Dutch
70,653
Asian
977 1,112 338,177
Asian Indian
36,267
English
408,604
Chinese
70,633
French (except Basque)
121,854
Filipino
58,517
Japanese
30,823
Korean
47,053
Vietnamese
53,412
French Canadian German
27,616 623,887
Greek
16,803
Hungarian
13,565
Irish
401,356
Italian
128,814
Lithuanian
5,904
Norwegian
219,840
Polish
72,347
Portuguese
10,588
Russian
54,115
Scotch-Irish
81,130
Scottish Slovak Subsaharan African Swedish
111,458 3,682 46,043 137,674
Swiss
17,177
Ukrainian
28,756
Welsh
34,879
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
5,158
Other Asian Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
White
3,276
Guamanian or Chamorro
5,642
Samoan
4,730
Other Pacific Islander
5,843
Some other race Two or more races
Black or African American
174,579
98,316 122,733
White and Black or African American
24,036
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
23,813
White and Asian
36,097
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
4,141
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
Cuban 2,478,037
19,491
Native Hawaiian
Puerto Rican Race (indicated only one)
41,472
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
228,547 161,135 11,050 3,816 52,546 3,034,950
(Continued)
1476
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Table 7 (Continued) Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI
Rank = 16
Ancestry
American Indian and Alaska Native
17,194
3,175,041
Cherokee tribal grouping
470
American
76,633
Chippewa tribal grouping
7,966
Arab
14,600
Navajo tribal grouping
Czech
58,180
Sioux tribal grouping
Danish
53,642
Dutch
53,555
Total population
Asian
107 2,020 158,492
Asian Indian
26,106
English
226,664
Chinese
17,291
French (except Basque)
149,940
Filipino
5,985
36,641
Japanese
2,573
French Canadian German Greek Hungarian Irish Italian
1,127,393 8,974 11,377 424,283 96,467
Korean Vietnamese Other Asian Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
11,257 20,479 74,801 716
Native Hawaiian
N
Lithuanian
7,419
Guamanian or Chamorro
N
Norwegian
462,979
Samoan
N
Polish
161,389
Other Pacific Islander
N
Portuguese
2,751
Russian
35,835
Scotch-Irish
34,946
Scottish
48,685
Slovak
6,048
Subsaharan African Swedish
69,315 337,848
Swiss
14,755
Ukrainian
11,735
Welsh
16,774
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
4,696
Race (indicated only one) White Black or African American
2,665,590 206,802
Some other race
65,115
Two or more races
61,132
White and Black or African American
22,825
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
12,776
White and Asian
12,469
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
1,706
3,175,041 141,006 95,689
Puerto Rican
6,984
Cuban
1,372
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
36,961 3,034,035
Appendix A
San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA
1477
Rank = 17
Ancestry
American Indian and Alaska Native
21,583
2,941,454
Cherokee tribal grouping
1,583
American
88,503
Chippewa tribal grouping
469
Arab
22,317
Navajo tribal grouping
659
Czech
11,429
Sioux tribal grouping
306
Danish
18,880
Asian
Dutch
40,238
Asian Indian
20,044
263,223
Chinese
46,055
82,611
Filipino
130,604
13,705
Japanese
18,676
Korean
21,303
Vietnamese
43,179
Total population
English French (except Basque) French Canadian German
364,830
Greek
14,358
Hungarian
14,643
Irish
286,953
Italian
147,099
Lithuanian
5,830
Norwegian
41,867
Polish
62,203
Portuguese
19,277
Russian
34,256
Scotch-Irish
48,578
Scottish
57,208
Slovak
3,964
Subsaharan African
26,926
Swedish
50,390
Swiss
8,952
Ukrainian
8,059
Welsh West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
17,893 6,191
Other Asian Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
White Black or African American
146,313
13,085 2,463
Guamanian or Chamorro
4,246
Samoan
4,904
Other Pacific Islander
1,472
Some other race Two or more races
287,054 105,040
White and Black or African American
14,163
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
14,764
White and Asian
29,737
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
2,428
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
Cuban 2,065,987
22,531
Native Hawaiian
Puerto Rican Race (indicated only one)
302,392
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
885,504 771,399 12,799 5,207 96,099 2,055,950
(Continued)
1478
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Table 7 (Continued) St. Louis, MO-IL
Rank = 18
Ancestry Total population American
American Indian and Alaska Native
5,657
2,793,988
Cherokee tribal grouping
1,856
182,574
Chippewa tribal grouping
30
6,331
Navajo tribal grouping
107
Czech
20,548
Sioux tribal grouping
473
Danish
7,250
Dutch
45,307
Arab
Asian
52,205
Asian Indian
13,808
English
264,459
Chinese
10,635
French (except Basque)
137,798
Filipino
7,009
Japanese
1,417
Korean
6,119
French Canadian German
5,825 899,693
Greek
10,840
Hungarian
14,857
Vietnamese Other Asian
10,002 3,215
Irish
426,756
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
Italian
145,179
Native Hawaiian
N
725
Lithuanian
6,758
Guamanian or Chamorro
N
Norwegian
18,812
Samoan
N
Polish
77,146
Other Pacific Islander
N
Portuguese
2,336
Russian
22,583
Scotch-Irish
42,655
Scottish
43,318
Slovak
4,107
Subsaharan African
23,689
Swedish
23,639
Swiss
13,345
Ukrainian Welsh West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
3,913 16,697 2,058
Some other race
16,168
Two or more races
39,275
White and Black or African American
14,516
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
10,172
White and Asian
5,944
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
1,947
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican Puerto Rican
Race (indicated only one) White Black or African American
Cuban 2,174,775 505,183
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
54,375 31,815 5,747 881 15,932 2,739,613
Appendix A
Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
Rank = 19
Ancestry Total population American
American Indian and Alaska Native Cherokee tribal grouping
2,344
167,967
Chippewa tribal grouping
368
14,517
Navajo tribal grouping
Czech
13,049
Sioux tribal grouping
Danish
8,077
Dutch
50,566
English
311,717
French (except Basque)
100,410
German
26,574 432,738
Greek
26,198
Hungarian
18,330
Irish
385,247
Italian
244,696
Lithuanian
7,636
Norwegian
18,799
Polish
7,859
2,697,731
Arab
French Canadian
1479
107,784
Asian Asian Indian
0 334 69,942 16,655
Chinese
9,483
Filipino
11,496
Japanese
1,714
Korean
5,405
Vietnamese Other Asian Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
15,456 9,733 1,225
Native Hawaiian
N
Guamanian or Chamorro
N
Samoan
N
Other Pacific Islander
N
Portuguese
12,658
Russian
26,021
Some other race
77,680
Scotch-Irish
50,310
Two or more races
45,199
Scottish
68,579
Slovak
7,105
White and Black or African American
10,447
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
9,489
Subsaharan African
24,162
White and Asian
6,948
Swedish
33,825
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
1,863
Swiss
6,180
Ukrainian
8,346
Welsh
22,911
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
31,783
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican Puerto Rican
Race (indicated only one) White Black or African American
Cuban 2,201,489 294,337
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
371,396 93,356 106,271 66,963 104,806 2,326,335
(Continued)
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Table 7 (Continued) Baltimore-Towson, MD
Rank = 20
Ancestry Total population American
American Indian and Alaska Native
5,934
2,658,405
Cherokee tribal grouping
964
188,271
Chippewa tribal grouping
108
9,760
Navajo tribal grouping
49
Czech
14,652
Sioux tribal grouping
357
Danish
4,253
Dutch
31,070
Arab
Asian
97,496
Asian Indian
21,885
264,297
Chinese
19,933
French (except Basque)
56,772
Filipino
13,291
French Canadian
12,160
Japanese
2,329
English
German
528,122
Greek
21,844
Hungarian
14,779
Korean Vietnamese Other Asian
24,181 6,311 9,566
Irish
393,385
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
Italian
179,063
Native Hawaiian
N
Guamanian or Chamorro
N
Samoan
N
Other Pacific Islander
N
Lithuanian
12,293
Norwegian
12,600
Polish Portuguese
128,970 5,287
Russian
38,755
Scotch-Irish
43,124
Scottish
46,926
Slovak
5,606
Subsaharan African
66,476
Swedish
19,911
Swiss
6,394
Ukrainian
9,772
Welsh
21,682
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
24,281
Race (indicated only one) White Black or African American
Some other race
27,998
Two or more races
49,366
White and Black or African American
752,489
17,094
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
6,620
White and Asian
8,940
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
2,678
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
75,755
Mexican
20,766
Puerto Rican
15,551
Cuban 1,724,311
811
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
2,977 36,461 2,582,650
Appendix A
Denver-Aurora, CO
Rank = 21
Ancestry Total population American
1481
American Indian and Alaska Native
18,410
2,408,622
Cherokee tribal grouping
1,874
106,743
Chippewa tribal grouping
336
Arab
12,630
Navajo tribal grouping
2,195
Czech
17,480
Sioux tribal grouping
2,610
Danish
21,675
Dutch
43,902
Asian
86,095
Asian Indian
10,119
285,494
Chinese
15,824
French (except Basque)
85,793
Filipino
6,482
French Canadian
13,979
Japanese
7,706
English
German Greek Hungarian
530,836 9,185 10,103
Korean
16,939
Vietnamese
18,353
Other Asian
10,672
Irish
314,009
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
Italian
121,565
Native Hawaiian
418
Guamanian or Chamorro
100
Samoan
522
Other Pacific Islander
814
Lithuanian
3,633
Norwegian
56,893
Polish
60,706
Portuguese
5,420
Russian
32,042
Scotch-Irish
52,798
Scottish
66,546
Slovak
2,496
Subsaharan African
19,343
Swedish
67,824
Swiss
13,151
Ukrainian Welsh West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
9,339 21,693 3,722
Race (indicated only one) White Black or African American
1,909,113 129,258
Some other race Two or more races
1,854
202,355 61,537
White and Black or African American
12,200
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
13,935
White and Asian
10,429
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
1,466
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
528,491 396,735
Puerto Rican
8,790
Cuban
3,411
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
119,555 1,880,131
(Continued)
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Table 7 (Continued) Pittsburgh, PA
Rank = 22
Ancestry
American Indian and Alaska Native
2,542
2,370,776
Cherokee tribal grouping
N
American
83,656
Chippewa tribal grouping
N
Arab
14,134
Navajo tribal grouping
N
Czech
17,379
Sioux tribal grouping
N
Danish
2,847
Dutch
37,100
Total population
English French (except Basque) French Canadian German
Asian Asian Indian
35,309 13,929
222,415
Chinese
8,059
51,999
Filipino
1,878
4,346
Japanese
1,680
Korean
4,284
743,251
Greek
14,725
Hungarian
50,937
Vietnamese Other Asian
3,270 2,209
Irish
469,692
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
Italian
415,872
Native Hawaiian
N
Guamanian or Chamorro
N
Samoan
N
Other Pacific Islander
N
Lithuanian
14,451
Norwegian
5,082
Polish Portuguese
240,748 870
Russian
38,373
Scotch-Irish
83,467
Scottish
46,658
Slovak
120,949
Subsaharan African
10,605
Swedish
20,068
Swiss
24,758
Welsh
32,174 1,893
Race (indicated only one) White Black or African American
Two or more races White and Black or African American
7,911 28,727 15,007
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
3,185
White and Asian
2,806
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
2,270
6,819
Ukrainian West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
Some other race
526
2,105,774 189,987
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
22,809
Mexican
7,426
Puerto Rican
5,759
Cuban
1,254
Other Hispanic or Latino
8,370
Not Hispanic or Latino
2,347,967
Appendix A
Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, OR-WA
Rank = 23
Ancestry Total population American
1483
American Indian and Alaska Native
25,834
2,137,599
Cherokee tribal grouping
1,218
96,826
Chippewa tribal grouping
604
Arab
7,483
Navajo tribal grouping
206
Czech
15,596
Sioux tribal grouping
539
Danish
25,418
Dutch
54,051
Asian
117,166
Asian Indian
11,808
276,756
Chinese
25,502
French (except Basque)
84,228
Filipino
14,685
French Canadian
19,169
Japanese
8,672
English
German Greek Hungarian Irish Italian
485,350 11,105 9,419 268,052 84,467
Korean
15,249
Vietnamese
25,143
Other Asian
16,107
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
6,333
Native Hawaiian
1,361
Guamanian or Chamorro
2,183
Lithuanian
3,382
Norwegian
94,266
Polish
41,214
Portuguese
11,275
Russian
40,043
Some other race
79,369
Scotch-Irish
55,435
Two or more races
65,751
Scottish
81,561
Slovak
2,286
Samoan Other Pacific Islander
10,977
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
20,990 16,027
11,425
White and Asian
Swedish
76,282
Swiss
16,172
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
Ukrainian
21,505
Welsh
26,158 2,068
Race (indicated only one) White Black or African American
1,784,969 58,177
2,013
White and Black or African American
Subsaharan African
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
776
2,526
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race) Mexican
207,666 168,182
Puerto Rican
3,542
Cuban
2,244
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
33,698 1,929,933
(Continued)
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Table 7 (Continued) Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH
Rank = 24
Ancestry
American Indian and Alaska Native
3,290
2,114,155
Cherokee tribal grouping
N
115,398
Chippewa tribal grouping
N
19,128
Navajo tribal grouping
N
Czech
35,964
Sioux tribal grouping
N
Danish
3,807
Dutch
24,759
Total population American Arab
English French (except Basque) French Canadian German
Asian
38,139
Asian Indian
12,071
181,985
Chinese
11,236
38,511
Filipino
2,477
5,188
Japanese
1,700
Korean
2,584
Vietnamese
4,197
461,580
Greek
15,127
Hungarian
85,968
Other Asian
3,874
Irish
311,230
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
0
Italian
225,175
Native Hawaiian
N
Guamanian or Chamorro
N
Samoan
N
Other Pacific Islander
N
Lithuanian
12,680
Norwegian
7,818
Polish Portuguese
184,131 2,587
Russian
29,673
Scotch-Irish
31,254
Scottish
34,637
Slovak
76,560
Subsaharan African
10,361
Swedish
16,062
Swiss
8,207
Some other race
32,480
Two or more races
34,259
White and Black or African American White and American Indian and Alaska Native
4,887
White and Asian
4,447
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
3,077
Ukrainian
22,627
Hispanic or Latino of any Race
Welsh
18,928
Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
3,967
Race (indicated only one) White Black or African American
412,842
80,767
Mexican
21,548
Puerto Rican
45,240
Cuban 1,593,145
10,200
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
698 13,281 2,033,388
Appendix A
Honolulu, HI.
1485
Rank = 53
Ancestry
American Indian and Alaska Native
2,969
909,863
Cherokee tribal grouping
N
American
7,207
Chippewa tribal grouping
N
Arab
1,708
Navajo tribal grouping
N
Czech
1,679
Sioux tribal grouping
N
Danish
3,379
Dutch
4,851
Total population
Asian Asian Indian
402,365 1,000
English
39,165
Chinese
53,693
French (except Basque)
12,844
Filipino
128,827
2,306
Japanese
151,817
French Canadian German
59,066
Greek
2,526
Hungarian
2,402
Irish
40,638
Italian
20,013
Lithuanian
702
Norwegian
5,034
Polish
9,947
Portuguese
33,918
Russian
2,861
Scotch-Irish
6,166
Scottish Slovak
10,817 273
Korean Vietnamese Other Asian
Native Hawaiian
44,597
Guamanian or Chamorro
2,361
Samoan
8,799
Other Pacific Islander Some other race Two or more races
3,742
Swiss
1,702
Black or African American and American Indian and Alaska Native
1,674
Race (indicated only one) White Black or African American
25,103
40,240 1,123
Hispanic or Latino of any Race Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
63,312
Mexican
13,072
Puerto Rican
24,641
Cuban 201,795
195,606
White and American Indian and Alaska Native
5,156
West Indian (excluding Hispanic-origin groups)
9,972
4,047
Swedish
2,914
16,296
White and Black or African American
White and Asian
Welsh
39,167 72,053
1,294
854
8,703
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
Subsaharan African
Ukrainian
19,158
Other Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino
611 24,988 846,551
Source: Data prepared by Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society Assistant Editor Kiljoong Kim and General Editor Richard Schaefer from the 2006 American Community Survey data set released by the U.S. Bureau of the Census in August 2007.
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Percent of People Who Are Foreign Born: 2006
Rank
State
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
California New York New Jersey Nevada Florida Hawai‘i Texas Arizona Massachusetts Illinois Connecticut District of Columbia Rhode Island United States Washington Maryland Colorado New Mexico Virginia Oregon Georgia Utah Delaware Alaska North Carolina Minnesota
13 14 15 16 17 17 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
Percent
Margin of Error
27.2 21.6 20.1 19.1 18.9 16.3 15.9 15.1 14.1 13.8 12.9 12.7
+/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.3 +/−0.4 +/−0.2 +/−0.8 +/−0.1 +/−0.3 +/−0.3 +/−0.2 +/−0.4 +/−0.7
12.6 12.5 12.4 12.2 10.3 10.1 10.1 9.7 9.2 8.3 8.1 7 6.9 6.6
+/−0.6 +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.3 +/−0.3 +/−0.5 +/−0.2 +/−0.3 +/−0.2 +/−0.3 +/−0.6 +/−0.6 +/−0.2 +/−0.2
Rank
State
26 27 28 28 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 36 38 38 40 41 42 43 44 45 45 47 48 49 50 51
Kansas Michigan Idaho Nebraska New Hampshire Pennsylvania Oklahoma Wisconsin Indiana South Carolina Tennessee Vermont Arkansas Iowa Ohio Missouri Maine Louisiana Alabama Kentucky Wyoming South Dakota North Dakota Montana Mississippi West Virginia Puerto Rico
Percent
Margin of Error
6.3 5.9 5.6 5.6 5.4 5.1 4.9 4.4 4.2 4.1 3.9 3.9 3.8 3.8 3.6 3.3 3.2 2.9 2.8 2.7 2.7 2.2 2.1 1.9 1.8 1.2 2.9
+/−0.2 +/−0.2 +/−0.3 +/−0.2 +/−0.4 +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.4 +/−0.2 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.3 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.4 +/−0.3 +/−0.3 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.2
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. 2007. 2006 American Community Survey. Data found in Table R0501 which can be accessed at the American FactFinder Web site of the U.S. Census Bureau (http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTSelectServlet?ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&_lang=en&_ts= 214135760532). Notes: Data are based on a sample and are subject to sampling variability. The degree of uncertainty for an estimate arising from sampling variability is represented through the use of a margin of error. The value shown here is the 90 percent margin of error. The margin of error can be interpreted roughly as providing a 90 percent probability that the interval defined by the estimate minus the margin of error and the estimate plus the margin of error (the lower and upper confidence bounds) contains the true value. In addition to sampling variability, the ACS estimates are subject to nonsampling error (for a discussion of nonsampling variability, see Accuracy of the Data). The effect of nonsampling error is not represented in these tables. Explanation of Symbols: 1
An ‘**’ entry in the margin of error column indicates that either no sample observations or too few sample observations were available to compute a standard error and thus the margin of error. A statistical test is not appropriate. 2 An ‘-’ entry in the estimate column indicates that either no sample observations or too few sample observations were available to compute an estimate, or a ratio of medians cannot be calculated because one or both of the median estimates falls in the lowest interval or upper interval of an open-ended distribution. 3 An ‘-’ following a median estimate means the median falls in the lowest interval of an open-ended distribution. 4 An ‘+’ following a median estimate means the median falls in the upper interval of an open-ended distribution. 5 An ‘***’ entry in the margin of error column indicates that the median falls in the lowest interval or upper interval of an open-ended distribution. A statistical test is not appropriate. 6 An ‘*****’ entry in the margin of error column indicates that the estimate is controlled. A statistical test for sampling variability is not appropriate. 7 An ‘N’ entry in the estimate and margin of error columns indicates that data for this geographic area cannot be displayed because the number of sample cases is too small. 8 An ‘(X)’ means that the estimate is not applicable or not available.
Appendix A
Table 9
Percent of the Total Population Who Are American Indian and Alaska Native Alone: 2006
Rank
State
Percent
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 12 12 15 16 16 16 16
Alaska New Mexico South Dakota Oklahoma Montana North Dakota Arizona Wyoming Oregon Washington Nevada Idaho North Carolina Utah Minnesota Colorado Kansas Nebraska Wisconsin United States Arkansas California Louisiana Maine Michigan Texas Alabama
13.1 9.7 8.6 6.8 6.3 5.2 4.5 2.2 1.8 1.5 1.2 1.1 1.1 1.1 1 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.8 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.4
20 21 22 23 23 23 26
1487
Margin of Error +/−0.4 +/−0.2 +/−0.3 +/−0.2 +/−0.3 +/−0.3 +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1
Rank
State
26 26 26 26 31 31
Mississippi Missouri Rhode Island Vermont Delaware District of Columbia Florida Hawai‘i Iowa New York South Carolina Tennessee Connecticut Georgia Illinois Indiana Kentucky Maryland Massachusetts New Hampshire New Jersey Ohio Virginia West Virginia Pennsylvania Puerto Rico
31 31 31 31 31 31 39 39 39 39 39 39 39 39 39 39 39 39 51
Percent
Margin of Error
0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.3
+/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1
0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.2
+/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. 2007. 2006 American Community Survey. Data found in Table R0203 which can be accessed at the American FactFinder Web site of the U.S. Census Bureau (http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTSelectServlet?ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&_lang=en&_ts=214135760532). Note: Refer to Table 8 for explanation of symbols and sampling procedures.
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Table 10
Percent of the Total Population Who Are Asian Alone: 2006
Rank
State
Percent
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 8 10
Hawai‘i California New Jersey New York Washington Nevada Maryland Massachusetts Virginia Alaska United States Illinois Oregon Minnesota District of Columbia Connecticut Texas Delaware Colorado Rhode Island Georgia Arizona Michigan Pennsylvania Florida Kansas
39.9 12.3 7.5 6.9 6.6 5.9 4.9 4.8 4.8 4.5 4.4 4.2 3.7 3.5 3.4
+/−0.8 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.3 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1
3.3 3.3 2.9 2.8 2.8 2.7 2.3 2.3 2.3 2.2 2.2
+/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1
11 12 13 14 15 15 17 18 18 20 21 21 21 24 24
Margin of Error
Rank
State
26 26 28 29 30 30 32 32 32 35 35 35 35 39 40 40 40 43 43 43 43 43 48 49 50 50
New Hampshire Wisconsin Utah North Carolina Nebraska Oklahoma Iowa Missouri Ohio Indiana Louisiana New Mexico Tennessee South Carolina Alabama Arkansas Idaho Kentucky Maine South Dakota Vermont Wyoming Mississippi North Dakota Montana West Virginia Puerto Rico
Percent
Margin of Error
2 2 1.9 1.8 1.7 1.7 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.1 1 1 1 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.6 0.3
+/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.3 +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. 2007. American Community Survey. Data found in Table R0204 which can be accessed at the American FactFinder Web site of the U.S. Census Bureau (http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTSelectServlet?ds_ name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&_lang=en&_ts=214135760532). Note: Refer to Table 8 for explanation of symbols and sampling procedures. Refer to “Introduction to Appendix A” for an explanation of “margin of error.”
Appendix A
Table 11
Percent of the Total Population Who Are Black or African American Alone: 2006
Rank
State
Percent
District of Columbia Mississippi Louisiana Georgia Maryland South Carolina Alabama North Carolina Delaware Virginia Tennessee Arkansas New York Florida Illinois Michigan New Jersey United States Ohio Texas Missouri Pennsylvania Connecticut Indiana Kentucky Oklahoma
55.4
+/−0.5
37.4 31.6 29.8 28.9 28.6 26.3 21.4 20.7 19.6 16.8 15.6 15.5 15.4 14.8 14.1 13.6 12.4 11.8 11.6 11.3 10.4 9.5 8.7 7.4 7.4
+/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 24
Margin of Error
Rank
State
26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 35 37 37 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 45 47 48 48 50 50
Nevada California Massachusetts Wisconsin Kansas Rhode Island Minnesota Nebraska Colorado Arizona Washington Alaska West Virginia Iowa Hawai‘i New Mexico Oregon New Hampshire Maine North Dakota Utah Vermont South Dakota Wyoming Idaho Montana Puerto Rico
1489
Percent
Margin of Error
7.3 6.2 6.1 5.9 5.6 5.1 4.4 4.1 3.7 3.4 3.4 3.2 3.2 2.3 2.2 2 1.7 1.1 1 0.9 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.7 0.5 0.5 7.7
+/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.4 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.4 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.3
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. 2007. 2006 American Community Survey. Data found in Table R0202 which can be accessed at the American FactFinder Web site of the U.S. Census Bureau (http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTSelectServlet?ds_ name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&_lang=en&_ts=214135760532). Notes: Refer to Table 8 for explanation of symbols and sampling procedures. Refer to “Introduction to Appendix A” for an explanation of “margin of error.”
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Table 12
Percent of the Total Population Who Are White Alone, Not Hispanic or Latino: 2006
Rank
State
Percent
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 16 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
Vermont Maine West Virginia New Hampshire Iowa North Dakota Montana Kentucky Wyoming South Dakota Idaho Minnesota Wisconsin Nebraska Indiana Ohio Utah Missouri Pennsylvania Kansas Oregon Massachusetts Rhode Island Michigan Tennessee Washington Arkansas
95.6 95.3 94.1 93.6 91 90.4 88.6 88.3 88 86.5 86.3 85.9 85.6 84.8 83.8 82.8 82.8 82.5 82 81 80.8 79.3 78.9 77.6 77.5 76.4 76.3
Margin of Error +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.2 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1
Margin of Error
Rank
State
Percent
28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35
Connecticut Oklahoma Colorado Alabama Delaware North Carolina Virginia Alaska United States South Carolina Illinois Louisiana New Jersey Florida New York Arizona Mississippi Georgia Nevada Maryland Texas California New Mexico District of Columbia Hawai‘i Puerto Rico
74.5 72 71.5 69 68.8 67.7 67.6 66.3 66.2 65.3 65.1 62.7 62.3 61 60.2 59.5 59.3 58.7 58.6 58.3 48.1 42.8 42.4 31.6
+/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1 +/−0.1
24.6 0.9
+/−0.1 +/−0.1
36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. 2007. 2006 American Community Survey. Data found in Table R0209 which can be accessed at the American FactFinder Web site of the U.S. Census Bureau (http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTSelectServlet?ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&_lang=en&_ts=214135760532). Notes: Refer to Table 8 for explanation of symbols and sampling procedures. Refer to “Introduction to Appendix A” for an explanation of “margin of error.”
Appendix A
Table 13
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Projected Population of the United States, by Race and Hispanic Origin: 2000 to 2050
Population or percent and race or Hispanic origin POPULATION Total White alone Black alone Asian Alone All other races 1/ Hispanic (of any race) White alone, not Hispanic PERCENT OF TOTAL POPULATION Total
2000
2010
2020
2030
2040
2050
282,125
308,936
335,805
363,584
391,946
419,854
228,548 35,818 10,684 7,075
244,995 40,454 14,241 9,246
260,629 45,365 17,988 11,822
275,731 50,442 22,580 14,831
289,690 55,876 27,992 18,388
302,626 61,361 33,430 22,437
35,622
47,756
59,756
73,055
87,585
102,560
195,729
201,112
205,936
209,176
210,331
210,283
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
White alone Black alone Asian Alone All other races 1/
81.0 12.7 3.8 2.5
79.3 13.1 4.6 3.0
77.6 13.5 5.4 3.5
75.8 13.9 6.2 4.1
73.9 14.3 7.1 4.7
72.1 14.6 8.0 5.3
Hispanic (of any race)
12.6
15.5
17.8
20.1
22.3
24.4
White alone, not Hispanic
69.4
65.1
61.3
57.5
53.7
50.1
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2004, “.S. Interim Projections by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin,” Table 1a. Available from http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/ usinterimproj. Internet Release Date: March 18, 2004. Notes: In thousands except as indicated. As of July 1. Resident population. 1/ Includes American Indian and Alaska Native alone, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, and Two or More Races.
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Table 14
Projected Population Change in the United States, by Race and Hispanic Origin: 2000 to 2050
Numerical or percent change and race or Hispanic origin
2000–2050
2000– 2010
2010–2020
2020–2030
2030–2040
2040–2050
137,729
26,811
26,869
27,779
28,362
27,908
White alone Black alone Asian Alone All other races 1/
74,078 25,543 22,746 15,362
16,447 4,636 3,557 2,171
15,634 4,911 3,747 2,576
15,102 5,077 4,592 3,009
13,959 5,434 5,412 3,557
12,936 5,485 5,438 4,049
Hispanic (of any race)
66,938
12,134
12,000
13,299
14,530
14,975
White alone, not Hispanic
14,554
5,383
4,824
3,240
1,155
-48
PERCENT CHANGE Total
48.8
9.5
8.7
8.3
7.8
7.1
White alone Black alone Asian Alone All other races 1/
32.4 71.3 212.9 217.1
7.2 12.9 33.3 30.7
6.4 12.1 26.3 27.9
5.8 11.2 25.5 25.5
5.1 10.8 24.0 24.0
4.5 9.8 19.4 22.0
Hispanic (of any race)
187.9
34.1
25.1
22.3
19.9
17.1
7.4
2.8
2.4
1.6
0.6
0.0
NUMERICAL CHANGE Total
White alone, not Hispanic
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2004, “U.S. Interim Projections by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin,” Table 1b. Available from http://www.census .gov/ipc/www/usinterimproj. Internet Release Date: March 18, 2004. Notes: 1/Includes American Indian and Alaska Native alone, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, and Two or More Races.
Appendix B Internet Resources on Race, Ethnicity, and Society The following is a sample of the thousands of Web sites that offer information on race, ethnicity, and society. They have been grouped by broad areas as most sites touch on a number of areas and subjects. While some of the sites that are noted in individual encyclopedia entries have also been listed here, many more with broad coverage have been added. The Web sites selected have stable URLs and are in English (or are multilingual, including English). Most of these Web sites, in turn, have links to other useful information.
General All of Us Are Related, Each of Us Is Unique (Syracuse University) http://allrelated.syr.edu
Minorities in Medicine (Association of American Medical Colleges) http://www.aamc.org/students/minorities
The Prejudice Institute http://www.prejudiceinstitute.org
Death Penalty Information Center http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org
Ethnic Media: New America Media
Race Traitor: Journal of the New Abolitionism: Constructing Whiteness http://www.racetraitor.org
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news
FBI Uniform Crime Reports, Data on Hate Crimes http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#hate
Southern Poverty Law Center: Tolerance Education http://splcenter.org and http://www.tolerance.org
U.S. Census Bureau http://www.census.gov or http://www.census.gov/pubinfo/www/hotlinks.html
Hate Crimes Laws (Anti-Defamation League) http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp
Hurricane Katrina: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services http://www.hhs.gov/disasters/emergency/ naturaldisasters/hurricanes/katrina/index.html
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service
U.S. Census Bureau, Revisions to the Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity (Office of Management and Budget) http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Search.htm (search for “Revisions and Standards”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
http://www.lirs.org
http://www.uscis.gov
For further information, contact the General Editor, Richard T. Schaefer, by email at
[email protected].
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U.S. Commission on Civil Rights http://www.usccr.gov
Asians/Pacific Islanders Minority Community Outreach (National Education Association) http://www.nea.org/mco/asians.html
U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform (University of Texas at Austin) http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/uscir
Chinese Immigration Records (National Archives) http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/heritage/ chinese-immigration.html
U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants http://www.refugeesusa.org
Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project http://www.densho.org
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission http://www.eeoc.gov
Hawai‘i–Independent and Sovereign http://hawaii-nation.org
African Americans African American History and Culture (The Smithsonian) http://www.si.edu/resource/faq/nmah/afroam.htm
African American Heritage Resources (National Archives) http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/heritage/ african-american
Internment Archives http://www.internmentarchives.com
Japanese American Citizens League http://www.jacl.org
Japanese American National Museum http://www.janm.org
Japanese American Records (National Archives) The Black Collegian Online http://www.black-collegian.com
Kwanzaa Information Center http://www.melanet.com/kwanzaa/whatis
MelaNET (The UnCut Black Experience) http://www.melanet.com
The Official Kwanzaa Web Site http://www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition http://www.rainbowpush.org
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) http://www.sclcnational.org
http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/heritage/ Japanese-americans.html
Little India (online magazine) http://www.littleindia.com
Little Saigon Net: Vietnam Today http://www.littlesaigon.com
National Japanese American Historical Society http://www.njahs.org
National Japanese American Memorial Foundation http://www.njamf.com
“Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story” (film by Eric Paul Fornier) http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2001/ofcivilwrongsandrights
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Asian American Net http://www.asianamerican.net
Asian American Studies, Yale University Guide to http://www.library.yale.edu/rsc/asian-american
http://www.searac.org
U.S. Census Bureau: Facts on the Asian Population http://www.census.gov/pubinfo/www/NEWapiML1.html
WWW Hmong Home Page http://www.stolaf.edu/people/cdr/hmong
Appendix B
Hispanics and Latinos
Jews and Judaism
AfroCuba Web: Afro-Cubans, Cuba, and the Caribbean
American Jewish Committee http://www.ajc.org
http://www.afrocubaweb.com
Anti-Defamation League Hispanic American Records (National Archives) http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/heritage/ hispanic-americans.html
International Boundaries Research Unit (Durham University) http://www.dur.ac.uk/ibru
Julian Samora Research Institute (Michigan State University) http://www.jsri.msu.edu
Latin American National Information Center (University of Texas at Austin)
http://www.adl.org
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society http://www.hias.org
Jewish American History Research (National Archives) http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/heritage/ jewish-american.html
My Jewish Learning http://myjewishlearning.com
Shamash: The Jewish Network http://shamash.org
http://lanic.utexas.edu
Mexican American Studies and Research Center (University of Arizona) http://masrc.arizona.edu
Mexican Migration Project (Princeton University) http://mmp.opr.princeton.edu
National Council of La Raza http://www.nclr.org
Nijmegen Centre for Border Research (Radboud University)
Muslim and Arab Americans American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee http://www.adc.org
American Muslim Perspective (online magazine) http://ampolitics.ghazali.net
Arab American Institute http://www.aaiusa.org
Muslim Students’ Association–National http://msanational.org
http://www.ru.nl/ncbr
Pew Hispanic Center http://pewhispanic.org
Puerto Rico and the American Dream
Native Americans American Indian Higher Education Consortium Virtual Library http://www.aihecvl.org
http://prdream.com
Bureau of Indian Affairs Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund
http://www.doi.gov/bureau-indian-affairs.html
http://www.prldef.org
National Congress of American Indians U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, Mexico–U.S. Binational Migration Study Report (University of Texas at Austin) http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/uscir/binational.html
http://www.ncai.org
National Indian Youth Council, Inc. http://www.niyc-alb.org
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Native American Records (National Archives) http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/heritage/ native-american/index.html
National Museum of the American Indian (The Smithsonian) http://www.nmai.si.edu
World Indigenous Cultures: Native Web http://www.nativeweb.org
Indigenous Peoples in Mexico, Central and South America: Abya Yala Net http://abyayala.nativeweb.org
Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (University of Amsterdam) http://www2.fmg.uva.nl/imes
International Organization for Migration (Geneva, Switzerland) http://www.iom.int/jahia/jsp/index.jsp
Global, Including Outside the United States
International Rescue Committee (New York) http://www.theirc.org
African National Congress (South Africa) http://www.anc.org.za
Population Studies Centre (University of Western Ontario) http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/sociology/popstudies/dp.html
Census of India http://www.censusindia.gov.in
Center for Immigration Research (University of Houston) http://www.uh.edu/cir
Center for Immigration Studies (Washington, DC) http://www.cis.org/articles
Center for Migration Studies (Staten Island, New York)
The Inter-University Committee on International Migration (MIT et al.) http://web.mit.edu/cis/www/migration
Migration Policy Institute (MPI) (Washington, D.C.) http://www.migrationpolicy.org
Migration Research Group (University of Hamburg) http://www.migration-research.org
The Migration Research Unit (University College, London) http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/mru
http://www.cmsny.org
The Peace People (Northern Ireland) Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations (University of Warwick) http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/crer
CIA World Factbook (general information on countries) https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worldfactbook
European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (Utrecht University) http://www.uu.nl/uupublish/onderzoek/onderzoekcen tra/ercomer/24638main.html
http://www.peacepeople.com
World Bank Data http://web.worldbank.org (for specific statistical information, click on “Data and Research”)
World Relief http://www.wr.org
Ethnic Groups and Other Subordinate Groups The U.S. Administration on Aging http://www.aoa.dhhs.gov
Immigration History Research Center (University of Minnesota) http://www.ihrc.umn.edu
The American Institute of Polish Culture, Inc. http://www.ampolinstitute.org.ic.pl
Appendix B
The American Irish Historical Society http://www.aihs.org
The Norwegian American Historical Association http://www.stolaf.edu/naha
Assembly of Turkish American Associations http://www.ataa.org
Polish American Association http://www.polish.org
Catholics for a Free Choice http://www.cath4choice.org
Disability Social History Project http://www.disabilityhistory.org
Ellis Island Immigration Museum http://www.ellisisland.com
Ethnicity in 20th-Century America (Thomas J. Archdeacon, University of Wisconsin–Madison) http://history.wisc.edu/archdeacon/404tja
Human Rights Web
Society and Culture: Disabilities (Yahoo) http://www.yahoo.com/Society_and_ Culture/Disabilities
Sons of Norway http://www.sofn.com
Swedish-American Museum Center http://www.samac.org
Vesterheim Norwegian American Museum http://www.vesterheim.org
http://www.hrweb.org
Interracial Voice http://www.webcom.com/~intvoice
Welcome to Germany (German Embassy, Washington, D.C.) http://www.germany-info.org
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Index AAAS. See American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) AAMC. See Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Aanishanabe. See Ojibwa Abdullah al Amin, Jamil, 1:26 Abernathy, Ralph, 2:773, 3:1268, 3:1269 Abolitionism: the movement, 1:1–2 aftermath of, 1:2 American Anti-Slavery Society and, 1:2, 1:3, 1:414 American School of Ethnology, scientific racism of, 1:2 antislavery debates and, 1:5 Back to Africa movement and, 1:125–127 Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and, 1:3 Dred Scott v. Sandford and, 1:416–419 early abolitionism and, 1:1 Emancipation Proclamation and, 1:414, 1:439–440 emigrationism and, 1:22 equality and unity of humankind goals of, 1:1, 1:2 feminism and, 1:2, 1:3–4 General Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia and, 1:5 Harpers Ferry insurrection and, 1:4, 1:414 interracial friendships and, 2:748 Irish Americans and, 2:760 Jewish abolitionists and, 2:789 Negro Convention Movement and, 1:22 new aboliltionism and, 1:1–2 Northern racism and, 1:2 Quaker beginnings of, 1:1 slave trade termination and, 1:1 Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage and, 1:3 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe) and, 1:4–5 Underground Railroad and, 1:5, 1:22, 1:414 See also Abolitionism: the people; individual abolitionists Abolitionism: the people, 1:3–5 Back to Africa movement and, 1:125–127 John Brown, 1:4, 1:4, 1:414 Frederick Douglass, 1:5, 1:22, 1:413, 1:413–415 Dred Scott v. Sandford and, 1:416–419 Benjamin Franklin, 1:3 William Lloyd Garrison, 1:1–2, 1:3–4, 1:414 Frances Watkins Harper, 1:22 Harriet Jacobs, 1:22 joining the movement and, 1:4–5 Abraham Lincoln, 2:852–854
Elijah Lovejoy murder and, 1:3 Wendell Phillips, 1:4 Robert Purvis, 1:22 the Quakers and, 1:1, 1:3 William Still, 1:5 Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1:4–5 Henry David Thoreau, 1:4 Sojourner Truth, 1:5, 1:22, 3:1329, 3:1329–1331 Harriet Tubman, 1:5, 1:22 Theodore Weld, 1:5 See also Abolitionism: the movement; individual abolitionists Aborigine Australia Aboriginal citizen movement and, 1:112–113 Australia Aboriginal clans and, 1:111 Australian Indigenous people, 1:115–119, 2:744 Canadian Aboriginal Mik’Maq lobster fishing incidents and, 2:592 Canadian Aboriginal treaty rights and, 1:226–227 Canadian Aboriginal women, 1:227–230 Canadian First Nations, 1:230–233, 1:231 Taiwan Aboriginal inhabitants, 3:1293–1294 See also Indigenous people Abortion, 1:5–8 accessibility to, 1:6 contraceptive use improvement and, 1:6 enduring controversy regarding, 1:7–8 “human life amendment” concept and, 1:8 persistent disparities and, 1:7 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey and, 1:6 post-Roe trends in, 1:7 (table) Roe v. Wade and, 1:6 social, legal history of, 1:5–6 state regulation of, 1:6, 1:8 statistics regarding, 1:5–6 Acculturation, 1:8–9 biculturation and, 1:481 bilingual education and, 1:9 child development and, 1:274–276 continuum of, 1:8 cosmopolitanism and, 1:333–336 cultural assimilation and, 1:9 definition of, 1:8 Dillingham Flaw concept and, 1:389–391
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ethnocentric generalizations and, 1:390 of immigrant families, 1:481–482 intercultural communication and, 2:730–733 museumization concept and, 1:481 negative social consequences of, 1:9 one-way process of, 1:8 social identity issues and, 1:9 social network breakdown and, 1:9 third-generation principle and, 3:1302–1304 withingroup diversity and, 1:481–482 See also Americanization; Assimilation ACJ. See American Citizens for Justice (ACJ) ACLU. See American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Acosta, Oscar Zeta, 2:612 Acosta, Vivian, 3:1310 Acosta-Belsen, Edna, 1:492 ACS. See American Colonization Society (ACS); Census, U.S., American Community Survey Act to Amend the Indian Act (1985, Canada), 1:227 Adams, Henry, 1:30 Addams, Jane, 3:1259 ADL. See Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Adoption, 1:9–11 birth information access issue and, 1:11 child development and, 1:274–276 definition, explanation of, 1:9–10 government child welfare agencies and, 1:11 history of, 1:10–11 Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 and, 2:714–716 intercountry adoption policies and, 1:11 legislation regarding, 1:11 “open” adoptions and, 1:11 organizations of social welfare workers and, 1:10 reasons for, 1:10 “special needs” children adoption and, 1:11 transracial, transcultural adoptions and, 1:11, 1:101, 3:1322–1325 Adoption and Safe Families Act (1997), 2:706 Adorno, Theodore, 1:119, 1:120, 2:1066–1067 Affirmative action in education, 1:12–15 African Americans in biomedicine and, 1:146–149 alternatives to, 1:14–15 The Bell Curve (Hernstein and Murray) and, 1:139–142 bilingual education and, 1:142–146, 2:916 brain drain and, 1:199–200 in Brazil, 1:203 Brown v. Board of Education and, 1:13, 1:210–212, 1:334, 1:436, 2:613, 2:616, 2:735, 2:795, 2:876, 2:914, 3:1213, 3:1222 Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 1:12 class-based affirmative action and, 1:14 continued need for, 1:13 critical race theory and, 1:345 debate regarding, 1:12–13 definition regarding, 1:12 discrimination evidence and, 1:392, 1:393 (table), 1:394 diversity enhancement of education and, 1:13 fairness issue regarding, 1:12–13 federal decisions regarding, 1:13–14
Fifteenth Amendment and, 1:12 Fisk University and, 2:613 Fourteenth Amendment and, 1:12, 1:562–563 Gratz v. Bollinger and, 1:14, 1:562, 1:563–564, 2:613, 2:1046 Grutter v. Bollinger and, 1:14, 1:562–564, 2:613, 2:1046 Hopwood v. University of Texas and, 1:14, 1:148 institutional discrimination and, 2:726–727 Jewish-Black relations and, 2:791 John F. Kennedy and, 1:12 long-term benefits of, 1:13 lottery-based admissions system and, 1:14–15 minorities negatively affected by, 1:12 pipeline concept and, 2:1045–1047 Plessy v. Ferguson and, 1:13, 2:612–613, 2:616 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and, 1:13, 1:28, 1:563 (See also Regents of the University of California v. Bakke) resegregation in public schools and, 1:211–212 reverse discrimination and, 1:12, 1:345, 1:564, 2:727, 3:1160 science faculty women of color and, 3:1210–1211 The Shape of the River (Bowen and Bok) and, 1:13 Smith v. University of Washington and, 1:14 state legislation and, 1:12, 1:14 unfairness to White males opposition to, 1:12 United States v. Fordice and, 3:1350–1352 Affirmative action in the workplace, 1:15–19 African Americans and, 1:28 African American women, work and, 1:35–38 beginnings of, 1:16 The Bell Curve (Hernstein and Murray) and, 1:139–142 Black enterprise and, 1:161–164 Brown v. Board of Education and, 1:16–17 California Civil Rights Initiative (Proposal 209) and, 1:321 Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 1:17, 1:28, 2:822 civil rights era and, 1:16–17 controversy regarding, 1:17–18 corporate Plans for Progress and, 1:18 discrimination evidence and, 1:392 EEOC and, 1:17, 1:18, 1:445–448 Fair Employment Act and, 1:16 founding principles of, 1:15–16 Freedman’s Bureau and, 1:16 glass ceiling and, 1:548–551 Jewish-Black relations and, 2:791 L. B. Johnson and, 1:18 John F. Kennedy and, 1:17 labor market segmentation and, 2:822–825 labor unions, women and, 1:17 Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation and, 1:16 Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (Proposal 2) and, 1:18–19 Nineteenth Amendment and, 1:16 Richard M. Nixon’s policies and, 1:18 Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs and, 1:18 Reagan administration and, 1:18 reverse discrimination and, 1:18, 2:727, 3:1160 U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights and, 1:15 World War II years and, 1:16
Index
Afghan Americans, 1:19–20, 1:19 (map) contemporary communities of, 1:20 famous Afghans and, 1:20 geographic distribution of, 1:20 immigration patterns of, 1:20 Pushtun, Tajik ethnic groups of, 1:19 refugee status of, 1:20 Afghanistan, 1:19 (map), 1:422 AFL-CIO labor union federation, 2:826, 2:827 African Americans, 1:20–30 ability grouping, tracking of, 1:437 abortion statistics and, 1:7, 1:7 (table) achievement gap and, 3:1300 affirmative action and, 1:28 African American Muslims and, 2:920–921 African background of, 1:20–21, 1:21 African Canadians and, 1:226 aging population and, 1:43–44 An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and American Democracy (Gunnar Myrdal) and, 1:57–59 Anglo-Saxon American race superiority myth and, 1:466 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (Walker), 1:22 Back to Africa movement and, 1:125–127 benevolent societies, voluntary associations of, 1:22 biomedicine and, 1:146–149 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith) and, 1:149–151, 1:150, 1:816, 2:1061 Black codes and, 1:16 Black Freedom Movement and, 1:25–26, 1:28, 1:176, 2:819 Black Greek letter organizations and, 1:510, 1:510–511 Black Haitian Americans and, 2:573–574 Black-Jewish conflict in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and, 1:350–351, 2:791 Black Leadership Forum and, 1:28 Black Power Movement and, 1:26 Black Women’s Club Movement and, 1:24 blockbusting housing discrimination practice and, 1:401 Caribbean Americans conflict with, 1:241 Civil Rights Act of 1991 and, 1:29 Civil War, enlistment/fighting in, 1:22–23, 2:903 Civil War, Massachusetts 54th Regiment and, 1:414 Congressional Black Caucus and, 1:28 Congressional seats filled by, 1:23 crime and race and, 1:338–341 criminal punishment bias and, 1:341–343, 1:385, 3:1111–1112 death penalty bias and, 1:339, 1:374–376, 2:872 The Declining Significance of Race (Wilson) and, 1:377–379 digital divide and, 1:388 disempowerment of, 1:404 domestic violence and, 1:404 Dominican Americans and, 1:409 double consciousness term and, 1:411–413, 2:794 drug use patterns and, 1:339, 1:419–420, 1:421 (table), 1:422 in East Harlem, 1:429 educational performance, attainment of, 1:432–433, 1:433 (table) educational stratification and, 1:435–438
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education disparities and, 1:392, 1:393 (table) electoral politics victories of, 1:28 emigration and, 1:22 enslavement and, 1:21–22 environmental racism and, 1:442 estimated percentages of Blacks in the U.S., 1:27 (figure) ethnic succession conflicts and, 1:463–464 exploitation theory of prejudice and, 2:1067 extended-kin networks of, 1:275, 1:275–276, 3:1257 Father Divine Peace Mission Movement and, 1:484–485 Fifteenth Amendment and, 1:23, 3:1369 First National Conference of the Colored Women of America and, 1:24 Fisk University and, 2:613 Fourteenth Amendment and, 1:23, 3:1369 freed Africans in the North and, 1:22 Freedom Movement and, 1:25–26, 1:28 FUBU Company and, 1:516–517 geographically concentrated poverty effects and, 1:526 gerrymandering, voting and, 1:544–545, 3:1369 the ghetto and, 1:546–548 Great Depression and, 1:23 Harlem and, 1:430, 2:583–585 Harlem Renaissance and, 1:23–24 Hayes-Tilden Compromise and, 1:23, 3:1219 health disparities of, 1:431, 2:606 higher education census data and, 2:614 HIV/AIDS and, 2:632 homelessness and, 2:642 homicide and, 2:644–645 Sam Hose murder and, 3:1220 housing discrimination and, 1:400, 1:401–402, 2:657, 2:726 incarcerated parents and, 2:704–706 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs), 1:22 income by race, gender and, 1:393, 1:393 (table) income data and, 1:392, 1:404 infant mortality rates of, 2:850–851, 2:851 (figure) institutional discrimination against, 2:726–729 interethnic violence and, 1:430 intergroup relations survey results regarding, 2:734–736 intermarriage issue and, 2:736–739 interracial friendships and, 2:748–750 interracial marriages and, 1:482 Jamaican Americans and, 2:776–778 job, labor market ethnic succession and, 1:464 juvenile offenders and, 1:339 Rodney King incident and, 1:29, 1:96, 3:1113, 3:1355 kinship of, 2:808–809 Kwanzaa and, 1:276, 2:818–820 labor union membership of, 2:826–827 Latino ethnic succession conflicts and, 1:463 legal segregation of, 1:23 leisure activity preferences of, 2:844 life expectancy and, 1:42–43, 2:848–852 life style diseases and, 1:44 literature of, 1:22 majority–minority voting district creation and, 1:545–546
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Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart (Stewart), 1:22 Mexican American War service of, 2:902–903 migrations North and, 1:23–24, 1:30–32 military and race and, 2:902–905 Million Man March/Day of Absence and, 1:29, 2:921 Mormonism and, 2:913–914 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Douglass), 1:22, 1:414 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and, 1:24 National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and, 1:24 National Council of Negro Women and, 1:24, 1:25, 1:245 National Urban League and, 1:24 NCLB, achievement gap improvement and, 1:434 the New Deal and, 1:25 newspapers established by, 1:22 Niagara Movement and, 1:24, 1:168, 3:1374 the 1970s and, 1:28 the 1980s and, 1:28–29 the 1990s and, 1:29 nonmarital birth statistics and, 1:479, 1:480 Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) politics and, 1:394 panethnic identity and, 2:1021 parenting “tough love” style of, 2:1025 People Who Care v. Rockford, Illinois Board of Education and, 1:437 Plessy v. Ferguson and, “separate but equal” ruling of, 1:24, 1:210, 1:301, 1:436, 2:612–613, 2:735, 2:795, 3:1213 popular culture racism and, 2:1061 prison population demographics of, 2:1071 race riots and, 1:308, 1:400 racially distorted crime news coverage and, 1:340 racial profiling and, 2:1054–1055, 3:1111–1113 Reconstruction period and, 1:23, 2:815–816 redlining housing discrimination practice and, 1:401, 3:1396 religion, importance to, 3:1137–1139 renewed resistance of, 1:24–25 residential segregation of, 2:610 Revolutionary War service of, 2:902 science faculty women of color and, 3:1210–1211 sexuality, race and, 3:1225–1226 slave trade and, 1:1, 1:3, 1:21–22 The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois) and, 1:168, 1:322, 1:411–413, 1:423, 2:872, 3:1106 Thirteenth Amendment and, 1:23 tracking and, 3:1317 Universal Negro Improvement Association and, 1:25, 1:127, 1:158, 1:171, 1:173, 1:241, 2:793, 2:900 the Veil and, 1:412–413, 1:423–424 voting rights of, 1:23, 1:307–308, 3:1369–1370 “welfare queen” and, 3:1384–1386 youth rites of passage and, 3:1162 See also African Americans, specific topic; Afrocentricity; Back to Africa Movement; Black specific topic; Brown v. Board of Education; Civil Rights Movement; Civil Rights Movement, women and; Color blindness; Color line; Critical race theory; Emancipation Proclamation; Feminism, Black; Jewish-Black
relations: specific topic; Jim Crow; Ku Klux Klan (KKK); Muslim Americans; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Nation of Islam; One-drop rule; Reparations, slavery; Veil; specific individual African Americans, migration of, 1:30–32 Back to Africa movement and, 1:125–127 Black Metropolis and, 1:170–171 cultural production and, 1:30, 1:31 early movement and, 1:30 gender differences in, 1:31 the Great Migration and, 1:30–31, 2:940 the Great Migration and, reversal of, 1:31–32 Harlem cultural center and, 1:31, 2:586 to Kansas, 1:30 labor market changes and, 1:30, 1:31 “negritude” movement (France) and, 1:508 to North and West, 1:30, 1:31, 2:790, 2:940 residential environments and, 1:30, 1:31 slave trade, slavery and, 1:30 social networks, institutions and, 1:31 to the South, 1:31–32 to urban areas, 1:30, 1:31, 2:940 See also Harlem Renaissance African American studies, 1:32–35 Afrocentricity and, 1:41–42 Afrocentric perspective emergence and, 1:33 James Baldwin and, 1:127–128 The Bell Curve (Hernstein and Murray) and, 1:139–142 Black character of ancient Egypt and, 1:34 at Black colleges, universities, 1:33 Black intellectuals and, 1:167–170 Black Power Movement and, 1:32 Black Women’s Studies and, 1:33–34 classical perspective emergence and, 1:34 community development focus of, 1:35 culture of poverty thesis and, 1:363–365 The Declining Significance of Race (Wilson) and, 1:377–379 St. Clair Drake and, 1:415–416 Dred Scott v. Sandford and, 1:416–419 of families, 1:480–481, 1:512–514 of familism, 1:478–479 Free Speech Movement and, 1:32 bell hooks and, 2:651–652 International Journal of Africana Studies and, 1:33 multicultural perspective emergence and, 1:34 National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) and, 1:33 organizational growth and, 1:33 origins of, 1:32–33 record of accomplishment and, 1:34–35 relegating minorities, residential inequities and, 1:547–548 at San Francisco State, 1:32–33 Vietnam War protests and, 1:32 See also African Americans; Black Power; Civil Rights Movement African American women and work, 1:35–38 affirmative action in the workplace and, 1:15–19 bachelor degree statistics and, 1:148
Index
domestic work and, 1:405–408 educational attainment and, 1:37 EEOC and, 1:445–448 formal vs. informal work roles and, 1:35–36 gender roles in religious organizations and, 3:1138–1139 historical patterns of, 1:35–36 bell hooks and, 2:651–652 labor force participation expansion and, 1:37–38 Million Woman March (MWM) and, 1:29 proportion of women’s labor and, 1:35 racial, sexual labor force segmentation and, 1:37 science faculty women of color and, 3:1210–1211 service work, domestic employment and, 1:36–37 sexual harassment and, 3:1225 sorting tobacco, circa 1899, 1:36 Sojourner Truth, 3:1329, 3:1329–1331 World War II effects and, 1:37 See also Feminism, Black African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA), 1:33, 1:34 African Liberation Support Committee, 1:26, 1:28, 1:178 African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1:172 Africans in the United States, 1:38, 1:38–40 African Americans vs., 1:40 African diversity and, 1:38 community contributions of, 1:38–39 cultural, social values in a new world and, 1:38–39 diaspora term regarding, 1:386 ethnicity focus of, 1:39 European colonialism, race and, 1:39–40 extended family focus of, 1:39 home economy contributions of, 1:39 other cultural hurdles and, 1:40 skin color, nature’s creativity and, 1:39 ubuntu communal worldview of, 1:39 Ugandan Americans and, 3:1339–1340 African Studies Association (ASA), 1:33 Afrocentricity, 1:41–42 Africans as subjects vs. victims, objects and, 1:41 Africans in the U.S. and, 1:38–40 Afrocentricity (Asante) and, 1:41 Afrocentrist scholars and, 1:42 classical African civilizations focus of, 1:41 concept development and, 1:41 contemporary issues in, 1:41 definition of, 1:41 European paradigm domination overthrow and, 1:41 intelligent conclusion concept and, 1:41–42 Kwanzaa and, 2:819–820 pluralism without hierarchy and, 1:41 principal ideas of, 1:41–42 reasonable plausibility concept and, 1:41 See also African American studies Age of Reason and Enlightenment, 1:552 Aging, 1:42–44 “baby boom” population and, 1:43 demographic overview of, 1:42–43 economic disparities and, 1:44 health disparities and, 1:44 marital status, living arrangements and, 1:43–44
1503
race, ethnicity and, 1:42 young old, old old, oldest old and, 1:43 Agricultural Labor Relations Act (California), 1:258, 2:659 Agricultural Workers Association (AWA), 2:658 Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), 1:257, 2:658 Aguilera, Michael, 1:455 AHEPA. See American Hellenic Progressive Association (AHEPA) Ahidiana, 1:178 Ahmed, Omar, 1:177 AHSA. See African Heritage Studies Association (AHSA) AIDS. See HIV/AIDS AIM. See American Indian Movement (AIM) Ainsworth, Mary D. S., 2:1025 Ain’t I a Woman (hooks), 2:651 Ainu population, of Japan, 2:780 AIRFA. See American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) AJC. See American Jewish Committee (AJC) Alabama anti-intermarriage laws in, 2:738 Black voter registration in, 1:308 Cherokee homeland in, 1:259 Choctaw in, 1:291 Choctaw Mowa Band in, 1:293 gerrymandering in, 1:545 Italian Americans in, 2:770 majority–minority voting district creation and, 1:546 Alamo, The, 1:45–46 diversity of defenders of, 1:45 siege of, 1:45 Texas Revolution and, 1:45 Alaska Hmong Americans in, 2:634 Native American census population data and, 2:965 (figure) Pacific Islanders in, 2:1008 statehood of, 1:46 Alaska National Interests Lands Conservation Act, 1:46 Alaska Native Brotherhood, 1:52, 3:1312–1313 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971), 1:46, 3:1269, 3:1313 Alaska Native Veterans Bill, 1:47 Alaskan Natives Aleuts and, 1:49–52 census population data of, 2:960 (table) educational performance, attainment of, 1:432–433, 1:433 (table) health care issues and, 2:953–954 HIV/AIDS and, 2:631 household population by tribal group and, 2:960 (table) medical school faculties and, 1:147 in military service, 2:904 mortality rates of, 1:44 Tlingit and, 3:1311–1314 See also Alaskan Natives, legislation concerning Alaskan Natives, legislation concerning, 1:46–47 Alaska National Interests Lands Conservation act and, 1:46 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971) and, 1:46, 2:1269, 3:1313 Alaska Native Veterans Bill and, 1:47
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Alaska Statehood and, 1:46 Duck Stamp Act and, 1:46 Elizabeth Peratrovich Day and, 1:47 Equal Rights Bill and, 1:46 Indian Citizenship Act and, 1:46 The Language Bills and, 1:46 Native Allotment Act of 1906 and, 1:46 Organic Law and, 1:46 See also Alaskan Natives Albanese, Catherine, 1:304 Albania, 1:47 (map), 1:129, 1:129 (map), 1:130, 1:131 Albanian Americans, 1:47–49, 1:47 (map) Albanian national movement and, 1:48 first generation of, 1:47 Free Albania Organization and, 1:48 Fran S. Noli and, 1:48 Pan-Albanian Federation of America and, 1:48 religion and, 1:48–49 World War I and, 1:48 World War II and, 1:48–49 from Yugoslav Federal Republic, 1:49 Albany Movement, 1:307 Aldridge, Delores, 1:34 Aleuts, 1:49–52, 1:50 (map), 1:51 alcohol, drugs, mental disorders and, 1:52 ancestral questions regarding, 1:50 census population data of, 2:960 (table) contemporary Aleut Americans and, 1:52 “cultural competence” concept and, 1:52 great Russian fur rush and, 1:51 mysteries of migration and, 1:50 prehistoric lifestyle of, 1:50–51 Pribilof Islands and, 1:51–52 Russian Orthodox Church and, 1:52 World War II and, 1:51–52 Alexander v. Holmes County (1969), 1:307 Algonquian tribes Blackfeet and, 1:165 of Canada, 1:230 Cheyenne and, 1:263 Menominee and, 2:890, 2:891 Ojibwa and, 2:995 Alien Act of 1798, 2:693 Alien Land Acts, 1:52–55 Asian response to, 1:53–54 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and, 1:53 continuing impact of, 1:54 historical context of, 1:53 Japanese internment and, 1:54 Manifest Destiny and, 1:53 McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 and, 1:54, 2:694, 2:781–782 Naturalization Act of 1790 and, 1:53 Takao Ozawa v. U.S. and, 1:53–54 U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind and, 1:54 Alien Registration Law (Japan), 2:779 Alinsky, Saul, 1:326 Alkebulan, Adisa, 1:41 Allen, Richard, 1:157, 1:172 Allen, Troy, 1:41
Alliance for Progress program, 2:1042 Allotment process. See Dawes Act of 1887 Allport, Gordon, 1:330–332, 2:1067 Alurista (Chicano poet), 1:122 AMEA. See Association of MultiEthnic Americans (AMEA) American Anti-Slavery Society abolitionist movement and, 1:4–5 William Lloyd Garrison and, 1:1–2, 1:3, 1:414 American Apartheid (Massey and Denton), 1:55–57 Black–White city segregation index and, 1:179, 1:401 Clinton Administration and, 1:56 Fair Housing Act (1968) and, 1:56 Federal Housing Administration policies and, 1:56 “hypersegregation” concept and, 1:56 institutionalized discrimination of 1920s and, 1:56 urban economy transformation issue and, 1:55 urban neighborhood racial segregation focus of, 1:55–56, 1:179 urban poverty, crime, drug abuse focus of, 1:55, 1:56 “urban underclass” debate and, 1:55 welfare system issue and, 1:55 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 3:1210 American Citizens for Justice (ACJ), 1:277, 1:278 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Hull House School of Race Relations and, 2:661 Loving v. Virginia and, 2:859 Mariel boatlift people and, 2:873 PATRIOT Act challenged by, 2:1032 Proposition 187 (California) and, 2:1075 Truong Van Tran’s defense and, 3:1367 American Colonization Society (ACS), 1:125–126 American Community Survey (ACS). See Census, U.S. American Dilemma, An (Gunnar Myrdal), 1:57–59 “American creed” vs. racial discrimination reality and, 1:58 Newton D. Baker and, 1:57 E. Franklin Frazier and, 1:57–58 individuals, organizations associated with, 1:57–58 monographs following, 1:58 Gunnar Myrdal and, 1:57–58 Robert Park, “Chicago School” of race relations and, 1:57 project origins and, 1:57 research, methodology, findings of, 1:57–58 William Graham Sumner’s work and, 1:58 White Americans’ responsibility focus of, 1:57 American G. I. Forum, 1:272 American Hellenic Progressive Association (AHEPA), 1:561 American Indian Movement (AIM), 1:59–62 agenda of issues of, 1:59–60 Alcatraz Island occupation and, 1:59, 1:262, 1:302, 2:1023, 2:1033, 3:1130, 3:1130–1131 American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center and, 1:61 Wesley Bad Heart Bull death and, 1:60 Dennis Banks and, 1:59, 1:61, 2:1033 Black Hills International Gathering and, 1:61 Bureau of Indian Affairs vandalization and, 1:59, 1:262, 2:1023, 2:1033–1034
Index
civil rights era organization of, 1:59 criminal charges against, 1:60 decentralization of, 1:61 Vine Deloria, Jr. and, 1:381 domestic issues and, 1:61–62 early issues of, 1:59 Federation of Survival Schools and, 1:60 global perspective of, 1:60–61 Hopi-Navajo land issue and, 1:61 Indian Health Board in Minneapolis and, 1:59 International Indian Treaty Council and, 1:60–61 Little Earth of United Tribes and, 1:60 The Longest Walk and, 1:61 Russell Means and, 1:59, 1:60–61 Menominee Tribe and, 2:892 Ojibwa and, 2:997 Ojibwa Winter Dam issue and, 1:59, 1:61 Leonard Peltier and, 2:1032–1035 Pine Ridge incident and, 2:1034 “Trail of Broken Treaties,” Washington, D.C. and, 1:59, 1:60, 1:262, 2:1033–1034, 3:1131 John Trudell and, 1:59 UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations and, 1:61 urban origin of, 3:1129 Wounded Knee (1973) and, 1:60, 1:61, 2:1023, 2:1034, 3:1129, 3:1131 Yellow Thunder Camp and, 1:61 Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and, 1:61 See also Trail of Broken Treaties American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA), 2:1045, 3:1180, 3:1182 American Indians. See Native Americans American Israel Public Affairs Committee, 2:788 Americanization, 1:62–64 acculturation and, 1:8–9 anti-communism and, 1:63 “baby boomers” and, 1:63–64 civil religion and, 1:302–305 of Danish Americans, 1:370–371 definition of, 1:62 of desi, September 11, 2001 and, 1:383 early years and, 1:62–63 ethnocentric generalizations and, 1:390 of German Americans, 1:541 of Greek Americans, 1:561 impact of immigration and, 1:63 by Nisei, 2:985–986, 2:987 politically marginalized population and, 1:62–63 Prohibition and, 1:63 Protestantism and, 1:62–64 of Puerto Rico, 2:1088 religion and, 1:62–63 religious individualism and, 1:63–64 Theories of Americanization (Berkson), 2:886 Vietnam, Watergate and, 1:64 violence and, 1:63 Western European Protestantism and, 1:62 World War II and, 1:63–64 See also Acculturation; Assimilation
American Jewish Committee (AJC), 1:64–66, 2:787 American Jewish Yearbook published by, 1:64 anti-Semitism activities of, 1:65 The Authoritarian Personality study and, 1:120 Balfour Declaration and, 1:65 civil rights agency, human relations focus of, 1:65 defense agency activities of, 1:73 German Jews rescue and, 1:65 ideology and agenda of, 1:65–66 “Jew Communist” charge and, 1:65 Naziism and, 1:65 philanthropic activities of, 1:64 post–World War II expansion of, 1:65 recent history of, 1:66 Russian Jewry focus of, 1:64, 1:65 Six Day War and, 1:66 John Slawson and, 1:65 stewardship role of, 1:65 structure of, 1:64–65 Survey of American Jewish Public Opinion and, 1:66 U.S. immigration policy focus of, 1:65 Zionism and, 1:65 American Jewish Congress, 1:72, 2:787, 2:788 American Mosaic Project, 3:1399–1401 American Nazi Party, 3:1408, 3:1409 American Protestant Association, 1:63 American School of Ethnology, scientific racism of, 1:2 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 1:66–68 Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 1:66 disability definition and, 1:67, 1:68 employment and, 1:67–68 fairness in the workplace issue and, 1:68 IDEA and, 2:719–721 Job Accommodation Network (JAN) data and, 1:67 mandates of, 1:66 progress of, challenges faced by, 1:68 Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and, 1:68, 1:212 unemployed disabled people statistics and, 1:67 American Zionism Organization, 2:788 Amish, 1:68–71 Anabaptist movement, Protestant Reformation and, 1:69 beliefs of, 1:69–70 Church, family focus of, 1:70 cultural barriers of, 1:68 diversity among, 1:69 Dutch Americans and, 1:427–428 German Americans and, 1:542 government relationship of, 1:70–71 history of, 1:69 making a living and, 1:70 nonfarm work shift of, 1:70 Old vs. New Order of, 1:69 Ordnung daily living guidelines and, 1:69–70 Pennsylvania German dialect of, 1:69 Rumspringa “running around” time and, 1:70 technology use by, 1:68, 1:70 Ammann, Jakob, 1:69 Amott, Teresa, 2:824
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Anabaptists Hutterites and, 1:669–671 Protestant Reformation and, 1:69 Schmiedeleut and, 3:1203–1204 See also Amish; Mennonites The Anatomy of a Revolution (Crane), 2:807 Ancien Regime and the Revolution (Tocqueville), 3:1093 Andersen, Hans Christian, 1:371 Anderson, Elijah, 1:312, 2:645 Angelou, Maya, 1:128 Angola, 1:337 Ani, Marimba, 1:41 An Inquiry Into the Principles of Political Economy (Steuart), 2:1059 Anslinger, Harry, 1:422 An Anthropology of Marxism (Robinson), 3:1166 Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 1:71–73 agenda of, 1:71–72 anti-Semitism focus of, 1:71–74, 2:787 B’nai B’rith relationship with, 1:71, 1:73, 2:787 church-state concerns of, 1:72–73 Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 1:72 defense agency activities of, 1:73 Leo Frank case and, 1:71 hate groups and, 1:72 ideology of, 1:72–73 international activities of, 1:72 Jews-Black relationship and, 2:792 Ku Klux Klan and, 1:71 Middle East issues and, 1:72 size of, 1:65 State of Israel and, 1:72 structure and strategy of, 1:71 “A World of Difference” program of, 1:72 Anti-Drug Abuse Act (1986), 1:422 Anti-Drug Abuse Act (1988), 2:678 Antiracist education, 1:73–76 color blindness and, 1:75 criticism of, 1:75–76 The Declining Significance of Race (Wilson) and, 1:75 definition of, 1:73–74 education in practice and, 1:75 framework of, 1:74–75 Paulo Freire and, 1:73 moral reformation and, 1:75 multicultural education vs., 1:73–74 racism meanings, manifestations and, 1:74 scientific discourse and, 1:74 student-centered, collaborative learning and, 1:74 Whiteness and, 1:74–75, 1:76 Anti-Semitism, 1:76–80 American Jewish Committee and, 1:64–66, 2:787 Anti-Defamation League and, 1:71–73, 2:787 anti-Masonic sentiment and, 1:79 in Argentina, 1:89 “Berkeley Studies,” Five-Year Study of, 1:72 Black anti-Semitism and, 2:791 Franz Boas and, 1:184–185 capitalism, money handling and, 1:78–79 chimerical prejudice and, 1:77, 1:78
contemporary pervasiveness of, 1:76–77 “Crown Heights riots” and, 1:351 Dryfus affair and, 1:79 to Eastern European Jews, Dillingham flaw and, 1:390 encompassing ideology of, 1:77 form of racism and, 1:79 in France, 1:79, 1:507, 1:508 ghetto terminology and, 1:546 Holocaust history and, 2:636–640 Islamic supremacism and, 1:76–77 Israelites, Christianity and, 1:77–78 “Judeo-Christian” history, world history and, 1:77–78 Ku Klux Klan and, 2:815–817 medieval instability, 1:78 in Nazi Germany, 1:79, 1:472, 1:473–474 roots of prejudice and, 1:77, 1:77 Social Darwinism and, 3:1249 urban legends and, 3:1353 Zionism and, 3:1426–1427 Anti-Slavery Standard, 1:414 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (1996), 2:678 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 1:492, 2:847 Apache blood quantum and, 1:181 census population data of, 2:960 (table) female puberty rite of passage of, 3:1162 tribal records of, 2:956 Apartheid, 1:80–82 Anti-Apartheid Movement and, 1:558 Apartheid laws and, 1:82–84 breakdown, end of, 1:82 comparative affirmative action and, 3:1095 economic position of White minority objective of, 1:81 education discrimination and, 1:81 ethnic apartheid, Back to African movement and, 1:126 Group Areas Act of 1950 and, 1:81 impact on South Africa of, 1:81–82 land ownership discrimination and, 1:81 in Latin America and Caribbean, 1:82 Nelson Mandela and, 2:867–869, 3:1094 Plessy v. Ferguson and, 2:1048 political dominance of White minority objective of, 1:81 Population Registration Act of 1950 and, 1:80 racial categories of, 1:80–81, 3:1094 racial purity objective of, 1:81 racism accentuation by, 1:39 social science perspective of race, ethnicity and, 1:558 system’s goals and, 1:81 in U.S. cities, 1:82 See also American Apartheid (Massey and Denton); South Africa, Republic of Apartheid, laws, 1:82–84 apartheid and, 1:81–82 Bantu Building Workers Act of 1951 and, 1:83 Black economic, social impoverishment of, 1:83–84 day-to-day living laws and, 1:83–84 education segregation laws and, 1:83 grand apartheid laws and, 1:83 homeland acts and, 1:83
Index
Immorality Amendment Act and, 1:83 life controlled by, 1:82–83 Nelson Mandela and, 1:84 Natives Act of 1952 and, 1:83 “pass laws” and, 1:83 petty apartheid laws and, 1:83–84 Population Registration Act of 1950 and, 1:83 Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and, 1:83 See also South Africa, Republic of Apollo Theater, 1:31 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (Walker), 1:22 Aquinas, Thomas, 2:1059 Arab Americans, 1:84–87 Abrahamic religions and, 1:84 Arab consciousness and, 1:85 Arab language and, 1:84 Arab League countries and, 1:84 the Arab world and, 1:84–85 Assyrian Americans and, 1:107–109 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and, 1:85, 1:278 community networks and, 1:85–86 contested representations and, 1:86–87 Dow v. United States and, 1:85 Egyptian Americans and, 1:438–439 Iraqi Americans and, 2:754–755 Jordanian Americans and, 2:797 League of Nations mandates and, 1:84 Lebanese Americans and, 2:840–841 Modern Standard Arabic language and, 1:84 “otherness” issue of, 1:86 Palestinian Americans and, 2:1011–1015 political ideological differences of, 1:86 political vs. religious differences and, 1:84 pre-1924 immigration wave of, 1:85–86 post-1965 immigration wave of, 1:86 quota system and, 1:85–86 “rehumanize” process of, 1:86–87 stereotypes of, 1:86–87 Syrian, Syrian American designation and, 1:85 Syrian Americans and, 3:1291–1292 transformations and, 1:84 “Turkey in Asia” designation of, 1:85 veil worn by, 3:1359–1360 “Whiteness” categorization and, 1:85 Arapaho Cheyenne and, 1:264 Sand Creek Massacre and, 3:1196–1197 Arawaks, of Jamaica, 2:775 Arendt, Hannah, 2:738–739 Argentina, 1:87–89, 1:87 (map) anti-Semitism in, 1:89 Argentine Jews and, 1:88–89 argentinidad concept and, 1:87 the gaucho national identity and, 1:88 indigenous people of, 1:88 Italian Argentines and, 1:88 present and beyond in, 1:89 Welsh Argentines and, 1:88 Aristotle, 2:1059, 2:1060, 3:1120
1507
Arizona Alien Land Act and, 1:53 bilingual education legislation in, 1:440–441, 2:916 colonias in, 1:318 English-only movement in, 1:146 Hispanics in, 1:135 internment camps in, 2:747 Mexican repatriation from, 3:1151 Native American Census population data and, 2:965 (figure) Navajo Reservation in, 1:373 refugee sanctuary movement in, 1:253 See also Phoenix, Arizona Arkansas Hmong Americans in, 2:634 immigrants settling in, 2:690 internment camps in, 2:745, 2:747, 2:783 one-drop rule in, 2:999 Armenian Americans, 1:89–91, 1:89 (map) early community of, 1:90–91 later arrivals of, 1:91 national identity of, 1:89–90 1915 genocide and, 1:89, 1:90, 1:91 noted Armenian Americans and, 1:91 Ottoman Empire and, 1:90 partisan conflict among, 1:90–91 suburban migration of, 1:91 Whiteness issue of, 1:90 youth gangs and, 1:91 ASA. See African Studies Association (ASA) Asante, Molefi Kete, 1:33, 1:41 Asian Americans, 1:91–96 academic achievements of, 1:148, 1:432–433, 1:433 (table), 2:614, 2:684 aging population and, 1:43–44 Alien Land Acts and, 1:52–55, 2:782 Asiatic Exclusion League and, 1:534 The Bell Curve (Hernstein and Murray) and, 1:140–141 biomedical work force and, 1:147 “boat people” and, 1:186 businesses owned by, 2:685 Cambodian Americans and, 1:221–225 Vincent Chin and, 1:276–278, 2:781, 2:1020 Chinatowns and, 1:281–285, 1:282 Cold War changes and, 1:94 collectivistic parenting style of, 2:1026 conflict, tensions and, 1:96 desi and, 1:382–383 diversity among, 1:482 domestic violence and, 1:404–405 drug use patterns and, 1:419–420, 1:421 (table) early immigrants and, 1:92 early immigrants and, opposition to, 1:92–93 educational stratification and, 1:435 era of resistance and, 1:93 estimated percentages of, 1:95 (map) ethnonational minority influence of, 1:470 familism and, 1:479 family reunification effects and, 1:94 filial piety and, 2:809, 3:1256–1257
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
gender roles of, 1:404–405 Hafu and, 2:569–571 hapa, Hawaiian word and, 2:581–583 health disparities of, 2:606–607 HIV/AIDS and, 2:631 Hmong Americans and, 2:633–636 homicide and, 2:646 housing discrimination against, 1:400, 1:402 immigration, refugee policies and, 1:94, 1:96 Immigration Act of 1924, 1:53, 2:693, 2:782, 2:812, 2:1016 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and, 1:86, 1:94, 1:285, 2:813, 2:1016 income data on, 1:393, 2:684–685 Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act (1975) and, 2:828 informal family and community support and, 3:1256–1257 intergenerational conflict and, 1:481 intergroup relations survey results regarding, 2:734–736 Internet access and, 1:388 internment camps and, 1:54, 1:93–94, 2:694 interracial marriages and, 1:482 intra-race variation among, 3:1097 Japanese American Citizens League and, 2:781–782 kinship ties of, 2:809 Korean Americans and, 2:811–814 labor source of, 1:92 labor union membership of, 2:826–827 language barriers of, 1:405, 3:1257 Laotian Americans and, 2:827–830 legislative changes and, 1:466, 2:700 McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 and, 1:496, 2:694, 2:699, 2:781–782 medical school faculties and, 1:147 in military service, 2:904 as model minority, 2:910 model minority stereotype and, 1:287, 1:364, 1:481, 2:694, 2:821, 2:1062, 3:1278 oppression resistance of, 1:93 Pacific Islanders vs., 1:92 pan-Asian identity and, 2:1016–1019 panethnic coalitions of, 1:96 patriarchal family of, 1:404 popular culture racism and, 2:1062 poverty rates of, 2:684–685 prejudice against, 1:92 prison population demographics of, 2:1071 professional achievements of, 2:684 sexuality, race and, 3:1225 social support barriers of, 3:1257 street gangs and, 1:523, 1:524 suburban Asian Americans and, 1:284–285, 1:287–288 sugar plantation worker strikes in, 1:93 transnational ethnicity negotiation and, 1:461–462 United States v. Wong Kim Ark and, 1:93 urban racial tension and, 1:96 violence against, 1:92 voting rights of, 3:1371 World War II and, 1:93–94
“yellow peril” prejudice and, 1:92, 1:533, 1:534, 2:1062 See also Asian Americans specific topic; specific immigrant group Asian Americans, New York City, 1:97–98 census data and, 1:97 community building by, 1:97 economic enclave of, 1:97–98 future of, 1:98 multicultural diversity and, 1:97 public service work of, 1:98 socioeconomic, cultural adaptations and, 1:97–98 stereotypic welfare myths and, 1:98 urban revitalization and, 1:98 work ethic focus of, 1:97–98 Asian American studies, 1:99–101 Asian area studies vs., 1:99 civic, community engagement and, 1:99, 1:100 current perspectives of, 1:100 decolonization focus of, 1:100 future of, 1:100–101 Hafu and, 2:569–571 hapa, Hawaiian word and, 2:581–583 Harry H. L. Kitano and, 2:810–811 origins of, 1:99 pan-Asian vs. ethnic specific courses, 1:100 panethnic coalitions and, 1:96 programs, departments of, 1:99 race, class, gender, ethnic issues intersection and, 1:100 service learning and, 1:100 social justice pursuit and, 1:100 Third World Liberation Front and, 1:99 transnationalism, globalization concepts in, 1:100 See also Asian American studies, mixed-heritage Asian American studies, mixed-heritage, 1:101–102 academic programs of, 1:102 background of, 1:101–102 Hapa Studies label and, 1:101 pan-Asian identity and, 2:1016–1019 transracial adoptees and, 1:101 Asian Exclusion League, 2:711 Asiatic Exclusion League, 1:534 ASPIRA, 1:102–104 community technology centers of, 1:103 Community Wealth Development Initiative of, 1:103 cultural pride focus of, 1:102 educational attainment, empowerment focus of, 1:102, 1:103, 2:1086 Latino youth benefactors of, 1:102, 2:1083 leadership skills attainment focus of, 1:102, 2:1083 Math and Science Academy of, 1:103 Parents for Educational Excellence and, 1:103 Professional Development Institute program of, 1:103 programs of, 1:103–104 Puerto Rican Association for Community Affairs and, 1:102 Reading Institute literacy program of, 1:103 state associations of, 1:103 three-step intervention model of, 1:103 traffic safety program of, 1:103 Web site of, 1:104
Index
Assembly of Captive European Nations, 1:450 Assimilation, 1:104–107 of Afghan Americans, 1:19–20 of Belgian Americans, 1:137 in the Cape Verde Islands, 1:236 of Cherokee, 1:260, 1:261 Chicago School of Race Relations and, 1:270 classical assimilation theory and, 1:104–105, 2:681 classical assimilation theory and, criticism of, 1:105–106, 2:681 cosmopolitanism and, 1:333–336 cultural assimilation and, 1:9, 1:105 Danish Americans and, 1:370–371 Dawes Act and, 1:217, 1:371–373 deficit model of ethnicity and, 1:379–380 definition of, 1:104 of desi and, 1:383 diaspora term regarding, 1:386 Dillingham Flaw concept and, 1:389–391 of Dutch Americans, 1:427–428 economic changes and, 1:105, 2:681 education, location factors and, 1:105 ethnic succession model vs., 1:463 ethnocentric generalizations and, 1:390 of French Americans, 1:514–516 future of in the United States and, 1:106–107 of Georgian Americans, 1:538–540 of Greek Americans, 1:559–562 of Guatemalan Americans, 1:564–565 intercultural communication and, 2:730–733 intermarriage across immigrant groups and, 1:106, 2:738 melting pot philosophy and, 1:104, 1:105 “model minority” phenomenon and, 1:105 multiculturalism vs., 1:104 natal alienation concept and, 1:217 Native American allotment process and, 1:217 of Native Americans, 1:182, 1:217, 1:261–262 “otherization” and, 3:1357–1358 Robert E. Park’s model of, 1:456 reactive ethnicity trend and, 1:105 second-generation decline and, 1:105 segmented assimilation theory and, 1:106 social, economic disadvantages increase and, 1:105 standard, vs. downward, vs. nonassimilation and, 1:106 straight-line assimilation and, 1:104–106 structural assimilation and, 1:105, 1:106 third-generation principle and, 3:1302–1304 third-generation principle of, 1:105, 1:107 urban vs. rural residence and, 1:106–107 “us and them” concept and, 3:1357–1358 withingroup diversity and, 1:481–482 See also Americanization; Native Americans; Third-generation principle Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies, 1:450 Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC), 1:34 Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), 1:148 Association of MultiEthnic Americans (AMEA), 2:919
1509
Assyrian Americans, 1:107–109, 1:107 (map) Assyrian American National Federation and, 1:109 census data on, 1:107 contemporary linkages of, 1:108–109 family reunification and, 1:108 kinship, lineage affiliations of, 1:108–109 migration history of, 1:107–108 “push, pull” factors of, 1:108–109 religion of, 1:107–108, 1:109 transnational networks of, 1:107 World War I genocide of, 1:108 Asylum, 1:109–111 “boat people” and, 1:186–187, 2:873–874 “credible fear of persecution” and, 3:1134 Cuban, Haitian immigrants and, 2:576–578, 2:873–874 Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and, 1:109 definition of, 1:109 French Protestants and, 1:109 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and, 1:109–110 humanitarian immigration and, 2:689 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (1996) and, 2:677–680 INS and, 2:696 nation-states reaction to, 1:110 numbers regarding, 2:689 refugees vs., 1:109, 2:689, 3:1133 “refugee warehousing” and, 1:110 UN High Commissioner for Refugees and, 1:110 voluntary vs. involuntary migration and, 1:110 World War II and, 1:109 Atlanta, Georgia African American mayor of, 1:28 African American migration to, 1:31 Bangladeshi Americans in, 1:133 Jamaican Americans in, 2:777 Nigerian Americans in, 2:982 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 race riots in, 1:400 rap artists from, 3:1124 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Atlanta Sociological Laboratory, 1:423, 1:425 Atlanta University Annual Conferences, 1:423, 1:425, 1:427 Augustine, Herman, 1:368 Australia, 1:111–115 Aboriginal citizen movement and, 1:112–113 Aboriginal clans in, 1:111 antidiscrimination legislation in, 1:114 Asian immigrants and, 1:113 citizenship in, 1:299 colonial primary racist assumption in, 1:111 Community Relations Commission and, 1:114 contemporary issues in, 1:114–115 core culture myths and, 1:111 Federation of Ethnic Community Councils of Australia and, 1:114 history, social context of, 1:112–113 Hong Kong migration to, 2:649 John Howard and, 1:111 humanitarianism focus in, 1:111
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Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and, 1:114 Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 and, 1:113 imperialist struggle history of, 1:111, 1:112–113 imported laborers in, 1:112 indigenous land rights in, 1:111 missionaries in, 1:112 multiculturalism policy and, 1:111, 1:113, 1:114 Native Title Act and, 1:114 post–9/11 anti-Muslim climate in, 1:114 race, racism and, 1:111–112 Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 and, 1:111, 1:114 Racial Hatred Act and, 1:114 racism, combating, 1:114 racism, immigrants, refugees and, 1:113 religious pluralism in, 3:1140 restrictive immigration policies in, 1:112 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and, 1:111, 1:114, 2:744 White Australia policy and, 1:111, 1:113, 1:114 World War II internments in, 1:113 See also Australia, Indigenous people Australia, Indigenous people, 1:115–119, 1:117 Aboriginal flag and, 1:117 Aborigine terminology and, 1:115 acculturation of, 1:8 art, artists, 1:115 assimilation differences in, 1:118 Australian Black Panther Party and, 1:117 Black Nationalism and, 1:117 Black Panther Party and, 1:117 citizenship to, 1:117 clan social structure of, 1:116 contemporary society and, 1:117–118 cosmology, oral folklore of, 1:116 definition of, 1:116 diverse cultural practices of, 1:116 early history of, 1:116 Europeans arrival and, 1:116 famous Indigenous people and, 1:118 health, social conditions of, 1:118 Indigenous Studies and, 1:118 labor strikes and, 1:117 legal, land issues and, 1:117 Mabo decision and, 1:117 missionary outreach to, 1:116 Native Title Act and, 1:117 population decrease and, 1:116 population statistics of, 1:118 protest movements and, 1:117 specific clan, region of, 1:115 spiritual belief systems of, 1:116 “Tent Embassy” protest and, 1:117 Torres Strait Islanders and, 1:115, 1:116 United Nations protection of, 2:744 See also Australia Austria, 1:130 anti-Muslim sentiment in, 2:927 hate crime legislation in, 2:591 Muslims migration to, 2:926
Authoritarian personality, 1:119–121 advanced industrialized society and, 1:120 American Jewish Committee and, 1:66, 1:120 anti-Semitic prejudice measured by, 1:120 The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, Sanford) and, 1:119–120, 2:1066–1067 contemporary relevance of, 1:120–121 enlightenment, fascism and, 1:120 Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies and, 1:120–121 Karl Marx influence and, 1:120 modernization/modernity paradox and, 1:120 obedience to authority studies and, 1:120 Politics and Psychoanalysis (Fromm) and, 1:120 prejudice, discrimination studies and, 1:119, 2:1066–1067 scale used in, 1:119–120 social context and, 1:120 Studies in Authority and the Family (Fromm) and, 1:120 study description and, 1:119–120 AWA. See Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) AWOC. See Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (Lemkin), 1:530 Aztecs, 2:833–834, 2:834 See also Aztlán Aztlán, 1:121–123 Aubin Codex and, 1:121 Aztec civilization and, 1:121 Chicano movement and, 1:122, 1:209, 1:273 Chicano political mobilization and, 1:122–123 First National Youth and Liberation Conference, Denver, Colorado and, 1:122 metaphorical role of, 1:121–122 Mexican American mixed-race identity and, 1:122 Mexican Americans and, 1:121 Mexican American transnationalism and, 1:122 Nahuatl-speaking Mexicans of Mexico and, 1:121 racist and exclusionary criticism of, 1:122 Baby boomers, 1:43, 1:63–64 Bach, Robert, 1:454 Bachrach-Ehlers, Tracy, 1:491 Back Student Movement, 1:178 Back to Africa movement, 1:125–127 advocates of, 1:125 American Colonization Society and, 1:125–126 Black Nationalism and, 1:125, 1:171–174 Martin Delany and, 1:126–127 ethnic apartheid and, 1:126 Fourth Bay settlement, Sierra Leone and, 1:125–126, 1:172 free Blacks and, 1:125, 1:172 Marcus Garvey and, 1:127 historical origin of, 1:125 indigenous population, settler relationship and, 1:126 Liberia and, 1:125, 1:126 “Monrovia” settlement and, 1:126 pan-Africanism Movement and, 1:25, 1:28, 1:167, 1:171, 1:173, 1:416 Rastafarians and, 1:127 repatriating people of African descent and, 1:125
Index
state colonization societies and, 1:126 subsequent support of, 1:126–127 See also Black Nationalism Bahamas, 1:237 Baker, Ella, 1:25, 1:310, 3:1281 Baker, George. See Father Divine Peace Mission Movement Baker, Newton D., 1:57 Baker v. Carr, 1:545 Bakke, Allan, 2:613 See also Regents of the University of California v. Bakke Baldwin, James, 1:127–128 artistic and political legacy of, 1:128, 1:168 artistic identity formation and, 1:127–128 Black diaspora struggle and, 1:128 Black Power movement and, 1:128 books written by, 1:127, 1:128 family background of, early influences on, 1:127 impact of, 1:127 oratory skills of, 1:127 social and physical exile of, 1:128 Balkans, 1:128–132, 1:129 (map) Albanian Americans and, 1:47–49 Armenian Americans and, 1:89–91 balkanization term and, 1:128, 1:129, 2:676, 2:915 borderland disputes in, 1:192 Bosnian Americans and, 1:195–197 Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and, 1:131 contest, conflict in, 1:131 countries of, 1:129, 1:129 (map) Croatian Americans and, 1:347–350 ethnic composition of, 1:129–130 ethnic conflict in, 1:128–129, 1:192, 1:451, 2:676 geographic peculiarity of, 1:129–130 geopolitical meaning of, 1:129 Greek Americans and, 1:559–562, 1:559 (map) nationalism and, 1:130–131 religion and, 1:130 Serbs and Croats in, 1:130, 1:131, 1:192 Slavic invasions and, 1:130 Baltic Appeal to the United Nations, 1:450 Baltimore, Maryland Caribbean Americans in, 1:241 Estonian Americans in, 1:450 Jamaican Americans in, 2:777 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Bangladesh borderland dispute and, 1:191–192 Canadian immigrants from, 1:226 desi and, 1:382 as South Asian, 2:712 Bangladeshi Americans, 1:132–133, 1:132 (map) Bengalis and, 1:132 census data on, 1:133 contemporary community of, 1:133 diversity visa, “lottery” visa program and, 1:132 Immigration Act of 1965 and, 1:132 Immigration Act of 1990 and, 1:132 immigration history of, 1:132–133 Muslim stereotype and, 1:133
in New York City, 1:97 political and religious persecution of, 1:132 skilled workers and, 1:133 student visas and, 1:133 undocumented immigrants and, 1:132 Bankole, Wade, 1:41 Banks, Dennis, 1:59, 1:61, 2:1033 Banks, James, 2:914–915 Bantu Building Workers Act of 1951 (South Africa), 1:83 Barnes, Albert C., 2:587 Barrio, 1:133–136 colonias and, 1:318–320 definition of, 1:134 demographic criteria of, 1:134 East Harlem and, 1:429–431 ethnic enclave entrepreneurship in, 1:136 films depicting, 1:499 gentrification of, 1:135, 1:136 geographic settlement patterns of, 1:135 the ghetto and, 1:546–548 political characteristics of, 1:134 racialization of, 1:134, 1:135–136 realities, transformations and, 1:136 resident identification and, 1:134–135 segregation and, 1:134, 1:135 socioeconomic characteristics of, 1:134 Spanish-speaking neighborhood of, 1:133–134 stereotypes and, 1:134, 1:135–136, 1:136 symbolism of, 1:134 underclass identification and, 1:134–135 Barry, Marion, 3:1281 Barth, Frederik, 1:457 Basemore v. Friday, 3:1351 Bates, Daisy, 1:310 Bates, Timothy, 1:455 Bay of Pigs invasion, 1:358 Becker, Howard, 2:821 Belafonte, Harry, 2:776 Belgian Americans, 1:136–137, 1:136 (map) census data on, 1:136–137 contemporary community of, 1:137 contributions of, 1:137 Dutch Fleming, Walloon ethnic groups of, 1:137 immigration patterns of, 1:137 Belgium citizenship in, 1:299 Muslims migration to, 2:926 Belize, 1:137–139, 1:138 (map) agriculture in, 1:138 British Honduras and, 1:138 the British in, 1:138 Caribbean identity of, 1:237 the Creole in, 1:138 early history of, 1:137–138 ethnic minorities in, 1:139 the Garifuna in, 1:139 German Mennonites in, 1:139 the Maya in, 1:139 the Mestizo in, 1:138
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punta rhythmic music of, 1:139 U.S. immigrants from, 1:251–252 Bell, Derrick, 1:334, 1:394 Bell, John, 1:417 Bell, Michael, 1:443 Bell, Thomas, 3:1239 Bellah, Robert N., 1:303–305 Bell Curve, The (Hernstein and Murray), 1:139–142 affirmative action and, 1:140–141 cognitive partitioning concept and, 1:140 cognitive skills importance and, 1:139–140 criticism of, 1:141 genes, human behavior, Darwinism and, 1:141 intellectual context and, 1:141–142 IQ effects and, 1:140 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and, 1:140 racial intelligence differences and, 1:139–141, 3:1299 Social Darwinism and, 3:1249 social origin salience and, 1:139 supporting research and, 1:141–142 tracking and, 3:1316–1318 Benedict, Ruth, 1:57, 1:184, 1:362 Benezet, Anthony, 1:1 Benjamin, Geoffrey, 3:1229 Benjamin, Walter, 1:120 Berlet, Chip, 3:1409 Bernal, Martin, 1:41 Bernier, François, 3:1092 Berry, Halle, 1:156 Bethune, Mary McLeod, 1:24, 1:25 Bevel, James, 3:1281 Beyond the Melting Pot (Glazer and Moynihan), 2:886–887 BGLOs. See Black Greek letter organizations (BGLOs) Bhutan, 2:712 BIA. See Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Biassou, Georges, 2:572 Bilingual education, 1:142–146 acculturation and, 1:9 additive bilingual enrichment principle and, 1:143 additive vs. subtractive programs and, 1:144 Bilingual Education Act and, 1:143 bilingualism universality, pervasiveness and, 1:142–143 of Cambodian Americans, 1:223–224 changing policies regarding, 1:143 Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District (1971) and, 1:294–296 controversy regarding, 1:143, 1:145–146 diverse programs and, 1:144–145 dual language, bilingual immersion and, 1:440 Dual-Language Education program and, 1:145 Early Exit program and, 1:144 Elementary and Secondary Education Act and, 1:143 English immersion and, 1:440–442 English Language Acquisition Act, 1:143 English Language Education for Children in Public Schools Initiative, 1:145–146 English-only movement and, 1:145–146 Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974 and, 1:143 feasibility factors of, 1:144
Head Start and, 2:602–604 heritage language, 1:440 Heritage Language program and, 1:145 historical context of, 1:142–143 interactive pedagogy principle and, 1:143–144 interdependence principle and, 1:143 language as a problem orientation to, 1:145 language as a resource orientation to, 1:145 language restrictionism policies and, 1:145–146 Late Exit program and, 1:144 Lau v. Nichols and, 1:143 Maintenance Bilingual Education program and, 1:144–145 maintenance bilingual programs and, 1:440 Newcomer Centers program, 1:145 No Child Left Behind Act and, 1:143 policy debate and, 1:145–146 program design diversity and, 1:142 second-language theories and, 1:143–144 transitional bilingual, 1:440 Transitional Bilingual Education program, 1:144 Bilingual Education Act, 1:143, 1:515 Billig, Michael, 1:121 Binet, Alfred, 2:729, 3:1299 Biological determinism, 1:188 Biomedicine, African Americans and, 1:146–149 AspiringDocs.org and, 1:148 Association of American Medical Colleges and, 1:148 biomedical, health, life sciences trends and, 1:148 brain drain and, 1:199–200 diverse work force importance and, 1:147 health care disparities and, 1:146–147 medical school applicant statistics and, 1:148 medical school faculty statistics and, 1:147–148 medicine trends and, 1:147–148 Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act of 2000 and, 1:148 National Center for Minority Health Disparities and, 1:148 National Institutes of Health and, 1:148–149 Birth of a Nation, The (Griffith), 1:149–151, 1:150 The Answer (Lee) and, 2:842 The Clansman (Dixon) and, 1:150, 2:816, 3:1408 impact of, 1:149, 1:151, 2:1061 making film history and, 1:150 the message of, 1:151 miscegenation rules and, 1:151 one-drop rule and, 1:151 the story of, 1:150–151 Black Arts Convention, 1:178 Black Arts Movement, 1:26, 1:178 Black bourgeoisie, 1:152–154 post–Civil War and, 1:152 1915-1960 and, 1:153–154 1960-present and, 1:154 20th century and, 1:152–153 Black Bourgeoisie (Frazier), 1:154 Black enterprise and, 1:161–164 Black institutions, public service and, 1:153 Black universities and, 1:152–153 education importance and, 1:153
Index
free Blacks and, 1:152 FUBU Company and, 1:516–517 generational divide and, 1:154 house vs. field slaves and, 1:152 immigration limitation and, 1:153 Ku Klux Klan and, 1:153 middle class development and, 1:153–154 mulatto elite and, 1:153 National Origins Quota Act of 1924 and, 1:153 professional occupations of, 1:152–153 social life and, 1:153–154 urban migration, enclaves, racism and, 1:153 White immigrants, racial tensions and, 1:153 Black Bourgeoisie (Frazier), 1:154 Black Canadians, 1:226 Black cinema, 1:154–157 Baby, 1:156 biracial buddy movie era and, 1:156 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith), 1:149–151, 1:150, 1:155, 1:816 Black Caesar, 1:156 Black comedian era and, 1:156 Black film mainstream of 1990s and, 1:156 blaxploitation films and, 1:156, 2:842 A Bucket of Cream Ale, 1:155 Carmen Jones, 1:155 change begins and, 1:155–156 civil rights era and, 1:156 Coffy, 1:156 conservativism, backlash politics and, 1:156 early Hollywood and, 1:155 Thomas Edison, motion picture technology and, 1:155 enslaved Africans as representational scapegoats and, 1:155 48 Hours and, 1:156 Foxy Brown, 1:156 Pam Grier and, 1:156 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1:155 Imitation of Life, 1:155 Spike Lee and, 2:841–843 Lillies of the Field, 1:155 Oscar Micheaux, 2:842 new wave of, 1:156 Oscars and, 1:155–156 popular culture, racism and, 2:1060–1063 “race films” and, 1:155 Shaft, 1:156 Sheba, 1:156 Superfly, 1:156 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Porter), 1:155 The Wooing and the Wedding of a Coon, 1:155 Black conservatives, 1:157–159 Back to Africa movement and, 1:125–127 becoming outcasts and, 1:159 Black behavior criticized by, 1:159 contemporary conservativism and, 1:158–159 Frederick Douglass, 1:157 Marcus Garvey, 1:158 political, economic self- and group help and, 1:157, 1:159 George Schuyler, 1:158–159
1513
social context for and mind-set of, 1:158–159 Clarence Thomas, 1:157 Universal Negro Improvement Association and, 1:158 Booker T.Washington, 1:157–158 Black Elk, 1:159–161 Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala (Steltencamp) and, 1:159 Black Elk Speaks: Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (Neihardt), 1:160 Christian faith and, 1:159–160 The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux (Brown) and, 1:159 spiritual and cultural renewal focus of, 1:159 transcripts supporting biography and, 1:159 Black enterprise, 1:161–164 from 1910 to 1960s and, 1:161 1960s changes and, 1:161–162, 1:162 (figure) automotive business sector and, 1:164 Black and White college graduates in managerial jobs, 1:162 (figure) Black educational attainment and, 1:162, 1:163 (figure) Black entrepreneur opportunities and, 1:162–164 Black executive careers and, 1:164 Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 1:162 FUBU Company and, 1:516–517 minority business revenue and, 1:163 salaried Blacks in private sector and, 1:164 today’s market and, 1:164 White corporate recruiters, Black colleges and, 1:162 Black Entertainment Television, 2:881 Blackfeet, 1:164–167 Algonquian peoples and, 1:165 Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Montana and, 1:164 Blackfoot Confederacy tribes and, 1:164 census population data of, 2:960 (table) Christianity and, 1:166 contemporary community of, 1:166 Dawes Act and, 1:166 difficult times of, 1:166 economy of, 1:165, 1:166 Europeans arrive and, 1:165–166 genesis narrative of, 1:164–165 geographic area of, 1:165 Indian Reorganization Act (1934) and, 1:166 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 and, 1:166 land losses of, 1:166 Meriwether Lewis and, 1:165 societal structure of, 1:165 spiritual life of, 1:165 Black feminism. See Feminism, Black Black Folk Here and There (Drake), 1:416 Black Freedom Movement, 1:25–26, 1:28, 1:176, 2:819 Black Greek 101: The Culture, Customs, and Challenges of Black Fraternities and Sororities (Kimbrough), 1:510 Black Greek letter organizations (BGLOs), 1:509 Black identity development theory, 3:1108 Black intellectuals, 1:167–170 activist artists and, 1:168 art vs. activism and, 1:168
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
James Baldwin, 1:127–128 Black Nationalism and, 1:171–174 Black Panther Party and, 1:174–176 Black Power and, 1:168–169 Chicago School of Race Relations and, 1:269–272 commitment to the masses and, 1:167–168 The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (Cruse) and, 1:169 St. Clair Drake, 1:415–416 W. E. B. Du Bois, 1:167–168, 1:423, 1:423–427, 2:872, 3:1106 Ralph Ellison, 1:168–169 Harlem Renaissance and, 1:168, 1:169 bell hooks, 2:651–652 Invisible Man (Ellison) and, 2:750–751 Charles S. Johnson, 2:796 Spike Lee, 2:841–843 “New Negro” concept and, 1:167, 1:168 See also Black Power; Harlem Renaissance; specific individual Black Kettle, Chief, 3:1196–1197 Black Leadership Forum, 1:28 Black Liberation Movement, 1:26 Black liberation theology, 1:178 Black Marxism (Robinson), 3:1164, 3:1165–1166 Black metropolis, 1:170–171 barrio and, 1:133–136 Black life, culture in Chicago after World War I and, 1:170–171 Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (Drake and Clayton) and, 1:170, 1:415 “Bronzeville” and, 1:170–171 community legacy of, 1:171 St. Clair Drake and, 1:415–416 the ghetto and, 1:546–548 Great Migration and, 1:170 housing, education, employment segregation and, 1:170–171 housing confinement policies and, 1:170–171 relegating minorities, residential inequities and, 1:547–548 residential segregation and, 1:378 Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (Drake and Clayton), 1:170, 1:415 Black Movements in America (Robinson), 3:1166 Black Muslim movement, 1:173 See also Muslim Americans Black Nationalism, 1:171–174 “Africa for the Africans” phrase and, 1:172 Afrocentricity and, 1:41–42 in Australia, 1:117 Back to Africa movement and, 1:125–127 Black Muslim movement and, 1:173 Black Panthers and, 1:171 Black Power and, 1:26, 1:176 Black self-help, group solidarity and, 1:171, 1:172 Stokely Carmichael and, 1:245 before the Civil War and, 1:171–172 current issues of, 1:174 Frantz Fanon’s work and, 1:483 Father Divine Peace Mission Movement and, 1:484–485 free Black leaders of, 1:172
Marcus Garvey and, 1:171, 1:173, 1:176 internationalizing of African struggle and, 1:171 Invisible Man (Ellison) and, 2:751 Kwanzaa and, 2:819–820 Malcolm X, Civil Rights era and, 1:171, 1:173–174, 1:308, 2:864, 2:865 nation-based racial formation theory and, 3:1103–1104 Nigrescence model of Black racial identity and, 3:1106, 3:1108 organizations of, 1:172 Grover Cleveland Redding and, 1:173 Henry McNeil Turner and, 1:172–173 Universal Negro Improvement Association and, 1:171, 1:173 voyages to Africa and, 1:125, 1:172 Black Panther Party, 1:174–176 in Australia, 1:117 Black Nationalism and, 1:174 Brown Berets and, 1:208 California gun control and, 1:175 Stokely Carmichael and, 1:246, 3:1282 Civil Rights Movement and, 1:26, 1:28, 1:32 controversy regarding, 1:175 individuals recruited by, 1:175 Mao Zedong and, 1:175, 1:176 Huey P. Newton and, 1:174, 1:176 origins of, 1:174–175 Panther Patrols, police racial abuse and, 2:977 philanthropy of, 1:175 police brutality focus of, 1:175, 1:308 “Power to the People” phrase of, 1:175 race-sensitive Marxism and, 1:175, 2:878 revision of, 1:176 Bobby Seale and, 1:174, 1:175, 1:176, 1:308, 2:977 self-defense, self-determination focus of, 1:175, 1:176, 2:878 violence supported by, 1:175–176 Young Lords and, 2:1083, 3:1421 Black Power, 1:176–179 African, Third World liberation links and, 1:178 James Baldwin and, 1:128 Black Arts Movement and, 1:178 Black Freedom Movement and, 1:25–26, 1:28, 1:176, 2:819 Black intellectuals and, 1:168–169 “Black is beautiful” theme of, 1:169 Black Nationalist sentiment and, 1:26, 1:176 Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (Ture and Hamilton) and, 1:26 Black Power conferences and, 1:177–178 Black Students’ Union (BSU) and, 1:32 Black Studies and, 1:32 Black United Front initiatives and, 1:178 in Brazil, 1:202 Stokely Carmichael and, 1:26, 1:177, 1:244, 1:246, 1:308, 1:483, 2:807 Continental African, Third World liberation struggles and, 1:26 CORE and, 1:329 critical race theory influenced by, 1:344 cultural initiatives and, 1:178 decline of, 1:178
Index
electoral struggles of, 1:178 Frantz Fanon’s work and, 1:483 FBI Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) and, 1:28 Marcus Garvey and, 1:26 goals of, 1:26 Harlem and, 2:585 impact of, 1:178 initiative organizations of, 1:178 Malcolm X and, 1:26, 1:177, 1:308, 2:865 Marxism and, 2:877 National Black Power Conferences and, 1:26 Nation of Islam and, 1:26, 1:177, 1:178 New Convention Movement and, 1:178 Nigrescence model of Black racial identity and, 3:1106 “operational unity” concept and, 1:26 origins of term and, 1:176–177 popularization of, 1:177–178 Adam Clayton Powell and, 1:26, 1:177 religious, cultural, economic, political focuses of, 1:26, 1:178 self-defense, self-determination, self-respect focus of, 1:177 SNCC and, 1:26, 1:177, 1:311, 1:329 social science perspective of race, ethnicity and, 1:558 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and, 1:177, 3:1282 urban rebellions and, 1:26, 1:178 Watts Revolt and, 1:26, 1:176, 2:977 Robert Williams and, 1:177 Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (Carmichael and Hamilton), 1:26, 1:246, 2:740 Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon), 1:483 Black Student Movement, 1:26 Black studies. See African American studies Black Studies Movement, 1:26, 1:178 Black United Fronts, 1:26 Blackwell, Unita, 1:311 Black Women’s Club Movement, 1:24 Black Women’s United Front, 1:178 Black Workers Congress, 2:878 Blainey, Geoffrey, 1:111–112 Blaxploitation films, 1:156, 2:842 Blockbusting, 1:179–180 exclusionary zoning laws and, 1:180 Fair Housing Act (1968) and, 1:179, 1:180, 2:656 Federal Housing Administration and, 1:179–180 ghettos and, 1:180 housing shortages and, 1:180 limited homeownership opportunities and, 1:180 racially restrictive covenants and, 1:180 racial steering and, 1:180, 2:657 real estate exploitation and, 1:179 redlining practices and, 1:180, 3:1396 social, economic barriers and, 1:179 tactics of, 1:180 urban index of dissimilarity and, 1:179 urban neighborhood racial segregation and, 1:179 Blood quantum, 1:181–183 allotment process and, 1:182, 2:955 Canadian Aboriginal women and, 1:227–229 census, racial categories and, 1:250
1515
Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood and, 1:183, 2:958 chattel slavery and, 1:181 Cherokee tribal membership and, 1:262 contemporary debates regarding, 1:183 cultural competence, social acceptance through, 1:183 Darwinian evolutionary principles and, 1:182 Dawes Act of 1887 and, 2:958 degree of racial inheritance and, 1:181 “ethnic fraud” issue and, 1:183 forced assimilation and, 1:182 historical documentation and, 2:955–956 historical significance of, 1:181–182 Hopi and, 2:654 Indian policy functions of, 1:182 Indian Removal Act (1830) and, 1:181 Indian Reorganization Act (1934) and, 1:182, 1:217–218, 2:958, 2:961 inferiority assessment and, 1:181 “inferior racial stocks” concept and, 1:182 interracial marriage prohibition and, 1:181 Japanese Americans and, 3:1198 nation’s racial destiny and, 1:181 Native American identity and, 2:955–956, 2:959 Native American legal definition and, 1:182, 2:955–956 Native Hawaiians and, 2:596 Quarter Blood Amendment Act and, 1:183 racial ancestry, legal rights definition and, 1:181 self-identification vs., 2:677 social significance of, 1:182–183 tribal biological, cultural purity preservation and, 1:183 tribe enrollment and, 1:181, 2:955 Blumenbach, Johann, 3:1091–1092 B’nai B’rith, 1:71, 1:73, 2:787, 2:792 Board of Education, Brown v. See Brown v. Board of Education Board of Education v. Dowell, 3:1153 Boas, Franz, 1:184–186 achievement vs. aptitude for achievement and, 1:185 activism and, 1:186 An American Dilemma (Gunnar Myrdal) and, 1:57 anthropometric measurements, assessments and, 1:185 anti-Semitism and, 1:184–185 Change in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants written by, 1:185–186 Columbia University’s anthropology department and, 1:184 cultural anthropology and, 1:184–185 cultural evolutionists and, 1:185 cultural relativism work of, 1:361–362 human differences in cultural terms and, 1:184 The Mind of Primitive Man written by, 1:185 physical anthropology and, 1:185–186 “Boat people,” 1:186–187 from Cuba and Haiti, 1:186–187, 2:573 Cuban Americans and, 1:355–356, 1:357–359 definition of, 1:186 from Southeast Asia, 1:186 Body image, 1:187–190 beauty disciplinary practices and, 1:189 beauty double standard and, 1:188
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biological determinism and, 1:188 body, beauty ideals and, 1:188–189 body norms and, 1:188 eating-disordered behavior and, 1:189 gender display and, 1:188 gendered behavior norms and, 1:188 internalized racism and, 2:742 race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation intersection with, 1:189–190 racial beauty standards and, 1:189 sex vs. gender and, 1:188 social norms, cultural practices, identity, self-expression and, 1:187–188 Bogardus, Emory, 2:1068, 3:1250 Bogardus Distance Scale, 3:1250 Bogen, Elizabeth, 1:98 Bogle, Donald, 1:155, 1:156 Bollinger, Gratz v. See Gratz v. Bollinger Bollinger, Grutter v. See Grutter v. Bollinger Bonacich, Edna, 1:377 Border Industrialization Program, 2:870 Borderlands, 1:190–192 The Alamo and, 1:45 border conflicts examples and, 1:191–192 Bracero Program and, 1:193, 1:198–199, 1:318, 2:702, 2:895, 3:1393–1395 colonias and, 1:318–320 cross-frontier contacts and, 1:348–350 cultural, mental thresholds and, 1:190 definitions, concepts regarding, 1:190 disputed issues and, 1:190–191 environmental issues and, 1:190 ethnic enclaves within nation-states and, 1:190 geographic areas concept and, 1:190 international tribunal resolution and, 1:190 maquiladoras and, 2:869–871 multinational corporations and, 1:191 natural resources dispute and, 1:191 See also Balkans Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Anzaldua), 1:492 Border Patrol, 1:192–195 Bracero Program and, 1:193 creation of, 1:193 Department of Homeland Security and, 1:192, 1:194 early contexts regarding, 1:192–193 force multipliers and, 1:194–195 guest worker program and, 1:194 human smuggling and, 1:194 illegal immigrant amnesty and, 1:566 Immigration Act of 1917 and, 1:192 Immigration Act of 1965 and, 1:193 Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 and, 1:192 nativist sentiment and, 1:194 1980s, 1990s legislation and, 1:194 “Operation Gatekeeper” and, 1:194 “Operation Hold the Line” and, 1:194 “Operation Wetback” (Eisenhower administration) and, 1:193, 1:499, 2:879, 3:1394–1395
September 11, 2001 and, 1:194–195 U.S. border with Canada and, 1:194 U.S. border with Mexico and, 1:192, 1:193 urban border environment and, 1:194 World War II expansion of, 1:193 Bose, Christine, 1:492 Bosnia, 1:129 (map), 1:130, 1:131 borderland dispute and, 1:192 Bosnian Americans, 1:195–197, 1:195 (map) economic challenges faced by, 1:196 family reunification program and, 1:196 Federation of Yugoslavia and, 1:195 life in Bosnia and, 1:195–196 resettlement assistance for, 1:196 seeking refuge and, 1:196 sociocultural adaptation of, 1:196 Boston, Massachusetts Albanian Americans in, 1:49 Armenian Americans in, 1:90 Boston House of Reformation juvenile reformatory in, 2:799 Chinese Americans in, 1:286 free Blacks in, 1:152 Haitian Americans in, 2:574 hate crime investigation units in, 2:591 Italian Americans in, 2:768 political ethnic succession in, 1:464 Swedish Americans in, 3:1287 Tibetan Americans in, 3:1307 Turkish Americans in, 3:1336 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Boukman voodoo priest, 2:572 Bourdieu, Pierre, 1:359–360, 3:1253 Bowie, James, 1:45 Boycott, 1:197–198 César Chávez and, 1:198, 1:257, 1:302, 2:659 civil, political rights struggle and, 1:197 commercial boycotts and, 1:197 definition of, 1:197 Montgomery bus boycott and, 1:25, 1:197–198, 1:301, 1:306, 1:310, 1:328 Olympics and, 1:197 Operation PUSH, Jessie Jackson and, 2:1002 political boycotts and, 1:197 protest strategy of, 1:197 sit-ins and, 1:198, 1:306, 1:310, 1:329 of South African products, 1:198 threats to, 1:197 United Farm Workers’ use of, 1:197, 1:198, 1:257 Boynton v. Virginia, 1:306 Bozorgmehr, Mehdi, 2:753 Bracero Program, 1:198–199 Border Patrol and, 1:193 colonias in, 1:318 Dolores Huerta and, 2:658 human rights exploitation of, 1:198–199 maquiladoras and, 2:870 McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 and, 2:879 Mexican contract labor system of, 1:198, 1:318, 2:702, 2:879, 2:895, 3:1393–1394
Index
“push, pull” factors of, 1:198 remittances to Mexico and, 3:1146 “wetbacks” and, 3:1393–1395 Bradley, Milliken v. See Milliken v. Bradley, Milliken v. Bradley II Brain drain, 1:199–200 foreign students in U.S. and, 1:199, 1:504–505 guest workers and, 1:568 H-1B visas, permanent work permits and, 1:199, 2:689 impact on developing nations and, 1:199 impact on industrial nations and, 1:199–200 impact on U.S. minority scholars and, 1:199 from Peru, 2:1042 of physicians, 1:199 “reverse brain drain” and, 3:1158, 3:1159 from Slovenia, 3:1242 from South America, 3:1263 world resources distribution and, 1:199–200 Bramel, Dana, 1:332 Brazil, 1:200–204, 1:200 (map) affirmative action in, 1:203 Afro-descendant label in, 1:201 Black rights movement in, 1:202–204 Black Soul, Black Power in, 1:202 Brazilian Americans and, 1:204–205 Brazilian Black Front organization in, 1:202 Cape Verde immigrants in, 1:236 capoeira and, 1:201 census data of, 1:200 class distinctions in, 1:202, 3:1094 comparative affirmative action in, 3:1095 contemporary racial issues and, 1:203–204 cultural organizations in, 1:202 Indigenous people of, 1:200 miscegenation in, 3:1096–1097 Nikkeijin in Japan from, 2:983–985 political organizations in, 1:202–203 Portuguese language in, 1:205 quilombos runaway slave colonies in, 1:201 race in, 1:201–202, 1:205, 3:1094 racial democracy concept in, 3:1094 “racial democracy” in, 1:205 slavery and, 1:200–201 socioeconomic data in, 1:202 United Movement Against Racial Discrimination and, 1:202–203 universalist mantra and, 3:1094 whiteness preference n, 1:202, 1:205 Yanomami tribal group of, 1:200 Brazilian Americans, 1:204–205 Brazil and, 1:200–204, 1:200 (map) Brazilian differences and, 1:204–205 demographics regarding, 1:204 Hispanic ethnic labels and, 1:205 race, ethnicity and, 1:205 social class, racial makeup and, 1:204 Brecht, Bertolt, 1:543 Breckinridge, John C., 1:417 Brenden, Jenny, 3:1308, 3:1310 Bridges, Ruby, 1:307
Briffault, Robert, 1:513 Brimmer, Andrew, 1:393 Brinton, Crane, 2:807 Britain’s Irish, 1:206–208, 1:207 (figure) Britain to Ireland immigration and, 1:208 British anti-Catholicism and, 1:206–207 census data on, 1:206 chronology of, 1:206, 1:207 (figure) ethnic incorporation and, 1:206–207 impact of new immigration and, 1:207–208 indigenous antipathy to immigrants and, 1:207 Ireland and, 2:755–758 Irish–British peace agreement and, 1:208 Irish identity and, 1:208 Irish migrant workers and, 1:206, 1:207 U.S. Irish ethnic community and, 1:206 British Honduras, 1:138 British North American Act, 1:225 Brody, Nathan, 1:141, 1:142 Brown, Carl, 1:516 Brown, Charlotte, 1:24 Brown, Elaine, 1:175 Brown, Henry Billings, 2:1048 See also Plessy v. Ferguson Brown, H. Rap, 1:26, 1:175, 1:246, 3:1282 Brown, Jerry, 1:258, 2:659 Brown, John, 1:4, 1:4, 1:414, 3:1333 Brown Berets, 1:208–210 Aztlán symbolism and, 1:122, 1:209 Black Panther Party, 1:208 Catalina Island incident and, 1:209 East Los Angeles origins of, 1:208–209 Mexican American Youth Organization and, 1:208 militant practice of Chicano empowerment and, 1:209 National Chicano Moratorium Committee and, 1:208 origins of, 1:208–209 David Sanchez and, 1:209, 1:274 self-identification, self-assertion focus of, 1:208 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and, 1:209 women members in, 1:209 Young Citizens for Community Action and, 1:209 Brown v. Board of Education, 1:210–212 affirmative action in the workplace and, 1:16–17 before Brown and, 1:210 the case and, 1:210–211 Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District (1971) and, 1:294 Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 1:211 desegregation ruling of, 1:13, 1:25, 1:306, 1:436, 2:613, 2:616, 2:735, 2:795, 2:876, 3:1152, 3:1204, 3:1207–1208, 3:1213, 3:1222 Dred Scott v. Sandford and, 1:210 forced busing and, 1:307, 1:344, 3:1205, 3:1208 Fourteenth Amendment and, 1:211 Green v. County School Board of New Kent County and, 1:211, 3:1351 Hernandez v. Texas and, 2:611–612 importance of, 1:210, 1:212 intergroup relations survey regarding, 2:735 minority self-esteem and, 2:1069–1070
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multicultural education and, 1:16–17 Plessy v. Ferguson overruled by, 1:13, 1:210, 2:735, 2:1048, 3:1204, 3:1207–1208, 3:1213 resegregation in public schools and, 1:211–212, 1:334 Roberts v. the City of Boston and, 1:210 Jackie Robinson, major league baseball and, 2:976 segregated schooling unconstitutional ruling of, 1:306 See also Plessy v. Ferguson; School desegregation; School desegregation, attitudes concerning Brubaker, Roger, 1:458 Brumidi, Constantino, 2:767 Bryant, Gay, 1:549 Buchanan, James, 1:417 Buchanan v. Warley, 3:1221 Buck, Christopher, 2:886 Buddhism in China, 1:279, 1:281 in India, 2:708 in Indonesia, 2:721 of Japanese Americans, 2:784 of Laotian Americans, 2:829–830 of Thai Americans, 3:1301–1302, 3:1302 of Vietnamese Americans, 3:1367 Buffalo, New York, 1:450 Building Communities From the Inside Out (McKnight and Kretzmann), 1:327–328 Bulgaria, 1:129 (map), 1:130, 1:131 Bulgarian Americans, 1:212–213, 1:213 (map) census data on, 1:212 contemporary community of, 1:213 famous Bulgarians and, 1:213 immigration patterns of, 1:213 Macdeonia and, 1:212 Bullard, Robert, 1:442 Bunche, Ralph, 1:25, 1:57 Bundy v. Jackson, 3:1224 Burakumin, 1:213–215 aid to Buraku communities and, 1:214–215, 2:780 Emancipation Edict and, 1:214, 2:780 historical background regarding, 1:214, 2:780 “impure” work of, 1:214, 2:780 occupational, residential discrimination and, 1:213, 2:780 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), 1:215–220 (1828-1887) removal, relocation and, 1:216–217 (1887-1934) reservation, allotment and, 1:217, 2:962 (1934-1946) reorganization, self-government and, 1:217–218 (1946-1961) termination, relocation and, 1:218, 2:933, 2:962 (1961-present) self-determination era and, 1:216, 1:218–219 AIM takeover and, 1:59, 1:262, 2:1023, 2:1033 American Indian legal status and, 1:215 Blackfeet and, 1:166 boarding schools and, 1:217, 2:715, 3:1129, 3:1155 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and, 1:216 Cobell v. Babbitt and, 1:218–219 Code of Federal Regulations Courts and, 1:218
“conquest by law” concept and, 1:216 Courts of Indian Offenses and, 1:218 “Discovery Doctrine” and, 1:216 formation of, 2:962 Kevin Glover’s apology and, 1:216 health care and, 2:950–952 Homestead Act, 1:216 Hopi–Navajo conflict and, 2:653 Indian Appropriations Act and, 1:216, 1:217 Indian Citizenship Act and, 1:217, 1:261 Indian Civil Rights Act (1968) and, 1:218 Indian Land Claims Commission Act and, 1:218 Indian Law Enforcement Reform Act and, 1:218 Indian New Deal and, 1:217, 1:261–262 Indian Removal Act and (1830), 1:216 Indian Reorganization Act (1934) and, 1:215, 1:217–218, 1:261, 2:958 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act and, 1:218, 1:219, 2:952, 3:1180–1181 “Indian wars,” massacres and, 1:216 Johnson v. M’Intosh and, 1:216 “largest land trust in the world” and, 1:215 mismanagement of tribal accounts and, 1:218–219 Morton v. Mancari and, 2:958 Native American education and, 2:945 Office of Law Enforcement Services and, 1:218 Plenary Power Doctrine and, 1:217, 2:1270 Railroads Act and, 1:216 responsibilities of, 1:215 self-governance and, 1:219 Snyder Act of 1921 and, 1:215 sovereignty vs. tribal dependence and, 1:215–216 Trail of Tears and, 1:216, 1:261 treaty making and, 1:216–217 tribal justice and, 1:218 Tribally Controlled Schools Act and, 1:218 tribal recognition criteria and, 1:215 Trust Doctrine and, 1:216 Wheeler-Howard Act and, 1:217, 1:261–262, 3:1180 Worcester v. Georgia and, 1:216 Burgess, Ernest W. Chicago School of Race Relations and, 1:269, 1:270 Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Burgess and Park) and, 2:1028 social distance scale and, 2:1068 Burke Act of 1906, 1:373 Burmese Americans. See Myanmarese Americans Burwell, Dollie, 1:443 Bush, George W. anti-Castro programs of, 2:575–576 Bureau of Indian Affairs policies and, 1:218, 1:219 Caribbean American Heritage Month designated by, 1:240, 1:243 Department of Homeland Security created by, 2:697 guest worker program and, 3:1147 Haitian independence and, 2:576 Homeland Security Act and, 2:697 IDEA reauthorization by, 2:719 illegal immigrant amnesty and, 1:193, 1:566
Index
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 and, 2:947 NCLB and, 1:434 Puerto Rico status issue and, 2:1089 restrictive covenants and, 3:1157 spirituality of Americans and, 1:304 Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, 1:520 Cabotto, Giovanni, 2:767 Cadena, Carlos, 2:611–612 Cajuns of Louisiana, 1:515 California affirmative action in education in, 1:14, 1:148 affirmative action in employment and, 1:19 Afghan Americans in, 1:20 African American elected officials in, 1:28 African American/Latino ethnic succession conflicts in, 1:464 Agricultural Labor Relations Act and, 1:258, 2:659 Alcatraz Island occupation and, 1:59, 1:262, 1:302, 2:1023, 2:1033, 3:1130, 3:1130–1131 Alien Land Act and, 1:53, 2:781, 2:782 anti-Chinese sentiment in, 1:282, 1:286 anti-Hindu violence in, 2:711 Armenian Americans in, 1:90 Asiatic Exclusion League and, 1:534 Belgian Americans in, 1:137 bilingual education in, 1:143, 1:440–441, 2:916 Brown Berets in, 1:209 Bulgarian Americans in, 1:213 California Civil Rights Initiative and, 1:321 California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians and, 1:520, 2:717 Cambodian Americans in, 1:222 Canadian Americans in, 1:234 Central Americans in the U.S. in, 2:627 Chinese Americans in, 1:282–283, 1:284, 1:286–288, 1:290 colonias in, 1:318 Croatian Americans in, 1:348 Danish Americans in, 1:371 Dutch Americans in, 1:428 early Asian immigrants in, 1:92 educational stratification in, 1:435–436 Egyptian Americans in, 1:439 English-only movement in, 1:145–146 environmental inequality in, 1:443–444 Filipinos in, 1:494, 1:496 Finnish Americans in, 1:502 French Americans in, 1:515 Georgian Americans in, 1:538 gun control in, 1:175 Hispanics in, 1:135, 2:627 Hmong Americans in, 2:634 Hungarian Americans in, 2:664 immigrant entrepreneurs in, 2:685 immigrants settling in, 2:690 Indonesian Americans in, 2:722–723 internment camps in, 2:747 Iranian Americans in, 2:752 Iraqi Americans in, 2:754
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Italian Americans in, 2:770 Japanese Americans in, 2:784 Japanese Exclusion League in, 2:781 Jordanian Americans in, 2:797 Korean Americans in, 2:813 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 Latvian Americans in, 2:840 Lebanese Americans in, 2:841 Lithuanian Americans in, 2:856 Mennonite Brethren in, 2:890 Mexican American internal colonialism experience in, 2:741 Mexican repatriation from, 3:1151 Native American bingo palaces in, 1:519–520 Native American Census population data and, 2:965 (figure) Nigerian Americans in, 2:982 Pacific Islanders in, 2:1008–1009 Pakistani Americans in, 2:1010 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Perez v. Sharpe anti-intermarriage decision and, 2:738 Peruvian Americans in, 2:1043 Portuguese Americans in, 2:1064 Proposition 187 and, 1:194, 2:1075–1077 Proposition 209 and, 1:321 Proposition 227 and, 2:916 Puerto Rican Americans in, 2:1083 Romanian Americans in, 3:1174 Samoan Americans in, 3:1190 Serbian Americans in, 3:1223 Sicilian Americans in, 3:1228 Slovene Americans in, 3:1242 South Americans in, 3:1265 Spanish Americans in, 3:1274 Sri Lankan Americans in, 3:1275 Syrian Americans in, 3:1292 Tongan Americans in, 3:1315 Turkish Americans in, 3:1336 Ukrainian Americans in, 3:1343 United Kingdom immigrants in, 3:1350 Vietnamese Americans in, 3:1366 “yellow peril” ordinances in, 1:533 See also Los Angeles, California; San Diego, California; San Francisco, California California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, 1:520, 2:717 Cambodia, 1:221 (map) Cambodian Americans, 1:221–225, 1:221 (map) Cambodian Cluster Project and, 1:222 Cambodian Mutual Assistance Associations Project and, 1:222 cultural recreation, maintenance and, 1:223–224 dance and music of, 1:224 diversity of, 1:222–223 health issues of, 1:223 immigration history of, 1:221–222 Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act (1975) and, 2:828 Khmer Rouge regime and, 1:221–222 language of, 1:223–224 “Pol Pot Time” and, 1:222 population characteristics and, 1:222–223 poverty rates of, 1:96, 2:685
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
refugee trauma and, 1:221, 1:223 religious practices of, 1:224 resettlement in the U.S. and, 1:221–222 secondary migration of, 1:222 socioeconomic characteristics of, 1:223 street gangs and, 1:523 from urban vs. rural environment, 1:222 Canada, 1:225–227 Aboriginal treaty rights in, 1:226–227 African Canadians discrimination and, 1:226 Anti-Defamation League in, 1:71 background of, 1:225 bilingual program in, 1:441–442 British North American Act and, 1:225 British orientation in, 1:225 Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947 and, 1:226 Charter Groups in (French and English), 1:225 Chinese Canadians discrimination and, 1:226 citizenship in, 1:299 Confederation of Canada and, 1:225 cultural mosaic multiculturalism concept and, 2:887, 2:910 Finnish emigration to, 1:500–501 First Nations People in, 1:225, 1:230–233, 1:231 Haitians recruited by, 2:573 Hong Kong migration to, 2:649 Icelandic immigrants in, 2:673–675 Immigration Act of 1910 and, 1:225 Immigration Act of 1967 and, 1:226 Japanese Canadians discrimination and, 1:226 Mennonite Brethren in, 2:890 Mennonites in, 2:888 multicultural environment in, 1:226–227, 2:887 Multiculturalism Act of 1988 and, 1:227 Nunavut territory formation and, 2:887 parliamentary government of, 1:225 preferred immigrants in, 1:225 provinces and territories of, 1:225 Schmiedeleut in, 3:1203–1204 South Asian Canadians discrimination and, 1:226 Tibetan in, 3:1307–1308 Ukrainian Canadians discrimination and, 1:226 See also Canada, Aboriginal women; Canada, First Nations; Hate crimes in Canada Canada, Aboriginal women, 1:227–230 Act to Amend the Indian Act (1985) and, 1:227, 1:228, 1:229 current plight of, 1:229 “Double Mother clause” and, 1:228 Enfranchisement Act (1869) and, 1:227 hate crimes against, 2:592 Indian Act (1876) and, 1:228 Indian Act (1920) and, 1:228 Indian definitions and, 1:227 Indian Register and, 1:228 internal colonialism and, 2:741 Lands and Enfranchisement Acts (1868-1869) and, 1:227 legislative history of, 1:227–228 marriage laws and, 1:227–229 Royal Commission on the Status of Women and, 1:228 Supreme Court of Canada cases and, 1:228–229
Canada, First Nations, 1:230–233, 1:231 acculturation of, 1:8 Algonquian hunters, 1:230 anti-Native racism and, 1:232 Arctic People, Inuit, 1:230 Caribou People, 1:232 Constitution Act of 1982 and, 1:233, 2:997 contemporary First Nations people, 1:232–233 Dené tribes, 1:232 Eastern Subarctic People, 1:230 Eastern Woodlands People, 1:230 European colonization, culture loss and, 1:230, 1:232 Five Nation Confederacy and, 1:230 global warming issues and, 1:232 hate crimes against, 2:592 “Hunters of the Sea” and, 1:231–232 illegal tobacco sales and, 1:232–233 Indigenous justice, intervention and, 1:233 Indigenous people of, 1:230 Interior Salish tribes, 1:231 Iroquoian Farmers, 1:230–231 Ojibwa First Nations in, 2:995–997, 2:996 Pacific Coastal People, 1:231–232 Plains People, 1:231 Plateau People, 1:231 prehistory of, 1:230–232 Royal Proclamation of 1763 and, 1:232 St. Lawrence Low Land and Southern Ontario People, 1:230–231 suicide prevention and, 1:232 Tlingit and, 1:231, 1:231, 1:233, 3:1311–1314 treaties and, 1:233 Western Subarctic People, 1:232 See also Canada, Aboriginal women Canadian Americans, 1:233–235 border controls and, 1:234 census data on, 1:233, 1:234 contemporary community of, 1:234 famous Canadian Americans and, 1:234 French Canadian immigrants and, 1:234 immigration patterns of, 1:233–234 naturalization process and, 1:234 Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, 2:924 Canales, Alma, 2:831 Canosa, Jorge Más, 1:358 Cape Verde Islands, 1:235–236 assimilado status in, 1:236 badiu African heritage and, 1:236 brancos, prêtos racial groups in, 1:235 Creole community in, 1:336, 1:337 Crioulo (mestiço) population and, 1:235, 1:236, 1:336 mixed race Crioulo population in, 1:235 nation of emigrés and, 1:236 Portuguese colonialism and, 1:235 racial composition of, 1:235 rice, ethnicity definition and, 1:235–236 skin color, racial taxonomy in, 1:235–236 slave trade and, 1:235
Index
Capital punishment. See Death penalty Capotorti, Francesco, 2:906 Caribbean, 1:237–240, 1:237 (map) Belize and, 1:138–139, 1:138 (map) Brazil and, 1:200–204, 1:200 (map) Canadian immigrants from, 1:226 Caribbean American Heritage Month and, 1:240, 1:243 Caribbean Commonwealth countries and, 1:241 Caribbean pluralism, 1:237–238 Caribbeans in Britain, 1:239–240 Caribbeans in North America and continental Europe, 1:238–239 Colombia and, 1:315–317 Creole communities and, 1:336–338 Dominican Republic and, 1:410–411, 1:410 (map) geographic diversity of, 1:237 growing Caribbean consciousness and, 1:240 Haiti and, 1:238 immigration patterns from, 2:700 Indigenous Peoples in, 1:237 Jamaica and, 2:775–776, 2:775 (map) language, religion diversity in, 1:238 musical, literary traditions in, 1:238 nation-states’ power struggle in, 1:238 Organization of American States and, 1:238 political identity of, 1:238 racial, ethnic identity complexity in, 1:237 Trinidad and, 3:1326–1329 See also Cuba; Haiti; Haitian Americans; Haitian and Cuban immigration: a comparison; Puerto Rico Caribbean Americans, 1:240–244 African Americans conflict with, 1:241 British West Indies Temporary Alien Program and, 1:241 Caribbean Commonwealth countries and, 1:237 (map), 1:241 Crown Heights, Black-Jewish conflict and, 1:350–351 Cuba migration, demography and, 1:354–356 Cuban Americans and, 1:357–359 definition of, 1:241 Dominican Americans and, 1:408–409 education and occupation of, 1:242–243 family and households of, 1:242 famous Caribbean Americans, 1:244 Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and, 1:253 Jamaican Americans and, 2:776–778 migration histories of, 1:241 naturalization statistics of, 1:243 racial, ethnic composition of, 1:241 religious and political participation of, 1:243–244 residential patterns of, 1:241–242 sanctuary movement in Arizona and, 1:253 slavery and, 1:241 social, political activism of, 1:241 socioeconomic condition of, 1:241 transnational ties of, 1:244 Trinidad and, 3:1326–1329 women’s roles and, 1:242 Caricom (Caribbean economic common market), 1:238 Carlisle Indian School, 1:217, 2:945, 2:945
1521
Carmichael, Stokely, 1:244–246 Black Nationalism and, 1:245 Black Panther Party and, 1:175, 1:176, 1:246 Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (Carmichael and Hamilton) and, 1:246 Black Power and, 1:26, 1:177, 1:244, 1:246, 1:308, 1:483, 2:807 Black Power (Carmichael) written by, 2:740 early years of, 1:244–245 Freedom Movement and, 1:26 “freedom rides” and, 1:245 institutional racism term and, 1:392 Martin Luther King, Jr. and, 1:245, 1:246 Pan-African Socialism and, 1:244, 1:246 religious ideology of, 1:244–245 Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism written by, 1:246 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and, 1:244, 1:245–246, 3:1281 Kwame Ture name and, 1:246 Carpenter, Linda, 3:1310 Carruthers, Jacob, 1:34 Carter, Jimmy American Indian Religious Freedom Act and, 3:1181 Interagency Council for Minority Business Enterprise and, 1:163 Mariel boatlift and, 2:873–874 Cary, Mary Ann Shadd, 1:22 Caste, 1:246–249 caste identifies replacing caste system and, 1:249 caste uprising and, 1:248 hierarchical purity of, 1:246–247, 1:247 ideology at lowest hierarchy of, 1:247–248, 1:249 in India, 2:707–710, 3:1213, 3:1214 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and, 2:744 jati castes and, 1:247, 1:249 “Other Backward Classes” of, 2:709–710 politics intersection with, 1:248 race vs., 1:247 Rg Veda categories of, 1:247 “Scheduled Castes” and, 2:709 Scheduled Tribes of, 2:709 Untouchable category of, 1:247, 2:709, 3:1213 Varna system of, 1:247 See also Indian Americans Castells, Manuel, 2:724 Castro, Fidel, 1:354, 1:355–356, 1:357, 1:358, 2:575–576 CBP. See Customs and Border Protection (CBP) CCP. See Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Census, U.S., 1:249–251 accuracy of, 1:251 Afghan American data and, 1:20 African American data and, 1:21, 1:27 (map) Albanian American data and, 1:49 American Community Survey of, 1:20, 1:137, 1:204, 1:213, 1:234, 1:235, 1:251, 1:348, 1:368, 1:428, 1:439, 2:597, 2:752, 2:754, 2:797, 2:828, 2:840, 2:841, 2:929, 2:960 (table), 2:982, 2:1010, 2:1016, 2:1064, 3:1174, 3:1274, 3:1350
1522
Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
ancestry questions on, 1:250–251 Arab American data and, 1:86 Asian American data and, 1:94, 1:97 Asian Indian category and, 2:712 Assyrian American data and, 1:107 Bangladeshi American data and, 1:133 Belgian American data and, 1:136–137 Bulgarian American data and, 1:212, 1:213 Cambodian American data and, 1:222, 1:223 Canadian American data and, 1:233, 1:234 Constitutional mandate origin of, 1:249–250 Croatian American data and, 1:347, 1:348 Cuban American data and, 1:357 Czech American data and, 1:367 Dominican American data and, 1:408–409 Dutch American data and, 1:427–428 Egyptian American data and, 1:439 enumerator observations and, 1:251 Estonian American data and, 1:449 ethnic population changes since 1965 and, 2:700 future plans regarding, 1:251 Georgian American data and, 1:539 gerrymandering and, 1:545–546 Haitian American data and, 2:574, 2:577 Hawaiian racial, ethnic groups data and, 2:597–598, 2:597–598 (tables) Hispanic, Latino racial categories and, 2:250, 2:624–625 Hispanic data and, 1:97 Hmong Americans data and, 2:634 Hungarian American data and, 2:664 Icelandic American data and, 2:673 immigrant origin countries and, 1:105 income data and, 1:392 Indian American data and, 2:712 Iranian American data and, 2:752 Iraqi American data and, 2:754 Irish American data and, 2:761 Italian American data and, 2:770 Jordanian American data and, 2:797 Korean Americans data and, 2:811 Laotian American data and, 2:828, 2:829 Latvian American data and, 2:839–840 Lebanese American data and, 2:840–841 Lithuanian American data and, 2:855, 2:856 long vs. short form of, 1:250 minority higher education data and, 2:614 mixed-heritage racial identity and, 1:101 multiracial designations on, 2:999–1000, 2:999 (table) Myanmarese American data and, 2:928, 2:929 Native American self-identity in, 2:958, 2:959, 2:960 (table) Nigerian American data and, 2:982 “Other Race” category and, 1:250, 1:251 Pacific Islander data and, 2:1007, 2:1007 (table), 3:1189 Palestinian American data and, 2:1013 Panamanian American data and, 2:1015–1016 political boundaries and, 1:250 Portuguese American data and, 2:1063–1064 Puerto Rican American data and, 1:430 racial categories and, 1:250–251
racial identity, politics and, 1:249 Romanian American data and, 3:1173, 3:1174 Salvadoran American data and, 3:1186, 3:1190 self-identification and, 2:700, 2:958, 2:999–1000 Serbian American data and, 3:1223 Sicilian American data and, 3:1228 Slovak American data and, 3:1240 Slovene American data and, 3:1242 South Americans in U.S. data and, 3:1263 on Spanish Americans, 3:1274 Sri Lankan American data and, 3:1275 student linguistic demographic data and, 1:440 Syrian American data and, 3:1291–1292 Tongan American data and, 3:1315 Turkish American data and, 3:1336 Ukrainian American data and, 3:1344 unemployment among disabled persons data and, 1:67 Ungandan American data and, 3:1340 United Kingdom immigrants in the U.S. data and, 3:1349–1350 Vietnamese American data and, 3:1366, 3:1368 wealth distribution data and, 3:1382 Center for Individual Rights, 3:1160 Central Americans in the United States, 1:251–256, 1:252 (map) Central American Refugee Center and, 1:255 Central American Studies programs and, 2:838 Colombia and, 1:315–317 Dominican Americans and, 1:408–409 economic conditions of, 1:253–254 Guatemalan Americans and, 1:564–566 Honduran Americans and, 2:646–647 inequity, political, economic “push” factors of, 1:252–253 origins of Central American migration and, 1:252–253 Salvadoran Americans and, 3:1185–1887 social and cultural activism of, 1:255 social ties of, 1:254 Temporary Protected Status Law and, 1:255 U.S. government policy toward, 1:253 women, the Indigenous, and youth of, 1:254–255 See also specific immigrant group CETA. See Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) Chain migration of Cypriot Americans, 1:366 family, familism and, 1:477, 1:480 of German Americans, 1:541 of Hungarian Americans, 2:662 increase in, 2:685 of Italian Americans, 2:769 kinship ties and, 2:809 of Polish Americans, 2:1056 of Portuguese Americans, 2:1064 Chalk, Frank, 1:531 Chaney, James, 1:307, 1:329 Change to Win labor union federation, 2:826, 2:827 Charlotte, North Carolina, 1:31 Charter schools, 1:434 Chatman, Jennifer, 2:749
Index
Chávez, Cesar, 1:256–259 Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and, 1:257 boycott strategy of, 1:302 charismatic authority of, 1:468 Chicano Movement and, 1:272 Community Service Organization and, 1:257 early history of, 1:256–257 enduring legacy of, 1:258–259 Dolores Huerta and, 1:256, 1:257, 2:658–659 National Farm Workers Association and, 1:257 nonviolent activism of, 1:258 political activism of, 1:257 Presidential Medal of Honor awarded to, 1:258 Fred Ross, 1:257 United Farm Workers and, 1:256, 1:256, 1:257–258, 1:302, 2:896 Chavez, Erik, 1:135 Chavez, Linda, 2:916 Cheney, James, 3:1282 Cherokee, 1:259–263 AIM and, 1:262 Alcatraz Island occupation and, 1:262 ancestral homeland of, 1:259 ancestry vs. tribal membership and, 1:262 boarding schools and, 1:261 Bureau of Indian Affairs, Washington, D.C. incident and, 1:262 census population data of, 2:960 (table) Certification of Degree of Indian Blood, 1:262 Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and, 1:259, 1:261, 1:263 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and, 1:216, 2:1270–1271 culture of, 1:259–260 Curtis Act (1887) and, 1:261 Dawes Act of 1887 and, 1:217, 1:261, 1:372 Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of North Carolina and, 1:259, 1:261, 1:263 European contact, colonization and, 1:260–261 Freedmen controversy and, 1:262–263 French and Indian Wars and, 1:261 Indian Citizenship Act (1924) and, 1:261 Indian Civil Rights Act (1968) and, 1:260 intermarriage of, 1:260 Keetoowah Nighthawk Society and, 1:260, 1:261 language, identity and, 1:260 Major Crime Act and, 1:260 Mississippian mound-building culture and, 1:259 Native American identity and, 1:259, 1:261, 1:262 in Oklahoma, 1:293 rebuilding by, 1:261 reform, legislation and, 1:261–262 religion, identity and, 1:259–260 relocation policies and, 1:262 removal to Oklahoma of, 1:371 Revolutionary War and, 1:261 self-determination era of, 1:262, 1:263 social reform movement and, 1:262 sovereignty of, 1:259 Ross O. Swimmer and, 1:262 three Cherokee Nations, 1:262–263
1523
Trail of Tears and, 1:216, 1:261 tribal records of, 2:956 tribal rolls and, 1:262, 1:263 tribes, nations of, 1:259 United Keetoowah Band of, 1:259, 1:260, 1:261, 1:262, 1:263 U.S. v. Rogers, Native American identity issue and, 2:958 Western and Eastern Cherokee division and, 1:259, 1:261, 1:263, 1:519 Western Band of, 1:260 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 1:216, 2:1270–1271 Cheyenne, 1:263–269 Algonquian language of, 1:263 census population data of, 2:960 (table) Council of 44 and, 1:267 cultural history of, 1:263–265, 1:264 gender division of labor of, 1:265–266 Great Omaha powwow dance and, 1:264 Hidatsa Sacred Arrow traditions of, 1:264, 1:268 life cycle ritual activity of, 1:266 Maahotse renewal ceremony and, 1:268 Mandan Okipa ceremony of, 1:264 marriage, kinship and, 1:266–267 Massaum ceremony and, 1:268 men’s societies and, 1:267 New Life Lodge, Sun Dance world renewal ceremony and, 1:268 nomadic life of, 1:263–264 Northern Cheyenne reservation incident (1878) and, 3:1154 Northern vs. Southern Cheyenne and, 1:263, 1:265, 1:267 “red talkers,” “people of an alien speech” meaning of, 1:263 religion of, 1:267–269 Sacred Medicine Hat and, 1:268 Sand Creek Massacre and, 3:1196–1197 seasonal cycle, environment influence on, 1:267 social organization of, 1:267 subsistence economy of, 1:265 Sweet Medicine of, 1:267 ten named bands of, 1:267 Chicago, Illinois African American electoral/political activity in, 1:28–29 African Americans migration to, 1:31 Assyrian Americans in, 1:108 Bangladeshi Americans in, 1:133 Black Panthers and, 1:176 Cherokee relocated in, 1:262 Chinatown in, 1:287, 1:288 Chinese Americans in, 1:286, 1:287, 1:288 community development corporations in, 1:327 community development finance institutions in, 1:327 Czech Americans in, 1:368 Danish Americans and, 1:370 Estonian Americans in, 1:450 ethnic enclaves in, 2:699 ethnic succession conflicts in, 1:463–464 Filipino Americans in, 1:496 gentrification, West Town and, 1:536 German Americans in, 1:542 Greek Americans in, 1:560, 1:561–562
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Guatemalan Americans in, 1:565 Haymarket Riot in, 1:542 Hmong Americans in, 2:633 Italian Americans in, 2:768 juvenile courts in, 2:799 Lithuanian Americans in, 2:855 Mennonites in, 2:889 Nigerian Americans in, 2:982 Norwegian Americans in, 2:992 Operation Breadbasket in, 2:773–774, 2:1001 Pakistani Americans in, 2:1010 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Polish Americans in, 2:1057, 2:1058 political ethnic succession in, 1:464 Puerto Rican Americans in, 2:1083 race riots in, 1:400, 1:401, 2:796 residential segregation in, 1:308 restrictive covenants in, 3:1156–1157 segregation in, 1:401 Sicilian Americans in, 3:1227 Sri Lankan Americans in, 3:1275 Swedish Americans in, 3:1287 Tibetan Americans in, 3:1307 Turkish Americans in, 3:1336 Ukrainian Americans in, 3:1342, 3:1343–1344 Harold Washington and, 3:1375–1377 Young Lords in, 3:1421 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Chicago School of Race Relations, 1:269–272 1892-1920, early period of, 1:270–271 1935-1960, later years of, 1:271 African American scholars of, 1:270 African American women scholars and, 1:270, 1:271 An American Dilemma (Gunnar Myrdal) and, 1:57 assimilation model of race relations and, 1:270, 3:1303 Ernest W. Burgess and, 1:269, 1:270 Wilmoth A. Carter and, 1:271 color line in, 1:270 cyclical pattern of race relations and, 1:269 era comparisons of, 1:271 ethnic succession model developed by, 1:462–465 gender color line and, 1:270, 1:271 Loraine Richardson Green and, 1:270 Helen MacGill Hughes and, 1:271 Hull House of Race Relations and, 1:270, 1:271 legitimated Chicago School and, 1:269–270, 1:271 Abraham Lincoln and, 1:270 George Herbert Mead and, 1:269 natural histories importance and, 1:269 Robert E. Park and, 1:269, 1:270, 1:271, 2:1028 race relations intellectual movement and, 1:269 scholar members of, 1:269, 1:270, 1:271 social origins of group prejudice focus of, 1:269 sojourner psychological orientation of immigrants and, 1:286 W. I. Thomas and, 1:271 urban disenfrchisement pattern and, 1:269 the Veil of the Chicago School and, 1:270, 1:271 White, patriarchal, middle-class justification of, 1:270 See also Hull House School of Race Relations
Chicano Movement, 1:272–274 achievements of, 1:274, 2:896 Aztlán symbolism and, 1:122, 1:209, 1:273 Brown Berets and, 1:208–210 Cesar Chávez and, 1:272 Chicana feminist movement and, 2:896 Chicanismo core concept of, 1:272 Chicano American Studies programs and, 2:837 Chicano arts, literature “renaissance” and, 1:274 “Chicano Moratorium” event and, 1:274 civil disobedience of, 1:272 critical race theory influenced by, 1:344 Crusade for Justice and, 1:122, 1:273 cultural nationalism, self-determination and, 1:122 Denver Youth Conference and, 2:837 El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán and, 1:122 films and, 1:498–499 goals of, 1:272–273 Hispanic, Latino, Chicano defined and, 1:497 internal colonialism term used in, 2:739, 2:740 La Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres and, 1:273 La Raza Unida Party and, 1:272–273, 2:831–833, 2:896 Mexican American civil rights organizations and, 1:272 Mexican American mixed-race identity and, 1:122 Mexican American transnationalism and, 1:122 Mexican American Youth Organization and, 1:273 Gloria Molina and, 2:897 Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán and, 1:122 National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference and, 1:273 nationalist movement of, 1:272 organizations of, 1:272–273 origins of, 1:272 pachuco, cholo icons and, 2:1006 Julian Samora and, 3:1191–1193 students’ role in, 1:273–274 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and, 3:1326 United Farm Workers movement and, 1:272 Yo Soy Joaquin (Gonzales) and, 1:122 Chickamaugan tribe, 1:261 Chickasaw census population data of, 2:960 (table) Choctaw conflict with, 1:292 Dawes Act and, 1:372 Mississippian mound-building culture and, 1:259 in Oklahoma, 1:293 Chico Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (Drake and Clayton) and, 1:170, 1:415 Child development, 1:274–276 bicultural identity development and, 1:276 cognitive flexibility development and, 1:276 “deficiency” model, children of color and, 1:275 extended-kin networks and, 1:275, 1:275–276 Head Start and, 2:602–604 Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 and, 2:714–716 mainstream research and, 1:275 minority adaptive culture and, 1:275 minority group misclassifications and, 1:275 parenting and, 2:1024–1027
Index
race, ethnicity centrality to, 1:274–276 racial, ethnic socialization and, 1:276 racism, discrimination, prejudice effects on, 1:275 “sensitivity to discontinuity” development and, 1:276 transracial adoption and, 3:1322–1325 Chimerical prejudice, 1:77, 1:78 Chin, Vincent, 1:54, 1:276–278 American Citizens for Justice and, 1:277, 1:278 community outrage and, 1:277 crime and punishment and, 1:277 Japanese American Citizens League and, 2:781 racism evidence and, 1:277–278 China, 1:278–281, 1:278 (map) Canadian immigrants from, 1:225 Chinese Canadians and, 1:226 Chinese Communist Party and, 1:279 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and, 1:53, 1:85, 1:278, 1:282, 1:286, 1:289–291, 1:466, 1:534, 2:687, 2:694, 2:699 Cultural Revolution in, 1:281 diversity in, 1:278–279 economic diversity in, 1:279–280 “five races” of, 1:279 foreign students in, 1:505 Han majority in, 1:279–280 Hmong migration to, 2:633 Hong Kong identity and, 1:280 India borderland dispute with, 1:192 indigenous regions of, 1:280–281 language, writing systems in, 1:280 Marxist/Leninist/Maoist minority group definition and, 1:280 minority Chinese life and, 1:280–281 minority nationalities in, 1:279, 1:280 Naturalization Act of 1870 and, 1:466, 2:694 parenting in, 2:1025 religious freedom in, 1:281 Taiwan and, 3:1294 “Tibet Autonomous Region” and, 1:279 Chinatowns, 1:281–285 anti-Chinese sentiment and, 1:282 “bachelor societies” concept in, 1:283, 1:286 Chinese diaspora and, 1:282 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and, 1:282, 1:283, 1:286 Chinese New Year parade in, 1:282 class-based geographic population distribution and, 1:283–284 ethnic enclaves of, 1:281–289 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and, 1:284 new, old, hybrid Chinatowns and, 1:284–285 postwar demographic shifts of, 1:283–284 refugee havens and, 1:282 San Francisco and, 1:282–283 stereotypes of, 1:281 suburban Chinese Americans and, 1:284–285, 1:287–288 tourist districts and, 1:282–283 tsu organization of, 1:282 See also China; Chinese Americans Chinese Americans, 1:285–289 Alien Land Acts and, 1:52–55 armed forces members and, 1:93 “bachelor societies” concept and, 1:283, 1:286, 2:694
1525
birth rite of passage of, 3:1162 Canadian Asian hate crimes and, 2:592–593 Vincent Chin and, 1:276–278, 2:781 Chinatowns, New York City, 1:97 Chinatowns and, 1:281–289, 1:282 Chinese Alien Wives of American Citizens Act and, 1:283 Chinese exclusion and, 1:286 Ching ming celebration of, 1:276 class differences in, 1:283–284, 1:288 community cohesiveness of, 1:289 Displaced Persons Act (1948) and, 1:287 diversity of, 1:285–286, 1:287 early immigrants of, 1:92 English language learner students and, 1:288 ethnic enclaves of, 1:290, 1:453 geographic distribution patterns of, 1:287–288 Hawaiian population and, 2:595, 2:597–598, 2:597–598 (tables) health disparities of, 2:606 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and, 1:284, 1:285, 2:700 immigration periods of, 1:286–287 interracial marriages of, 1:482 legislative changes and, 2:700 model minority stereotype and, 1:287, 1:364, 1:481, 2:694, 2:1062 newcomer challenges and, 1:288 oppression resistance of, 1:93 postwar years and, 1:286–287 poverty rates of, 2:685 quota system and, 1:495 Refugee Relief Act (1953) and, 1:287 Scott Act (1888) and, 2:694 sending countries of, 1:285 sojourner psychological orientation of, 1:286 statistics regarding, 1:92, 1:534 suburban Chinese Americans and, 1:284–285, 1:287–288 undocumented immigrants and, 1:288 United States v. Wong Kim Ark and, 1:93 unskilled immigrants and, 1:92 violence against, 1:92 War Brides Act (1945) and, 1:283, 1:287, 2:694 Yick Wo v. Hopkins and, 1:93 See also Alien Land Acts; Asian Americans; Asian Americans, New York City; Asian American studies; China; Chinatowns; Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 1:279–281 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 1:289–291, 1:466, 1:534 administration and enforcement of, 1:291 Alien Land Acts and, 1:53 Amendments and renewals of, 1:290 anti-Chinese sentiment and, 1:282, 1:286, 1:289, 2:694, 2:699, 2:969 Arab Americans and, 1:85 “Chinese laborers” vs. skilled laborers and, 1:289 First Chinese Exclusion Act and, 1:290 Geary Act (1892) and, 1:290 Japanese immigration increase after, 1:53, 1:278, 2:687, 2:764 Magnuson Act (1943) and, 1:289, 1:290–291
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
New Immigration Act (1965) and, 1:291 opium smoking and, 3:1202, 3:1202 railroad laborers and, 1:289 repeal of, 1:287, 1:290–291 Chinese Exclusion Act (Canada), 1:226 Chino, Eusebio, Fr., 2:767 Chippewa of Canada, 1:230 census population data of, 2:960 (table) Leonard Peltier and, 2:1032–1035 See also Ojibwa Chisholm, Shirley, 2:939 Chivington, John M., 3:1196–1197 Choctaw, 1:291–294 alcohol’s impact on, 1:292 census population data of, 2:960 (table) Chickasaw conflict with, 1:292 Choctaw nation today, 1:293–294 Civil War and, 1:293 Dawes Act and, 1:372 early history of, 1:291–292 forced exile of, 1:293 French and Indian War and, 1:292 generosity importance to, 1:292 matrilineality of, 1:291 Mississippian mound-building culture and, 1:259 Mississippi Band of, 1:293 Mowa Band of, Alabama and, 1:293 Muskogee language of, 1:291 Nanih Waiya Mother Mound and, 1:291 Oklahoma, “Indian Territory” exile of, 1:293 Oklahoma land loss of, 1:293 sovereignty of, 1:293 Spanish explorers and, 1:292 subsistence economy o, 1:292 treaties, land loss and, 1:292–293 U.S. government relations with, 1:292–293 Christian, Barbara, 1:34 Christian, Mark, 1:41 Christianity anti-Semitism and, 1:546 Back to Africa movement and, 1:125 Black Christianity, Black intellectuals and, 1:169 Cherokee and, 1:259–260 in China, 1:279 Christian imperialism and, 1:381 citizenship, Middle Ages and, 1:296 colonialism and, 1:411 colonization and, 1:317 cosmopolitanism history and, 1:333 Cuban migration and, 1:355 Cypriot Americans and, 1:367 Father Divine Peace Mission Movement and, 1:484–485 Greek Americans and, 1:559 Greek Cypriots and, 1:367 in Haiti, 2:572 Hmong Americans and, 2:636 in India, 2:707–708 in Indonesia, 2:721, 2:723
Iranian Americans and, 2:752 Japanese Americans and, 2:784–785 Korean Americans and, 2:812 of Laotian Americans, 2:829 Latin American Indigenous people and, 2:833 Menominee Tribe and, 2:891 Middle Ages, citizenship and, 1:296–297 Muslims in Spain and, 2:926 Native Americans, colonialism and, 1:514 of Pakistani Americans, 2:1010 Pueblo and, 2:1080–1081 segregation in, 3:1214 in Singapore, 3:1230 slavery and, 2:793 in Turkey, 3:1335 united humanity and, 1:333 of Vietnamese Americans, 3:1366 See also Protestantism; Roman Catholics; specific denomination Churches and Voluntary Associations Among Negroes in Chicago (Drake), 1:415 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). See Mormons, race and Church of Scientology, in Germany, 3:1140 Cisneros, Henry, 2:896–897 Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District, 1:294–296 Brown v. Board of Education and, 1:294 the case, 1:294 the court’s instructions, 1:295 “de facto” segregation and, 1:294 desegregation class action suit of, 1:294 Mexican American teacher requirement and, 1:295 the rulings, 1:294–295 school transportation plans and, 1:295 “state action” component of, 1:294, 1:295 Citizenship, 1:296–300 asylum and, 1:109–111 birthright vs. naturalization acquisition of, 1:299 Byzantine Era and, 1:297 civil religion and, 1:302–305 colonialism and, 1:298 colonial period to present, 1:298 cosmopolitanism and, 1:300, 1:333–336 democratization process and, 1:296 ethnonational differentiations and, 1:297 European Convention on Citizenship and, 1:299 European Union and, 1:298, 1:300 exclusionary character of, 1:296 French Revolution, Code Civil of 1804 and, 1:297 global citizenship and, 1:300 Greek democracy and, 1:296 loss of, 1:299 Middle Ages and, 1:296–297 Migratory Period, Period of Barbarian Invasions and, 1:297 multicultural citizenship concept and, 1:300 multiple citizenships and, 1:299 nation-states, common identity and, 1:298 Nordic Passport Union and, 1:298 peoplehood and, 2:1035–1037
Index
refugees, asylum seekers and, 1:299 Renaissance, Enlightenment and, 1:297–298 renunciation of, 1:299 revolution, parliamentary democracy and, 1:298 Roman thinking regarding, 1:296 social rights and, 1:297 status of membership definition of, 1:296 statutory citizenship and, 1:299 supranational citizenship and, 1:300 types of, 1:298–300 United Nations and, 1:298 world wars and, 1:298 City of Boerne v. Flores, 3:1142–1143 Civil disobedience, 1:300–302 Alcatraz Island occupation and, 1:302, 2:1033 boycotts and, 1:197–198, 1:258 Cesar Chávez and, 1:258, 1:302 of Chicano Movement, 1:272 Fellowship of Reconciliation and, 1:302, 1:328 Freedom Rides and, 1:301–302, 1:306–307, 1:329, 3:1268, 3:1281 Mahatma Gandhi and, 1:301 historical background regarding, 1:301–302 Martin Luther King, Jr. and, 1:301 Korematsu v. United States and, 1:302 mass demonstrations and, 1:302 Montgomery bus boycott and, 1:25, 1:197–198, 1:301, 1:306, 1:310, 1:328 nonviolent public acts of law violation and, 1:300 by other ethnic groups, 1:302 sit-ins and, 1:301, 1:306, 1:310, 1:329 Henry Thoreau and, 1:300 Civil Liberties Act (1988), 2:781, 2:783, 2:810, 2:986, 2:987, 3:1198 Civil religion, 1:302–305 academic interpretive tool of, 1:304–305 America as religion and, 1:303–304 Robert N. Bellah and, 1:303–305 common spiritual vocabulary and, 1:304 Daedalus article (Bellah) and, 1:303–304 debates, extensions of, 1:304–305 deification of the polity and, 1:303 a developing covenant and, 1:304 national sacrifice, death, rebirth phase of, 1:304 nation formation stage of, 1:304 nation’s global responsibility phase of, 1:304 pledging allegiance to the flag and, 1:303 The Social Contract (Rousseau) and, 1:297, 1:303 Civil Rights Act of 1954 affirmative action and, 1:550 Japanese American Citizens League and, 2:781 Civil Rights Act of 1957, 1:26 Civil Rights Act of 1964 affirmative action in the workplace and, 1:17, 1:28, 2:822 affirmative action opposition and, 1:12 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and, 1:66 Anti-Defamation League and, 1:17 Commission on Civil Rights and, 1:17 EEOC and, 1:17, 1:26, 1:28, 1:162, 1:445, 1:446–447
1527
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and, 2:694 Martin Luther King, Jr. and, 2:806 labor unions, women and, 1:17 managerial, professional jobs and, 1:162 NAACP and, 2:932, 3:1138 Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs and, 1:162 passage of, 1:307 school desegregation and, 1:211, 1:307, 3:1204 White corporate recruiters, Black colleges and, 1:162 Civil Rights Act of 1991 Glass Ceiling Act and, 1:549 veto, then passage of, 1:29 Civil Rights Bill of 1960, 1:26 Civil Rights Movement, 1:305–309 affirmative action and, 1:12 African American Freedom Movement and, 1:25–26 African American studies and, 1:32–33 Albany, Birmingham and, 1:307 Alexander v. Holmes County (1969) and, 1:307 The Anatomy of a Revolution (Crane) and, 2:807 assessment of, 1:308–309 Black intellectuals and, 1:168 Black labor force participation and, 1:37 Black Nationalism and, 1:173–174 Black Power and, 1:308 boycotts and, 1:197–198 Boynton v. Virginia and, 1:306 Brown v. Board of Education and, 1:13, 1:25, 1:210–212, 1:436, 2:616 Chicano Movement and, 1:272–274 civil disobedience and, 1:300–302 Dred Scott v. Sandford and, 1:416–419 federal legislation and, 1:26 Freedom Democratic Party and, 1:308 Freedom Rides and, 1:245, 1:301–302, 1:306–307, 1:310, 1:329, 3:1268, 3:1281 Free Speech Movement and, 1:32 historical background of, 1:306 “I Have a Dream” speech (King), 1:305, 1:307 intermarriage rights and, 2:738–739 Jewish support of, 2:790, 2:791 Martin Luther King, Jr. and, 1:25 March on Washington and, 1:305, 1:307, 2:806 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and, 1:311 Montgomery bus boycott and, 1:25, 1:197–198, 1:301, 1:306, 1:310, 1:328 movement in the North and, 1:308 Nationality Act of 1965 and, 1:496 Niagara Movement origins of, 1:306 nonviolent active resistance of, 1:26 organizations, leaders of, 1:25–26 origins of, 1:308 The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (Morris) and, 1:308 police brutality and, 1:308 Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency (McAdam) and, 1:308 racial formation through, 3:1104 religion role in, 3:1138 right to vote and, 1:307–308
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school desegregation and, 1:307 sit-ins, 1:301, 1:306, 1:310, 1:329 social gender norms in, 1:311 social science perspective of race, ethnicity and, 1:558 social work profession and, 3:1260 summary regarding, 1:305–306 Women’s Political Council and, 3:1139 See also Brown v. Board of Education; Chicano Movement; Civil Rights Movement, women and; King, Martin Luther, Jr. Civil Rights Movement, women and, 1:309–312 activism organization, recruitment and, 1:309 Ella Baker, 1:310 Daisy Bates, 1:310 Unita Blackwell, 1:311 as “bridge leaders,” 1:311 Septima Clark, 1:309–310 Annie Devine, 1:311 early leaders of, 1:309–310 Victoria Gray, 1:311 Fannie Lou Hamer, 1:25, 1:308, 1:311 bell hooks, 2:651–652 Diane Nash, 1:310 Rosa Parks, 1:25, 1:197, 1:306, 1:310, 2:806, 2:1028–1030 Jo Anne Robinson, 2:806 SNCC, Freedom Summer and, 1:310–312, 1:329 social gender norms in movement and, 1:311 Jane Stembridge, 1:311 Women’s Political Council and, 1:310 Civil War African Americans fighting in, 1:22–23, 2:903 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith) and, 1:149–151 Black bourgeoisie after, 1:152–153 Choctaw and, 1:293 Abraham Lincoln and, 2:853 Massachusetts 54th Regiment and, 1:414 See also Abolitionism: the movement; Abolitionism: the people; Emancipation Proclamation; Jim Crow; Lincoln, Abraham; Reconstruction, Civil War; Slavery The Clansman (Dixon), 1:150, 2:816, 3:1408 Clark, Kenneth, 1:245 Clark, Septima, 1:309 Clayton, Horace R., 1:331, 1:415 Cleaver, Eldridge, 1:175, 1:176 Cleaver, Kathleen, 1:175 Cleveland, Grover, 2:938 Cleveland, Ohio African American mayor of, 1:28 Estonian Americans in, 1:450 Hungarian Americans in, 2:662, 2:663 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Slovak Americans in, 3:1238 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Clinton, Bill Cesar Chávez and, 1:256, 1:258 clemencies granted by, 2:1085 environmental justice focus of, 1:395, 1:443 Hawai‘i apology of, 2:582 HOPE VI program and, 2:1077, 2:1078
housing desegregation policies of, 1:56 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (1996) signed by, 2:677–678 immigration “wet feet/dry feet” policy of, 2:578 Indian Self-Determination Contract Reform Act and, 1:219 Native American sacred sites and, 3:1182 Rosa Parks and, 2:1028 Leonard Peltier and, 2:1034–1035 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and, 1:364, 3:1252, 3:1386–1387 Proposition 187 (California) and, 2:1075–1076 Puerto Rico status issue and, 2:1089 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993) and, 3:1142, 3:1182 Tuskegee Syphilis Study apology by, 2:884 welfare reform and, 3:1385 Coalition to Support Cuban Detainees, 2:873 Cobell v. Babbitt, 1:218–219 Coble, James, 3:1310 Cochran, Johnnie L., 1:346 Code of Federal Regulations Courts, 1:218 Code of the street, 1:312–314 Elijah Anderson research on, 1:312, 1:313, 2:645 cultural response and, 1:313–314 defense mechanism of, 1:312 disrespect, respect significance and, 1:313, 1:340 drug use results and, 1:312–313 structural factors of urban environments and, 1:312–313, 1:340 urban interpersonal behavior rules of, 1:312 “White flight” and, 1:312 Code of the Street (Anderson), 2:645 Coker v. Georgia, 1:375 Coler, Jack, 2:1034 Colgrove v. Green, 1:545 Colley, Linda, 1:206 Collier, John, 1:261 Collins, Patricia Hill, 1:314–315 academic work of, 1:315 Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment written by, 1:314 Black Nationalism, racism, feminism intersection and, 1:315 From Black Power to Hip-Hop written by, 1:315 Black Sexual Politics written by, 1:314 Black womanhood, worldview and, 1:314 critical social theory and, 1:314 Fighting Words written by, 1:315 matrix of domination concept and, 1:315, 2:1074 “outsider within” self-definition and, 1:314 race, class, gender intersectionality work of, 1:314–315, 1:488, 1:528 standpoint theory and, 1:314 Colombia, 1:315–317, 1:316 (map) Chibchas of Andes highlands in, 1:315 class, economics in, 1:316 diaspora from, 1:315 illegal drug production in, 1:422 independence of, 1:316
Index
Indigenous people of, 1:315–316 population, geography of, 1:315 Spanish colonization of, 1:315–316 World War II refugees in, 1:316 Colón, Jesus, 2:1084 Colonialism, 1:317–318 African colonies independence from, 1:317 Aleuts and, 1:49–52 ancient empires and, 1:317 Belize and, 1:138–139 of Brazil, 1:200–201 in the Cape Verde Islands, 1:235–236 Christianization and, 1:317 Colombia and, 1:315–316 Creole communities and, 1:336–338 decolonization and, 1:317 Dominican Republic and, 1:408, 1:410–411 Europe and, 1:317–318, 1:474–475 Frantz Fanon’s work and, 1:483 genocide and, 1:531–532 globalization during, 1:552 Haiti and, 2:571–572 imperialism vs., 1:317 indigenous population extermination and, 1:317 internal colonialism and, 2:739–741 Jamaica and, 2:775–776, 2:775 (map) by Japan, 2:780 of Kenya, 2:802 of Latin America’s Indigenous people, 2:833–835 legitimacy controversy and, 1:317 of Mexico by Spain, 2:898–900 neocolonialism and, 1:317–318 New Netherland and, 1:428 Orientalism and, 2:1003–1004 postcolonialism and, 1:318 race, ethnicity conceptualization through, 1:557–558 racism, ethnocentrism and, 1:317 Social Darwinism and, 1:317 system of domination and value and, 1:317 transferred populations and, 1:317 Trinidad and, 3:1326–1329 See also Internal colonialism Colonias, 1:318–320 addressing problems in, 1:319 community history and, 1:318–319 Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act (1990) and, 1:318, 1:319 definition of, 1:318 life in, 1:319 U.S.–Mexico border and, 1:318 Colorado African American elected officials in, 1:28 bilingual education in, 1:143 Cheyenne in, 1:264 Hispanics in, 1:135 Hmong Americans in, 2:634 internment camps in, 2:747 Slovene Americans in, 3:1242 See also Denver, Colorado
1529
Color blindness, 1:320–322 antiracist education and, 1:75 barrier to progress and, 1:321 Civil Rights Movement and, 1:320 color-blind racism and, 1:321 color consciousness vs., 1:320 color line and, 1:322–324 critical race theory and, 1:344–347 equal outcome vs. equal opportunity and, 1:321 government policymaking and, 1:320 interracial “buddy” film portrayals and, 2:1062–1063 mission accomplished and, 1:320–321 nonracial society ideal and, 1:320 prejudice trends and, 2:1069 privilege invisibility and, 2:1073–1074 racetalk and, 3:1100–1102 racetalk as color-blind discourse and, 3:1101–1102 transracial adoption and, 3:1323 unintentional racism and, 3:1120 Whiteness and, 1:74–75 Color line, 1:322–324 contemporary issue of, 1:323–324 double consciousness and, 1:413, 2:794 W. E. B. Du Bois and, 1:322, 1:528, 1:529, 1:558, 2:872, 2:1049, 2:1051 history of, 1:322–323 housing market and, 1:323 illusory, objective nature of, 1:322 life chances connection to, 1:322 marginalization and, 2:872 meritocracy and, 1:323, 1:345 one-drop rule and, 1:322–323 physical features reflecting differences, value and, 1:322 Plessy v. Ferguson and, 2:1049–1050 property ownership, citizenship and, 1:322–323 racialized system and, 1:322, 1:323–324 sense of identity, community and, 1:323 slavery and, 1:322–323 20th century focus on, 1:558 White privilege, power and, 1:322–323, 1:323 Colors (Cullen), 2:587 Columbus, Christopher, 2:767, 2:775 Comanches, 1:293 Commandment Keepers Congregation synagogue, 2:793 Commission of Interracial Cooperation, 1:57 Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (England), 1:3 Committee on Racial Equality (CORE), 1:32 Community Action Agency, 2:603 Community cohesion, 1:324–325 antiracism, multiculturalism vs., 1:324 common national identity and, 1:325 concept description and, 1:324–325 gentrification and, 1:533–535 immigrant communities and, 2:680–683 implementation issues and, 1:325 inclusivity, positive valuing of diversity and, 1:324 interethnic relations and, 1:324 kinship and, 2:808–810
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practical, philosophical problems of, 1:325 Report on the Commission on the Future of Multiethnic Britain and, 1:324 social cohesion vs., 1:324 soft vs. hardline debate regarding, 1:324 solidarity, social equality, connectedness and, 1:324 White flight and, 1:325 See also Immigrant communities Community empowerment, 1:325–328 advocacy, organizing and, 1:326 asset-based community development and, 1:327–328 Black intellectuals and, 1:167–170 Building Communities From the Inside Out (McKnight and Kretzmann) and, 1:327–328 communities of color focus of, 1:326 community cohesion and, 1:324–325 community development corporations and, 1:327 community development finance institutions and, 1:327 community economic development and, 1:327 community of ascribed interests and, 1:326 community of common interests and, 1:326 conclusions regarding, 1:328 definitions regarding, 1:326 federally funded initiatives of, 1:328 gentrification and, 1:533–535 geography community and, 1:326 the ghetto and, 1:546–548 immigrant communities and, 2:680–683 Industrial Areas Foundation and, 1:326 unionlike, direct-action tactics of, 1:326 Community Reinvestment Act (1977), 3:1128 Community Service Organization (CSO), 1:257, 2:658 Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), 2:603 Compromise of 1850, 2:913 Compromise of 1877, 1:158 The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States (Delany), 1:126–127 Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, 2:801 Confucianism, 2:814 Congressional Black Caucus, 1:28, 1:157 Congress of African Peoples, 1:26, 1:178 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 1:328–330 African American studies and, 1:32 Black Nationalism and, 1:174 Black Power and, 1:177, 1:178, 1:329 Black voter registration efforts of, 1:329 Civil Rights Movement and, 1:25, 1:28 contemporary conservativism of, 1:329 St. Clair Drake and, 1:416 James Farmer leader of, 1:328 Fellowship of Reconciliation and, 1:328 freedom marches and, 1:328 Freedom Rides and, 1:301–302, 1:306–307, 1:310, 1:329, 3:1281 Freedom Summer project and, 1:329, 3:1281 Jesse Jackson, Sr. and, 2:773 major leadership of, 1:329 James Meredith march and, 1:329 Montgomery bus boycott and, 1:328
national prominence of, 1:328–329 nonviolent direct action strategy of, 1:328 SCLC and, 3:1268 sit-ins and, 1:301, 1:328, 1:329 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and, 1:329, 3:1268, 3:1281 women leaders of, 1:310–311 Connecticut Albanian Americans in, 1:49 Armenian Americans in, 1:90 Hungarian Americans in, 2:663 Italian Americans in, 2:770 Jamaican Americans in, 2:777 Puerto Rican Americans in, 2:1083 racial, religious intermarriage data in, 2:738 Slovak Americans in, 3:1238 Constructionism, 1:384 Contact hypothesis, 1:330, 1:330–333 addition research on, 1:331–332 Gordon Allport’s work in, 1:330–332 contact outcomes for different groups and, 1:332 face-to-face contact variable and, 1:331 formulating a theory of, 1:330–331 homogeneity assumption fallacy and, 1:332 increased contact, decreased stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination and, 1:330 individual vs. aggregate research on, 1:331 intergroup relations, surveying and, 2:733–736 interracial friendships and, 2:748–750 mediating variables for optimal conditions and, 1:330–331 outgroup targets, contact settings variables and, 1:332 Robbers Cave Experiment and, 3:1163–1164 social distance and, 3:1250–1251 socioeconomic status, age factors and, 1:331–332 stereotypes affected by contact and, 1:330 testing of, 1:331 Convention for Refugees (1951), 1:475 Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, 3:1324 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (United Nations), 1:530 Cooper, Anna Julia, 1:24, 1:527, 1:528, 2:824 Cooper, Robert, 2:749 CORE. See Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Cornell, Stephen, 2:1019 Coronado, Francisco Vasquez de, 2:1080 Corpus Christi School District, Cisneros v. See Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District Cortez, Hernando, 2:833 Cosby, Bill, 1:517 Cosmopolitanism, 1:333–336 Anthony Appiah and, 1:334 Ulrich Beck’s work regarding, 1:333 capitalism and, 1:334 “citizenship of the world” and, 1:333 cosmopolitan governance and, 1:334–335 cosmopolitanization vs., 1:333 definitions of, 1:333 democracy undermined by, 1:333
Index
ethical universalism and, 1:334 ethnicity negotiation and, 1:459–462 extreme cosmopolitanism and, 1:334 globalization and, 1:333 history of, 1:333–334 hybridity and, 1:335–336 identity politics and, 1:333 Immanual Kant and, 1:334 language, common culture and, 1:334 nationalism renewal and, 1:333, 1:334, 1:335 religious cosmopolitanism and, 1:333–334 urbane social psychology and, 1:335 Costa Rica, 1:251–252, 1:252 (figure) Cotton Club, 1:31 County School Board of New Kent County, Green v. See Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. Cox, Oliver, 2:824, 2:1067 Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act (1990), 1:318, 1:319 Cree, 1:230 Creek census population data of, 2:960 (table) Dawes Act and, 1:372 Mississippian mound-building culture and, 1:259 removal to Oklahoma of, 1:371 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 1:334, 2:677 Creole, 1:336–338 in Belize, 1:138 Cajuns of Louisiana and, 1:515 “coolie” trade and, 1:337 definition, meanings of, 1:336 in Dominican Republic, 1:411 Dominican Republic and, 1:411 French Americans and, 1:514–516 global vs. local processes and, 1:336–337 government positions held by, 1:337 Haitian Americans and, 2:574, 2:577 Jamaica and, 2:775–776, 2:775 (map) language variations of, 1:337–338 multiracial ancestry, multicultural heritage and, 1:336 Portuguese crioulo and, 1:336 slavery, colonialism history and, 1:336–337 subgroups within, 1:337 Trinidad and, 3:1326–1329 Crime and race, 1:338–341 African American criminal behavior statistics and, 1:338–339 Canadian hate crimes and, 2:591–594 code of the street and, 1:340, 1:547 criminal processing and, 1:341–344 death penalty, racial discrimination and, 1:374–376, 2:872 deviance and race and, 1:384–385 drug use and, 1:339, 1:419–423 early childhood intervention programs and, 1:341 economic deprivation factor and, 1:339 future research directions and, 1:341 Hernandez v. Texas and, 2:611–612 homicide and, 2:644–646
1531
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (1996) and, 2:677–680 incarcerated parents and, 2:704–706 juvenile justice system and, 2:798–800 juvenile offenders, drug offenders and, 1:339 news media, public opinion and, 1:340 racial differences in offending and, 1:338–339 racial differences in offending and, reasons for, 1:339–340 racial differences in punitiveness and, 1:340 racial discrimination, criminal behavior factor and, 1:340 racial discrimination in the criminal justice system and, 1:338, 1:339 racially discriminating drug laws and, 1:422, 2:1072, 3:1112 scapegoating and, 3:1201–1203 Some Notes on Crime, Particularly in Georgia (Du Bois) and, 1:426 urban residence factor and, 1:339 Criminal processing, 1:341–344 crime and race and, 1:338–341 death penalty and, 1:374–376, 2:872 deviance and race and, 1:384–385 drug use and, 1:419–423 Hernandez v. Texas and, 2:611–612 incarcerated parents and, 2:704–706 juvenile justice system and, 2:798–800 pretrail processing racial disparities and, 1:342 racially discriminating drug laws and, 1:422, 2:1072, 3:1112 racial profiling and, 3:1111–1112 release, revocation racial disparities and, 1:343 sentencing racial disparities and, 1:342–343 stages of, 1:342 victim discounting and, 3:1361–1363 The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (Cruse), 1:169 Critical race theory, 1:344–345, 1:344–347 affirmative action and, 1:345 applications of, 1:345, 1:346 attracting controversy and, 1:345–346 Derrick Bell’s work in, 1:334 “call to context” focus of, 1:345 civil rights accomplishments erosion and, 1:334 color-blind ideology criticized by, 1:345 color consciousness focus of, 1:345 Critical Legal Studies and, 1:344 criticism of, 1:346 “differential racism” concept and, 1:346 early strands of, 1:344 formalizing its place and, 1:344–345 hate speech, crimes and, 1:345 “legal instrumentalism” version of Black empowerment and, 1:345–346 “legal storytelling” concept and, 1:345 meritocracy, individualism criticized by, 1:323, 1:345 new directions in, 1:346 notable scholars of, 1:334 race, gender, class, sexual orientation intersection with, 1:346 race and the law intersection and, 1:334 racism endurance and, 1:344–345 O. J. Simpson trial and, 1:346 standpoint epistemology and, 1:345
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
understudied themes and, 1:346 White interests vs. Black justice and, 1:334 Croatia, 1:129, 1:129 (map), 1:130, 1:131, 1:192, 1:347 (map) See also Croatian Americans Croatian Americans, 1:347–348, 1:347 (map) census data on, 1:347, 1:348 contemporary community of, 1:348 famous Croatian Americans and, 1:348 immigration patterns of, 1:347–348 refugees and, 1:348 return migration of, 1:348 Cross, William E., 3:1106–1107, 3:1108 Cross-frontier contacts, 1:348–350 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and, 1:349 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and, 1:349, 1:476, 3:1170 legal provision for, 1:349 minority rights and, 1:349 nation-state formations and, 1:348–349 Roma and, 3:1169–1170 transfrontier minorities and, 1:348 Crow, 1:264 Crowder, Kyle, 1:135 Crowdy, William S., 2:793 Crown Heights, Brooklyn, 1:350–352 Black-Jewish conflict in, 1:350–351, 2:791 British West Indian culture in, 2:777 Caribbean Americans in, 1:242, 1:350–351 “Crown Heights riots” in, 1:351 social history, geography and, 1:350–351 White flight and, 1:350–351 Crummell, Alexander, 1:22 Crusade for Justice (Chicano Movement), 1:122, 1:273 Cruse, Harold, 1:169 Crystal City, Texas, 2:830–831, 2:896 CSO. See Community Service Organization (CSO) Cuba, 1:352–354, 1:352 (map) African heritage sharing in, 1:352 Afro-Cuban identity and, 1:352 Bay of Pigs invasion and, 1:358 Castro regime and, 1:354, 1:355–356 Cuba migration, demography and, 1:354–356 distance from pure blackness and, 1:353 mestizaje concept in, 1:352–353 mestizo national identity and, 1:353 Missile Crisis and, 1:186–187 the one-drop rule and, 1:352 race in early history of, 1:353 “racial” heritage terms in, 1:353 Santería in, 3:1190–1201 slavery, racism in, 1:353 slave trade and, 1:355 transcultural, the Cuban ajiaco identity and, 1:353 Treaty of Paris and, 2:1097 U.S. economic embargo against, 1:358 Cuba: migration and demography, 1:354–356 balseros flotillas, “Marielitos” and, 1:187, 1:355, 2:578 Castro-Clinton accords and, 1:356 Castro regime and, 1:355–356
Chinese Cubans, Nicaraguans and, 1:356 Cuban, Haitian immigrants and, 2:576–578 demographic impact and, 1:356 economic diversity and, 1:356 emigration effects and, 1:355–356 historical background on, 1:355 Indigenous people and, 1:355 religiosity and, 1:356 slave trade and, 1:355, 1:356 Spanish colonialism and, 1:355 Cuban Adjustment Act (1966), 1:358, 2:873 Cuban-American National Foundation, 2:873 Cuban Americans, 1:357–359 balseros flotillas, “Marielitos” and, 1:187, 1:355, 2:578, 3:1134 barrios of, 1:135 “boat people” and, 1:186, 1:355–356 census data on, 1:357 Center for Cuban Studies, New York City and, 2:838 cigar industry and, 1:357 Cuba economic embargo and, 1:358 Cuba emigration and, 1:355–356 Cuban Adjustment Act and, 1:358, 2:873 Cuban American National Foundation and, 1:358 Cuban Studies journal and, 2:838 Cuban Studies programs and, 2:838 economic, educational successes of, 1:359 ethnic enclaves of, 1:453, 1:454–455 health disparities of, 2:606 Hispanic label and, 2:625, 2:627 immigration patterns of, 2:700 in Miami, 1:357, 1:357, 1:379, 2:627 political exile and, 1:357 political successes of, 1:358 politics of migration and, 1:357–358 refugees and, 1:357–358, 3:1133–1134 residential patterns of, 2:627 return migration of, 1:357 Santería and, 3:1190–1201 segregation of, 1:135 socioeconomic condition of, 1:482 successful community of, 1:358–359 See also Haitian and Cuban immigration: a comparison Cuffee, Paul, 1:22, 1:125, 1:172 Cullen, Countee, 1:24, 2:587, 2:796 Cultural capital, 1:359–361 ascribed status and, 1:360–361 Pierre Bourdieu’s work in, 1:359–360 critiques of, 1:361 educational performance, attainment and, 1:434 habitus, internalized structuring dispositions and, 1:359–360 mismatch between body and cultural capital and, 1:360 “passing” and, 1:360 “reading” of, 1:360 reproduction, resistance and, 1:361 rewarding cultural capital and, 1:360 social capital and, 1:359 social class maintenance and, 1:361 status marker and, 1:359–360
Index
Cultural pluralism. See Pluralism Cultural relativism, 1:361–363 anthropological bias and, 1:362 Franz Boas and, 1:184–186, 1:361–362 crisis of, 1:362–363 cultural contextualization, historical paticularism and, 1:362 development of, 1:361–362 ethnocentrism and, 1:361–362 human rights violations and, 1:361, 1:362 intercultural communication and, 2:730–733 inverted racism against Western societies and, 1:362 moral relativism and, 1:361, 1:362 nihilistic way of thinking and, 1:362 “privitivism” valuation and, 1:362 Social Darwinism and, 1:361 Culture of poverty, 1:363–365, 1:365 applications of, 1:363–364 contemporary applications of, 1:363–364 critiques of, 1:364–365 the ghetto and, 1:546–548 historical origins of, 1:363 “oppositional culture” studies and, 1:364–365 pathological, maladaptive values and behaviors focus of, 1:363 self-perpetuating barriers and, 1:363, 1:365 social policy affected by, 1:364 stereotypes and, 1:364 structural poverty determinants and, 1:365 universal value system characteristics and, 1:363 “welfare queen” and, 3:1384–1386 Cummins, Jim, 1:143–144 Curry, George E., 1:12 Curtis Act (1898), 1:261 Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 2:688, 2:697 Custor Died for Your Sins (Deloria), 1:381, 2:967 Cutter v. Wilkerson, 2:1045 Cypriot Americans, 1:365–367, 1:365 (map) chain migration and, 1:366 Cypriots in the U.S. and, 1:365–366 economic, political “push” factors and, 1:366 emigration phases of, 1:365–366 languages of, 1:367 religion of, 1:367 village of origin local societies of, 1:366, 1:367 Cyprus, 1:365–367, 1:365 (map) Czech Americans, 1:367–368, 1:367 (map) Herman Augustine and, 1:368 census data on, 1:367 contemporary community of, 1:368 famous Czech Americans and, 1:368 immigration patterns of, 1:367–368 urban settlement of, 1:368 Dallas, Texas Bangladeshi Americans in, 1:133 Cambodian Americans in, 1:222 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Turkish Americans in, 3:1336
1533
Vietnamese Americans in, 3:1366 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Dandridge, Dorothy, 1:155 Danish Americans, 1:369–371, 1:369 (map) assimilation of, 1:370 Danes Worldwide Archives and, 1:370–371 Danish Lutheran Church, Evan, Minnesota, 1:370 Dano-Prussian war and, 1:370 folk high schools and, 1:369 heritage societies and, 1:370–371 Lutheran State Church and, 1:369 Mormons and, 1:369 Slesvig (Schlesvig)–Holstein debate and, 1:370 in Utah, 1:369 Darwin, Darwinism. See Social Darwinism Das Gupta, Monisha, 1:481 Daughters of Africa, 1:172 The David Project, 2:788 Davis, William Allison, 1:169, 1:415 Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 3:1225 Dawes Act of 1887, 1:371–374 allotment process and, 1:182, 1:217, 1:261, 2:968, 2:996–997, 3:1155 assimilation and, 1:182, 1:217 background on, 1:372 Blackfeet and, 1:166 blood quantum and, 1:182, 2:958–959 Burke Act of 1906 and, 1:373 Congressional amendments to, 1:373 formalizing the system and, 1:372 impact of, 1:373 implementation, revision of, 1:372–373 Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock and, 1:373, 2:968 Miriam Commission report and, 1:373 Mnominee resistance to, 2:892 Office of Indian Affairs and, 1:372 Ojibwa and, 2:996–997 Protestant reformers and, 1:372 tribal rolls compilation and, 1:182, 1:262, 1:263 Wheeler-Howard Act and, 1:217, 1:261–262, 1:372, 3:1180 Dean, Harry, 1:173 deAnda, James, 2:611–612 Dearborn Independent (Henry Ford), 1:65, 1:72 Death penalty, 1:374–377 advocates of, 1:374 Baldus Study on, 1:375 British law and, 1:374 capital punishment, race and, 1:339, 1:375–376, 2:872, 3:1362–1363 Coker v. Georgia and, 1:375 constitutional issues and, 1:374–375 execution techniques and, 2:1071 Furman v. Georgia and, 1:374–375 Gregg v. Georgia and, 1:375 history of, 1:374 jury bias and, 1:376 mandatory sentencing and, 1:375 McCleskey v. Kemp and, 1:375 Miller-El v. Cockrell and, 1:376
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opponents of, 1:374, 1:376 race, class bias and, 1:339, 1:374, 1:376, 2:872 slave codes and, 1:374 United States v. Bass and, 1:376 Web site regarding, 1:378 Woodson v. North Carolina and, 1:375 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2:909, 3:1269 Declining Significance of Race, The (Wilson), 1:377–379 antiracist education and, 1:75 contemporary research and, 1:377–378 human capital acquisition factor and, 1:378 race and social class interrelationship and, 1:377–378 residential segregation and, 1:378 structures of opportunity sensitivity and, 1:378 thesis criticism and, 1:378 U.S. race relations history and, 1:377 William Julius Wilson and, 3:1413–1415 Deep South: A Social Anthropoligcal Study of Caste and Class (Drake), 1:415 De facto segregation after civil rights legislation and, 1:308, 2:795 in baseball, 2:973 Brown v. Board of Education and, 1:211, 1:212 Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District (1971), 1:294, 1:295 of Greek fraternities, sororities, 1:511 Northern industrial period and, 1:377 residential segregation and, 1:508 school desegregation and, 3:1204 sundown towns and, 3:1285 White flight and, 1:308, 3:1395–1397 Deficit model of ethnicity, 1:379, 1:379–380 acculturation and, 1:8–9 Belgian Americans and, 1:136–137 ethnocultural fundamentalism and, 1:379 explanation of, 1:379–380 family pathologies and, 1:479–480 hybrid identity, hybrid cultures and, 1:380 loss of culture and, 1:380 related issues and, 1:380 “tangential development” concept and, 1:380 “zero-sum game” concept and, 1:380 De jure segregation Brown v. Board of Education and, 1:212, 1:294 Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District (1971) and, 1:294 civil rights legislation and, 1:309, 1:321, 2:795 school desegregation and, 3:1204 sundown towns and, 3:1285 Delany, Martin, 1:2, 1:22, 1:126–127, 1:157, 1:172 Delaware immigrants settling in, 2:690 Salvadoran Americans in, 3:1190 Delgado, Richard, 1:334 Deloria, Vine, Jr., 1:380–382 anthropologists criticized by, 1:381–382 Custor Died for Your Sins written by, 1:381, 2:967 Kennewick Man controversy and, 1:381 life of, 1:381 music love of, 1:382
Native American sacred sites and, 3:1182 Native American treaty history and, 3:1318–1319 Red Earth, White Lies written by, 1:381 “Red Power” concept and, 2:933 spirituality, religion and, 1:381, 2:969 work of, 1:381–382, 2:933 Democracy in America (Tocqueville), 3:1093 Denmark, 1:369 (map) anti-Muslim sentiment in, 2:927, 2:928 Caribbean racial, ethnic identity in, 1:239 See also Danish Americans Denton, Nancy A. See American Apartheid (Massey and Denton) Denver, Colorado Denver Youth Conference and, 2:837 Hmong Americans in, 2:633 juvenile courts in, 2:799 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Border Patrol under, 1:192, 1:194 Canadian-American border control and, 1:234 creation of, 2:697 Customs and Border Protection and, 2:688, 2:697 Immigration and Customs Enforcement and, 2:688, 2:697 immigration law administrated by, 2:688 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and, 2:688, 2:697 Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and, 1:234 Desi, 1:382–383 ABCD acronym and, 1:382 bideshi, videshi vs., 1:382 “brown narratives” concept and, 1:383 class-linked concept of, 1:383 cultural characteristics of, 1:383 gender differences in, 1:383 religion role and, 1:383 “second generation” from Indian subcontinent and, 1:382 South Asian diaspora and, 1:382 who they are, 1:382–383 Des Moines, Iowa Grand View College in, 1:371 Hmong Americans in, 2:633 Detroit, Michigan African Americans migration to, 1:31 Albanian Americans in, 1:49 Armenian Americans in, 1:90 Assyrian Americans in, 1:108 Vincent Chin murder and, 1:276–278, 2:781, 2:1020 ethnic succession conflicts in, 1:463 Hungarian Americans in, 2:662, 2:663 Iraqi Americans in, 2:754 Lebanese Americans in, 2:841 Milliken v. Bradley and, 3:1152, 3:1205–1206 Milliken v. Bradley II and, 3:1152–1153, 3:1206 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Polish Americans in, 2:1057 political ethnic succession in, 1:464 school desegregation in, 3:1206 Turkish Americans in, 3:1336 See also Appendix A: Table 7
Index
Deviance and race, 1:384–385 code of the street and, 1:547 crime and race and, 1:338–341 definitions regarding, 1:384 drug use and, 1:419–423 labeling and, 2:821 linguistics and, 1:385 positivist vs. constrctionist approach to deviance and, 1:384 racial distinctions and, 1:384–385 research approaches to study of, 1:384 street vs. white-collar crimes and, 1:384–385 Devine, Annie, 1:311 Dewey, John Chicago School of Race Relations and, 1:269 Social Darwinism criticized by, 3:1249 DHS. See Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Diallo, Amadou, 3:1113 Diaspora, 1:385–388 Africans in the U.S. and, 1:38–40, 1:386 James Baldwin and, 1:127–128 Cape Verde Islands and, 1:236 Chinatowns and, 1:282 of Chinese Americans, 1:287 Cuban, Haitian immigrants and, 2:575–578 definition of, 1:385–386 as descriptive tool, 1:386 disciplinary approaches to, 1:387 St. Clair Drake study of, 1:415–416 of Estonian Americans, 1:448–450 ethnonational identity construction and, 1:460–461 of Filipino Americans, 1:493–497 forced expulsion condition of, 1:386 globalization and, 1:385–386, 1:387 of Greek Americans, 1:559–562 group-based ethnic identities and, 1:386 homeland concept and, 1:386 immigrant communities concept and, 1:385 of Iraqi Americans, 2:754–755 Iraqi Americans and, 2:754–755 Jewish experience of, 1:386 of Kurds, 2:818 process of, 1:386–387 of Puerto Americans, 2:1082 of Tibetan Buddhists, 3:1307 transnational social fields and, 1:387 Zionism and, 3:1426–1427 Diawara, Manthia, 1:149 Digital divide, 1:388–389 defining access and, 1:388–389 definition of, 1:388 digital inclusion prospects and, 1:389 global digital divide and, 1:389 information rich vs. poor and, 1:389 problem emergence and, 1:388 Dillingham, William F., 1:390 Dillingham Flaw, 1:389–391 ethnocentrism and, 1:390, 1:465–467 the future and, 1:390–391 history of, 1:389–390
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mixed heritage predominance and, 1:391 the past and, 1:390 the present and, 1:390 simplistic categorizations, anachronistic observations and, 1:390 Diop, Cheikh Anta, 1:34 Discrimination, 1:391–394 affirmative action in education and, 1:12–15 affirmative action in the workplace and, 1:15–19 Americans with Disabilities Act and, 1:66–68 apartheid and, 1:81–82 apartheid and, laws, 1:82–84 asylum and, 1:109–111 Bracero Program and, 1:193, 1:198–199, 2:702, 2:895, 3:1393–1394 of Burakumin, Japan, 1:214 Canadian hate crimes and, 2:591–594 caste and, 1:246–249 color line and, 1:322–324 critical race theory and, 1:344–347 educational stratification and, 1:435–438 EEOC and, 1:445–448 gerrymandering and, 1:544–546, 3:1369 Harlem and, 2:583–585 institutional racism, discrimination and, 1:392, 1:404, 2:726–729 Invisible Man (Ellison) and, 2:750–751 LGBT and, 2:846–848 measurement of, 1:392–394, 1:393 (table) Merton’s typology of, 2:1065 negative attitudes vs. negative behavior and, 2:1065 past-in-present discrimination and, 1:392 prejudice vs., 2:1065–1066 relative vs. absolute deprivation and, 1:391 resistance to perceived discrimination and, 1:391 “reverse discrimination” and, 1:12, 1:18, 1:345, 1:564 scapegoating and, 3:1201–1203 total discrimination and, 1:392 See also Affirmative action in education; Affirmative action in the workplace; Anti-Semitism; Brown v. Board of Education; Discrimination, specific topic; Educational stratification; Hate crimes; Prejudice; Racism; Segregation Discrimination, environmental hazards, 1:394–396 Environmental Equity Workgroup and, 1:395 environmental justice movement and, 1:395, 1:442–445 Environmental Protection Agency and, 1:394–395, 1:443 environmental racism and, 1:394, 1:442–443 hazardous waste dumps and, 1:394 health outcomes and, 1:395–396 international environmental harm and, 1:396 Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) politics and, 1:394 postindustrialism and, 1:396 Superfund program and, 1:395 Discrimination, measuring, 1:397–399 audit studies method of, 1:398–399 challenges in, 1:397 counterfactual questions and, 1:397 criminal processing and, 1:341–343
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differential treatment vs. differential impact discrimination and, 1:397 importance of, 1:397 median income by race, gender and, 1:393–394, 1:393 (table) reports from perpetrators method of, 1:398 reports from targets method of, 1:398 statistical decomposition method of, 1:397–398 Discrimination in housing, 1:399–402 blockbusting practice and, 1:179–180, 1:401 color line and, 1:323 discrimination testing, auditing and, 1:401–402 Fair Housing Act (1968) and, 1:399, 1:401–402, 2:656 forms of, 1:399–400 Gautreaux decision and, 1:524–526, 2:1078 housing audits and, 2:656–657 income source and, 1:400 index of dissimilarity and, 1:401 institutional discrimination and, 2:726 before 1968, 1:400 public housing and, 2:1077–1079 racial steering and, 1:180, 2:657 redlining practice and, 1:401, 3:1396 restrictive covenants and, 1:400 segregation and, 1:400–401 sexual orientation and, 1:400 Shelley v. Kraemer and, 1:400, 3:1157 steering practice and, 1:399, 1:401 telephone anonymity and, 1:402 veteran status and, 1:400 Displaced Persons Act (1948), 1:538, 2:688 Chinese American immigration and, 1:287 Estonian, Latvian, American immigration and, 1:449 Lithuanian American immigration and, 1:449, 2:855, 2:856 refugees and, 3:1133 Serbian Americans and, 3:1223 Diversity Visa Program, 2:688 Dixon, Thomas, 1:150, 2:816 Dole, Robert Glass Ceiling Act and, 1:549 Dole, Sanford B., 2:580 Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence (Hondagneu-Sotelo), 1:406 Domestic violence, 1:403–405 African American communities and, 1:404 Asian American communities and, 1:404–405 cycle of violence and, 1:403 definitions regarding, 1:403 Immigration Act of 1990 and, 1:405 institutionalized racism and, 1:404 Latino American communities and, 1:404 learned behavior of, 1:404 machismo and, 2:863–864 power, control focus in, 1:403 remedies for, 1:405 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) and, 1:405 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and, 1:405
Domestic work, 1:405–408 African American women and, 1:36–37 Central American women and, 1:254 current trends in, 1:407 definition of, 1:406 Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence (Hondagneu-Sotelo) and, 1:406 guest workers and, 1:568 hierarchy of class, status in, 1:36–37 “international transfer of caretaking” concept and, 1:407 racialized work and, 1:406–407 women’s work and, 1:406 Dominican Americans, 1:408–409 barrios of, 1:135 census data on, 1:408–409 Dominican Day parade and, 1:409 Dominican Republic and, 1:410–411 Dominican Studies programs and, 2:838 ethnicity vs. race and, 1:409 health disparities of, 2:609 history, socioeconomic profile of, 1:408–409 immigration patterns of, 2:700 negative and gendered racialization of, 1:409 residential patterns of, 2:627 Washington Heights, New York City and, 1:430 Dominican Republic, 1:410–411, 1:410 (map) Africans, Creoles and, 1:411 cultural preservation and, 1:411 Dominican Americans and, 1:408–409 European exploration, independence and, 1:410–411 Haiti and, 2:571–572 history of, 1:408, 1:410–411 Donald, Michael, 2:817 Don-Yehiya, Eliezer, 1:305 Double consciousness, 1:411–413 acculturation and, 1:8–9 African American sense of twoness and, 1:411–412 of Black American Jewry, 2:794 consciousness of White people and, 1:413 definition of, 1:411–412 Invisible Man (Ellison) and, 2:750–751 The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois) and, 1:411–413, 2:872, 3:1106 the Veil and, 1:412–413, 1:423–424 See also Veil Douglas, Aaron, 1:24, 2:588, 2:796 Douglas, Stephen A., 1:417 Douglass, Frederick, 1:413–415, 1:414 abolitionist movement and, 1:2, 1:5, 1:22, 1:413–415 Black American Jewry and, 2:793 Civil War and, 1:414 color line and, 1:323 critical race theory influenced by, 1:344 early years of, 1:413–414 Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company and, 1:415 freedom in the North and, 1:414–415 Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and, 1:418 William Lloyd Garrison and, 1:2, 1:5 individual, group self-help focus of, 1:157
Index
Abraham Lincoln and, 2:854 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass written by, 1:22, 1:414 National Antislavery Standard and, 1:5 The New National Era newspaper and, 1:414–415 North Star newspaper and, 1:414 Sojourner Truth and, 3:1131 Underground Railroad and, 1:5, 1:414 work, vocational, skills training focus of, 1:157 Dow v. United States, 1:85 Drake, St. Clair, 1:415–416 academic career of, 1:415–416 African diaspora work of, 1:416 anthropological work of, 1:415 Black Folk Here and There written by, 1:416 Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City written by, 1:170, 1:415 Churches and Voluntary Associations Among Negroes in Chicago written by, 1:415 contact, prejudice in mixed neighborhoods research of, 1:331 Deep South: A Social Anthropoligcal Study of Caste and Class written by, 1:415 early years of, 1:415 pan-Africanism and, 1:416 political engagement of, 1:416 race, nation, capitalism work of, 1:415–416 Value Systems, Social Structure, and Race Relations in the British Isles written by, 1:415–416 Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1:416–419, 1:417 epilogue to, 1:418 events preceding, 1:417 Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and, 1:418 key factors in, 1:417–418 Missouri Compromise and, 1:417, 1:418 outcomes of, 1:210, 1:418 Drover, Glenn, 2:642 Drug use, 1:419–423 by age, race and, 1:421 (table) Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and, 1:422 code of the street and, 1:312–314 crack babies focus and, 1:422 crime and race and, 1:338–341 criminal justice system data and, 1:420, 1:422 definitions regarding, 1:419 drug laws legislation, enforcement and, 1:422 drug use pagers explanation and, 1:420 Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 and, 1:422 illegal drugs and, 1:420, 1:421 (table) inner city neighborhoods and, 1:312–314 legal drugs and, 1:419–420, 1:421 (table) Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 and, 1:422 National Survey on Drug Use and Health and, 1:419–420, 1:421 (table) patterns by race/ethnicity and, 1:419–420 prescription drug use and, 1:420 racial drug use patterns and, 1:339 racially discriminating laws regarding, 1:422, 2:1072, 3:1112 school zone policies and, 1:422
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studies of, limitations of, 1:419 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and, 1:419 D’Souza, Dinesh, 2:915 Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt, 1:423, 1:423–427 academic career of, 1:167, 1:423 activist artists and, 1:168 African American social problems empirical research of, 1:425–427 African American urban life studied by, 1:424–425 An American Dilemma (Gunnar Myrdal) and, 1:57 Atlanta Sociological Laboratory and, 1:423, 1:425 Atlanta University and, 1:423, 1:425, 1:427 Black American Jewry and, 2:794 Black intellectual class and, 1:167–168 Franz Boas and, 1:186 Chicago School of Race Relations and, 1:270, 1:271 “color-line” focus of, 1:322, 1:528, 1:529, 1:558, 2:872, 2:1049, 2:1051 commitment to the masses and, 1:167–168 critical race theory influenced by, 1:344 double consciousness concept and, 1:411–413, 2:794, 3:1106 education work of, 1:426 Ralph Waldo Emerson and, 1:412 Frantz Fanon and, 1:483 “gift of second sight” concept of, 1:528 “Guiding Hundredth” concept of, 3:1296 Harlem Renaissance and, 1:24, 1:168 Health and Physique of the Negro American written by, 1:424 Hull House School of Race Relations and, 2:661 William James and, 1:412 Jewish support and, 2:789 Marxism, socialism interest of, 1:167, 1:426 methodological triangulation research method and, 1:425, 1:426, 1:427 Morals and Manners among Negro Americans written by, 1:426 NAACP and, 1:25, 1:158, 1:168, 1:306, 1:424, 2:789, 2:931 The Negro American Family study of, 1:426, 1:513 The Negro Church written by, 1:424, 1:426 The New Negro: An Interpretation (Locke) anthology and, 2:586, 3:1296 Niagara Movement and, 1:24, 1:168, 3:1374 overview of, 1:423–424 pan-African Movement and, 1:25, 1:167–168, 1:173 peace activities of, 1:424 The Philadelphia Negro written by, 1:423, 1:424, 1:425, 3:1296 political activities of, 1:424 racialized labor segmentation and, 2:824 sociological postscript and, 1:427 sociological research work of, 1:424–425 Some Notes on Crime, Particularly in Georgia written by, 1:426 The Souls of Black Folk written by, 1:168, 1:322, 1:411–413, 1:423, 2:872, 2:1051, 3:1106 spirituality of work of, 1:412 The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America written by, 1:423
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
“Talented Tenth” concept of, 1:167, 3:1295–1296 the Veil and, 1:412–413, 1:423–424 Booker T. Washington and, 1:158, 1:168, 3:1374 White racism and, 3:1405 Duck Stamp Act (Alaska), 1:46 Duke, David, 2:817, 2:915–916 Durkheim, Émile, 1:425, 3:1183 Dutch Americans, 1:427–428, 1:427 (map) Amish and, 1:68–71 contemporary community of, 1:428 Dutch Reformed Church and, 1:428 immigration patterns of, 1:428, 2:699 Duvalier, “Papa Doc,” 2:573, 2:577 East Harlem, 1:429–431 Dominican Americans and, 1:408–409, 1:409 East side story and, 1:430 ethnic succession, changes in, 1:431 gentrification of, 1:430–431 the ghetto and, 1:546–548 health disparities in, 1:431 interethnic violence in, 1:430 neighborhood ethnic history and, 1:429 Puerto Rican New York and, 1:429, 2:584 from Puerto Rico to El Barrio and, 1:429–430 Spanish Harlem as, 1:430 today’s community and, 1:430–431 Easton, Hosea, 1:2 Eating disorders, 1:189 Ebens, Ronald, 1:276–278 Ebonics, 1:174 Economic Opportunity Initiative (EOPI), 2:603 Edison, Thomas, 1:155 Education Du Bois sociological work in, 1:426 folk high schools and, 1:369 Greek American projects and, 1:561–562 See also Educational performance and attainment; Educational stratification Educational performance and attainment, 1:431–435 affirmative action in education and, 1:12–15 African Americans in biomedicine and, 1:146–149 African American women, work and, 1:37–38 ASPIRA and, 1:103–104 attainment and, 1:432–433 attainment and, income and, 1:431–432 The Bell Curve (Hernstein and Murray) and, 1:139–142, 3:12993:1299 bilingual education and, 1:142–146 Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District (1971) and, 1:294–296 cultural capital concept and, 1:434 cultural differences factor and, 1:433 differences explained and, 1:433–434 digital divide and, 1:388–389 of Dominican Americans, 1:408 Gautreaux decision and, 1:524–526 Grutter v. Bollinger and, 1:562–564, 2:613, 2:1046 Head Start and, 2:602–604
IDEA and, 2:719–721 intelligence tests and, 2:729–730 National Assessment of Educational Progress tests and, 1:432, 1:433 (table) NCLB and, 1:432, 1:434–435 performance and, 1:432 by race, ethnicity, 1:432–433, 1:433 (table) racial barriers, structural limitations factor and, 1:434 science faculty women of color and, 3:1210–1211 self-fulfilling prophecy and, 3:1215–1219 socioeconomic differences factor and, 1:433 tracking and, 3:1316–1318 United States v. Fordice and, 3:1350–1352 voluntary vs. involuntary minorities and, 1:434 Educational stratification, 1:435–438 ability grouping, tracking and, 1:436–437 African Americans in biomedicine and, 1:146–149 between-school stratification and, 1:435–436 Brown v. Board of Education and, 1:436 ethnonational minorities’ social rights focus on, 1:469 high stakes testing and, 1:437 Mendez v. Westminster and, 1:436 NCLB and, 1:437 People Who Care v. Rockford, Illinois Board of Education and, 1:437 Plessy v. Ferguson and, 1:436 race-based residential patterns and, 1:436 remedies to, 1:437–438 science faculty women of color and, 3:1210–1211 within-school stratification and, 1:436–437 See also Affirmative action in education; Brown v. Board of Education Education for All Handicapped Children Act, 2:719 Edwards, Richard, 2:823 Egyptian Americans, 1:438–439, 1:438 (map) census data on, 1:439 contemporary communities of, 1:438–439 geography of, 1:438 immigration patterns of, 1:438 Eid, Paul, 3:1291 Eighteenth Amendment, 1:63 Eighth Amendment, 1:374 Einstein, Albert, 1:543 Eisenhower, Dwight D. Bay of Pigs invasion and, 1:358 “Operation Wetback” and, 1:193, 1:499, 2:879, 3:1394–1395 school desegregation and, 1:307 Eisler, Hanns, 1:543 Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional. See Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). El Barrio. See East Harlem Elections: 1860 presidential, 1:417 Elections: 1928 presidential, 1:63 Elections: 1984 presidential, 2:774, 2:939–940, 2:1002 Elections: 1988 presidential, 2:774, 2:939–940, 2:1002 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 1:143 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965), 3:1204 Eliade, Mircea, 3:1183 Elizabeth Peratrovich Day (Alaska), 1:47
Index
Ellis, William, 1:173 Ellison, Christopher, 1:331 Ellison, Ralph, 2:750–751 Ellwood, David, 2:655 El Salvador, 3:1185 (map) apparel industry in, 3:1186 CAFTA and, 3:1186 coffee production in, 3:1185–1186 independence of, 3:1185 international migrations and, 3:1186 migration to Honduras, 3:1186 refugees from, 3:1133 Spanish colonization of, 3:1185 unauthorized immigration from, 2:689 See also Salvadoran Americans Emancipation Proclamation, 1:439–440 affirmative action concepts and, 1:16 Black family life and, 1:513–514 Civil War end objective of, 1:439–440 European public support for Union and, 1:439 Abraham Lincoln issue of, 1:22, 1:414, 1:439–440 military strategy of, 1:439 practical effect of, 1:210 Thirteenth Amendment and, 1:5, 1:440 Emerson, Michael, 2:749 Emerson, Ralph Waldo W. E. B. Du Bois and, 1:412 Employment Division, State of Oregon v. Smith, 2:1044–1045 Enfranchisement Act (1869, Canada), 1:227 Engels, Frederick, 1:529 Black Panther Party and, 1:175 capitalism, Jews and, 1:79 English immersion, 1:440, 1:440–442 bilingual education and, 1:142–146 bilingual programs and, 1:440 bilingual teacher availability and, 1:440 Canadian bilingual program vs., 1:441–442 definition of, 1:441 distinctions among programs of, 1:441–442 English-only programs and, 1:145–146, 1:440 ESL programs and, 1:440 NCLB and, 1:441 state legislation factors in, 1:440–441 student linguistic demographics and, 1:440 English Language Education for Children in Public Schools Initiative, 1:145–146 Entwisle, Barbara, 2:749 Environmental hazards. See Discrimination, environmental hazards Environmental justice, 1:442–444 critique of existing framewroks and, 1:444 discrimination, environmental hazards and, 1:394–396 environmental democracy and, 1:444–445 Environmental Inequality Formation (EIF) framework and, 1:444 environmental justice movement and, 1:395, 1:444 environmental justice paradigm and, 1:444 environmental racism and, 1:442–443 “garbage imperialism” concept and, 1:444
1539
Hopi-Navajo mining dispute and, 2:653, 2:971 macrostructural approach of, 1:442 maquiladoras and, 2:870–871 Native American water rights and, 3:1379–1381 Navajo nuclear waste incident and, 2:968, 2:972 race and class as predictors of, 1:442–443 sociohistorical/processual approach to, 1:443–444 Environmental Justice Coalition, 1:443 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental Equity Workgroup and, 1:395 environmental hazard discrimination and, 1:394–495 Office of Environmental Justice and, 1:443 Superfund program and, 1:395 EOPI. See Economic Opportunity Initiative (EOPI) Epstein, Benjamin, 1:72 EPZs. See Export processing zones (EPZs) Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974), 3:1128 Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974, 1:143 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 1:445–448 affirmative action in the workplace and, 1:17 Age Discrimination Act and, 1:446 agenda of, 1:445 Americans with Disabilities Act and, 1:446 Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 1:17, 1:28, 1:162, 1:445, 1:446 disparate impact and, 1:447 disparate treatment and, 1:447 enforcement procedures and, 1:446 Equal Pay Act and, 1:446 Griggs v. Duke Power Co. and, 1:447 McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green and, 1:447 Morton v. Mancari and, 2:958 Office of State and Local Programs of, 1:446 Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and, 1:212, 1:446 sexual and racial harassment and, 1:447 theories of discrimination and, 1:446–447 Title VII of, 1:17 Equal Pay Act of 1963, 1:17 Equal Rights Bill (Alaska), 1:46 Eriksen, T. H., 1:458 Erikson, Erik, 3:1106 Eskimo census population data, 2:960 (table) Espinosa, Aurelio, 2:836 Espiritu, Yen Le, 1:96, 2:1017–1018, 2:1020 Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (Gobineau), 3:1093 Estonian Americans, 1:448–450, 1:448 (map) Displaced Persons Act and, 1:449 first diaspora: era of mass migration and, 1:448–449 National Origins Act of 1924 and, 1:449 Nazi Germany and, 1:449 Russia and, 1:448–449 second diaspora: World War II and, 1:449 Soviet “Red Terror” and, 1:449 Soviet sphere of influence and, 1:449 Valis-Eestl: “Estonia abroad” and, 1:449–450 “Viking” boat people and, 1:449 Ethiopia, 1:173 Ethiopian Hebrew Rabbinical College, 2:793
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Ethnic conflict, 1:450–453 accounting for conflict and, 1:451 armed conflict examples of, 1:450 Balkans example of, 1:451 borderland conflict and, 1:190–192 contact hypothesis and, 1:330–333 Croatian Americans and, 1:347–350 Crown Heights, Black-Jewish conflict and, 1:350–351 dimensions of, 1:450–451 ethnic bargaining and, 1:452 examples of, 1:450–451 grievances importance in, 1:451 identifying the opponent and, 1:451–452 interventions by others and, 1:453 Ireland and, 2:755–758 media references to, 1:450 Ocean Hill-Brownsville Teacher’s Strike and, 2:790, 2:791 political importance of, 1:450 self-identification of ethnic origin and, 1:451 solutions to, 1:452–453 zero-sum vs. positive sum game analogy and, 1:452 See also Ethnic group Ethnic enclave, economic impact of, 1:453–455 Amish and, 1:68–71 barrio and, 1:133–136, 1:134 benefits to workers and, 1:453, 1:454 of Cambodian Americans, 1:223 Cambodian Americans and, 1:221–225 Chinatowns and, 1:281–289 Chinese Americans and, 1:285–289, 1:290 clustering component of, 1:449–450 colonias and, 1:318–320 of Danish Americans, 1:370 deficit model of ethnicity and, 1:379, 1:379–380 ethnic solidarity benefits and, 1:454 explanation of, 1:453–454 of Greek Americans, 1:560–562 informal economy and, 2:724–726 labor supply economics and, 1:454 Little Italy, New York City and, 1:454 negative view of, 1:453, 1:455 owners’ success and, 1:454 “tour of duty” pathway concept and, 1:454 vertical integration and, 1:453, 1:454–455 See also Immigrant communities Ethnic group, 1:456–459 community cohesion and, 1:324–325 culture, ethnicity and, 1:457–458 deficit model of ethnicity and, 1:379–380 definition of, 1:456–457 ethnic conflict and, 1:450–453 ethnicity, the other and, 1:456 ethnicity as a politicized culture and, 1:458–459 ethnicity etymology and, 1:456 ethnic relations and, 1:457 “groupism” and, 1:458 Hispanic versus Latino ethnic label and, 2:627–629 immigrant communities and, 2:680–683 kinship and, 2:808–810
nation, nationality, nationalism, national groups concepts and, 1:456–457, 1:458 outcome of a social process and, 1:456 Robert E. Park’s work and, 1:456, 2:1027–1028 process of ethnicity and, 1:458–459 typology of ethnic map of the modern world and, 1:458 universal characteristics of ethnicity and, 1:457 Max Weber and, 1:457 See also Immigrant communities Ethnicity, negotiating, 1:459–462 boundaries negotiation and, 1:460 coexisting multilayers of ethnicity concept and, 1:459–460 cosmopolitanism and, 1:333–336 deficit model of ethnicity and, 1:379–380 ethnic consumer lifestyles and, 1:461 ethnonational identity construction and, 1:460–461 expressing ethnicity and, 1:461 hyphenated identities and, 1:460, 1:462 intercultural communication and, 2:730–733 negotiation strategies and, 1:459–460 race, ethnicity and, 1:460–461 racial ethnogenesis and, 1:460 social construction of ethnicity and, 1:459 transnational groups and, 1:460–462 See also Ethnic group Ethnic succession, 1:462–465 assimilation model vs., 1:463 changing neighborhoods and, 1:463–464 civic ties mediation of, 1:464 Crown Heights, Black-Jewish conflict and, 1:350–351 in East Harlem, 1:430–431 economic, political transitions and, 1:464–465 ethnic conflict and, 1:450–453 job, labor market competition and, 1:464 in political arena, 1:464 resources competition and, 1:463 urban group relations model development and, 1:462–463 Ethnocentrism, 1:465–467 affective-cognitive system of, 1:466 Afrocentricity and, 1:41–42 Anglo-Saxon American race superiority myth and, 1:466 assimilation and, 1:104 cultural capital and, 1:361–363 cultural relativism vs., 1:466 domestic drug problem and, 1:422 ethnocultural fundamentalism and, 1:379 genetic basis of, 1:466 multiculturalism vs., 1:104 Orientalism and, 2:1003–1004 Orientalism concept and, 1:467 postcolonial studies and, 1:467 resource scarcity cause of, 1:466 social identity theory explanation of, 1:465–466 in the social sciences, 1:466–467 sociological positivism and, 1:467 standpoint theory and, 1:467 William Sumner’s work in, 1:465–466 theories of, 1:465–466 in the United States, 1:466
Index
Ethnonational minorities, 1:467–470 charismatic authority and, 1:468–469 claim-making and, 1:467, 1:468–469 cross-frontier contacts and, 1:348–350 diaspora term regarding, 1:386 identity politics with contentious politics intersection and, 1:468 legal-rational (bureaucratic) authority and, 1:469 nation governance consideration of, 1:469 “public good” of a nation concept and, 1:467, 1:469 racialized identity negotiation and, 1:460 social geography element and, 1:467–468 social rights practice and, 1:467, 1:469 sociological imagination and, 1:468–469 traditional authority and, 1:468 U.S. society and, 1:469–470 Ethnophaulism prejudice expression, 2:1065 Ethnotourism, 1:371 Ethnoviolence, 1:470–472 alternative perspectives on, 1:470–471 bias crime, bias incidents terminology and, 1:471 Canadian hate crimes and, 2:591–594 cross-frontier contacts and, 1:348–350 genocide and, 1:530–533 hate crimes terminology and, 1:470–471 identifying features of, 1:471 National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence and, 1:470, 1:471 prevalence statistics on, 1:471 underreporting of, 1:471–472 Web sites of, 1:472 The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese (Siu-kai Lau, Ksin-chi Kuan), 2:648 Eugenics, 1:472–474 Act to Preserve Racial Integrity (1924, Virginia) and, 2:859 biological racial superiority theories and, 3:1092 breeding strategies and, 1:472–473 contemporary issues regarding, 1:474 genetic manipulation technology and, 1:472, 1:474 Holocaust history and, 2:636–640 Human Genome Project and, 1:474 Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 and, 1:473, 2:937 immigration restrictions and, 2:937 involuntary sterilization programs and, 1:473 movement’s origins and, 1:472–473 the Nazi agenda and, 1:472, 1:472, 1:473–474 power of heredity and, 1:472 Social Darwinism and, 3:1249 Southern, Eastern European immigration quotas and, 1:473 U.S. initiatives and, 1:473 See also Social Darwinism Europe, 1:474–476 asylum seekers in, 2:926 Canadian immigrants from, 1:225 contemporary patterns of, 1:475–476 European identity and, 1:475 French Americans and, 1:514–516 Greek Americans and, 1:559–562 guest workers, undocumented immigrant issues and, 1:566, 2:926
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historical minorities and, 1:475–476 historical perspective on, 1:474–475 historic and multilinguistic diversity in, 1:476 immigration patterns from, 2:698–699 language boundaries defining ethnic borders in, 1:476 Latin American conquest and, 2:833–834 migration, settlement patterns in, 1:474–475, 2:926–927 Muslims in, 2:925–928 nationalism in, 1:130–131 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 3:1169–1170 postwar migrant groups and, 2:926–927 racism in, 3:1113–1115 Roma in, 3:1169–1170 See also Balkans; specific immigrant group European Americans. See specific ethnic group or country European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, 1:476 European Charter of Fundamental Rights, 1:476 Evansville, Indiana race riots, 1:400 Exodusters, 1:30 Ex Parte Homer A. Plessy, 2:1050 Exploitation theory of prejudice, 2:1067 Export processing zones (EPZs), 1:554 EZLN. See Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) Fair Employment Act, 1:16 Fair Housing Act (1968) blockbusting and, 1:179, 1:180 housing discrimination and, 1:56, 1:399, 1:401–402, 3:1127–1128 redlining and, 3:1127–1128 Fair Share Refugee Act (1960), 3:1133 Falling Through the Net: A Survey of the “Have Nots” in Urban and Rural America (NTIA), 1:388 FALN. See Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) Familism, 1:477–479 African American family studies and, 1:512–514 chain migration and, 1:477, 1:480 compadrazgo and, 1:478 components of, 1:477, 1:478 immigrant ties and, 1:477–478 industrialization, urbanization and, 1:477–478 Latino families and, 1:478 opportunities limited by, 1:477 social, economic interdependency and, 1:477 strength from relationships and, 1:477 Family, 1:479–482 acculturation, biculturation and, 1:481 adoption and, 1:9–11 African American studies of, 1:480–481, 1:512–514 “blaming the victim” and, 1:479–480 of Caribbean Americans, 1:242 chain migration and, 1:477, 1:480 child development and, 1:274–276 cultural, political controversy over, 1:479 from culture to structure, 1:479–480
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domestic violence and, 1:403–405 domestic work and, 1:405–408 elder care and, 1:480 ethnic family studies and, 1:479–480 extended families and, 1:480 familism and, 1:477–479 guest workers labor strategy and, 1:567 Head Start and, 2:602–604 historically subjugated groups and, 1:480–481 homelessness and, 2:642 immigrant families and, 1:481–482 incarcerated parents and, 2:704–706 interracial, transracial adoption and, 1:482 interracial marriages and, 1:482 kinship and, 2:808–810 Laotian American traditions of, 2:829 museumization concept and, 1:481 mutiracial issues and, 1:482 Native American studies of, 1:481 nonmarital birth statistics and, 1:479 parenting and, 2:1024–1027 social forces, families of color and, 1:480 society’s sustainability and, 1:479 transnational parenting and, 1:481 transracial adoption and, 3:1322–1325 See also Familism; Parenting Fanon, Frantz, 1:483 Black Power and, 1:177 Black Skin, White Masks written by, 1:483 early years of, 1:483 scholarly work of, 1:483 The Wretched of the Earth written by, 1:483 Farmer, James, 1:328 Farrakhan, Louis Stokely Carmichael and, 1:246 Washington marches and, 1:29, 2:921 Father Divine Peace Mission Movement, 1:484, 1:484–485 background of, 1:484 criticism of, 1:484–485 the ministry and, 1:484–485 “new thought” theology and, 1:484 Faubus, Orville, 1:307 Fauset, Jessie Redmon, 1:24, 2:586 FDP. See Freedom Democratic Party (FDP) Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 2:666 Federal Housing Administration (FHA) housing discrimination policies of, 2:726 housing segregation policies of, 1:56 restrictive convenants practices of, 1:400 Fein, Helen, 1:531 Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1:302, 1:328 FEMA. See Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Feminism, 1:485–487 abolitionist movement and, 1:2, 1:3–4 binary dualisms and, 1:487 biological determinism and, 1:188 body image and, 1:187–190 critical race theory influenced by, 1:344 definitions regarding, 1:485
emancipatory, egalitarian feminism and, 1:486 Enlightenment thinking and, 1:486 feminist academics and, 1:486–487 feminist standpoint epistemology and, 1:487 German American women and, 1:542–543 glass ceiling and, 1:548–551 hip-hop and rap, women and, 2:621–624 hip-hop feminism and, 2:623 bell hooks, 2:651–652 Marxist feminism and, 1:486, 1:487 oppressive power of men over women focus and, 1:486 political lesbians and, 1:486 poststructuralist feminism and, 1:487 productive vs. reproductive labor value and, 1:486 psychoanalytic, cultural feminists and, 1:486 race, class, gender intersectionality framework of, 1:527–529 radical feminism and, 1:486 “third wave” feminism and, 1:487 Sojourner Truth and, 3:1131 See also Feminism, Black; Feminism, Latina Feminism, Black, 1:488–490 alternative epistemology to, 1:489 body image ideals and, 1:189–190 collective social activism and, 1:314 Patricia Hill Collins’s work and, 1:314–315, 1:488, 1:528 “committed objectivity” of, 1:490 context importance and, 1:489 critical race theory and, 1:344–347 glass ceiling and, 1:548–551 health care and employment systems inequities and, 1:487–488 hip-hop and rap, women and, 2:621–624 hip-hop feminism and, 2:623 bell hooks, 2:651–652 “humanizing speech” feature of, 1:490 race, class, gender intersectionality framework of, 1:488, 1:527–529 relational differences between groups’ experiences and, 1:489 resistance intersectional analysis and, 1:489 self-reflexivity, self-critical features of, 1:490 simultaneity and, 1:488–489 Feminism, Latina, 1:490–493 body image ideals and, 1:189–190 Chicana feminisms and, 1:490, 1:491–492 Eurocentric feminist framework barrier to, 1:490–491 family structure historical oppressions and, 1:492 feminist movement and, 1:490 glass ceiling and, 1:548–551, 1:549 intersectionality of gender, sexuality, class, racial identity and, 1:492 issues addressed by, 1:492 Latina Feminist Group formation and, 1:492 Latin America, Caribbean women and, 1:492 Marianismo and, 1:490, 1:491, 1:492 panethnic Latina feminism movement and, 1:490 pan-Latina/o coalition building, feminist identity and, 1:490, 1:492 sexuality, race and, 3:1226
Index
Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonies (Latina Feminist Group) and, 1:492 Third World feminism and, 1:492 Ferguson, Plessy v. See Plessy v. Ferguson FHA. See Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Fifteenth Amendment affirmative action in education and, 1:12 African American voting rights and, 1:23, 2:854, 3:1213, 3:1369 Filipino Americans, 1:493–497, 1:493 (map) armed forces members and, 1:93 “development diplomacy” of Marcos and, 1:493, 1:567 diaspora of, 1:493–494, 1:567, 2:687 early Filipino immigration and, 1:92, 1:494 Filipino Labor Union activity of, 1:93 Filipino Repatriation Act of 1935 and, 1:495, 1:499 Filipino Veterans Equity Act and, 1:495 Hawaiian population and, 2:595, 2:597–598, 2:597–598 (tables) health disparities of, 2:606 the home country and, 1:493–494, 1:493 (map) Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and, 1:92, 1:495 interracial marriages of, 1:482 legislative changes and, 1:495, 2:700 Nationality Act of 1940 and, 1:495 1965 turning point and, 1:496 sense of place and, 1:496–497 Tydings-McDuffie Act and, 1:495 U.S. Manifest Destiny and, 1:494 War Brides Act of 1945 and, 1:495 World War II and, 1:494, 1:495 Film, Latino, 1:497–499 American Me (Olmos, Dir.), 1:498 barrio films and, 1:499 Chicano “greaser” stereotype and, 1:497, 1:498 context of, 1:497 film critics, reviewers and, 1:497–498 film portrayals of Latinos and, 1:497–498 films made by Latinos and, 1:498–499 La Bamba (Valdez), 1:498, 1:499 Latino, Hispanic defined and, 1:497 The Lawless (Losey, Dir.), 1:498 The Milagro Beanfield War, 1:499 My Family (Nava, Dir.), 1:498 political films and, 1:499 popular culture, racism and, 2:1060–1063 Salt of the Earth (Biberman, Dir.), 1:498 Stand and Deliver, 1:499 Zoot Suit, 1:498 Filner, Bob, 1:495 Finland, 3:1187 Finnish Americans, 1:500–503, 1:500 (map) cultural roots maintenance by, 1:502–503 early history of, 1:500 in East Harlem, 1:429 entertainment industry and, 1:502 main immigration period of, 1:500–502 modern Finnish Americans and, 1:502 motives for immigration and, 1:501
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New Sweden and, 1:500 plans to return and, 1:501–502 prominent Finnish Americans and, 1:502 settlements of, 1:501 suomi-koulu children’s Saturday school movement and, 1:502 “third generation principle” and, 1:503 utopian communities of, 1:502 Fiorina, Carleton, 1:551 First African Church of Savannah, 1:172 First National Conference of the Colored Women of America, 1:24 First National Youth and Liberation Conference, 1:122 Fisk University, 2:613, 2:796 Five Civilized Tribes Choctaw, 1:291–294 Dawes Act of 1887 and, 1:372, 1:373 Indian Removal Act and (1830), 1:216 Flexner, Abraham, 3:1259 Florida affirmative action in education in, 1:14 Albanian Americans in, 1:49 Belgian Americans in, 1:137 Bulgarian Americans in, 1:213 Canadian Americans in, 1:234 Caribbean Americans in, 1:242 Cuban Americans in, 1:135, 1:357, 2:627, 3:1134 Cypriot Americans in, 1:366 Dutch Americans in, 1:428 Egyptian Americans in, 1:439 Finnish Americans in, 1:501, 1:502 Guatemalan Americans in, 1:565 Hmong Americans in, 2:634 immigrants settling in, 2:690, 3:1134 Italian Americans in, 2:770 Jamaican Americans in, 2:777 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 Latvian Americans in, 2:840 Lebanese Americans in, 2:841 Lithuanian Americans in, 2:856 Native American bingo palaces in, 1:519 Nicaraguan Americans in, 2:979 Pacific Islanders in, 2:1008 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Panamanian Americans in, 2:1016 Peruvian Americans in, 2:1043 Portuguese Americans in, 2:1064 Puerto Rican Americans in, 2:1083 Romanian Americans in, 3:1174 Santería practitioners in, 3:1200 Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida and, 2:716–717 Sicilian Americans in, 3:1228 Slovene Americans in, 3:1242 South Americans in, 3:1265 Spanish Americans in, 3:1274 Syrian Americans in, 3:1292 Turkish Americans in, 3:1336 United Kingdom immigrants in, 3:1350 Vietnamese Americans in, 3:1366 See also Miami, Florida; Tampa, Florida
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Folk high schools, 1:369 Forbes, Donald, 1:331 Forbes, Harold D., 1:331, 1:332 Ford, Arnold, Rabbi, 2:793 Ford, Gerald, 1:18 Ford, Henry, 1:65, 1:72 Fordice, United States v. See United States v. Fordice Foreign students, 1:503–506 bilingual education and, 1:142–146 brain drain and, 1:199, 1:504–505 China, India universities and, 1:505 competition with U.S. students issue and, 1:504 educational, economic, political advantages of, 1:504 enrollment statistics and, 1:503–504 German Americans and, 1:543 issues concerning, 1:505 negative impact on country of origin and, 1:504 opportunities for, challenges faced by, 1:504–505 Thai Americans and, 3:1301 Forster, Arnold, 1:72 Forten, James, 1:172, 1:414 Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, 3:1319–1320 Fourteenth Amendment affirmative action in education and, 1:12, 1:211, 1:562–563 Brown v. Board of Education and, 1:211, 3:1194 citizenship to African Americans and, 1:23, 1:210, 3:1213, 3:1369 death penalty constitutionality and, 1:374 educational stratification and, 1:435–436 equal protection clause, “one man, one vote” in, 1:545 equal protection clause, review standards of, 1:562–563 equal protection clause, under the law and, 1:210, 1:294, 3:1194, 3:1369 Native American voting rights and, 3:1370 Plessy v. Ferguson and, 2:1049, 2:1050, 3:1219–1220 Proposition 187 (California) and, 2:1076 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993) and, 3:1143 restrictive covenants and, 3:1157 Yick Wo v. Hopkins and, 1:93 Foxman, Abraham H., 1:73 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, 1:349, 1:476, 3:1170 France, 1:506–508, 1:506 (map) Anabaptist group in, 1:69 anti-Muslim sentiment in, 2:927 “antiracism without races” and, 1:506 Caribbean colonialism by, 1:238 Caribbian racial, ethnic identity in, 1:239 Charter Groups in Canada and, 1:225 colonialism of, 1:317 colonialism of, Creole communities and, 1:336 color blindness in, 1:321 discrimination, inequality in, 1:506, 1:508 dominant religion in, 3:1140 Dryfus affair in, 1:79 former French colonies’ immigrants and, 1:507–508 French Americans and, 1:514–516 French Canadians and, 1:234 French Revolution and, 1:506
Gayssot Low of 1990 and, 1:506 guest workers, undocumented immigrant issues and, 1:566 Haitians recruited by, 2:573 Haiti colonization by, 2:571–572 hate crime legislation in, 2:591 immigrant workers from Europe in, 1:507 Islamophobia in, 2:762 Jewish community in, 1:507, 1:508 Laos and, 2:828 Muslim acculturation in, 1:9 Native American mission schools and, 2:944 official policy in, 1:506–507 postwar, recent immigration in, 1:507–508 race, ethnicity concepts in, 1:506 third-generation principle in, 1:507 Frank, Leo, 1:63, 2:790 Franklin, Benjamin, 1:3 Fraser, Nancy, 2:676 Fraternities and sororities, 1:508–512, 1:511 Alpha Delta Pi sorority, 1:509 Alpha Kappa Nu Black fraternity, 1:510 Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., 1:511 Asian Greek organizations and, 1:509, 1:511 Black Greek letter organizations and, 1:509, 1:510, 1:510–511 Chi Phi fraternity, 1:509 definitions regarding, 1:508–509 Delta Kappa Epsilon, 1:509 Delta Sigma Theta sorority, 1:510 future of, 1:511 Gamma Phi Beta sorority, 1:509 Iota Phi Theta Fraternity Inc., 1:511 Kapa Alpha Society, 1:509 Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc., 1:511 Latino Greek organizations and, 1:511 multicultural Greek organizations and, 1:511 National Association of Latino Fraternity Organizations (NALFO) and, 1:511 National Multicultural Greek Council (NMGC) and, 1:511 National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) and, 1:509, 1:510 North American Interfraternity Conference (NIC) and, 1:509–510 Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc., 1:511 overview of, 1:509 Phi Beta Kappa, 1:509 Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc., 1:511 Rho Psi Asian fraternity, 1:511 Sigma Pi Phi Black fraternity, 1:510 traditionally white organizations and, 1:509–510 Fraternities without Brotherhood (Lee), 1:509 Frazier, E. Franklin, 1:512–514 African American family historic analysis written by, 1:480, 1:512–513 An American Dilemma (Gunnar Myrdal) and, 1:57–58 Black Bourgeoisie written by, 1:154 career of, 1:512 Chicago School of Race Relations and, 1:269, 1:270 emancipation impact on family and, 1:513–514 Charles S. Johnson and, 2:796
Index
The Negro Family in the United States written by, 1:512 slavery impact on family and, 1:513 urbanization impact on family and, 1:514 Free African Society, 1:172 Freedman’s Bureau, 1:16 Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, 1:415 Freedom Democratic Party (FDP), 1:308 Freedom Rides, 1:245, 1:301–302, 1:306–307, 1:310, 1:329, 3:1268, 3:1281 Freeman, Alan, 1:334 Freeman, Richard, 1:162 Free Speech Movement, University of California, Berkeley, 1:32 Freire, Paulo, 1:73 French Americans, 1:514–516 Cajuns of Louisiana and, 1:515 England and France wars and, 1:515 explorers, missionaries and, 1:514–515 French Canadian immigrants and, 1:234 French community and, 1:515–516 Huguenots and, 1:514–516 immigration patterns of, 2:699 immigration stream variety and, 1:514–515 “New France” and, 1:515 Frenkel-Brunswik, Else, 1:119 Freud, Sigmund, 1:120 Fromm, Erich, 1:120 FUBU Company, 1:516–517 “Fat Albert” line and, 1:517 “For Us, By Us” acronym and, 1:516 FUBU Foundation and, 1:516–517 Daymond John creator of, 1:516 LL Cool J and, 1:516 Samsung and, 1:516 urban community economic development and, 1:516–517 Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, 1:418 Fukuyama, Francis, 2:701 Furman v. Georgia, 1:374–375 Furnivall, J. S., 2:721 Future of the American Negro (Washington, B. T.), 3:1374G. I. Bill, 2:613, 3:1406–1407 Galton, Francis, 1:472 Gaming, Native American, 1:519–522, 1:520 bingo palace beginnings of, 1:521–522 California v. Cabazon Board of Mission Indians and, 1:520 Class I, II, III games and, 1:521 Congressional regulation and, 1:519 economic development strategy of, 1:519 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and(IGRA), 1:520, 1:521, 2:997 Ojibwa and, 2:997 reservation poverty and, 1:519 revenue from, 1:521, 2:963 tribal sovereignty and, 1:519 See also Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 (IGRA) Gamio, Manuel, 2:836 Gandhi, Mahatma (or Mohandas), 1:301, 1:468, 2:661 Gangs, 1:522–524 of Armenian Americans, 1:91
1545
code of the street and, 1:547 criminal activity purpose of, 1:522 deviance and race and, 1:384–385 in East Harlem, 1:430 of El Salvadoran youth, 1:255, 1:524, 3:1187 female gangs and, 1:523 financial opportunities through, 1:524 gang activity explanation and, 1:523–524 gang membership and, 1:522–523 gang warfare and, 1:523 hip-hop and, 2:619 illegal economy of, 1:522 immigrant acculturation stress and, 1:524 interethnic violence and, 1:430 “jumping in” ritual and, 1:523 of Mexican American youth, 1:255, 1:523, 1:524 military hierarchy of, 1:523 nationally recognized gangs and, 1:523 organized crime gangs and, 1:522 pachucos/pachucas and, 2:1005–1006 protection of members and, 1:522, 1:523, 1:524, 2:619 racial, ethnic, gender identity and, 1:523 sense if identity and, 1:522, 2:619 Sleepy Lagoon incident and, 2:1005–1006, 3:1428 socialization processes of, 1:523–524 street gangs and, 1:522 structural inequalities and, 1:524 types of, 1:522 urban legends regarding, 3:1354 Young Lords and, 3:1421 Zoot Suit Riots and, 2:1005–1006 Gans, Herbert J., 3:1288–1289, 3:1290 Garcia, Gustavo, 2:611–612 Garcia-Coll, Cynthia, 2:1024 Garifuna, in Belize, 1:139 Garnet, Henry Highland, 1:126 Garnett, William Highland, 1:157 Garrison, William Lloyd anti-slavery movement and, 1:1–2, 1:3–4, 1:414 Anti-Slavery Society and, 1:3–4 disunion advocated by, 1:2 Harpers Ferry incident and, 1:4 Hull House School of Race Relations and, 2:661 The Liberator newspaper of, 1:1–2, 1:3, 1:414 Liberty party and, 1:4 nonviolent approach of, 1:4 Sojourner Truth and, 3:1331 Garvey, Marcus Back to Africa movement and, 1:127 Black American Jewry and, 2:793 Black Power Movement and, 1:26 conservativism of, 1:158, 1:168 Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement and, 1:484 Harlem Renaissance and, 2:584 Jamaica homeland of, 2:776 Nation of Islam and, 1:158 pan-African nationalism and, 1:158, 1:171, 1:173, 1:176 Universal Negro Improvement Association and, 1:25, 1:127, 1:158, 1:171, 1:173, 1:241, 2:793, 2:900
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 1:128 Gautama, Siddhartha, 2:708 Gautreaux, Hills v. See Gautreaux decision Gautreaux decision, 1:524–526 desegregation remedy and, 1:525, 2:1078 education outcomes and, 1:525–526 employment outcomes and, 1:525 geographically concentrated poverty effects and, 1:526 Hills v. Gautreaux and, 1:525 Move to Opportunity initiatives and, 1:526 spatial mismatch hypothesis and, 1:525 Gayssot Law of 1990 (France), 1:507 Geary Act (1892), 1:290 Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, 3:1224–1225 Geertz, Clifford, 1:455 Gender and race, intersection of, 1:527–530 abortion trends and, 1:6–7, 1:7 (table) African American women, work and, 1:35–38 body image and, 1:187–190 Patricia Hill Collins and, 1:314–315, 1:488, 1:528 domestic work and, 1:405–408 EEOC and, 1:445–448 glass ceiling and, 1:548–551 guest workers and, 1:566–568 HIV/AIDS and, 2:629–633 bell hooks, 2:651–652 immigration and gender and, 2:691–693 informal economy and, 2:724–726 intertwined oppressions and, 1:527, 1:528 life expectancy and, 1:42–43, 2:848–852 localized meanings and, 1:527, 1:528–529 locations shape perspectives and, 1:527, 1:528 machismo and, 2:863–864 “matrix of domination” concept and, 1:528 mutual constitution and, 1:527, 1:529 race, class, gender intersection and, 1:527–529 race, class, gender intersection and, homelessness and, 2:642–643 relation of dependence and, 1:527, 1:529 science faculty women of color and, 3:1210–1211 sexuality and, 3:1225–1227 social inequality and, 3:1251–1253 social locations and, 1:527, 1:528 split labor market and, 3:1275–1276 structural vs. physical characteristics and, 1:527 See also Feminism, Black; Feminism, Latina General Accounting Office landfill report, 1:442 General Allotment Act. See Dawes Act of 1887 Genius of Universal Emancipation weekly newspaper (Lundy), 1:1 Genocide, 1:530–533 in Armenia, 1:89, 1:90 of Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, 1:108 Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (Lemkin) and, 1:530 Bangladesh and, 1:530 Cambodian American refugees and, 1:221–222 “collectivity” feature of, 1:531 colonial expansion, imperialism and, 1:531–532 cross-frontier contacts and, 1:348–350
definitional debates regarding, 1:531 eugenics and, 1:472–474, 1:474 examples of, 1:531–532, 2:676 The History and Sociology of Genocide (Chalk and Jonassohn) and, 1:531 Holocaust history and, 2:636–640 Holocaust of African enslavement and, 1:21–22 Nazi extermination campaign and, 1:530, 1:532 Nuremberg Trials and, 1:530, 1:532 origins of, 1:530–531 peoplehood and, 2:1036 racism extremism and, 2:1036 responses to, 1:532–533 United Nations and, 1:530–531, 1:533 Gentlemen’s Agreement, 1:533–535 anti-Japanese prejudice and, 1:534, 2:687, 2:699, 2:782 Asiatic Exclusion League and, 1:534 ethnocentrism and, 1:466 Japanese background and, 1:534–535 Japanese Issei and, 2:765 Korean Americans and, 2:812 National Origins Act of 1924 and, 1:534 Ozawa v. U.S. and, 1:535 series of notes and, 1:533–534 U.S. background and, 1:534 Gentrification, 1:535–537 in barrios, 1:135 Black Metropolis, of Chicago, 1:171 of Chinatowns, 1:287–288 consumption- vs. production-side explanations of, 1:535 of East Harlem, 1:430–431 in Harlem, 1:536 housing, resources conflict and, 1:536 political economy changes and, 1:536 process stages of, 1:535–536 restoration, revitalization of, 1:535 Young Lords, Chicago and, 3:1421 See also Immigrant communities George, Nelson, 2:622 Georgia Bulgarian Americans in, 1:213 Cherokee homeland in, 1:259 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and, 2:1270–1271 death penalty law in, 1:375 immigrants settling in, 2:690 Italian colonists in, 2:767 Jim Crow laws in, 2:795 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 majority–minority voting district creation and, 1:546 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Panamanian Americans in, 2:1016 Peruvian Americans in, 2:1043 See also Atlanta, Georgia Georgian Americans, 1:537–540, 1:537 (map) Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild West Congress of Rough Riders of the World and, 1:537, 1:538 community life of, 1:538–539 famous Georgians and, 1:538 Georgia background and, 1:537–538, 1:537 (map)
Index
Georgian Jews and, 1:537, 1:538, 1:539 immigration history and, 1:537, 1:538 Russia and, 1:537–538 today’s community and, 1:538–540 World War II and, 1:537, 1:538 German Americans, 1:540–544, 1:540 (map), 1:541 American Revolution and, 1:541 Amish and, 1:68–71 chain migration and, 1:541 colonial period and, 1:540–541, 2:698–699 community life of, 1:542–543 Illinois Michigan Canal and, 1:542 national claims and, 1:543 National German-American Alliance and, 1:543 Nazi period, war, postwar years and, 1:543 political activities of, 1:542 prohibition rejection by, 1:542–543 quest for land and, 1:541 redeptioner, indentured servant system and, 1:540–541 religious dissenters and, 1:540 religious diversity of, 1:542 Socialist party and, 1:542 urban experience of, 1:542–543 women’s groups, feminist activities and, 1:542–543 World War I and, 1:543 Germany anti-Muslim sentiment in, 2:927–928 border conflicts and, 1:191 citizenship in, 1:299 dominant religion in, 3:1140 guest workers, undocumented immigrant issues and, 1:566 hate crime legislation in, 2:591 Muslims migration to, 2:926 Roman Catholics from, 1:63 Gerrymandering, 1:544–546 Baker v. Carr and, 1:545 census and, 1:250, 1:545–546 Colgrove v. Green and, 1:545 “contiguity,” “compact” districting principles and, 1:545 cracking, stacking, packing strategies of, 1:544 election outcomes and, 1:544 explanation of, 1:544 Fourteenth Amendment and, 1:545 Gomillon v. Lightfoot and, 1:545 House of Representative elections and, 1:544 majority–minority district creation and, 1:545–546 Mobile v. Bolen and, 1:546 1990 census and, 1:545–546 origins of, 1:544 race, rules for redistricting and, 1:545–546 race and, 1:544–545, 3:1369 Reynolds v. Sims and, 1:545 Shaw v. Reno and, 1:546 Thornburg v. Gingles and, 1:545 2000 census and, 1:545–546 Voting Rights Act of 1965 and, 1:307–308, 1:545 Voting Rights Act of 1983 and, 1:545 Wesberry v. Sanders and, 1:545
1547
Ghana, 1:173 Ghetto, 1:546–548 barrio and, 1:133–136 “blaming the victim” and, 1:547 blockbusting and, 1:180 class-based theorists and, 1:548 code of the street and, 1:312–314, 1:547 cultural/attitudinal adaptation to inequality and, 1:547 culture of poverty theory and, 1:547 discrimination, intolerance in, 1:546–547 East Harlem and, 1:429–431 “enterprise zones” concept and, 1:548 federal fair housing legislation and, 1:548 gentrification and, 1:535–537, 1:548 ghetto underclass and, 3:1345 Harlem and, 2:583–585 “hyperghettos” and, 3:1345 industrial economy, immigrant minorities and, 1:546–547 joblessness and, 1:548 policy prescriptions for, 1:548 race-based theories and, 1:547–548 race vs. social class debate and, 1:547–548 redlining and, 1:548 relegating minorities, residential inequities and, 1:547–548 term’s origin and, 1:546 Gibbs, Lois, 1:443 Giddings, Paula, 1:34 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 1:529 Glass ceiling, 1:548–551, 1:549 affirmative action and, 1:550 affirmative action in the workplace and, 1:15–19 cracking of, 1:549–550 Glass Ceiling Act and, 1:549 Glass Ceiling Commission and, 1:549 glass cliff concept and, 1:550 glass elevator, escalator concept and, 1:550 grass ceiling concept and, 1:550 history of concept and, 1:549–550 investment industry and, 1:550 landmarks in cracking of, 1:550–551 maternal wall concept and, 1:550 National Organization for Women and, 1:549 political glass ceiling and, 1:550 stained glass ceiling concept and, 1:550 women, minorities and, 1:548–549 Glazer, Nathan, 1:456 Global commodity chains, 1:553–554 Globalization, 1:551–556 Age of Enlightenment and, 1:552 antiglobalization movements and, 1:556 concept explanation and, 1:551 cosmopolitanism and, 1:333–336 cultural globalization and, 1:555–556 development, structural adjustment policies and, 1:554 diaspora concept and, 1:385–386 digital divide and, 1:388–389 early trade, empires, 1:552 economic globalization and, 1:553–554 export processing zones and, 1:554
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
global commodity chains and, 1:553–554 global empires and, 1:552 “globalization,” hybridism and, 1:556 labor migration and, 1:566–568 linguae francae, loss of languages and, 1:555 maquiladoras and, 2:869–871 media influence, media oligopolies and, 1:555–556 nation-states, end of, 1:555 nation-states, intergovernmental organizations and, 1:554 nongovernmental organizations and, 1:554–555 political globalization and, 1:554–555 postindustrial period and, 1:553 transnational corporations and, 1:553 transnational people and, 3:1320–1322 20th century and, 1:552–553 Global perspective, 1:556–559 boundaries between groups and, 1:558–559 colonization and, 1:557–558 decolonization and, 1:558 ethnicity, panethnogenesis and, 1:557 globalization and, 1:551–556, 1:558 hierarchies from, 1:557 “qualities and degrees of human difference” and, 1:557 race, different nation-states and, 1:557 social constructs of, 1:557 social science perspectives on, 1:558 sociohistorical overview of, 1:557–558 Glover, Kevin, 1:216 Goebbels, Joseph, 1:77 Goldenwater, Alexander, 1:184 Goldman, Ari, 2:794 Gomillon v. Lightfoot, 1:545 Gonzales, Daniel, 1:99 Gonzáles, Rodolfo “Corky,” 1:122, 1:273 Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, 3:1143 Goodman, Andrew, 1:307, 3:1282 Gordon, David, 2:823 Gordon, Milton, 1:463, 2:738 Gottfedson, Linda, 1:141 Gramsel, Antonio, 1:344 Gratz v. Bollinger, 1:14, 1:562, 1:563–564, 2:613, 2:1046 Graves, Earl, 1:163 Gray, Victoria, 1:311 Great Britain brain drain from, 2:711 Britain’s Irish and, 1:206–208 Canadian immigrants from, 1:225 Caribbean colonialism by, 1:238 Caribbean racial, ethnic identity in, 1:239–240 citizenship in, 1:299 colonization, Creole communities and, 1:336 color blindness in, 1:321 Commonwealth Immigration Act (1962) and, 1:366 Crown Colony of Jamaica and, 2:775 Cypriot immigrants in, 1:366 hate crime policies in, 2:591 Hati colonialism and, 2:572 Hong Kong and, 2:647–650
Ireland and, 2:755–758 Islamophobia in, 2:762 Kenya and, 2:802 London bombings (July 7, 2005) and, 2:857–878 Muslims migration to, 2:926 Singapore and, 3:1228–1229 slavery in, 1:3 Trinidad and, 3:1327 Ugandan colonization and, 3:1339–1340 See also Community cohesion; London bombings (July 7, 2005); United Kingdom; United Kingdom, immigrants and their descendants in the United States Great Migration, of African Americans. See African Americans, migration of Greek Americans, 1:559–562, 1:559 (map) American Hellenic Institute Public Affairs Committee and, 1:561 American Hellenic Progressive Association and, 1:561 ancient Greek contributions and, 1:559 cultural groups, benevolent societies, organizations of, 1:560, 1:561 Cypriot Americans and, 1:365–367 educational projects and, 1:560, 1:561–562 Greek American Community and, 1:560–562 Greek American federations and, 1:561 Greek immigration to the U.S. and, 1:560 Greek Orthodox Christianity and, 1:559, 1:560–561 Hermes Expo trade and business organization and, 1:562 historical background regarding, 1:559–560 intermarriages of, 2:738 Modern Greek Studies Association (MGSA) and, 1:561 Orthodox Clergy Laity (OCL) and, 1:560 Ottoman-Turkish Empire and, 1:559–560 post–World War II refugees and, 1:559, 1:560 secular, spiritual merge and, 1:560–561 United Hellenic American Congress (UHAC) and, 1:561 Greely, Horace, 1:216 Green, Loraine Richardson, 1:270 Green, Samuel, 2:817 Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 1:211, 3:1204–1205, 3:1351 Gregg v. Georgia, 1:375 Griffith, D. W., 1:150, 2:842 Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 1:447 Group Areas Act of 1950 (South Africa), 1:81 Grundtvig, N. F. S., 1:369 Grutter v. Bollinger, 1:562–564 affirmative action in education and, 1:14 Gratz v. Bollinger and, 1:562, 1:563–564, 2:613, 2:1046 Grutter case and, 1:562–563 pipeline concept and, 2:1046 Guadeloupe, 1:238 Guantanamo Bay detainees, 2:746 Guatemala, 1:564 (map) census data on, 1:252 (figure) refugees from, 3:1133 unauthorized immigration from, 2:689
Index
Guatemalan Americans, 1:564–566, 1:564 (map) census data on, 1:252 (figure) economic conditions of, 1:252–253 female immigrants from, 1:565 gender, racial, ethnic discrimination of, 1:564 Guatemalan civil war and, 1:565 Indigenous Mayan women and, 1:254 Mayan Guatemalans and, 1:565 Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) and, 1:255, 1:565 obstacles faced by, 1:564 “push, pull” factors of, 1:564–565 social, cultural activism of, 1:255 social, family ties of, 1:254 transnational kinship, social networks of, 1:564, 1:565 Guest workers, 1:566–568 Border Patrol and, 1:194 Bracero Program and, 1:193, 1:199, 1:318, 2:702, 2:895, 3:1393–1395 brain drain and, 1:568 colonialism, imperialism explanation of, 1:567 contemporary characteristics of, 1:567–568, 2:659 domestic work and, 1:405–408 education levels of, 1:567 in Europe, 2:926 future outlook for, 1:568 immigrant laborers vs., 1:566 immigration conflict and, 1:566 impact on labor-receiving countries and, 1:568 labor migration, globalization and, 1:566–568 Mexican remittances from, 3:1147 micro-, macro-level explanations of, 1:567 “push-pull” factors of, 1:567 recruitment agencies and, 1:567 September 11th terrorist attacks and, 1:566 state policies regarding, 1:567 structural perspectives on, 1:567 in Taiwan, 1:566, 3:1294–1295 undocumented immigrant workers legislation and, 1:566 vulnerability of, 1:568 women workers and, 1:567–568 Guevara, Che, 1:175, 1:208 Guevara v. City of Norcross, Georgia, 2:894 “Guiding Hundredth” concept of W. E. B. Du Bois, 3:1296 Guinea Bissau, 1:337 Gurr, Ted, 2:908 Gustadt, Richard E., 1:72 Gutiérrez, José Angel, 1:273, 2:830–831 Guyana, 1:237 Guyene, 1:237 Hafu (Haafu), 2:569–571 ainoko derogatory term and, 2:569 daburu term and, 2:570 Japanese and White social classification and, 2:569 Japanese homogeneity myth and, 2:569 konketsuji term and, 2:569 mainstream popularity of, 2:570 media portrayal of, 2:570
1549
mikkusu term and, 2:570 phenotype traits and, 2:569 quotah term and, 2:570 social implications of, 2:570 Haiti, 2:571–572, 2:571 (map) “boat people” from, 1:187, 2:874 colonial times in, 2:571–572 Creole communities in, 1:337, 1:338 “Papa Doc” Duvalier and, 2:573, 2:577 geographic location of, 2:571 historical background on, 2:571 independence of, 1:410, 2:273, 2:573, 2:576 Indigenous people of, 2:571 language of, 2:571 population demographics of, 2:571 racial tension in, 2:571 slave revolt in, 2:572 slavery in, 2:571–572 Haitian Americans, 2:572–576 AIDS connection myth and, 2:575 American Revolution and, 2:572–573 “boat people” and, 1:187 census data on, 2:574, 2:577 demographics of, 2:573–574 economic life of, 2:574, 2:577 Haitian links of, 2:575–576 Haitian revolution and, 2:573 Harlem Renaissance and, 2:573 Hart-Celler immigration bill and, 2:573 homeland remittances of, 2:575–576 immigration history of, 2:573 language of, 2:574–575, 2:577 political life of, 2:574 recruitment of, 2:573 as refugees, 2:573 religion of, 2:575 repatriation of, 2:577 social adaptation of, 2:574–575 undocumented immigrants and, 2:574 Haitian and Cuban immigration: a comparison, 2:576–578 anti-Castro programs and, 2:575–576 “boat people” and, 1:186–187, 2:578 George W. Bush Haitian repatriation and, 2:577 Clinton “wet feet/dry feet” immigration policy and, 2:578 conclusions regarding, 2:578 contrast in reception and, 2:576–577 Cuba migration, demography and, 1:354–356 Cuban American experience and, 1:357–359, 2:578 Cuban Balseros, “Marielitos” and, 2:578 Florida and, 2:576–578 Haitian American experience and, 2:573–575, 2:577–578 Haitian mortality rates and, 2:577–578 interdiction at sea and, 2:578 repatriation and, 2:577, 2:578 See also Haitian Americans; Puerto Rican Americans Hall, Edward T., 2:731 Hallinan, Maureen, 2:749 Halmilton, Charles, 1:26 Hamer, Fannie Lou, 1:25, 1:308, 1:311
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Hamilton, Charles, 1:246, 1:392, 2:740 Hamilton, Marci, 3:1143 Hammond, Phillip E., 1:305 Hampton, Fred, 1:175 Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (Banks and Banks), 2:914 Hansen, Marcus Lee, 3:1302–1303 Haole, 2:579–581 capitalist, managerial class and, 2:580–581 different types of, 2:581 diversity of, 2:581 early influences and, 2:579–580 haole today and, 2:581 Hawai‘i annexation and, 2:580 Hawai‘i “territorial era” and, 2:580 kanaka maoli indigenous Hawaiians and, 2:599–602 King Kamehameha I and, 2:579, 2:580, 2:600 malihini and, 2:579 meaning of term and, 2:579 missionaries and, 2:579, 2:580 origin of term and, 2:579 plantation owners and, 2:580, 2:595 political control and, 2:580 Queen Lili’oukalani deposed and, 2:580, 2:596, 2:601 tourism impact and, 2:580–581, 2:602 U.S. military and, 2:580, 2:595 white-skinned, strange newcomers and, 2:579, 2:595 “without breath” and, 2:579, 2:595 Hapa, 2:581–583 Asian American studies, mixed heritage and, 1:101–102 contemporary use of, 2:583 controversy regarding, 2:582–583 definition and background of, 2:581–582 haole and, 2:579–581 inclusion issues and, 2:583–584 Indigenous Hawaiians and, 2:582 intermarriage of native and Caucasian and, 2:582 kanaka maoli indigenous Hawaiians and, 2:599–602 King Kamehameha I and, 2:579, 2:580, 2:600 mixed Asian descent and, 2:582 pejorative use of, 2:581–582 people of mixed race and, 2:581 Rice v. Cayetano and, 2:582 symbolic ethnicity and, 2:582 Hare, Nathan, 1:32–33 Harlem, 2:583–585, 2:584 African Americans in, 1:31, 1:430 Africans in, 1:38 barrio and, 1:135 Black domestic laborers in, 2:584 Commandment Keepers Congregation synagogue, 2:793 deteriorated living conditions in, 2:584–585 East Harlem and, 1:135, 1:429–431 Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement and, 1:484 gentrification in, 1:536 the ghetto and, 1:546–548 Great Depression and, 2:584 great school boycott (1964) and, 2:585 Harlem Renaissance and, 1:23–24, 1:31, 1:168
Harlem today and, 2:585 immigration in, 2:583–584 Irish immigrants in, 2:583 Italian, Spanish, Black Harlem and, 2:584 Jewish immigrants in, 2:585 Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination and, 2:585 Malcolm X, Black Panthers and, 2:585 Property Owners Protective Association in, 2:584 Puerto Rican Americans, East Harlem and, 2:584 slavery in, 2:583 strikes, riots in, 2:584–585 urban renewal projects in, 2:584 White flight from, 2:584 See also East Harlem; Harlem Renaissance Harlem Renaissance, 2:585–588 African Americans migration and, 1:31–32, 2:584 James Baldwin and, 1:127–128 Black American art and, 2:588 “civil rights by copyright” concept and, 2:585 Countee Cullen, 2:587 cultural diplomacy of, 2:585–586 Aaron Douglas, 2:588 W. E. B. Du Bois and, 1:168 end of, 2:588 Marcus Garvey and, 2:584 Great Depression and, 2:588 group expression, self-determination goals of, 2:586 Haitian Americans and, 2:573 Harlem Jazz Age and, 2:584 Harlem Riot of 1935 and, 2:588 Langston Hughes and, 2:587, 2:587 interracial movement and, 2:587 Jim Crow laws and, 2:586 Charles S. Johnson and, 2:796 Nella Larsen, 2:587 Alain Locke and, 2:586, 3:1295, 3:1296 Claude McKay, 2:587 The New Negro: An Interpretation (Locke) and, 2:586, 3:1296 Northern African American migration and, 2:586 notable individuals of, 1:32, 2:584 race pride and, 2:587 racial renewal through cultural diplomacy and, 2:585 rise of, 2:586 Survey Graphic social work journal and, 2:586, 2:587, 2:588 Talented Tenth concept and, 3:1295 theatrical plays and, 2:588 Jean Toomer, 2:587 White patrons of, 2:587 writers, poets, musicians of, 2:584 Harper, Frances Watkins, 1:22 Harpers Ferry insurrection, 1:5, 1:5, 1:414 Harris, Abram, 1:25 Harris, Cheryl, 1:334 Louis Harris and Associates, 2:734 Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, 1:422 Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 3:1224 Hart, Keith, 2:724 Hart-Celler Act, 1:92, 2:573, 2:721 See also Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
Index
Hartsock, Nancy, 1:528 Harvey, O. J., 3:1163–1164 Hate crimes, 2:588–591 Anti-Defamation League and, 1:72, 1:73, 2:590 anti-Muslim sentiment and, 2:924, 2:1017 Bureau of Statistics definition of, 2:590 Vincent Chin murder and, 1:276–278, 2:781, 2:1020 Community Relations Service definition of, 2:590 differing definitions of, 2:590 disabilities and, 2:589 ethnoviolence and, 1:470–472 “false zeros” concept and, 3:1362 FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program and, 2:589 federal legislation regarding, 2:589–590 freedom of speech protection and, 1:345 gender and, 2:589 Hate Crime Statistics Act (1990) and, 2:589, 2:590 identity politics as cause of, 2:676 Indian Americans and, 2:714, 2:1017 international response to, 2:591 Jewish American organizations and, 2:787 National Crime Victimization Survey of, 2:590 sexual orientation issue and, 2:590 state, local legislation regarding, 2:590–591 in the United Kingdom, 3:1347 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (1994) and, 2:589 See also Anti-Semitism; Hate crimes in Canada; Ku Klux Klan (KKK); Lynching Hate crimes in Canada, 2:591–594 Aboriginal Mik’Maq lobster fishing incidents and, 2:592 Africville, Nova Scotia incident, 2:592 Asian Canadians and, 2:592–593 Black Canadians and, 2:592 Canadian Islamic Congress report and, 2:593 Canadian laws on, 2:593–594 Chinese labor camp assaults and, 2:592–593 Council on American-Islamic Relations - Canada and, 2:593 Criminal Code of Canada and, 2:593 First Nations and, 2:592 First Nations women and, 2:592 hate propaganda material and, 2:593 human rights legislation and, 2:593 Internet hate and, 2:593 Jewish Canadians and, 2:592, 2:593 Muslim Canadians and, 2:592, 2:593 “promotion of genocide,” “incitement to hatred” and, 2:593 sexual orientation and, 2:593 “starlight tours” atrocities and, 2:592 Hawai‘i, 2:599 (map) Asian American labor in, 1:92, 1:93 Chinese Americans in, 1:287 Gentlemen’s Agreement and, 1:533–534 Japanese Hawaiians internment issue and, 2:765, 2:783, 2:903, 2:986 Korean Americans in, 2:813 Okinawans and, 2:765 Pacific Islanders in, 2:1008–1009 Portuguese Americans in, 2:1064
1551
Samoan Americans in, 3:1190 sugar plantation worker strikes in, 1:93 Tongan Americans in, 3:1315 See also Appendix A: Table 7; Haole; Hapa; Hawai‘i, race in; Hawaiians; Pacific Islanders Hawai‘i, race in, 2:594–598 annexation and, 2:595–596, 2:596 Asian American studies, mixed heritage and, 1:101–102 blood quantum and, 2:596 “Caucasian” vs. “Asiatic” Hawaiians and, 2:596 census data on, 2:597–598, 2:597–598 (tables) Chinese, Japanese, Filipino labor supply and, 2:595 European colonialism and, 2:594–595 first census (1900) and, 2:595–596 haole and, 1:101, 2:579–581, 2:595 hapa haole term and, 1:101 introduction of race and, 2:594–595 Issei Japanese migrants and, 2:764–766 Japanese Americans in, 2:784, 3:1198 kanaka maoli indigenous Hawaiians and, 2:599–602 King Kalakaua and, 2:594, 2:596 King Kamehameha I and, 2:579, 2:580, 2:600 language loss and, 2:595 local vs. nonlocal identities in, 3:1198 plantation economy and, 2:580, 2:595 public land loss, entitlement and, 2:596–597, 2:600–601 Queen Lili’oukalani deposed and, 2:580, 2:596, 2:601 racial, ethnic groups in, 2:597 (table) residential patterns and, 2:598 socioeconomic indicators and, 2:597–598, 2:598 (table) U.S. military and, 2:595 See also Hawaiians; Pacific Islanders Hawaiians, 2:599–602, 2:599 (map) ancestry, genealogy importance to, 2:599, 2:602 Asian American studies, mixed heritage and, 1:101–102 chiefdoms of, 2:600 cosmogonic and religious beliefs of, 2:599 cultural values of, 2:599–600, 2:601 dying race of, 2:602 Filipinos in, 1:494 haole and, 2:579–581 hapa, Hawaiian word and, 2:581–583 Issei Japanese migrants and, 2:764–766 Japanese Hawaiians internment issue and, 2:765 King Kamehameha I and, 2:579, 2:580, 2:600 Okinawans and, 2:765 public land loss, entitlement and, 2:596–597, 2:600–601 See also Pacific Islanders Hayden, Casey, 1:311 Hayes-Tilden Compromise, 1:23, 3:1219 Haymarket Riot, Chicago, Illinois, 1:542 Head Start and immigrants, 2:602–604 bilingualism and, 2:604 Community Action Agency and, 2:603 Comprehensive Employment and Training Act and, 2:603 Economic Opportunity Initiative and, 2:603 immigrant women empowerment and, 2:603–604 interview, needs assessment and, 2:604 legislative background regarding, 2:603
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migrant programs of, 2:603 parent participation, self-efficacy focus of, 2:603–604 school readiness program, 2:602 Health, immigrant, 2:604–607 of Asian immigrants, 2:606–607 of Black immigrants, 2:606 of Cambodian Americans, 1:224 conclusions regarding, 2:607 country of origin statistics and, 2:604–605 general immigrant health status and, 2:605–606 health insurance, health care and, 2:605–606 of Hispanic immigrants, 2:606 HIV/AIDS and, 2:629–633 immigrant definition difficulties and, 2:605 Journal of Immigrant and MInority Health and, 2:605 positive health outcomes of, 2:605 Vital and Health Statistics information, 2:605 Welfare Act (1996) and, 2:606 See also Health disparities Health and Physique of the Negro American (Du Bois), 1:424 Health disparities, 2:607–611 abortion trends and, 1:6–7, 1:7 (table) African American disparities and, 2:608, 2:609 African Americans in biomedicine and, 1:146–149 aging and, 1:44 definitions regarding, 2:607–608 discrimination, environmental hazards and, 1:394–396 disparities definition and, 2:607 in East Harlem, 1:431 environmental justice and, 1:442–445 ethnonational minorities’ social rights focus on, 1:469 excess deaths measurement of, 2:608 gender, area of resident, age factors and, 2:609 Health, United States 1983 (DHHS) report and, 2:608 Health and Physique of the Negro American (Du Bois), 1:424 health care and, 2:610 health improvement inequities and, 2:608 Healthy People 2000: National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives and, 2:608 Healthy People 2010 and, 2:608 Hispanic disparities and, 2:609 HIV/AIDS and, 2:629–633 life expectancy factors and, 2:848–852 Native American health care and, 2:949–954 racial discrimination and, 2:609 the record on disparities and, 2:608–609 reduction, elimination of, 2:610 residential segregation and, 2:609–610 Strategic Research Plan to Reduce and Ultimately Eliminate Health Disparities (NIH) and, 2:608 Task Force on Black and Minority Health and, 2:607–608 tobacco, alcohol consumption and, 2:610 young old, old old, oldest old and, 1:43 See also Health, immigrant Height, Dorothy, 1:25 Held, David, 1:335 Helms, Janet, 3:1107, 3:1109 Henius, Max, 1:370
Herberg, Will, 3:1290 Hernandez, Pedro (Pete), 2:611–612 Hernandez v. Texas, 2:611–612 aftermath of, 2:612 Brown v. Board of Education and, 2:611–612 the murder trial and, 2:611 Supreme Court appeal and, 2:611–612 Hernstein, Richard, 1:139–142, 3:1249, 3:1299 Herrera, John, 2:611–612 Herskovits, Melville, 1:57, 1:184, 1:362 Herzegovinia, 1:129, 1:129 (map), 1:130, 1:131 borderland dispute and, 1:192 Higher education, 2:612–615 affirmative action in, 1:12–15, 2:613 ASPIRA and, 1:103–104 bilingual education and, 1:142–146 Brown v. Board of Education and, 2:613 census data on, 2:614 Cheney University and, 2:612, 2:615 college attendance rates by gender data and, 2:614 college tuition burden and, 2:614 cultural pluralism, multiculturalism in, 2:615 educational stratification and, 1:435–438 first Black colleges and universities and, 2:612–613 Fisk University and, 2:613 foreign students and, 1:503–506 fraternities, sororities and, 1:508–512 G. I. Bill and, 2:613 Gratz v. Bollinger and, 2:613, 2:1046 Grutter v. Bollinger and, 1:562–564, 2:613, 2:1046 levels of degrees earned and, 2:614 minorities for sports mascots and, 2:615 minority faculty data and, 2:615 National Campus Diversity Project and, 2:615 Native American education and, 2:944–947 Navajo Community College and, 2:615 performance, attainment by race, ethnicity and, 1:432–433, 1:433 (table) Plessy v. Ferguson and, 2:612–613, 2:616 racial inequalities in, 2:613–615 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and, 2:613 socioeconomic status and, 2:614 United States v. Fordice and, 3:1350–1352 Higher education: racial battle fatigue, 2:615–618 affirmative action in education and, 1:12–15 antiracist education and, 1:73–76 Brown v. Board of Education and, 2:616 causes and stress reactions to, 2:617–618, 2:617 (figure) extreme environmental stress and, 2:616 fraternities, sororities and, 1:508–512 Grutter v. Bollinger and, 1:562–564, 2:613, 2:1046 Native American education and, 2:944–947 Plessy v. Ferguson legal segregation and, 2:616 psychological, behavioral dimensions of, 2:616 psychological, physiological, behavioral stress responses, 2:617, 2:617 (figure) racial microaggressions and, 2:616, 2:617, 2:617 (figure), 2:618
Index
reactionary racism and, 2:616 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and, 1:28, 1:563 student perceptions and, 2:616 subtle, overt discrimination and, 2:616 Hill, Herbert, 1:245 Hills v. Gautreaux, 1:524–526, 2:1078 See also Gautreaux decision Hinduism in the Caribbean, 1:238 caste and, 1:248 in India, 2:707 in Indonesia, 2:721 of Pakistani Americans, 2:1010 in Singapore, 3:1230 Hip-hop, 2:618–621 Afrika Bambaataa and, 2:619 B-boying, breakdancing and, 2:619 the Bronx and, 2:618–619, 2:621 50 Cent and, 2:620 characteristics and topics of, 2:619–620 Chuck D and, 2:620, 2:622 criticisms of, 2:620–621 “Dancehall and Rastafarian” reggae and, 2:778 deindustrialization, urban renewal and, 2:618–619 of desi and, 1:383 DJ-ing and, 2:619, 2:621 DMX and, 2:620 Eminem and, 2:620 fashion of, 3:1125 female rappers and, 2:620, 2:621–623 FUBU Company and, 1:516–517 Furious Five and, 2:620 gang appeal and, 2:619 “gangsta rap” and, 2:620, 2:622, 2:1061, 3:1121–1122 ghetto life lyrics of, 2:620 graffiti writing and, 2:619–620, 2:621 Grand Master Flash and, 2:620 Kool Herc and, 2:619 hip-hop and rap, women and, 2:621–624 Hip Hop Dictionary: The Dictionary of Hip Hop Terminology (Westbrook) and, 1:517 Kool DJ Herc and, 2:621 LL Cool J and, 1:516 marginalization of residents and, 2:619 MC-ing, rapping and, 2:620 N. W. A. rap group and, 2:620 Rosa Parks and, 2:1030 police brutality lyrics of, 2:620 Public Enemy and, 2:620 racial profiling lyrics of, 2:620 rap, the genre and, 3:1121–1123 rap, the movement and, 3:1123–1126 sexist, misogynistic lyrics of, 2:620, 2:621–623 Snoop Doggy Dogg and, 2:620 Too Short and, 2:620 violence glorified by, 2:620, 2:621 See also Hip-hop and rap, women and
Hip-hop and rap, women and, 2:621–624, 2:622 “answer records” and, 2:622 Da Brat, 3:1125 depiction of women and, 2:622–623, 3:1125 Dimples D, 2:622 Eve, 3:1125 female DJs, producers and, 2:622 female rappers and, 2:622, 3:1125 Foxy Brown, 3:1125 Funky Four Plus One More, 2:622, 3:1125 gendered power relations and, 2:623, 3:1125 “ghettocentric” urban space reality and, 2:621 hidden politics of, 2:623 Lauryn Hill, 3:1125 hop-hop basics and, 2:621–622 hop-hop feminism and, 2:623, 3:1125 Lady of Rage, 3:1125 Lil’ Kim, 3:1125 MC Lyte, 3:1125 Mercedes Ladies, 2:622 Mia X, 3:1125 music video and, 2:622–623 Rosa Parks and, 2:1030 Queen Latifah, 2:622, 3:1125 sexism, misogyny and, 2:621–622, 2:622–623 Roxanne Shante, 2:622, 3:1125 Sha-Rock, 2:622 South Bronx origins of, 2:621 themes of, 3:1125 violence glorification and, 2:621 Zulu Queens, 2:622 Hip Hop Dictionary: The Dictionary of Hip Hop Terminology (Westbrook), 1:517 Hirabayashi, Gordon, 2:746 Hirabayashi, Lane Rho, 2:746 Hirabayashi v. United States, 2:746 Hispanics, 2:624–627 ability grouping, tracking of, 1:437 abortion statistics and, 1:7, 1:7 (table) academic achievements of, 1:148, 1:432–433, 1:433 (table), 2:614, 2:684 achievement gap and, 3:1300 African American/Latino ethnic succession conflicts and, 1:463 aging population and, 1:43–44 ASPIRA and, 1:103–104 barrio and, 1:133–136 The Bell Curve (Hernstein and Murray) and, 1:139–142 biomedical work force and, 1:147 businesses owned by, 2:685 census, racial categories and, 1:250, 2:624–625 census data and, 1:97, 1:390 Chicano rap and, 3:1125 compadrazgo kinship and, 2:809 crime and race and, 1:338–341 criminal processing disparities and, 1:341–343 detracking and, 3:1317
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differential residential settlement patterns of, 2:625, 2:626 (map), 2:627 digital divide and, 1:388, 1:389 discrimination evidence and, 1:393 (table) diversity within, 1:481–482 domestic violence and, 1:404 domestic work and, 1:407 drug use patterns and, 1:419–420, 1:421 (table), 1:422 educational stratification and, 1:435–438 education disparities and, 1:392 environmental racism and, 1:442 ethnonational minority influence of, 1:470 familism, 3:1257 familism and, 1:477–479 government definition of, 2:624–625 in Hawai‘i, 2:597–598, 2:597–598 (tables) health disparities of, 1:431, 2:606 Hispanic ethnic label inadequacies and, 2:627 Hispanic versus Latino ethnic label and, 2:627–629 HIV/AIDS and, 2:631–632 homelessness and, 2:642 homicide and, 2:645 housing discrimination and, 1:402, 2:657 incarcerated parents and, 2:704–706 income data and, 1:392, 1:393 (table) infant mortality rates of, 2:850–851, 2:851 (figure) institutional discrimination against, 2:726–729 intergenerational conflict and, 1:481 intergroup relations survey results regarding, 2:734–736 interracial marriages and, 1:482 job, labor market ethnic succession and, 1:464 juvenile offenders and, 1:339 kinship of, 2:809 labor union membership of, 2:826–827 language barriers of, 3:1257 Latin American national identity and, 2:627 Latino and, 2:627 leisure activity preferences of, 2:844 life expectancy and, 2:848–852 machismo and, 2:863–864 MALDEF and, 2:892–894 medical school faculties and, 1:147 in military service, 2:904 NCLB, achievement gap improvement and, 1:434 nonmarital birth statistics and, 1:479, 1:480 panethnic identity and, 2:1021 panethnic oversimplification of term and, 2:624 panethnicty and, 2:625 popular culture racism and, 2:1062 population demographics and, 2:625–626 prison population demographics of, 2:1071 racially distorted crime news coverage and, 1:340 school segregation and, 3:1209 science faculty women of color and, 3:1210–1211 sexuality, race and, 3:1226 tracking and, 3:1317 voting rights of, 3:1370–1371 youth rites of passage and, 3:1162 See also Film, Latino; specific immigrant group
Hispanic versus Latino, 2:627–629 Brazilian Americans and, 1:205 census, racial categories and, 1:250, 2:624–625 Chicano, Raza ethnic label and, 2:629 compound label preference and, 2:628 familism and, 1:477–479 Hispanic, Latino, Chicano ethnic labels defined and, 1:497 Hispanic label inadequacies and, 2:628 Latino, gendered ethnic label and, 2:628–629 Latino, political, geographical, historical links and, 2:628 Latino films and, 1:497–499 Latino label inadequacies and, 2:628–629 national origin preference and, 2:628 The History and Sociology of Genocide (Chalk and Jonassohn), 1:531 Hitler, Adolf, 1:79 HIV/AIDS, 2:629–633 African American community and, 2:632 Asian American community and, 2:631 autoimmune system viral disease and, 2:629 blood transfusions and, 2:629, 2:630 course of the disease and, 2:630 general characteristics of, 2:632–633 Haitian Americans and, 2:575 health care access and, 2:629 highly active antiretroviral therapy and, 2:630 Hispanic community and, 2:631–632 HIV virus and, 2:629 homosexually active men and, 2:629 injection drug users and, 2:629, 2:630 LGBT and, 2:847 Native American, Alaska Native community and, 2:631 the pandemic of, 2:630 statistics regarding, 2:630 sub-Saharan life expectancies and, 2:847 treatment of, 2:630 Hmong Americans, 2:633–636 Asian migration of, 2:633 census data on, 2:634 chicken farming industry and, 2:634 contemporary social patterns of, 2:634–636 cultural traditions of, 2:636 diversity in communities of, 2:635–636 economic indicators of, 2:634–635 housing data of, 2:635 immigration patterns of, 2:633–634 job distribution of, 2:635 Laos and, 2:828 poverty rates of, 1:96, 2:635 religion of, 2:636 stateless ethnic group of, 2:633 youth gangs and, 2:635 HMPS. See Housing Market Practices Survey (HMPS, HUD) Ho Chi Minh, 1:175 Holly, James, 1:22 Holocaust, 2:636–640 Buchenwald concentration camp and, 1:474 common good, health of a nation focus of, 2:637 culpability issues and, 2:639
Index
death camps of, 2:639 death marches and, 2:639 European Jews migration and, 1:475 forced labor and, 2:638–639 French revisionist historians and, 1:507 genocide and, 1:530–531, 1:532 “Genocide Convention,” 2:639 German from Jewish German segregation and, 2:637 German mass murders and, 2:638 German Soviet Union attack and, 2:638 Heinrich Himmler and, 2:637 historical debates regarding, 2:639 history of: 1933 to 1939, 2:637–638 history of: World War II period, 2:638–639 immigration quotas and, 1:473 International Tribunal in Nuremberg and, 2:639 Jewish genocide plan and, 2:638 Jewish Germans emigration and, 2:637 “Judeo-Bolshevism” focus of, 2:638 moral and political impact of, 2:639 Nazi racial value hierarchy and, 2:636–637 non-nation-state-based groups focus of, 2:637 “Nuremberg Laws” and, 2:637 pogroms and, 2:637–638 Polish atrocities and, 2:638 political, ideological background regarding, 2:636–637 Roma focus of, 2:638 “Rome Statute” and, 2:639 Wannsee Konferenz and, 2:638 Holocaust deniers and revisionists, 2:640–641 “Anne Frank’s diary was a hoax” and, 2:641 anti-Zionists and, 2:641 Austin App, 2:640 Harry Elmer Barnes, 2:640 Robert Faurisson, 2:640 “Hitler was a ‘man of peace’” and, 2:640–641 The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (Butz) and, 2:640 Holocaust history and, 2:636–640 international conference on Holocaust denial, Tehran and, 2:640 David Irving, 2:640 Meyer Levin scandal and, 2:641 revisionism vs. denial and, 2:640 “the concentration camps were not so bad” and, 2:640 “there were no gas chambers” and, 2:640 Ernst Zundel, 2:640 Holocaust of African enslavement, 1:21 Homeland Security. See Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Homeland Security Act, 2:697 Homelessness, 2:641–644, 2:642 age demographic data on, 2:642 claims makers competition and, 2:643 employment decline and, 2:641–642 ethnicity demographic of, 2:642–643 families demographic of, 2:642 gender demographic of, 2:642 gentrification, minority displacement and, 1:536 the ghetto and, 1:546–548
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morality, ethics, institutional responses and, 2:643–644 National Alliance to End Homelessness and, 2:642 poverty, cost of housing factors of, 2:641–642, 2:643 public assistance decline and, 2:642, 2:643 social citizenship and, 2:643–644 social contracts and, 2:643 structural dynamics of postmodernism and, 2:643 urban environments and, 2:643 “welfare queen” and, 3:1384–1386 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (1975), 3:1128 Homestead Act (1862), 1:216 Homicide, 2:644–646 African American homicide rates and, 2:644–645 Asian homicide rates and, 2:646 Code of the Street (Anderson) and, 2:312–313, 2:645 death penalty and, 1:374–376 disadvantaged socioeconomic contexts and, 2:644 Latino homicide rates and, 2:645 Native American homicide rates and, 2:645–646 poverty, unemployment and, 2:645 race-specific homicide research and, 2:644 residential segregation and, 2:644 social isolation, concentration effects and, 2:644–645 Honda, Mike, 1:495 Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette, 1:406 Honduran Americans, 2:646–647, 2:647 (map) homeland remittances from, 2:647 Honduras economy and, 2:646 human rights abuses and, 2:647 poverty, natural disaster push factors and, 2:646 residential patterns of, 2:647 undocumented immigrants from, 2:647 Honduras, 2:647 (map) U.S. immigrants from, 1:251–252, 1:252 (figure) unauthorized immigration from, 2:689 Hong Kong, 2:647–650, 2:648 (map) action on inequity and, 2:650 anti-racial discrimination legislation in, 2:650 British citizenship and, 2:649 Canadian immigrants from, 1:225 change of sovereignty and, 2:648–649 Chinese Americans from, 1:285, 1:287 Chinese minority ethnic groups in, 2:648 colonial past of, 2:648 “ethnic minorities” today and, 2:649–650 ethnic specific occupations in, 2:649–650 The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese (Siu-kai Lau, Ksin-chi Kuan) and, 2:648 First Opium War and, 2:648 Guangdog Province, China and, 2:648 Hong Kong identity vs. China and, 1:280 Hong Kong in China: The Challenges of Transition (Kuah Khun Eng) and, 2:650 Hong Kong special administrative region and, 2:647–648 Hong Kong vs. China identity and, 2:648–649 language in, 2:648 “local boy (girl)” identity and, 2:649 “one country, two systems” formula and, 2:648 Perspectives on Hong Kong Society (Leung) and, 2:648
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Re-making Citizenship in Hong Kong (Sautman) and, 2:649 return migrants to, 2:649 transnational migration and, 2:649 Hong Kong in China: The Challenges of Transition (Kuah Khun Eng), 2:650 Hood, William R., 3:1163–1164 hooks, bell, 2:651–652 academic career of, 2:651 Ain’t I a Woman first book of, 2:651 books written by, 2:652 cultural criticism work of, 2:652 feminist work of, 2:651 LGBT activism of, 2:847 name choice and, 2:651 Hoover, Herbert, 1:63, 3:1151 Hoover, J. Edgar Black Panthers and, 1:176 Hopi, 2:652–654 Anasazi ancestors of, 2:652 blood quantum and, 2:654 Bureau of Indian Affairs and, 2:653 economy of, 2:652–653 fourth creation of life belief of, 2:653 government of, 2:653–654 Hopi Reservation on the Black Mesa and, 2:653 matrilineal, matrilocal society of, 2:653 Mormon, Mennonite missionaries and, 2:653 Navajo and, 2:652 Navajo-Hopi dispute and, 2:653, 2:971 place-based history of, 2:967, 2:968 Pueblo branch of, 2:652, 2:1082 Spanish contact with, 2:653, 2:1080, 2:1081 Uto-Aztecan language family of, 2:652 Hopwood v. Texas, 1:14, 1:148 Horkheimer, Max, 1:120 Hose, Sam, 3:1220 Hossfeld, Karen, 1:529 Hourglass economy, 2:654–656 bifurcated labor force and, 2:654, 2:655 bifurcation of wealth and, 2:655 birth of the hourglass and, 2:655 economic inequality growth and, 2:654, 2:655–656 economic paradox of, 2:654 middle class shrinkage and, 2:654, 2:655 occupational wage structure changes and, 2:655 Pakistani Americans and, 2:1010–1011 social mobility and, 3:1253–1256 sociopolitical causes of, 2:655–656 Housing Act of 1937, 2:1077, 2:1078 Housing Act of 1949, 2:1077 Housing audits, 2:656–657 discrimination testing and, 1:401–402 experimental housing discrimination tests and, 2:656 Fair Housing Act amendment (1988) and, 2:657 Fair Housing Act (1968) and, 2:656, 3:1127–1128 Housing Discrimination Study (1989) and, 2:657 Housing Market Practices Survey (HUD) and, 2:656–657 integrated vs. segregated neighborhood results of, 2:657 local-level audits and, 2:657
methods and history of, 2:656–657 racial steering and, 2:657 “racial steering” and, 1:180 residential segregation and, 2:656 tester characteristics’ influence on, 2:657 Housing discrimination. See Discrimination in housing Housing Market Practices Survey (HMPS, HUD), 2:656–657 Houston, Charles Hamilton, 1:306, 3:1221 Houston, Texas Guatemalan Americans in, 1:565 Honduran Americans in, 2:647 Mexican Americans in, 1:453 Pakistani Americans in, 2:1010 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 rap artists from, 3:1124 Turkish Americans in, 3:1336 Vietnamese Americans in, 3:1366 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Houston, Zora Neal, 1:24 Howard, John, 1:111 HUD. See U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Huerta, Dolores C., 2:658–659 Agricultural Workers Association and, 2:658 Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and, 2:658 Bracero program and, 2:658 Cesar Chávez and, 1:256, 1:257, 2:658–659 early years of, 2:658 feminist activism of, 2:659 La Raza advocate and, 2:658 National Farm Workers Association and, 2:658 UFW and, 2:658–659 Hughes, Helen MacGill, 1:271 Hughes, Langston, 2:584 Ralph Ellison and, 2:751 Harlem Renaissance and, 1:24, 1:31, 2:587, 2:587 National Urban League and, 2:796 Hull House School of Race Relations, 2:659–661 abolitionism, Abraham Lincoln influences on, 2:659 accomplishments of, 2:659, 2:661 African American women importance and, 2:660 Chicago School of Race Relations and, 1:270, 1:271 Civil Rights Movement and, 2:661 John Dewey and, 1:270 education, democracy tools of, 2:659 epistemology of, 2:659–661 Fabian socialism supported by, 2:660 folk knowledge and, 2:660 members of, 2:661 NAACP and, 2:659, 2:661 National Urban League and, 2:659, 2:661 “new abolitionism” and, 2:660–661 new social consciousness focus of, 2:660 race relations can be changed focus of, 2:659–660 University of Chicago and, 2:659 Fannie Barrier Williams and, 3:1412 women, African Americans as change agents and, 2:660 women, “civic housekeeping” and, 2:660 See also Chicago School of Race Relations
Index
Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, 1:120–121 Human Genome Project, 1:474 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (Australia), 1:114 Hungarian Americans, 2:662–665, 2:662 (map) tidal wave, 1870-1920 and, 2:662–663 Treaty of Trianon (1920) and, 2:663 post–World War II: displaced persons and ‘56-ers and, 2:663–664 census data on, 2:664 contemporary community of, 2:664 ethnic enclaves of, 2:662, 2:663, 2:664 ethnic identity of, 2:664 Hungarian American Foundation Web site and, 2:665 identity crisis of, 2:663 migratory nature of, 2:662–663, 2:664 mining and factory workers of, 2:662 refugees and, 2:663–664 residential patterns of, 2:662–663 Hungarian Refugee Act (1958), 3:1133 Hungary, 1:129 (map), 1:130, 2:622 (map) dominant religion in, 3:1140 Huntington, Samuel P., 2:700–701 Hurricane Katrina, 2:665–668, 2:666 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report on, 2:667 country’s security post 9/11 and, 2:666 emergency management failure and, 2:666 environmental injustice after, 1:396 FEMA administered benefits and, 2:667 FEMA and, 2:666 forced evacuation and, 2:665, 2:665–666 General Accounting Office report on, 2:666 government vs. local effectiveness after, 2:668 House of Representatives Report on, 2:666 housing discrimination and, 1:402, 2:666–667 labeling by media and, 2:821 language barriers and, 2:667 Latino population affected by, 2:666 long-term strategies regarding, 2:667–668 minorities impacted by, 2:665, 2:665–666, 2:667 National Council of La Raza report on, 2:666 National Preparedness and Response Authority and, 2:666 Oxfam America report on, 2:666–667 Senate Report on, 2:666 social and economic impact of, 2:665 undocumented immigrants and, 2:667 White House Report on, 2:666 Hurston, Zora Neale, 1:168, 1:184, 2:587 Hutterites, 2:668–671 communal property concept of, 2:669–670, 3:1203 education and, 3:1203 European roots of, 2:668–669 German Americans and, 1:542 Mennonites and, 2:889 modern ways and, 2:670 New World communities of, 2:669 Schmiedeleut and, 3:1203–1204 social control, isolation and, 2:670–671 technology utilized by, 2:670
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Hutton, Bobby, 1:175, 1:176 Hymowitz, Carol, 1:549 ICE. See Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Icelandic Americans, 2:673–675, 2:673 (map) 1870s to 1890s emigration and, 2:673–674 1950s to 1970s immigration and, 2:674–675 census data on, 2:673 ethnic identity maintained by, 2:674–675 Icelandic National League of North America and, 2:674 Iceland NATO base and, 2:674 “New Iceland” Canada and, 2:674 Pembina County, North Dakota and, 2:674 present day immigration and, 2:675 ICERD. See International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) Ichioka, Yuji, 2:765 Idaho Alien Land Act and, 1:53 internment camps in, 2:747 IDEA. See Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 (IDEA) Identity politics, 2:675–677 “American-ness” challenged by, 2:676 analytical tool, theoretical construct of, 2:675–676 Azlán and, 1:121–123 bicultural identity development and, 1:276 blood quantum and, 1:181–183 Britain’s Irish and, 1:206–208 Chicano Movement and, 1:122, 1:272–274 cosmopolitanism and, 1:333–336 criticism of, 2:676–677 “cult of ethnicity” concept and, 2:676 devaluation of “otherness” challenged by, 2:676 equal valuation and treatment of social groups and, 2:676 essentializing identity and, 2:676 ethnic conflicts resulting from, 2:676 Hafu and, 2:569–571 hapa, Hawaiian word and, 2:581–583 identity boundaries and, 2:677 identity instability and, 2:677 intersectionalities of identity vs., 2:676–677 kanaka maoli indigenous Hawaiians and, 2:599–602 over reliance on culture by, 2:677 pan-Asian identity and, 1:278 politics of recognition concept and, 2:675 progressive social change and, 2:677 self-identification and, 2:677 shifting U.S. identities and, 2:676 “If We Must Die” poem (McKay), 2:587 IGOs. See Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) IGRA. See Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 (IGRA) IITC. See International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, 2:677–680 aggravated felonies classification and, 2:678 alien benefit restrictions of, 1:194, 2:678, 2:679, 2:683, 2:691 alien smuggling and, 2:678 Anti-Drug Abuse Act (1988) and, 2:678
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Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (1996) and, 2:678 asylum removal exception of, 2:679 border control and, 2:678 deportable offenses and, 1:194, 2:678, 2:696 employment restrictions of, 2:678 “expedited removal” and, 2:678–679, 2:696 INS and, 2:696 INS v. St. Cyr and, 2:678 judicial review denial and, 2:678–679 provision of support and, 2:679 refugee detention and, 2:679 refugees and, 2:678 sponsor support and, 2:678, 2:679 Welfare Reform Act of 1996 and, 2:678, 2:679 Illinois Albanian Americans in, 1:49 Belgian Americans in, 1:137 bilingual education in, 1:143 Bulgarian Americans in, 1:213 Chinese Americans in, 1:287 Croatian Americans in, 1:348 death penalty in, 1:376 Hispanics in, 1:135 Iraqi Americans in, 2:754 Italian Americans in, 2:770 Jordanian Americans in, 2:797 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 Lithuanian Americans in, 2:856 Mennonites in, 2:888 Pakistani Americans in, 2:1010 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Peruvian Americans in, 2:1043 Puerto Rican Americans in, 2:1083 Romanian Americans in, 3:1174 Serbian Americans in, 3:1223 Sicilian Americans in, 3:1228 Slovak Americans in, 3:1238 Slovene Americans in, 3:1242 Swedish Americans in, 3:1286 See also Chicago, Illinois; Chicago School of Race Relations; Hull House School of Race Relations ILO. See International Labor Organization (ILO) Ilves, Toomas Hendrik, 1:450 Immigrant communities, 2:680–683 acculturation and, 2:681 of Afghan Americans, 1:19–20 assimilation downward spiral and, 2:681 Bangladeshi Americans and, 1:132–133 colonias and, 1:318–320 community network importance to, 2:681–682 community network losses and, 2:682 cultural heritage retention benefits and, 2:681 deficit model of ethnicity and, 1:379–380 diaspora concept and, 1:385–386 of Dutch Americans, 1:428 of Egyptian Americans, 1:438–439 of Estonian Americans, 1:449–450 ethnonational minorities and, 1:469–470
family disruption and, 2:680–681 of Finnish Americans, 1:500–503 the ghetto and, 1:546–548 hybrid identity, hybrid cultures and, 1:380 immigration and gender and, 2:691–693 of Italian Americans, 2:769–770 loss of culture and, 1:380 melting pot myth and, 2:680, 2:681 nativist fear of, 2:682–683 nature of U.S. immigration and, 2:680–681 rainbow underclass concept and, 2:681 socioeconomic ladder ascension and, 2:681 “tangential development” concept and, 1:380 U.S. society, culture impacted by, 2:680 See also Ethnic enclave, economic impact of Immigration, economic impact of, 2:683–686 age demographics and, 2:684 current immigration debates and, 2:685–686 economic growth and, 2:685–686 educational, professional achievements and, 2:684 entrepreneurs and, 2:685 foreign students and, 1:503–506 job categories and, 2:685 labor sources and, 2:683–684, 2:685, 2:690 poverty rates and, 2:684–685 undocumented immigrants issue and, 2:686 younger adult immigrant optimism and, 2:684 See also Ethnic enclave, economic impact of Immigration, U.S., 2:686–691 alien benefit restrictions and, 1:194, 2:678, 2:679, 2:683, 2:691 Alien Land Acts and, 2:1:52–55 Chinese Exclusion Act and, 2:687 countries of origin and, 2:690 Dillingham Flaw concept and, 1:389–391 Displaced Persons Act (1948), 1:287, 1:449, 1:538, 1:553, 2:688, 2:854, 3:1133, 3:1223 diversity visa and, 1:132 employment-based migration and, 2:688, 2:690 ethnonational minorities and, 1:469–470 family-sponsored preference categories and, 2:688, 2:690 foreign students and, 1:503–506 Gentlemen’s Agreement and, 1:466, 1:533–535, 2:687, 2:765, 2:782, 2:812 guest worker program and, 1:194 H-1B visas and, 1:199, 2:689 humanitarian immigration and, 2:689 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and, 1:194, 2:677–680, 2:979 Immigration Act of 1990 and, 2:688 Immigration and Nationality Act (1952) and, 2:688 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and, 2:688, 2:921 immigration law administration and, 2:688 interracial marriages and, 1:482 legal status of U.S. foreign-born population and, 2:690 (figure) legislation limiting, 1:466 “lottery” visa program and, 1:132 Mexican workers and, 2:688
Index
Thomas Nast cartoon regarding, 2:758 national origins quota system and, 2:688 nativist sentiment and, 1:194 new lawful permanent residents by decade and, 2:687 (figure) nonimmigrant system and, 2:688–689 occupational immigration admissions and, 2:813 original colonial settlers and, 2:687 past immigration policy and, 2:687–688 permanent immigration and, 2:688, 2:690 (figure) Refugee Relief Act (1953) and, 1:287, 1:538, 2:688 settlement patterns of, 2:690 transnational parenting and, 1:481 trends in, 2:689–691 unauthorized immigration and, 2:689, 2:690, 2:690 (figure) undocumented immigrant issue and, 1:469 See also Acculturation; Assimilation; Asylum; Border Patrol; Ethnic enclave, economic impact of; Health, immigrant; Immigrant communities; Immigration and gender; Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; Immigration and race; Refugees; “Wetbacks”; specific immigrant group; specific immigration legislation Immigration Act of 1917, 1:192, 3:1151 Immigration Act of 1990, 1:132, 1:405, 1:496, 2:678, 2:688 Immigration Act of 1967 (Canada), 1:226 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 2:688, 2:697 Immigration and gender, 2:691–693, 2:692–693 changing constructions of gender and family and, 2:691 domestic violence and, 1:404–405 domestic work and, 1:405–408 family, power, transnationalism themes and, 2:692–693 family separation stress and, 2:693 feminization of migration, migration studies and, 2:691–692 gendered power shifts and, 2:692–693 guest workers and, 1:566–568 Immigration Act of 1990 and, 1:405 male labor migration predominance and, 2:691 migrant worker remittances and, 2:692 remittances and, 2:692 Social Science Research Council’s Working Group on Gender and Migration and, 2:691 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) and, 1:405 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and, 1:405 women, gender, migration and, 2:692 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 2:688 See also McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, 2:693–695 Asian Americans immigration and, 1:92, 1:94, 1:284, 1:285 Bangladeshi Americans immigration and, 1:132 biracial to triracial society change and, 2:694 brain drain controversy and, 1:199, 2:711–712 Chinese American immigration and, 1:284, 1:285, 2:879 Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 2:694 Civil Rights Movement and, 2:694 democracy focus and, 2:694 ethnocentrism and, 1:466 Filipino American immigration and, 1:92, 1:495 Greek American immigration and, 1:560 immigrant assimilation and, 1:106, 2:1019
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immigrant experience differences and, 2:694–695 immigrants of color and, 2:694, 2:700 Indian American immigration and, 2:711–712 Indonesian American immigration and, 2:721 INS enforcement of, 2:695–696 Korean American immigration and, 2:813 model minority myth and, 2:694 Muslim Americans and, 2:921 pan-Asian identity and, 2:1016 PATRIOT Act of 2001 and, 3:1134 quota system ended by, 2:688, 2:693, 2:699, 2:880, 2:922 race-based immigration legislation and, 2:693–694 refugees and, 3:1133 South Americans in the U.S. and, 3:1263 street gangs and, 1:524 Thai American immigration and, 3:1301 tide of change and, 2:694–695 undocumented immigrants and, 1:193–194 White male power structure and, 1:17 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 2:695–698 “expedited removal” and, 2:679 function overview and, 2:695–696 history of, 2:695 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (1996) and, 2:677–680, 2:696 Immigration and Nationality Act (1952, 1965) and, 2:695–696 immigration law administer by, 2:695 Justice Department and, 2:695 refugee and asylum seekers and, 2:696 scale of responsibilities example of, 2:696 September 11th aftermath and, 2:697 service and enforcement missions of, 2:696 structural changes of, 2:696–697 World War II and, 2:695 Immigration and race, 2:698–702 Chinatowns and, 1:281–285 conclusions regarding, 2:701 divisive political and linguistic enclaves and, 2:700–701 domestic work and, 1:405–408 Dominican Americans and, 1:409 economic benefits from immigrants and, 2:700–701 The Good Shepherd movie illustration of, 2:698 guest workers and, 1:566–568, 1:567 “Hispanic panic” concept and, 2:701 immigration “waves” chronology and, 2:699 Thomas Nast cartoon regarding, 2:758 National Origins System and, 2:937–939 race and ethnicity since 1965 and, 2:699–700 U.S. ethnoracial hierarchy and, 2:698–699 U.S. nativism and, 2:700–701 Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act (Japan), 2:779 Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1965, 2:1019 Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), 1:496, 1:499, 2:702–704 amnesty provided by, 2:696, 2:702, 2:703 Border Patrol and, 1:194, 2:703 Bracero Program and, 2:702
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failure of, 2:702, 2:703 historic need for workers and, 2:702–703 human trafficking and, 2:703 implementation of, 2:703 INS and, 2:695–696 Special Agriculture Workers program and, 2:703 undocumented immigrants and, 1:253, 2:702–703 Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, 1:53, 1:186, 1:473, 2:688 Border Patrol creation and, 1:193 Japanese immigration and, 2:782 Korean American immigration and, 2:812 Latvian American immigration and, 2:839 Lebanese American immigration and, 2:840 pan-Asian identity and, 2:1016 Syrian American immigration and, 3:1292 Turkish American immigration and, 3:1335 Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 (Australia), 1:113 Impact intercultural communication theories, 2:733 Imperialism vs. colonialism, 1:317 Incarcerated parents, 2:704–706 Adoption and Safe Families Act (1997) and, 2:706 children of, 2:705 demographic profile of, 2:704–705 implications of policies regarding, 2:705–706 incarcerated fathers and, 2:704 incarcerated mothers and, 2:704–705 public housing denial to, 2:706 racial disparities and, 2:704 reentry of, 2:705 visitation of, 2:705 war on drugs and, 2:705 Welfare Reform Act and, 2:706 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Jacobs), 1:22 India, 2:707–710, 2:707 (map) Bangladeshi Americans and, 1:132–133 brain drain from, 1:199, 2:711–712 Buddhism in, 2:708 Canadian immigrants from, 1:225, 1:226 caste and, 1:246–249, 2:744, 3:1213, 3:1214 Census India 2001 Web site and, 2:710 China borderland dispute with, 1:192 Christian community in, 2:707–708 desi and, 1:382–383 foreign students in, 1:505 Hindus in, 2:707 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and, 2:744 the Jains and, 2:708–709 language, region, skin color and, 2:710 Muslim minorities in, 2:707 Other Backward Classes and, 2:709 Pakistan conflict with, 1:191–192 Parsi elite in, 2:709 remittances to, 3:1147 Scheduled Castes of, 2:709 Scheduled Tribes in, 2:709 Sikhs and, 2:708 See also Caste
Indiana Amish in, 1:69 bilingual education in, 1:143 Mennonites in, 2:888 Serbian Americans in, 3:1223 sundown towns in, 3:1283, 3:1284 (figure), 3:1285 Indian Americans, 2:710–714 anti-Indian sentiment and, 2:710, 2:711, 2:713–714, 2:1017 Asian Exclusion League and, 2:711 Bangladeshi Americans and, 1:132–133 brain drain and, 2:711–712 census Asian Indian category and, 2:712 census data on, 2:712 contemporary community issues of, 2:713–714 desi and, 1:382–383 diversity among, 2:710–711 economic success of, 2:712 health disparities of, 2:606 identity negotiation and, 2:713 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and, 2:711–712 immigration legislation changes and, 2:711–712 immigration patterns of, 2:711 interracial marriages of, 1:482 Little India, Jackson Heights, Queens, 1:97 as model minority, 2:910 in New York City, 2:712 poverty rates of, 2:685 South Asian designation and, 2:712 statistics regarding, 1:92 U.S. v. Bhagat Singh and, 2:711 wedding rite of passage of, 3:1162 See also Caste Indian Appropriations Act of 1851, 1:216, 1:217 Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, 2:714–716 adoption into non-Indian homes and, 2:715 alcoholism, poverty and, 2:715 boarding school assimilation attempts and, 2:715 guidelines of, 2:716 implications of, 2:715–716 removal of American Indian children before, 2:715 sovereign rights and, 2:714, 2:715–716 tribal self-determination and, 2:714–716 Indian Citizenship Act, 1:217, 1:261, 3:1370 Indian Citizenship Act (Alaska), 1:46 Indian Civil Rights Act (1968), 1:218, 1:260, 2:891 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 (IGRA), 2:716–719 California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians and, 1:520, 2:717 Class I, II, III games and, 1:521, 2:718 federally recognized tribe requirement of, 2:717 history and background regarding, 2:716–717 location requirements and, 2:717–718 Ojibwa and, 2:997 per capita payments and, 2:719 regulations affecting tribes and, 2:717–718 revenues regulated by, 2:719 Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida and, 2:716–717 state interest in Indian gaming and, 2:716–717
Index
Indian Health Care Improvement Act, 2:952 Indian Health Service, 2:950, 2:952–954 Indian Land Claims Commission Act, 1:218 Indian Law Enforcement Reform Act, 1:218 Indian New Deal, 1:217, 1:261–262 See also Wheeler-Howard Act Indian Removal Act (1830), 1:181, 1:216, 1:261 Indian Reorganization Act (1934), 1:166, 1:182, 1:215, 1:217–218, 1:261, 2:958, 2:961, 2:962, 2:997 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, 1:166, 1:218, 1:219, 2:952, 3:1131, 3:1180–1181 Indian Self-Determination Contract Reform Act, 1:219 Indians of All Tribes, 2:1023 Indigenous people Ainu of Japan, 2:780 Arawaks, of Jamaica, 2:775 in Australia, 1:111–115 Back to Africa movement, Liberia and, 1:126 in Belize, 1:138–139 in Carribean, 1:237 in Colombia, 1:315–317 in Cuba, 1:355 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and, 2:909, 3:1269 gravesite desecration of, 2:947 of Haiti, 2:571 in Hawai‘i, entitlement and, 2:596–597 ka–naka maoli indigenous Hawaiians and, 2:599–602 kinship ties of, 2:809 Mayan women from Guatemala and, 1:254 of Mexico, 2:898–900 Oklahoma, “Indian Territory” and, 1:293 of Peru, 2:1039–1040 Sami of Norway, Sweden, Finland and, 3:1187–1189 in Singapore, 3:1228 UN protection of, 2:744 “vanishing race” myth and, 2:948 Yanomami tribal group of Brazil and, 1:200 See also Australia, Indigenous people; Canada, Aboriginal women; Canada, First Nations; Latin America, Indigenous people; Native Americans; Native Americans specific individual, subject, tribe Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 (IDEA), 2:719–721 Americans with Disabilities Act and, 1:66–68 context of, 2:719–720 Education for All Handicapped Children Act and, 2:719 equal protection clause and, 2:719 failure of, 2:719 “free and appropriate” public education focus of, 2:719 impact of racism and, 2:720 labeling of minority students and, 2:720 learning disabilities diagnoses and, 2:720 least restrictive environment focus of, 2:719 special education, discipline and control and, 2:720 student classifications and, 2:720 Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act (1975), 2:828
Indonesia Chinese Americans from, 1:287 colonialization of, 2:721 independence of, 2:722 Indigenous people of, 2:722 Indonesian Americans, 2:721–724 Batak Community of California Club and, 2:723 Chinese Indonesians and, 2:722 colonial influences and, 2:721–722 ethnic and regional associations of, 2:723 Hart-Celler Act and, 2:721 immigration patterns of, 2:722 Indonesia’s diversity and, 2:721 Maesa organization and, 2:723 nationalist movement and, 2:722 religion of, 2:722–723 Union of People of Indonesian Origin and, 2:723 “unity in diversity,” 2:723–724 Industrial Areas Foundation, 1:326 Informal economy, 2:724–726 of Cambodian Americans, 1:223 definition of, 2:724–725 entrepreneurship character of, 2:724–725 gender and, 2:725 hourglass economy and, 2:654–656 International Labor Organization and, 2:724 legitimate vs. illegitimate activities and, 2:724 social networks, urbanization and, 2:725 Third World cities basis of, 2:724, 2:725 urban governance and, 2:725 Innis, Roy, 1:329 INS. See Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Inseln, Aleksander, 1:450 Insight Research Corporation, 1:389 Institute of Positive Education, 1:178 Institutional discrimination, 1:392, 2:726–729 Black enterprise and, 1:161–164 Black labor force participation and, 1:37 against businesses, 2:728 critical race theory and, 1:344–347 definition of, 2:726 detection difficulty and, 2:726 domestic violence and, 1:404 domestic work and, 1:406–407 by Federal Housing Administration, 2:726 IDEA and, 2:719–721 institutional racism and, 2:726, 3:1118, 3:1119 Invisible Man (Ellison) and, 2:750–751 paternalistic racism vs., 3:1120 reverse discrimination and, 2:727–728 scapegoating and, 3:1201–1203 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and, 3:1326 by university admissions, 2:726–727 White racism and, 3:1405 INS v. St. Cyr, 2:678 Intelligence tests, 2:729–730 The Bell Curve (Hernstein and Murray) and, 1:139–142, 3:1299 genetic, environmental factors and, 2:730
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g measured by, 2:729–730 racial, ethnic groups and, 2:730 Stanford-Binet Test, 2:729 Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales, 2:729 Interagency Council for Minority Business Enterprise, 1:163 Inter-American Development Bank, 3:1147 Intercultural communication, 2:730–733 anxiety and uncertainty management theory of, 2:732 assimilation adaptation outcome and, 2:733 co-cultural impact theory of, 2:733 communication accommodation theory of, 2:732 communication approaches and, 2:731–732 contact hypothesis and, 1:330–333 convergent commuication process and, 2:732 critical approach to, 2:731–732 cultural imperialism impact theory and, 2:733 cultural sensitivity training and, 2:730–731 cultural synergy model of, 2:732 culture shock stages and, 2:732 divergent communication process and, 2:732 empowerment of marginalized individuals and, 2:732 ethnicity negotiation and, 1:459–462 Foreign Service Institutes and, 2:730 globalization, cultural imperialism and, 2:731 Edward T. Hall and, 2:731 high vs. low-context cultures and, 2:732 history of studies and, 2:730–731 individualistic vs. collectivistic cultures and, 2:732 integration adaptation outcome and, 2:733 intercultural adaptation model of, 2:732–733 intergroup relations, surveying and, 2:733–736 interpretive approach to, 2:731 maintenance communication process and, 2:732 marginalization adaptation outcome and, 2:733 power relations theory of, 2:733 racetalk and, 3:1100–1102 social science approach to, 2:731 theories on impact and, 2:733 theories on process and, 2:732–733 theories on value orientation and, 2:732 theory of Whiteness and, 2:733 Interethnic Placement Act, 3:1323 Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), 1:554 Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, and Sherif), 3:1163–1164 Intergroup relations, surveying, 2:733–736 contact hypothesis and, 1:330–333 differences by race/ethnicity results of, 2:734–735 differences by region, income, age results of, 2:735 interesting linkages results of, 2:735–736 interracial friendships and, 2:748–750 Islamophobia, 2:762–764 National Conference for Community and Justice and, 2:730–731 pluralism and, 2:1051–1053 racetalk and, 3:1100–1102 Robbers Cave Experiment and, 3:1163–1164 survey process and, 2:734
survey results and, 2:734–736 Taking America’s Pulse (TAP) I, II, III telephone surveys and, 2:734 Intermarriage, 2:736–739, 2:737 antimiscegenation laws and, 2:737–738 Assimilation in American Life (Gordon) and, 2:738 assimilation indicated by, 1:106, 2:738 biological species difference theory and, 2:737 Black migration North and, 2:737 blood quantum and, 1:181–183 of Bosnians, 1:195 Canadian Aboriginal women and, 1:227–230 classic research on, 2:738–739 of French Americans, 1:515 Hafu and, 2:569–571 hapa, Hawaiian word and, 2:581–583 inheritable property issue and, 2:737 interracial friendships and, 2:748–750 interracial marriages and, 1:482 of Japanese Americans, 2:784 of Jewish Americans, 2:787 Loving v. Virginia and, 2:738, 2:858–859 in military service, 2:904 miscegenation term and, 2:736 “one-drop rule” and, 2:736 Perez v. Sharpe and, 2:738 racial barriers undermined by, 2:736 racial caste system and, 2:736–737 religious intermarriages and, 2:738 slavery and, 2:736–737 in 20th-century law, 2:737–738 Internal colonialism, 2:739–741 Black Power (Carmichael and Hamilton) and, 2:740 Chicano Movement and, 2:739, 2:740 Civil Rights era usage of, 2:739, 2:740 critiques of, 2:740–741 Dark Ghetto (Clark) and, 2:740 definition of, 2:739, 2:740 global issues of, 2:741 Latin American theories of, 2:740 structural subordination of Blacks and, 2:740 traditional colonialism and, 2:739–740 in the U.S., 2:739–740 See also Colonialism Internalized racism, 2:169, 2:741–743 “colorism” skin-tone bias and, 2:742 cosmetic surgeries and, 2:742 internalized stereotypes and, 2:1067–1068 internalizing oppression and, 2:742, 2:1069–1070 mental colonization and, 2:742 racial identities constructed from power relations and, 2:742 self-esteem of minorities and, 2:1069–1070 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), 2:743–744 Australian Aboriginal people and, 1:111, 1:114, 2:744 Cold War and, 2:743 implementation of, 2:743–744 India’s caste system and, 2:744 Latin American elections and, 2:743
Index
Mauritania’s protest of, 2:744 minority rights protected by, 2:909 neo-Nazism and, 2:743 purpose vs. effect differentiation and, 2:743 racial discrimination definition in, 2:743 state parties’ obligations detailed in, 2:743 Third World Conference Against Racism and, 2:744 UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and, 2:744 U.S. ratification of, 2:743 Web site regarding, 2:744 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 10(1), 2:679 International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), 1:60–61 International Journal of Africana Studies, 1:33 International Labor Organization (ILO), 2:724 International Ladies Garmet Workers Union, 2:790 International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA, France), 1:507 International Montetary Fund, 1:554 International Peace Mission Movement, 1:484–485 Internet digital divide and, 1:388–389 English predominance on, 1:388 Internet hate and, 2:593 Internet Protocol Television and, 2:881 urban legend information on, 3:1352 White supremacy movement and, 3:1409 Internment camps, 2:745–747 Alien Land Acts and, 1:54 Asian Americans and, 1:93–94, 2:694 Civil Liberties Act (1988) and, 2:781, 2:783, 2:810, 2:986, 2:987, 3:1198 economic impact of, 2:747 Hawaiian Japanese Americans and, 2:765, 2:783, 2:903 Hirabayashi v. United States and, 2:746 internal conditions of, 2:747 Japanese American identity issues and, 2:1017 Japanese American Issei and, 2:765, 2:766 Harry H. L. Kitano and, 2:810 Korematsu v. United States and, 1:302, 2:746 life after, 2:986–987 locations of, 2:747–748 loyalty questionnaire and, 2:986 at Manzanar, California, 2:747, 2:747 military recruitment, dissenters and, 2:747, 2:783, 2:986 Redress Movement and, 2:781, 2:783, 2:810, 2:987, 3:1150, 3:1198 reparations for, 2:745, 2:747, 2:781, 2:987 Franklin Roosevelt’s creation of, 1:94, 1:302, 2:745, 2:783 War Relocation Authority system and, 2:745, 2:747 Web sites regarding, 2:747 Interracial friendships, 2:748–750 benefits of, 2:748–749 as bonding and bridging capital, 2:748 friendship measurement and, 2:748 historical context of, 2:748 individual characteristics factor and, 2:749 influencing factors of, 2:749 intermarriage and, 2:736–739
1563
level of family support factor and, 2:749 opportunity hypothesis regarding, 2:749 optimal conditions for contact and, 2:749 prejudice reduction and, 2:749 recent trends in, 2:748 research on, 2:749 social competency, multicultural sensitivity and, 2:748 social distance and, 3:1250–1251 Interstate Commerce Commission, 1:26 Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Park and Burgess), 2:1028 Inuit, 1:230, 1:232 Invisible Man (Ellison), 2:750–751 anticommunism theme in, 2:751 Black Nationalism and, 2:751 marginalization of social, economic classes and, 2:751 section 1 of: education, 2:750–751 section 2 of: city life, 2:751 Tulsa Race Riot (1921) and, 2:750 Iowa bilingual education in, 1:143 Czech Americans in, 1:368 Danish Americans and, 1:370 gerrymandering in, 1:545 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 I-Pride movement, 2:919 IQ. See Intelligence tests Iranian Americans, 2:751–754, 2:752 (map) Assyrian Americans and, 1:107–109, 1:107 (map) brain drain and, 1:199 economic status of, 2:753 ethnic groups of, 2:752 immigration patterns of, 2:752 Iranian ethnic identity of, 2:752 Iranian Revolution and, 2:752, 2:753 Iran–Iraq War and, 2:753 Persian ethnic group of, 2:752 religion of, 2:752–753 September 11 and, 2:753 settlement patterns of, 2:752 U.S.–Iran political issues and, 2:753 Iraqi Americans, 2:754–755, 2:754 (map) Assyrian Americans and, 1:107–109, 1:107 (map) brain drain and, 1:199 census data on, 2:754 famous Iraqi Americans and, 2:754 Iraqi diaspora and, 2:754–755 refugees and, 2:755 settlement patters of, 2:754 IRCA. See Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) Ireland, 2:755–758, 2:755 (map) an independent state and, 2:756–757 Britain’s negative image of, 2:755–756 “the Celtic Tiger” label and, 2:757 economic growth, racism and, 2:757 Gaelic revival of Irish culture and, 2:756 Good Friday Agreement (1998) and, 2:757 Great Potato Famine in, 2:756, 2:759–760
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Irish in Great Britain and, 1:206–208 language and, 2:756 Northern Ireland conflict and, 2:757 religion and, 2:756 Roman Catholics from, 1:63 Irish Americans, 2:758–762 abolitionist movement and, 2:760 Alien Act of 1798 and, 2:693 American Revolution and, 2:758–759 anti-Irish sentiment and, 2:758, 2:759 Black Americans vs., 2:760 Britain’s Irish and, 1:206–208 California Gold Rush and, 2:759 census data on, 2:761 Civil War conscription and, 2:760 contemporary Irish Americans and, 2:761–762 “Draft Riots of 1863” and, 2:760 famine years and, 2:759–760 famous Irish Americans and, 2:761 free land lure of, 2:758 Illinois Michigan Canal and, 1:542 immigration patterns of, 2:698–699, 2:758–759, 2:759 (table) indentured servitude and, 2:758 Irish social organizations and, 2:759 Thomas Nast immigration cartoon and, 2:758 religion and, 2:758–760 Roman Catholicism and, 2:758–761, 3:1171 St. Patrick’s Day celebrations and, 2:761 undocumented immigrants and, 2:761 upward social mobility of, 2:760–761 “Whiteness” and, 2:760–761 Iroquois of Canada, 1:230 census population data of, 2:960 (table) removal to Oklahoma of, 2:960 (table) Islam in China, 1:279, 1:281 in Indonesia, 2:721 in Nigeria, 2:981 segregation in, 3:1214 of Singapore Malays, 3:1230 See also Islamophobia; Muslim Americans; Muslims Islamophobia, 2:762–764 anti-Muslim sentiment of, 1:86–87, 1:114, 2:593, 2:762, 2:922, 2:923–925, 3:1114, 3:1298 Christian, Jewish polemic against Islam and, 2:762 cultural racism and, 3:1118 dress codes, religious symbols, festivals and, 2:763 institutional Islamophobia and, 2:763 manifestations of, 2:763 media role in, 2:762, 2:763 organizations to reduce, 2:762 political Islamophobia and, 2:763–764 post-reflective personal Islamophobia and, 2:763 pre-reflective personal Islamophobia, 2:762–763 September 11th, Muslim stereotypes and, 2:762, 2:763, 2:922, 2:923–925 in the United Kingdom, 2:762
Israel Anti-Defamation League and, 1:71, 1:72 Arab conflict with, 1:191 Palestine partition conflict and, 1:191 Issei, 2:764–766 bilingual research on, 2:766 Chinese Exclusion Act and, 2:764 ethnic studies framework of, 2:765–766 first generation migrants from Japan and, 2:764, 2:782, 2:983 Gentlemen’s Agreement and, 2:765 Immigration Act of 1924 and, 2:764 Japanese internment history and, 2:765, 2:766 migration patterns of, 2:764–765 Nikkei, Nikkeijin and, 2:983 Okinawans and, 2:765 transnational perspective of, 2:766 U.S. mainland vs. Hawai‘i differences in, 2:765 women “picture brides” and, 2:765, 2:782 Italian Americans, 2:766–771, 2:767 (map) anti-Italian American sentiment and, 2:769, 2:770 Catholicism and, 2:769, 3:1172 Catholicism mistrust by, 2:769 census data on, 2:770 Civil War and, 2:767–768 early immigration years and, 2:698–699, 2:767–768 in East Harlem, 1:429 education and, 2:769–770 explorers, missionaries and, 2:767 extended family importance to, 2:769, 2:770 great migration of, 2:768–769 interethnic violence and, 1:430 intermarriages of, 2:738, 2:770 Italian-Black relationships and, 2:768 Little Italy, New York City and, 1:454, 2:768 19th century and, 2:699, 2:767–768 return migration of, 2:768 Sacco and Vanzetti trial and, 2:769 second-generation adults of, 2:770 settlement patterns of, 2:768–769 Sicilian Americans and, 3:1227–1228 social mobility of, 2:770–771 social patterns of, 2:769–770 societal hostility and, 2:769 Italian Argentines, 1:89 Italy, 1:129 (map), 1:130 hate crime legislation in, 2:591 Jackson, Andrew Native American policies of, 1:216, 1:261, 1:293 Jackson, Bailey, 3:1108 Jackson, Jesse, Sr., 1:29, 2:773–774 CORE and, 2:773 family and education of, 2:773 Jews and women opposition to, 2:940 Martin Luther King, Jr. and, 2:773 “kingdom theory” of, 2:774 “Marshall Plan” for Blacks and, 2:774, 2:1001 National Rainbow Coalition and, 2:773, 2:774, 2:939–940
Index
1984, 1988 presidential candidacy of, 2:774, 2:939–940, 2:1002 nonviolent activism of, 1:258 Operation Breadbasket and, 2:773–774, 2:1001 Operation PUSH and, 2:773, 2:774, 2:940, 2:1001–1003 Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and, 2:773, 2:774, 2:940 SCLC and, 2:773–774 Web site of, 2:774–775 Jackson, Robert H., 1:532 JACL. See Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) Jacobs, Harriet, 1:22 Jacobs, James, 2:676 Jacobson, Lenora, 3:1216 Jainism, 2:708–709 Jamaica, 2:775–776, 2:775 (map) African Creoles in, 2:775–776 the Arawak Indians of, 2:775 Belize and, 1:138–139, 1:138 (map) Creole communities in, 1:337, 1:338 European colonists in, 2:775 famous Afro-Jamaicans and, 2:776 Maroon community in, 2:776 other ethnic groups in, 2:776 slave labor in, 2:775–776 Jamaican Americans, 2:776–778 African Americans and, 2:776–778 Harry Belafonte, 2:776 British West Indian culture and, 2:777 culture and assimilation of, 2:777–778 demographics of, 2:777 immigration patterns of, 2:777 racism experienced by, 2:777–778 residential segregation of, 2:778 transnationalism of, 2:776 James, William, 1:412, 3:1106 Jamieson, Kathleen, 1:228 JAN. See Job Accommodation Network (JAN) Japan, 2:778–781, 2:779 (map) Action Plan for Measures to Combat Trafficking in Persons and, 2:780 Ainu, Okinawan people in, 2:780 Alien Registration Law and, 2:779 burakumin and, 1:213–215, 2:780 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and, 1:53, 1:278, 2:687, 2:764 ethnic groups in, 2:779 Filipino women in, 2:779–780 Gentlemen’s Agreement with, 1:466, 1:533–535, 2:687, 2:699, 2:765, 2:782, 2:812 Hafu and, 2:569–571 Issei and, 2:764–766 Japanese Canadians and, 1:226 Koreans in, 2:776, 2:779 Laos and, 2:828, 2:829 multiculturalism in, 2:780 multi- vs. mono-ethnic society of, 2:778 Nikkeijin population in, 2:778, 2:779 Zainichl Koreans in, 2:779
1565
Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), 2:781–782 California’s Alien Land Law and, 2:781, 2:782 Vincent Chin murder and, 2:781 civil and human rights focus of, 2:781, 2:783 Civil Liberties Act (1988) and, 2:781, 2:783 Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 2:781 internment reparations and, 2:781 Japanese Exclusion League and, 2:781 Harry H. L. Kitano and, 2:811 Program for Action Committee of, 2:782 Redress Movement and, 2:781, 2:783, 2:810, 2:987, 3:1150, 3:1198 Web site of, 2:782 World War II and, 2:781, 2:783 Japanese Americans, 2:782–785 acculturation, ethnic identity of, 2:785, 2:1017 Alien Land Acts and, 1:52–55, 2:782 Asiatic Exclusion League and, 1:534 contemporary community of, 2:783–784 educational data on, 1:96 education and, 2:784 exploitation theory of prejudice and, 2:1067 farming industry and, 2:783 Gentlemen’s Agreement and, 1:466, 1:533–535, 2:687, 2:699, 2:765, 2:782, 2:812 Gosei generation of, 2:783 Hawaiian population and, 2:595, 2:597–598, 2:597–598 (tables) health disparities of, 2:606 immigration legislation and, 2:782–783 immigration patterns of, 2:782–783 interracial marriages of, 1:482 Issei and, 2:764–766, 2:783–784 Japanese American Citizens League and, 2:781–782, 2:783 Kiebei generation of, 2:783–784 Korematsu v. United States, 1:302 labor source of, 2:782 language issues of, 2:784 model minority stereotype and, 2:782, 2:784, 2:910 National Origins Act of 1924 and, 1:534, 1:535 Nikkei generations of, 2:783, 2:784 Nisei generation of, 2:783, 2:784, 2:811 oppression resistance of, 1:93 out-marriage of, 2:784 Ozawa v. U.S. and, 1:535 quota system and, 1:495 Sansei generation of, 2:783 settlement patterns of, 2:784 spirituality, celebrations of, 2:784–785 statistics regarding, 1:92, 1:534 Web sites of, 2:785 World War II and, 1:93–94, 2:783 Yonsei generation of, 2:783 See also Internment camps Jeannot, 2:572 Jefferson, Thomas, 1:292–293 Jeffries, Judson L., 2:977–978 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 3:1140 Jensen, Arthur, 1:142
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Jensen, Leif, 1:453 Jewish Americans, 2:785–788 American Jewish Committee and, 1:64–66, 2:787 American Jewish Congress and, 2:787, 2:788 Anti-Defamation League and, 1:71–73, 2:787 assimilation and intermarriage of, 2:787 B’nai B’rith and, 1:71, 1:73, 2:787 Canadian Jewish hate crimes and, 2:592, 2:593 Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Black-Jewish conflict and, 1:350–352 Dearborn Independent (Henry Ford), 1:65, 1:72 definition of race and, 2:786 demographic statistics of, 2:785–786 diaspora term regarding, 1:386 in East Harlem, 1:429 ethnic identity of, 2:786 garment industry niche of, 1:464 Georgian Jews and, 1:537, 1:538, 1:539 ghetto terminology and, 1:546 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and, 1:538 Holocaust history and, 2:636–640 housing discrimination against, 1:400 immigration patterns of, 2:699, 2:786–787, 2:789–790 Judaization and, 2:786 labor union membership of, 2:826 Lower East Side, New York City and, 1:430 Mormonism and, 2:912 New York Association for New Americans and, 1:538 organizational life of, 2:787 Orthodox, the Reform, the Conservative groups of, 2:786, 2:788 politics and, 2:787–788 racial, ethnic, religious designation of, 2:786 religion, Americanization and, 1:63 religion in the future and, 2:788 Sephardic Jews and, 2:786 United Jewish Appeal and, 2:787 World War I and, 1:543 Zionism and, 3:1426–1427 See also American Jewish Committee (AJC); antiSemitism; Holocaust; Holocaust deniers and revisionists; Jewish-Black relations: specific topic Jewish-Black relations: a historical perspective, 2:788–791 before the 20th century and, 2:789 1900 through 1970 and, 2:789–790 Blacks move North and, 2:790 Franz Boas and, 1:184–186 W. E. B Du Bois and, 2:789 Leo Frank lynching and, 2:790 German Jews during slavery and, 2:789 Jewish abolitionists and, 2:789 Jewish immigration patterns and, 2:789–790 Ocean Hill-Brownsville Teacher’s Strike and, 2:790, 2:791 support and conflict between, 2:788–789, 2:790 Booker T. Washington and, 2:789 Jewish-Black relations: the contemporary period, 2:791–792 affirmative action policies and, 2:791 Black anti-Semitism and, 2:791 Civil Rights Movement and, 2:790, 2:791
Crown Heights, Brooklyn conflict and, 1:350–351, 2:791 Frantz Fanon’s work and, 1:483 Jewish exploitation of Blacks and, 2:791 Ocean Hill-Brownsville Teacher’s Strike and, 2:790, 2:791 Palestinian issue and, 2:791 Jewry, Black American, 2:792–795 African American experience focus of, 2:793–794 beginnings of, 2:792–793 B’nai Abraham and, 2:793 Christianity, slavery and, 2:793 William S. Crowdy and, 2:793 “double consciousness” experienced by, 2:794 Ethiopian Hebrew Rabbinical College and, 2:793 first Black Jewish sects and, 2:793 four Jewish denominations and, 2:794 Halachah, Torah law and, 2:794 Jewishness and, 2:794 organizations of, 2:794 suffering, Promised Land and, 2:793 Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and, 2:792 today’s practice of, 2:793–794 Jews Argentine Jews and, 1:89–90 European Jews in Canada and, 1:225 in France, 1:507 Iranian Americans and, 2:752 Mormonism and, 2:912 See also American Jewish Committee (AJC); Anti-Semitism; Holocaust; Holocaust deniers and revisionists; Jewish Americans; Jewish-Black relations: specific topic; Jewry, Black American “Jigsaw technique” to overcome stereotypes, 3:1278 Jim Crow, 2:795 antimiscegenation laws and, 1:151 Black intellectualism and, 1:168 Brown v. Board of Education and, 2:795, 2:914, 2:1048 civil disobedience and, 1:300 Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 2:795 Harlem Renaissance and, 2:586 Hull House School of Race Relations and, 2:661 minstrel show origin of, 2:795, 2:1061 NAACP and, 1:24, 2:795, 3:1213 Plessy v. Ferguson and, 1:24, 1:210, 2:795, 2:1048 Preindustrial race relations period and, 1:377 Progressive era and, 2:795 segregation enforced by, 2:795, 3:1213 “separate but equal” concept and, 1:24, 2:795, 2:1048, 3:1213 sit-ins and, 1:301, 1:306, 1:310 social, economic, political control through, 1:16, 2:795 Job Accommodation Network (JAN) data, 1:67 John, Daymond, 1:516 Johnson, Allan, 2:1073 Johnson, Charles S., 2:795–797 An American Dilemma (Gunnar Myrdal) and, 1:57 Chicago Race Commission and, 2:796 Chicago race riots and, 2:796 Fisk University and, 2:796 Harlem Renaissance and, 2:586, 2:796 National Urban League and, 2:796
Index
Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life and, 2:796 Robert E. Park and, 2:796 race relations career of, 2:795–796 Race Relations Institutes and, 2:796 scholarly works of, 2:796 United Nations and, 2:796 Johnson, Elijah, 1:125 Johnson, Hazel, 1:443 Johnson, James Weldon, 1:24, 1:168 Johnson, Lyndon B. affirmative action policies of, 1:18 civil rights policies of, 1:305, 1:308, 2:795, 2:806, 3:1370 Cuba and, 1:358 Thurgood Marshall and, 2:876 Native American policies of, 2:962 War on Poverty, Head Start and, 2:914, 3:1260 Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 immigration restriction, 1:90, 2:878, 2:879, 2:937, 2:1012, 3:1335 See also National Origins System Johnson v. M’Intosh, 1:216, 2:1270 Jonassohn, Kurt, 1:531 Jones, Absalom, 1:172 Jones, Dorothy K., 1:51 Jones, Eugene, 1:25 Jones, Jacqueline, 2:824 Jones, Michael D., 1:88 Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917, 1:429 Jordan, Allan, 3:1402–1403 Jordanian Americans, 1:86, 2:797 census data on, 2:797 contemporary community of, 2:797 immigration patterns of, 2:797 Joyner, Kara, 2:749, 2:1068 Juvenile justice, 2:798–800 anti-immigrant sentiment and, 2:798–799 bootcamps and, 2:800 children of incarcerated parents and, 2:705 in colonial America, 2:798 community-based corrections programs and, 2:800 crime and race and, 1:338–341 criminal processing and, 1:341–344 “dangerous classes” concept and, 2:798, 2:799 House of Refuge, New York City and, 2:799 juvenile courts and, 2:799–800 juvenile reformatory movement and, 2:798–799 modern juvenile justice and, 2:799–800 nigh watch system and, 2:798 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice (1967) and, 2:800 race, gender, religion, social class factors in, 2:799–800 urban juvenile misbehavior and, 2:799 Zoot Suit Riots and, 2:1005–1006 Kallen, Horace, 2:886, 2:887 Kamakau, S. M., 2:579 Kansas Cheyenne in, 1:264 “Exodusters” in, 1:30 Hmong Americans in, 2:633
Laotian Americans in, 2:828 Mennonites in, 2:889 Kant, Immanuel, 1:334 Kao, Grace, 2:749, 2:1068 Karenga, Maulana, 1:26, 1:29, 1:34, 1:41, 1:177, 1:178, 2:818–819, 2:916 Kashmir borderland dispute, 1:191–192 Kaufman, Charles, 1:277 Keetoowah Nighthawk Society (Cherokee), 1:260 Kellog, Paul, 2:587 Kennedy, John F. affirmative action and, 1:17, 1:563 Alliance for Progress program of, 2:1042 Cuba and, 1:358 ethnoreligious feature of, 1:468 Thurgood Marshall and, 2:876 Native American policies of, 2:962 segregation policies of, 1:307, 1:329 Voter Education Project of, 1:329 Kennedy, Robert F. Cesar Chávez and, 1:256, 1:258 Freedom Rides and, 1:306–307 Martin Luther King, Jr. and, 2:806 Loving v. Virginia and, 2:859 Kennedy, Ruby Jo, 2:738 Kennewick Man, 2:801–802 claimant tribes of, 2:801 Vine Deloria, Jr. opinion on, 1:381 discovery of, 2:801 disputed claims regarding, 2:801–802, 2:949 legal resolution of, 2:802 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) and, 2:801–802, 2:948–949 Native American respect for the dead and, 2:801–802 paleoanthropological value of, 2:801 Kentucky bilingual education in, 1:143 Cherokee homeland in, 1:259 Kenya, 2:802–804, 2:803 (map) Canadian immigrants from, 1:226 colonial background of, 2:803 economy of, 2:804 ethnic groups in, 2:804 geography of, 2:802 independence of, 2:802 Kikyuy ethnic group in, 2:802 Mau Mau War in, 2:802 politics, government in, 2:803–804 “White Highlands” area of, 2:802 Kerans, Patrick, 2:642 Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1, 3:1152 Kimbro, Rachel, 2:749 Kimbrough, Walter, 1:510 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 2:585, 2:804–808 assassination of, 1:308, 2:585, 2:807 Black American Jewry and, 2:794 Black consciousness and, 2:807 Stokely Carmichael and, 1:245, 1:246 charismatic authority of, 1:468
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
civil disobedience of, 1:301, 1:308 Civil Rights Act (1964), 2:806 Civil Rights Movement and, 1:25, 1:28, 2:806–807 early years of, 2:804–805 education of, 2:805–806 “I Have a Dream” speech of, 1:305, 1:307, 2:806, 2:806, 3:1269 “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” and, 2:806, 3:126 Malcolm X and, 1:173 marriage of, 2:805–806 mass demonstrations and, 1:302 Montgomery bus boycott and, 1:301, 1:306, 2:806 Nobel Prize for Peace awarded to, 2:806 protests and, 1:198, 2:806 Race Relations Institutes and, 2:796 religious values, social justice foundations of, 2:805 residential segregation and, 1:308 Southern Christian Leadership Conference and, 1:306, 2:773, 2:804, 2:806, 2:806, 2:807, 3:1138, 3:1268–1269 King, Mary, 1:311 King, Rodney, 1:29, 1:96, 3:1113, 3:1355 Kingsley, Mary H., 1:513 Kinship, 2:808–810 African American ties of, 2:808–809 Asian American ties of, 2:809 of Assyrian Americans, 1:108–109 “blood” relationships and, 2:808 chain migration and, 2:809 Charity toward others concept and, 2:808 compadrazgo and, 2:809 compadrazgo kinship and, 2:809 Confucian filial piety and, 2:808 definition of, 2:808 extended-kin networks and, 1:275, 1:275–276 familism and, 1:477–479 family kinship and, 2:808 filial piety and, 2:809, 3:1256–1257 group identity and, 2:808 Hispanic ties of, 2:809 immigrants and, 2:808 importance of, 2:808 Indigenous people ties of, 2:809 of Laotian Americans, 2:829 Native American ties of, 2:809 See also Family Kiowa, 1:293 Kirkness, Verna, 1:228 Kitano, Harry H. L., 2:810–811 awards received by, 2:811 books written by, 2:810 education, scholarship of, 2:810–811 inter-, intragroup dynamics work of, 2:810 internment camp experience of, 2:810 Japanese American Citizens League and, 2:811 Japanese American experience focus of, 2:810 Redress Movement and, 2:810 UCLA academic career of, 2:810–811 KKK. See Ku Klux Klan (KKK) Klamath tribal people, 1:381
Klein, Milton, 1:304 Klineberg, Otto, 1:184 Know Nothing Party, 1:63, 2:760 Kobayashi, Audrey, 2:649 Korean Americans, 2:811–814, 2:812 (map) after 1965 and, 2:813 census data on, 2:811 church communities of, 2:813 contemporary community of, 2:813 diversity of, 2:812 elderly caretaking by, 2:813 entrepreneurship of, 2:811 ethnic enclaves of, 1:96, 1:454–455, 2:813 families of, 2:813–814 filial piety focus of, 2:814 Gentlemen’s Agreement and, 2:812 health disparities of, 2:606–607 Immigration Act of 1924 and, 2:812 Immigration Act of 1965 and, 2:813 immigration patterns of, 2:700, 2:812–813 Korean independence and, 2:812 Korean War and, 2:812–813 Los Angeles civil unrest and, 2:812, 2:814 as model minority, 2:910 national, global citizens and, 2:814 occupation immigration admissions of, 2:813 Overseas Emigration Law (1962) and, 2:813 “picture brides” and, 2:812 postwar years and, 2:812–813 statistics regarding, 1:92 Korematsu, Fred, 2:746 Web site regarding, 2:747 Korematsu v. United States, 1:302, 2:746 Kosovo, 1:47, 1:49, 1:129, 1:131 Kotrotsios, Paul, 1:562 Kozol, Jonathan, 3:1404 Kraemer, Shelley v. See Shelley v. Kraemer Krashen, Stephen, 1:143–144 Kretzmann, John, 1:327–328 Kroeber, Alfred L., 1:184 Ku Klux Klan (KKK), 2:815–817 after World War I, 1:173 Americanization, Protestantism and, 1:63 Anti-Defamation League and, 1:71 anti-immigrant, -communist, -Jew, -Catholic sentiments of, 2:815, 2:816 anti-immigrant sentiment of, 2:760 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith) and, 1:149, 1:150, 1:151, 2:816, 2:1061 Black bourgeoisie and, 1:153 civic interests of, 2:816 Civil Rights era and, 2:815, 2:817 The Clansman (Dixon) and, 1:150, 2:816, 3:1408 fast food contamination conspiracy and, 3:1353 Nathan Bedford Forrest and, 2:815 Freedom Summer voter registration and, 2:817 legislation against, 2:816 origins (1866) of, 2:815–816 political influence of, 2:816
Index
post–World War II nativism and, 2:816 Reconstruction and, 1:23, 2:815–816 revival of, 2:816–817 self-declared Klan organizations and, 2:817 William J. Simmons and, 2:816 terrorism of, 3:1297 United Klans of America and, 2:817 violent activities of, 2:816, 2:817, 2:860 White supremacy focus of, 2:815, 2:816, 3:1213, 3:1408–1409 Kurdish Americans, 2:817–818 diaspora term regarding, 1:386, 2:818 gender roles of, 2:818 international humanitarian relief effort and, 2:818 Iran/Iraq War and, 2:818 “Kurdistan” geographic region and, 2:818 national minority claims of, 2:906 nomadic character of, 2:817 as refugees, 2:818 Sunni Muslim religion of, 2:817 Kwanzaa, 2:818–820, 2:819 activities of, 2:819 African American celebration of, 1:178, 1:276 African harvest celebration and, 2:819 African karamu and, 2:819 Black Freedom movement and, 2:819 Black Power and, 1:178 communitarian African values focus of, 2:819 historical background regarding, 2:818–819 meaning and celebration of, 2:819–820 Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles) focus of, 2:819 pan-African holiday of, 2:818 Siku ya Taamuli (The Day of Meditation) day of, 2:819–820 Swahili “first fruits” meaning of, 2:818 symbols of, 2:819 Us organization and, 2:819 Kymlicka, Will, 2:909 La Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres, 1:273 Labeling, 2:821–822 caste and, 2:1:246–249 examples of, 2:821 Hurricane Katrina example of, 2:821 intelligence tests and, 2:729–730 of minority students in special education, 2:720 model minority example of, 2:821 Orientalism and, 2:1003 positive labeling and, 2:821 race in Brazil and, 1:201–202 self-fulfilling prophecy and, 2:822 society values definition by, 2:821–822 stereotypes, impact of, 2:821, 2:822 See also Stereotypes Labor market segmentation, 2:822–825 affirmative action in the workplace and, 1:15–19 African American women and, 1:37 boundaries in, 2:823 capitalist profit view of, 2:823 chattel slavery impact on, 2:824
1569
conclusions regarding, 2:824–825 domestic work and, 1:36–37, 1:405–408 glass ceiling and, 1:548–551 guest workers and, 1:566–568 industrial labor requirements and, 2:823, 2:824 laborer, employer hierarchy and, 2:823 laborer, employer interactions and, 2:823 labor market characteristics and, 2:823 labor markets’ significance and, 2:822–823 labor power concept and, 2:822 primary, secondary market sectors and, 2:823–824 racialized division of labor and, 2:822, 2:824 segregation in, 1:377–378 sex, race and, 1:37 split labor market and, 3:1275 supply and demand view of, 2:823 White privilege, supremacy and, 2:824 Labor unions, 2:825–827, 2:826–827 activities, structures, governance of, 2:825–826 AFL-CIO labor federation and, 2:826, 2:827 Agricultural Labor Relations Act (California) and, 1:258, 2:659 Asian American activity and, 1:93 boycotts and, 1:197–198, 1:257 Central Americans and, 1:255 certification procedure and, 2:825 Change to Win labor federation and, 2:826, 2:827 decline of, 2:826 Democratic Party support of, 2:825 diversity of, 2:825–826 International Ladies Garmet Workers Union, 2:790 Mexican American labor activism and, 2:895 minority, immigrant workers in, 2:826–827 Ocean Hill-Brownsville Teacher’s Strike and, 2:790, 2:791 political action activities of, 2:825 San Joaquin, California, cotton strike and, 2:895 self-governing characteristic of, 2:826 strikes and, 2:825 Texas Pecan Shelling Workers Union strike and, 2:895 United Farm Workers, 1:197, 1:198, 1:256, 1:256, 1:257–258, 2:827 See also United Farm Workers Ladner, Dorie, 1:311 Ladner, Joyce, 1:311 Lakota Sioux Leonard Peltier and, 2:1032–1035 Wounded Knee, 1973 AIM and, 1:60 See also Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973) Landry, Bart, 1:153 Lands and Enfranchisement Acts (1868-1869, Canada), 1:227 Langmuir, Gavin, 1:77 The Language Bills (Alaska), 1:46 Laos, 2:827 (map) history of, 2:828, 2:829 Hmong migration to, 2:633, 2:828 Laotian Americans from, 2:827–830 Laotian Americans, 2:827–830, 2:827 (map) adjustment process of, 2:829 Baci-Sou Khuan ceremony and, 2:829
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census data on, 2:828, 2:829 family and kinship of, 2:829 Hmong Americans and, 2:633–636, 2:828 Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act (1975) and, 2:828 Laotian history and, 2:828 low, mid, highlander subgroupings of, 2:828 migration, settlement patterns of, 2:828 religion of, 2:828–829 Lapchick, Richard, 3:1308, 3:1310 LaPiere, Richard, 2:1065–1066 Laplanders. See Sami La Raza, 1:276, 2:830–831 “Brown pride” and, 2:830 Chicano movement and, 2:830, 2:896 El Dia de la Raza celebration and, 2:830 Dolores Huerta and, 2:658 indigenous, African roots emphasis and, 2:830 La Raza Cósmica (Vasconcelos) and, 2:629, 2:934 La Raza Unida Party and, 2:831–833 Latino, Hispanic terms and, 2:830 “mestizo” Latinos characteristic and, 2:830 National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and, 2:658 political unity, cultural pride and, 2:830 Julian Samora and, 3:1191–1193 See also La Raza Unida Party; National Council of La Raza (NCLR) La Raza Unida Party, 2:831–833 Chicano Movement and, 1:272–273, 2:831–832, 2:896 Crystal City, Texas and, 2:830–831, 2:896 Jose Angel Gutierrez and, 2:830 La Raza and, 2:830–831 legacy of, 2:832 Los Cinco and, 2:830 Mexican American Youth Organization and, 1:273 Ramsey Muniz Texas gubernatorial candidate and (1972), 2:831 school walkouts and, 2:831 See also La Raza; National Council of La Raza (NCLR) Larsen, Nella, 2:587 La Salle, Robert, 2:767 Lasswell, Harold, 1:468 Latin America Brazil and, 1:200–204, 1:200 (map) Caribbean and, 1:237–240, 1:237 (map) Colombia and, 1:315–317, 1:316 (map) El Dia de la Raza celebration and, 2:830 election laws in, Spanish literacy and, 2:743 immigration patterns from, 2:700 La Raza and, 2:830–831 national identity in, 2:627 Nikkeijin in Japan from, 2:983–985 social construction of race in, 3:1096 unauthorized immigration from, 2:689 See also Central Americans in the United States; specific immigrant group Latin America, Indigenous people, 2:833–835 Aztec Indian children in Mexico and, 2:834 Aztecs and, 2:833, 2:834
Belize and, 1:138–139, 1:138 (map) Christianity and, 2:833 Civil Rights Movement and, 2:833 Colombia and, 1:315–316 conquered groups and, 2:834–835 European conquest and, 2:833–834 Incas and, 2:833 independence movements and, 2:835 Mayan of Guatemala, 1:565 Mayas and, 2:834 Maya term and, 2:833 militant reactions of, 2:834–835 Mormonism and, 2:913 neoliberal globalization policies and, 2:835 in Peru, 2:1039–1041 subjugation, marginalization of, 2:833–835 Latina/o studies, 2:836–839 Brown Berets and, 1:208–210 Chicanas feminists and, 2:837 Chicano/Mexican American Studies, 2:837 Chicano Movement and, 1:272–274 college curriculum emphasis on, 2:837 Cuban, Dominican, Central American Studies programs, 2:838 culture of poverty thesis and, 1:363–365 domestic work and, 1:405–408 Dominican Republic and, 1:410–411 El Plan de Santa Barbara and, 2:837 familism and, 1:477–478 Hispanic, Latino, Chicano defined and, 1:497 interdisciplinary approach of, 2:836 internal colonialism and, 2:739–741 journals of, 2:837 Latina feminism and, 1:490–493 machismo and, 1:478, 2:863–864 non-Latino contributions to, 2:836–837 Américo Paredes’s work and, 2:836 Puerto Rican Studies programs, 2:837–838 research and writing and, 2:836–837 Julian Samora and, 2:836, 3:1191–1193 science faculty women of color and, 3:1210–1211 sexuality, race and, 3:1226 Studies vs. Studies programs and, 2:836 United Mexican American Students and, 2:837 women scholars in, 2:836 See also specific immigrant group Latvian Americans, 2:839–840, 2:839 (map) census data on, 2:839–840 contemporary community of, 2:839–840 Displaced Persons Act and, 1:449 immigration patterns of, 2:839 Soviet sphere of influence and, 1:449 Lau v. Nichols, 1:143 Lawrence, Charles, 1:334 Lawrence, Jacob, 1:31 Lawrence, Stephen, 3:1347 Lawson, James, 1:301 Laycock, Douglas, 3:1142 LDS (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). See Mormons, race and
Index
League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA), 1:507 League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), 1:272, 2:1075 Lebanese Americans, 1:86, 2:840–841, 2:840 (map) census data on, 2:840–841 contemporary community of, 2:841 famous Lebanese Americans and, 2:841 immigration patterns of, 2:840–841 Lee, Alfred M., 1:509 Lee, Spike, 2:841–843 African American authentic representations by, 2:842 The Answer film by, 2:842 The Birth of a Nation and, 2:842 Black cinema and, 1:156 chronology of films by, 2:842–843, 2:842 (table) Inside Man film by, 2:843 internalized racism issue and, 2:741 Jungle Fever film by, 2:843 The Last Hustle in Brooklyn film by, 2:842 Oscar Micheaux and, 2:842 race, class, ethnicity, gender, inequalities themes of, 2:841, 2:842–843 School Daze film by, 2:842 Lee, Wen Ho, 1:54 Leisure, 2:843–846 as activities, 2:844–845 as attitude, 2:845 Black-White differences in, 2:844 definition of, 2:842 ethnicity perspective on, 2:844–845 freedom of choice limitations and, 2:843, 2:845 intrinsic motivation as, 2:845 marginality perspective on, 2:844 as residual time, 2:843–844 society, race, ethnicity and, 2:842 socioeconomic discrimination and, 2:844–845 Lemkin, Raphaël, 1:530 Lenin, Vladimir, 1:167 Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT), 2:846–848 asylum requests and, 2:847 Black, Latino hypersexuality and, 2:847 body image and, 1:187–190 co-ed organization difficulties and, 2:846 communities of color, homophobia and, 2:847 community organizing, activism and, 2:847–848 historical overview of, 2:846–847 HIV/AIDS and, 2:847 interracial dating and, 2:848 LGBT acronym use and, 2:846–847 machismo and, 2:847 National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and, 2:846 National Gay Task Force and, 2:846 people of color, sense of erasure and, 2:848 racial aspects of LGBT identity, organizing and, 2:847, 2:847–848 sexuality, race and, 3:1226, 3:1227 sexual orientation vs. gender identity and, 2:846 transexual vs. transsexual and, 2:846
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violence and, 2:846 Whiteness as ideal basis for gayness and, 2:847 LeTexier, Emmanuelle, 1:134 Letters From an American Farmer (St. John de Crèvecoeur), 2:885 Levinson, Daniel, 1:119 Lew, Jamie, 2:813 Lewis, John, 1:308, 3:1281 Lewis, Levering, 2:585 Lewis, Oscar, 1:363, 1:365, 1:480, 1:547, 2:1083 Ley, David, 2:649 Liapunova, Roza G., 1:50 The Liberator abolitionist newspaper (Garrison), 1:1–2, 1:3, 1:414 Liberia, 1:125–126, 1:172, 1:336 LICRA. See League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) Liebman, Charles, 1:305 Life expectancy, 2:848–852 “baby boom” population and, 1:43 definition of, 2:848–849 demographic measures of, 2:849 genetic influence in, 2:851 health care services access factor in, 2:851 health of society, subpopulations measured by, 2:846 Healthy People 2010 and, 2:852 “Hispanic paradox” of, 2:851 infant, late-life mortality and, 2:848, 2:850–851, 2:851 (figure) leading causes of death and, 2:849–850, 2:849 (table) life expectancy at birth vs. n years and, 2:849 lifestyle and health factors in, 2:851 Native American statistics on, 2:953–954 race, gender disparities in, 1:42–43 by race and sex, 2:850 (figure) “race crossover” effect and, 2:851 race differences in, 2:849–850 race gap in, 2:849–852 social environment factors in, 2:851 socioeconomic factors in, 2:848, 2:851 young old, old old, oldest old and, 1:43 Lincoln, Abraham, 2:852–854 abolitionism and, 2:852, 2:853 Black voting rights and, 2:854 Chicago School of Race Relations and, 1:270 Civil War and, 1:414, 2:853 colonization of slaves supported by, 2:853 Constitution, slavery and, 2:853 Frederick Douglass and, 2:854 emancipation as a war measure and, 2:853 Emancipation Proclamation and, 1:5, 1:22, 1:414, 1:439–440, 2:853 “House Divided” speech of, 2:853 Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and, 2:852 liberty vs. slavery and, 2:852 “pursuit of happiness,” fruits of labor and, 2:852, 2:853 race relations views of, 2:853–854 slavery views of, 2:852–853 state sovereignty over slavery and, 2:853 Thirteenth Amendment and, 2:853 Union preservation focus of, 2:853
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Lincoln, C. Eric, 1:245 Lindsey, Elizabeth, 2:601 Linnaeus, Carolus, 3:1091–1092 Lipsitz, George, 2:824 Lithuanian Americans, 2:854–857 census data on, 2:855, 2:856 contemporary life of, 2:856 Displaced Persons Act and, 1:449, 2:855, 2:856 ethnic enclaves of, 2:854 immigration patterns of, 2:855–856 social, economic, cultural organizations of, 2:855 Soviet Union and, 1:449, 2:853–854 symbolic ethnicity of, 2:856 Little Earth of United Tribes, 1:60 “Little Rock Nine,” 1:307, 1:310 LL Cool J, 1:516 Locke, Alain, 1:24, 2:586–588, 2:886, 2:887, 3:1295–1296 Loewen, James T., 3:1282–1283, 3:1284 (figure) Logothetis, Demetrios, 1:562 London bombings (July 7, 2005), 2:857–858 anti-immigrant sentiment after, 3:1114 martyrdom desire and, 2:857–858 Muslim suicide bombers and, 2:857 terrorism of, 3:1298 Western injustices perception and, 2:858 Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 1:373, 2:968 Lopez Moreno, Eduardo, 1:134 Lorde, Audre, 2:848 Los Angeles, California Afghan Americans in, 1:20 African American/Latino ethnic succession conflicts in, 1:464 African American mayor of, 1:28 African Americans migration to, 1:31 anti-Chinese violence in, 1:92 Bangladeshi Americans in, 1:133 barrio of East Los Angeles and, 1:134, 1:135 Black Congress organization of, 1:178 Brown Berets in, 1:208–209 Central Americans in, 1:252, 1:253 Cherokee relocated in, 1:262 Chinatown in, 1:287 community development corporations in, 1:327 El Salvadoran youth gangs in, 1:255 Estonian Americans in, 1:450 ethnonational minority social geographies in, 1:468–469 Filipino Americans in, 1:496 Guatemalan Americans in, 1:565 Indonesian Americans in, 2:722 Iranian Americans in, 2:752 Rodney King incident in, 1:29, 1:96, 3:1113, 3:1355 Korean Americans in, 2:813 Mennonites in, 2:889 Mexican Americans in, 1:453, 1:468–469 Nigerian Americans in, 2:982 Pacific Islanders in, 2:1008 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 restrictive covenants in, 3:1157 Salvadoran Americans in, 3:1190 Sri Lankan Americans in, 3:1275
Tibetan Americans in, 3:1307 Turkish Americans in, 3:1336 Vietnamese Americans in, 3:1366 Watts Riots in, 1:26, 1:176, 1:245, 2:977 Zoot Suit Riots and, 2:1006, 3:1428–1429 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Louis Harris and Associates, 2:734 Louisiana Alien Land Act and, 1:53 bilingual education in, 1:142 Choctaw in, 1:291, 1:293 Creole ethnic identity in, 1:336, 1:337 Jim Crow laws in, 2:795 majority–minority voting district creation and, 1:546 one-drop rule in, 2:999 See also Hurricane Katrina; New Orleans, Louisiana Love Canal, New York, 1:443 Lovejoy, Elijah, 1:3 L’Overture, Toussaint, 1:175 Loving v. Virginia, 2:858, 2:858–860 Act to Preserve Racial Integrity (1924) and, 2:859 antimiscegenation laws unconstitutional and, 2:738, 2:858 Robert Kennedy and, 2:859 legalized segregation ended by, 2:858 McLaughin v. Florida and, 2:859 Naim v. Naim and, 2:859 one-drop rule declared unconstitutional in, 2:999 Lowery, Joseph, 3:1269 Lowie, Robert H., 1:184 Lucy, Autherine, 1:307 LULAC. See League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Lumbee census population data, 2:960 (table) Lundquist, Jennifer, 1:253 Lundy, Benjamin, 1:1 Lutheran Church changes in, 3:1136 Danish Americans and, 1:369, 1:370 Norwegian Americans and, 2:992 Lynch, Frederick, 3:1160 Lynching, 2:860–861 advocacy against, 2:860–869 Black intellectualism and, 1:168 of James Byrd, Jr., 2:861 definitions regarding, 2:860 of Michael Donald, 2:817 due process denied by, 2:860 of Leo Frank, a Jew, 2:790 illegal executions and, 1:374 of Italian Americans, 2:769 Ku Klux Klan and, 2:815–817, 2:860, 3:1213 NAACP and, 1:24, 1:306, 2:861, 2:932 perceived challenges to inequities and, 1:452 reconstruction, mob violence and, 2:860 ritualized spectacle of, 2:860 of Emmett Till, 1:306 Tuskegee University documentation of, 2:860 Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, 3:1181
Index
Maathai, Wangari, 1:444 Maccoby, E. E., 2:1024 MacDonald, Jason, 2:748 Macedonia, 1:129, 1:129 (map), 1:130, 1:131 borderland dispute and, 1:192 Bulgarian Americans from, 1:212 Machismo, 2:863–864 communities of color, homophobia and, 2:847 definition contradictions and, 2:863 Dictionary of Mexican Cultural Code Words and, 2:863 domestic violence and, 2:864 familism vs., 1:478 family pride, respect and, 1:478 hembrismo vs., 2:863 in-your-face masculinity and, 2:864 Latina feminism and, 1:490–493 male chauvinism and, 2:863 patriarchal view of women’s roles and, 2:864 respect, responsibility, honor and, 2:863 self-confidence vs. self-doubt and, 2:863–864 social class, education level and, 2:864 Magnet schools, 3:1152 Magnuson Act (1943), 1:289, 1:290–291 Mailangkay, Emile, 2:723 Major Crime Act (1883), 1:260 Major Indian Crimes Act (1883), 2:891 Malaysia Chinese Americans from, 1:287 Singapore and, 3:1228–1231 Malcolm X, 2:864–867 assassination of, 1:174, 1:308, 2:865, 2:867 James Baldwin and, 1:128 Black Nationalism and, 1:173–174, 1:308, 2:864 Black Power and, 1:177, 2:585, 2:865 “by any means necessary” motto of, 1:26, 1:177, 1:308, 2:865 childhood of, 2:865 as “Detroit Red,” 2:865 as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, 2:866–867 Martin Luther King, Jr. and, 1:173 as Minister Malcolm, 2:866 Nation of Islam and, 1:173, 1:177, 1:178, 1:308, 2:865, 2:865–286, 2:920–921, 2:943 Organization of African American Unity and, 1:173 pursuit of truth focus of, 2:864–865 religion and racial oppression link focus of, 2:864 self-defense vs. violence focus of, 1:173, 1:308 Suni Islamic conversion of, 2:866–867 MALDEF. See Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) Maldive Islands, 2:712 Maldova, 1:129 (map) Malinowski, Bronslaw, 1:513 Malthus, Thomas, 3:1092 Mandela, Nelson, 2:867–869 African National Congress and, 2:867–868 ANC Youth League and, 2:868 apartheid and, 1:81–82, 3:1094 Communist Party of South Africa and, 2:867, 2:868
Defiance Campaign and, 2:868 democratic elections in South Africa and, 2:867 election of, 1:84 imprisonment of, 2:868 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to, 2:867 Pan-African Congress and, 2:868 prison release of, 2:869 racial reconciliation, nation building efforts of, 2:869 social justice focus of, 2:867 United Democratic Front and, 2:869 Manifest Destiny, 1:466, 1:494, 1:501 Alien Land Acts and, 1:53 Mexican War and, 2:895 myths of, 1:304 Native American tribe removals and, 1:216 racial separation and, 1:181 reservation system and, 3:1153–1155 scientific racism and, 2:957–958 Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo (1848) and, 3:1325 U.S. v. Rogers and, 2:958 Mankiller, Wilma, 1:262 Manley, Effa, 2:974, 2:976 Mann, Thomas, 1:543 Mao Zedong, 1:175, 1:176 Maquiladoras, 2:869–871 Border Industrialization Program and, 2:870 Bracero Program and, 2:870 environmental pollution and, 2:870–871 export processing zones and, 1:554 in-bond plant concept and, 2:870 institutionalized sexual discrimination and, 2:870 Mexican economy and, 2:869, 2:870 twin plant concept and, 2:870 March on Washington, 1:305, 1:307, 2:806 Marcia, James, 3:1106, 3:1107 Marginalization, 2:871–872 barrios and, 1:133–136 of Black American Jewry, 2:792–795 color line and, 1:322–324, 2:872 criminal justice racial bias and, 2:872 death penalty racial bias and, 2:872 deficit model of ethnicity and, 1:379–380 definition of, 2:871 double consciousness concept and, 1:411–412, 2:794 in European countries, 2:871 immigration patterns and, 2:871 Invisible Man (Ellison) and, 2:750–751 labeling and, 2:821–822 slavery and, 2:871 social capital and, 2:872 “Whiteness,” Social Darwinism and, 2:871 “Marielitos,” 2:872–874 civil rights groups advocates of, 2:873 Cuban Adjustment Act (1966) and, 2:873 Cuban “boat people” and, 1:187, 1:355, 2:578, 2:872, 2:969, 3:1134 the Cuban excludables and, 2:873 human rights issue and, 2:873 political impact of, 2:873–874
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, 1:422 Marriot, McKim, 1:248 Marshall, John, 1:216 Marshall, T. J., 1:297 Marshall, Thurgood, 1:210, 2:612, 2:796, 2:874, 2:874–877 African American citizenship rights focus of, 2:875–876 Brown v. Board of Education and, 2:874, 2:876, 3:1222 early years of, 2:874–875 educational rights and, 3:1194–1195 federal career of, 2:876 NAACP and, 2:875–876, 3:1222 women’s rights, affirmative action and, 2:876 Martin, J. Alexander, 1:516 Martin, Lynn, 1:549 Martínez, Mel, 1:358 Martín Fierro film (Argentina), 1:89 Martinique, 1:238 Maruritania, 2:744 Marxism and racism, 2:877–878 authoritarian personality and, 1:120 Black Panther Party and, 1:175 Black political organizations and, 2:878 capitalism, class exploitation and, 2:877 Chicago School of Race Relations and, 1:270 class consciousness and, 1:167 class struggles and, 1:529 exploitation theory of prejudice and, 2:1067 false consciousness concept and, 2:877 Invisible Man (Ellison) and, 2:750–751 labor power concept and, 2:822 Marxist feminism and, 1:486, 1:528 parasitic capitalism and, 1:79 political economy theory and, 2:1060 race-sensitive Marxism and, 2:877–878 Social Darwinism and, 3:1249 traditional Marxism and, 2:877 White worker privilege and, 2:878 workers of color exploitation and, 2:877 working class divided by racism and, 2:877 Maryland Afghan Americans in, 1:20 bilingual education in, 1:143 death penalty in, 1:376 Italian colonists in, 2:767 Mennonites in, 2:888 Nigerian Americans in, 2:982 Sri Lankan Americans in, 3:1275 sundown towns in, 3:1283 See also Baltimore, Maryland Mason, Charlotte Osgood, 2:587 Massachusetts abolitionists in, 1:2 Albanian Americans in, 1:49 Armenian Americans in, 1:90 bilingual education legislation in, 1:440–441 Cambodian Americans in, 1:222 Canadian Americans in, 1:234 Caribbean Americans in, 1:242 Chinese Americans in, 1:287
English-only movement in, 1:146 Italian Americans in, 2:770 Lebanese Americans in, 2:841 Lithuanian Americans in, 2:856 Portuguese Americans in, 2:1064 Puerto Rican Americans in, 2:1083 Salvadoran Americans in, 3:1187 South Americans in, 3:1265 Vietnamese Americans in, 3:1366 See also Boston, Massachusetts Massachusetts 54th Regiment, 1:414 Massey, Douglas S. Central American immigration factors and, 1:253 ethnic succession work of, 1:464 spatial mobility barriers concept of, 1:179 See also American Apartheid (Massey and Denton) Mathus, T. R., 2:1060 Matsuda, Mari, 1:334 Matthaei, Julie, 2:824 Matthew, Wentworth, Rabbi, 2:793 Mauritius, 1:337 Maya in Belize, 1:139 Mayan Guatamalans and, 1:565 Spanish conquest of, 2:834 MAYO. See Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) Mazama, Ama, 1:41 McAdam, Doug, 1:308 McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, 2:878–880 Alien Land Act and, 2:781 alien registration system and, 2:879 as anti-Nazi weapon, 2:879 Asian exclusion ended by, 2:879 Bracero Program undocumented workers and, 2:878 Chinese excluded by, 2:879 communists excluded by, 2:879–880 exclusionary criteria of, 2:879–880 family reunification focus of, 2:699–700, 2:878 gender discrimination eliminated by, 2:878 historical context of, 2:878–879 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and, 2:880 international political alliances and, 2:878–879 isolationism vs. internationalism and, 2:880 Japanese Issei citizenship and, 2:765 Johnson-Reed Act replaced by, 2:879 Muslim immigration and, 2:1012–1013 Nationality Act of 1965 and, 2:879 national origins principle of, 2:880 National Origins Quota Act of 1924 and, 1:54, 1:496, 2:694, 2:1012–1013 “Operation Wetback” and, 2:879 quotas replace exclusion and, 2:879 special-preference, skilled immigrants and, 2:878, 2:879 Harry Truman and, 2:880 McCleskey v. Kemp, 1:375 McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 1:447 McIntosh, Peggy, 2:1073, 3:1404 McKay, Claude, 1:24, 2:587 McKee, C. W., 1:511
Index
McKissick, Floyd, 1:246, 1:329 McKnight, John, 1:327–328 McLaughin v. Florida, 2:859 McNabb v. Heckler, et al., 2:952 Mead, Margaret, 1:184, 1:362 Means, Russell, 1:59, 1:60–61 Media and race, 2:880–883 Amos ‘n’ Andy African American depictions and, 2:880 The Bill Cosby Show and, 2:881 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith) and, 1:149–151, 2:1061 Black cinema and, 1:154–157 Black Entertainment Television and, 2:881 cognitive research on, 2:880–881 digital divide and, 1:388–389 ideological struggles over race and, 2:880 implicit vs. explicit racial bias research and, 2:880 internalized racism and, 2:741–742 Internet Protocol Television and, 2:881 media influence, media oligopolies and, 1:555–556 media’s role in White privilege and, 2:881 minority channels and, 2:881 non-Black minority research and, 2:881 racially distorted crime news coverage and, 1:340 racial profiling by police and, 3:1112–1113 story frames impact and, 2:880–881 television impact on White viewers and, 2:880 television production, ownership issues and, 2:881 urban legends and, 3:1354 White culture norms and, 2:880 See also Film, Latino Medical experimentation, 2:883–885 Declaration of Helsinki and, 2:884 FDA clinical trials and, 2:883 genetic biotechnology and, 1:474 informed consent and, 2:883 minorities, marginalized groups as subjects, 2:884 Nazi eugenics and, 1:473, 2:884 Nuremberg Code and, 2:637, 2:884 reform of, 2:885 Tuskegee Syphilis Study, 2:884, 2:884, 3:1353 Willowbrook School Study, 2:884 Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart (Stewart), 1:22 Meier, August, 1:245 Melting pot, 2:885–888 acculturation and, 1:9 Americaness and, 2:885 assimilation concepts and, 1:104, 1:105 Beyond the Melting Pot (Glazer and Moynihan) and, 2:886–887 Canadian cultural mosaic concept and, 2:887, 2:910 Cuban ajiaco vs., 1:353 cultural pluralism and, 1:105–106, 2:615, 2:886, 2:1051–1053 Danish Americans and, 1:371 “Democracy Versus the Melting Pot” (Kallen) and, 2:886, 2:887 Indian Americans and, 2:713 interracial friendships and, 2:748–750 Jim Crow exclusions to, 2:886
1575
Letters From an American Farmer (St. John de Crèvecoeur) and, 2:885 The Melting-Pot theatrical play (Zangwill) and, 2:885–886, 2:887 minority exclusions and, 1:16 model minority myth and, 2:910 multidimensional theory of democracy and, 2:886 myth of, 2:680, 2:681, 2:698 religious intermarriages and, 2:738 “salad bowl” concept vs., 1:105–106, 2:910 “unity through diversity” concept and, 2:886 urban ethnic succession and, 1:465 World War II common cause and, 1:16 See also Immigrant communities Mendez v. Westminster, 1:436 Mengele, Josef, 1:472 Mennonites, 2:888–890 Anabaptists, Amish and, 1:69, 2:888 in Belize, 1:139 General Conference Mennonite Church and, 2:889–890 German Americans and, 1:542 history of, 2:887 Hopi and, 2:653 Horning and Wenger Old Order groups of, 2:889 immigrant members of, 2:888, 2:889 Mennonite Brethren and, 2:889 Mennonite Church USA and, 2:889 Old Order, Transitional, Assimilated Mennonites and, 2:887–890 Menominee Tribe, 2:890–892 Algonquian language and, 2:890, 2:891 American Indian Movement and, 2:892 Dawes Act (1887) and, 2:892 economic success of, 2:891–892 European contact of, 2:890 history of and European contact with, 2:890–891 Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 and, 2:891 Major Indian Crimes Act (1883) and, 2:891 Minominee Restoration Act and, 2:892 missionaries, religion and, 2:891 Mississippi mound-builders and, 2:890 resilience of, 2:890 “Termination Policy” and, 2:892 threats to the language of, 2:891 timber, fur industries of, 2:890, 2:891–892 Wisconsin ancestral homeland and, 2:890 Mental colonization, 2:742 Meredith, James, 1:246, 1:307, 1:308, 1:329, 2:807 Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson, 3:1224 Merton, Robert, 3:1215 Meszzei, Filippo, 2:767 Meucci, Antonio, 2:767 Meuser, Michael, 1:443–444 Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), 2:892–894 Chicano Movement and, 1:272–273 Community Education and Leadership Development department of, 2:893 Employment Economic Development Department of, 2:893
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Fair Share and Equal Access Department of, 2:893 funding of, 2:893 Guevara v. City of Norcross, Georgia and, 2:894 immigration reform focus of, 2:893, 2:893–894 mission of, 2:893 NAACP model for, 2:892–893 organization of, 2:893 Proposition 187 (California) and, 2:1075 Ramirez v. Desert Community College District and, 2:894 Rodriguez v. Malloy and, 2:894 Julian Samora and, 3:1193 Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project and, 2:836 Velez v. Lindow and, 2:894 Mexican Americans, 2:894–898 Anglo-Saxon American race superiority myth and, 1:466 artistic contributions of, 2:897–898 Aztán and, 1:121–123 barrios of, 1:135 Battle of the Alamo and, 1:45 Bracero Program and, 1:193, 1:198–199, 1:318, 2:702, 2:895, 3:1393–1395 Brown Berets and, 1:208–210 Chicano Movement and, 1:122, 1:272–274, 2:896 Henry Cisneros and, 2:896–897 civic organizations of, 2:896 collectivistic parenting style of, 2:1026 colonias and, 1:318–320 community network importance and, 2:681–682 demographic overview of, 2:897 discrimination against, 2:895–896 divisive political and linguistic enclaves of, 2:700–701 domestic work and, 1:407 educational stratification and, 1:435 ethnic enclaves of, 1:453, 1:455 familism and, 1:477–479 guest workers, prejudice against and, 1:568 health disparities of, 2:606, 2:609 Hernandez v. Texas and, 2:611–612 Hispanic label and, 2:625, 2:627 “Hispanic panic” concept and, 2:701 historical overview of, 2:894–896 HIV/AIDS and, 2:632 Dolores Huerta and, 2:658–659 internal colonialism and, 2:741 labor activism of, 2:895 labor union membership of, 2:826–827 La Raza, Vierge de Guadalupe and, 1:276, 2:830–831 La Raza Unida Party and, 2:831–833, 2:896 legislative changes and, 2:700 MALDEF and, 2:892–894 Mendez v. Westminster and, 1:436 Mexican American Declaration of Independence and, 1:122 Mexican American politicians, 2:896–897 Mexican American Studies programs and, 2:837 Mexican Revolution and, 2:895, 2:900 mixed-race identity and, 1:122 Gloria Molina and, 2:897 National Council of La Raza and, 2:934–936
pachucos/pachucas and, 2:1005–1006 Puerto Rican Studies programs and, 2:838 repatriation of, 2:895, 3:1150–1152 Julian Samora and, 2:836, 3:1191–1193 San Joaquin, California, cotton strike and, 2:895 self-identifying terms used by, 2:894 street gangs and, 1:523, 1:524 Texas Pecan Shelling Workers Union strike and, 2:895 transnationalism and, 1:122 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and, 3:1325–1326 United Farm Workers Union and, 2:896 United States v. Fordice and, 3:1350–1352 World War II armed forces and, 2:895 Zoot Suit Riots and, 2:1006, 3:1428–1429 See also Chicano Movement Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), 1:208, 1:273 Mexico, 2:898–902, 2:898 (map) Battle of the Alamo and, 1:45 Blacks, Afro-Mexicans in, 2:899, 2:901, 2:902 Blacks in the colonial period and, 2:899–900 border patrol and, 1:193–195 Bracero Program and, 1:193, 1:198–199, 1:318, 2:702, 2:895, 3:1393–1395 colonias and, 1:318–320 ethnic conflicts in, 2:900 guest worker program and, 1:194 independence of, 2:900 “Indians” in the 16th century and, 2:898–899 “Indians” in the colonial period, 2:899–900 indigenista ideology, indigenous movements in, 2:901 indigenous constitutional recognition in, 2:901 land reform in, 2:900, 2:901 maquiladoras and, 2:869–871 mestizo nation identity in, 2:898, 2:902 Mexican identity and, 2:900 Mexican Revolution and, 2:895, 2:899–900 1980s, 1990s immigration legislation and, 1:194 postrevolutionary Mexico and, 2:901–902 race, ethnicity in the colonial period and, 2:899–900 remittances to, 3:1146–1147, 3:1159 unauthorized immigration from, 2:689 Zapatista Army of National Liberation and, 2:901–902, 3:1423–1424 See also Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) MGSA. See Modern Greek Studies Association (MGSA) Miami, Florida Caribbean capital of, 1:238 Central Americans in, 1:252, 1:253 Cuban Americans in, 1:357, 1:357, 1:379, 1:453, 1:469, 2:578 Cuban “Marielitos” and, 2:872–874 ethnonational social geographic concentrations in, 1:469 Haitian Americans in, 2:573, 2:574, 2:575, 2:576–578 rap artists from, 3:1124 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Micheaux, Oscar, 1:155 Michigan Albanian Americans in, 1:49 Belgian Americans in, 1:137
Index
Canadian Americans in, 1:234 Danish Americans and, 1:370 Dutch Americans in, 1:428 Finnish Americans in, 1:501, 1:502 Hmong Americans in, 2:634 Hungarian Americans in, 2:664 Iraqi Americans in, 2:754 Latvian Americans in, 2:840 Lebanese Americans in, 2:841 Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (Proposal 2) and, 1:18–19 Ojibwa in, 2:995–998 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Sicilian Americans in, 3:1228 sundown towns in, 3:1283 Syrian Americans in, 3:1292 Turkish Americans in, 3:1335 See also Detroit, Michigan Micronesia, 1:337, 2:1008 Middle Eastern Americans. See specific country, immigrant group Milgram, Stanley, 1:120, 1:121 Military and race, 2:902–905 African Americans in Civil War and, 2:903 African Americans in Mexican American War and, 2:902 African Americans in Revolutionary war and, 2:902 African Americans in World Wars I, II and, 2:903 colonial period and, 2:902–903 intergroup marriage and, 2:904 Iraqi War death statistics and, 2:904 Japanese Americans World War II internment and, 2:903 military services today and, 2:903–905 NAACP and, 2:932 segregation, desegregation in the military and, 2:903–904, 2:1052 women statistics and, 2:905 Mill, John Stuart, 2:1060, 3:1249 Miller, Kelly, 1:168 Miller-El v. Cockrell, 1:376 Milliken v. Bradley, 3:1152, 3:1205–1206 Milliken v. Bradley II, 3:1152–1153, 3:1206 Million Man March/Day of Absence (MMM/DOA), 1:29, 2:921 Million Woman March (MWM), 1:29 Million Youth Marches (MYMs), 1:29 Mills, C. Wright, 1:468–469 Milwaukee, Wisconsin Cherokee relocated in, 1:262 Polish Americans in, 2:1057 The Mind of Primitive Man (Boas), 1:185 Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota Cambodian Americans in, 1:222 Estonian Americans in, 1:450 Hmong Americans in, 2:634 Indian Health Board in, 1:59 Norwegian American festivals in, 2:992 Swedish Americans in, 3:1287 Tibetan Americans in, 3:1307 Ukrainian Americans in, 3:1342 See also Appendix A: Table 7
1577
Minnesota bilingual education in, 1:143 Cherokee relocated in, 1:262 Czech Americans in, 1:368 Danish Americans and, 1:370 Finnish Americans in, 1:501, 1:502 Hmong Americans in, 2:634 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 Norwegian Americans in, 2:991 Ojibwa in, 2:995–997 Schmiedeleut in, 3:1203 Slovene Americans in, 3:1242 Swedish Americans in, 3:1286 See also Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota Minorities at Risk project, University of Maryland, 2:908 Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act of 2000, 1:148 Minority/majority, 2:905–907 bilingual education and, 1:142–146 contact hypothesis and, 1:330–333 democratic political rights to minorities and, 2:905–906 ethnonational minorities and, 1:467–470 ghetto and, 1:546–548 individual autonomy and, 2:906–907 inequalities in social, political, economic power and, 2:905 majority political authority principle and, 2:905 “majority rule” government concept and, 2:905 minority belonging issue and, 2:906 minority definition difficulties and, 2:906 minority nondominant position and, 2:906 minority self-determination restriction and, 2:906 national minority claims and, 2:906 numeric relationship and, 2:905 popular sovereignty doctrine and, 2:905 Minority rights, 2:907–910 bilingual education and, 1:142–146 cross-frontier contacts and, 1:348–350 cultural diversity benefits and, 2:909 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and, 2:909, 3:1269 differential treatment to protect different needs and, 2:908–909 external protection claims and, 2:909 Dolores Huerta and, 2:658–659 individual and group rights and, 2:908–909 internal restriction claims and, 2:909 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and, 2:909 majoritarian process affects on, 2:908 mechanisms to protect, 2:909–910 Minorities at Risk project and, 2:908 minority groups designations and, 2:908 Minority Rights Declaration and, 2:909 national peoples, minority peoples and, 2:908 theory of consociationalism and, 2:909 tyranny of the majority and, 2:909 See also Minority/majority Minow, Martha, 2:676, 2:677 Miriam Commission report, 1:373
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Miscegenation Jim Crow laws and, 1:151 Loving v. Virginia and, 2:738, 2:858 slavery, intermarriage and, 2:736–737 social acceptability differences and, 3:1096–1097 Mission Indians, 1:520 Mississippi Black voter registration in, 1:307–308, 1:310–311 Choctaw in, 1:291, 1:293 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and, 1:311 one-drop rule in, 2:999 sundown towns in, 3:1283 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1:311 Missouri bilingual education in, 1:142–143 Hmong Americans in, 2:634 See also St. Louis, Missouri Missouri Compromise of 1820, 1:417, 1:418 Missouri v. Jenkins, 3:1153 MMM/DOA. See Million Man March/Day of Absence (MMM/DOA) MNUCDR. See United Movement Against Racial Discrimination (MNUCDR, Brazil) Mobile v. Bolen, 1:546 Model minority, 2:910–912 affirmative action legislation and, 2:911 an American success story and, 2:910 Asian Indians as, 2:910 assimilation and, 1:105 Chinese Americans as, 1:287, 1:364, 1:481, 2:694 Vincent Chin murder and, 1:277–278 culture of poverty vs., 1:364 Japanese Americans as, 2:910, 2:782, 2:784, 2:986–987 Korean Americans as, 2:910 melting-pot metaphor and, 2:910 myth, stereotype of, 2:694, 2:782, 2:784, 2:910–911, 2:1062, 3:1278 national culture ideals and, 2:911 neoconservativism and, 2:911 pan-Asianism and, 2:1017 recent history regarding, 2:911–912 social justice legislation and, 2:911 Modern Black Convention Movement, 1:26 Modern Greek Studies Association (MGSA), 1:561 Mohr, Nicholasa, 2:1084 Molina, Gloria, 2:897 Montagu, Ashley, 1:184 Montana Alien Land Act and, 1:53 Blackfeet Confederacy tribes in, 1:164–167 Cheyenne in, 1:263, 1:264 Estonian Americans in, 1:448 Native American Census population data and, 2:965 (figure) Ojibwa in, 2:995 Slovene Americans in, 3:1242 Montenegro, 1:129, 1:129 (map), 1:131 Montgomery bus boycott, 1:25, 1:197–198, 1:301, 1:306, 1:310, 1:328, 2:806, 2:1028, 2:1029 Moore, Joan, 2:741
Moraga, Cherríe, 2:847 Morals and Manners among Negro Americans (Du Bois), 1:426 Morehouse, Henry Lyman, Rev., 3:1295 Morgan, Joan, 2:623 Morganthau, Henry, 1:90 Morgan v. Virginia, 2:932 Moriyama, Alan, 2:764 Mormons, race and, 2:912–914 African Americans and, 2:913–914 Brigham Young University and, 2:912, 2:913 Danish Americans and, 1:369, 1:370 European colonial expansion context of, 2:912 Hopi and, 2:653 Jews, Israel and, 2:912 in Latin America, 2:913 Manifest Destiny context of, 2:912 millennialism context and, 2:912 Native Americans and, 2:912–913 sectional conflict context of, 2:912 Joseph Smith, founding prophet of, 2:912, 2:913 Tongan Americans and, 3:1314 Morongo Band of Mission Indians, 1:520 Morris, Aldon, 1:308 Morris, Amanda S., 2:1024 Morrison, Toni, 1:128 Morse, Samuel F. B., 2:759–760 Morton, Samuel, 1:181 Morton v. Mancari, 2:958 Morton v. Ruiz, 2:952 Moscowitz, Henry, 2:931 Moses, Bob, 1:25 Moses, Robert, 1:307–308 Mostofi, Nilou, 2:753 Mouw, Ted, 2:749 Movement for Friendship between Peoples (MRAP, France), 1:507 Move to Opportunity (MTO) initiatives, 1:526 Moynihan, Daniel P., 1:456, 1:479–480 MRAP. See Movement for Friendship between Peoples (MRAP, France) MTO. See Move to Opportunity (MTO) initiatives Muhammad, Elijah, 1:26, 2:866, 2:920–921, 2:943, 2:944 Muhammad, Mother Clara, 2:943 Muhammad, W. D. Fard, 1:173, 2:920, 2:942 Muhammad, Warith Deen, 2:921, 2:922, 2:943–944 Muller, Thomas, 1:98 Multicultural education, 2:914–916 academic discipline of, 2:914–915 antiracist education vs., 1:73–76 James and Cherry Banks work in, 2:914–915 Brown v. Board of Education and, 2:914 contemporary influences in, 2:915 criticism of, 2:915–916 curriculum guidelines for, 2:915 definition of, 2:914 early years of, 2:914 English immersion and, 1:440–442 freedom, justice, equality, equity, human dignity principles of, 2:914
Index
future directions in, 2:916 Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (Banks and Banks) and, 2:914 Head Start and, 2:914 Intercultural Communication Institute and, 2:915 Kwanzaa and, 2:819–820 Multicultural Perspectives journal and, 2:915 National Conference for Race and Ethnicity and, 2:915 National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education and, 2:915 National Organization of Multicultural Educators and, 2:915 NCLB and, 2:915 nonassimilated immigrants and, 2:915–916 organizations, institutions, conferences of, 2:915 Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research and, 2:915 teacher preparation and, 2:915 Multiculturalism Act of 1988 (Canada), 1:227 Multicultural social movements, 2:916–918 assimilation vs., 1:104 collective action frames and, 2:917–918 contemporary cultural traditions and, 2:917 cultural histories of collective trauma and, 2:917 France and, 1:506–508 group culture and, 2:917–918 identity recognition and, 2:916–917 institutional constraints and, 2:918 narratives embedded in group cultures and, 2:917 pluralism and, 2:1051–1053 resources redistribution, equalization and, 2:916, 2:917 Multiethnic Placement Act, 3:1323 Multiracial identity, 2:918–920 Association of MultiEthnic Americans and, 2:919 biological race belief and, 2:919 Brazilian Americans and, 1:204–205 contemporary history of, 2:919–920 Creole communities and, 1:336–338 definition of, 2:918–919 “experience of being multiracial” criteria of, 2:919 Hafu and, 2:569–571 hapa, Hawaiian word and, 2:581–583 ideological structure and, 2:919 I-Pride movement and, 2:919 multiracial support groups and, 2:919 Project RACE and, 2:919–920 publications focused on, 2:920 social vs. biological designation and, 2:919 U.S. Census and, 1:249–251 Muniz, Ramsey, 2:831 Muñoz, Rosalio, 1:208, 1:274 Murphy-Shigematsu, Stephen, 2:569, 2:570 Murray, Charles, 1:55, 3:1249, 3:1299 Muscogee, 1:293 Muslims anti-Muslim sentiment and, 1:86–87, 1:114, 2:593, 2:762, 2:922, 2:923–925, 3:1114, 3:1338, 3:1357 in the Caribbean, 1:238 caste and, 1:248 gender segregation in, 3:1214–1215
1579
in Hong Kong, 2:649–650 in India, 2:707 in Indonesia, 2:721, 2:723 Kurdish Americans and, 2:817 religious segregation and, 3:1214 in Singapore, 3:1230 in Turkey, 3:1335 Turkish Americans and, 3:1337 united humanity and, 1:333 in the United Kingdom, 3:1349 Muslim Americans, 2:920–923 Afghan Americans, 1:19–20 African American Muslims and, 2:920–921 Africans in the U.S. and, 1:38–40 assimilation of, 2:921 Bangladeshi Americans and, 1:133 Black Muslim movement and, 1:173 Bosnian Americans and, 1:195–197 Cambodian Americans and, 1:223, 1:224 Canadian Muslim hate crimes and, 2:592, 2:593 citizenship policies and, 2:922 civil rights protection of, 2:922 Cypriot Americans and, 1:367 diversity of, 2:920 Egyptian Americans and, 1:438–439 Louis Farrakhan and, 2:921 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and, 2:921 impact of terrorism on, 2:922–923 Iranian Americans and, 2:752–753 Iraqi Americans and, 2:754–755 Islamophobia and, 2:762–764 khutbas and, 2:922 Lebanese Americans and, 2:840–841 Malcolm X and, 2:920–921 “mosqued” v. “unmosqued” Muslims and, 2:921 Elijah Muhammad and, 2:866, 2:920–921, 2:943 Muslim immigration patterns and, 2:921 Muslim Isolationists vs. Muslim Democrats and, 2:921 Nation of Islam and, 2:920–921, 2:922 Pakistani Americans and, 2:1010–1011 Palestinian Americans and, 2:1011–1015 racialization of Muslims and, 2:922 “rehumanize” process of, 1:86–87 security concerns regarding, 1:461 Shi’a faction of, 2:920 Shi’as faction of, 2:922 South Asian Muslims tensions with, 2:921–922 stereotypes and, 1:86–87, 1:133 Sufi faction of, 2:920 Sunni faction of, 2:920, 2:921, 2:922 Syrian Americans and, 3:1292 veil worn by, 3:1359–1360 See also Malcolm X; Nation of Islam Muslims in Canada, 2:923–925 anti-Muslim sentiment and, 2:923–924 Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations and, 2:924 Canadian Islamic Congress Web site and, 2:925 Canadian media and, 2:924 demographics of, 2:923–924
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hate crimes against, 2:592, 2:593 post–9/11 environment and, 2:924–925 Muslims in Europe, 2:925–928 after World War II, 2:926–927 in the Balkans, 1:130–131 diversity of, 2:925–926 European colonization and, 2:926 Iberian Peninsula presence of, 2:926 integration debate and, 2:927–928 Islamophobia and, 2:762–764 labor migration and, 2:926 in the United Kingdom, 3:1347 Muste, A. J., 1:16 MWM. See Million Woman March (MWM) Myanmarese Americans, 2:928–929, 2:929 (map) census data on, 2:928–929 contemporary community of, 2:929 immigration patterns of, 2:928–929 MYMs. See Million Youth Marches (MYMs) Myrdal, Gunmar, 1:57–58, 2:999 NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) NABSW. See National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) NACARA. See Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) NACW. See National Association of Colored Women (NACW) NAEP. See National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests Nagel, Joane, 2:1024 Naim v. Naim, 2:859 NALFO. See National Association of Latino Fraternity Organizations (NALFO) Napoleon in Haiti, 2:572, 2:573 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Douglass), 1:22, 1:414 Nash, Diane, 3:1281 Nast, Thomas, 2:758 NASW. See National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Natal alienation concept, 1:217 National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2:642 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests achievement levels measured by, 1:432 performance and attainment by race, ethnicity measured by, 1:433 (table) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 2:931–932 Amos ‘n’ Andy African American depictions and, 2:880 An American Dilemma (Gunnar Myrdal) and, 1:57 Ella Baker and, 1:310 Daisy Bates and, 1:310 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith) and, 1:149 Black military officers issue and, 2:932 Franz Boas and, 1:186 Brown v. Board of Education and, 1:210–212, 1:306, 1:436, 2:795, 2:932 Stokely Carmichael and, 1:246
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 2:932, 3:1138 Civil Rights Movement and, 1:32, 1:306 death penalty bias and, 1:374 St. Clair Drake and, 1:416 W. E. B. Du Bois and, 1:25, 1:158, 1:168, 1:306, 1:424, 2:789, 2:931 history of, 2:931–932 Charles Houston and, 3:1221 Hull House School of Race Relations and, 2:661 impact of, 2:932 Jewish support and, 2:789 Jim Crowism and, 1:24, 1:306, 3:1213 legal battles of, 2:932, 3:1221 lynching and, 1:24, 1:306, 2:861, 2:932 MALDEF and, 2:892–893 Thurgood Marshall and, 1:210, 2:875–876, 2:932, 3:1222 Morgan v. Virginia and, 2:932 National Negro Committee and, 2:931 Niagara Movement and, 1:24, 1:168 nonviolent tactics of, 2:931–932 Rosa Parks and, 1:310, 2:1028–1029 political lobby of, 2:932 school desegregation strategy of, 3:1221–1222 sit-ins and, 1:301 Clarence Thomas and, 1:157 Voting Rights Act of 1965 and, 2:932 Ida B. Wells-Barnett and, 2:931, 3:1389 Walter White and, 2:999–1000 National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW), 3:1323, 3:1324 National Association of Colored Women (NACW), 1:24 National Association of Latino Fraternity Organizations (NALFO), 1:511 National Association of Social Workers (NASW), 3:1259 National Black Assembly, 1:26, 1:28, 1:178 National Black Environmental Justice Network, 1:443 National Black Political Convention, 1:28, 1:178 National Black Power Conferences, 1:26 National Campus Diversity Project, 2:615 National Center for Education Statistics, 1:388 National Center for Minority Health Disparities, 1:148 National Chicano Moratorium Committee (NCMC), 1:208 National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference, 1:273 National Commission for Severely Distressed Public Housing, 2:1078 National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), 2:730–731 National Conference for Race and Ethnicity, 2:915 National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), 1:381, 2:933–934 Aleuts and, 1:52 Bureau of Indian Affairs and, 2:933 education, Youth Commission and, 2:934 formation of, 3:1129 founding of, 2:933 as lobbying organization, 2:934 National Indian Education Association and, 2:933 National Indian Youth Council and, 1:381 nonviolent tactics of, 2:933
Index
self-determination policies focus of, 2:933 termination policy and, 2:933 tribal sovereignty focus of, 2:933 National Convention of Colored Men, 1:323 National Council for Black Studies (NCBS), 1:33, 1:34 National Council of La Raza (NCLR), 2:658, 2:934–936 advocacy, electoral empowerment and, 2:935 education focus of, 2:935 health, family support and, 2:935 immigration, farm workers issues and, 2:935 la raza term and, 2:934 Latino civil rights advocacy and, 2:934, 2:935 mission, programs of, 2:935 National Organization for Mexican American Services and, 2:934 origins of, 2:934–935 policy analysis, advocacy and, 2:935 Julian Samora and, 3:1192–1193 Southwest Council of La Raza and, 2:934, 3:1192 Raul Yzaguierre and, 2:934–935 See also La Raza; La Raza Unida Party National Council of Negro Women, 1:24, 1:25, 1:245 National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), 1:257, 2:658 National Indian Education Association, 2:933 National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC), 1:521 National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), 2:936–937 environmental focus of, 2:937 fish-ins strategy of, 2:936, 3:1130 “For a Greater Indian America” slogan of, 2:936 funding of, 2:937 international activities of, 2:937 National Congress of American Indians and, 2:936 nonprofit charitable organization of, 2:936, 2:937 political activities of, 2:937 Red Power and, 2:1023 Trail of Broken Treaties and, 2:936 tribal termination policy and, 2:936 urban origin of, 3:1129 Washington state fishing treaty rights and, 2:936, 2:1023, 3:1130 National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence, 1:471, 1:472 National Institutes of Health (NIH), 1:148–149 Nationality Act of 1940, 1:495 immigration discrimination and, 1:495 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1:140 National Multicultural Greek Council (NMGC), 1:511 National Negro Committee, 2:931 National Negro Conference of 1910, 1:186 National Organization for Women (NOW), 1:549 National Organization of Multicultural Educators, 2:915 National Organization on Disability, 1:67 Web site of, 1:68 National Organization on Disability/Harris Survey, 1:68 National Origins Act of 1924 Arab immigration and, 2:1012 Black bourgeoisie growth and, 1:153 Chinese immigration, 1:286 Eastern Europe immigration and, 2:693, 2:937 Ellis Island and, 2:938
1581
Estonia quotas and, 1:449 Gentlemen’s Agreement and, 1:534 immigrant assimilation and, 1:106 immigration restrictions of, 2:937–939 Indian Americans and, 2:711 Japanese immigration and, 1:535, 2:693 Korean Americans and, 2:812 McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act (1952) and, 2:694, 2:699, 2:878–879 racist policies of, 2:922 revocation of, 2:688, 2:693, 2:699, 2:922 Slovak Americans and, 3:1240 Turkish American immigration and, 3:1335 National Origins System, 2:937–939 eugenics and, 2:937 Gentlemen’s Agreement and, 1:466, 1:533–535, 2:687, 2:699, 2:765, 2:782, 2:812 historical development of, 2:937–938 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and, 2:880 Immigration Restriction League and, 2:938 immigration restrictions and, 2:937–939 key provisions of, 2:938 literacy requirements and, 2:938 McCarran-Walter Act and, 2:878–880 National Origins Act of 1924 and, 1:449, 1:495, 2:688, 2:693, 2:694, 2:937, 2:938–939 National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC), 1:509 National Preparedness and Response Authority, 2:666 National Preservation Act (1966), 3:1181 National Rainbow Coalition (NRC), 2:939–940 Jesse Jackson, Sr. and, 2:773, 2:774, 2:939–940 Operation PUSH and, 2:940, 2:1003 Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and, 2:940 voter registration focus of, 2:939–940 National Research Council (NRC), 1:148–149 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 1:419–420, 1:421 (table) National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), 1:388 National Urban League, 1:24, 2:940–942 activities of, 2:941–942 African American migration North and, 2:941 An American Dilemma (Gunnar Myrdal) and, 1:57 annual reports of, 2:941 auxiliary organizations of, 2:941–942 economic self-reliance, parity, power, civil rights focuses of, 2:941 history of, 2:940–941 Hull House School of Race Relations and, 2:659, 2:661 Charles S. Johnson and, 2:796 Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life and, 2:796 Nation of Islam, 1:28, 2:942–944 “American Muslim Mission” name change and, 2:943 of Bangladeshi Americans, 1:132 basic teachings of, 2:942–943 Black Power and, 1:26, 1:177, 1:178 Civil Rights Movement and, 1:32 economic self-help focus of, 1:158 Louis Farrakhan and, 2:944
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liberation of Black Americans focus of, 2:942 Malcolm X and, 1:173, 1:177, 1:178, 1:308, 2:865, 2:865–866, 2:920–921, 2:943 Million Man March/Day of Absence and, 1:29, 2:921 Mother Clara and, 2:943 Elijah Muhammad and, 2:866, 2:920–921, 2:943, 2:944 Wallace Fard Muhammad and, 2:942 Warith Deen Muhammad and, 2:921, 2:922, 2:943–944 origins of the Nation and, 2:942 White racism tenets reversal and, 2:942 See also Islamophobia; Malcolm X; Muslim Americans Nation-states, 1:554–555 after World War II, 1:558 decolonization and, 1:558 globalization, “connectedness” among, 1:558 social science perspective, race and ethnicity and, 1:558 Native Allotment Act of 1906 (Alaska), 1:46 Native American education, 2:944–947 boarding schools and, 1:217, 1:261, 2:715, 2:945–946, 3:1129, 3:1155 Carlisle Indian School and, 1:217, 2:945, 2:945 federal and state public schools and, 2:946 Hopi and, 2:653 manual labor schools and, 2:945 mission schools and, 2:944–945 renaissance and, 2:946 resistance and reform and, 2:946 tribal colleges and, 2:946 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, 2:947–949 historic context of, 2:947–948 implementation and politics of, 2:948–949 Kennewick Man controversy and, 2:801–802, 2:948–949 “salvage ethnology” concept and, 2:948 scientific, museum backlash to, 2:948 scientific racism and, 2:947–948 “Spirit Cave Man” discovery (1940s) and, 2:802 Tlingit artifacts and, 3:1313 Native American health care, 2:949–954 current demographics and health status of, 2:953–954 current issues of, 2:954 European contact and, 2:949 federal role in, 19th century, 2:950 federal role in, early 20th century, 2:951 federal role in, postwar changes, 2:951–952 federal role in, Public Health Service and, 2:952 IHS organization and service population and, 2:952–953 Indian Health Care Improvement Act and, 2:952 Indian Health Service and, 2:950, 2:952–954 Indian Medical Service and, 2:951 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 and, 2:952, 3:1180–1181 Kiowa School of Practical Nursing and, 2:951 McNabb v. Heckler, et al., 2:952 Morton v. Ruiz and, 2:952 “Save the Babies” program and, 2:951 termination policy and, 2:952 trachoma campaign and, 2:951 tuberculosis campaign and, 2:951, 2:953
Native American identity, 2:954–956 blood quantum and, 2:955, 2:959 changing culture and, 2:963–964 of Cherokee, 1:259, 1:261, 1:262 European colonialism and, 2:956–967, 2:959 external ascription role in, 2:954 identity definition and, 2:954 Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 and, 2:714–716 language preservation and, 2:964 legal, sociohistorical context of, 2:955 Native American education and, 2:944–947 native homelands, reservations and, 2:964–966 other criteria of, 2:956 pan-Indianism and, 2:1022–1024 physical appearance and, 2:956 “supratribal consciousness” and, 2:955 See also Blood quantum; Native American identity, legal background Native American identity, legal background, 2:956–959 blood quantum and, 1:181–183, 2:677, 2:958–959, 2:961 Canadian Aboriginal women and, 1:227–230 Certificates of Degree of Indian Blood and, 2:958 colonial era and, 2:957 dialogue on treaty rights and, 3:1319–1320 extended-kinship network and, 2:957 Fort Laramie Treaty (1868) and, 3:1319–1320 “Indian,” “tribe” terminology and, 2:957 Indian Citizenship Act and, 1:217, 1:261, 3:1370 Morton v. Mancari and, 2:958 Native American voting rights and, 3:1370 Navajo creation narrative and, 2:957 outsider cultural adoption and, 2:957 “patent-in-fee” (fee-simple title) and, 1:373 peyote and, 2:1044–1045 scientific racism and, 1:2, 2:947–948, 2:957–958 treaty making history and, 3:1318–1319 United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians and, 3:1320 U.S. v. Broncheau and, 2:958 U.S. v. Rogers and, 2:958 Native Americans, 2:959–966 acculturation of, 1:8 aging population and, 1:43–44 alcoholism effects and, 1:52, 1:292, 2:715 Aleuts and, 1:49–52 American-Indian Wars and, 2:903 Anglo-Saxon American race superiority myth and, 1:466 biological racism and, 2:959 biomedical work force and, 1:147 blood quantum and, 1:181–183, 2:959, 2:961 boarding schools and, 1:217, 1:261, 2:715, 2:945–946, 2:962, 3:1129, 3:1155 Burke Act of 1906 and, 1:373 Canadian Aboriginal women and, 1:227–230 census categories and, 2:959, 2:960 (table) changing culture and, 2:963–964 Christianity conversion and, 1:259–260, 1:514 of Colombia, 1:315–317 common qualities of, 2:964 crime and race and, 1:341
Index
Dawes Act of 1887 and, 1:166, 1:217, 1:261, 1:371–374 digital divide and, 1:388 “domestic dependent nations” label and, 2:962 domestic work and, 1:407 drug use patterns and, 1:419–420, 1:421 (table) educational performance, attainment of, 1:432–433, 1:433 (table) educational stratification and, 1:435, 1:436 environmental racism and, 1:442 exploitation theory of prejudice and, 2:1067 family studies, 1:481 federal termination policy and, 2:892, 2:933, 2:952, 2:956, 2:962 Five Civilized Tribes and, 1:216, 1:372, 1:373 gaming revenues use and, 2:963 geographic location barriers and, 3:1257 HIV/AIDS and, 2:631 homelessness and, 2:642 homicide and, 2:645–646 household population by state and, 2:965 (figure) household population by tribal group and, 2:960 (table) Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 and, 2:714–716 Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 and, 2:891 Indian Removal Act (1830) and, 1:181, 1:216, 1:261 Indian Reorganization Act (1934) and, 1:166, 1:182, 1:215, 1:217–218, 1:261, 2:958, 2:961, 2:962, 2:997 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 and, 1:166, 1:218, 1:219, 2:952, 3:1131, 3:1180–1181 interracial marriages and, 1:482 intra-race variation among, 3:1097 Kennewick Man controversy and, 1:381, 2:801–802 kinship ties of, 2:809, 2:964 language preservation and, 2:964 Latin American Indigenous people and, 2:833–835 life style diseases and, 1:44 Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock and, 1:373, 2:968 Major Indian Crimes Act (1883), 2:891 Manifest Destiny and, 1:466 medical school faculties and, 1:147 in military service, 2:904 Mormonism and, 2:912–913 Native American gaming and, 1:519–522, 1:520, 2:716–719 Native American water rights and, 3:1379–1381 native homelands, reservations and, 2:962, 2:964–966 nonmarital birth statistics and, 1:480 Office of Indian Affairs and, 1:372, 1:373 oral traditions and, 2:961 pan-Indian civil rights movement and, 2:962 pan-Indianism and, 2:1022–1024 peyote and, 2:1044–1045 popular culture racism and, 2:1061 prison population demographics of, 2:1071 racial definitions and, 2:959, 2:961 Red Power and, 3:1129–1132 Sand Creek Massacre and, 3:1196–1197 self-determination era of, 1:218–219, 1:262–263, 2:714, 2:946, 2:961, 2:962 self-identification by, 2:959 sexuality, race and, 3:1226
1583
sports team mascot stereotypes and, 2:615, 2:822, 2:1062 treaty making history and, 3:1318–1319 tribal colleges and, 2:615 Tribally Controlled Schools Act and, 1:218 tribal nations identification and, 2:961 U.S. interventions and, 2:961–963 voting rights of, 3:1370 water rights and, 3:1379–1381 Wheeler-Howard Act and, 1:217, 1:261–262, 1:372, 3:1180 See also Blood quantum; Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA); Dawes Act of 1887; Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978; Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 (IGRA); National Congress of American Indians (NCAI); National Indian Youth Council (NIYC); Native American, specific topic; Reservation system; Sacred sites, Native American; Sovereignty, Native American; Trail of Broken Treaties; Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973); specific legislation; specific tribe; specific individual Native Americans, environment and, 2:966–969 colonialist racism, genocide and, 2:967 degradation of tribal lands and, 2:968 discrimination, environmental hazards and, 1:394–396 dispossession of land and, 2:967–968 federal trust power of U.S. government and, 2:968 homeland degradation and, 2:966 Hopi-Navajo mining dispute and, 2:653 key policies and, 2:968 Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock and, 1:373, 2:968 Native American lifeways and, 2:968–969 Navajo nuclear waste incident and, 2:968, 2:972 oral narrative histories and, 2:967 place-based tribalism and, 2:967 plenary power of U.S. government and, 2:968, 2:1270 self-determination and, 2:968–969 Washington state fishing treaty rights and, 2:936, 2:1023, 3:1130 water rights and, 3:1379–1381 Winters v. United States and, 3:1380 Natives Act of 1952 (South Africa), 1:83 Native Title Act (Australia), 1:114 Nativism, 2:969–970 Anglo-Saxon American race superiority myth and, 1:466 anti-Catholic American Protective Association and, 2:760 anti-Catholic sentiment and, 2:760, 2:969 anti-Indian American sentiment and, 2:710, 2:711 anti-Irish sentiment and, 2:759–760 California Proposition 187, 2:969–970, 2:1075–1077 Chinese Exclusion Act and, 2:969 Dillingham Flaw concept and, 1:389–391 Know Nothing Party and, 2:760, 2:969 nativist fear of immigrant communities and, 2:682–683, 2:969–970 terrorism and, 2:970 U.S. immigration, race and, 2:700–701 xenophobia and, 2:969 See also Americanization Naturalization Act of 1790 “free white persons” focus of, 1:53, 1:694, 2:694, 2:922 Immigration Act of 1924 and, 1:53
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Naturalization Act of 1870, 1:466 Navajo, 2:970–973 blood quantum and, 1:181 census population data of, 2:960 (table) contemporary community of, 2:972 education and, 2:972 environmental preservation and, 2:937 history of, 2:970–971 Hopi and, 2:652–654 Navajo-Hopi dispute and, 2:653, 2:971 Navajo Reservation, Arizona and New Mexico, 1:373, 2:965, 2:971 nuclear waste incident and, 2:968, 2:972 Pueblo influence on, 2:970 weaving industry of, 2:971 World War II code talkers and, 2:971 Nazism American Jewish Committee and, 1:65 anti-Semitism and, 1:72, 1:76–77, 1:77, 1:79, 1:472, 1:473–474, 3:1249 genocide and, 1:530 See also Holocaust; Holocaust deniers and revisionists NCAI. See National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) NCBS. See National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) NCCJ. See National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) NCLB. See No Child Left Behind (NCLB) NCLR. See National Council of La Raza (NCLR) NCMC. See National Chicano Moratorium Committee (NCMC) Nebraska bilingual education in, 1:143 Cheyenne in, 1:264 Czech Americans in, 1:368 Danish Americans and, 1:370 Mennonite Brethren in, 2:890 The Negro American Family (Du Bois), 1:426 The Negro Church (Du Bois), 1:424, 1:426 Negro Convention Movement, 1:22 The Negro Family in the United States (Frazier), 1:512 Negro League baseball, 2:973–976 Rafael Almeida and, 2:974 barn-storming circuit of, 2:973, 2:974 Roy Campanella and, 2:975 Eastern Colored League and, 2:975 Fair Employment Practices Commission and, 2:975 Josh Gibson and, 2:974 Great Depression and, 2:975 Homestead Grays team of, 2:973 Effa Manley and, 2:974, 2:975 Armando Marsans and, 2:974 National Negro League and, 2:975 Negro American League and, 2:975 Negro World Series and, 2:975 Satchel Paige and, 2:974 Plessy v. Ferguson and, 2:974 recognition of, 2:976 Jackie Robinson and, 2:973, 2:974, 2:975, 2:976 social and historical context of, 2:974–975
Neocolonialism, 1:317–318 Nepal, 2:712 Netherlands, 1:427–428, 1:427 (map) Anabaptists in, 2:888 anti-Muslim sentiment in, 2:927 Caribbean colonialism by, 1:238 Caribbean racial, ethnic identity in, 1:239 colonialism of, 1:317 colonialism of, Creole communities and, 1:336 dominant religion in, 3:1140 Indonesia colonized by, 2:721 Muslims migration to, 2:926 religious segregation in, 3:1214 Nevada Hispanics in, 1:135 immigrants settling in, 2:690 Pacific Islanders in, 2:1008 Salvadoran Americans in, 3:1187 Newark, New Jersey African American mayor of, 1:28 Black Power conference in, 1:177 Committee for a United Newark and, 1:178 Jamaican Americans in, 2:777 Nigerian Americans in, 2:982 political ethnic succession in, 1:464 Puerto Rican Americans in, 2:1083 Sri Lankan Americans in, 3:1275 New Deal African Americans and, 1:25 Great Depression, Roosevelt and, 1:25, 1:57, 3:1260 Indian New Deal and, 1:217, 1:261–262 Modern Industrial race relations period and, 1:377 social work and, 3:1260 New Hampshire immigrants settling in, 2:690 Salvadoran Americans in, 3:1190 Turkish Americans in, 3:1335 New Immigration Act (1965), 1:291 New Jersey Albanian Americans in, 1:49 Armenian Americans in, 1:90 Chinese Americans in, 1:287 Cypriot Americans in, 1:366 Egyptian Americans in, 1:439 Hispanics in, 1:135 Hungarian Americans in, 2:663, 2:664 immigrants settling in, 2:690 Italian Americans in, 2:770 Jordanian Americans in, 2:797 Latvian Americans in, 2:840 Nigerian Americans in, 2:982 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Peruvian Americans in, 2:1043 Portuguese Americans in, 2:1064 Puerto Rican Americans in, 2:1083 Slovak Americans in, 3:1238 South Americans in, 3:1265 Spanish Americans in, 3:1274 Sri Lankan Americans in, 3:1275
Index
Turkish Americans in, 3:1336 Ukrainian Americans in, 3:1342, 3:1343 See also Appendix A: Table 7; Newark, New Jersey New Mexico Alien Land Act and, 1:53 bilingual education in, 1:142 colonias in, 1:318 Hispanics in, 1:135 Italian Americans in, 2:770 Los Comancheros in, 1:209 Mexican American internal colonialism experience in, 2:741 Native American Census population data and, 2:965 (figure) Navajo Reservation in, 1:373 Spanish Americans in, 3:1274 The New National Era newspaper, 1:414–415 The New Negro: An Interpretation (Locke), 2:586, 2:588, 3:1296 New Orleans, Louisiana Central Americans in, 1:252 rap artists from, 3:1124 Sicilian Americans in, 3:1227 See also Hurricane Katrina New Religious Movements (NRM), 3:1140–1141 Newton, Huey, 2:976–978 autobiography of, 2:978 Black Panther Party and, 1:174, 1:308, 2:976 early years of, 2:976–977 intercommunalism concept of, 2:978 “legal first aid” by, 2:977 Malcolm X and, 2:977–978 Panther Patrols, police racial abuse and, 2:977 police brutality focus of, 2:977 radical activism and exile of, 2:977 “reactionary suicide” concept of, 2:977 Bobby Seale and, 2:977 writings of, 2:977–978 New York City abortions in, 1:6 African Americans migration to, 1:31 Albanian Americans in, 1:49 Anti-Defamation League in, 1:71 Armenian Americans in, 1:90 Asian Americans in, 1:97–98 ASPIRA and, 1:102–104 Assyrian Americans in, 1:108 Audre Lorde Project in, 2:848 Bangladeshi Americans in, 1:133 Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn area and, 1:55 Cambodian Americans in, 1:222 Caribbean Americans in, 1:241–242 Central Americans in, 1:252 Chinatown in, 1:282, 1:284, 1:286, 1:287, 1:288 Chinese Americans in, 1:284, 1:286, 1:287, 1:288, 1:453 community development corporations in, 1:327 Crown Heights, Brooklyn and, 1:242, 1:350–352 Cuban Americans in, 1:357 Cypriot Americans in, 1:366 Czech Americans in, 1:368 Danish Americans in, 1:370 Dominican Americans in, 1:408
1585
Dominican Day parade in, 1:409 East Harlem and, 1:429–431 Estonian Americans in, 1:448, 1:450 ethnic enclaves in, 2:699 ethnonational minority social geographies in, 1:469 Filipino Americans in, 1:496 Finnish Americans in, 1:501 FUBU Company and, 1:516–517 gentrification, Lower East side and, 1:536 Georgian Jews in, 1:538 Haitian Americans in, 2:573, 2:574 hate crime investigative units in, 2:591 homelessness, minority displacement and, 1:536 Honduran Americans in, 2:647 House of Refuge, juvenile reformatory in, 2:799 Italian Americans in, 2:768, 2:768 Jamaican Americans in, 2:777 Little India, Jackson Heights, Queens and, 1:97 Little Italy in, 1:454 Mennonites in, 2:889 Nigerian Americans in, 2:982 Norwegian Americans in, 2:991 Ocean Hill-Brownsville Teacher’s Strike and, 2:790, 2:791 Pacific Islanders in, 2:1008 Pakistani Americans in, 2:1010 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Peruvian Americans in, 2:1043 political ethnic succession in, 1:464 Puerto Rican Americans in, 1:135, 2:1083 race riots in, 1:400 Santería practitioners in, 3:1200 Sicilian Americans in, 3:1227 South Americans in, 3:1265 Spanish Americans in, 3:1274 Sri Lankan Americans in, 3:1275 Swedish Americans in, 3:1287 Tibetan Americans in, 3:1307 Turkish Americans in, 3:1336 undocumented Bangladeshi Americans in, 1:132 See also Appendix A: Table 7; Crown Heights, Brooklyn; East Harlem; Harlem; Harlem Renaissance New York Manumission Society, 1:3 New York (state) Afghan Americans in, 1:20 Albanian Americans in, 1:49 Armenian Americans in, 1:90 bilingual education in, 1:143 Bulgarian Americans in, 1:213 Canadian Americans in, 1:234 Croatian Americans in, 1:348 Dutch Americans in, 1:428 Egyptian Americans in, 1:439 Hispanics in, 1:135 Hungarian Americans in, 2:664 immigrants settling in, 2:690, 3:1134 Iranian Americans in, 2:752 Iraqi Americans in, 2:754 Italian Americans in, 2:770 Japanese Americans in, 2:784
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Jordanian Americans in, 2:797 Latvian Americans in, 2:840 Lebanese Americans in, 2:841 Lithuanian Americans in, 2:855, 2:856 Native American Census population data and, 2:965 (figure) Nigerian Americans in, 2:982 Pacific Islanders in, 2:1008 Pakistani Americans in, 2:1010 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Panamanian Americans in, 2:1016 Polish Americans in, 2:1058 Puerto Rican Americans in, 2:1083 Romanian Americans in, 3:1174 Sicilian Americans in, 3:1228 Slovak Americans in, 3:1238 Slovene Americans in, 3:1242 South Americans in, 3:1265 Spanish Americans in, 3:1274 Sri Lankan Americans in, 3:1275 Syrian Americans in, 3:1292 Ukrainian Americans in, 3:1342 United Kingdom immigrants in, 3:1350 See also New York City Nez Perce, 2:801 NFWA. See National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) NGOs. See Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) Niagara Movement, 1:24, 1:168, 1:306, 3:1374 NIC. See North American Interfraternity Conference (NIC) Nicaragua, 2:978 (map) domestic violence in, 2:864 Sandinista National Liberation Front conflict in, 1:253, 2:979 Nicaraguan Americans, 1:251–252, 2:978–980, 2:978 (map) census data on, 1:252 (figure), 2:979 culture, language, identity of, 2:979–980 economic conditions of, 1:252–253 Hispanic identity and, 2:978, 2:980 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and, 2:979 immigration patterns of, 2:979 language of, 2:980 mestizo identity of, 2:980 Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) and, 1:255, 1:565 political asylum seekers and, 2:873 Sandinista Revolution and, 2:979 social, cultural activism of, 1:255 social, family ties of, 1:254 socioeconomic factors and barriers of, 2:979 Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NACARA), 1:255, 1:565 Niebaum, Gustave, 1:500 Nielsen, George, 1:370–371 NIGC. See National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) Nigeria, 2:980–982, 2:980 (map) early history and empires in, 2:981 English colony, protectorate of, 2:981 ethnic unification in, 2:981–982 geography of, 2:980 Islam in, 2:981
Nigerian Americans, 2:982–983 census data on, 2:982 contemporary community of, 2:982 immigration patterns of, 2:982 refugees of, 2:982 return migration of, 2:982 Nigrescence model of Black racial identity, 3:1106–1107, 3:1108 NIH. See National Institutes of Health (NIH) Nikkeijin, 2:983–985 Brazil, Peru homeland of, 2:778, 2:779 Brazilian and other Nikkeijin in Japan and, 2:983–985 Immigration Control and Refugee Cognition Act (Japan) and, 2:984 inclusive of diversity and, 2:983 “Japanese American” term and, 2:983 Japanese “bubble” economy and, 2:984 as labor source, 2:779 language, community of, 2:784 national, cultural differences and, 2:984 prejudice, discrimination of, 2:779 Sansei and, 3:1198–1199 usage in Japan of, 2:983 usage in U.S. of, 2:983 Web sites regarding, 2:985 Nile Valley Civilization group, 1:34 Nineteenth Amendment, 1:16 Nisei, 2:985–988 American-born children of Japanese immigrants and, 2:985 Americanization response to racism and, 2:985–986, 2:987 internment and, 2:985–986 internment and, loyalty issue and, 2:986 internment and, military recruitment and, 2:986 Japanese American generation and, 2:783, 2:784 Kibel Nisei and, 2:987–988 Harry H. L. Kitano and, 2:784 model minority stereotype and, 2:986–987 postwar period and, 2:986–987 redress, reparations movement and, 2:987 Shin-Nisei, 2:985, 2:988 Nitz, Michael, 1:276–278 Nixon, Richard M. affirmative action policies of, 1:18 AIM and, 1:59 Minominee Restoration Act and, 2:892 Native American self-determination policies of, 1:218, 3:1131, 3:1180–1181 Office of Minority Business Enterprise and, 1:163 NIYC. See National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) NMGC. See National Multicultural Greek Council (NMGC) Nobles, Wade, 1:41 No Child Left Behind (NCLB), 1:434–435 accountability feature of, 1:434 bilingual education and, 1:143 educational options feature of, 1:434 ELL students and, 1:143, 1:441 flexibility, local control feature of, 1:434 high stakes testing focus of, 1:434, 1:437 multicultural education and, 2:915 teaching methods feature of, 1:434
Index
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 1:554–555 Nooyi, Indra, 1:551 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) international environmental harm and, 1:396 North American Interfraternity Conference (NIC), 1:509 North Carolina Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians of, 1:259, 1:261 Highway Traffic Study in, 3:1112 Hmong Americans in, 2:634 immigrants settling in, 2:690 interracial marriage prohibition and, 1:181 majority–minority voting district creation and, 1:546 Native American Census population data and, 2:965 (figure) Salvadoran Americans in, 3:1187 North Dakota Finnish Americans in, 1:501 Icelandic Americans in, 2:674 Mennonite Brethren in, 2:890 non-Indian home adoptions in, 2:715 Norwegian Americans in, 2:991 Ojibwa in, 2:995 Schmiedeleut in, 3:1203 Swedish Americans in, 3:1286 Northern Ireland, racism in, 2:755 (map), 2:988–991 anti-racism campaign and, 2:757, 2:990 Belfast Agreement (1998) and, 2:990 conflict resolution and justice in, 3:1095 Eastern European, Filipino, Portuguese migrant workers and, 2:989 economic prosperity distribution and, 2:757 institutional racism and, 2:989, 2:990 “invisibles” minority ethnic groups and, 2:990 Jewish population in, 2:988 Loyalist paramilitaries and, 2:989 Protestant majority vs. Catholic minority in, 2:988, 2:990, 3:1214 Race Relations Order and, 2:990 racial harassment and, 2:989 racist prejudice and, 2:988, 2:989–990 Roma population in, 2:988 Unionism, Nationalism and, 2:990 violence and, 2:989 Norway, 2:991 (map) emigration from, 1:370 racist incidents in, 3:1114 Sami in, 3:1187 Norwegian Americans, 2:991–993, 2:991 (map) Rasmus Bjøn Anderson and, 2:992 community developments and, 2:992–993 early immigration of, 2:991 early settlements of, 2:991–992 folk arts of, 2:993 later settlements, festivals of, 2:992–993 Lutheran Church and, 2:992 Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Synod and, 2:992 universities, colleges of, 2:992 Novas, Himilce, 2:627 NOW. See National Organization for Women (NOW) NPHC. See National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC)
1587
NRC. See National Research Council (NRC) NRM. See New Religious Movements (NRM) NSDUH. See National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) NTIA. See National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Nuremberg Trials, 1:472 Obama, Barack, 2:1000 Obenga, Theophile, 1:34 Oboler, Suzanne, 2:627 Oceana, 2:1008 O’Connor, Sandra Day, 1:14, 1:563 OEJ. See Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ) OFCCP. See Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) Office of Environmental Equity, 1:395 Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ), of EPA, 1:395, 1:443 Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, 1:162 Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), 1:18 Office of Indian Affairs, 1:372, 1:373 Office of Minority Business Enterprise, 1:163 Ogbu, John, 1:434 Oglala Sioux Black Elk and, 1:159–161 Pine Ridge incident and, 2:1034 Wounded Knee, 1973 AIM and, 1:60, 3:1129, 3:1131 See also Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973) Ohio Albanian Americans in, 1:49 Amish in, 1:69 bilingual education in, 1:142 Croatian Americans in, 1:348 Hungarian Americans in, 2:664 Italian Americans in, 2:770 Jordanian Americans in, 2:797 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 Mennonites in, 2:888 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Puerto Rican Americans in, 1:135, 2:1083 Serbian Americans in, 3:1223 Slovak Americans in, 3:1238 Slovene Americans in, 3:1242 United Farm Workers in, 1:257–258 See also Cleveland, Ohio Ojibwa, 2:995, 2:995–998 AIM and, 2:997 Algonquian language family and, 2:995 Canadian “civilizing” policy and, 2:996 of Canadian Eastern Subarctic People, 1:230 casino gaming and, 2:997 census data on, 2:995 clan based society of, 2:995 Constitution Act of 1982 (Canada) and, 2:997 contemporary issues of, 2:997 Dawes Act and, 2:996–997 European contact with, 2:996 history of, 2:996–997 Indian Reorganization Act (1934) and, 2:997
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Northern States Power dam, Wisconsin and, 1:59, 1:61 Leonard Peltier and, 2:1032–1035 Red Lake Band, Minnesota and, 2:997 reservations of, 2:995 settlement patterns of, 2:995 State of Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and, 2:996 treaty process and, 2:996 tribal name, spelling variations and, 2:995 Okihiro, Gary, 1:93 Okinawa Japanese Americans from, 2:782 Okinawan in Japan and, 2:780 Oklahoma Cherokee, Creeks removed to, 1:371 Cherokee Nations in, 1:259, 1:261 Cheyenne in, 1:263, 1:264 Choctaw exiled to, 1:293 Hmong Americans in, 2:634 “Indian Territory” in, 1:293 Native American Census population data and, 2:965 (figure) See also Tulsa, Oklahoma Omi, Michael, 1:323, 3:1103, 3:1104 One-drop rule, 2:998–1000 apartheid and, 3:1094 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith) and, 1:149–151 “Blackness” and, 1:352 census self-identification and, 2:999–1000 color line and, 1:322–323 contemporary times and, 2:1000 in Cuba, 1:352 Loving v. Virginia and, 2:999 multiracial designations and, 2:999–1000 “passing as White” and, 2:998–999 Plessy v. Ferguson and, 2:999 property rights, citizenship and, 1:322–323 racial classification and, 3:1091, 3:1093–1094, 3:1096 slavery, intermarriage and, 2:736 slavery reparations and, 3:1149 social significance of, 2:998 two or more races reported, by specified race and, 2:999 (table) White supremacy and, 3:1410 Operation Bootstrap, 2:1000–1001 agricultural sector decline result of, 2:1000 economic industrial growth focus of, 2:1000, 2:1088 ineffectiveness of, 2:1000, 2:1088 Puerto Rican Development Corporation and, 2:1000 Operation Breadbasket, 2:1001, 3:1269 “Operation Gatekeeper” border policy, 1:194 “Operation Hold the Line” border policy, 1:194 Operation Pipeline, Drug Enforcement Agency, 3:1112 Operation PUSH, 2:1001–1003 boycott technique of, 2:1002 corporate covenants and, 2:1002 Jesse Jackson and, 2:1001–1002 National Rainbow Coalition and, 2:940 Nike boycott and, 2:1002 PUSH for Excellence student program of, 2:1002 Web site of, 2:1003
“Operation Wetback” (Eisenhower administration), 1:193, 1:499, 2:879, 3:1394–1395 Oregon Alien Land Act and, 1:53 anti-Hindu violence in, 2:711 Employment Division, State of Oregon v. Smith and, 2:1044–1045, 3:1142 Estonian Americans in, 1:448 Finnish Americans in, 1:502 hate crime statutes in, 2:589 Hmong Americans in, 2:634 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 Slovene Americans in, 3:1242 sundown towns in, 3:1283 See also Portland, Oregon Oresick, Peter, 3:1239 Organic Law (Alaska), 1:46 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 3:1169–1170 Organization of African American Unity, 1:173 Organization of American States (Caribbean), 1:238, 2:573 Oriental Exclusion Act, 1:466 Orientalism, 2:1003 Vincent Chin murder and, 1:276–278, 2:781, 2:1020 colonialism, imperialism and, 2:1003 definition of, 2:1003 ethnocentrism and, 1:467 labeling, stereotyping and, 2:1003 Occident vs., 2:1003 Edward Said scholarship on, 2:1003 “us and them” concept and, 3:1357 Orientalism (Said), 1:318, 2:1003 The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (Morris), 1:308 Orlando, Florida African American migration to, 1:31 Puerto Rican Americans in, 2:1083 O’Rourke, Dennis H., 1:50 Ortiz, Fernando, 1:353 Osage census population data of, 2:960 (table) Dawes Act and, 1:372 in Oklahoma, 1:293 Ottawa census population data, 2:960 (table) Otto, Rudolf, 3:1183 Overseas Emigration Law (1962), 2:813 Ovington, Mary White, 2:931 Oxfam America, 2:666–667 Ozawa v. U.S., 1:535 Pachucos/pachucas, 2:1005–1006 Chicano Movement and, 2:1006 cholos, cholas and, 2:1006 geographical origins of, 2:1005 Mexican American youth subculture and, 2:1005 pachuco slang and, 2:1006 Sleepy Lagoon incident and, 2:1005–1006, 3:1428 zoot suit look of, 2:1005 Zoot Suit Riots and, 2:1005–1006, 3:1428
Index
Pacific Islanders, 2:1007–1009, 2:1007 (map) age demographics of, 2:1008 Asian Americans vs., 1:92 bachelor degree statistics and, 1:148 census data on, 2:1007, 2:1008 census workers and, 2:1009 drug use patterns and, 1:419 educational performance, attainment of, 1:432–433, 1:433 (table), 2:1008 geographic origins of, 2:1007–1008 haole and, 2:579–581 Hawaiian Islands and, 2:1008–1009 HIV/AIDS and, 1:92, 2:631 homeland issues of, 2:1009 household population by detailed group and, 2:1007 (table) income, poverty data on, 2:1008 kanaka maoli indigenous Hawaiians and, 2:599–602 language retention of, 2:1009 medical school faculties and, 1:147 Micronesia and, 2:1008 in military service, 2:904 outmarriage of, 2:1009 Polynesian Islands and, 2:1008 residence patterns of, 2:1008–1009 Samoan Americans and, 3:1189–1191 Tongan Americans and, 3:1314–1316 in the United States, 2:1008–1009 Page Act (1875), 3:1225 Paiute census population data, 2:960 (table) Pakistan, 2:1010 (map) brain drain from, 1:199 Canadian immigrants from, 1:225, 1:226 ethnic groups, languages in, 2:1010 Hinduism in, 2:707, 2:708 Indian conflict with, 1:191–192 as South Asian, 2:712 Pakistani Americans, 2:1009–1011, 2:1010 (map) assimilation of, 2:1010 Bangladeshi Americans and, 1:132–133 census data on, 2:1010 contemporary community of, 2:1010–1011 desi and, 1:382 ethnic, religious diversity of, 2:1010 famous Pakistani Americans and, 2:1011 hourglass economy and, 2:1010–1011 immigration patterns of, 2:1010 Islamic faith of, 2:1011 in New York City, 1:97 social lives, holidays, festivals of, 2:1011 Palestinian Americans, 1:86, 2:1011–1015 age and education demographics of, 2:1014 census data on, 2:1013 civic, political, religious organizations of, 2:1014 current community of, 2:1013–1014 dual-identity experienced by, 2:1015 economic status of, 2:1013–1014 identity, adaptation, assimilation of, 2:1014–1015 immigration patterns of, 2:1012–1013
Middle Eastern conflict factors and, 2:1012–1013 politics of, 2:1014 Zionism and, 3:1426–1427 Pan-Africanism Movement, 1:25, 1:28, 1:416 Black intellectuals and, 1:167–168, 1:169 Black Power and, 1:178 Marcus Garvey and, 1:158, 1:171, 1:173, 1:176 nation-based racial formation theory and, 3:1103–1104 Panama, 2:1016 (map) Creole communities in, 1:337 U.S. immigrants from, 1:251–252, 1:252 (figure) Panamanian Americans, 1:251–252, 2:1015–1016, 2:1016 (map) census data on, 1:252 (figure), 2:1015–1016 contemporary community of, 2:1016 economic conditions of, 1:253–254 immigration patterns of, 2:1015–1016 Panama Canal conflict and, 2:1016 social, family ties of, 1:254 Pan-Asian identity, 2:1016–1019 advocacy-based organizations of, 2:1017 anti-ethnic group sentiment and, 2:1017 Asian American identity and, 2:1016–1017 challenges to its formation and, 2:1017 cultural, political identities and, 2:1017, 2:1019 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924 and, 2:1016 Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1965 and, 2:1016–1017 Korean Americans and, 2:811–814 model minority stereotype and, 2:1017 the possibilities of, 2:1017–1018 racialization bias as shared experience and, 2:1017 socioeconomic diversification and, 2:1017 transnational framework of, 2:1017 Panethnic identity, 2:1019–1022 of Central Americans in the U.S., 1:255 Vincent Chin murder example and, 2:1020 class, generation, geography factors of, 2:1020 development of, 2:1019–1020 external threats and, 2:1020 future of, 2:1021–1022 Hispanics and, 2:625–627 Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1965 impact and, 2:1019 importance of, 2:1019 Indian Americans and, 2:710–714 pan-Asian identity and, 2:1016–1019 pan-Indianism and, 2:1022–1024 people of color identity and, 2:1038 personal, individual identity and, 2:1020–1021 political and sociocultural dimensions of, 2:1020–1021 political power, social change and, 2:1019 rejected identities and, 2:1021 shared racialization and, 2:1019–1020 of South Americans in the U.S., 3:1267 transnational global structures of inequality and, 2:1021 U.S. Census and, 1:249–251 Pan-Indianism, 2:1022–1024 acts of resistance and, 2:1023
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American Indian Movement and, 2:1023 boarding school movement and, 3:1129 criticism of, 2:1022 ethnic diversity lessened by, 2:1023 Indian program funding and, 2:1023–1024 Native American water rights and, 3:1379–1381 “new Indian” stereotype hazard and, 2:1023 Quechua Indians, Peruvian Americans and, 2:1043 racism and, 2:1022–1024 Red Power and, 2:1023, 3:1129–1132 reservation system and, 2:1023 supratribalism and, 2:955, 2:1022 urban relocation and, 2:1023 Pantoja, Antonia, 1:102 Papayannis, Theodore, 1:562 Paredes, Américo, 2:836 Parenting, 2:1024–1027 acculturation within-group differences in, 2:1026 adoption studies of, 2:1026 authoritative vs. authoritarian parenting and, 2:1024, 2:1067 behavior meaning cultural differences and, 2:1025 child development and, 1:274–276 child well-being affected by, 2:1026 collectivistic vs. individualistic orientations and, 2:1026 dimensions of, 2:1024 extended-kin networks and, 1:275–276 gender roles and, 2:1025 Head Start and, 2:602–604 immigrants, families of color and, 2:1024 language use differences and, 2:1025 nurturing, teaching, managing roles of, 2:1024, 2:1025 parent attachment style and, 2:1025 racial and ethnic variations of, 2:1025–1026 “tough love” and, 2:1025 transracial adoption and, 3:1322–1325 universal vs. culturally situated behaviors of, 2:1024–1025 See also Familism; Family Pareto, Vilfredo, 3:1093 Park, Robert E., 2:1027–1028 An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and American Democracy (Gunnar Myrdal) and, 1:57–58 Chicago School of Race Relations and, 1:269, 1:270, 1:271, 2:1027 Chicago Urban League and, 2:1027 colonialism inequality and, 2:1028 early years of, 2:1027 ethnic succession model developed by, 1:462–465 Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Park and Burgess) and, 2:1028 Charles S. Johnson and, 2:796 professional career of, 2:1027–1028 social distance scale and, 2:1068, 3:1250 Southern Black-White relations focus of, 2:1028 theory of human ecology of, 2:1028 Booker T. Washington and, 1:270, 2:1028 Parks, Rosa, 2:1028–1030 Black youth focus of, 2:1029 civil rights role of, 2:1028–1029 hip-hop and, 2:1030
later accomplishments of, 2:1029–1030 Montgomery bus boycott and, 1:25, 1:197, 1:306, 1:310, 2:806, 2:1028, 2:1029 NAACP and, 1:310, 2:1028–1029 positive values, role models and, 2:1029–1030 Presidential Medal of Freedom and, 2:1028 Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar, 1:407 Parsi, 2:709, 2:1010 Passel, Jeffrey, 2:689 Patch, Penny, 1:311 Paternalistic racism, 3:1119–1120 PATRIOT Act of 2001, 2:1030–1032 American Civil Liberties Union and, 2:1032 anti-Muslim American sentiment and, 2:922 arrests, prosecutions resulting from, 2:1031–1032 charges, sentences associated with, 2:1031–1032 civil liberties deprived by, 2:1032 continuing debate regarding, 2:1032 controversial provisions of, 2:1030 detainment authority of, 2:1031 functions of, 2:1030–1031 negative racial/ethnic impact of, 2:1030–1031 public opinion of, 2:1032 reauthorization of, 2:1032 refugees and, 3:1134 See also Terrorism Patterson, Orlando, 1:217 Paul, William L., 1:46 Pawnee, 1:264 Peace of Westphalia, 1:552 Pellow, David, 1:444 Pelosi, Nancy Cesar Chávez and, 1:256, 1:258–259 Peltier, Leonard, 1:60, 2:1032–1035 American Indian Movement and, 2:1033–1034 early years of, 2:1033 Fort Lawton military base takeover and, 2:1033 murderer or martyr status of, 2:1034–1035 Pine Ridge Shootout and, 2:1034 Trail of Broken Treaties and, 2:1033–1034 Pennsylvania Albanian Americans in, 1:49 Amish in, 1:69 bilingual education in, 1:143 Croatian Americans in, 1:348 Dutch Americans in, 1:428 Hungarian Americans in, 2:664 Iraqi Americans in, 2:754 Italian Americans in, 2:770 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 Lithuanian Americans in, 2:855, 2:856 Mennonites in, 2:888 Polish Americans in, 2:1056 Puerto Rican Americans in, 2:1083 Serbian Americans in, 3:1223 Slovak Americans in, 3:1238 Slovene Americans in, 3:1242 Syrian Americans in, 3:1292 Ukrainian Americans in, 3:1342, 3:1343
Index
See also Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pennsylvania Antislavery Society, 1:3 People for Community Recovery, 1:443 Peoplehood, 2:1035–1037 citizenship and, 1:296–300 common descent and contemporary commonality of, 2:1035 explanation of, 2:1035 future of, 2:1036–1037 horizontal vs. vertical integration and, 2:1035–1036 peoplehood identity decline and, 2:1036–1037 population vs., 2:1035 race, ethnicity, nation distinctions and, 2:1035 racism, genocide and, 2:1036 rise of modern state, peoplehood and, 2:1035–1036 “us” vs. “them” and, 2:1035–1036 People of color, 2:1037–1039 coalitional and contemporary uses of term and, 2:1038–1039 derogatory trajectory of phrase and, 2:1037 deviance and race and, 1:384–385 ethnic minority phrase vs., 2:1038 feminist theorizing and, 2:1038–1039 free people of color and, 2:1037 historical use of term and, 2:1037–1038 LGBT and, 2:846–848 in military service, 2:902–905 panethnic identity and, 2:1038 phenotype association of phrase and, 2:1037 political mobilization and, 2:1037 racialization context of, 2:1038 relegating minorities, residential inequities and, 1:547–548 social construction debates about race and, 2:1038 term use and, 2:1037 U.S. racialization changes and, 2:1039 Whiteness invisibility, opposition to, 2:1038 People Who Care v. Rockford, Illinois Board of Education, 1:437 Peratrovich, Elizabeth, 3:1313 Perez v. Sharpe anti-intermarriage decision, 2:738 Perlmutter, Nathan, 1:72 Perrin, Keith, 1:516 Perry, Matthew, 1:126 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, 1:364, 3:1252, 3:1386–1387 Perspectives on Hong Kong Society (Leung), 2:648 Peru, 2:1039–1042, 2:1040 (map) curacas nobile elite in, 2:1040 current conditions and trends in, 2:1041–1042 independence of, 2:1040 indigenous Inca and Andean people of, 2:1039–1040 indigenous mestizos in, 2:1040 insurrection, repression, reform and, 2:1040–1041 mestizo population in, 2:1039, 2:1040, 2:1041 slavery in, 2:1040 Spanish invasion of, 2:1039–1040 tripartite social system in, 2:1040–1041 Tupac Amaru rebellion in, 2:1040, 2:1041 Peruvian Americans, 2:1042–1044 Afro-Peruvians and, 2:1042 Asian Peruvians and, 2:1042 brain drain, Alliance for Progress and, 2:1042
1591
contemporary community of, 2:1043 famous Peruvians and, 2:1043 immigration patterns of, 2:1042–1043 Ingenious heritage people of, 2:1042 mestizo heritage of, 2:1042 Quechua Indians and, 2:1043 Pettigrew, Thomas, 1:330–331, 1:332, 2:749 Peyote, 2:1044–1045 American Indian Religious Freedom Act and, 2:1045, 3:1180 City of Boerne v. Flores and, 2:1045 Employment Division, State of Oregon v. Smith and, 2:1044–1045 hallucinogenic mescaline from, 2:1044 legal issues of, 2:1044–1045 Native American Church and, 2:1044–1045, 3:1142, 3:1180 opposition to, 2:1044 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993) and, 2:1045, 3:1182 religious rituals use of, 2:1044 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Albanian Americans in, 1:49 Assyrian Americans in, 1:108 Black Power conference in, 1:177 Cambodian Americans in, 1:222 Cuban Americans in, 1:357 Father Devine Peace Mission Movement in, 1:485 free Blacks in, 1:152 German Americans in, 1:542 Hmong Americans in, 2:633 National German-American Alliance and, 1:543 Philadelphia House of Refuge juvenile reformatory in, 2:799 Puerto Rican Americans in, 2:1083 rap artists from, 3:1124 Sicilian Americans in, 3:1227 Turkish Americans in, 3:1336 See also Appendix A: Table 7 The Philadelphia Negro (Du Bois), 1:423, 1:424, 1:425, 3:1296 Philippines, 1:493–494, 1:493 (map) brain drain from, 1:199, 2:711 Canadian immigrants from, 1:225 Chinese Americans from, 1:287 Filipino women in Japan and, 2:779–780 Treaty of Paris and, 1:494, 2:1097 See also Filipino Americans Phillips, Wendell, 1:4 Phinney, Jean, 3:1107 Phinney’s Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure, 3:1107 Phoenix, Arizona. See Appendix A: Table 7 Pierce, Chester, 2:616 Pima census population data, 2:960 (table) Pine Ridge Reservation, 1:60 See also Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973) Piore, Michael, 2:823 Pipeline, 2:1045–1048 affirmative action and, 2:1046 Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate and, 2:1047 challenges to success of, 2:1046–1047 explanation of, 2:1045–1046
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Gratz v. Bollinger and, 2:1046 Grutter v. Bollinger and, 2:1046 health care sector and, 2:1047 intellectual potential, skills maximization and, 2:1045–1046 “leaks” in, 2:1046 National Institutes of Health and, 2:1047–1048 Proposal 2 in Michigan and, 2:1047 Proposition 209 in California and, 2:1047 renewed efforts regarding, 2:1047–1048 standards, qualifications and, 2:1047 teacher education and, 2:1047 tracking and, 3:1316–1318 underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, women and, 2:1046, 2:1047 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. See Appendix A: Table 7 Pizarro, Francisco, 2:833, 2:1040 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1:6 Plenary Power Doctrine, 1:217, 2:1270 Plessy v. Ferguson, 2:1048–1051 affirmative action in education and, 1:13, 2:612–613 the bright line and, 2:1050 Civil Rights Movement and, 1:25 color line and, 2:1048, 2:1049 drawing the line and, 2:1049–1050 Ex Parte Homer A. Plessy and, 2:1050 Fourteenth Amendment and, 2:1049, 2:1050, 3:1219–1220 hardening the color line and, 2:1050–1051 hypodescent biocentrism and, 2:1050 intergroup relations survey regarding, 2:735 Jim Crow and, 1:210, 2:795, 2:1048 Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890 and, 2:1049, 2:1050 Negro League baseball and, 2:974 Homer Adolph Plessy and, 2:1048 the railroad line and, 2:1049 Reconstruction reforms reaction and, 2:1048 segregation legally recognized by, 2:939, 2:999, 2:1048, 3:1219–1220 “separate but equal” ruling of, 1:25, 1:210, 1:301, 1:436, 2:616, 2:735, 2:795, 2:999, 2:1048, 3:1204, 3:1207–1208, 3:1213, 3:1219–1220 social construction of race and, 3:1096 State of Louisiana v. Homer Adolph Plessy and, 2:1049 Thirteenth Amendment and, 2:1049, 2:1050 U.S. apartheid of systemic segregation and, 2:1048 See also Brown v. Board of Education Pluralism, 2:615, 2:1051–1053 an expanded scope of, 2:1052–1053 of Black American Jewry, 2:792–795 Caribbean pluralism and, 1:237–238 Civil Rights Movement and, 2:1052 free speech, press, association and, 2:1052 gerrymandering and, 1:544–546 in higher education, 2:615 immigration policy changes and, 2:1052–1053 in intergroup relations, 2:1051–1053 melting pot concept and, 1:105–106, 2:615, 2:886, 2:1051–1053 military integration and, 2:1052 multicultural social movements and, 2:1051–1053
religious diversity and, 2:1051–1052 social diversity as positive cultural influence and, 2:1051 Theories of Americanization (Berkson) and, 2:886 third-generation principle and, 3:1302–1304 without hierarchy, 1:41 Plyler v. Doe, 2:1076 Poitier, Sidney, 1:155 Police, 2:1053–1055 affirmative action, EEOC guidelines and, 2:1055 colonial America through the 19th century and, 2:1053–1054 current issues regarding, 2:1055 London Metropolitan Police model of, 2:1053 migrant workers policing agencies and, 2:1054 minority ethnic group clashes with, 2:1054–1055 political patronage and, 2:1054 Progressive Movement police reform and, 2:1054 racial profiling by, 2:1054–1055, 3:1111–1113 slave patrols and, 2:1053 20th century and, 2:1054–1055 urban riots and, 3:1354–1356 War on Terror and, 2:1055 Polish Americans, 2:1055–1059, 2:1056 (map) anti-Polish sentiment and, 2:1057 chain migration and, 2:1056 contemporary community of, 2:1058 famous Polish Americans and, 2:1058 immigration patterns of, 2:1056, 2:1056–1057 intermarriages of, 2:738 Jewish-Catholic distinction among, 2:1057 Pennsylvania coal mining and, 2:1056 Polana community of, 2:1056–1057 The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (Thomas and Znaniecki) and, 2:1057 Pope John Paul II and, 2:1058 priesthood training and, 2:1058 Regional subgroups of, 2:1057 religion and, 2:1057 self-help organizations of, 2:1057, 2:1058 Solidarity support by, 2:1057, 2:1058 suburban migration of, 2:1058 symbolic ethnicity of, 2:1058 Political economy, 2:1059–1060 African Americans and, 1:377–378 An Inquiry Into the Principles of Political Economy (Steuart) and, 2:1059 historic description of, 2:1059 Keynesianism and, 2:1060 management of society and, 2:1059 Marx’s theory of, 2:1060 mercantile system theory of, 2:1060 monitarism and, 2:1060 neoclassical theory of, 2:1060 poverty, racism and, 2:1060 Jean-Jacques Rousseau and, 2:1059 Smith’s system of, 2:1059–1060 vulgar economy vs., 2:1060 wealth definitions and, 2:1059–1060 Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency (McAdam), 1:308
Index
Politics and Psychoanalysis (Fromm), 1:120 Polk, James K, 3:1325 Polygenesis, separate origins of races concept, 1:2 Polynesian Islands, 2:1008 Popular culture, racism and, 2:1060–1063 Africans in the U.S. and, 1:38–40 American Indians and, 2:1061–1062 anti-Black image globalization and, 2:1061 Asians, Asian Americans and, 2:1062 athletic team mascot stereotypes and, 2:615, 2:822, 2:1062 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith) and, 1:149–151, 2:1061 Black Americans and, 2:1061 Black cinema and, 1:154–157 “blackness,” “otherness” and, 2:1061 conclusions regarding, 2:1063 interracial buddy portrayals and, 2:1062–1063 Latino, Hispanic Americans and, 2:1062 Latino gendered stereotypes and, 2:1062 media racialized reality and, 2:1061 minstrel shows and, 2:795, 2:1061 “noble savage” image and, 2:1061 racetalk and, 3:1100–1102 “welfare queens,” “gansta” figures and, 2:1061 White Americans and, 2:1062–1063 White superiority ideology and, 2:1061–1062 “yellow peril” concept and, 2:1062 Population Registration Act of 1950 (South Africa), 1:80, 1:83 Portes, Alejandro, 1:97, 1:454, 2:624, 2:724 Portland, Oregon. See Appendix A: Table 7 Portugal, 2:1063 (map) Brazil and, 1:200, 1:205, 1:235, 1:236 Cape Verde Islands and, 1:235–236 colonialism of, 1:317 colonialism of, Creole communities and, 1:336 geography of, 2:1063 slave trade and, 1:337 Portuguese Americans, 2:1063–1064, 2:1063 (map) census data on, 2:1063–1064 chain migration of, 2:1064 contemporary community of, 2:1064 famous Portuguese Americans and, 2:1064 immigration patterns of, 2:1064 as refugees, 2:1064 Positivism, 1:384 Postcolonialism, 1:318, 2:1014 Potawatomi census population data, 2:960 (table) Potter, Kimberly, 2:676 Poverty. See Health disparities; Homelessness; Public housing; Welfare reform Powell, Adam Clayton, 1:26, 1:177 Powell, Colin, 1:321 Powell, Lewis, Supreme Court Justice, 1:375 Powers, Daniel, 1:331 Pratt, Richard Henry, 1:217 Prejudice, 2:1064–1070, 2:1068–1069 attitude component of, 2:1064, 2:1068–1069 authoritarian personality theory and, 2:1066–1067 Canadian hate crimes and, 2:591–594 categorical rejection component of, 2:1064–1065
1593
chimerical prejudice and, 1:77 color blindness and, 2:1069 contact hypothesis and, 1:330–333 definition of, 2:1064 discrimination vs., 2:1065–1066 Du Bois’ “Veil” image and, 2:169 ethnophaulism expression of, 2:1065 exploitation theory and, 2:1067 of guest workers, 1:568 internalized racism and, 2:741–742 interracial friendships and, 2:748–750 Islamophobia and, 2:762–764 labeling and, 2:821–822 Richard LaPiere’s study of, 2:1065–1066 measurement of, 2:1067–1070 Merton’s typology of, 2:1065 modern racism and, 2:1069 mood of the oppressed and, 2:1069–1070 negative attitudes vs. negative behavior and, 2:1065 normative approach to, 2:1067 overview of, 2:1065 Robbers Cave Experiment and, 3:1163–1164 scapegoating and, 3:1201–1203 scapegoating theory and, 2:1066 self-fulfilling prophecy and, 3:1215–1219 social conduct and, 2:1065 social distance scale and, 2:1068, 3:1250–1251 stereotypes, labels and, 2:1067–1068 trends in, 2:1068–1069 types of, 1:77 See also Anti-Semitism; Color blindness; Discrimination; Stereotypes; Stereotype threat Prejudice Institute, 1:471 Web site of, 1:472 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice (1967), 2:800 Prince Hall Masons, 1:172 Prisons, 2:1070–1073 death penalty and, 2:1071 effectiveness research on, 2:1071 Federal Bureau of Prisons Web site and, 2:1073 incarcerated parents and, 2:704–706 offense demographics and, 2:1071 policy reform suggestions and, 2:1072 prison population demographics and, 2:1071 purpose, goals of, 2:1071 racial disproportionality of, 2:1070, 2:1072 racial profiling and, 1:422, 2:1111–1112 rehabilitation techniques in, 2:1071 substance use, mental illness in, 2:1071 Privilege, 2:1073–1074 ability privilege, 2:1073 advantages of social dominant group and, 2:1073 caste and, 1:246–249 color blindness and, 2:1074 examples of, 2:1073 gender privilege, 2:1073 invisibility of, 2:1073–1074 Marxism and race and, 2:877–878
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matrix of domination concept and, 2:1074 oppression vs., 2:1073 sexual orientation privilege, 2:1073 theory of domination and, 2:1074 “unearned advantages” vs. “conferred dominance” and, 2:1073 White privilege and, 2:1073 Process intercultural communication theories, 2:732–733 Prohibition, 1:63 Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (South Africa), 1:83 Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally), 2:919–920 Proposition 187, 2:1075–1077 California immigrant population and, 2:1075 the campaign regarding, 2:1075 education section of, 2:1075 false documentation section of, 2:1075 health care section of, 2:1075 immigrants, migrants, public resources and, 1:194, 2:970, 2:1075 legal battle and other reactions to, 2:1075–1076 nativist anti-illegal immigrant sentiment and, 2:969–970 Plyler v. Doe and, 2:1076 public opinion on, 2:1075 reporting section of, 2:1075 residual effects of, 2:1076–1077 unconstitutionality of, 2:1076 Prosser, Gabriel, 1:22, 1:175 Prosser, Nana, 1:22 Protestant-Catholic-Jew (Herberg), 3:1290 Protestantism Americanization and, 1:62–64 Anabaptist movement, Protestant Reformation and, 1:69 Assyrian Americans and, 1:108 in the Caribbean, 1:238 in China, 1:281 Hmong Americans and, 2:636 Irish Americans and, 2:758–760 Welsh Argentines and, 1:88 See also specific Protestant group Providence, Rhode Island, 2:633 Prtes, Alejandro, 1:453 Public housing, 2:1077–1079 blockbusting practice and, 1:179–180 Hills v. Gautreaux decision and, 1:524–526, 2:1078 historical background regarding, 2:1077–1078 HOPE VI program and, 2:1077, 2:1078 Housing Act of 1937 and, 2:1077, 2:1078 Housing Act of 1949 and, 2:1077 housing audits and, 2:656–657 HUD Site and Neighborhood Standards and, 2:1078 National Commission for Severely Distressed Public Housing and, 2:1078 racial discrimination patterns of, 2:1078 racial steering and, 1:180, 2:657 reputation of, 2:1077 resident demographics and, 2:1077–1078 Pueblos, 2:1079–1082 ancestral Puebloans and, 2:1079–1080 architecture of, 2:1079, 2:1082 census population data of, 2:960 (table)
Four Corners region and, 2:1080 Hopi and, 2:652–654 kiva structure of, 2:1079, 2:1080 language of, 2:1082 matrilineal clans of, 2:1081 Mexican-American War and, 2:1081 modern Pueblos and, 2:1081–1082 Navajo influenced by, 2:970 New Spain and, 2:1080–1081 Pueblo Revolt and, 2:1081 Spanish explorers and, 2:1079, 2:1080–1081 Puerto Rican Americans, 2:1082–1084 acculturation health problems of, 1:9 anti-Puerto Rican sentiment and, 2:1083 ASPIRA and, 1:102–104, 2:1083 barrios of, 1:135 census data and, 1:430 contemporary community of, 2:1083–1084 discrimination and resistance of, 2:1083–1084 East Harlem and, 1:429–431, 2:584 ethnic enclaves of, 1:455 health disparities of, 2:609–610 Hispanic label and, 2:625, 2:627 HIV/AIDS and, 2:632 immigration patterns of, 2:1082–1083 interethnic violence and, 1:430 Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 and, 1:429 literary contributions of, 2:1084 Nuyorican poetry movement and, 2:1084 political organizations of, 2:1083–1084 Puerto Rican Studies programs and, 2:837–838 Puerto Rico commonwealth status and, 2:1082 residential patterns of, 2:627 return migration of, 2:1083 Santería practitioners and, 3:1200 street gangs and, 1:523 Young Lords and, 2:1083, 3:1421 Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), 2:1084–1085 Boricua Popular Army, in Puerto Rico and, 2:1084–1085 El Barrio and, 2:1084 imprisonment, clemency of members of, 2:1085, 2:1088 political prisoners focus of, 2:1084 Filiberto Ojeda Ríos and, 2:1084–1085 Treaty of Paris violation focus of, 2:1085 violent actions of, 2:1084 Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, 2:1085–1086 ASPIRA represented by, 2:1086 civil and human rights focus of, 2:1085 founders of, 2:1085–1086 Latino advocacy areas of, 2:1086 Puerto Rico, 2:1086–1089, 2:1086 (map) Americanization in, 2:1088 Armed Forces of National Liberation and, 2:1088 ASPIRA and, 1:102–104 colonialism history of, 2:1086–1087 commonwealth status of, 2:1086, 2:1087 contemporary politics of, 2:1089 economy of, 2:1088, 2:1088
Index
education and language of, 2:1088–1089 Foraker Act (1900) and, 2:1087 geography of, 2:1086 government of, 2:1087 Jones Act (1917), 2:1087 languages spoken in, 2:1086 Operation Bootstrap and, 2:1000–1001, 2:1088 resistance to U.S. control and, 2:1088 Santería practitioners in, 3:1200 Spain and, 2:1086–1087 statehood issue and, 2:1089 Treaty of Paris and, 2:1097 UN colonialism resolution concerning, 2:1089 U.S. Navy presence and, 2:1089 U.S. relationship of, 2:1087–1088 Young Lords and, 3:1421 Purkayastha, Bandana, 1:461 Purvis, Robert, 1:22 Pyramid Lake Reservation, Nevada, 3:1378 Quakers abolitionism and, 1:1, 1:3 Quarter Blood Amendment Act, 1:183 Quicksand (Larsen), 2:587 Race, 3:1091–1093 biological racial superiority theories and, 3:1091–1092 blood quantum and, 1:181–183, 2:959 in Brazil, 1:201–203 definition of, 3:1091 eugenics movement and, 3:1092 Hispanic versus Latino ethnic label and, 2:627–629 history of, 3:1091–1092 one-drop rule and, 3:1091, 3:1093–1094, 3:1096 physical similarities characterization and, 3:1091 race and civilization myth and, 3:1092 race and intelligence myth and, 3:1092 race conquest and disease myth and, 3:1092 self-identifying racial groupings and, 3:1091 social construction of, 3:1091, 3:1093–1094 social similarities characterization and, 3:1091 stereotyping and, 3:1091 Race, comparative perspectives, 3:1093–1095 Brazilian racial stratification and, 3:1094 of Cape Verdians in the U.S., 1:236 comparative affirmative action and, 3:1095 conflict resolution and justice and, 3:1095 cultural racism and, 3:1117–1118 Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (Gobineau) and, 3:1093 globalization, transnationalism and, 3:1094–1095 group power, domination legitimization and, 3:1093 historical comparisons and, 3:1093 nomadic lifestyles, geographic mobility and, 3:1094–1095 one-drop rule and, 3:1091, 3:1093–1094 “racial democracy” and, 3:1093–1094 social construction of racial categories and, 3:1091, 3:1093–1094, 3:1110–1111, 3:1113 Alexis de Tocqueville and, 3:1093 Race, social construction of, 3:1091, 3:1096–1098
1595
blood quantum and, 1:181–183, 2:959 Brazilian Americans and, 1:204–205 census racial classifications and, 3:1096 colonization pattern differences and, 3:1096 cultural racism and, 3:1117–1118 deviance and race and, 1:384–385 in different nations, 3:1096–1097 Frantz Fanon’s work and, 1:483 ghettos and, 1:547–548 hierarchy among races and, 3:1096, 3:1113 from historical processes, 3:1096 identity created using symbols and, 3:1096 ideological effect of social relationships and, 3:1118–1119 importance of understanding, 3:1097 intra-race variation and, 3:1097 kanaka maoli indigenous Hawaiians and, 2:599–602 miscegenation acceptability and, 3:1096–1097 one-drop rule example of, 3:1096 Plessy v. Ferguson and, 3:1096 racial comparative studies and, 3:1093–1094 racial groupings development and, 3:1096 racialization and, 3:1110–1111 relegating minorities, residential inequities and, 1:547–548 U.S. Census and, 1:249–251 Race, UNESCO statements on, 3:1098–1100 Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice and, 3:1100 “Proposals on the Biological Aspects of Race” and, 3:1099 scientific facts and, 3:1098–1099 social, ethical, philosophic aspects of, 3:1099–1100 “Statement on Race” and, 3:1098 Statement on the Nature of Race and Race Differences and, 3:1098 Racetalk, 3:1100–1102 blackness or otherness language and, 3:1101 Civil Rights Movement racial discourse and, 3:1100 as codified discourse, 3:1101 as color-blind discourse, 3:1101–1102 conclusions regarding, 3:1102 denigrating vocabularies and conceptual frameworks of, 3:1100 as harmless joking, 3:1101 historical background on, 3:1100–1101 modern racism concept and, 3:1101 political correctness and, 3:1100 as private discourse, 3:1101 racial incoherence and, 3:1102 Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 (Australia), 1:111, 1:114 Racial formation, 3:1102–1105 Civil Rights Movement and, 3:1104 class-based theory of, 3:1103 class conflict theory and, 3:1103 color line and, 1:323–324 ethnicity theory of, 3:1103 Hispanic versus Latino ethnic label and, 2:627–629 market relations approach to, 3:1103 nation-based theory of, 3:1103–1104 race as a sociohistorical process and, 3:1103, 3:1104 race as organizing or classification principle and, 3:1104 Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (Omi and Winant) and, 3:1103, 3:1104
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stratification theory of, 3:1103 U.S. Census and, 1:249–251 Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (Omi and Winant), 3:1103, 3:1104 Racial identity, 3:1105–1107 ascribed racial group membership and, 3:1105 Creole communities and, 1:336–338 double consciousness concept and, 1:411–412, 2:794 “double consciousness” concept (Du Bois) and, 3:1106 Erik Erikson’s life-span development model and, 3:1106 ethnicity term vs., 3:1105 fundamental concepts of, 3:1105–1106 general model of ethnic identity development and, 3:1107 Hispanic versus Latino ethnic label and, 2:627–629 identity theories and, 3:1106 James Marcia’s identity formation stages and, 3:1106 Nigrescence model of, 3:1106–1107, 3:1108 other racial identities and, 3:1107 Phinney’s Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure and, 3:1107 private vs. public self and, 3:1106 psychosocial identity development theories and, 3:1105 race term vs., 3:1105 self-identification with a particular racial group and, 3:1105 U.S. Census and, 1:249–251 White racial identity and, 3:1107 Racial identity development, 3:1108–1110 Black identity development theory and, 3:1108 conclusion regarding, 3:1109 individual White racism and, 3:1109 nonracist White identity and, 3:1109 process of, 3:1108 stagewise, sinous socialpsychological process of, 3:1108 transracial adoption and, 3:1322–1325 White racial identity development and, 3:1109 worldview shaped by, 3:1108 Racialization, 3:1110–1111 in barrios, 1:133–136 class struggle context of, 3:1110 definition of, 3:1110 domestic work and, 1:405–408 of Dominican Americans, 1:409 for economic benefit, 3:1119 environmental injustice, racism and, 1:443–444 ethnonational minority identity negotiation and, 1:460 eugenics and, 1:472 false consciousness process and, 3:1119 genetic biotechnology and, 1:474 of Muslim Americans, 2:922 by National Origins System, 2:937–939 people of color phrase and, 2:1037–1039 racialization of poverty example and, 3:1110 racial outcomes determined through, 3:1110 shared racialization, panethnic identity and, 2:1019–1020 social structure hierarchy and, 3:1110, 3:1111 visible, invisible effects of, 3:1110 into Whiteness, 3:1110–1111 Racial profiling, 3:1111–1113 anti-Muslim sentiment and, 2:924
crime and race and, 1:338–341 criminal justice context of, 3:1111–1112 in drug enforcement, 2:1072, 3:1112 in drug enforcement, sentencing, 1:422 explanation of, 2:1054 history of, 3:1112 labeling and, 2:821–822 marginalization and, 2:872 PATRIOT Act and, 2:1030–1031 by police, 2:1054–1055 police perceptions and, 3:1112 race differences in perceptions of, 3:1112 (table) stereotyping and, 3:1278 summary of, 3:1112–1113 victim discounting and, 3:1361–1363 Racism, 3:1113–1115 American School of Ethnology, scientific racism of, 1:2 anti-immigrant sentiment and, 3:1114 antiracist education and, 1:73–76 apartheid and, 1:81–82 in Australia, 1:111–115 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith) and, 1:150 in Canada, 1:225–226 Vincent Chin murder and, 1:276–278, 2:781, 2:1020 Crania Americana (Morton) and, 1:181 critical race theory and, 1:344–347 Darwinian evolutionary principles and, 1:182 of guest workers, 1:568 hierarchical power and, 3:1113–1114 Sam Hose murder and, 3:1220 increase in, 3:1114–1115 “inferior racial stocks” concept and, 1:182 institutional discrimination and, 2:726–729 internalized racism and, 2:741–742 Invisible Man (Ellison) and, 2:750–751 in Japan, 2:779–780 labor market segmentation and, 2:822–825 outlook regarding, 3:1115 peoplehood and, 2:1036 polygenesis, separate origins of races concept and, 1:2 racetalk and, 3:1100–1102 role of, 3:1113–1114 scientific racism and, 1:2, 2:947–948, 2:957–958 social constructed hierarchy and, 3:1113 “social dislocations” and, 1:74 in sociohistorical discourse, 3:1114 toward desi, 1:383 See also Discrimination; Discrimination, specific topic; Prejudice; Racial profiling; Racism, aversive; Racism, cultural; Racism, types of; Racism, unintentional; Segregation; Stereotypes; Stereotype threat Racism, aversive, 3:1115–1117 evidence and antidotes of, 3:1116–1117 framework of, 3:1116 pro-in-group orientation of, 3:1116 social cognition and, 3:1116 unconscious negative feelings, beliefs and, 3:1115–1116 Racism, cultural, 3:1117–1118 cultural capital and, 1:361–363
Index
cultural conformity demands and, 3:1117–1118 culturalism term and, 3:1118 cultural relativism and, 1:361–363 extreme, less extreme forms of, 3:1117 Islamophobia and, 2:762–764 psychological roots of, 3:1117 socially constructed characteristics focus of, 3:1117 Racism, types of, 3:1118–1119 false consciousness process and, 3:1119 ideological effect of social relationships and, 3:1118–1119 institutional racism and, 3:1118 power component of, 3:1118 racialization for economic benefit and, 3:1119 racism definition and, 3:1118 reverse discrimination and, 3:1118 social structure of, 3:1118 Racism, unintentional, 3:1119–1120 color-blind approach, 3:1120 institutional racism, 3:1119 institutional racism and, 3:1118, 3:1119 paternalistic decision making, 3:1119–1120 positive discrimination, tokenism and, 3:1120 racism defined by outcome and, 3:1119 Railroads Act (1862), 1:216 Rainbow Coalition, 1:29 RAM. See Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) Rambout, G. Ruben, 1:97 Ramirez v. Desert Community College District, 2:894 Randolph, A. Philip, 1:16, 1:305, 1:306, 1:307 Rap: the genre, 3:1121–1123 Black masculinity focus of, 3:1121–1122 50 Cent and, 3:1121 Common and, 3:1121 De La Soul and, 3:1121 DJ-ing and, 3:1121 emceeing and, 3:1121 Fresh Prince and, 3:1121 FUBU Company and, 1:516–517 gangsta rap and, 2:620, 2:622, 2:1061, 3:1121–1122, 3:1123–1124 “ghetto” realities and, 3:1121 Grandmaster Flash “The Message” and, 3:1121 hardcore style of, 3:1121 hip-hop and, 2:618–621, 3:1121 hip-hop and rap, women and, 2:621–624 Iceberg Slim and, 3:1121 influences on, 3:1121 “jazz/bohemian” rap and, 3:1121 LL Cool J and, 1:516, 3:1121, 3:1123 lyrical topics of, 3:1121 misogyny, homophobia subjects of, 3:1121–1122 Niggaz With Attitude Straight Outta Compton and, 3:1121, 3:1123–1124 origins of, 3:1121 “pimp” rap and, 3:1121 rap dance-clubs and, 3:1121 Run-DMC and, 3:1121, 3:1123 socially marginalized groups and, 3:1123
SugarHill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” and, 3:1121, 3:1123 Too $hort and, 3:1121 A Tribe Called Quest and, 3:1121 versatility of, 3:1122–1123 West vs. East Coast rap and, 3:1122, 3:1124 Wu-Tu Clan and, 3:1122 Rap: the movement, 3:1123–1126 the beginnings, 3:1123 the 1980s, 3:1123–1124 the 1990s, 3:1124 the millennium, 3:1124 Big Daddy Kane and, 3:1123 Black American oral traditions and, 3:1123 Boogie Down Productions and, 3:1124 breakdancing and, 3:1123 Chicano rap and, 3:1125 conscious rappers and, 3:1124 criticism of, 3:1124 DJ-ing and, 3:1123 emceeing and, 3:1123 Fat Boyz and, 3:1123 gangsta rap and, 2:620, 2:622, 2:1061, 3:1121–1122, 3:1123–1124 hip-hop and, 2:618–621, 3:1123 hip-hop and rap, women in, 2:621–624, 3:1125 hip-hop fashion and, 3:1125 Ice T and, 3:1123, 3:1124 Jamaican toasting and, 3:1123 Kid Frost Hispanic Causing Panic and, 3:1125 Kool Moe Dee and, 3:1123 2 Live Crew and, 3:1124 LL Cool J and, 1:516, 3:112, 3:1121, 3:1123 lyric advisory warning labels and, 3:1124 Midwestern rap, 3:1124 misogynist, violent lyrics of, 3:1124 MTV and, 3:1123 new styles of, 3:1124 Niggaz With Attitude and, 3:1123–1124 original culture form of, 3:1123 political rap and, 3:1124 Poor Righteous Teachers and, 3:1124 Public Enemy and, 3:1124 Run-DMC and, 3:1121, 3:1123 Schoolly D and, 3:1123 Shakur and, 3:1124 social contexts of, 3:1123–1124 social impacts of, 3:1125 Southern rap, 3:1124 SugarHill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” and, 3:1121, 3:1123 Too $hort and, 3:1123 urban life lyrics of, 3:1123 West Coast/East Coast rap wars and, 3:1124 West Coast rap and, 3:1123 Whodini, 3:1123 X-Clan and, 3:1124 Rastafarians, 1:127 in the Caribbean, 1:238
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Marcus Garvey, Jamaica and, 2:776 Jamaican Americans and, 2:777 Ray, James Earl, 2:807 Reagan, Ronald Central American immigration policies of, 1:253 Japanese internment reparations and, 2:745, 2:747, 2:781, 2:783, 3:1198 Mariel boatlift and, 2:874 social program policies of, 2:574 “welfare queen” term and, 3:1385 Rebhun, Uzi, 3:1291 Reconstruction, Civil War, 1:23 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith) and, 1:149–151 KKK and, 2:815–816 Henry McNeil Turner, Black Nationalism and, 1:172–173 Reddick, L. D., 1:245 Redding, Grover Cleveland, 1:173 Red Earth, White Lies (Deloria), 1:381 Redfield, Robert, 2:836 Redlining, 3:1126–1129 anti-redlining laws and, 3:1127–1128 blockbusiting and, 1:180 business loans and, 3:1127 Community Reinvestment Act (1977) and, 3:1128 consequences of, 3:1127 creditworthiness process vs., 3:1126 Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974) and, 3:1128 Fair Housing Act (1968) and, 3:1127–1128 future of, 3:1128 history and process of, 3:1126–1127 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (1975) and, 3:1128 housing discrimination and, 1:401, 3:1396 housing discrimination and, ghettos, 1:547–548 insurance practices and, 3:1126, 3:1127 loan-granting process factors and, 3:1126 mortgage withholding and, 3:1126–1127 place-based social exclusion and, 3:1126, 3:1396 research on, 3:1127 Red Power, 3:1129–1132 activism of, 3:1130–1132 Alcatraz Island occupation and, 2:1023, 3:1130, 3:1130–1131 assimilation attempts and, 3:1129 boarding school movement and, 3:1129 fishing rights treaty “fish-ins” and, 3:1130 impacts of, 3:1132 the Longest Walk and, 3:1131–1132 Native American water rights and, 3:1379–1381 organizations of, 2:1023 origins of, 3:1129–1130 pan-Indianism and, 2:1023, 3:1129–1130 Trail of Broken Treaties and, 3:1131 Wounded Knee II and, 2:1023, 3:1129, 3:1131 Redress Movement, Japanese internment reparations and, 2:781, 2:783, 2:810, 2:987, 3:1150, 3:1198 Refugee Act (1980), 3:1133 Refugees, 3:1132–1135 Afghan Americans as, 1:19–20
Africans in the U.S. and, 1:38–40 asylum and, 1:109–111, 2:689, 3:1133 Belgian Americans as, 1:136–137 “boat people and, 1:186–187 Bosnian Americans as, 1:195–197 Bulgarian Americans as, 1:213 Cambodian Americans as, 1:221–225 from Central America, 1:253 Cold War, communism and, 3:1133 after the Cold War and, 3:1133–1134 conclusion of, 3:1134–1135 Croatian Americans as, 1:347–350 Cuban Americans as, 1:357–358, 3:1133, 3:1134 Czech Americans as, 1:367–368 Displaced Persons Act (1948) and, 3:1133 from El Salvador, 3:1186 of El Salvadorans, 3:1186 Estonian Americans as, 1:448–450 in Europe, 1:475 Fair Share Refugee Act (1960), 3:1133 from Guatemala, 1:253, 1:565 Haitians in U.S. and, 2:573, 3:1133, 3:1134 historical and legal perspectives of, 3:1132–1133 humanitarian immigration and, 2:689 Hungarian Americans as, 2:663–664 Hungarian Refugee Act (1958) and, 3:1133 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (1996) and, 2:677–680, 3:1134 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and, 3:1133 immigration legislation and, 3:1133 INS and, 2:696 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 10(1), 2:679 Iraqi Americans as, 2:755 Kurdish Americans as, 2:818 Laotian Americans and, 2:827–830 Latvian Americans and, 2:839–840 Nigerian Americans and, 2:982 numbers of, 2:689 Office of Refugee Resettlement and, 1:222 Pakistani Americans as, 2:1010 PATRIOT Act of 2001 and, 3:1134 Portuguese Americans as, 2:1064 Refugee Act of 1980 and, 1:196, 1:253, 2:689 Refugee Relief Act (1953) and, 1:287, 1:538, 2:688, 2:689, 3:1133, 3:1223 “refugee warehousing” and, 1:110 sanctuary movement in Arizona and, 1:253 of South Vietnam, 2:755 Statue of Liberty quote and, 3:1132 Syrian Americans as, 3:1292 UN High Commissioner for Refugees and, 3:1133 Vietnamese refugees and, 3:1134 “well-founded fear” of persecution and, 3:1133, 3:1134 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 1:13, 1:18, 1:28, 1:563, 2:613 Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 1:68, 1:212, 1:446 Rehnquist, William, 3:1157 Reich, Michael, 2:823
Index
Reich, Robert, 1:549 Reiss, Winold, 2:587 Religion, 3:1135–1137 accounting for change and, 3:1136 in Caribbean, 1:238 categorizing links and, 3:1135–1136 in China, 1:279 civil religion and, 1:302–305, 1:303 in Cuba, 1:356 ethnicity foundation of, 3:1135–1136 ethnic religious tradition link and, 3:1136 gender segregation in, 3:1214–1215 in Haiti, 2:572 in India, 2:707–709 national identity link and, 3:1136 pluralism and, 2:1051–1052, 3:1140 religion and ethnicty relationship types and, 3:1134–1135 religion and national identity link and, 3:1136 religious segregation and, 3:1214 See also Religion, African Americans; Religion, minority; Sacred versus secular; specific religion Religion, African Americans, 3:1137–1139 African American Catholic Mass, 3:1137 African Methodist Episcopal Church and, 3:1138 Black Church growth and, 3:1139 Black Church history and, 3:1137–1138 Civil Rights Movement and, 3:1138 contemporary Black Church, 3:1139 Crown Heights, Black-Jewish conflict and, 1:350–351, 2:791 Father Divine Peace Mission Movement and, 1:484–485 free African Americans and, 3:1138 gender roles in organizations, 3:1138–1139 NAACP and, 3:1138 patriarchal organization of, 3:1138 revivalist religion and, 3:1137 SCLC and, 3:1138 segregation in, 3:1137–1138 slavery and, 3:1137–1138 social reforms and, 3:1138 women-centered organizations of, 3:1138–1139 Women’s Political Council and, 3:1139 Religion, minority, 3:1139–1141 of Aleuts, 1:52 Americanization and, 1:62–63 Amish and, 1:68–71 of Assyrian Americans, 1:108 in the Balkans, 1:130 of Bangladeshi Americans, 1:132, 1:133 of Cambodian Americans, 1:224 of Caribbean Americans, 1:243 of Cherokee, 1:259 of Cheyenne, 1:267–269 Crown Heights, Black-Jewish conflict and, 1:350–351, 2:791 of Cypriot Americans, 1:367 of Egyptian Americans, 1:438 ethnic succession mediation by, 1:464 gender segregation in, 3:1214–1215 of Greek Americans, 1:559, 1:560–561 of Haitian Americans, 2:575
1599
of Hmong Americans, 2:636 Hutterites and, 2:668–671 of Indigenous Hawaiians, 2:599–600 of Indonesian Americans, 2:722–723 of Irish Americans, 2:758–760 of Japanese Americans, 2:784–785 of Laotian Americans, 2:829–830 of Latino families, 1:478 Lutheran State Church and, 1:369 of Menominee Tribe, 2:891 Mormans, Danish Americans and, 1:369, 1:370 The Negro Church (Du Bois), 1:424, 1:426 New Religious Movements and, 3:1140–1141 People’s Temple mass murder-suicides, Guyana and, 3:1141 peyote and, 2:1044–1045 pluralistic societies and, 3:1140 power relationships and, 3:1139 Santería and, 3:1190–1201 of the Sioux, 1:268 of Slovakian Americans, 3:1239–1240 the usual case of, 3:1140 of Vietnamese Americans, 3:1367 Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 3:1141–1144 City of Boerne v. Flores and, 3:1142–1143 controversy regarding, 3:1142 Cutter v. Wilkerson and, 2:1045 Employment Division, State of Oregon v. Smith and, 2:1044–1045, 3:1142 Fourteenth Amendment and, 3:1143 Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal and, 3:1143 government restriction of minority religions and, 3:1141–1142 impact of, 3:1143 logic and history of, 3:1142–1143 Native American sacred sites and, 3:1182 peyote use and, 2:1044–1045, 3:1142 provisions of, 3:1142 Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2001 and, 2:1045, 3:1143 revival of, 3:1143 rights of prisoners protected by, 3:1142–1143 unconstitutionality ruling and, 3:1142–1143 Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (2001), 2:1045, 3:1143 Religious movements, new, 3:1144–1145 “brain washing,” “mind control” and, 3:1141, 3:1145 Children of God and, 3:1144, 3:1145 controversy regarding, 3:1144–1145 “cults” and, 3:1141 Divine Light Mission and, 3:1144 freedom of religion and, 3:1141 Hare Krishna and, 3:1141, 3:1144, 3:1145 initial interest in, 3:1144 Jesus Movement groups and, 3:1144 Rajneesh group and, 3:1144, 3:1145 Scientology and, 3:1144, 3:1145 self-help civil law suits and, 3:1141 spread and evolution of, 3:1145
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Unification Church, Sun Myung Moon and, 3:1141, 3:1144, 3:1145 youth orientation of, 3:1144–1145 Re-making Citizenship in Hong Kong (Sautman), 2:649 Remittances, 3:1145–1148 background and magnitude of, 3:1145 Bracero Program and, 3:1146 definition of, 3:1145 economic development from, 3:1146, 3:1159 guest worker programs and, 3:1147 from Haitian Americans, 2:575–576 high-, middle-, low-income countries and, 3:1146 from Honduran Americans, 2:647 human trafficking and, 3:1147 illegal immigrant issue and, 3:1147 from illegal immigrants, 3:1147 impact of in Mexico, 3:1146–1147, 3:1159 Inter-American Development Bank and, 3:1147 national and personal impact of, 3:1147–1148 negative effects of, 3:1147 personal sacrifices and, 3:1148 of Salvadoran Americans, 3:1187 sojourners and, 3:1146, 3:1147 of women migrant workers, 2:692 Reparations, slavery, 1:21, 1:174, 3:1148–1150 “Forty Acres and a Mule” slogan and, 3:1149 Japanese American Redress Movement and, 3:1150 living survivor factor of, 3:1149 in opposition to, 3:1149–1150 precedents for, 3:1150 racial tension increase from, 3:1150 slavery legacy and, 3:1149–1150 in support of, 3:1148–1149 wealth gap argument and, 3:1150 Repatriation of Mexican Americans, 3:1150–1152 background regarding, 3:1151 Great Depression and, 2:895, 3:1150–1151 Immigration Act of 1917 and, 3:1151 Mexican labor source and, 3:1151 Mexico’s response to, 3:1151–1152 repatriation definition and, 3:1150 Republic of New Africa, 1:26, 1:178 Rescission Act of 1946, 1:495 Resegregation, 3:1152–1153 anti-desegregation rulings and, 3:1153 Brown v. Board of Education and, 3:1152–1153 busing court decisions and, 3:1152–1153, 3:1205, 3:1208 definition of, 3:1152 within desegregated schools and, 3:1208 Gautreaux decision and, 2:1078 neighborhoods and, 3:1153 private, parochial, magnet school choices and, 3:1152 in public schools, 1:211–212 in residential neighborhoods, 3:1152, 3:1153 reversal of school desegregation and, 3:1152–1153, 3:1208 White flight and, 1:308, 3:1152, 3:1206, 3:1395–1397 Reservation system, 3:1153–1155 blood quantum and, 1:181–183, 2:961
boarding schools and, 3:1155 cultural deprivation on, 3:1155 Dawes Act of 1887 and, 1:371–373, 3:1155 ethnocide and, 1:182 forcible relocation to, 2:962 human rights violations and, 3:1154 Indian agents and, 3:1154–1155 legislation basis for, 1:216 life on the reservation and, 3:1154–1155 Mennonites and, 2:887–890 modern improvements and, 3:1155 Native American gaming and, 1:519–522, 2:716–719 Native American water rights and, 3:1379–1381 Northern Cheyenne incident (1878) and, 3:1154 policy of expansion and, 3:1154 religious practices suppression and, 3:1180 Franklin D. Roosevelt and, 3:1155 treaties and, 3:1154 Wheeler-Howard Act (1934) and, 3:1180 See also Dawes Act of 1887; specific Native American tribe Restrictive covenants, 3:1156–1158 blockbusting and, 1:180 court rulings opposed to, 3:1157 deed restrictions and, 3:1156 FHA supporting policy manuals and, 3:1156 Fourteenth Amendment and, 3:1157 housing discrimination and, 1:400, 3:1156, 3:1221 how they worked and, 3:1156–1157 individual properties vs. neighborhoods, 3:1156 ongoing phenomenon and, 3:1157 separate but equal neighborhoods and, 3:1221 Shelley v. Kraemer and, 1:400, 3:1157 state court supportive rulings and, 3:1156 Return migration, 3:1158–1159 of African Americans to the South and, 1:31 of Canadian Americans, 1:233 of Croatian Americans, 1:348 of Cuban Americans, 1:357 cultural practices introduced by, 3:1159 “failed” migrants and, 3:1158 impact of, 3:1159 “innovative” returnees and, 3:1158 of Italian Americans, 2:768 of Latvian Americans, 2:840 Mexican Migration Project research on, 3:1158 motives for, 3:1158 of Nigerian Americans, 2:982 of Nikkeijin from Brazil and Latin American, 2:984 of Puerto Rican Americans, 2:1083 reception conditions and, 3:1159 remittances and, 3:1159 return retirees and, 3:1158 “reverse brain drain” and, 3:1158, 3:1159 of Romanian Americans, 3:1173 studying the phenomenon of, 3:1158–1159 Theory of Cumulative Causation and, 3:1159 Reverse discrimination, 3:1159–1161 actual experience of, 3:1160
Index
affirmative action in education and, 1:12, 1:345, 1:564, 3:1160–1161 affirmative action in the workplace and, 1:18, 2:727, 3:1160–1161 Center for Individual Rights and, 3:1160 discrimination perceived and, 3:1160 individual racism and, 3:1118 institutional discrimination and, 2:727–728 issue debate regarding, 3:1160–1161 meanings of, 3:1159–1160 Whites as victims in, 3:1102 Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), 1:28, 1:178 Reynolds v. Sims, 1:545 RFRA. See Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) Rhode Island Italian Americans in, 2:770 Portuguese Americans in, 2:1064 Rhodes, Ryan, 3:1310 Rhodesia. See Zimbabwe Ricardo, David, 2:1060 Rice v. Cayetano, 2:582 Richmond, Mary, 3:1259 Rickey, Wesley Branch, 2:975, 3:1167 Ricks, Willie, 1:26, 1:177 Riesman, David, 1:456 Ritchings, Edna Rose, 1:484 Rites of passage, 3:1161–1163 birth, 3:1161–1162 generations linked through, 3:1161 puberty, 3:1162 theoretical views of, 3:1161 tripartite structure of, 3:1161 wedding, 3:1162 Robbers Cave Experiment, 3:1163–1164 group dynamics experiment of, 3:1163 impact of, 3:1163–1164 Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, and Sherif) and, 3:1163–1164 intergroup hostility resolution focus of, 3:1163 methodology of, 3:1163 preadolescent life studied by, 3:1163 social conflict focus of, 3:1163 social construction of norms and, 3:1163 study and, 3:1163 Roberts, John, 3:1143 Roberts, Joseph Jenkins, 1:126 Roberts v. the City of Boston, 1:210 Robeson, Paul, 1:177 Robinson, Cederic, 3:1164–1166 African American resistance and, 3:1164 An Anthropology of Marxism written by, 3:1166 authority as political power concept and, 3:1164–1165 Black Marxism written by, 3:1164, 3:1165–1166 Black Movements in America written by, 3:1166 Black radical tradition and, 3:1164, 3:1165–1166 four phases of racialism and, 3:1165 racialized capital and, 3:1164 racism traced to medieval Europe and, 3:1165
1601
slavery, as racial capitalism, 3:1165 slavery, new view of, 3:1164 Terms of Order written by, 3:1164–1165 Western Anarchism and, 3:1164–1165 Robinson, Jackie, 3:1166–1168 achievements of, 3:1167–1168 Black players before Robinson and, 3:1167 Brooklyn Dodgers and, 2:975, 3:1167 challenging discrimination by, 3:1168 Bud Fowler and, 3:1167 Kansas City Monarchs and, 2:975 Most Valuable Player awarded to, 3:1167 Wesley Branch Rickey and, 2:975, 3:1167 Rookie of the Year awarded to, 2:975, 3:1167 World War II service of, 3:1167 Robinson, Jo Anne, 2:806 Robinson, Ruby Doris, 1:25 Robison, Isaiah, 1:177 Robnett, Belinda, 1:311 Rockwell, George Lincoln, 3:1408, 3:1409 Rodriguez, Clara, 2:624 Rodriguez, San Antonio Independent School District v. See San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez Rodriguez v. Malloy, 2:894 Roediger, David, 2:824 Roe v. Wade, 1:6 Rollins, Judith, 1:406 Roma, 3:1168–1170 addressing concerns of, 3:1169–1170 distinct ethnic groups within, 3:1169 European documents protecting, 3:1169–1170 historical minorities and, 1:475, 1:476, 3:1213 including Roma in policy decisions and, 3:1169–1170 India origins of, 3:1168 linguistic tracings of, 3:1168 migration to Europe by, 3:1169 minority rights protections and, 3:1169–1170 national minority claims of, 2:906 nomadic lifestyle of, 3:1169 population size of, 3:1169 UN protection of, 2:744 Roman Catholics, 3:1170–1173 Albanian Americans and, 1:49 Americanization and, 1:62–63 anti-Catholic American Protective Association and, 2:760 anti-Catholic sentiment and, 2:969 anti-Irish sentiment and, 2:759–760 anti-Masonic sentiment and, 1:79 Assyrian Americans and, 1:108 Australian missionaries and, 1:116 in the Balkans, 1:130 Britain’s Irish and, 1:206–207 in China, 1:281 in Cuba, 1:356 Cypriot Americans and, 1:367 early structure and politics of, 3:1171 gender segregation in, 3:1215 gospel-driven theology of, 3:1172 hierarchical structure of, 3:1171
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Hmong Americans and, 2:636 institutional structure and social migration of, 3:1172–1173 Ireland and, 2:755–758 Irish Americans and, 2:758–760, 3:1171 Italian Americans and, 2:769, 3:1172 Native American mission schools and, 2:944 papacy origins and, 3:1171 postimperial development and change by, 3:1171–1172 Reformation and, 3:1170 as religious minority, 3:1140 Rome, Vatican, pope and, 3:1170 sacramental rituals and ceremonies of, 3:1172 salvation theology and social cohesion of, 3:1172 Santería and, 1:356 social unification by, 3:1172 St. Patrick’s Cathedral and, 3:1171 symbolic ethnicity of, 3:1289 Trinidad and, 3:1327 Ukrainian Americans in, 3:1341–1343 Vatican II, Nostra Aetate and, 1:72 western vs. eastern split and, 3:1172 Romania, 1:129 (map) Romanian Americans, 3:1173–1174, 3:1173 (map) census data on, 3:1173, 3:1174 contemporary community of, 3:1174 diverse ethnic and religious groups of, 3:1173 famous Romanians and, 3:1174 Gold Rush and, 3:1173 return migration of, 3:1173 Romero, Mary, 1:406 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano anti-racial discrimination legislation of, 1:283, 1:306 “Black Cabinet” of, 1:25 Fair Employment Act and, 1:16 Fair Employment Practices Commission and, 2:975 Filipinos in World War II and, 1:495 INS and, 2:695 Japanese interment camps and, 1:94, 1:302, 2:745, 2:783, 3:1198 Native American policies of, 1:261, 1:373, 3:1155 New Deal and, 1:25, 1:57, 3:1260 spirituality of Americans and, 1:304 Roosevelt, Theodore Gentleman’s Agreement and, 1:533–535 immigration ideas of, 1:389–390 National German-American Alliance organization and, 1:543 Rose, Tricia, 2:621 Rosenfeld, Irene, 1:551 Rosenthal, Robert, 3:1216 Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana, 1:358 Ross, John, 1:261 Rush, Benjamin, 1:2 Russell, Harvey C., 1:550 Russia, 3:1174–1177, 3:1175 (map) Aleuts and, 1:49–52 Anti-Defamation League in, 1:71 “anti-extremism” Duma charter and, 3:1176 Armenia and, 1:89–90, 1:89 (map) Chechnya tensions and, 3:1175 discrimination, prejudice in, 3:1176–1177
ethnic diversity in, 3:1174 ethnic group legitimacy in, 3:1175 ethnic tensions and, 3:1175–1176 Georgian Americans and, 1:537–540 Liberal Democratic Party in, 3:1175 “matrioska nationalisms” concept and, 3:1176 Nashi youth organization and, 3:1176–1177 nationalist movement in, 3:1175 Orthodox Church in, 3:1176 Putin era in, 3:1176–1177 religious pluralism in, 3:1140 Sami in, 3:1187 Stalin deportations and, 3:1175 transition from communism and, 3:1174–1175 Vladimir Zhirinovsky and, 3:1175 Russian Orthodox Church, 3:1341–1343 Rustin, Bayard, 1:16, 1:302, 1:328 Sabagh, Georges, 2:753 Sacco, Nicola, 2:769 Sacred sites, Native American, 3:1179–1182 American Indian Religious Freedom Act and, 3:1180, 3:1182 Big Horn Medicine Wheel controversy and, 3:1182 cosmotheistic worldview and, 3:1179 current sacred site issues and, 3:1181–1182 Vine Deloria, Jr. and, 1:381, 2:967 Vine Deloria and, 3:1182 governmental policies and, 3:1180 Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act (1975) and, 3:1180–1181 Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association and, 3:1181 National Preservation Act (1966) and, 3:1181 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and, 2:947–949 reciprocal kin-spirit relations and, 3:1179 religious beliefs, sacred land and, 3:1179–1180 reservation system and, 3:1180 sacred power landscape requirement and, 3:1179–1180 self-determination, religious freedom and, 3:1180–1181 Sacred versus secular, 3:1182–1185 academic context of, 3:1182–1183 civil religion and, 1:302–305 describing the sacred and, 3:1183 Émile Durkheim and, 3:1183 Rudolf Otto and, 3:1183 profane vs., 3:1183 secularization thesis and, 3:1183–1184 U.S. challenge and, 3:1184 See also Religion Said, Edward, 1:318, 1:467, 2:1003, 2:1014, 3:1357 Saint Domingue. See Haiti; Haitian Americans; Haitian and Cuban immigration: a comparison Salt Lake City, Utah Hmong Americans in, 2:633 Pacific Islanders in, 2:1008 Salvadoran Americans, 1:251–252, 1:565, 3:1185–1187, 3:1185 (map) census data on, 1:252 (figure), 3:1186 contemporary community of, 3:1190–1191
Index
cultural loyalty, kinship ties of, 3:1190 economic conditions of, 1:253–254 internal migrations and, 3:1185–1186 Nicaraguan and Central American Relief Act (NACARA) and, 1:255 political asylum seekers and, 2:873 professional sports and, 3:1191 as refugees, 3:1186 religion of, 3:1190 remittances from, 3:1187 social, cultural activism of, 1:255 social, family ties of, 1:254 urban youth gangs and, 1:255, 1:524, 3:1187 U.S. community and, 3:1186–1187 Sam, Alfred C., 1:173 SAMHSA. See Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Sami, 3:1187–1189 arts and, 3:1188–1189 geography of, 3:1187 historical minorities and, 1:475 language of, 3:1188 “Laplanders” and, 3:1187 nomadic reindeer-herding people and, 3:1187, 3:1188 political history of, 3:1188 population of, 3:1187–1188 settlement patterns of, 3:1187 shamanistic rituals of, 3:1188–1189 Samoan Americans, 3:1189–1191, 3:1189 (map) census data on, 3:1190 cultural ties and, 3:1190–1191 demographics of, 3:1190 immigration history of, 3:1189–1190 military service of, 3:1190 U.S. community and, 3:1190 Samora, Julian, 3:1191–1193 Chicano studies of, 3:1192–1193 early research initiatives of, 3:1192 formative experiences of, 3:1191–1192 Latin American studies work of, 2:836 Los Mojados: The Wetback Story written by, 3:1193 Mexican American civil rights focus of, 3:1192–1193 Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and, 3:1193 Mexican-Americans in the Southwest written by, 3:1193 National Council of La Raza and, 3:1192–1193 Order of the Aztec Eagle (Mexico) awarded to, 3:1193 University of Notre Dame years of, 3:1192–1193 San Antonio, Texas, Battle of the Alamo, 1:45–46 San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 3:1193–1196 Brown v. Board of Education and 3:1193, 3:1194 court’s reasoning and, 3:1194–1195 education as a fundamental constitutional right focus of, 3:1194–1195 Equal Protection Clause focus of, 3:1194, 3:1195 legal background of, 3:1194 racial identity and poverty focus of, 3:1194 school district funding issue in, 3:1194 understanding the decision and, 3:1195
1603
Sanchez, David, 1:209, 1:274 Sánchez, George I., 2:836 Sanctuary movement of refugees, 1:253 Sand Creek Massacre, 3:1196–1197 aftermath of, 3:1197 Chivington’s attack and, 3:1196 Sandford, Dred Scott v. See Dred Scott v. Sandford San Diego, California Black Federation organization of, 1:178 Cambodian Americans in, 1:222 Kurdish Americans in, 2:818 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Sanford, R. Nevitt, 1:119 San Francisco, California Afghan Americans in, 1:20 Alcatraz Island occupation and, 1:59, 1:262, 1:302, 2:1023, 2:1033, 3:1130, 3:1130–1131 anti-Chinese sentiment in, 1:282 Asiatic Exclusion League and, 1:534 Assyrian Americans in, 1:108 Cambodian Americans in, 1:222 Cherokee relocated in, 1:262 Chinatown in, 1:282–283, 1:284, 1:287, 1:288 Chinese Americans in, 1:286, 1:287, 1:288, 1:453 Estonian Americans in, 1:450 Italian Americans in, 2:768 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Salvadoran Americans in, 3:1190 Tibetan Americans in, 3:1307 Turkish Americans in, 3:1336 Vietnamese Americans in, 3:1366 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Sansei, 3:1197–1199 Japanese in Brazil and, 2:984 Japanese visas of, 3:1198 middle-class professionals of, 3:1197 Nikkei, Nikkeijin and, 2:983, 3:1198–1199 radical 1960s perspectives of, 3:1198 Redress Movement, reparations and, 2:987, 3:1198 Shin-Nisei and, 2:988 specific cohort of experiences and, 3:1197 third-generation Japanese Americans and, 2:983, 3:1197 U.S. mainland vs. Hawai‘i experiences of, 3:1198 Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de, 1:45 Santería, 3:1199–1201 Afro-Cuban religious-cultural practice of, 3:1199, 3:1200 Catholicism and, 3:1199 communicating with Orishas and, 3:1199 in Cuba, 1:356 deity beliefs, communication rituals and, 3:1199 hierarchy of communication in, 3:1200 marginalization of, 3:1200 Sapir, Edward, 1:184 Satcher, David, 1:146–147 Sautman, Barry, 2:649 Savage Inequalities (Kozol), 3:1404 SAW. See Special Agriculture Workers (SAW) program Scalia, Antonin, 1:345
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Scapegoats, scapegoating, 3:1201–1203 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and, 3:1202 Chinese lodging house and, 3:1202 diversity and, 3:1201 institutional scapegoating, elements of, 3:1200 institutional scapegoating, in the past, 3:1201 institutional scapegoating, modern, 3:1202–1203 Nazi Germany, Jewish minority example of, 3:1200 in Russia, 3:1175 scapegoating theory of prejudice and, 2:1066 social crises framed with race and, 3:1202–1203 victim discounting and, 3:1361–1363 War on Drugs and, 3:1201–1202 xenophobia and, 3:1419 Schaef, Anne Wilson, 1:490–491 Schellhardt, Timothy, 1:549 Schlesinger, Arthur, 2:676 Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 2:915 Schlesinger, Arthur M., Sr., 2:886 Schmiedeleut, 3:1203–1204 Bon Homme colony and, 3:1203 Communal Corporation Act (1935, Colorado) and, 3:1203 communal living and, 3:1203 education and, 3:1203–1204 Hutterite branch of, 3:1203 in South Dakota, 3:1203 School desegregation, 3:1205–1206 Alexander v. Holmes County (1969) and, 1:307 Brown v. Board of Education and, 3:1204, 3:1207–1208, 3:1213 building level desegregation and, 3:1204 busing issues and, 1:307, 1:344, 3:1205 Cisneros v. Corpus Christi School District (1971) and, 1:294–296 Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 3:1204 definition of, 3:1204 de jure vs. de facto segregation and, 3:1204 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965) and, 3:1204 Green et al. v. County School Board and, 1:211, 3:1204–1205 history of, 3:1204–1206 at Little Rock, Arkansas, 1:307, 1:310 James Meredith and, 1:246, 1:307, 1:308, 1:329, 2:807 Milliken decisions and, 3:1205–1206, 3:1205–1208 Milliken v. Bradley I and, 3:1205–1206 Milliken v. Bradley II and, 3:1206 outcomes of, 3:1206–1207 Plessy v. Ferguson separate but equal ruling and, 3:1204, 3:1207–1208 promotion of, 3:1204–1205 resegregation begins and, 3:1205–1206, 3:1209 school desegregation, 3:1205 science faculty women of color and, 3:1210–1211 social capital outcomes of, 3:1206–1207 social community cohesion outcome of, 3:1207 Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education and, 3:1152, 3:1204–1206 United States v. Fordice and, 3:1350–1352 at University of Alabama, 1:307
at University of Mississippi, 1:307 See also Brown v. Board of Education; School desegregation, attitudes concerning School desegregation, attitudes concerning, 3:1207–1210 African Americans in biomedicine and, 1:146–149 African American support for, 3:1209 change in over time and, 3:1208–1209 early desegregation efforts and, 3:1208 Federal education funding and, 3:1208 forced busing issue and, 1:307, 1:344, 3:1205 immigration effects and, 3:1209 recent resegregation and, 3:1209 resegregation within desegregated schools and, 3:1208 suspension rate inequities and, 3:1208 unitary status and, 3:1209 urban schools and, 3:1208–1209 White flight and, 3:1209, 3:1395–1397 See also Brown v. Board of Education Schuler, George, 1:158 Schwerner, Mickey, 1:307–308, 1:329, 3:1282 Science faculties, women of color on, 3:1210–1211 African Americans in biomedicine and, 1:146–149 American Association for the Advancement of Science and, 3:1210 background of, 3:1210 doctoral degrees across fields and, 3:1210–1211 gender and rank correlations and, 3:1211 gender focus importance and, 3:1210 longitudinal data needed and, 3:1211 minority, women underrepresentaiton and, 3:1210 next steps to diversity and, 3:1211 progress/no progress of, 3:1210–1211 tenure-rack faculty appointments and, 3:1211 Scientific racism, 1:2, 2:947–948, 2:957–958 SCLC. See Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Scott Act (1888), 2:694 Seale, Bobby Black Panther Party and, 1:174, 1:175, 1:176, 1:308, 2:977 Seattle, Washington anti-Chinese violence in, 1:92 Cambodian Americans in, 1:222 Cherokee relocated in, 1:262 Estonian Americans in, 1:450 Norwegian Americans in, 2:991 Tibetan Americans in, 3:1307 Vietnamese Americans in, 3:1366 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Secondary migration, 1:222 Second Supplemental Surplus Appropriations Rescission Act, 1:495 Secularization thesis, 3:1183–1184 Segmented assimilation theory, 1:106 Segregation, 3:1212–1215 American Apartheid (Massey and Denton) and, 1:55–57 in ancient societies, 3:1212–1213 in barrios, 1:133–136 blockbusting practice and, 1:179–180 Buchanan v. Warley and, 3:1221
Index
color line and, 1:322–324 de facto segregation and, 1:321 definition of, 1:400–401 of disabled individuals, 3:1212 Federal Housing Administration policies and, 1:56 Gautreaux decision and, 1:524–526, 2:1078 gender segregation, religion and, 3:1214–1215 gender segregation and, 3:1212 geographical segregation and, 3:1212 the ghetto and, 1:546–548 historical background of, 3:1212–1213 housing audits and, 2:656–657 housing segregation and, 1:400–401 hypersegregation in schools and, 2:916 index of dissimilarity and, 1:401 India’s caste system and, 1:246–249, 3:1213 occupational segregation and, 3:1212 Plessy v. Ferguson and, “separate but equal” ruling of, 1:24, 1:210, 1:301, 1:436, 2:612–613, 2:616, 2:735, 2:795, 3:1207–1208, 3:1213, 3:1213 racial segregation and, 3:1212 racial segregation and, legislation regarding, 3:1213–1214 racial steering and, 1:180, 2:657 religious segregation and, 3:1214 resegregation and, 3:1152–1153 residential segregation and, 1:308, 1:325, 1:436, 1:508, 1:547–548 Roberts v. the City of Boston and, 1:210 Roma and, 3:1213 of social outcasts, 3:1213 social segregation and, 3:1212 term usages and, 3:1212 urban index of dissimilarity and, 1:179 See also Civil Rights Movement; De facto segregation; De jure segregation; Discrimination; Jim Crow; Racism; Racism specific topic Seguín, Juan, 1:45 Self-fulfilling prophecy, 3:1215–1219 accumulation of effects of, 3:1218 background of, 3:1215–1216 experimental research on, 3:1216–1217 explanation of, 3:1215 false definition becomes real in, 2:822 harm vs. good effects of, 3:1217 impact of, 3:1217–1218 Robert Merton’s work and, 3:1215 minority student performance research and, 3:1216–1217 situational, motivational factors and, 3:1217–1218 social inequalities caused by, 3:1215–1216 steps in, 3:1216 of stereotypes and labeling, 2:822, 3:1279–1281 susceptibility to, 3:1217 Seminole census population data of, 2:960 (table) Dawes Act and, 1:372 Mississippian mound-building culture and, 1:259 in Oklahoma, 1:293 Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 2:716–717
1605
Sen, Amartya, 1:444 Seneca Dawes Act and, 1:372 outsider cultural adoption by, 2:957 Separate but equal, 3:1219–1222 Brown v. Board of Education and, 3:1222 Buchanan v. Warley and, 3:1221 educational stratification and, 1:436 Hayes-Tilden Compromise and, 3:1219 historical background of, 3:1219–1220 Sam Hose murder and, 3:1220 Charles H. Houston, 3:1221 justice inequalities and, 3:1220 legal challenge to segregation and, 3:1221–1222 Thurgood Marshall and, 2:876, 3:1222 NAACP and, 3:1221–1222 Plessy v. Ferguson and, 1:24, 1:210, 1:301, 1:436, 2:612–613, 2:616, 2:735, 2:795, 2:999, 3:1207–1208, 3:1213, 3:1219–1220 real estate restricted covenants and, 3:1221 Reconstruction era and, 3:1219 segregated neighborhoods and, 3:1220–1221 segregated schools and, 3:1221 social conduct and, 3:1220 “sundown towns” and, 3:1221 violent enforcement of White supremacy and, 3:1220 Sephardic Jews, 2:786 September 11, 2001 “Americanness” threatened by, 1:383 anti-Arab American sentiment and, 1:54, 1:86, 1:475, 3:1278 anti-immigrant sentiment after, 2:714, 3:1114 anti-Iraqi American sentiment and, 2:755 anti-Muslim American sentiment and, 1:86–87, 2:922, 3:1114, 3:1278, 3:1357 anti-Muslim Canadian sentiment and, 2:593, 2:923–925 border security after, 1:194–195 Canadian–American border control and, 1:234 guest workers, undocumented immigrant issues and, 1:566 Hurricane Katrina and, 2:666 Immigration and Naturalization Service and, 2:697 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 10(1) and, 2:679 Irish American New York City fire fighters and, 2:761 Islamophobia and, 2:762–764, 2:763 Kurdish Americans and, 2:818 Muslim American studies and, 2:920 New York’s Chinatown and, 1:288 refugee, asylum detainees after, 2:679 refugee admissions after, 2:689, 3:1134 spirituality of Americans after, 1:304 terrorism’s impact and, 3:1298–1299 undocumented Bangladeshi Americans and, 1:132 See also PATRIOT Act of 2001; Terrorism Serbia, 1:129, 1:130, 1:131, 3:1222 (map) Serbian Americans, 3:1222–1223, 3:1222 (map) census data on, 3:1223 contemporary community of, 3:1223 Croatian Americans and, 1:347–350 Displaced Persons Act (1948) and, 3:1223
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famous Serbians and, 3:1223 immigration patterns of, 3:1222–1223 Kosovo, Vojvodina and, 3:1222 Refugee Relief Act (1953) and, 3:1223 Slavonic term and, 3:1222 Yugoslavia and, 3:1222 Sexual harassment, 3:1223–1225 Bundy v. Jackson and, 3:1224 Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education and, 3:1225 definition of, 3:1223–1224 EEOC and, 1:447, 3:1223–1224 Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District and, 3:1224–1225 gender discrimination and, 3:1223–1224 Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc. and, 3:1224 hostile work environment and, 3:1224 Meritor Savings Bank, FSB v. Vinson and, 3:1224 Office of Civil Rights and, 3:1223–1224 quid pro quo harassment and, 3:1224 racial and cultural factors in, 3:1225 at school, 3:1224–1225 Title IX of Educational Amendments of 1972 and, 3:1223–1224 Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 3:1223–1224 Williams v. Saxbe and, 3:1224 in the workplace, 3:1223–1224 Sexuality, 3:1225–1227 African Americans and, 3:1225–1226 Asian Americans and, 3:1225 biological determinism and, 1:188 bisexuality and, 3:1227 body image and, 1:187–190 gays and lesbians of color and, 3:1226 Latina/o Americans and, 3:1226 Native Americans and, 3:1226 Seychelles Creole communities, 1:337 The Shape of the River (Bowen and Bok), 1:13 Sharabi, Hisham, 2:1014 Sharot, Steven, 3:1290 Shaw v. Reno, 1:546 Shelley v. Kraemer, 1:400, 3:1157 Shelton, Robert, 2:817 Sherif, Carolyn W., 3:1163–1164 Sherif, Muzafer, 3:1163–1164 Sherman, William Tecumseh, 3:1149–1150 Shintoism, 2:784 Shoshone Cheyenne and, 1:264 land rights issue of, 2:744 Shrine of the Black Madonna, 1:26, 1:178 Shuffle Along musical, 2:588 Sicilian Americans, 3:1227–1228, 3:1227 (map) census data on, 3:1228 contemporary community of, 3:1228 famous Sicilians and, 3:1228 immigration patterns of, 3:1227–1228 Siembieda, William, 1:134 Sierra Leone, 1:125–126, 1:172 Creole community in, 1:337, 1:338
Sigelman, Lee, 2:748 Sikhs, 2:708, 2:1010, 3:1230 Silberman, Laurence, 1:18 Simmel, Georg, 3:1250 Simmons, William J., 2:816 Simpson, O. J., 1:346 Singapore, 3:1228–1231, 3:1228 (map) British colonization of, 3:1228–1229 Chinese ethnic group in, 3:1229–1230 CMIO multiracialism model and, 3:1228, 3:1229 current environment of, 3:1229 ethnic composition of, 3:1228 Eurasian minority community in, 3:1230–1231 geography of, 3:1228 guest workers, undocumented immigrant issues and, 1:566 historical background of, 3:1228–1229 Hong Kong migration to, 2:649 independence of, 3:1229 Indian ethnic group in, 3:1230 languages in, 3:1229 Malays ethnic group in, 3:1230 People’s Action Party and, 3:1229 Singleton, Benjamin “Pap,” 1:30 Sioux, 3:1231–1234 Alcatraz Island occupation and, 3:1130 Black Hills, South Dakota issue and, 3:1319–1320 census population data of, 2:960 (table) conflict, way of life destruction of, 3:1233–1234 Dakota meaning and, 3:1231 Dakota Sioux Uprising of 1862 and, 3:1234, 3:1319 European contact with, 3:1233 kinship, tiospaye interrelatedness of, 3:1232–1233 mawatani society of, 3:1232–1233 missionaries and, 3:1233 organization of, 3:1231–1232 religion of, 1:268 reservations of, 3:1233–1234 Sacred Pipe and, 3:1233 Sitting Bull, Wounded Knee and, 3:1234 social, political order of bands of, 3:1232–1233 Soldiers’ Lodge government society of, 3:1232 treaties, land loss of, 3:1233 United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians and, 3:1320 at the White House, 3:1232 women’s role in, 3:1233 See also Oglala Sioux; Standing Rock Sioux; Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973) Sitting Bull General Custer and, 1:381 Wounded Knee and, 3:1234 Slavery, 3:1234–1237 abolitionism and, 1:22 African American kinship and, 2:808 African armed struggles against, 1:22 agribusiness of South and, 3:1235–1236 as an institution, 3:1236 Back to Africa movement and, 1:125–127 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith) and, 1:149–151 Black family life and, 1:513
Index
in Brazil, 1:200–201 in Canada, 1:226 Caribbean Americans and, 1:241 Christianity and, 2:793 Creole communities and, 1:336–338 culture and, 3:1237 death penalty and, 1:374 domestic work and, 1:406 Dred Scott v. Sandford and, 1:416–419 emancipation and, 3:1237 Emancipation Proclamation and, 1:439–440 emigrationism and, 1:22 enslavement of African Americans and, 1:21–22 European economic growth and, 3:1234–1235 family and, 3:1236–1237 Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and, 1:418 global economy and, 1:552 hierarchical ethnocentrism and, 1:466 on Hispaniola, 1:410 Holocaust of African enslavement and, 1:21 intermarriage, one-drop rule and, 2:736 legalization of, 3:1234 Abraham Lincoln’s views on, 2:852–853 literature of, 1:22 Middle Passage and, 3:1235 Muslim Africans and, 2:920 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Douglass), 1:22, 1:414 Negro Convention Movement and, 1:22 New World and, 3:1235–1236 one-drop rule and, 2:736, 2:999 origins of, 3:1234–1235 physical, psychological, sexual brutality of, 1:21–22 plantation life and, 3:1236 racial construction and, 3:1236 religion and, 3:1137–1138 reparations issue and, 3:1148–1150 slave codes, laws and, 3:1236 slave revolts and, 3:1237 slave trade and, 1:1, 1:3, 1:21–22, 1:235, 3:1234–1235 Thirteenth Amendment and, 1:440 Sojourner Truth and, 3:1329, 3:1329–1331 Underground Railroad and, 1:5, 1:22, 1:414, 3:1237 See also Abolitionism: the movement; Abolitionism: the people; Emancipation Proclamation; specific individual Slavery and Social Death (Patterson), 1:217 Slavin, Robert, 2:749 Slawson, John, 1:65 Sleepy Lagoon incident, 2:1005–1006, 3:1428 Slesvig-Holstein debate, Dano-Prussian war, 1:370 Slovak Americans, 3:1238–1241, 3:1238 (map) Austrian-Hungarian Empire and, 3:1238 census data on, 3:1240 contemporary community of, 3:1240–1241 Czech Americans and, 1:367–368 Czechoslovakia and, 3:1238, 3:1240 ethnic identity maintained by, 3:1238, 3:1239–1241 famous Slovak Americans and, 3:1240–1241
fraternal organizations of, 3:1239 historical background of, 3:1238–1239 immigration patterns of, 3:1238–1239 language of, 3:1239–1240 life in the United States by, 3:1239 mining industry and, 3:1238, 3:1239 National Origins Act (1924) and, 3:1240 Out of the Furnace (Bell) and, 3:1238 religion of, 3:1239–1240 U.S. citizenship and, 3:1240 work focus of, 3:1239 Slovene Americans, 3:1241–1244, 3:1241 (map) brain drain and, 3:1242 census data on, 3:1242 contemporary community of, 3:1242 cultural centers of, 3:1242, 3:1244 ethnic organizational structures of, 3:1242 ethnic parishes of, 3:1242 famous Slovene Americans and, 3:1244 historical background of, 3:1241–1242 immigration patterns of, 3:1241–1242 newspapers and politics of, 3:1244 settlement patterns of, 3:1243 (figure) Slovene indigenous minorities and, 3:1241 Slovenia, 1:129, 1:129 (map), 1:130, 3:1241 (map) borderland dispute and, 1:192 Smith, Al, 1:63 Smith, Chad, 1:262 Smith, James McCune, 1:2 Smith, John Stanhope, 1:2 Smith, Joseph, 2:913 Smith, June, 1:115 Smith, Neil, 1:536 Smith, Steven, 2:749 Smith v. Allwright, 3:1369 Smith v. University of Washington, 1:14 SNCC. See Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Snoden, Conrad, 1:245 Snyder Act of 1921, 1:215 Social capital, 3:1245–1247 “bridging” social capital and, 3:1245–1246 “closure-based” social capital and, 3:1245 cultural capital and, 1:359–361 explanation of, 3:1245 immigrant economic contributions and, 2:685–686 loss of freedom and, 3:1246 marginalization and, 2:872 minority group disadvantages and, 3:1246 negative consequences of, 3:1246–1247 as resources, 3:1246 social mobility and, 3:1253–1256 social relation networks and, 3:1245 upward mobility vs. solidarity conflict and, 3:1246–1247 The Social Contract (Rousseau), 1:297, 1:303 Social Darwinism, 3:1247–1250 biological racial superiority theories and, 3:1092 blood quantum and, 1:182 Franz Boas and, 1:184–186
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capitalism and, 3:1247, 3:1248 colonialism and, 1:317–318 cultural capital and, 1:361–363 cultural relativism and, 1:361–363 Darwin’s theory of evolution vs., 3:1247–1248 description of, 3:1247 eugenics and, 3:1249 European welfare states and, 3:1249 historical context of, 3:1248–1249 Holocaust history and, 2:636–640 inequalities in capability, intelligence focus of, 3:1247 T. R. Malthus’s theory and, 2:1060 marginalization and, 2:871–872 Marxist socialism vs., 3:1249 natural selection and, 3:1248 natural selection and, changes in species from, 3:1248 Nazi anti-Semitism and, 3:1249 political economy theory and, 2:1060 recent history of, 3:1249 Herbert Spencer, “arrival of the fittest” and, 3:1248 William Graham Sumner and, 3:1248 utilitarian liberalism vs., 3:1249 Social distance, 3:1250–1251 Bogardus scale of, 3:1250 in personal relationships, 3:1250 prejudice reduction and, 3:1250–1251 race relations, personal level of, 3:1250 from a racial or ethnic group, 3:1250 Robbers Cave Experiment and, 3:1163–1164 United States and, 3:1250–1251 Social inequality, 3:1251–1253 aging and, 1:42–44 contingent work, poverty and, 3:1252–1253 cultural capital and, 1:359–361 digital divide and, 1:388–389 English immersion and, 1:440–442 feminization of poverty and, 3:1252 future trends in, 3:1253 homelessness and, 2:641–644 life expectancy disparities and, 2:848–852 self-fulfilling prophecy and, 3:1215–1219 social class and, 3:1251–1252 social group characteristics and, 3:1251 social mobility and, 3:1253–1256 social stratification and, 3:1251 victim discounting and, 3:1361–1363 wage disparities and, 3:1252 wealth inequality and, 3:1252 workplace economic restructuring and, 3:1253 Social mobility, 3:1253–1256 achieved vs. ascribed status and, 3:1254 capital-based mobility and, 3:1253–1254 class divisions and, 3:1254 cultural capital and, 1:359–361, 3:1253 economic capital and, 3:1253 educational opportunities and, 3:1254–1255 Gautreaux decision and, 1:524–526, 2:1078 horizontal vs. vertical mobility and, 3:1254 immigrant communities and, 2:680–683
income factor in, 3:1255 intra- vs. intergenerational social mobility and, 3:1254 labor market segmentation and, 2:822–825 measures of, 3:1254–1255 “occupational prestige” and, 3:1254 past and current trends in, 3:1255–1256 social capital and, 3:1253 social inequality and, 3:1251–1253 symbolic capital and, 3:1253 transition markers of social status and, 3:1253 upper-upper class and, 3:1254 upward vs. downward social mobility and, 3:1254 See also Immigrant communities Social Science Research Council’s Working Group on Gender and Migration, 2:691 Social support, 3:1256–1258 aging and, 1:42–44 Asian American family example of, 3:1256 definition of, 3:1253–1256 emotional support and, 3:1256 familism and, 1:477–479 family, community support and, 3:1256–1257 formal support and, 3:1257 formal support and, barriers to, 3:1257–1258 informal support and, 3:1256–1257 informational support and, 3:1256 tangible support and, 3:1256 Social work, 3:1258–1260 adoption and, 1:9–11 Charity Organization Societies origins of, 3:1259 Civil Rights Movement, War on Poverty and, 3:1260 Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers and, 3:1259 community-based social work and, 3:1259–1260 confidentiality and, 3:1259 Council on Social Work Education and, 3:1260 history of, 3:1259–1260 New Deal and, 3:1260 professional values and ethics of, 3:1258–1259 race and ethnicity issues in, 3:1258 self-determination focus of, 3:1258 Settlement House Movements origins of, 3:1259 social work practice and, 3:1260 transracial adoption and, 3:1322–1325 value of the common good and, 3:1258 Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, 1:3 Society of Friends, 1:3 Sociological imagination concept, 1:468–469 Solvag, California, 1:371 Some Notes on Crime, Particularly in Georgia (Du Bois), 1:426 SOS Racism (France), 1:507, 1:508 Souljah, Sister, 2:623 The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois), 1:168, 1:322, 1:411–413, 1:423, 2:872, 2:1051, 3:1106 South, Scott, 1:135 South Africa, Republic of, 3:1261–1262, 3:1261 (map) African, White, Indian, colored racial categories in, 3:1261 Anti-Apartheid Movement in, 1:558
Index
apartheid and, 1:81–82 apartheid laws and, 1:82–84 class divisions in, 3:1262 comparative affirmative action in, 3:1095 identity, question of, 3:1261 Nelson Mandela and, 2:867–869, 3:1094 multicultural “rainbow nation” concept in, 3:1262 national identity in, 3:1261 nonracial cultural identities in, 3:1261 race in modern South Africa and, 3:1261–1262 racialized identities, racial division in, 3:1261 Truth and Reconciliation Commission in, 3:1095 See also Apartheid South Americans in the United States, 3:1262–1268 brain drain and, 3:1263 Brazilian Americans and, 1:204–205 census data on, 3:1263 civil unrest, violence push factors and, 3:1263 demographic characteristics of, by country, 3:1266 (table) economic push factors and, 3:1263 ethnic background and cultural integration of, 3:1265–1267 ethnic identity, panethnic Latino group and, 3:1267 foreign-born population by country, 3:1266 (table) geographic distribution of, 3:1265 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and, 3:1263 immigration patterns of, 3:1263–1265, 3:1264 (table) socioeconomic status of, 3:1265 undocumented immigrants and, 3:1265 See also specific immigrant group South Carolina Cherokee homeland in, 1:519 Hmong Americans in, 2:634 immigrants settling in, 2:690 South Dakota Communal Corporation Act (1935) and, 3:1203 Estonian Americans in, 1:448 Mennonite Brethren in, 2:890 non-Indian home adoptions in, 2:715 Schmiedeleut in, 3:1203–1204 Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 1:25, 1:32, 3:1268–1269 Ralph Abernathy and, 2:773, 3:1268, 3:1269 Ella Baker and, 1:310, 3:1281 Black voter registration and, 1:308 Stokely Carmichael and, 1:246 citizenship schools and, 3:1269 Congress of Racial Equality and, 3:1268 Freedom Rides and, 3:1268 Jesse Jackson, Sr. and, 2:773–774, 2:1001 Jim Crow struggle of, 1:306 key civil rights events and, 3:1268–1269 Martin Luther King, Jr. and, 1:306, 2:773, 2:804, 2:806, 2:807, 3:1138, 3:1268–1269 Joseph Lowery and, 3:1269 nonviolent tactics of, 3:1268 Operation Breadbasket and, 2:1001, 3:1269 political and economic sustenance of, 3:1269 religion role in, 3:1138, 3:1268 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and, 3:1268, 3:1281
Sovereignty, Native American, 3:1269–1271 AIM and, 1:59–62 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971) and, 3:1269, 3:1313 Aleut and, 1:51 Bureau of Indian Affairs and, 1:216–219 of Cherokee and, 1:259, 1:260, 1:261 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and, 2:1270–1271 of Choctaw, 1:293 Congress and, 3:1270 Congressional plenary power and, 1:217, 2:1270 importance of, 3:1269 Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 and, 2:714–716 Johnson v. M’Intosh and, 2:1270 Native American education and, 2:944–946 Native American gaming and, 1:519–521, 2:716–719 Native Hawaiians and, 3:1269 Supreme Court and, 3:1270–1271 Trade and Intercourse Acts and, 2:1270 Worcester v. Georgia and, 1:216, 2:1271 See also Trail of Broken Treaties Spain, 3:1273 (map) Caribbean colonialism by, 1:238 Caribbean racial, ethnic identity in, 1:239 colonialism of, 1:317 colonialism of, Creole communities and, 1:336 Cuban colonialism by, 1:355 early Muslims in, 2:926 El Salvador and, 3:1185 Haiti colonization by, 2:571 hate crime legislation in, 2:591 Hopi contact with, 2:653, 2:1080 Mexican Indigenous people and, 2:898–900 Native American mission schools and, 2:944 Peru colonized by, 2:1039–1040 Pueblos contact with, 2:1079–1081 Trinidad and, 3:1327 Spanglish, 3:1271–1273 calquing linguistic borrowing process and, 2:1272 “Cubonics” variety of, 3:1272 culture and, 3:1273 intrasentential code-mixing and, 2:1272 linguistic characteristics of, 3:1272 “Tex-Mex” variety of, 3:1272 Spanish Americans, 3:1273–1274, 3:1273 (map) bilingualism of, 3:1274 census data on, 3:1274 contemporary community of, 3:1274 famous Spanish Americans and, 3:1274 immigration patterns of, 3:1273–1274 Spanish regions and, 3:1273 Spanish Harlem. See East Harlem Spearman, Charles, 2:729 Special Agriculture Workers (SAW) program, 2:703 Spencer, Herbert, 3:1092, 3:1248 Spirit House, 1:178 Split labor market, 3:1274–1276 defining concept of, 3:1274–1275 dual economy theory and, 3:1275
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gender and race linked to, 3:1275–1276 glass ceiling and, 1:548–551 labor market segmentation and, 2:822–825, 3:1275 related theories and, 3:1275 Sri Lanka, 3:1276 (map) Canadian immigrants from, 1:225, 1:226 as South Asian, 2:712 Sri Lankan Americans, 3:1276–1277, 3:1276 (map) census data on, 3:1275 contemporary community of, 3:1277 immigration patterns of, 3:1276 Sri Lanka’s ethnic diversity and, 3:1275–1276 St. John de Crèvecoeur, J. Hector, 2:885–886 St. Louis, Missouri race riots in, 1:401 restrictive covenants in, 3:1157 segregation in, 1:401 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Standing Rock Sioux, 1:380–382 Stanford-Binet intelligence test, 2:729 State of Louisiana v. Homer Adolph Plessy, 2:1049 State of Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, 2:996 Stauffer, John, 2:748 Steinberg, Laurence, 2:1024 Stembridge, Jane, 1:311 Stepick, Alex, 2:684 Stereotypes, 3:1277–1279 of African Americans, 1:404 of Arab Americans, 1:86–87 of Asian American welfare myth, 1:98 balkanization, Balkans and, 1:129 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith) and, 1:149–151, 1:150, 1:155, 2:1061 Blaxploitation films and, 1:156, 2:842 of Brazilian Americans as Hispanics and, 1:205 Vincent Chin murder and, 1:276–278, 2:781, 2:1020 consequences of, 3:1278 contact hypothesis and, 1:330–333 culture of poverty and, 1:363–365 definition of, 2:821, 3:1277–1278 of disabled persons, 1:67 examples of, 3:1278 hate groups, Anti-Defamation League and, 1:72 IDEA and, 2:719–721 of immigrant communities, 2:682–683 impact of, 2:822 of Italian Americans, 2:769 “Jigsaw technique” to overcome, 3:1278 labeling and, 2:821–822 model minority example of, 2:782, 2:784, 2:910–911, 2:1062, 3:1278 of Muslim Americans, 1:86–87 of Native Americans, 1:164 Orientalism and, 2:1003 panethnic internal boundaries negotiation and, 1:460 prejudice, discrimination from, 3:1278 scapegoating and, 3:1201–1203 self-fulfilling prophecy and, 3:1215–1219 self-fulfilling prophecy of, 2:822
sports team mascots and, 2:615, 2:822, 2:1062 of Vietnamese “boat people,” 1:186 “welfare queen” and, 3:1384–1386 See also Anti-Semitism; Discrimination; Labeling; Model minority; Prejudice Stereotype threat, 3:1279–1281 children’s gender-typed beliefs and, 3:1279 description of, 3:1279 enabling factors of, 3:1279–1280 environmental threats and, 3:1280 gap, explaining of, 3:1279–1280 gender and minority academic gap example of, 3:1279 impact of, 3:1279 research on, 3:1280–1281 self-fulfilling prophecy and, 3:1215–1219 Sterner, Richard, 1:58 Steuart, James, 2:1059 Stewart, Maria, 1:22 Still, William, 1:5 Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism (Stokely), 1:246 Stone, Chuck, 1:177 Stouffer, Samuel, 1:58 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1:4–5 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 3:1281–1282 African American studies and, 1:32 Ella Baker and, 3:1281 Black Nationalism and, 1:174 Black Power and, 1:26, 1:177, 1:311, 1:329, 3:1282 Stokely Carmichael and, 1:244, 1:245–246, 3:1281 Civil Rights Movement and, 1:25, 1:28 CORE and, 1:329, 3:1281 St. Clair Drake and, 1:416 Freedom Summer voter registration campaign and, 1:307–308, 1:310–311, 1:329, 2:817, 3:1281, 3:1369 SCLC and, 3:1268, 3:1281 student sit-in movement and, 3:1281 white membership and, 2:790, 3:1282 women leaders of, 1:310–311 Substance abuse. See Drug use Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), 1:419 Suicide (Durkheim), 1:425 Sumner, William G. ethnocentrism work of, 1:465–466 “folkways,” “mores” work of, 1:58 Social Darwinism and, 3:1248 Sundown towns, 3:1282–1285 attempts to integrate and, 3:1283–1285 Civil War origins of, 3:1283 de jure vs. de facto segregation and, 3:1285 in Indiana, 3:1284 (figure) maintaining the system and, 3:1283 minority groups excluded from, 3:1282 non-Whites excluded from, 3:1282 practice, prevalence of, 3:1282–1283 segregated neighborhoods and, 3:1221
Index
Superfund program, 1:395 The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America (Du Bois), 1:423 Supratribalism, 2:955, 2:1022 Suriname Caribbean identity of, 1:237 Creole communities in, 1:337 Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 3:1152, 3:1204–1206 Sweden, 3:1285 (map) Caribbean racial, ethnic identity in, 1:239 citizenship in, 1:299 emigration from, 1:370 hate crime legislation in, 2:591 Sami in, 3:1187 Swedish Americans, 3:1285–1288, 3:1285 (map) Bishop Hill Colony and, 3:1287 early immigration and, 3:1286 early settlements of, 3:1287 ethnic identity maintained by, 3:1287–1288 immigration patterns of, 2:699, 3:1286–1288 later settlements and festivals of, 3:1287–1288 Swedish American Heritage Learners and, 3:1288 Sweet, Ossian, 1:463 Swimmer, Ross O., 1:262 Switzerland Anabaptist group in, 1:69 Hutterites and, 2:668–771 Muslims migration to, 2:926 Symbolic ethnicity, 3:1288–1290 adaptability and enduring characteristics of, 3:1288 Belgian Americans and, 1:136–137 Czech Americans and, 1:367–368 deficit model of ethnicity and, 1:379–380 defining characteristics of, 3:1289 desi and, 1:382–383 ethnic heritage pride and, 3:1289 of French Americans, 1:515 of Irish Americans, 2:761 Kwanzaa and, 2:819–820 lifecycle celebrations and, 3:1289 of Lithuanian Americans, 2:856 manifestations of, 3:1289 of Polish Americans, 2:1058 term, use of, 3:1289 third-generation principle and, 3:1302–1304 See also Ethnic group Symbolic religiosity, 3:1290–1291 decontextualized religious, secular objects and, 3:1290 definition of, 3:1290 Eastern European Jews acculturation and, 3:1290 ethnic, religious acculturation and, 3:1290 of Jews, 3:1290–1291 Protestant-Catholic-Jew (Herberg) and, 3:1290 research on, 3:1291 symbolic ethnicity and, 3:1289, 3:1290
Syria, 1:225, 3:1291 (map) Syrian Americans, 3:1291–1292, 3:1291 (map) Arab Americans vs., 1:85, 1:86 Assyrian Americans and, 1:107–109, 1:107 (map) census data on, 3:1291–1292 contemporary community of, 3:1292 Dow v. United States and, 1:85 famous Syrians and, 3:1292 Immigration Act of 1924 and, 3:1292 immigration patterns of, 3:1291–1292 Szasz, Andrew, 1:443–444 Taft, William Howard, 1:543, 2:938 Taíno Indians, 1:410, 2:571, 2:775 Taiwan, 3:1293–1295, 3:1293 (map) Aboriginal inhabitants of, 3:1293–1294 brain drain from, 2:711 Canadian immigrants from, 1:225 Chinese Americans from, 1:285, 1:287 Chinese control of, 3:1294 ethnic groups and, 3:1294 guest workers, undocumented immigrant issues and, 1:566, 3:1294–1295 history of, 3:1293–1294 Japanese settlement of, 3:1294 labor shortage in, 3:1295 migration and, 3:1294–1295 population density of, 3:1293 “Tiger” economy of, 3:1294, 3:1295 United Nations and, 3:1293 Takahashi, Jere, 3:1198 Takao Ozawa v. U.S., 1:53–54 Talented Tenth, 3:1295–1297 of African American community, 3:1295 W. E. B. Du Bois and, 1:167, 3:1295–1296 “Guiding Hundredth” and, 3:1296 Harlem Renaissance and, 3:1295 Alain Locke’s vision and, 3:1296 Tampa, Florida. See Appendix A: Table 7 Taoism, 1:281 Tappan, Arthur, 1:2, 1:3 Tappan, Lewis, 1:2, 1:3 TAP surveys. See Intergroup relations, surveying Taylor, Dorceta, 1:444 Taylor, Paul, 2:836 Technology Amish and, 1:68, 1:70 digital divide and, 1:103 See also Internet Telles, Edward, 3:1094 Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonials (Latina Feminist Group), 1:492 Temporary Protected Status (TPS) law, for Central Americans in the U.S., 1:255 Tennessee Cherokee homeland in, 1:259 gerrymandering in, 1:545 immigrants settling in, 2:690
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Kurdish Americans in, 2:818 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 one-drop rule in, 2:999 Terman, Louis, 2:729 Terms of Order (Robinson), 3:1164–1165 Terrell, Mary church. See National Association of Colored Women (NACW) Terrorism, 3:1297–1299 airport security and, 3:1298 anti-Muslim sentiment and, 3:1298 changing perspectives on, 3:1297–1298 definitions of, 3:1297–1298 government perpetrated terrorism and, 3:1297 of Ku Klux Klan, 3:1297 London bombings (July 7, 2005) and, 2:857–858 nativistic anti-immigrant sentiment and, 2:970 politics of fear and, 3:1298 since 2001 and, 3:1298–1299 West vs. non-Western Other binary and, 3:1298 See also PATRIOT Act of 2001; September 11, 2001 Testing, 3:1299–1300 academic proficiency, 3:1299 achievement gap and, 3:1300 The Bell Curve (Hernstein and Murray) and, 1:139–142, 3:1299 content issues of, 3:1300 culturally-based limitations of, 3:1300 educational stratification and, 1:437 fairness of, 3:1300 high-stakes testing and, 3:1299 human capacity measured by, 3:1299 intelligence heritability issue and, 3:1299 language bias of, 3:1300 legalized racial segregation and, 3:1299 race-sensitivity in, 1:174 racial, ethnic group social and educational status and, 3:1299 tracking and, 3:1316–1318 See also No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Teton Dakota, 1:264, 1:265 Texas affirmative action in education in, 1:14 Afghan Americans in, 1:20 Austin Latina/o Lesbian and Gay Organization in, 2:847 Battle of the Alamo and, 1:45 bilingual education in, 1:143 Chinese Americans in, 1:287, 1:288 colonias in, 1:318 congressional districting in, 1:546 Crystal City, Texas and, 2:830–831, 2:896 Czech Americans in, 1:368 death penalty in, 1:376 Hernandez v. Texas and, 2:611–612 Hispanics in, 1:135, 2:627 immigrants settling in, 2:690, 3:1134 Iranian Americans in, 2:752 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 Mexican American internal colonialism experience in, 2:741 Mexican repatriation from, 3:1151 Native American Census population data and, 2:965 (figure) Nigerian Americans in, 2:982
one-drop rule in, 2:999 Pacific Islanders in, 2:1008 Pakistani Americans in, 2:1010 Palestinian Americans in, 2:1013 Panamanian Americans in, 2:1016 Peruvian Americans in, 2:1043 Puerto Rican Americans in, 2:1083 San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez and, 3:1193–1196 Spanish Americans in, 3:1274 Sri Lankan Americans in, 3:1275 sundown towns in, 3:1283 Tongan Americans in, 3:1315 Turkish Americans in, 3:1336 Ukrainian Americans in, 3:1343 United Farm Workers in, 1:257–258 United Kingdom immigrants in, 3:1350 Vietnamese Americans in, 3:1366 See also Dallas, Texas; Houston, Texas; San Antonio, Texas Texas, Hernandez v. See Hernandez v. Texas Thai Americans, 3:1300–1302, 3:1301 (map) Buddhist temple ritual of, 3:1302 Chang and Eng “Siamese twins” and, 3:1301 contemporary community of, 3:1302 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, 3:1301 immigration patterns of, 3:1301–1302 Isan missionary monks and, 3:1301–1302 Thai, Chinese, Lao ethnic groups of, 3:1300–1301 Thailand, 3:1301 (map) Hmong migration to, 2:633 Laos and, 2:828, 2:829 Then There Were None (Lindsey), 2:601 Theory of Cumulative Causation, 3:1159 There is Confusion (Fauset), 2:586 Third-generation principle, 3:1302–1304 ancestral pride of, 3:1303 assimilation vs., 3:1303 cultural pluralism vs., 3:1303 deficit model of ethnicity and, 1:379–380 desi and, 1:382–383 ethnic identity perspectives of, 3:1303–1304 Finnish Americans and, 1:503 in France, 1:507 Marcus Lee Hansen and, 3:1302–1303 immigrant cultural revival and, 3:1303 psychological security of, 3:1303 second generation vs., 3:1303 See also Acculturation; Assimilation Third World Conference Against Racism, 2:744 Third World Liberation Front, 1:99 Thirteenth Amendment Abraham Lincoln and, 2:853 Plessy v. Ferguson and, 2:1049, 2:1050 slavery abolished with, 1:5, 1:23, 1:210, 1:440, 2:853, 3:1213 Thomas, Clarence, 1:157, 1:321 Thomas, Piri, 2:1084 Thomas, W. I., 1:270, 1:271, 2:821–822 Thompson, Louise, 2:751
Index
Thoreau, Henry David, 1:4, 1:300–301 Thornburg v. Gingles, 1:545 Thorpe, Jim, 3:1304–1306, 3:1305 athletic achievements of, 3:1304–1305 Native American icon and, 3:1304–1305, 3:1306 Olympic gold medal of, 3:1305–1306 private life of, 3:1305–1306 Tibetan Americans, 3:1307–1308 Dalai Lama and, 3:1307 immigration patterns of, 3:1307 Tibetan Buddhism and, 3:1307 Tibetan U.S. Resettlement Project and, 3:1307 “Tibet Autonomous Region,” in China, 1:279 Tijerina, Reies López, 1:273, 3:1326 Title IX, 3:1308–1310 benefits of, 3:1308–1309 “clustering” problem of, 3:1309 coaching, administration of, 3:1310 of Educational Amendments Act (1972), 3:1308 girls, women of color in sports focus of, 3:1308–1309 high school, collegiate athletic programs affected by, 3:1308 implementation problems of, 3:1309–1310 Office of Civil Rights and, 3:1308 proportionality requirement of, 3:1309 2005 Racial and Gender Report Card (Lapchick and Brenden) and, 3:1308 women’s ice hockey and, 3:1309 Tlingit, 3:1311–1314 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971) and, 3:1313 Alaskan Native Brotherhood and, 3:1312–1313 Alaskan Native Sisterhood and, 3:1313 Anti-discrimination Act and, 3:1313 Canadian First Nations, 1:231 census population data of, 2:960 (table) contemporary community of, 3:1313 culture, society of, 3:1311–1312 early European contact and, 3:1312–1313 Haida and, 1:231 Indigenous justice and, 1:231 missionaries and, 3:1313 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) and, 3:1313 Elizabeth Peratrovich and, 3:1313 potlatch dancing costume of, 3:1311 potlatch system of, 3:1311–1312 prehistory of, 3:1311–1312 Raven and Wolf or Eagle phratry of, 3:1311, 3:1312 social change and, 3:1313 TNCs. See Transnational corporations (TNCs) Toennies, Ferdinand, 1:334 Tohano O’Odham census population data, 2:960 (table) Tolstoy, Leo, 2:661 Tomaras, Chris, 1:562 Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald, 2:824 Tongan Americans, 3:1314–1316, 3:1314 (map) athletic accomplishments of, 3:1315 census data on, 3:1315 contemporary community of, 3:1315 immigration patterns of, 3:1315
1613
Kingdom of Tonga and, 3:1314–1315 Mormonism of, 3:1314, 3:1315 U.S. World War II occupation of, 3:1314 Tonti, Enrico de, 2:767 Toomer, Jean, 1:24, 2:587 Toqueville, Alexis de, 3:1093 Toure, Sekou, 1:177 Toussait Louverture, François-Dominique, 2:572 TPS. See Temporary Protected Status (TPS) law, for Central Americans in the U.S. Tracking, 3:1316–1318 ability group mobility and, 3:1317 discrimination issues and, 3:1316–1317 educational stratification resulting from, 1:436–437 IDEA and, 2:719–721 impact, implementation of, 3:1317–1318 intelligence tests and, 2:729–730 proponents of, 3:1316 racial, ethnic minority students disadvantaged by, 3:1316 rise and fall of, 3:1316 socioeconomic factors and, 3:1317 testing bias and, 3:1316–1317 tracking today and, 3:1316 Trail of Broken Treaties, 3:1318–1320 AIM and, 3:1319–1320 BIA headquarters occupation and, 1:59, 1:60, 1:262, 2:1023, 2:1033, 3:1131, 3:1319 Black Hills, South Dakota focus of, 3:1319–1320 Fort Laramie Treaty (1868) focus of, 3:1319 National Indian Youth Council and, 2:936 Leonard Peltier and, 2:1033–1034 Red Power and, 3:1131 treaty making history and, 3:1318–1319 treaty rights dialogue and, 3:1319–1320 “20-Point Proposal” and, 3:1131, 3:1319 United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians and, 3:1320 TransAfrica lobby, 1:28 Transnational corporations (TNCs), 1:553 Transnational people, 3:1320–1322 Assyrian Americans and, 1:107–109, 1:107 (map) Bracero Program and, 1:193, 1:198–199, 1:318, 2:702, 2:895, 3:1393–1395 Caribbean Americans and, 1:244 Central Americans in the U.S. and, 1:255 comparative perspectives on race relations and, 3:1094–1095 cosmopolitanism and, 1:333–336 definition of, 3:1320 diaspora concept regarding, 1:387 diversity of, 3:1321–1322 education, economic opportunity motivation of, 3:1321 ethnicity negotiation and, 1:459–462 explanation of, 3:1321–1322 globalization and, 3:1321 Haitian Americans and, 2:575 immigrant vs., 3:1320–1321 immigration and gender and, 2:691–693 Jamaican Americans as, 2:776 labor market motivation of, 3:1321 motives of, 3:1321
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multiple identities of, 3:1321–1322 nomadic lifestyles, geographic mobility and, 3:1094–1095 panethnic identity and, 2:1019–1022 staying in touch and, 3:1322 technology used by, 3:1322 Transracial adoption, 1:11, 3:1322–1325 adoption tax credit and, 3:1323–1324 advocates of, 3:1323 best interest of the child criteria and, 3:1323, 3:1324 challenges for, 3:1324 child development and, 1:274–276 Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption and, 3:1324 costs of, 3:1323–1324 debates of, 3:1323–1324 intercountry adoptions and, 3:1324 Interethnic Placement Act and, 3:1323 media attention to, 3:1323 Multiethnic Placement Act and, 3:1323 National Association of Black Social Workers and, 3:1323, 3:1324 opponents of, 3:1323–1324 race, color-line issues and, 3:1320 White parents, African American children and, 3:1323 Travis, William, 1:45 Treaty Establishing the European Community, 3:1170 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), 3:1325–1326 Brown Berets and, 1:209 California gold rush and, 3:1325–1326 contemporary issues and, 3:1326 geographic area of, 3:1325 institutional racism of, 3:1326 La Alianza Federal de Pueblos Libres and, 1:273 Manifest Destiny and, 3:1325 Mexicans gain U.S. citizenship and,3:1325–1326, 3:1370 Mexican War ended by, 3:1325 Treaty of Paris, 1:494, 2:1085, 2:1097 Tribally Controlled Schools Act, 1:218 Trinidad, 3:1326–1329, 3:1326 (map) Caribbean Commonwealth countries and, 1:241 colonization of, 3:1327 contemporary community of, 3:1328 geography of, 3:1326 immigrants to, 3:1327 labor sources and, 3:1327 plantation economy of, 3:1327 pluralistic society of, 3:1327–1329 population distribution by race/ethincity, 3:1328 (table) research “frontier” and, 3:1326–1327, 3:1328–1329 Tropp, Linda, 1:331, 1:332, 2:749 Trudell, John, 1:59 Truman, Harry, 2:880, 2:903 Truth, Sojourner, 3:1329, 3:1329–1332 abolitionist movement and, 1:5, 1:22, 3:1130 beyond slavery and, 3:1330 critical race theory influenced by, 1:344 Frederick Douglass and, 3:1131 early years of, 3:1330 William Lloyd Garrison and, 3:1331
Narrative of Sojourner Truth and, 3:1331 spreading the gospel and, 3:1330–1331 women’s rights and, 1:5, 3:1331 Tubman, Harriet, 3:1332–1334 abolitionist movement and, 1:5, 1:22, 2:793 “Black Moses” and, 3:1332–1333 Frederick Douglass and, 3:1333–1334 postwar years and, 3:1333–1334 slavery years of, 3:1332 Underground Railroad and, 3:1333 women’s rights, suffrage and, 3:1333 Tuch, Steven, 2:748, 3:1112 Tulsa, Oklahoma Hmong Americans in, 2:633 race riots in, 1:400 Ture, Kwame (Stokely Carmichael), 1:25–26, 1:392, 1:483 Black Panther Party and, 1:175, 1:176 Black Power and, 1:177 See also Carmichael, Stokely Turkey, 3:1334–1336, 3:1334 (map) Armenia and, 1:89–90, 1:89 (map) Assyrian Americans and, 1:107–109, 1:107 (map) Balkan conflict and, 1:129, 1:129 (map), 1:131 Canadian immigrants from, 1:225 Cyprus invasion by, 1:366 ethnic groups in, 3:1334 history of, 3:1334 immigration from, 3:1335 international organization membership of, 3:1335–1336, 3:1337 labor export agreements in, 3:1335 race, ethnicity and religion of, 3:1334–1335 Sunni Muslims in, 3:1335 Turkish American immigration and, 3:1336–1338 Western relations of, 3:1335–1336 Turkish Americans, 3:1336–1338 anti-Muslim sentiment and, 3:1338 assimilation of, 3:1337–1338 Assyrian Americans and, 1:107–109, 1:107 (map) census data on, 3:1336 contemporary community of, 3:1336, 3:1337–1338 Cypriot Americans and, 1:365–367 immigration patterns of, 3:1335, 3:1336–1337 Muslim faith of, 3:1337 Reed-Johnson Immigration Act (1924) and, 3:1335 Turner, Henry McNeal, 1:126, 1:172–173 Turner, Nat, 1:22, 1:175, 3:1237 Turner, Patricia, 3:1353–1354 Tusarora Mississippian mound-building culture, 1:259 Tuskegee University lynchings documented by, 2:860 Tuskegee Syphilis Study and, 2:884, 2:884, 3:1353 Booker T. Washington and, 1:24, 3:1221 Twenty-First Amendment, 1:63 Tydings-McDuffie Act, 1:495 Uganda, 1:226, 3:1339 (map) Ugandan Americans, 3:1339–1340, 3:1339 (map) census data on, 3:1340 colonization of, 3:1339–1340
Index
history of, 3:1339–1340 immigration patterns of, 3:1340 UHAC. See United Hellenic American Congress (UHAC) UJA. See United Jewish Appeal (UJA) Ukraine, 1:226, 3:1341 (map) See also Ukrainian Americans Ukrainian Americans, 3:1340–1344, 3:1341 (map) census data on, 3:1344 contemporary communy of, 3:1343–1344 Georgian Americans and, 1:537–540 immigration patterns: before World War I, 3:1341 immigration patterns: between world wars, 3:1341–1342 immigration patterns: post World War II, 3:1342–1343 immigration patterns: post Soviet Union, 3:1343 Roman Catholic Church and, 3:1341–1343 Russian Orthodox Church and, 3:1341–1343 Uncle Tom’s Cabin film, 1:155 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 1:4 Underclass, 3:1344–1346 barrio and, 1:133–136 conceptual problems of, 3:1346 conservative views of, 3:1344 debate regarding, 3:1345–1346 definition of, 3:1344 ghetto underclass and, 3:1345 homelessness and, 2:641–644 hourglass economy and, 2:654–656 illegitimacy rates and, 3:1345–1346 opportunity, resources loss and, 3:1345 rainbow underclass concept and, 2:681 social buffer and, 3:1345 structural views of, 3:1344–1345 urban riots and, 3:1355 “welfare queen” and, 3:1384–1386 William Julius Wilson’s work on, 3:1344–1345 Underground Railroad, 1:22, 1:414 Harriett Tubman and, 3:1333 Uniform Crime Report, 3:1362 United Church of Christ landfill report, 1:442 United Farm Workers boycott strategy of, 1:197, 1:198, 1:257, 1:302 Cesar Chávez and, 1:256, 1:256, 1:257–258, 1:302, 2:827, 2:896 Chicano Movement and, 1:272 Dolores Huerta and, 2:658–659 United Hellenic American Congress (UHAC), 1:561 United Indians of All Tribes Foundation, 2:1033 United Jewish Appeal (UJA), 2:787 United Kingdom, 3:1346–1349, 3:1347 (map) anti-Muslim sentiment in, 3:1349 contemporary relations and, 3:1347–1348 early migration and, 3:1347 Elizabeth II, Queen of, 3:1348 institutional racism in, 3:1348 labor shortages in, 3:1347 MacPherson Report and, 3:1348–1349 race, ethnicity in, 3:1346–1347 racist victimization in, 3:1347–1348
1615
terrorism and, 3:1348 See also Great Britain; London bombings (July 7, 2005); United Kingdom, immigrants and their descendants in the United States United Kingdom, immigrants and their descendants in the United States, 3:1349–1350 American colonial settlement and, 3:1349 census data on, 3:1349–1350 contemporary community of, 3:1349–1350 immigration patterns of, 3:1349 United Movement Against Racial Discrimination (MNUCDR, Brazil), 1:202–203 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and, 1:111, 1:114 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide and, 1:530 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and, 2:689 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2:909, 3:1269 International Indian Treaty Council and, 1:60–61 Internet access focus of, 1:389 media oligopolies and, 1:555–556 Monetary and Financial Conference, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire and, 1:553 nongovernmental organizations and, 1:554–555 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and, 2:689 Taiwan and, 3:1293 UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and, 1:60–61, 1:556, 1:558 UN High Commissioner for Refugees and, 1:110, 3:1133 Working Group on Indigenous Populations and, 1:61 See also International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD); Race, UNESCO statements on United Native Americans, 3:1129 United States v. Bass, 1:376 United States v. Cartozian, 1:90 United States v. Fordice, 3:1350–1352 Brown v. Board of Education and, 3:1351 case and early rulings of, 3:1350–1351 case precedents and, 3:1351–1352 Green v. New Kent County Board of Education and, 3:1204–1205, 3:1351 Supreme Court ruling and, 3:1351 United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, 3:1320 United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 1:93, 3:1371 Universal Negro Improvement Association, 1:25, 1:127, 1:158, 1:171, 1:173, 1:241, 2:793, 2:900 University of Michigan. See Grutter v. Bollinger Urban League. See National Urban League Urban legends, 3:1352–1354 anti-Semitic legends and, 3:1353 contamination, pollution themes of, 3:1353 definition of, 3:1352 ethnic, economic anxieties interaction and, 3:1352–1353 gang initiation rituals and, 3:1354 Internet chat rooms and, 3:1352
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Ku Klux Klan food contamination conspiracy and, 3:1353 racial mistrust and, 3:1353 subliminal fear role in, 3:1352 Urban riots, 3:1354–1356 characteristics of, 3:1355 civil society breakdown and, 3:1355 controlling of, 3:1356 Crown Heights, Black-Jewish conflict and, 1:350–351, 2:791 definition of, 3:1354 ethnic succession model and, 1:462–465 explanations of, 3:1355–1356 in Harlem, 2:584–585 Rodney King incident and, 1:29, 1:96, 3:1113, 3:1355 opportunity inequities and, 3:1355 police-civilian encounters and, 1:308, 3:1355, 3:1356 protests, revolutions vs., 3:1354–1355 underclass hypothesis and, 3:1355 urban deprivation cause of, 3:1355 Us and the East, 1:26, 1:28, 1:178 “Us and them,” 3:1357–1358 assimilation, otherization and, 3:1357–1358 aversive racism and, 3:1117 explanation of, 3:1357 Manifest Destiny and, 3:1357 Orientalism and, 2:1003–1004, 3:1357 peoplehood and, 2:1035–1036 “perpetual foreigners” concept and, 3:1358 race relations, future of, 3:1357–1358 viewing outsiders as “others” and, 3:1357 See also Discrimination; Nativism; Prejudice; Racism; Stereotypes; Xenophobia U.S. Census Bureau. See Census, U.S. USCIS. See U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), 2:688, 2:697 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) housing discrimination studies by, 1:401–402 U.S. Sentencing Commission, 1:422 U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 1:54, 2:711 U.S. v. Broncheau, 2:958 U. S. v. Rogers, 2:958 Utah Brown Berets in, 1:209 hate crime statutes in, 2:589–590 Icelandic Americans in, 2:674 internment camp in, 2:747, 2:810 non-Indian home adoptions in, 2:715 Pacific Islanders in, 2:1008, 2:1009 Peruvian Americans in, 2:1043 Salvadoran Americans in, 3:1190 slavery in, 2:913 Tongan Americans in, 3:1315 Valentine, David, 2:847 Value orientation intercultural communication theories, 2:732 Value Systems, Social Structure, and Race Relations in the British Isles (Drake), 1:415–416
Van Gennep, Arnold, 3:1161 Van Sertima, Ivan, 1:34 Van Vechten, Carl, 2:587 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 2:769 Varshney, Ashutosh, 1:464 Vasconcelos, José, 2:629, 2:830, 2:934 VAWA. See Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Veil, 3:1359–1360 abayah and, 3:1359 country variations regarding, 3:1359 dress of Muslim women and, 3:1359 empowerment from, 3:1360 hijab and, 3:1359–1360 Koran interpretation of, 3:1359 negative stereotypes regarding, 3:1360 niqab and, 3:1359 public sphere mobility and, 3:1359–1360 respect regarding, 3:1360 re-veiling movement and, 3:1359 the Veil (as used by W. E. B. Du Bois) African American double consciousness and, 1:412–413, 2:794 The Souls of Black Folks (Du Bois) and, 1:168, 1:322, 1:412–413, 1:423–424, 2:872, 2:1051, 3:1106 Chicago School of Race Relations and, 1:270, 1:271 Velez v. Lindow, 2:894 Vermont Salvadoran Americans in, 3:1190 Vernon, Irene, 2:631 Verrazano, Giovanni de, 2:767 Versey, Denmark, 1:22 Vertical integration, of ethnic enclaves, 1:453, 1:454–455 Vesey, Denmark, 1:175 Victim discounting, 3:1361–1363 blaming the victim and, 3:1361 capital punishment disparities and, 3:1362–1363 crime statistics, discounting in, 3:1361–1362 criminal justice discretionary power and, 3:1361 criminal processing racial disparities and, 3:1362 “false zeros” concept and, 3:1362 marginalization of negative effects of victim’s experience and, 3:1361 race, sex, social status factors in, 3:1361 service, assistance denial and, 3:1361 social institutions and, 3:1362–1363 underreporting and, 3:1361–1362 Uniform Crime Report and, 3:1362 voluntary hate crime reporting and, 3:1361–1362 Victimization, 3:1363–1365 definition of, 3:1363 domestic violence and, 1:403–405 feelings resulting from, 3:1365 homicide and, 2:644–646 primary vs. secondary victimization and, 3:1364 process of, 3:1364 responses, experiences and explanations of, 3:1364–1365 small vs. large groups affected by, 3:1364 victim discounting and, 3:1361–1363
Index
victimology and, 3:1365 victims, demographic characteristics of, 3:1363–1364 Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA), 1:405 Vietnam, 3:1366 (map) Chinese Americans from, 1:287 Hmong migration to, 2:633 Vietnam War and, 3:1366 Vietnamese Americans, 3:1365–1368, 3:1366 (map) “boat people” from, 1:186 Buddhism and, 3:1366 census data on, 3:1366, 3:1368 culture of, 3:1366–1367, 3:1367 demographics of, 3:1366 health disparities of, 2:606 immigration patterns of, 2:700, 3:1366 Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act (1975) and, 2:828 mutual assistance associations and, 3:1367 political views of, 3:1367 poverty rates of, 2:685 socioeconomic changes and, 3:1368 street gangs and, 1:523, 1:524 Vietnam War and, 3:1366 Villa, Jose Garcia, 1:496–497 Villard, Oswald Garrison, 2:931 Villenas, Sofia, 1:491 Vinson, Fred, 2:611 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), 1:405 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (1994), 2:589 Virginia Afghan Americans in, 1:20 chattel slavery in, 1:181 Cherokee homeland in, 1:259 Egyptian Americans in, 1:439 Iranian Americans in, 2:752 Italian colonists in, 2:767 Loving v. Virginia antimiscegenation decision and, 2:738, 2:858, 2:858–859 Mennonites in, 2:888 Pakistani Americans in, 2:1010 racial purity obsession in, 2:859 United Kingdom immigrants in, 3:1350 Vietnamese Americans in, 3:1366 Virginia, Loving v. See Loving v. Virginia von Braun, Wernher, 1:543 von Herder, Johann Gottfried, 1:334 Voodoism in the Caribbean, 1:238 in Haiti, 2:572 Voting rights, 3:1368–1371 African Americans and, 3:1369–1370 Asian Americans and, 3:1371 Black suffrage, Abraham Lincoln and, 2:854 Black voter registration campaign and, 1:307–308, 2:807 Fifteenth Amendment and, 1:23, 2:854, 3:1213, 3:1369 Freedom Summer voter registration campaign and, 1:307–308, 1:310–311, 1:329, 2:817, 3:1281, 3:1369 gerrymandering and, 1:544–546
1617
“grandfather clause” and, 3:1369 Hispanic Americans and, 3:1370–1371 Native Americans and, 3:1370 Nineteenth Amendment and, 1:16 Smith v. Allwright and, 3:1369 United States v. Wong Kim Ark and, 3:1371 Voting Rights Act and, 3:1370 “White primary” and, 3:1369 of women, 1:16 See also specific voting rights legislation Voting Rights Act of 1965 African Americans elected and, 1:28 Civil Rights Movement and, 1:26, 1:308, 2:807 gerrymandering and, 1:544–546 NAACP and, 2:932 White male power structure and, 1:17 Voting Rights Act of 1983 gerrymandering and, 1:545 VTVPA. See Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (VTVPA) Vysotsky, Stanislav, 3:1409 WAIS. See Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales (WAIS) Waldinger, Roger, 1:463, 1:464 Walker, David, 1:22 Walker, Lenore, 1:403 Wallace, George, 1:211, 1:307 Walling, William English, 2:931 War Brides Act (1945), 1:283, 1:287, 1:495, 2:694 Ward, Lester, 3:1249 Warfield-Coppock, Nsenga, 3:1161 Warner, W. Lloyd, 1:305, 1:415 “War on Terror” Guantanamo Bay detainees and, 2:746 War Relocation Authority system. See Internment camps Warren, Earl, 2:612 Washington, Booker T., 3:1373–1375 Black American Jewry and, 2:794 Compromise of 1977 and, 1:158 conservativism of, 1:157–158 W. E. B. Du Bois and, 1:158, 1:167, 1:168, 3:1374 Future of the American Negro written by, 3:1374 history’s assessment of, 3:1374 Hull House School of Race Relations and, 2:661 individual, group self-help focus of, 1:157, 1:158 Jewish support and, 2:789 life of, 3:1373 The Man Farthest Down written by, 2:1028 Negro Business League and, 1:158 opposition views and, 3:1374 Robert E. Park and, 1:270, 2:1028 Tuskegee University and, 1:24, 3:1221 vision of, 3:1219, 3:1373–1374 voting, civil rights deemphasized by, 1:157–158 work, vocational, skills training focus of, 1:157, 3:1221 Washington, D.C. African American mayor of, 1:28 Bureau of Indian Affairs vandalization and, 2:1023, 2:1033
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Cambodian Americans in, 1:222 Central Americans in, 1:252 Central Americans in the U.S. in, 2:627 Estonian Americans in, 1:450 hate crime statutes in, 2:589 Kurdish Americans in, 2:818 March on Washington and, 1:305, 1:307, 2:806 Million Man March/Day of Absence in, 1:29, 2:921 Nigerian Americans in, 2:982 Pakistani Americans in, 2:1010 Peruvian Americans in, 2:1043 Salvadoran Americans in, 3:1190 Tibetan Americans in, 3:1307 “Trail of Broken Treaties” and, 1:59, 1:60, 1:262, 3:1131 Turkish Americans in, 3:1336 Vietnamese Americans in, 3:1366 See also Appendix A: Table 7 Washington, Harold, 1:28–29, 3:1375–1377 early career of, 3:1376 legacy of, 3:1376–1377 mayoral years of, 3:1376 social and political context of, 3:1375–1376 Washington, Margaret Murray, 1:24 Washington (state) affirmative action in education in, 1:14 affirmative action in employment and, 1:19 Alien Land Act and, 1:53 anti-Chinese violence in, 1:92 anti-Hindu violence in, 2:711 Finnish Americans in, 1:502 hate crime statutes in, 2:589 Hmong Americans in, 2:634 Icelandic Americans in, 2:674 Japanese Americans in, 2:784 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 Native American Census population data and, 2:965 (figure) Native American fishing treaty rights in, 2:936, 2:1023, 3:1130 non-Indian home adoptions in, 2:715 Pacific Islanders in, 2:1008, 2:1009 Romanian Americans in, 3:1174 Salvadoran Americans in, 3:1190 Slovene Americans in, 3:1242 Tongan Americans in, 3:1315 Vietnamese Americans in, 3:1366 See also Seattle, Washington WASP, 3:1377–1379 ancestry societies and, 3:1378 Anglo-Saxon definition and, 3:1377 anti-Semitism and, 3:1378 as an upper social class, 3:1378 cultural, economic, political dominance of, 3:1377–1378 decline of, 3:1378–1379 educational institutions and, 3:1378 neighborhood residence associated with, 3:1378 Protestant denominations and, 3:1378 snobbishness, exclusivity and, 3:1378 Social Register and, 3:1378
“White Anglo-Saxon Protestant” acronym and, 3:1377 Who’s Who in America and, 3:1378 Watanabe, Teresa, 2:583 Water rights, 3:1379–1381 competition over, 3:1379–1380 Pyramid Lake Reservation, Nevada situation and, 3:1378 reservation water quality and, 3:1381 reserved Indian and, 3:1380–1381 Winters v. United States and, 3:1380 Waters, Mary C., 3:1289 Watts Revolt, 1:26, 1:176, 1:245, 2:977 Wealth distribution, 3:1381–1384 census data on, 3:1382 concept explained and, 3:1381 digital divide and, 1:388–389 homelessness and, 2:641–644 hourglass economy and, 2:654–656 income vs., 3:1382 inequality factors and, 3:1383 informal economy and, 2:724–726 net worth and, 3:1382 political economy and, 2:1059–1060 race and, 3:1383 social inequality and, 3:1251–1253 social mobility and, 3:1253–1256 survey data on, 3:1382 Survey of Consumer Finances data and, 3:1382 wealth definition and, 3:1381 Weatherford, Willis D., 1:513 Weaver, Robert, 1:25 Weber, Max authority levels focus of, 1:468–469 ethnicity, perception of common descent and, 1:457 ethnic relations and, 1:457 racial, ethnic groups in one category and, 1:457 researcher neutrality focus of, 1:424 universal characteristics of ethnicity and, 1:457 Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales (WAIS), 2:729 Wechsler-Bellevue Scale of Intelligence, 2:729 Weitzer, Ronald, 3:1112 Weld, Theodore, 1:5 Welfare Act (1996), 2:606 “Welfare queen,” 3:1384–1386 culture of poverty thesis and, 1:364 emergence of, 3:1385 popular culture, racism and, 2:1061 Linda Taylor case and, 3:1385 welfare program history and, 3:1384–1385 Welfare reform, 3:1386–1388 alien benefits and, 2:678, 2:679 culture of poverty thesis and, 1:364 homelessness and, 2:641–644 imperfections continuation and, 3:1387–1388 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and, 1:364, 3:1252, 3:1386–1387 welfare before 1996 and, 3:1386 “welfare queen” and, 3:1384–1386 Welfare Reform Act of 1996 and, 2:678, 2:679
Index
Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 1:24, 2:861, 3:1388–1390 Chicago School of Race Relations and, 1:271 early life of, 3:1388–1389 later advocacy and, 3:1389–1390 lynching studied by, 3:1389, 3:1389 NAACP and, 2:931, 3:1389 Fannie Barrier Williams and, 3:1412 Welsh Argentines, 1:89 Wesberry v. Sanders, 1:545 West, Cornel, 1:17 Westbrook, Alonzo, 1:517 Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, 1:234 West Indian Americans, 3:1390–1393, 3:1391 (map) African Americans and, 3:1392–1393 Dominican Americans and, 1:408–409 first generation of, 3:1390–1392 Jamaican Americans and, 2:777–778 West Indians today and, 3:1392 West Virginia, 1:259 “Wetbacks,” 3:1393–1395 Bracero Program and, 3:1393–1394 explanation of, 3:1393 Los Mojados: The Wetback Story (Samora) and, 3:1193 “Operation Wetback” (Eisenhower administration) and, 1:193, 1:499, 2:879, 3:1394–1395 Wheeler-Howard Act, 1:217, 1:261–262, 1:372, 3:1180 White, B. Jack, 3:1163–1164 White, Byrun, 3:1350 White flight, 3:1395–1397 blockbusting and, 1:179–180 Caribbean American residential patterns and, 1:242 community cohesion and, 1:325 Crown Heights, Brooklyn area and, 1:350–351 definition of, 3:1395–1396 from Harlem, 2:584 hypersegregation and, 3:1396 inner city results of, 1:312 “new White flight” and, 3:1153 post–World War II era and, 3:1396 push and pull factors of, 3:1396 school desegregation and, 3:1396 school resegregation result of, 1:308, 3:1152, 3:1209 White racism and, 3:1407 Whiteness, 3:1397–1398 antiracist education and, 1:73–76 color blindness and, 1:75 critical race theory and, 1:344–347 definition of, 3:1397 of Irish Americans, 2:760–761 moral reformation and, 1:75 popular culture racism and, 2:1062–1063 power and privilege of, 3:1397 racetalk and, 3:1100–1102 slavery and, 3:1397 social and cultural processes of, 3:1397–1398 “White” culture and, 3:1398 White identity abolition and, 3:1398 “whiteness” studies and, 3:1397, 3:1398–1399
1619
White racial identity and, 3:1107 White racism and, 3:1397, 3:1404 Whiteness, measuring, 3:1398–1401 American Mosaic Project and, 3:1399–1401 cultural ideologies, norms and, 3:1400–1401 self-conceptions vs. contexts and ideologies and, 3:1398–199 understanding of privilege theoretical issue and, 3:1399–1400 White identity theoretical issues and, 3:1399 “whiteness” studies and, 3:1397, 3:1398–1399 Whiteness and masculinity, 3:1401–1403 attacks on identity and, 3:1403 definition changes in, 3:1403 privilege invisibility and, 3:1402 race, gender, class, sexuality intersection and, 3:1402 race and gender centrality and, 3:1402 scholarship trends in, 3:1402–1403 “sex roles” scholars and, 3:1402 White privilege, 3:1403–1405 after Plessy v. Ferguson, 3:1220–1221 antiracist education and, 1:73–76 becoming “White” process, 3:1404 color blindness and, 1:75 color line and, 1:322–324 consciousness of White people and, 1:413 creation of, 3:1404–1405 critical race theory and, 1:344–347 digital divide and, 1:388–389 explanation of, 3:1403 gender, sexual orientation, ability examples of, 2:1073 haole and, 2:579–581 individual and collective costs of, 3:1404 individual White racism abandonment and, 3:1109 invisibility of, 2:1073–1074 labor market segmentation and, 2:824 media’s role in perpetuation of, 2:881 moral reformation and, 1:75 multicultural education and, 1:73–74 nonracist White identity construction and, 3:1109 paternalistic racism and, 3:1120 race and deviance and, 1:384–385 race and privilege and, 2:1073 racetalk and, 3:1100–1102 Savage Inequalities (Kozol), 3:1404 social institutions and, 3:1404 social racial hierarchy and, 3:1404 as “the other side of racism,” 3:1403–1404 understanding of, 3:1404 “unearned advantages” vs. “conferred dominance” and, 2:1073 the Veil and, 1:412–413 White racism and, 3:1397, 3:1404 See also Color blindness White racism, 3:1405–1408 cultural domination and, 3:1407 definition of, 3:1405 W. E. B. Du Bois and, 3:1405 European colonization and, 3:1405 FHA loans and, 3:1407 framing of the world and, 3:1407–1408 G. I. Bill of Rights example of, 2:613, 3:1406–1407
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
global racist order and, 3:1405 Indigenous people and, 3:1405–1406 institutional racism and, 3:1405 racetalk and, 3:1100–1102 structured white dominance and, 3:1406–1407 systemic racism and, 3:1405 systems of racialized oppression and, 3:1405 U.S. context of, 3:1406 White flight and, 3:1395–1397, 3:1407 White privilege and, 3:1397, 3:1404 White supremacy and, 3:1405 White supremacy movement, 3:1408–1411 American Nazi Party and, 3:1408, 3:1409 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith) and, 1:149–151, 1:150, 1:816, 2:1061, 3:1408 The Clansman (Dixon) and, 1:150, 2:816, 3:1408 “crisis of masculinity” and, 3:1410 history and membership of, 3:1408–1410 ideology of, 3:1410–1411 Internet and, 3:1409 Ku Klux Klan and, 2:815–817, 3:1213, 3:1408–1409 “love of their own race” feature of, 1:471 neo-Confederates term and, 3:1409 new member recruitment and, 3:1410 one-drop rule and, 3:1410 racist skinheads and, 3:1409 George Lincoln Rockwell and, 3:1408, 3:1409 stereotypes and, 3:1410 White power music and, 3:1409 White separatist, White nationalist terms and, 3:1408 Wilchins, Riki Anne, 2:846 Will, George, 1:98 Willeto, Angela A. A., 2:972 Williams, Fannie Barrier, 1:24, 3:1411–1412 Chicago School of Race Relations and, 1:271 Chicago Women’s Club controversy and, 3:1412 early years of, 3:1411 Hull House and, 3:1412 National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and, 3:1412 orator and journalist career of, 3:1411–1412 Williams, Hosea, 1:308 Williams, Patricia, 1:334 Williams, Robert, 1:177 Williams, Robin M., 1:331 Williams, Ronald, 2:1034 Williams, Spencer, 1:155 Williams v. Saxbe, 3:1224 Willis, Paul, 1:361 Willobrook School Study_, 2:884 Wilson, Charles Reagan, 1:305 Wilson, Dick, 1:60, 3:1131 Wilson, William Julius, 3:1413–1415 The Bridge Over the Racial Divide written by, 3:1415 The Declining Significance of Race written by, 1:75, 1:377–379, 3:1413, 3:1414 early life of, 3:1413 major works by, 3:1414–1415 mutiracial coalition vision of, 3:1415 Power, Racism, and Privilege written by, 3:1414
public policy and, 3:1415 societal analysis of racial, ethnic stratification focus of, 3:1413–1414 The Truly Disadvantaged written by, 3:1413, 3:1414, 3:1415 urban underclass, poverty and, 1:55, 2:644, 3:1344–1345 When Work Disappears written by, 3:1413, 3:1415 Wilson, Woodrow African American policies of, 1:173 Armenian policies of, 1:90 The Birth of a Nation (Griffith) and, 1:150 immigration policies of, 2:938 NAACP and, 2:932 Winant, Howard, 1:323, 3:1103, 3:1104 Winfrey, Oprah, 1:551 Winters, J. Alan, 3:1291 Winters v. United States, 3:1380 Wisconsin Belgian Americans in, 1:137 bilingual education in, 1:143 Czech Americans in, 1:368 Danish Americans and, 1:370 Danish Americans in, 1:371 Estonian Americans in, 1:448 Finnish Americans in, 1:501, 1:502 Hmong Americans in, 2:634 Laotian Americans in, 2:828 non-Indian home adoptions in, 2:715 Norwegian Americans in, 2:991 Ojibwa in, 2:995–998 Polish Americans in, 2:1058 Slovene Americans in, 3:1242 sundown towns in, 3:1283 Swedish Americans in, 3:1286 Tibetan Americans in, 3:1307 United Farm Workers in, 1:257–258 Woertz, Patricia, 1:551 Women in Brown Berets, 1:209 domestic violence and, 1:403–405 domestic work and, 1:405–408 incarcerated mothers and, 2:704–706 income by race, gender and, 1:393, 1:393 (table) income data and, 1:392 informal economy activities and, 2:725 Latina/o familism and, 1:477–478 “superwoman” complex and, 1:404 See also Affirmative action specific topic; African American women and work; Canada, Aboriginal women; Civil Rights Movement, women and; Feminism; Feminism, specific topic; Gender and race, intersection of; Hip-hop and rap, women and; Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT); Science faculties, women of color on; Sexual harassment; Sexuality Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Hull House School of Race Relations and, 2:661 Women’s Political Council (WPC), 3:1139
Index
Woocher, Jonathan, 1:304 Woodard, Komozi, 1:26 Woods, Tiger, 2:1000 Woodson v. North Carolina, 1:375 Woolman, John, 1:1 Worcester v. Georgia, 1:216, 2:1271 World Bank, 1:554 World War I adoptions increase after, 1:11 African American migration and, 1:31 African Americans after, 1:23 Albanian Americans and, 1:47 Anti-Defamation League and, 1:71 Assyrian, Chaldean, Syriac genocide and, 1:108 Balkans and, 1:129 Black bourgeoisie and, 1:153–154 Danish immigration and, 1:370 domestic work and, 1:406 German Americans and, 1:543 Hungarian Americans and, 2:663 World War II African American migration and, 1:31 Albanian American immigration and, 1:48–49 Aleuts and, 1:51–52 Americanization after, 1:63–64 asylum seekers, refugees after, 1:109 Black bourgeoisie and, 1:153–154 borderland disputes after, 1:191 Bracero Program of Mexican workers and, 1:193, 1:198, 1:318, 2:702, 2:895, 3:1393–1395 Bulgarian Americans immigration after, 1:213 Chinese American immigrants and, 1:286–287 Chinese in Singapore and, 3:1229 Danish immigration and, 1:371 economic inequality growth after, 2:654 Estonian immigrants after, 1:449 European migration patterns after, 1:475 Filipino American immigration and, 1:494, 1:495 Georgian American immigration and, 1:537, 1:538 German American immigration and, 1:543 globalization after, 1:552–553 global racism after, 1:558 Greek immigrants after, 1:559, 1:560 guest worker migration after, 1:567 hate groups, Anti-Defamation League and, 1:72 Hungarian American immigration and, 2:663–664 INS and, 2:695 Japanese American Citizens League and, 2:781 Latin American allies and, 1:498 Latvian American immigration and, 2:839 Mexican American militarists and, 2:895 Muslim American immigration and, 2:921 Muslims in Europe and, 2:926–927 nation-states, ethnic groups after, 1:558 Navajo code talkers and, 2:971 “race films” and, 1:155 women, minority laborers and, 1:16, 1:37 Wounded Knee (1890 and 1973), 3:1415–1417 1890, Sitting Bull and, 3:1234, 3:1415–1416
1621
1973, AIM and, 1:60, 1:61, 2:1023, 2:1034, 3:1129, 3:1131, 3:1416 1973, contextual perspectives of, 3:1416–1417 1973, historical events and, 3:1415–1416 1973, Red Power and, 3:1129, 3:1131 WPC. See Women’s Political Council (WPC) The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon), 1:483 Wright, Nathan, 1:26, 1:177 Wright, Richard, 1:31, 1:128, 1:168, 1:177, 2:751 Wyoming Cheyenne in, 1:264 Estonian Americans in, 1:448 internment camps in, 2:747 non-Indian home adoptions in, 2:715 Peruvian Americans in, 2:1043 Slovene Americans in, 3:1242 Xenophobia, 3:1419–1420 anti-immigrant sentiment and, 2:798–799, 3:1419–1420 Franz Boas and, 1:186 causes of, 3:1419–1420 definition of, 1:77, 3:1419 Dillingham Flaw concept and, 1:389–391 ethnocentric generalizations and, 1:390 European refugees and, 1:475 in France, 1:507 of guest workers, 1:568 immigration and, 3:1420 against Indian Americans, 2:710, 2:711 of Italian Americans, 2:769, 2:770 in Japan, 2:779–780 Japanese Canadians and, 1:226 Jews and, 1:77, 1:78 National Origins System and, 2:937–939 nativism and, 2:969 pachucos/pachucas and, 2:1005–1006, 3:1428 scapegoating and, 3:1419 urban legends and, 3:1352–1354 See also Chin, Vincent; Hate crimes Yakima Nation Kennewick Man and, 2:801, 2:802 place-based history of, 2:967 Yancey, George, 2:749 Yaqui census population data, 2:960 (table) Yasui, Minoru, 2:746 YCCA. See Young Citizens for Community Action (YCCA) Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 1:93 Yoon, In-Jin, 1:455 Yo Soy Joaquin (Gonzales), 1:122 Young, Brigham, 2:913 Young Citizens for Community Action (YCCA), 1:209 Young Lords, 3:1421–1422 Black Panther Party model for, 2:1083, 3:1421 direct action activism of, 2:1083 gender equality focus of, 3:1421 gentrification resistance and, 3:1421 Cha Cha Jimenez and, 2:1083 local community issues and, 3:1421
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Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society
Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization and, 3:1421 Puerto Rico independence focus of, 2:1083, 3:1421 Thirteen Point Manifesto of, 2:1083, 3:1421 Yugoslavia, 1:129, 1:131, 1:192 Yuman census population data, 2:960 (table) Yzaguierre, Raul, 2:934–935 Zainichi Koreans, in Japan, 2:779 Zangwill, Israel, 2:885–886, 2:887 Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), 1:61, 2:901–902, 3:1423 Zapatista Rebellion, 3:1423–1424 autonomous control demanded by, 2:835 movement evolution and, 3:1424 roots of, 3:1423–1424 Zapatista Army of National Liberation and, 1:61, 2:901–902, 3:1423 Zhirinovsky, Vladimir, 3:1175 Zimbabwe, 3:1424–1426, 3:1425 (map) economic collapse of, 3:1426 independence from White minority rule and, 3:1424–1425 land seizures and, 3:1425–1426 Movement for Democratic Change party and, 3:1425–1426
new governments of, 3:1425 Patriotic Front-Zimbabwe African People’s Union party and, 3:1425 Zimbabwe African National Union and, 3:1425 Zimbardo, Philip, 1:120, 1:121 Zionism, 3:1426–1428 American Jewish Committee and, 1:65 definitions of, 3:1426 early history of, 3:1426–1427 post-Zionism and, 3:1427 “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” and, 1:65 religious nationalist Zionism and, 3:1427 religious Zionists and, 3:1426 secular nationalist Zionism and, 3:1427 social Zionists and, 3:1427 Zionist Organization of America, 1:73 Zoot Suit Riots, 3:1428–1429 economic, social conditions causes of, 3:1428–1429 in Los Angeles, 2:1006, 3:1428–1429 Pachucos and, 2:1006 Sleepy Lagoon incident and, 2:1005–1006, 3:1428 Zorastrianism, 2:709, 2:752 Zuni, 2:1080, 2:1081, 2:1082